Fee
ΎΜΝΟΙ νι,
νοσήσας
- μ . BASED ely gh,
- ν᾿ ΡΝ oes
δου ον : ’ Ἶ r ἶ
0 δεν let Wn ον om, einen
"πε Has a 4? aay
eR διϑο Nees ey
icine
| ENN Na Lg PEA ee bones ays
1 Ὁ ye Ae
a Ὶ +? tev emt Ses WRG ὁ hear ge” ΟΝ
: . a Serta ᾿
Μ : . meheuonze : μι. aE αῦδο σὸδι : ESS SR
rail σα a; γεν WPNAweye « - . ᾽ στὸ SENET AY ; Lets st. nee
fe PN ξυσω σιν oe ρηδη ιν μ 9 - -
Beeler orwell ay Vere PIN ae ᾿ 5 ;
κκενη,ηκύηνες Ret fet » weed a age f !
ΟῚ P+ oO ῥωονὶ ‘
Eas Rene tee
ee eae eta απ eee Sei
. “,͵ al . . b
δι τὸς κ τὸν Les, Sot
ae
2 a“,
REY hate wie” ᾿ :
bye
δ . τὰ μονας
SOC EY έν ana” rome μῳγὰ
4 MEN IR mot ay,
᾿ Pee het να, ἣν
=f ress a > ᾿ PADI 16 NOE
rere oF ;
ἔ ‘ PoP ae oF ives Feet
Sete eres Υ
at eH ae δ
μενα, ecg mt =
ον <
Re eM Ae,
Seer ce
ταν όδεν deta
SEA es
ANTE Og) eet Rane,
Ne tae
3 . enn bie hn) .
. / tales 5)
νυ σὴ σνα ,
“tee IRN εκ ey
πόσιν, κα Pre a ”
Peete μεν, eel ae
τὰ
SPRL δε Peg ange
Fa Geert Mat
Sewn ἧς ον τως κὺ
- Ὶ ρου τσ ον
" Pe See
Meh We δ
EVENS Fee eee WS te tny ot
48a erate Mes
στον τὸ Mey blister Lone te
ee eee eee See ae Ἄν, see πο
po α - er ee Nee aN
. r Ὰ ᾿ Ry ere eae ah te we,
. " erent
were Mme. MSOVNF han
Mate ad ce
A Me abe. »" -
Ct ae Poe
ee ee
POOP en ta
- =
: : λυ δ ὐλοθιονα ον πε ων κα
“oe ere
Nee tw ee whee, Soa Potting ta
ORE ον μον ahe eat τ
νυν
Ts Sele eet Mena eh a tate.
a ae
MON oy sailor
ba the)
SNS See ὦ
eral |
een eee Bod
SRM eras!
i angi >
SPAR t
. a er ae
Saree ten ee dee -
er την
stqpesaee
Coden oye,
LIBRARY OF PRINCETON
| JAN ~ 7 2003 |:
THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY
AA ea
ty ,
οι
7 ee
ee Hh ahi ἃ ] Ε
' ey, wi! τὴν : ἢ
“aT
Wid Nees
ΙΝ
\ δὲ
i at
Ὶ "ἡ ἱ *
ioral) ae
bh
if
en
AN
\a
GENERAL HISTORY
OF THE
CHRISTIAN RELIGION AND CHURCH:
FROM THE GERMAN OF
DR. AUGUSTUS NEANDER.
TRANSLATED FROM THE SECOND AND IMPROVED EDITION.
BY JOSEPH TORREY,
PROFESSOR OF MORAL AND INTELLECTUAL PHILOSOPHY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF VERMONT.
«« My kingdom is not of this world.”” ‘‘ The kingdom of heaven fs like unto leaven.”” Words of owr Lord.
“The Lord is that Spirit ; and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.’"” Words of the Apostle Paut.
“Ἐπ Jésus-Christ toutes les contradictions sont accordées.’” Pascal.
σα
VOLUME» FIRST:
COMPRISING THE FIRST GREAT DIVISION OF THE HISTORY
vw
Φ επί American Ldvition.
BOSTON:
PUBLISHED BY CROCKER & BREWSTER.
LONDON: WILEY & PUTNAM.
1866.
PPP DCCA DADA DAAARADDRNNW2N12N2224N214244444242092444444%44A4A4A4AR
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1847,
By CROCKER & BREWSTER,
In the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts.
BALL Ὁ Δ COOCCODCCDDDODODDCCDOOOOOnenwnnwnms
TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE.
Tue translator deems it proper to state, that his labors
on Neanper began, and were prosecuted to the comple-
tion of several successive volumes or parts of the present
work, many years ago,— though not before a partial
translation of the same work had already appeared in
England.
He has certainly no reason to regret, but rather much
reason to congratulate himself, that his first translation
did not find its way to the press. In 1843, Dr. Neanper
sent forth a second edition of the first volume of his
work, embracing the history of the church in the first
three centuries. In this new edition, the alterations are
numerous and important. The great features of the
original work, its method and spirit, are, indeed, faithfully
preserved; but, in other respects, there are very decided
improvements.
These important changes, occurring not here and there,
but through entire pages and paragraphs, have made it
necessary to translate nearly the whole of the first volume
anew. The translator has submitted to this labor with
the more cheerfulness, as it enables him to present the
work to the English reader in the form in which Dr.
Neanper has been pleased to express his wish that it
should appear.
It has been, throughout, the translator’s aim and effort
to render a faithful version of the original. He has
never felt himself at liberty, on any pretence whatever,
to add any thing to the text, or to omit any thing from it
iv TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE. ADVERTISEMENT.
He has never resorted to notes for the purpose of explain-
ing any thing ‘which could be made sufficiently clear in
the place where it stands. On the extreme difficulty of
giving an exact rendering in English of an author's lan-
guage, so exceedingly idiomatic, so thoroughly German
in all his habits of thought and modes of expression as
the author of this History, he need not enlarge. If
allowance be made for the slight but necessary modifica-
tions which for this reason have sometimes been resorted
to, the translator believes it will be found, that as he has
clearly conceived his author’s meaning, so he has faith-
fully expressed it in some form of English that can be
understood.
In conclusion, he would take this occasion to express
his grateful acknowledgments to all those friends who
have encouraged and assisted him in the execution of
his task; and in a very particular manner to the Rev.
JosepH Tracy, whose consent to overlook the proof-
sheets before they came under the translator’s final re-
vision, was an act of real kindness, which will not by
him be very easily forgotten.
ADVERTISEMENT.
Tue publishers have concluded to issue this first vol-
ume, without waiting for the second, now in the press.
Meantime, the translator has been informed that a new
edition of the second volume has just appeared in Ger-
many. It is his intention to procure this new edition as
early as possible, and to incorporate all the important
additions and improvements it may contain with the
second volume of the translation before it goes forth to
the public.
--
DEDICATION OF THE FIRST VOLUME.
TO F. VON SCHELLING, THE PHILOSOPHER.
As the first volume of my Church History is about to make its appearance in a
better shape, I feel constrained to take this opportunity of presenting you a testi-
mony of my sincere respect and love, and my hearty thanks for all the instruction
and excitement to thought derived from what you have said, both publicly and in
the intercourse of private life, and for all you have done, during your residence
here, in the service of our common holy cause. When I dedicate a work of this
character to a philosopher like you, I know that it is nothing foreign from your
philosophy ; for that takes history for its point of departure, and would teach us to
understand it according to its inward essence. In striving to apprehend the history
οἵ the church, not as a mere juxtaposition of outward facts, but as a development
proceeding from within, and presenting an image and reflex of internal history, I
trust that I am serving a spirit which may claim some relationship to your philoso-
phy, however feeble the powers with which it may be done. In what you publicly
expressed respecting the stadia in the development of the Christian church, how
much there was which struck in harmony with my own views! I might feel some
hesitation in laying before a man of your classical attainments, such a master of
form as well as of matter, a work of whose defects, when compared with the idea
at its foundation, no one can be more conscious than its author. But I know, too,
that fellowship of spirit and feeling will be accounted of more worth by you, than
all else besides.
Trusting, then, that you will accept this offering in the same spirit with which
it is presented, I conclude with the sincerest wishes that a gracious God may long
preserve you in health, and the full enjoyment of your powers; that he would
make you wholly our own, and long keep you in the midst of us, to awaken the
ἔρως πτεροφύτωρ in the minds of our beloved German youth; to exert your power-
ful influence against all debasement and crippling of the intellect; to lead back
those who are astray, from the unnatural and the distorted to a healthful simplicity ;
to exhibit a pattern of right method and of true freedom in science; to testify
of that which constitutes the goal and central point of all history; and—so far as
it comes within the province of science —to prepare the way for that new, Chris-
tian age of the world, whose dawn already greets us from afar; that, for such ends
as these, He would prolong the evening of your life, and make it even more glori-
ous than was its morning.
These are the sincere and fervent wishes of him who calls himself, with his
whole heart, Yours, 1k atin ΟΡ ΤΕ
BERLIN, JULY 11, 1842.
PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION.
To exhibit the history of the Church of Christ, as a living witness of the divine
power of Christianity; as a school of Christian experience; a voice, sounding
through the ages, of instruction, of doctrine, and of reproof, for all who are dis-
posed to listen ; this, from the earliest period, has been the leading aim of my life
and studies. At the same time, I was always impressed with the magnitude of the
undertaking, and with the great difficulties which must attend it, if so conducted
as to answer the demands of science and of the great practical want which I have
mentioned; for both of these are, in the present case, closely connected. Nothing
but what can stand as truth before the scrutiny of genuine, unprejudiced science,
—of ascience which does not see through the glass of a particular philosophical
or dogmatic school, — can be profitable for instruction, doctrine, and reproof; and
wherever a science relating to the things of God and their revelation and evolu-
tion among mankind has not become, by mismanagement of human perversity, an
insignificant caricature, or a lifeless skeleton, it must necessarily bear these fruits. |
Science and life are here designed to inter-penetrate each other, if life is not to
be exposed to the manifold contradictions of error, and science to death and inanity.
Although I certainly felt the inward call to such an undertaking, yet the sense
of its weight and its responsibleness— especially at the present time, which so
much needs the historiam vite magistram, as a sure compass in the storm and tumult
of events —has continually deterred me from attempting to realize the favorite
idea which so long floated before my mind. After several preliminary essays,
on works connected with church history, I was led by various motives, personal
and outward, to engage in a task which, if too long delayed, might never be
accomplished.
The immediate outward occasion was, that my respected publisher invited me to
prepare for the press a new edition of my work on the Emperor Julian; and, at
the same time, a more full and ample treatment of the subject, which in that work
had been only a fragment. But, in setting about this task, I found that the book,
according to the views which I then entertained; would have to take an entirely
new shape, and, if it came to any thing, to be wrought into a far more comprehen-
sive whole. Thus was suggested to me the thought of publishing, in the first place,
the history of the church in the three first centuries, as the starting point of a gen-
eral Church History; and the encouragement received from my publisher con-
firmed me in the plan.
I here enter, then, upon the execution of this work, and present to the public
the first great division of the history of the church during the three first centuries.
The second division, if it please God, shall follow by the next Easter fair. The
history of the Apostolic church as a whole, is, to my own mind, of so much impor-
tance, that I could not prevail on myself to incorporate it immediately with the
present history. Hence, in this work, I have simply presupposed it; and I reserve
for a future opportunity the publication of it, as a separate work by iself.
May He who is the fountain of all goodness and truth, attend the commence-
ment of this work with His blessing, and grant me both the ability and the right
disposition to prosecute it to the end.
To conclude, I offer my hearty thanks to all the friends who have attended this
work, in its transition through the press, with their kind assistance; and especially
to my excellent friend, one of our promising young theologians, (soon afterwards
removed to a better world,) the theological student, Srvger. To his assiduity and
care, accompanied with no small labor in correcting the proofs, the appearance of
this volume 15 greatly indebted. The indexes referring to the matter of the work,
which, it is hoped, will contribute much to the reader’s convenience, are also due
to the industry of this valued and beloved friend.
A. NEANDER.
BERLIN, OCTOBER 18, 1825.
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.
First of all, I would thankfully acknowledge the Divine goodness which has
enabled me—beyond any expectations I could have formed when, seventeen
years ago, 1 commenced the publication of my Church History — to prosecute the
work so far, and also to recast the first volume of it in a better shape. The first
edition having been disposed of within a year, a reimpression of the text and
doubling the number of copies made it possible to defer the preparation of a new
edition for so long a period. For this I am indebted to the prudent arrangement
of my respected publisher; for had I undertaken to prepare a new edition at any
earlier period, it would hardly have been in my power to carry forward the work
so far as [have. Besides, owing to the long interval which has elapsed, I had be-
come almost a stranger to this portion of it, in its original form; and hence the
defects which demanded correction, could not fail to appear to me the more
glaring. Many of the corrections have been suggested by the remarks of friends
and of enemies; and I trust I shall ever be glad to listen also to the latter, when
the truth speaks through them.
I must still hold fast to the same fundamental position in theology, and in the
contemplation of history, which I held at the outset of my undertaking. I must
strenuously defend it, over against, and in opposition to, the same main tendencies
-which I then had to combat. On many points, history, in the mean time, has
already decided. Nothing will remain hidden: principles must unfold themselves,
and bring out to the light the results which lie within them. When this has been
done, all the shifts are in vain, by which men would seek to reverse the decision
of history, and repeat over again the old trick of deception.
When, at the commencement of my labors, seventeen years ago, I dedicated my
work to the friend who was about to leave me, WILHELM BOHMER,—a young man
whom I looked upon as the representative of a whole class inspired with the same
disposition ; who has since, as a man, maintained his standing among the learned
theologians and teachers of the church, and with whom I have ever remained
bound by the same fellowship of spirit, —I affixed to it the motto of our common
theology, and of this exhibition of history: “ Pectus est, quod theologum facit.”
We need not be ashamed of this maxim; shame rather to those who were bold
enough to ridicule it. They have pronounced sentence on themselves. It was the
watchword of those men who called forth theology from the dead forms of scholas-
ticism to the living spirit of God’s word. So let this be our motto still, in despite
of all starveling or over-crammed Philisters,—of all the foolish men who wrap
themselves in the conceit of their own superior science, or who allow themselves
to be dazzled by such vain pretensions.
The first division of this work, in its present altered shape, will occupy two
volumes. The second volume, with the Divine permission, will soon follow the
present; * and I hope, also, the continuation of the whole work will no longer
be delayed.
A. NEANDER.
BERLIN, JULY 11, 1842.
* The two volumes are embraced in the first volume of the present translation
DEDICATION OF THE SECOND VOLUME.
TO MY BELOVED AND MUCH-HONORED FRIEND,
DR. HEUBNER,
SUPERINTENDENT-GENERAL AT WITTENBERG,
THE THEOLOGUS NON GLORIZ SED CRUCIS.
WueEw, last year, the noble festival was held in commemoration of the twenty-
fifth anniversary of your Theological Seminary, from which, during that space
of time, so rich a blessing has flowed to the churches of this country, gladly
would I have borne some part or other in honor of this occasion so interesting to
my heart. It was not my happiness to enjoy that privilege. I now come after
the feast, with a small offering, which assures you of my sincere love and respect.
There is also ἃ jubilee-festival in commemoration of our ancient friendship. It is
now more than five and twenty years since it was my happiness to make your ac-
quaintance, in the society of that man of God, who but a short time ago was called -
home from the midst of us, Baron von Korrwirz, a man whose memory thou-
sands bless, — and from that time I have looked towards you as to a point of light
amid the darkness of this worldly age. You will receive this tribute of my sincere
esteem with indulgent good-will. If you find a good deal here, as in other writings
of mine, which does not accord with your own views of doctrine, this, I am con-
fident, cannot disturb your kind feelings. You understand how to make subordinate
differences recede and give place to the higher fellowship grounded on that one
foundation, which is Christ. You are a disciple of the true spirit of love and free-
dom, which, so far from insisting that everything shall be cast in the same mould,
maketh free.
God grant that you may be spared yet many years, as a blessing to his church,
which, in these times of encroaching darkness, needs such witnesses above all
things else. With all my heart, yours,
BERLIN, JUNE 28, 1843. A. NEANDER.
PREFACE TO THE SECOND VOLUME.
THE following is that part of the first book of my Church History, which con-
tains the history of doctrines. The active investigations which have been going
on, during the few years past, in this department, gave occasion, here especially,
for the correction or more ample proof of many things which I had advanced ;
and I am rejoiced that the opportunity has been given me for making these im-
provements. A tendency which aims at science and spirit by referring everything
to the head, could, most assuredly, never find in me any thing but an unfashion-
able opponent.
In conclusion, I present my hearty thanks to my friend, HERMANN RossEL, for
the patient and skilful care which he has bestowed on the correction of this volume,
and in preparing the running-titles, and the indexes at the end.
The two prefaces to the second and third volumes of the first edition, I leave
out for want of room. The third volume was dedicated to the beloved man with
whom, as a colleague, I have since had the pleasure of being permanently connect-
ed, and was meant as a salutation of hearty love on the occasion of his then recent
arrival on a visit to this city, in July 19th, 1827.
The guide to Church History, which I promised some time ago, will now beyond
all doubt be prepared by a very dear young friend of mine, Hr. Lic. Jacos1, who
has already made himself favorably known by his essay on Pelagius, and from
whom the best which could be done may be expected.
A. NEANDER.
BERLIN, JUNE 23, 1843.
TABLE OF CONTENTS.
VOLUME FIRST.
HISTORY OF THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION AND CHURCH IN THE THREE
FIRST CENTURIES.
INTRODUCTION.
GENERAL RELIGIOUS CONDITION OF THE WORLD, ROMAN, GREEK AND JEW-
ISH, AT THE TIME WHEN CHRISTIANITY FIRST APPEARED, AND
TO MAKE PROGRESS, p. 1—68.
Christianity, a power transcending man’s nature; but adapted to the
wants, and called for by the history, of the human race; as this period
of its first appearance most especially shows: +--+ +++ πο ences
Religious Condition of the Roman, Greek, and Pagan World, ὅ---ϑῦ.
Religion of the Greeks and Romans, of transient significance, and sup-
planted by the progress of culture. Not a religion for mankind, but
only a popular and state religion. Antithesis of esoteric and exoteric.
Superstition regarded by Polybius the strongest pillar of the Roman
state: so also by Strabo. Varro’s distinction of a threefold theology - -
Total decline of religion. Epicurianism, skepticism: Lucretius, Lucian.
Isolated attempts to rescue the fundamental truths of religion: Varro,
Strabo. Doubt as to all religion: the elder Pliny-+--+--+-+:*" "777°
The craving awakened after the religion of the earlier times. Dissatisfac-
tion with the present, and with the results of a negative philosophy:
Pausanias, Dionysius of Halicarnassus. Artificial faith. Fanaticism.
Superstition AROS ἀλλο RRS WRT ΟΝ NEMO NOR ra NECN Bea Get <b eevee ene
Superstition. Infidelity. Plutarch on the relation between the two-----
The more earnest tendencies of the period: Stoicism, Platonism. Rela-
tion of the two to each other, and to the religious want--++-+- +--+" τη τ
Eclecticism growing out of Platonism. Plutarch, its representative: +++: -
The speculative mode of apprehending religion as preparing the way for
Monotheism. Idea of a simple Original Essence, of the Neo-Pla-
Representation of worship as sensuous imagery and accommodation. De-
fence, on this ground, of image-worship : Dio Chrysostom. Apologetic
doctrines concerning demons: Plutarch, Porphyry. These arti cial
helps of no use to the people. The aristocratic Bpirits eee ss ese yee
Religions cravings excited by the attempts to defend and yi the de-
clining religion. Enthusiasm. Goetse: Alexander of Abonoteichus,
Apollonius of Tyana patti PRO oho πα oe ew ee ve dae Keane oes
The Clementines ΣΉ ον ον ον δ eS νὸν δ os θα κα Δ ge νὰ o ale mh we sean
BEGAN
PAGE
1—5
5—7
8—10
10—14
14—19
15—20
20—25
25—27
27—30
80---82
82---88
88—35
x TABLE OF CONTENTS. 4
Religious Condition of the Jews, 35—68.
Judaism as a divine revelation. Want of accordance between the divine
subject-matter and its form of manifestation. Hence Judaism only ἃ
preparatory step. Prophecy. Its end and aim, and the ultimate end
of the Jewish religion. The idea of the Messiah: --.--++.+.+-.-.4-
Conception of the ‘Theocracy, and expectations of the Messiah become
sensuous. Judas of Gamala. The Zealots. False prophets---------
Three main directions of the Jewish theology. a dead and formal ortho-
doxy, a superficial religion of the understanding, and Mysticism, rep-
resented in the three sects of the Pharisees, Sadducees, and Essenes: - -
Alexandrian Judaism, 49—62.
Influence of pagan culture on the Jews of Alexandria. Dogmas of a for-
eign philosophy combined with faith in a revelation. Universal histori-
_ cal import of Judaism set forth by Philo-----+-+-+++++++--+- ἐπ ΣΥΝ
Twofold purpose of the Alexandrian philosophy of religion; to ward off
pagan infidelity, and pharisaical bondage to the letter. In opposition to
the latter, the allegorical method of interpretation. ‘Two different stages
in the understanding of revelation; faith in the letter and history, intu-
ition of the enveloped idea. Sons of the Logos, sons of the ὄν. Dis-
tinction between esoteric and exoteric religion: - - - τ ++++++++eeeeee ee
Ascetic tendency growing out of this Idealism. The Therapeute------
Relation of the different religious tendencies among the Jews—of Sad-
duceeism, Phariseeism, of Jewish Mysticism, of the Alexandrian the-
ology =o Christianity δα Ὁ γε ς καὶ ο, ὑξαὶ τὴς, πον eel ρθε oh θὴκ πρρλθυν γα, 6 3- δου δ, 5.5 7 ς
Spread of Judaism among Greeks and Romans. Proselytes of justice.
Proselytes of the ZALS + se rere cree cece rere eens rece nc en enenseens
SECTION FIRST.
RELATION OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH TO THE UNCHRISTIAN WORLD,
69—178.
Spread-of Christianity, 68—86.
Spread of Christianity generally. Obstacles which hindered it. Causes
and means by WICH 1b WAS ΘΕ wiereve sailele im τρῶς aie a's ais ene exenens anche
Christianity, by readily uniting with every thing purely human, and as
readily attacking every form of ungodliness, destined and suited, from
the smallest beginnings, to reform entire humanity. ---}---+++++++++++
Superstition of the lower classes of the people among the pagans. Sor-
cerers hinder the entrance of Christianity. Supernatural effects of
Christianity, contrasted with the arts of these men----+-++++++++++++>
The devout, enthusiastic life of its confessors, a witness for Christianity,
and means of its spread Sy CNC x ROR ROR OCIS CAO CRO ΚῚΣ Gua Gr o ΟΡ ῊΣ
Diffusion of Christianity in particular Districts, 79—86.
Asia. 'The accounts in the New Testament. Legend about the corres-
pondence of Uchomo, Abgar of Edessa, with Christ. More certain
evidence of the sp of Christianity there, in the years 160—170.
The gospel preached in the Parthian empire, by Peter. In Arabia,
erhaps by Paul and Bartholomew. Later, by Pantenus and Origen.
n India, according to an old tradition, by Thomas: - - τ τ τ Ὁ στ στ τε σσσεν
Africa. Mark, according to the tradition, founder of the church at Alex-
andria. Diffusion of the gospel from thence to Cyrene. To Carthage
and proconsular Africa, fin) PEGG ss οὐ νοι το Fale sa) isi = τον ον sige ee
ae
a
35—37
37—39
39—49
49—52
52—58
58—62
62—66
66—68
68—79
68—71
71—75
75—79
80—83
83—84
— eg
TABLE OF CONTENTS.
connections with Asia Minor-----++- $00) « isle” 6 ὃ ὁ 6 lore An wiles ion wecese
Persecutions of the Christian Church, 86—178.
Their Causes, 86—93.
Limits of Roman toleration. Grounded on a principle exclusively
political. Christianity a religio nova, illicita. Suspicion of political
designs, favored by the position taken by the majority of Christians
in relation to the state and its institutions: +--+ ++ +++++eesseeeeeees
Public opinion. Popular HEITOR othe ec cede eae Ca kc ee et eer Keen wee
Situation of the Christian Church under the several Emperors, 93—156.
Under Tiberius. Tertullian’s story of a proposal of the emperor to the
senate in relation to Christ: εν ον δεν ἐν ς ἐν νον καον κε ον ve me nvercece
Under Claudius. Christians confounded with the Jews; and, in con-
sequence, banishment of the Christians in the year 53. Report of
SHETGTTIGHC iors Sie. S sieves ceeie ta sitelelaie © lccaiielin Suspere(e ποτ ΣΝ
_~Nerg Persecution of the Christians occasioned by the burning of Rome
Domitian. Encouragement of informers. Confiscation of goods. Banish-
ment. Trial of the kinsmen of Jesus----+--esseecccvesssesccces
Nerva. Prohibition of informers. Trajan. His law against close
associations. Report of Pliny, governor of Bithynia and Pontus, in
the year 110. Less favorable situation of the Christians: --+-++++::
Hadrian. Forbids riotous attacks. Complaints against them by the
Proconsul Serennius Granianus. Rescript of Hadrian to the latter’s
successor Fundanus. Religious views of Hadrian. Persecution of the
Christians under Barcochba-.-.--cecserererevererecscessccrece
Antoninus Pius. Disapprobation of popular attacks. Pretended rescript
πρὸς TO κοινὸν τῆς ᾿Ασίας . seers cece ee se erceerseeereereeeteereces
Marcus Aurelius. His religious tendency. Sharper measures against
the Christians. Persecution at Smyrnain 167. Martyrdom of Poly-
carp. Persecution in Gaul, — Lugdunum, Vienna, Autun. Martyr-
dom of Pothinus. Examples of Christian heroism. The legio fulminea
Commodus. Reason of his milder behavior towards the Christians - - - -
Situation of the Christians during the political disturbances after the
death of Commodus. Septimius Severus. Law forbidding Romans
to embrace Christianity «+++ +++ +2 tere eee cee eee eee weer eos
Caracalla. Examples to show how the persecution was conducted: -: -
- Tranquillity under Heliogabalus and Alexander Seyerus. The lararium
of the latter. Collection of imperial rescripts against the Christians
by Domitius Ulpianus. — eee ὁ 4 ee eer Οὐ eee κ᾽ ὁ δ᾽" reese α.α. οὐδ 8 α ὁ ὦ
Popular attacks under Maximin the Thracian., Tranquillity under
Philip the Arabian. Story of the corfversion of this Emperor to
removal from Carthages Continuation of the persecution under
Gallus and Volusianus. Martyrdom of the Roman bishops Cornelius
and Lucius eK Py aa ae Oe eT te ek ek es Sewers eces
The Christians under Gallienus and Macrianus. Decree of toleration
by the former. Christianity a religio licita. Consequences of this
even in the time of Aurelign. Forty years’ repose of the church: -- -
Diocletian. From 284 and onward, alone; then from 286 with Maximian
Herculius. At first favorable to the Christians. His edict against
84—86
86—92
92—93
93—94
94
94—95
96
95—101
101—103
103
103—117
117—119
119—122
122—125
125—126
126—129
129—131
131—136
136—140
140—142
ΧΙ TABLE OF CONTENTS. ἰ
the Manichewans. Alarm of the Pagans at the increasing spread of
the Christian religion. Caius Galerius Maximian. His command, —
that all the soldiers should take part in the sacrifices, in the year 298.
Martyrdom of the centurion Marcellus: --++++++++++e+eeeeeeeeeee 142—147
Meeting of Diocletian with Galerius at Nicomedia. Destruction of the
Christian church there. Attempt to destroy the copies of the holy
scriptures. Examples illustrative of this persecution: ---+++++++++- 147—153
Constantius Chlorus. Cesar in Spain, Gaul, Britain. His mildness
towards the Christians. Maximin, elevated to the rank of a Cesar,
continues the persecution. In the year 308, a new command to offer
sacrifice. Three years later, the edict of toleration by Galerius-- - - - 154—156
Written Attacks on Christianity, and the Defence of it against such
Attacks, 156—178.
Erroneous judgments concerning Christianity, arising out of the form of
its development, and the singularity of its whole appearance. Lucian.
Confusion of Christianity with various kinds of superstition. His.
Peregrinus ἀν δ τὰ ἰοῦσι ee: vous, (ols lolsiele, cipife-e oiGi 5.2.5 letlelel ele je) je ἀν οι islielis sveile tetevelare 157—158
Judgment of the stoic Arrian, like that of Marcus Aurelius. The most
eminent antagonists from the school of Neo-Platonism. Celsus. In-
quiry relative to his person. His Platonic Eclecticism. Importance!
of his attack entitled, — λόγος ἀληϑήῆς. Its contents: +++++++-++++-+- 158—170
Porphyry the Pheenician, towards the close of the third century: like-
wise a Platonician. His “system of Theology derived from the re-
sponses of Oracles,” περὶ τῆς ἐκ λογίων φιλοσοφίας. Oracular responses
concerning CURT Ash alo fo ims baile: alee Sieliiatts Sele Ol ete aisle! elev les Ὁ Ὁ ΓΤ ets) aware, τὰ 170—i 73
Hierocles, governor of Bithynia, the last writer against Christianity of
this age. His book: λόγοι φιλαλήϑεις πρὸς τοὺς Χριστιανούς. Repetition
of objections already made. Calumnies. Inclination of declining
Paganism to oppose to the founder of the Christian religion, the heros
of their own. Account of the life of Apollonius by the rhetorician
Peaster eben ee te eae ts cid sears PEE eats ἐν τὴς THS=1 7s
Christian Apologists after the time of Hadrian. Twofold purpose of
the Apologies. Relation of the Roman state to them. Appeal of the
Apologists to the life of the Christians. Reference to prophetic ele-
ments in Paganism. The Sibyllines. Tertullian’s appeal to testimony
of the soul, as Christian by nature---- seeeee eee seer cree eee eees 174—178
SECTION SECOND.
HISTORY OF THE CHURCH CONSTITUTION, CHURCH DISCIPLINE, AND
SCHISMS, 179—248.
History of the Church Constitution, 179—217.
History of the Constitution of the Communities generally, 179—201.
Two periods to be distinguished: the first shaping of the church consti-
tution in the Apostolic age, proceeding immediately from the essence of
Christianity, and the further development of it under the foreign in-
fluences of the succeeding times.
First Ground-work of the Constitution of the Christian Communities
in the Apostolic Age, 179—190.
Christ the one and only High Priest — the end of the whole priesthood.
All Christians a priestly race. Common participation of all in one
Spirit. Manifestation of one’ Spirit in the several spiritual gifts.
Different position of individuals according to these charismata------ 179182
TABLE OF CONTENTS.
The charisma of government, χάρισμα κυβερνήσεως. Unsuitableness of
the monarchical form of government. Shaping of the constitution
of the Christian communities after the pattern of the Jewish. Council
of elders, πρεσβύτεροι = Ὁ} 1, also called ἡγούμενοι, ποιμένες, ἐπίσκοποι.
The names of bishops and presbyters equivalent+++++++++++++++++
The charisma of teaching, χάρισμα διδασκαλίας. Relation of the office of
teaching to the administration of government -++++++++erereers ees
Office of the deacons: +--+ - sees sees eeereceseeeces Je evcces dw δ᾽ οἷο εἷς
Form of election to these church offices " - "Ὁ 7.11.1 Seen eer eeerenes .
Changes in the Constitution of the Christian Church after the
Apostolic Age, 190—217.
Change more especially in three points: — a. Distinction introduced
between bishops and presbyters, and development of the monarchico-
episcopal government of the church. ὁ. Distinction between the
clergy and the laity, and formation of a sacerdotal caste. c. Multi-
plication of church offices.
a. The president of the college of presbyters receives distinctively and
afterwards exclusively the title of ἐπίσκοπος : continues nevertheless
to be primus inter pares. Development of the episcopal system favored
by the circumstances of the times. Influence of the Apostle John in
this respect. Traces of the earlier equality of rank. Contest between
the presbyters and episcopi. Cyprian’s activity in this contest. Ad-
vantages and disadvantages of the episcopal system +-++++++++++++:
}. Furtherance of the idea of a distinct sacerdotal caste by this system.
Development of this idea. The denominations Ordo, κλῆρος, originally
without reference to the Levitical priesthood-++-+++++++++++++2+s
Revolt of the Christian consciousness against the pretensions of the
sacerdotal order: --se- secs ccc cece seer cass reese ese eresecene
Change of the original relation between communities and presbyters.
Separation of the latter from the world. Form of church elections: -
c. Multiplication of church offices. Sub-deacons. Readers, lectores,
avayvworai. Acolytes. Exorcists. Door-keepers, πολωροΐ, ostiarii - -
Forms of Union between the several individual Communities, 201—207.
In place of the gospel equality, subordination of some of the communities
to others. The country bishop under the city bishop. The provincial
-city under the bishop of the capital. Mother churches. Sedes Apos-
tolice: Rome, Antioch, Alexandria, Ephesus, Corinth -+---+++++++
Rome the centre of the world, the mother church of almost the entire
West, — distinguished by the preaching and the martyrdom of Peter
and Ῥα 0 = siete oe writers οὐ οἷον το eit a A ebslelsid OE ors) ST 5 τοὐ δ Φ αἰ δ ets .“
Union between the communities by means of travellers. Ecclesiastical
correspondence. Epistole formate, γράμματα τετυπωμένα. Origin of
synods. Advantages and disadvantages of them ---+-+--+++- ΣΝ
Union of the entire Church in one body, closely connected in all its parts; the
Outward Unity of the Catholic Church, and its Representation, 207—217.
Unity of the church. Conception of the unity of the church as an out-
ward thing. Irenwus, Cyprian. Resistance to it. Representation
of this outward unity. erm of the medieval domination of the
priesthood ee σὸν σα δ i CR αν ὦ νἀ ee Ke TSH eine eS
Preéminent rank of Peter. Gradual origin of the view that Rome was
the cathedra Petri------- SO μιν τ es ee ea eR Re τα
Arrogant claims of the Roman bishops, as episcopi episcoporum. Resist-
ance to it. Ireneus, Cyprian ----++-- ie aan a pine tho Ὁ
VOL. I.
Xl
182—184
184—188
188—189
189—190
190—193
193—196
196—198
198—200
200—201
»
201—203
203—204
205—207
207—211
211—214
214—217
X1V TABLE OF CONTENTS.
Church Discipline. Exclusion from the Fellowship of the Visible
Church, and Terms of Re-admission, 217—221.
The Christian church in its not unalloyed manifestation. Necessity of
church discipline, and of the exclusion of the unworthy. Views
of St. Pele ees oe POPS oe aisha άπ ρῶν ee ee ee wie ete we Ὁ 917—218
The church as an institution for education. Church penance. Re-
admission of the reformed. Church discipline becomes outward and
FOLIA «e's cele calc ca oe owe ce 0 eo oe es 00 vise jee de siete s ces estate eee es 918—220
Controversy concerning the re-admission of those who had fallen into
MOTIAL GING 2s cere ccececcecscorveceesvveseseevevsesdecviuveeser 990—221
History of Church Divisions or Schisms, 221—248.
Distinction between church divisions and heresies. Furtherance of the
system of church unity by the two principal schisms ---+++-++++-+-- 221—222
The Schism of Felicissimus at Carthage, 222—236.
Cyprian. His conversion and nomination to the episcopate. His
position with respect to the Carthaginian communities------+-++-+++> 222—224
Novatus. His appointment of Felicissimus to the office of deacon: - - - - 224—225
Cyprian’s flight from Carthage.» Question about the re-admission of the
lapsed. Cyprian’s decision. Hostility to this by Cyprian’s adver-
saries, confirmed by the voice of the confessors:++++++++-++++++++* 225—230
Cyprian opposed to the excessive veneration of the confessors. His
undecided conduct on this point. Influence of the Roman church on
his way of proceeding Een ee ee SINGS Gi ἘΠ Ghai ale BIG a to Sic 930—232
Church visitation. Resistance of Felicissimus. New outbreak of the
controversy aise lols δὴ τ γενό ον wisi 1 mics ele οὐδ ein join isin lin hel-s)eicaye4¥) Ἀν ΒΊΑ, ial s πόκον απ τ tain 932—233
Synod of Carthage, A. D. 251. Removal of the schism. Last attempts
of the party. Cyprian’s letter to Florentius Pupianus---+-+++++++++: 233—236
Schism of Novatian in Rome, 237—248.
Novatian — his life and character: -----+-++--+«- been κι ee ewer ene 2,5) Ξ: 941
Intermeddling of Novatus in the Roman controversy. Novatian anti-
bishop to Cornelius. Judgment of Dionysius of Alexandria on the
schism. Cyprian’s position with relation to it-++++++++++errsesees 241—242
The two points of dispute : — the nature of penance and the conception
of the church.
a. Novatian’s principles on penance. Cyprian’s arguments on the other
ΠΟΙ ΘΗ 659: ς «τινὰ OOOO ROO OC Oats Goo aninacd Ao voc ot 949—947
b. Novatian’s conception of the purity of the church. Contaminated by
toleration of the lapsed. Cyprian’s refutation. Fundamental error
of both parties: — the confounding together of the visible and the
invisible church. Victory of the catholic church system as the fruit
Of the SGHISMSs δον ὁ δον ἐξα wee co cla ele οἱ δ cle sinus ce win αἱ εἰ τίου τα τς atalnielblere 94 7—248
SECTION THIRD.
CHRISTIAN LIFE AND CHRISTIAN WORSHIP, 249—335.
Christian Life, 249—288.
Christianity a power for sanctification. Testimonies of the church fathers 249—250
Contrast of pagan and Christian life. Circumstances that furthered and
hindered the cultivation of the Christian temper. Outward appre-
hension of Christianity — particularly of baptism ---+++++++++++++ 250—253
Entrance of Christianity even into the sensuous representations of men.
TABLE OF CONTENTS.
Defects of the visible church. Point of view to be taken, in contem-
plating this primitive period ἈΝ ΟΣ nets πλδυλοννεν αν λῷ λιν
Prominent virtues of the Christians. Christian brotherly love and
benevolence Se σεν σον οὶ 6.5. UR: ὧν θδὲ αὶ ὁ 6a) liebe ὦ. Oe ναι. ( wap ᾧ. Δ» δ' Bi BLS eee 6. Bla Le WAS
Position of Christianity in respect to the existing forms and relations of
society. Collision between civil and religious matters. Different
views of the Christians on this point: +--+ -++-+++++eeee eer eee ee eee
Occupations and trades which were forbidden. Penalty for visiting any
kind of public ΠΡ ΝΕ ΕΟ we io Leh een an ine τ δεν ἐμέε τος, δι wijel δ κε βάδην oye ΔΜ. ἀρ ῊΣ st
Christianity in its relation to slavery: " - - "Ὁ 555 Ὁ τ νκκκ eee ee εκ κεν κὸν
Different views respecting the propriety of taking any civil or military
office. Arguments for and against Christians enlisting in the mili-
tALY SEPVICE +s eee eee cece cece ee rete tere cere cece wean ese νειν
Christian life as judged of by the Pagans. Christian asceticism. Re-
sistance against extreme asceticism. The shepherd of Hermas.
Τίς ὁ σωζόμενος πλούσιος of Clement of Alexandria .----+++-+++.+.-.
Christian life in the family. Marriage. Dress. Mixed marriages.
Church consecration of marriage ae) λνλ! ee ey aha the Pale SMawe ὁ ἡ ἀν Meh elas des
Prayer, the soul of the whole Christian life. Effects. Mode of prayer.
Times of prayer. Common prayer. Position and gestures of the
suppliant we αν ὁ μὲ seer coer cere sesecn i ee ee δ᾽ ον Φ Ὁ ΟΠ:
Of the Common Worship of God, 288—335.
Character of Christian Worship generally, 288—290.
Spiritual worship of God in contradistinction to Judaism and Paganism.
Places of Assembling for Worship, 290—292,
First, private houses ; later, buildings erected for the purpose. Churches.
Originally no images. Hatred of art. Causes of it. Images in
domestic life. Symbolic figures. Churck images. Sign of the cross
Times of Assembling for Divine Worship and Festivals, 292—302.
Times consecrated to God. New view of Christianity on this point.
Origin of festivals. Confounding together of the Old and New
Testament points OE VIBW ἐς sss + cinta MORASS meee ae: Diese emake) ab προ τ te Want
Weekly and annual festivals. Sunday. Dies stationum. Sabbath.
Fasts. Annual festivals. Feast of the passover. Difference with
regard to the celebration of the passover between Jewish and pagan
NOIPPIS TA TIG SoS io Haale Ca eee eh Sw bro ey ews Sree ios BOR RSs
Disputes concerning the passover. Anicetus and Polycarp. Renewal
of the dispute. Victor and Polycrates.---+-- +++. sees eee eee eee
Quadragesimal fasts. Festival of Pentecost. Origin of the Christmas
festival. Feast of Epiphany δεῖ σιν bie exe wc οὐ δια © 06> 0 0.6 040 αὔτ᾽ ον ἐὐδ'ο οἰ δε κα
Particular Acts of Christian Worship, 302—335.
Edification by common hearing of the word, and prayer. Reading of
the holy gs tae Translations. Addresses. Preaching. Church
psalmody. Sacraments. Baptism and the Lord’s supper--------+-
Of Baptism.
Catechumens. Catechists. Confession of faith. Apostolic confession
of faith. Its signification. Oral tradition. Formula of renunciation.
Exorcism. Form of baptism. Formula of baptism. Infant baptism.
Its signification. Tertullian’s rejection of infant baptism. Doctrine
of its necessity. Cyprian. Origen on this point. Baptismal sponsors.
Unction. Imposition of hands. Confirmation. Fraternal kiss - - - - -
Controversies about baptism - - - -- eee eee cee ee eee eee κα κε εν κεν κεν
ΧΥ͂
253—254
254—258
258—262
262—266
266—269
269—272
979. 279
979. 988
983. 988
290-—292
292. 294
ἑ
994. 997
297—300
300-—302
302—305
305—317
317—323
ΧΥΪ TABLE OF CONTENTS.
Sacrament of the Supper.
Foundation. Signification of the Lord’s supper. Original celebration
of it. Love feasts. Degeneration of them. Severance of the Agape
from the celebration of the Lord’s supper. Comparison of the supper
with the pagan mysteries. Prayer of praise and thanksgiving,
εὐχαριστία. Oniginal idea of the thankoffering. False notion of
sacrifice. Elements of the Lord’s supper. Domestic participation
and use of it. Communion of infants. -++++++e+e eect ee eee eens
Union of the celebration of the Lord’s supper with the covenant of
marriage and the celebrations in memory of the dead. Feasts of the
martyrs. Degeneration of honor paid to the martyrs: +++++++-+++. .
SECTION FOURTH.
HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY APPREHENDED AND DEVELOPED AS A
SYSTEM OF DOCTRINES.
General Introductory Remarks.
Christianity considered as to its effects on thought and knowledge. Dif-
ferent forms of the apprehension of Christianity. The four funda-
mental forms. Origin and signification of the heresies --+-- - πο ν
Heretical Tendencies.
The two fundamental heresies:-+-+--++-++e-«: nr eleioickevaleieletonetetehetorels rete -
Judaizing Sects.
Origin of the Judaizing sects. The compromise or henoticon of Jeru-
salem. Apostolic and heretical Jewish Christians. Influence of the
Jewish war. Gentile-Christian community at Elia Capitolina: -----
Ebionites. Their name. Epiphanius. Origen on its meaning. Their
doctrine. Different kinds. Nazarzans. Gospel of the Nazarzans.
Transition of Ebionitism to other tendencies: - τ τ τ τσ τσ στ σ στ λ σι κν σαν
The Clementines. Supposition of a primeval religion. Doctrine of
inspiration. Relation to Judaism and Christianity.. Relation to the
apostle Paul. Position of Judaism and Christianity with regard to
each other. Justin. Chiliasm--+--+++++- eee cece ς οἴ τον τὸς ἈΠ ὧς os
Sects growing out of the Fusion of Christianity with Ancient Religious Theories
of the East.
\
The Gnostic Sects.
General Remarks on the Origin and Character of these Sects, on that which they
possessed in common, and that in which they differed, 366—390.
Aristocratic spirit of the ancient world. Opposition between those who
knew and those who believed, favored by outward faith. Eclectic
character of Gnosticism. Influence of Parsism and Buddhaism.
Principle of redemption. Peculiarity of the Gnostic mode of inquiry.
Its objects. Relation to simple faith. Doctrine of emanation. Doc-
trine of moral evil. Of the Hyle. Diversity in the mode of appre-
hending this ὁ, Cre Jollee eiielle ers. eile Je (δν τον (ἃ «-. es ον δὰ κ᾽ «ἰδ (sa δ Ὁ s}ajejleue le jays ee ecer vee
Prevailing inclination {o Monoism or to Dualism, as distinguishing the
Alexandrian and Syrian Gnosis. Influence of these different forms
on the system of morals. Expression in the two different modes of
considering the Demiurge, the basis of a classification of the systems.
Common tenets of the two classes-----++++++ees ouneuajeda venous eiaierets ee
323—333
333—335
336—339
339—341
341—344
344—353
- 353—365
366—374
374—380
TABLE OF CONTENTS.
/
Judaizing Gnostics: sensual and spiritual Theocracy. Transitive char-
acter of Judaism. Anti-Jewish Gnostics. Judaism as opposed to
Christianity - We! αἴ α αὶ ον Oi m0 0.0 ὁ κ᾽ ὁ pus ἀν εν ιν 6. bile ον δ νῷ δι ἃ ie. ane δι ὦ 6) 6
Influence of this eras on the shaping of the system of morals. On
the doctrine concerning Christ. Distinction of a heavenly and an
earthly Christ. Docetiup Biblical interpretation of the Gnostics.
Secret doctrines. eir position with respect to the principle of the
Christian church o 5. Ἃ 8.5. Ἀΐδ ζοῦν, sb re ὦ ἀξ eeu eee οὐ stbhe = ole, a oleln Ν ἀ Skeh eece Suniel) δὲς
Gnosticism attacked on one side by the church, on another by Neo-
LOTTE) ok ECO EINRUT SS sre fas sta Κι ΜΉ ΝΡ ata WioBn a. ΉὉ
Judaizing and anti-Jewish Gnostics. . Points of transition between
Judaism and Gnosticism. The Clementines as opposed to the doc-
trine of Marcion. ‘Two-fold shaping of anti-Jewish Gnosticism - - -- -
Particular Sects.
Gnostic Sects connected with, Judaism.
Cerinth.
Contradictory accounts. Chasm between God and the world. Angels,
' as creators of the world, and givers of the law. Ebionite doctrine
concerning Christ. Union of the heavenly with the earthly Christ at
the baptism. Uncertainty with regard to his views concerning the
resurrection. Continued obligation of the law. Doctrine of the mil-
lenium ΟΣ e@erererer - ee eee eer ere eee ees ese esvseeeseas eseeereereeever
Basilides.
His field of activity. Fundamental view of his system. Evolution of
the divine powers. The Ogdoad-Dualism. Formation of the world.
Purification_of fallen life. “Transmigration of souls through nature
and humanity. Doctrine of the Archon and of providence. *Minister-
ing spirits. Theodicee. Typical representation of Judaism. Sources
of the doctrine taught by Basilides. On the Grecian philosophy.
National gods. Doctrine of redemption. Union of Jesus with the
Nus at the baptism. Effect of this unien on the Archon. On the
sufferings of Jesus. Doctrine of justification. --+--+-+-- tee ee ee σον
Individual religious-moral ideas of the Basilidean school. Doctrine
concerning faith as the most intimate union with the godlike. System
of morals. Rejection of excessive asceticism. Recognition of the
authority of the apostle eID riahoeeten sistabepeteishe ve ls''s ‘eLciay's oin-ohel ehereleini ara ον ἃ
Valentine and his School.
Birth and residence of Valentine. Relation to Basilides. Self-limitation
of the Bythus, the ground of the AXons, of the Pleroma. Idea of
the Horus. Immersion of the divine germs in the Hyle. The
heavenly wisdom, Achamoth. Three stages of existence : pneumatic,
psychical, and hylic natures. The Demiuree. The devil. Place of
the redemption. . The Soter, former and redeemer of the lower world.
His union with the Achamoth. Place of man in the mundane system.
His elevation above the Demiurge. His exaltation into the syzygies
of the Pleroma. Ante-Christian revelation. Incompleteness of the
redemption. Union of the Soter with the psychical Messiah at the
baptism. Nature of the redemption. Significance of Christ’s suffer-
ings Separation of the psychical from the pneumatic Messiah in
death. Psychical and pneumatic Christianity. The last things: - ---
Distinguished men belonging to Valentine’s school. Heracleon. His
commentary on John. Interpretation of the discourse with the
Samaritan woman. Opposed to the wrong notion of martyrdom: -
Plotemeus. Letter to Flora. Esoteric tradition. Striving aie
Monoism. Threefold origin of the law----++--+++++++seereeeees
Marcus. - Bardesanes. | Cabalistic symbolism of Mareus. Native coun-
try of Bardesanes. Different reports concerning his relation to the
church. Prominent place attributed to freedom: +--+ ++++-++eesees
a
xVil
380—382
382—386
386—390
390—396
396—400
400—413
413—417
417—434
434—437
437—439
439—442
XV1ll TABLE OF CONTENTS.
Gnostic Sects in Conflict with Judaism.
Sects which, in opposing Judaism, tnclined towards Paganism.
The Ophites.
Pantheistic character of the system. Soul of the world. Ialdabaoth.
Ophiomorphus. Formation of man. Signification of the fall of man.
Migration of Christ through the heavens. Pantheistic system of
morals. Probable transition to antichristian tendency---+----++--+++-
Pseudo-Bastlideans.
Antinomianism. Crucifixion of Simon of Cyrene. Ridicule of martyr-
dom oe ee ew eer διῶ υ, eeer eee ὁ δ. ee ον δ, ὃ reer eee eee eer eer eeeeree ὁ δια ees 8 ὦ
Cainites.
Inversion of the history of revelation. Cain and Judas Iscariot con-
sidered as the true men of the βριγῦ- - - τ τ στ τσ ++ e+e κι ee eee eee ee eee
Carpocrates and Epiphanes, Prodicians, Antitactes, Nicolaitans, Simontans.
Carpocrates and his son Epiphanes. Employment of Platonic ideas.
A supreme primal essence. Limitation of the revelation of him by
the several national gods. Equalization of Christ with the wise men
of all nations. Undisturbed repose of the pneumatic nature. Perfect
fellowship, as the moral ideal. Carpocratians at Samos. Antitactes,
Prodicians. Contempt for the moral law. WNicolaitans. Report of
Treneus. His mistake with regard to the deacon Nicolaus. Report
of Clement. Licentiousness of the sect. Simonians; honor paid to
Simon Magus. Unsettled character of his adherents: ----+-++-++++-
Anti-Jewish Gnostics who strove to apprehend Christianity im its
Purity and Self- Subsistence.
Saturnin.
Formation of the world by the seven star-spirits. Man as the bearer of
a higher life. Redemption by the Nuss: <3 60502 ass cals eelemia ee meee
" Tatian and the Encratites.
Conversion of Tatian by means of Justin Martyr. His apology. Doc-
trine of the Hyle. Destruction of God’s image in man by the fall.
Asceticism. Rejection of marriage--++++++e+ reese κεν eee σι κεν ee
Marcion and his School.
Predominant tendency of Marcion to the practical element in Chris-
tianity. Protestant rejection of tradition. Literal interpretation.
Pauline conception of faith. Historical significance of Marcion.
Circumstances of his life and history Separation of the God of
nature from that of the gospel. Christianity a sudden intervention.
His residence at Rome. Exclusion from the fellowship of the church.
Intercourse with Cerdo. Meeting with Polycarp. Rumor of his
CONVeYrSION «ese eet rere ο᾽.6 ὁ.σ..0..6 ν 46.6.66» δ νὰ, κ' ὁ α΄ ὦ οὐσ οἷν εἰ ν΄ δι ὁ ὦ αν νυ αν ο.ο εἴὸ
Marcion’s system. Separation of the God of the Jews from that of the
Christians. Demiurge. The Redeemer. Docetism. Relation of
the Demiurge to the redemption. Moral tendency of his doctrines.
Criticism of the New Testament --+-- +++ seescecsceesceccccccce
Marcion’s Sects.
Marcus. Lucan. Apelles.++++++seeee kiko e tes eit Siw Ὡς tote tohehons unetetene
442—447
447—448
448—449
449—455
455—456
456—458&
458—466
466—473
473—476
TABLE OF CONTENTS.
\ APPENDIX.
On the Worship of the Gnostics.
Entire rejection and pompous excess of worship. Marcosians. Two-
fold baptism. Formula of baptism. Resistance of Marcion to the
separation of the catechumens and the faithful. Charge brought
against Marcion of holding to a representative baptism ------++-- εν
Mani and the Manicheans, 478—506.
Character of Manicheism. History of its founder. Western and East-
ern sources. Acts of Archelaus of Cascar. Scythian and Buddas, as
predecessors. Mani’s education. Purposed reformation of Chris-
tianity by fusing it with Parsism. His appearance on the stage of
ΑΘ ΕΥΘΙΗ͂Σ ΨΜῈ LA READ thinset ket ste Sd A = el an arene baliwe vast- a tame πν Ύ ΛΕ Le
Mani’s doctrines. Connection with the sect of Magusians. Light and
darkness. The mother of life. The primal man. His immersion in
the darkness. Origin of the soul of the world. The living spirit.
Transfer of the Mithras doctrine to Christianity. Crucifixion of
Christ in nature. Man a microcosm. Humanity the theatre of the
great conflict. Enfeebling of the evil principle, the end of the course
of the world. Sources of information respecting the religion -------
The Doctrine of the Catholic Church, as it unfolded itself in opposition
to the sects.
Genetic Development of the Church Theology in general; and Character of the
several different Religious and Dogmatic Tendencies of Spirit, which had a
particular Influence upon τὲ, 506—557.
Determination of the church theology by the above oppositions. Judaiz-
ing, Gnosticising tendencies. Supernatural, rational elements. Greek,
Roman individualities of character. Mediation betwixt the Eastern
and Western church: Ireneus. Representation of the West by
Tertullian PCN eC Ge Ween ὐὐδ' ὁ ὦ 5. eC Yr ROCA ROU aC, $id foiestate « .
Montanism.
Importance of Montanus as the founder of the sect. Character of
Montanism. Tenacity to a rigid supernaturalism, as opposed to the
mediation of the supernatural and natural. Graduated progress of
the church by means of outward revelations. Notion of inspiration.
The Paraclete. Tendency to outward morality-----+--+-- eee
Montanus. History of his development. His prophetesses --++----+-
Exhibition of the Montanistic system. Undue prominence given to
God’s omnipotence. Nearness of the millennium. Tertullian con-
cerning the church of the Spirit, as opposed to the church of the
bishops. Assertion of the priestly dignity of all Christians; a falling
back, at the same time, to the Old Testament point of view - - τ τ τ τ
Attack of the Montanistic notion of inspiration. The new Montanistic
propositions. Contempt of life among the Montanists. Over-valua-
tion of celibacy. Concerning second marriages. Strictness of pen-
ance. Chiliasm. External fate of the sect. -----+++++++sereeeree
Relation of the church tendency to Montanism--+++++++-+++++s++++*
The Alexandrian School.
Appropriation of the existing culture in behalf of Christianity. Origin
Gb the School... Catechists- «<i .0:c)s 0.0.0 <e viene nis s 0.50.00 06 e a sige ate eels
Relation of the Alexandrian school to the Greeks, to the Gnostics, to
Men ype es sts eh me Biel a lone eat ies eueve ee ΣΙΝ ἐν oie δῷ ὁ «πο ἘΦ Ὁ el ws! βιὰ τὰ Ηρ ee ὦ
476—478
478—488
488—505
506—509
509—513
513—514
514—519
519—524
524—527
527—529
529
xX TABLE OF CONTENTS.
Conception of Gnosis and Pistis. Clement concerning both, in oppo-
sition to Pagans and Gnostics. Sources of information respecting
the Gnosis. Necessity of Grecian culture. Its defence by Clement.
View of the Christian development of history. Disparagement of
simple faith. Agreement with the Gnostics. Difference from them.
Gnostic pride δ πὶ ise fel ον λον δ᾽ aise, ὁ o) o's olsihs spelen te are Neie Kells: \efurateliatells)s Ve eetes> τὸ [5 οἷν
Prosecution of Clement’s ideas by Origen. Fundamental position of
Origen. The Gnosis in its relation to the facts of Christianity. Faith
as the lowest stage. Reality of the Redeemer in the system of Origen.
Imperfection of all human Gnosis. Pistis and Gnosis, as sensual and
spiritual Christianity. Different forms of the revelation of Christ.
Opposition to the Pauline preaching of Christ crucified. Tolerance
and gentleness of Origen «-- +++ +++. 2s eee e eee eee eee cen eee
Twofold principle of scriptural exposition. All scripture a revelation
of God. Gnostic definition of the end of this revelation. Moral sense
of scripture, between the literal and the spiritual. Dangerous appli-
cation of these principles of interpretation to the gospel history.
Counterpoise in the Realism of the West- - "τ τ -.--+ee+ee eee eee .
Development of the several main Doctrines of Christianity.
The fact of redemption, the central point of Christianity. Reformation
of the entire religious consciousness commencing from this point.
Theology.
Doctrine concerning God. God as omnipresent, as undeniable. Refer-
ence of Clement, Origen, Theophilus, to this undeniable sense of God.
Tertullian’s appeal to the testimony of the uncultivated soul. Spiritual
nature of God. The Alexandrians. Irenzus, Novatian. Anthro-
pomorphism, Anthropopathism. Marcion’s denial of the divine justice.
Tertullian opposed to him. His view of God’s condescension to man.
Subjective apprehension of the divine attribute by the Alexandrians.
Origen on the Divine wrath. Midway between the other church
teachers anmine Ἐπ δε ει» 23st eee! ot ee a a ei ἀπο αν το ΠΣ hee
Doctrine of the creation. Connection of the doctrine of the creation
with other Christian doctrines. Creation from nothing. Hermogenes.
Opposition to the Gnostic as well as to the Christian doctrine of the
the creation. God conceived as eternally giving form to the Hyle.
Inconsistency GEIS MOCETUG ls Hvala τς τη γτ = ς ΠΡ ge ater chet lc (eis shu atea
Origen on the creation. Inconceivableness of a beginning of creation.
Objection of Methodius. Concerning God's omnipotence. Its con-
nection with the other attributes. Limited number of the creatures
Doctrine of the Trinity. Fundamental marks of it in the New Testa-
ment. Dangerous nature of analogies drawn from other religions.
Progressive development of the practical into the ontological Trinity.
Son of God in the Old and New Testament. Idea of the Logos: ---
The Monarchians. Two classes of them - - - τ Ὁ +--+ esse cece cere eens
First Class. Said to be dominant in the most ancient Roman church.
Theodotus. Development of Christ under the influence of the Holy
Spirit. Supernatural birth. The confessor Natalis. Artemon.
Appeal to the Roman bishop Victor. Novatian in opposition to the
Artemonites. Pretended prevalence of the Artemonite tendency
until the time of Zephyrinus. Intellectual bent of the sect. Their
criticism of the New Testament. The Alogi------++++eee+seeeees
Second Class. Patripassians. Praxeas. Residencein Rome. Journey
to Carthage. Tertullian opposed to him. Two ways of understand-
ing his doctrine :— denial of any distinction whatever in God, — dis-
tinction of God hidden and revealed. Noetus. Distinction of God
as ὧν and as λόγος ὁ πνν οἷς 'a\ (a μὴν seLeiatalje, ΚΦ 2 ο ide joi leL.iisikal’ ofisi δι 5) 5 ehe\in a) ania) te tole ae
Doctrine of the church. Oriental subordination-system, as opposed to
the Monarchians. Western striving after the unity of essence. The
a
529—544
544—552
552—557
557—564
564—568
568—571
571—575
575—579
579—583
583—585
TABLE OF CONTENTS.
doctrine of the Logos. Justin Martyr, Athenagoras. The Alexan-
drian doctrine of the Logos. Clement. ‘Transfer of the predicates
of the Nus to the Logos. Origen. The Logos, as the collective
revelation of God. Ditterent forms of the revelation of one and the
same Logos. Eternal generation of the Logos grounded in the divine
will. Difference of essence. ‘Subordination - - - - τ τ τ τιν τ τ τ τ στ στ σεν
Mediatory monarchian tendency. Indwelling of the deity in Christ,
constituting his personality. Preéxistence in the divine idea. Beryll.
Disputation with Origen. Sdbellius. Discordant views of his doc-
trine. The Father evolved in the Son and the Spirit. Creation of
humanity in the Logos. Hypostasizing of the Logos*in Christ. As
such, the Son of God. ‘Transient continuance of this hypostasis.
Ultimate end. On the continued duration of creaturely existence.
Gospel of the Egyptians. Paul of Samosata. Deistical tendency.
Impersonality of the Logos. Indwelling in Christ. Christ as a mere
man. Use of the name, “Son of God.” Character and external
history of Paul. Disputation with Malchion - - - τ τ ++++++++++ssese
Difference between the Western and Eastern mode of apprehending the
doctrine of the Trinity. Tertullian. Unity of essence. Graduated
series of persons. Diversity not in number but in measure. Retro-
cession of the doctrine of subordination. Condemnation of the Ho-
TAOOISION. HU TNE eae he τ τ «ones Wer ars το © aeuore. oR) Cnpatahalnta, bie mex ΡΥ
Dionysius of Alexandria. Prominence given to the doctrine of subor-
dination. Opposed to him, Dionysius of Rome. ᾿ Yielding disposition
GE the FOTIMET Noe 2 oS hie) σίνος Seohale Mieke haya: sist asl ἐς kel) ieaatieh ὁ τον dais, hia lailg) a6) 6a
Doctrine of the Holy Spirit. His personality. Its denial by the Mo-
narchians and Lactantius. Diversities of doctrine. Justin. Clement
of Alexandria opposed to the Montanistic doctrine concerning the
Holy Spirit: - τ τ στ στ κεν κεν εν eee κα ee κεν settee eect tenes
Doctrine concerning human nature. Its connection with the doctrine
concerning God. Both determined by the doctrine of the Redeemer.
Necessity of redemption ; recipiency for the redemption. Opposition
between the Christian and the pagan doctrine of human nature. Con-
ception of moral freedom. Doctrine of spirits: --+-+++++++-++++++-
Opposition between the church and the Gnostic doctrine of human
nature: - τ 5.66 ΡΥ ie) G,e) 6! (@ 6),8) @) 8,6. 0/06 [sje /e) 4, 0's 56" :
Difference of the North-African from the Alexandrian Tendency.
Tertullian’s doctrine. Traduction of souls. Corruption of man’s nature ;
relationship to God. Against Hermogenes’ view of the hylic soul.
Against the Platonic λογικόν and ἄλογον. On the power of divine grace
The Alexandrian church. Clement on the fall of man. Connection
between grace and free-will. Origen. Derivation of all diversity
from moral freedom. Moral evil as a fall from true being. The
corporeal world as the place for purification. Higher intelligences.
Doctrine of the preéxistence of souls. Natural corruption. The three
principles of fallen human nature. Separation of fore-knowledge and
predestination. Grace and free-will.---++- +--+ sees tree eer eeeees
Doctrine concerning Christ.
Assumption of human nature by the Redeemer. Opposed to Docetism ;
Ignatius, Tertullian. Tertullian on the servant-form of Christ.
Clement on the absence of all need in Christ. Clement; Origen
concerning the servant-form. The soul of Christ. Passage in Ire-
neus. Trichotomy in Justin. Tertullian. Twofold division of the
human nature. The human soul of the Redeemer. Origen on the
soul of Christ. Distinction of Psyche and Pneuma. On the sinless-
ness of the soul of Christ. On Christ’s body. Origen accused of
separating Jesus and the Christ. - - "τ τ τ τσ τε τκ κεν τ ἐκ κε κκ εκ τσ κυ
ΧΧΙ
585—591
591—605
605—606
606—608
608—610
610—612
- 612—614
614—620
620—630
630-—640
Xx TABLE OF CONTENTS.
Doctrine of the redemption. Negative and positive moment in it. In
reference to the first: victory over Satan by Christ. To the last:
Christ as the archetype of humanity, in Ireneus. Justin on the
sufferings of Christ. ‘lhe letter to Diognetus on satisfaction. Origen
on the passion. His view of the sacrifice: - - τ τ ++++ esse seers eee
Doctrine concerning faith. Connection of redemption with sanctification.
Clemens Romanus. Letter to Diognet. Irenzus. Distortion of the
Pauline conception ΤΥ ΝΥ ΤΡ ΤΙ OT τον IO te era CREO CAS: HORE ac tigi JG neces
Doctrine of the church (see above, sect. I.)
Doctrine of the sacraments. Confusion of the sign with the thing signified.
a. Baptism. Irenzus, Tertullian, Clement. Confounding of the outward
symbol with the inward grace ; of baptism with regeneration «+-----
ὃ. Lord’s supper. Ignatius, Justin, Irenzeus. Union of the Logos with
the wine and bread. Tertullian, Cyprian. Symbolical mode of
apprehension. Communion of infants. Origen. Distinction of the
inward substance from its outward sign ++ +++. e+e sete sere eee eens
Eschatology.
Doctrine of the last things. Millenium. Papias. Ireneus. Anti-
Chiliast tendency. Opposition to Montanism. Alexandrian theology.
Caius against Proclus. Nepos. Coracion and Dionysius. Of the
intermediate State «2 cess ecevccecrvcasvenclersccreccseccnsesccns
Doctrine of the resurrection. Controversy between the church fathers
and the Gnostics. Mediation of Origen. Continued development
after death. Origen on the restoration of all things------+-+++-++++--
History of the more eminent Teachers of the Church.
The Apostolic Fathers.
Barnabas. Letter of Barnabas. +--+ +s esse eee eee ee eee eee ewe ee nee
Clement of Rome. Epistle to the Corinthians. Fragment of a second.
Two letters to the Syrian church. The Clementines. The apostolic
constitutions Stn fae ΜΝ aaliay Ma oM tere) Aw lal aya ake ὦ ΤΑ ΝΥΝ ois) we Le keGeLe elie el nin amin te
Hermas, his shepherd--- +--+ ++ -+++e seer ee seen eee eet e eee ee ees
Ignatius. Seven letters to churches of Asia Minor. Polycarp- ---- - Ὡς
The Apologists
Quadratus. ἈΞ OS os) οὐντο ies ode Poialisihel coi elseellettel ter v/a) et Φτθι το τν τε Kale) τ 5 folie 5 6} el =
Justin Martyr. His education. His two Apologies. Determination of
the time of the first. The παραινετικὸς πρὸς “Ἕλληνας. The λόγος πρὸς
Ἕλληνας. The dialogue with Trypho the Jew. Lost writings. The
letter to Diognet. Justin’s death - - - τ τ +++ see eee e rere cere ree εν
Tatian. Conversion by means of Justin. Discourse to the Gentiles: - -
Athenagoras: Πρεσβεία περὶ Χριστιανῶν. Hermias: Διασυρμὸς τῶν ἔξω
φιλοσόφων 5 We tare elas eis Δ. 5. (se Avie εν 0, 5 ΦἼ ρα κε δ τ πον Ὁ ὦ δ, Ὁ αὐ Τὼ; δι σ ἀγ 5 Ὁ) Ὁ bye tune ets iey ©
Theophilus of Antioch against the Pagan Autolycus --++-+++++++++++
Church Teachers of Asia Minor.
Hegesippus. His πέντε ὑπομνήματα ἐκκλησιαστικῶν πράξεων. His relation
he the Roman -Churel - <6 +.606.0 se ese 6 ew ws ine oe ome see ed ob τ
Subjects written upon by these church teachers. Melito of Sardis.
Claudius of Apollinaris pages heals pase Re iene) e's Ye tahonel θοῦ τὴς τὴν γεγο σης let merce .
Ireneus. His relation to Polycarp. Position with regard to Montanism.
Refutation of the Gnostic systems. Treatise on the style of St. Paul.
The two letters to Blastus and to Florinus--+++++++-+++s+eerseres
Hippolytus. His place of residence. Commentary on the scriptures.
Defence of the Gospel of John and of the Apocalypse. His work
against thirty-two heresies. Tract on Antichrist. Exhortation to
ΕἸ ERETIY © τς τὴν οἰ Sine OWA μιν ων © Ὁ τ δι πα clin tat wm orate eee gt al ielepe fetes Ὁ ΤΠ ἢ
- 640—644
644—645
646
646—647
647--649
649—654
654—656
656—658
658—660
660
660—661
661—662
662—671
671—673
673—674
674
674—675
675—677
677—681
681—683
TABLE OF CONTENTS. Xxili
Church Teachers of North Africa.
Tertullian. Characteristics. Circumstances of life. His Montanism.
ΤΟΥ Πα Wve Secon rate do ΤΣ bee ee ee ee ee were nne 683—685
Cyprian. Relation to Tertullian. His books of testimonies: ----+----- 685—686
G@ommodian, ‘His instructiotis: ὁ Ὁ ον ἐς Peewee. cece ccepesecee ses 686—687
Arnobius. His conversion. His Apology ++++++++ .++se++eee+e++ 687—689
Church Teachers of Rome.
Caius. Novatian. Minucius Felix ----..-.++se.- SiGe! © e. 0 ele le 616/010) syne 689—691
Church Teachers of Alexandria.
Pantenus. Clement. His writings. +--+. +++. sees eee e eee κεν κ κε σ κεν 691—693
Origen. History of his life. Theological education. Catechetical
office. His activity as a theological teacher. Relation to Ambrose.
His commentaries. Περὲ ἀρχῶν. Persecution by Demetrius. Residence
in Palestine. The Hexapla. Correspondence with Julius Africanus.
His other writings. Death. "5 τ τ Ὑ τ τ τ τ τ τλ ee κε cree ee ee eee eee eeeee 693—711
The school of Origen. Heraclas. Dionysius of Alexandria. Pierius
and Theognostos. Origenistic and Anti-Origenistic party -------- 711—713
Hieracas. His exegesis ‘and ascetic tendency. On marriage. Ap-
proach to ταν ΕΠ ἀν. Ὁ, tele a ΠΥ 7 5 ΞΞΥ ΤΟ
Gregory Thaumaturgus. Conversion by means of Origen. His labors
and writings Flin eink ema le ah iulewielate clin opal aitsia,® © fae eel, ΡΟ ΕΣ a¥al aia. οἷν sat Bala 716—720
Methodius. Controversy with Origen. His writings ----+-+++++++++ 720—721
Pamphilus. His services rendered to exegesis. Defence of Origen-++ 721—722
Theological school at Antioch. Doritheus. Lucian. Conclusion: ---- 722—723
Index to Names and Subjects ee we rere ο᾽5 οἱ οἷν δ 9, Στ ὁ το 5. 64 «Ὁ ἀπ αν ὁ δα, 55 οἷν 725—732
Citations - Meer eee eee seer eerseeoeeeseeese es eeeseeeeseee eeereeceeeeeee 733—740
Ἢ etn Slit
le
) 4 ar Hitt mortar: it eo
eC eT warner Is oh Ss οὐδεν Naa ncered wre Pre ve ere
ogee bit ‘in Ata a »ῃ δος δ ἂν am Hoh ΄ evil seen bis
vee seats B
‘
ok ae dah - s
Pee Le ef ate «ht # aaah: ah
pps?
a ea iiahias wae er δ
[. " ; ie as
ΜΗ BY, onde
cdibeen ms
Salle. Pes heats
cubated ἫΝ τὰν es
, ‘ fate a J
hit
INTRODUCTION, oF
CONDITION OF THE WORLD, ROMAN, GREEK AND JEWISH, AT THE TIME OF THE FIRST
APPEARANCE AND THE COMMENCEMENT OF THE SPREAD OF CHRISTIANITY.
It shall be our purpose to trace, from the small mustard-grain,
through the course of the past centuries, lying open for our imspection,
the growth of that mighty tree, which is destmed to overshadow the
earth, and under the branches of which all its people are to find a
safe habitation. The history will show how a little leaven, cast into
the mass of humanity, has been gradually penetrating it. Looking back
on the period of eighteen centuries, we would survey a process of de-
velopment in which we ourselves are included; a process moving
steadily onward, though not in a direct line, but through various wind-
ings, yet in the end furthered by whatever has attempted to arrest its
course ; a process having its issue in eternity, but constantly following
the same laws, so that in the past, as it unfolds itself to our view, we
may see the germ of the future, which is coming to meet us. But
although the contemplation of history enables us to perceive the powers
as they are prepared in their secret laboratories, and as they are ex-
hibited in actual operation, yet in order to a right understanding of
all this, it is pre-supposed that we have formed some just conception of
that in its inward essence, which we would study im its manifestation
and process of development. Our knowledge here falls ito a neces-
sary circle. ‘To understand history, it is supposed that we have some
understanding of that which constitutes its working principle; but it
is also history which furnishes us the proper test, by which to ascer-
tain whether its principle has been rightly apprehended. Certainly,
then, our understanding of the history of Christianity will depend on
the conception we have formed to ourselves of Christianity itself.
Now Christianity we regard not as a power that has sprung up out
of the hidden depths of man’s nature, but as one which descende*
from above, because heaven opened itself for the rescue of revolt
humanity ; a power which, as it is exalted above all that human natu
can create out of its own resources, must impart to that nature a ne
life, and change it from its inmost centre. ‘The great source of thi
power is the person whose life its appearance exhibits to us — Jesus 0
Nazareth —the Redeemer of mankind when alienated from God b
sin. In the submission of faith to him, and the appropriation of t!
truth which he revealed, consists the essence of Christianity, and
VOL. I. ee
-
2 RELATION OF CHRISTIANITY
that fellowship of the divine life resulting from it, which we designate
under the name of the church. Out of this springs the common con-
sciousness, which unites all its members in one, however separated
from one another by space or time. ‘The contmuance of all those
agencies, whereby Christianity has given a new turn to the life of our
race, depends on our holding fast to this, its peculiar essence, to the
same that has been the spring of these agencies from the beginning.
‘To the Kingdom of God, which derived its origin from these mfluences
in humanity, and which must ever continue to spring up afresh from the
same, may be applied the remark of an ancient historian respecting
the kingdoms of the world, that they will be preserved by the same
means to which they were indebted for their foundation. 1
But although Christianity can be understood only as somethmg
which is above nature and reason, something communicated to them
from a higher source, yet it stands im necessary connection with the
essence ‘of these powers and with their mode of development, — other-
wise, indeed, it could not be fitted to elevate them to any higher stage ;
otherwise, it would not operate on them at all. And such a connec-
tion, considered by itself, we must presume to exist in the works of God,
in the mutual and harmonious agreement of which is manifested the
divine order of the universe. The connection of which we now speak
consists in this; that what has by the Creator been implanted im the
essence of human nature and reason, what has its ground in their idea
and their destination, can attain to its full realization only by means of
that higher principle, as we see it actually realized in Him who is its
Source, and in whom is expressed the original type and model, after
which humanity has to strive. And accordingly, we see the evidence
_ of this connection, whenever we observe how human nature and reason
. do, by virtue of this, their original capacity, actually strive, in their his-
torical development, towards this higher principle, which needs to be
communicated to them in order to their own’ completion ; and how, by
the same capacity they are made receptive of this principle and conduct-
ed onward till they yield to it, and become moulded by its influence.
It is simply because such a connection exists, because in all cases
τ where, through the historic preparation, the soil has been rendered suit-
~ able for its reception, Christianity enters readily into all that is human,
striving to assimilate it to its own nature, and to inter-penetrate it with
its own power, that on a superficial view, it appears as if Christianity
itself were only a product resulting from the combination of the
different spiritual elements it had drawn together ; and the oprmon
has found advocates, that it could thus be explained. So may it also
become blended for a while with the impure elements, attracted by its
influence, and in its manifestation assume a shape which wholly
‘resembles them ; —till at length, by its own intrinsic power, it begins
a process of purification, from which it issues forth refined and ennobled,
even in its outward form. But this circumstance, again, might seem
to furnish some hold for the opinion, as if all those impure elements,
1 Imperium facile his artibus retinetur, quibus initio partum est.
TO JUDAISM AND PAGANISM. 9
which only attached themselves to Christianity in its outward mani-
festation, sprang from its essence; while on the contrary, the real
operation of its essence, as the process of development went on, was
to separate and reject them. In the contemplation of history, as of
nature, it is always in truth a very difficult thing to avoid confounding
accidental symptoms with more deep-seated agencies, — to distinguish
clearly the true cause from what merely works on the surface.!
If this holds good, so far as it concerns the relation of Christianity
to the development of human nature generally, it will be found to
apply with peculiar force to that great period, which was chosen for
the appearance of the Saviour of the world; and for the diffusion
among mankind, from him, as the source, of those powers from above,
which formed the commencement of that new creation, whose progres-
sive work became thenceforth the final problem and the goal of history.
It is, therefore, only from its historical connection with the previous
development of that portion of mankind, among whom Chfistianity
first appeared, that its effects can be rightly understood; and such a
connected view of the subject is necessary, in order to clear the way
of false explanations.
This connection is hinted at by the Apostle Paul, where he says
that Christ appeared when the fulness of the time was come. For
herein, certainly, it is implied, that the precise time when he appeared
had some particular relation to his appearance ; — that the preparatory
steps, through the previous development in the history of the nations,
had been directed precisely to this point, and were destined to proceed
just so far, in order to admit of this appearance — the goal and central
poit of all. It is true, this appearance stands in an altogether peculiar
relation to the religion of the Hebrews, which was designed to prepare
the way for it in an altogether peculiar sense. It is connected with
this religion by the common element of a divine revelation, — the
supernatural and supra-rational element; by the common interest of
‘Theism and the Theocracy ; as all revealed religion, the entire devel-
opment of Theism and the Theocracy, points from the beginning
towards one end; which being reached, every thing must be re-
cognized as belonging to one organic whole, —a whole wherem all
the principal momenta served to announce beforehand, and to prepare
the way for, the end towards which they were tending as their last
fulfilment and consummation. It is im this reference, Christ says of
his relation to this religion, what he could not say after the same
manner, of his relation to any other;—that he was not come to
destroy the law and the prophets, but to fulfil; although it remains
none the less true, that Christ stands in the relation of one, who came
not to destroy but to fulfil, to all the truth at bottom in all religions, to
the purely human element wherever it may be found. But still we
must not confine ourselves here to the connection of the appearance
of Christianity with Judaism alone. Judaism itself, as the revealed
religion of Theism, can be understood in its true significance, only as
1 We might apply here what the great kindred subject : ᾿Αρχὴ τί διαφέρει καὶ πόσον
historian Polybius says on another, though διέστηκεν αἰτίας καὶ προφάσεως. ILI. VL, 6.
4 RELIGIOUS CONDITION
contrasted with the Nature-religion of Paganism. Whilst on the one
hand, the seed of divine truth out of which Christianity sprang, was
communicated to reason by divine revelation; so on the other hand,
reason unfolding itself from beneath, must seek, especially among
that great historical people, the Greeks, how far it could singly, and by
its own power, advance in the knowledge of divine things. ‘To this, the
Apostle Paul alludes, when he says, ‘“ God hath determined for all
nations the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation,
— how long they should continue, and how far they should extend their
Sway, — that they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after
him and find him.” And so, too, when he says of the times immediately
preceding the revelation of the gospel, that the world, by its own wis-
dom, sought to know God in his wisdom, but could not know him. ΑΒ it
had been intrusted to the Hebrews to preserve and transmit the heaven-
derived element of the Theistic religion, so it was ordained that
among the Greeks, all seeds of human culture should unfold themselves
in beautiful harmony, to a complete and perfect whole; and then
Christianity, taking up the opposition between the divine and the
human, was to unite both in one, and show how it was necessary that
both should co-operate to prepare for the appearance of itself and for
the unfolding of what it contains. Origen had no hesitation in admit-
ting, what Celsus the great antagonist of Christianity maintained, when
he ascribed to the Greeks a peculiar adaptation of talents and fitness
of position, which qualified them for applying human culture to the
development and elaboration of those elements of divine knowledge
they had received from other quarters, namely from the East.1
Besides, among Pagans, the transient flashes of a deeply-seated con-
sciousness of God, — the sporadic revelations of Him in whom we live
and move and have our bemg, and who has not left himself without wit-
ness among any people,—are too clear to be mistaken; the testimonia
anime naturaliter christiane, as it is expressed by an ancient father,
which pomted to Christianity. And while it was: necessary that the
influence of Judaism should penetrate into the heathen world, in order te
prepare the way and open a point of communication for Christianity, so
was it needful also, that the stern and repulsive stiffness of Judaism
should be softened and expanded by the elements of Hellenic culture,
in order to-become recipient for what was new in the presentations of
the Gospel. The three great historical nations had to contribute, each
m its own peculiar way, to prepare the soil for the planting of Chris-
tianity, — the Jews on the side of the religious element; the Greeks on
the side of science and art; the Romans, as masters of the world, on
the side of the political element. When the fulness of the time was
arrived, and Christ appeared,— when the goal of history had thus
been reached,— then it was, that through him, and by the power of
the spirit that proceeded from him, —the might of Christianity, — all
the threads, hitherto separated, of human development, were to be
brought together and interwoven in one web.
1 Ὅτε κρῖναι βεβαιώσασϑαι καὶ ἀσκῆσαι escing in this opinion. says it serves pre-
πρὸς ἀρετὴν τὰ ὑπο βαρβάρων εὑρεϑέντα cisely for. the vindication of Christianity.
ἀμείνονές εἰσιν “Ἕλληνες. Origen, acqui- c. Cels. I. 2.
OF THE PAGAN WORLD. 5
Now, how it was, that the different courses of development under
revealed, and in natural religion, — under Judaism on the one hand,
and Greek or Roman institutions on the other, — co-operated to prepare
the way for Christianity, it is our present purpose more particularly to
consider ; and we will first cast a glance at the religious state of the
pagan world among the Greeks and Romans. .
State of the Pagan World among the Greeks and Romans.
If, in the ancient world, a dark fatality seemed to reveal itself im the
rise and fall of nations, an irresistible cycle to which all human great-
ness was forced to submit, in this impression we may recognize the
consciousness of a necessary law of development at that stage of the
world. All national greatness depends on the tone of public feeling
and manners; and this again on the power of religion in the life of the
people. But the popular religions of antiquity answered only for a
certain stage of culture. When the nations, in the course*of their
progress, had passed beyond this, the necessary consequence was a
dissevering of the spirit from the religious traditions. In the case of
the more Meal and equable development of the Oriental mind, — so
tenacious of the old, — the opposition between the mythic religion of
the people, and the secret, theosophic doctrines of a priestly cast, who
gave direction to the popular conscience, might exist for centuries
without change. But among the more excitable nations of the West,
intellectual culture, as soon as it attained to a certain degree of
independence, must necessarily fall into collision with the mythic
religion, handed down from the infancy of the people. The more
widely diffused cultivation became, the more extensive grew this schism.
Religion was deprived of its power, and the defection from this led
at the same time to the depravation of morals. Thus the culture
which had no religious and moral ground of support, capable of with-
standing every shock, and indestructible under all changes, — as soon
as it was rent from its connection with the inner life that alone gives
the vigor of health to all human concerns, — could only degenerate i into
false civilization and corruption. There was as yet no salt, to preserve
the life of humanity from decomposing, or to restore it back again
When passing to decomposition.
As it was the Grecian mind,—freed in its development from the
influence of tradition, — to which philosophy and every independent
science under its form, owe their existence; so too it was among the
Greeks, that the mighty schism first presented itself, between the
human mind striving after its freedom, and the popular religion. As
early as the fifth and fourth conturies before Christ, the arbitrar y and
heartless dialectic of the Sophists was directed against the might of
holy tradition and morals. Plato already represents Socrates discours-
ing against this rage for enlightenment, which he characterises as a
“ boorish wisdom,” that put itself to the thankless task of tr acing back
1 ᾿Αγροΐκῳ τινὶ onde χρώμενος, is what natural and trivial. Phsdrus, p. 285, Plat
he says of one of those enlighteners who ed. Bipont, Vol. X.
were for explaining every thing into the
¥
ats
x
6 RELIGION OF THE PAGAN WORLD.
all mythical tales to some natural fact, neglecting meanwhile, what is
most important and nearest to man, the knowledge of himself. And
in the times immediately succeeding, appeared a certain Euemerus,
from the school of Cyrene, who fancied that he had compassed the long-
sought object, and resolved the whole doctrine concerning the gods,
into a history of nature.
Among the Romans, religion was more closely interwoven than in
the other ancient states, w ith } politics. One gave lite to the other.
Here, more than elsewhere, the whole civil and domestic life was based
on reli: igious customs, which, by their connection with modesty of man-
ners, p resented a striking contrast with the more zsthetic than moral
element of the Grecian mythology, —a system which did not shrink
from even entering into union with immorality.! The great historian
Polybius has given a picture of Roman life, as it was a century and a
half before Christ, while it yet retained its ancient simplicity. Judging
by those maxims of the understanding, which, as a statesman, he was
in the habit of applymg to the affairs of the world, he believed that
the trait of character, for which the Roman people had been commonly
reproached, — the excessive superstition inwrought with their public and
private life, — was, in truth, the firmest pillar of the Roman state.?_ Con-
templating religion in this outward way, he saw in it only a means,
employed by the wisdom of law-givers, for training and leading the
multitude. It was his opinion, that were it even possible to form a
state of wise men, such a procedure would, perhaps, be found un-
necessary. But as a counterpoise to the power, which unruly passions
and desires exercised over the excitable multitude, there was need of
uch means, in order to hold them in check by the dread of the invisi-
ble, and by terrifying fictions.2 From this power of religious faith, he
accounted for the integrity and trustworthiness of the Roman magis-
trates, with whom an oath was a pledge of fidelity, to be relied on with
far more confidence than any number of other securities in the Grecian
states. But while he praised the ancients, who, not without good rea-
sons, had introduced among the multitude these opmions concerning the
gods and the things of the lower world, he felt constrained to censure
those of his own contemporaries, who were most unreasonably and in-
considerately seeking to destroy these convictions. 4
It would necessarily be the case, at the point occupied by the an-
cient world, that in* proportion as scientific culture came to be more
_ generally diffused among the people, this opposition noticed by Polybius
‘between the subjective conviction of individuals and the public state-
religion, would become more strongly marked. There were no means
of creating a fellowship of religious interest on truthful grounds,
1A difference between the Roman and
Grecian religions, particularly noticed by
Dionysius of Halicarnassus, a Greek writer
of the Augustan age. See the well-known
and remarkable passage, in Archzxol. Ro-
man. I. IT. c. 18.
2 Kal μοι δόκει τὸ. παρὰ τοῖς ἄλλοις
ἀνϑρώποις ὀνειδιζόμενον, τοῦτο συνέχειν τὰ
ῥωμαΐων πράγματα, λέγω δὲ τὴν δεισιδαι-
μονίαν. 1,. VI. ¢. 56.
3 Acimerat, τοῖς ἀδὴλοις φόβοις καὶ τῇ
τοιαύτῃ τραγῳδιᾳ τὰ πλήϑη συνέχειν.
Ξ Διόπερ οἱ παλαιοὶ δοκοῦσι μοι τὰς περὶ
ϑεῶν ἐννοίας καὶ τὰς ὑπὲρ τῶν ἕν δου δια-
λήψεις οὐκ εἰκῇ καὶ ὡς ἔτυχεν εἰς τὰ πλήϑη
παρεισαγαγεῖν" πολὺ δὲ μᾶλλον οἱ νῦν εἰκῇ
καὶ ἀλόγως ἐκβάλλειν αὐτά.
RELIGION AMONG THE COMMON PEOPLE. T
between the cultivated class and the people. The wiser sort endeavor-
ed to ‘sustain the popular religion; either because, like Polybius, they
merely recognized in it a necessary means to political ends; or
because, like philosophers of more depth, they regarded it as ποῦ
barely the work of human caprice, but as belonging to a higher neces-
sity; as resting on a basis of truth, which could be brought near the
consciousness of the multitude only under this human form; as the
fragments of a tradition, transmitting the knowledge of divine things
possessed in the earliest times, wherein all that was true and that
clamed to be acknowledged as such also by the wise, ought to be dis-
tinguished from the imperfect form.4 With Polybius agrees Strabo the
geographer, who wrote in the age of Augustus Cesar. ‘ The multi-
tude of women, he observes, and the entire mass of the common people
cannot be led to piety by the doctrines of philosophy ; for this purpose
superstition also is necessary, which must call in the aid of myths and
tales of wonder.’’ Having adduced some examples from the Grecian
mythology, he adds, ‘‘ such things the founders of states employed as
bug-bears to awe childish people.’ These myths, as it seemed to him,
were required not only for children, but no less for the ignorant and
uneducated, who are no better than children; and so too for those
whose education is imperfect, for in their case too, reason has not as yet
acquired strength enough to throw off the habits they have brought
with them from the years of childhood.?
In the latter times of the Roman republic, when the ancient simpli-
city of manners was fast disappearing before the advance of culture,
this opposition, which had for a long time existed among the Grecks,
between the religion of thinking men and the state-religion, or the
popular faith, began to prevail more generally in proportion to the
influence of the Grecian philosophy. Thus the learned Roman
antiquarian, Varro, who lived about the time of our Saviour’s birth,
distinguished three kinds of théology ; the poetic or mythical, the civil,
and the natural ; the last being the one which belongs to the whole
world, and in which the wise are agreed. ‘The theologia civilis, in its
relation to truth, seemed to him to lie half way between mythology
and philosophical religion.? Seneca said in his tract “ against super-
stition,’ “the whole of that vulgar crowd of gods, which for ages
past a Protean superstition has been accumulating, we shall worship in
1So Aristotle; who says, “It has been
handed down, in a mythical form, from the
earliest times to posterity, that there are
gods, and that the divine (the Deity) com-
passes entire nature. All besides this, has
been added, after the mythical style, for the
purpose of: persuading the multitude, and
for the interest of the laws and the advan-
tage of the state. Thus men have given
to the gods human forms, and have even
represented them under the figure of other
beings, in the train of which fictions fol-
lowed many more of the like sort. But if
we separate from all this the original prin-
ciple, and consider it alone, namely, that
the first essences are gods, we shall find,
that this has been divinely said; and since
it is probable that philosophy and the arts
have been several times, —so far as: that is
possible, —found and lost, such doctrines
may have been preserved to our times, as the
remains of ancient wisdom.” Metaphys. x. ὃ.
2 In Strabo Geogr aph. l. I. e. 2.
ὃ His words are: Prima theologia max-
ime accommodata ‘est ad theatrum, secun-
da ad mundum, tertia ad urbem. Ea, que
scribunt poets, minus esse, quam ut popu-
li sequi debeant, que autem philosophi,
plus quam ut ea vuleum scrutarl expediat.
Ea que facilius intra parietes in schola,
quam extra in foro ferre possunt aures.
Augustin. de civitate Dei. 1. VI. c. 5, et seq
ἊΨ
ὃ RELIGION AMONG THE EDUCATED.
this sense, viz. that we ever remember the worship we pay them is due
rather to good manners, than to their own worth. All such rites the
sage will observe, because they are commanded by the laws, not because
they are pleasing to the gods. So Cotta, whom Cicero introduces as
the Academician, in the third book of his work, ‘‘ De natura Deorum,”
knows how to distinguish, in his own person, the two different positions
of the pontifex and the philosopher. But not every one had the wis-
dom, which could hold these two positions distinctly apart, and keep
them from destroying, where they had nothing better to substitute in
place of what they destroyed. The imner disunion was at length
no longer to be concealed even from those who were no philosophers.
When with the incredse of luxury, a superficial cultivation came to be
more widely spread among the Romans, and the ancient simplicity of
manners gradually disappeared; when the old civic virtue, and the old
constitution and freedom sank away, and were succeeded by every species
of moral depravation, and by servitude ; then was the tie also broken,
whereby the old religion of the state had been thus far preserved in
the life of the people. Those among the philosophical systems of the
Greeks, which most completely harmonized with a worldly, thoughtless
spirit, destitute of all susceptibility for the godlike; those which made
pleasure man’s highest end, or which led to doubt of all objective
truth, — Epicureanism, as represented, for example, by a Lucretius, and
scepticism, — found currency on all sides; and although the systems
themselves were seldom studied, yet the great mass of half-educated
men, became familiar with their results. Individuals appeared, who,
like Lucian, pointed the shafts of their wit against the existing religions,
and the superstitions of the people. In the religious systems of the
several nations that had been brought in contact with one another by the
Roman empire, as well as in the doctrines of the philosophical schools,
men saw nothing but the strife of opmions, without any criterion of
truth. Pilate’s question, ‘ what is truth ?”’ conveying a sneer at all
enthusiasm about such a matter, represented the prevailing tone of
mind of many a noble Roman.
They, who without any deep sense of religious need, were yet un-
able to make up their minds to a total denial of religion, endeavored to
content themselves with that dead abstraction, which is usually left
behind, as something to retire to from the living forms of religion,
when these are on the point of expiring,—a certain species of
Deism, —a way of thinking that does not indeed absolutely deny the
existence of a Deity, but yet places him at the utmost possible dis-
tance, in the back-ground of his works. An idle deity is all that is
wanted; not one everywhere active— whose agency pervades the
whole life of things. He who to satisfy his religious wants requires
anything beyond this meagre abstraction, he who would know anything
more respecting man’s relation to a higher world appears already, to
men of this way of thinking, a fanatic or a fool. The inquiries that
suggest themselves under the feeling of a more profound religious
need, are to such minds unintelligible; for they are strangers to the
feeling itself. In the notions entertained by the many, concerning the
OPINIONS OF VARRO AND STRABO. 9
anger of the gods, and the punishments of the lower world, they see
nothing but superstition, without recognizing in them a fundamental
truth, namely, the undeniable need, which leads men into various de-
lusions, only when misunderstood. But, by minds of this stamp, the
whule is ridiculed alike, as mere dreams and fancies of limited man,
who transfers all his own passions over to his gods. As a representa-
tive of this class, we may take that satirical castigator of manners in
the age of the Antonines, Lucian, who characterizes himself as. the
hater of lies, cheats and charlatanry.4_ And Justin Martyr observes
of the philosophers in his time, “ that the greater part of them bestow
no thought on the questions, whether there is one God, or whether
there are many gods, whether there is a providence, or no providence ;
as if knowledge of these matters were of no importance to our well-
being. ‘‘ They rather seek,” says he, ‘‘ to convince us also, that the
divinity extends his care to the great whole, and to the, several kinds,
but not to me and to you, not to men as individuals. Hence it is
useless to pray to him; for everything occurs according to the un-
changeable laws of an endless cycle.’
From the wreck of religion, many sought to rescue the faith in one
divine primal essence, which they found it difficult, however, to dis-
tinguish from the world; and the simple spiritual worship of this,
appeared to them the original truth, lying at the foundation of the
whole fabric of superstition in the popular religions. It was Varro’s
opinion, that the only thing true in religion was the idea of a rational
soul of the world, by which all things are moved and governed.? He
traces the origin of superstition and unbelief to the introduction of
idols, which he contends were unknown to the earliest religion of the
Romans.* “If images had not been introduced,” says he, “ the gods
would have been worshipped in a more chaste and simple manner ;’’®
and he appeals, furthermore, to the example of the Jews. So Strabo
informs us what he himself considered to be the original truth in reli-
gion, where he describes Moses as a religious reformer, who established
the simple spiritual worship of a Supreme Being, in opposition to the idol
and image worship of all other nations; “and this one Supreme
Essence,” says he, “15 what embraces us all, water and land, — what
we call the heavens, the world, the nature of.things. his Highest
Being should be worshipped without any visible image, in sacred
groves. In such retreats, the devout should lay themselves down to
sleep, and expect signs from God in dreams.”’ But this simple nature-
worship, Strabo supposes, became afterwards, as well among the Jews
as everywhere else, corrupted by superstition and thirst for power. ὃ
We should mention here, also, that eclectic philosopher of the Cynic
1 Μισαλαζών εἰμι καὶ μισογόης καὶ μισο- 8 Anima motu ac ratione mundum gub-
ψευδὴς Kal μισότυφος καὶ μισῶ πᾶν τὸ τοιου- ernans.
τῶδες εἶδος τῶν μιαρῶν ἀνϑρώπων: πάνυ δὲ 4 Qui primi simulacra deorum populis
πολλοί εἰσιν. Which, to be sure, he could posuerunt, eos civitatibus suis et metum
say, with perfect justice, of his own time. demsisse et errorem addidisse.
See the dialogue entitled dAzeve. 5 Castius Dii observarentur; see Augus
2 Dial. c. Tryph. Jud. at the beginning f. tin. de civ. Dei, 1. V. ο. 31.
218, Ed. Colon. 1686. 6 Strabo 1. XVI. c. 2.
10 VIEWS OF THE ELDER PLINY.
tribe, Demonax of the isle of Cyprus, who, at the beginning of the
second century, resided in Athens, where he lived near to the age of
‘a hundred years, universally respected for his simple life, full of kind-
ness and charity to all. He was the representative of a sober,
practical bent of mind, striving after nothing beyond the purely human,
which, while it discarded whatever savored of superstition and fanati-
cism, checked all inquiry also about super-terrestrial things. He made
no offerings, because the gods needed none. He had no desire to be
initiated ito the mysteries, for he thought, “if they were bad, they.
ought to be divulged, to keep men away from them, and if they were |
good, they should be communicated to all, from love to mankind.”
When a show of gladiators was about to be exhibited in Athens, he
presented himself before the assembled people, and told them they
should pass no such decree, until they had first removed away the altar
of pity (eleos). That equanimity which renders man independent of
outward things and truly free, which makes him fear nothing and hope
for nothing, he considered the loftiest attamment. When asked
whether he thought the soul to be immortal, his answer was, “ Yes,
but in the sense in which all things are immortal.” 1
The elder Pliny, while absorbed in the contemplation of nature, is
lost in admiration of an immeasurable creative spirit, beyond all
human comprehension, manifesting himself in his works. But his
admiration of this exalted spirit of the universe, serves only to awaken,
in tenfold strength, the depressing sense of the narrowness and vanity
of man’s existence. He saw nothing to fill up the chasm betwixt
feeble man and that unknown, all-transcending spirit. Polytheism ap-
peared to him an invention of human weakness. Since men were
incapable of grasping and retainmg the whole conception of perfect
being, they separated it into many parts. They formed for themselves
divers ideals as objects of worship; each making himself a god, suited
to his own peculiar wants. ‘All religion is the offspring of necessity,
weakness and fear. What God is,—if in truth he be anything
distinct from the world, —it is beyond the compass of man’s under-
standing to know. Lut it is a foolish delusion, which has sprung from
human weakness and human pride, to imagme that such an infinite
spirit would concern himself with the petty affairs of men.” It is diffi-
cult to say, whether it might not be better for men to be wholly without
religion, than to have one of this kind, which is a reproach to its object.
do not think.”
1 See the a¢count of his life, by Lucian.
This remarkable bent of Demonax, 50 ex-
clusively practical, moral and rationaltstic,
so decided in its renunciation of all higher
knowledge, so ready to spurn, as fanaticism,
all speculative or religious interest about
any other world besides or above the pres-
ent, is illustrated by several other of his
sentences, preserved in the collection of
Johannes Stobaeus. Thus, when asked if
the world was animated, or of a spherical
shape, he replied, “You busy yourselves
impertinently about the nature of the world,
but of the disorder in vour own nature you
The play on the words is
not translatable into English. ‘Yyeic¢ περὶ
μὲν τοῦ κόσμου πολυπραγμονεῖτε, περί δὲ
τῆς ἑαυτῶν ἀκοσμίας οὐ φροντίζετε. Stobaei
Ecloge 1. II. c. I. 11, ed. Heeren, P. II. p. 10.
Two other sentences are contained in the
Anthology of Stobaeus on the γνῶϑι oeav-
τόν and on ὑπεροψία, and in Orelli’s Col-
lection of the Gnomographi graeci.
2 Plin. hist. nat. 1. IL ¢. 4, et seq.; 1. VII.
c.1. Irridendum vero, agere curam rerum
humanarum ilind, quidquid est summum.
Anne tam tristi atque multiplici ministerio
non pollui credamus.dubitemusve #
RETURN TO THE OLD RELIGION. 11
The vanity of man, and his insatiable longing after existence, have
led him also to dream of a life after death. A being full of contradic-
tions, he is the most wretched of creatures; since the other creatures
have no wants transcending the bounds of their nature. Man is full
of desires and wants, that reach to infinity, and can never be satisfied.
His nature is a le,— uniting the greatest poverty with the greatest
pride. Among these so great evils, the best thing God has bestowed
on man, is the power to take his own life.” Sadness, mixed with a
cold resignation, is the prevailing tone that runs through Pliny’s re-
markable work. It was in the same temper, he proceeded to encounter
the flames of Vesuvius, for the purpose of exploring their effects.
But as the history of this and of every age witnesses, there is a
religious need clinging to man’s nature, and not to be denied; a need
of recognizing something above nature, and of fellowship with the
same, — which only asserts itself with the more force, the longer it is re-
pressed. ‘The predominance of that worldly bent of mind, which will
acknowledge nothing above nature, does but call forth, in the end, a
stronger reaction of the longing after the supernatural; the domin-
ion of an all-denying unbelief excites a more intense desire to be able
to believe. And the experience itself, which follows m the train of un-
belief, contributes to bring about this result. The times in which,
unbelief has prevailed, are, as history teaches, uniformly times of
earthly calamity ; for the moral depravation which accompanies unbe- |
lief, necessarily destroys, also, the foundation of all earthly prosperity.
Thus the time of the diffusion of unbelief in the Roman state, was
also the time which saw the destruction of civil liberty, and the time
of public suffering, under the rule of merciless despots. And the out
ward distress awakened a sense of the inward; men were led to regard
their estrangement from the gods and from heaven, as a principal cause
of the public decay and misery. Many felt themselves constrained to
compare these times of public misfortune with the flourishing period of
the Roman republic, and believed this melancholy change ought to
be ascribed particularly to the decline of the religio Romana, once so
scrupulously observed. In the gods, now cast off or neglected, they saw
the authors and protectors of the Roman empire. They observed the
mutual strife of the philosophical systems, which, promising truth, did
but multiply uncertamty and doubt. All this excited in them the
longing after some external authority, which might serve as a stay for
religious conviction; and they resorted back to the religion of their
more fortunate ancestors, who, under the influence of that religion,
found themselves so happy in the freedom from all doubt. That old
religion appeared to them, like the days of the past, in a transfigured
light. Such was the tone of feeling which set in to oppose, first the
prevailing infidelity, afterwards, Christianity.
Thus the pagan Cecilius, in the apologetic dialogue of Minucius
Felix, first describes the strife and uncertainty in the systems of hu-
man philosophy ; shows what small reliance can be placed on human
things generally ; and points to the doubts ina providence, which sug-
gest themselves when we observe the misfortunes of the virtuous, and
—_ ων
12 - PAUSANIAS ON UNBELIEF.
the prosperity of the wicked. He then goes on to say, “ How much
nobler and better is it, then, to receive just what our fathers have
taught us, as a sufficient guide to truth? To worship the gods which we
have been instructed by our fathers to reverence, even before we could
have any true knowledge of them? ‘To allow ourselves, in regard to
the divinities, no license of private judgment, — but to believe our
ancestors, who, in the infancy of mankind, near the birth of the world,
were even considered worthy of having the gods for their friends or
for their kings ?”’
The need of some union with heaven, from which men felt they
were estranged, the dissatisfaction with a cold, melancholy present,
procured a more ready belief for those accounts, in the mythical
legends, of a golden age, wherein gods and men lived in intimate fel-
lowship together. Ardent spirits looked back to those times, with a
sort of earnest craving, —a cravimg after the past, that pomted to the
future. Thus Pausanias’ endeavors to defend old mythical traditions
against the mfidelity of his contemporaries ; accounting for the latter,
partly from the fact, that the true had been rendered suspicious by
being mixed in with the false, and in part from the fact, that men had
grown accustomed to apply a standard, suiting the present times only,
to that more glorious period of wonders. Of those former days he
says, ‘‘ The men who lived then, were, on account of their uprightness
and piety, admitted as guests and even table companions of the gods ;
for their good actions, the gods openly bestowed honors on them, and
for their bad, openly manifested displeasure. It was then, also, that
men themselves became gods, and continue to enjoy this honor.” But
of his own time, he says, “‘ At the present day, when wickedness has
reached its highest pitch, and extended itself through all the country
and in every town, such an incident no longer occurs, as that of a man
becoming a god, except merely in name, and through flattery to power
(the apotheosis of the emperors; ) and the anger of the gods awaits
transgressors at a remote period, and after they are gone from this
world.” Dionysius of Halicarnassus, who, a few years before the
birth of Christ, wrote on the old Roman history, relates the story of a
vestal virgin, whose innocence, after she had been falsely accused, was
miraculously brought to light. Upon this, he remarks, ‘‘ The followers
of atheistic philosophies, — if philosophies they may be called, which
scoff at all appearances of the gods, that are said to have occurred
among the Greeks or Barbarians, — would make themselves quite merry
with these accounts, attributing them to human exaggeration ; as if no
one of the gods ever concerned himself about a man, whoever he might
be ; but he who is not disposed to deny altogether the care of the gods
for men, but believes they regard the good with complacency and the bad
with displeasure, will look upon these appearances as not incredible.” 3
The artificial faith in an old religion that had outlived itself, must,
on this very account, become fanatical, be united with passion, in place
of natural conviction. Hence, the violence by which the continually
1In his Description of Greece. See Ar- 2 Antiq. Roman. II. 68
cadica, or 1. VIII. c, II. § 2.
PLUTAROCH ON INFIDELITY. 13
waning course of Paganism was sought to be maintained against the
onward advance of Christianity. Although the Romans, accustomed
to hold firm to their old traditional forms, and national peculiarities,
were singularly averse to foreign modes of worship, yet this funda-
mental trait in the old Roman character had, with many, already become
obliterated. The ancient religion of Rome had lost its power over
their minds, and they were inclined, therefore, to seek a prop for their
religious faith in foreign modes of worship. Ceremonies that wore
an air of enigma and mystery; strange-sounding magical formulas in
some barbarous tongue ; whereby, as Plutarch remarks, the national
dignity of devoutness was put to the blush,’ found readiest admittance.
Men were looking, as usual, for some peculiar supernatural power in
that which they did not understand, and which was incapable of being
understood.
Hence, the artificial faith was pressed more closely to assume the
shape of superstition. Unbelief, against which an undeniable need of
man’s nature asserted its force, called forth superstition, — since
these two distempered conditions of the spiritual life are but opposite
symptoms of the same fundamental evil, and one of them, therefore,
passes easily over to the other. It isthe worldly tone of the inner life,
which either suppresses religious feeling entirely, and then turns to
unbelief ; or, mixing itself up with that feeling, gives to it an interpre-
tation of its own, and thus turns to superstition, The desperation of
unbelief surrenders the troubled conscience a prey to superstition ; and
the irrationality of superstition makes religion suspected by the thought-
ful mind. Such an opposition we find presenting itself, whenever we
contemplate this period, under various forms. A man who was not in
the habit, like Lucian, of ridiculing the absurd extravagances of su-
perstition, but who was made sad in contemplating such cases of the denial
or misapprehension of the Godlike, — the wise and devout Plutarch, —
in a beautiful work of his, where he describes this opposition, as it ex-
isted in his own time,” presents us a picture from the life, of such
caricatures of religion. ‘ Hvery little evil is magnified to the super-
stitious man, by the scaring spectres of his anxiety.2 He looks on
himself as a man whom the gods hate and pursue with their anger. A
far worse lot is before him ; he dares employ no means for averting or
eurig the evil, lest he be found fighting against the gods. The phy-
sician, the consoling friend, are driven away. Leave me,—says the
wretched man, — me, the impious, the accursed, hated of the gods, to
suffer my punishment. He sits out of doors, wrapped in sackcloth or
in filthy rags; ever and anon he rolls himself, naked, in the dirt, con-
fessing aloud this and that sin,’— and the nature of these sins is
truly characteristic !— ‘he has eaten or drunk something wrong,* —
he has gone some way or other, which was not allowed him by the
divinity. The festivals in honor of the gods give no pleasure to the
1 ᾿Ατόποις ὀνόμασι καὶ ῥήμασι βαρβαρι- 2 The tract Περὲ δεισιδαιμονίας καὶ ἀϑεό
κοῖς καταισχύνειν καὶ παρανομεῖν τὸ ϑεῖον τητος. ; [
καὶ πάτριον ἀξίωμα τῆς εὐσεβείας. De su- 8 Cap. 7.
perst. c. 33. * Comp. Colose * 6.
VOL. I. 2
14 SUPERSTITION AND INFIDELITY.
superstitious,’ but fill him rather with fear and affright. He proves the
saying of Pythagoras false in his own case, —that we are happiest when
we approach the gods, —for it is just then he is most wretched. Temples
and altars are places of refuge for the persecuted ; but where all others
find deliverance from their fears, there the superstitious man fears and
trembles most. Asleep? or awake, he is haunted alike by the spectres
of his anxiety. Awake, he makes no use of his reason; and asleep,
he finds no deliverance from what disturbs him. His reason always
slumbers; his fears are always awake. Nowhere can he find an
escape from his imaginary terrors.”” ‘he contradictions involved in
superstition are thus described: ‘These men fear the gods, and fly to
them for succor. ‘They flatter them, and insult them. They pray to
them, and complain of them.”’® ‘The offensive phrases and gesticula-
tions, the forms of selftabasement, — so repulsive to the antique feeling
of freedom, —into which the slavish spirit of superstition fell, were
peculiarly revolting to the Greek and Roman sense of propriety.
In the work above cited, Plutarch thus judges respecting the mu-
tual relation of superstition and unbelief:* ‘‘ The infidel has no belief
in the gods ; the superstitious man would fain disbelieve, but believes
against his will, for he fears to do otherwise. Yet as Tantalus wearies
himself to escape the stone that hangs over him, so the superstitious
man would gladly rid himself of the fear which is no trifling burden to
him; and he is inclined to praise the unbeliever’s state of mind, as
freedom. But now the unbeliever has nothing of superstition in him ;
while, on the other hand, the superstitious man is an unbeliever by in-
clation, but only too weak to think of the gods as he would be glad
to do.® The unbeliever contributes nothing at all towards producing
superstition; but the superstitious have, from the beginning, given
existence to unbelief, and furnish it, when it exists already, an appa-
rent ground of justification.”’ ©
Manifestly, Plutarch has taken here but a very partial view of the
religious phenomena of his times, — a natural mistake for one living n
the midst of those phenomena, and who is biased in his judgment by
immediate impressions. It seems evident, from what has been already
said, that the same cause which produces superstition, hes also at the
root of unbelief; and that unbelief, therefore, may easily change into
superstition, as well as superstition into unbelief. Indeed, it was
precisely the latter, which, in this period of history, had called forth
the former. Plutarch, moreover, has looked at these opposite tenden-
cies, in a way too general and abstract; he did not observe and take
into his account, those manifold gradations and transitions, which he
might have discerned in his own times, in the mutual relation of unbe-
lief and superstition to each other. If there was a superstition, at
1 Cap. 9. 2 Cap. 3. into unbelief ;—the different turn which is
8 Cap. 5. * Cap. 11. taken in the natural course of their devel-
5 In like manner, Plutarch says,in anoth- opment by the ἀσϑενέδι καὶ ἀκάκοις on the
er place, that by the prevailing false notions one hand, and the δεινοτέροις καὶ ϑρασυτέ-
of the gods, the weaker and more simple ροις. on the other. De Iside et Osiride, ¢. 71
natures were led into a superstition without 6 Cap. 12.
bounds; the more acute and bolder spirits,
GREEK PHILOSOPHIES. 15
that time, leagued with immorality, having its root in unbelief, —but an
unbelief restrained by fear,— yet we find, too, in the case of some who
were really striving after moral worth, various modifications of super-
stition, grounded at bottom in the need, — though not understood, and
even misunderstood,— of believing; the need of atonement, from
the deep-felt disunion in their nature. It was only necessary that, to
such need, the satisfaction, unconsciously sought, should be furnished,
in order to lead it from superstition to faith. This was the point of
religious development, through which many were brought to embrace
Christianity, as the remedy for their evil.
And while Plutarch, in the work above cited, biased, as he mani-
festly was, by the impression received from the revolting exhibitions of
superstition, was really inclined to prefer unbelief to superstition; yet
where he has occasion to attack an unbelief that denies every thing, he’
owns there is one kind of superstition which he would prefer to unbe-
lief. He says, for example, of Epicureanism, which boasted of having
delivered men from the shadowy fears of superstition, ‘‘ It is better to
have a feeling of reverence mixed with fear, together with faith in the
gods, than for the purpose of avoiding that feeling, to leave one’s self
neither hope nor joy, neither confidence in prosperity, nor recourse to
a divine being in adversity.’’!
That profound sense of disunion, of disruption, which gave birth to
manifold kinds of superstition, revealed itself in those forms of mental
disease, which so widely prevailed, where the sufferers believed them-
selyes to consist of two or more hostile natures,-— to be possessed or
persecuted by evil spirits. It was through this ground-tone of the
spiritual life, that the system of Dualism, which came from the East,
found means of introducing itself; and hence its extraordinary influ-
ence in this age.
If we now glance at those philosophical tendencies among the Greeks,
which, m this period, found most general acceptance with men of earn-,
est minds, two systems of philosophy will offer themselves particularly
to our notice, the Stove and the Platonic.
To begin with the Stoic: the old Roman character felt itself pecu-
liarly attracted by the moral heroism flowing from the principles of this
philosophy. ‘To the noble pride of the Roman, who would not survive
his country’s liberty, and in the self-sufficing consciousness of his dispo-
sition, bade defiance to the corruption of the times, the doctrines of
the stoic school were peculiarly welcome. In the freedom and inde-
pendence of the sage, placing himself above the power of fate, by his
self-feeling of an unconquerable mind, he found a compensation for the
loss of civil liberty. Between a disposition like Cato’s and Stoicism,
there existed a natural relationship. The wise man felt conscious of
an entire equality, in moral loftmess, with Jupiter himself; and of
1 Βέλτιον γὰρ, ἐνυπάρχειν te καὶ ovyke- ἀγαϑῶν παρόντων, μῆτε τινὰ δυστυχοῦσιν
κρᾶσϑαι τῇ περὶ ϑεῶν δόξῃ κοινὸν αἰδοῦς ἀποστροφὴν πρὸς τὸ ϑεῖον ἀπολείπεσϑαι. In
καὶ φύβου πάϑος, ἢ που τοῦτο φεύγοντας the tract: Non posse suaviter vivi secun-
unr ἐλπίδα, unre χάραν ἑαυτοῖς, μῆτε ϑάρσος dum Epicurum, c. 20.
16 STOICISM.
standing below him in no respect.’ He was master of his own hfe,
and might take it, whenever he found he could live no longer in a man-
ner worthy of himself. On this principle, many noble Romans acted ;
not only when they wished to withdraw themselves from the ignominy
of despotism, but also when disease cramped their powers and rendered
existence no longer supportable.? Thus many a strong soul found, in
this philosophy, the expression for that which he carried in his own
bosom; and to many it imparted a moral enthusiasm, which enabled
them to rise superior to the degeneracy of their contemporaries. But
there were many who did nothing more than make an idle parade of
the lofty maxims of the ancient philosophers, with whose statues or busts
they embellished their halls, while their lives, abandoned to every vice,
presented the strongest contrast with these examples.®
In respect to the relation of Stoicism to the religious interest, its
aim was to bring the popular religion, allegorically explained} into
union with a thoroughly pantheistic view of the world.* The Jupiter
of Stoicism was not a being who governs all things with paternal love,
and for whom each individual has a distinct end to fulfil. He was not
one who can reconcile the good of the whole with the good of the indi-
vidual; but he was a being who devours his own children; the All-
Spirit from which all individual existence has flowed, and into which,
after certain periods, it is again resolved. The gods themselves» were
subject to the universal law of this eternal cycle, to which every indi-
vidual existence must finally be sacrificed.? The law, or word of Zeus,
providence, fate,® all signify in this system the same thing ; — that
unchangeable law of the universe, of an immanent necessity of reason,
which all must obey. Evil itself is necessary, according to this law, to
exhibit the harmony of the world, since without it there could be no
good.? The wise man calmly looks on the game, and surrenders with
cheerfulness his individual existence to the claims of the whole,—to which
every individual, as a part, ought to be subservient. The wise man
has precisely the same divine life with Zeus, from whom his own has
͵
1 500 the words of Chrysippus: Ὥσπερ
τῷ Ail προσήκει σεμνύνεσθαι ἐπ’ αὐτῷ τε
καὶ τῳ βίῳ καὶ μέγα φρονεῖν καὶ εἰ δεῖ οὕτως
εἰπεῖν, ὑψαυχεῖν καὶ κομᾷν καὶ μεγαληγο-
ρεῖν, ἀξίως βιοῦντι μεγαληγορίας" οὕτω τοῖς
ἀγαϑοῖς πᾶσι ταῦτα προσήκει, κατ’ οὐδὲν
προεχομένοις ὑπὸ Διός. Plutarch. de Sto-
icorum repugnantiis, ¢c. 13.
2 For examples, cons. Pliny’s Letters, I.
12, 92. IL 7. VI. 24. The old man of
sixty-seven, lying under an incurable dis-
ease, dismissed his physician, who was for
compelling him to take nourishment against
his will, with the word κέκρικα. Whereupon
Pliny remarks, — Que vox, quantum ad-
ο΄ mirationis in animo meo, tantum desiderii
Ἢ reliquit. The following words of Pliny
serve to give distinct form and expression
to the principle of the age, that left the de-
cision of life and death to the autonomy of
reason. Deliberare et causas mortis expen-
dere utque suaserit ratio, vite mortisque
»
consilium suscipere vel ponere, ingentis est
animi.
8 Qui Curios simulant Bacchanalia vivunt,
Indocti primum: quanquam plena omnia gypso
Chrysippi invenies. — Juvenal. Satira IT.
4 Lucian quotes, in the way of banter,
the motto of the stoic pantheism: ‘G¢ καὶ
ὁ ϑεὸς οὐκ ἐν οὐρανῷ ἐστιν, ἀλλὰ διά πάν-
των πεφοίτηκεν, οἷον ξυλων, καὶ λίϑων καὶ
ζώων, ἄχρι καὶ τῶν ἀτιμοτάτων. Hermo-
tim. § 81.
5 As Chrysippus says in his work, Περὲ
προνοὶας, --- Tov Δία αὔξεσθαι, μέχρις ἄν
εἰς αὐτὸν ἅπαντα καταναλώσῃ. Plutarch.
de Stoicorum repugnantiis, c. 39.
6 Διός λόγος, προνοία, εἱμαρμένη.
7 Thus Chrysippus says, Γίνεται καὶ αὐτῆ
(ἡ κακία) πως κατὰ τὸν τῆς φύσεως λόγον
καὶ ἵν’ οὕτως εἴπω, οὐκ ἀχρήστως γίνεται
πρὸς τὰ ὅλα, οὔτε γὰρ τ’ ἀγαϑὰ ἦν. Plu-
tarch. de Stoicor. repugnantiis, c. 35
~
»
STOICISM. 17
flowed. Calmly submissive, he restores it back, when the fated hour
arrives, to its original source.
A cold resignation, — wholly at variance with man’s natural feel-
ings, and altogether different from the childlike submission of the
Christian, which leaves every purely human feeling inviolate, sub-
mission, not to an iron necessity, that decrees annihilation, but to eternal
love, which restores back what has been offered to it, transfigured and
glorified. The emperor Marcus Aurelius says of this Stoic principle,
‘¢’The man of disciplined mind reverently bids Nature, who bestows all
things and resumes them again to herself, ‘ Give what thou wilt, and
take what thou wilt.’” He says this, not in a haughty spirit and in
defiance of Nature, but in the spirit of cheerful obedience to her.! His
Stoicism, moreover, was tempered and refined by a certain childlike
devoutness, a certain gentleness, and unpretending simplicity of char-
acter. But with what grounds of comfort, does he strive to still the
craving, implanted in man’s nature, after an imperishable personal
existence ? We will hear what he says himself. “Two things, we
should consider ; first, that from all eternity, things are repeated over
after the same manner, and that it matters not whether one beholds the
same thmg again in one hundred or two hundred years, or in infinite
time ; next, that he who lives longest, and he who dies soonest, lose
just alike, for each loses only that which he has, the present moment.”’
CI. 14.) “Ever keep in mind, that whatever happens and shall
happen, has already been, —it is merely the same show repeated!”
(10, 27.) “An action terminating at the allotted moment, suffers no
evil, in that it has termmated ; and he that did it, suffers no evil, im
that he has-done acting. So, also, the whole, consisting of the aggre-
gate sum of actions, which is life, suffers no evil, when it terminates at
the allotted time, in that it has terminated ; and he, who, at the allotted
tinfe, has brought up the whole chain to the end, has lost nothing.”
(12, 23.) He asks, (12, 5,) “‘ How happens it, that the gods, who
have ordered all things well and with love to men, seem to overlook
this one thing alone, “that many very good men, who, by pious works
and offerings, have stood on terms of intimate communion with the
deity, having once died, return no more to existence, but perish entire-
ly?” He answers thus, ‘‘Although this is so, yet be assured, that if
it ought to have been otherwise, the gods would have so ordered it.
For had it been right, it would also have been possible; and had it
been in harmony with nature, then nature would have allowed it.
That it is not so, if it is not so, should satisfy us that it ought not to
be so.”’
As Stoicism, by repressing a want inseparable from the essence of
man’s nature, tended, on the one hand, to awaken the longing after a
revelation, capable of satisfying this want; so, on the other hand, by
unfolding m man the consciousness of his relationship to the divine, —
the trath } lying at the bottom of pantheism,?— by the idea — although
1 Monolog. 10, 14. of such a consciousness in the verse of
2 Thus, for instance, Paul, in his dis- Aratus; and much of a similar import is
course at Athens, appeals to that testimony to be found in the hymn of Cleanthes, and
*
18 PLATONISM.
pantheistically apprehended — of one original divine Being, and of the
Spirituality of his worship, as confined to no particular place, which
idea it opposed to the polytheistic religion of the people,!— it pre-
pared the way for Christianity.
Yet a far greater, more deep-reaching and more universal influence
on the religious life of man’s spirit than it was ever in the power of
Stoicism to exert, was destined to proceed from the Platonic philoso-
phy. It dates its beginning from that man, who appears to us as the
forerunner of a higher develo; ment of humanity, as the greatest man
of the ancient w orld, — one in whom the spirit of that world, going beyond
itself, strove after a more glorious future, — from Socrates, whose whole
appearance seems invested ina mystery and riddle, corresponding to his
prophetic character. As it was his great callmg, when the first strong
reaction of reason, become altogether worldly, was turned against religious
and moral belief, to witness, in the struggle with this w orldly tendency
and heartless dialectic caprice, which suppressed all higher interests; to
witness of the reality of that in which alone the spirit can find its true life,
and to awaken in men wholly immersed in earthly things, that aspiration
after the godlike, which might lead them to Christ ; so through his great
disciple, Plato, — who, in his philosophy, produced, with a truly original
and creative mind, the image of Socrates, although not in the whole
loftmess and simplicity of the man himself, — the mfluence of Socrates
has been often experienced, after the same manner, in those great
crises of man’s history, destined by the dissolution of the old, to
prepare the way for a new creation; and as one who lived in a crisis
of this sort, has said,? the Platonic Socrates came like a John the Bap-
tist before the revelation of Christ. This was preeminently true, so
far as it relates to the first appearance of Christ, the great epoch in
the history of the world.
The Platonic philosophy did not merely lead men, like the Stoic, to
the conscious sense of a divine indwelling life, and of an immanent
reason in the world, answering to the idea of the Stoic Zeus ; but it led
men to regard the divine as supra-mundane, as an unchangeable ex-
istence, transcending that which merely becomes; a supreme Spirit,
exalted above the world, if not as an unconditionally free Creator, yet
as the architect of the universe. It awakened, also, the consciousness.
of the supernatural and divine, which in man is the efflux from this
supreme Spirit, and of a kindred nature; so that man is thus enabled
to rise and have fellowship with it, and cognition of it. It did not, like
the Stoic philosophy, followed out to its legitimate consequences, repre-
in other outpourings of the Stoic muse.
Compare the well-known passage in Seneca,
Non sunt ad ceelum elevandz manus nec
exorandus sditus, ut nos ad aures simu-
lacri, quasi magis exaudiri possimus, ad-
mittat, prope est a te Deus, tecum est, intus
est. Ita dico sacer intra nos spiritus sedet.
Ep- 41 ad Lucil.
1 Compare the passage from Seneca and
the words of Zeno: “ We should build no
temple to the gods; for a temple is of lit-
tle worth, and nothing holy, —a work of
architects and common laborers is not worth
much.” Ἱερὰ ϑεῶν μὴ οἰκοδομεῖν: ἱερὸν
γὰρ μὴ πολλοῦ ἄξιον καὶ ἅγιον οὐκ ἔστιν"
οἰκοδόμων δ᾽ ἔργον καὶ βαναύσων οὐδέν ἐστι
πολλοῦ ἄξιον. Hence Plutarch reproaches
the Stoies with self-contradiction, in parti-
cipating in the religious rites of the temple.
Plut. de Stoicorum repugnantiis, ο. 6.
2 Marsiglio Ficino.
PLATONISM. 19
, sent the divine in man, as a self-subsistent element, an efflux from the
divine source, which, as long as the form of personal appearance lasted,
could maintain an existence by itself; so that Zeus appeared to the
Wise man simply as the ideal of wisdom he was to strive after ; — but
it contemplated the divine in man as a ray which conducted back to
the primal light itself; merely as something to receive —a capacity —
which, separated from communion with the original source, from which
alone it can receive, 1s powerless.
Compared with the principle of ethical self-sufficiency — with that
elevation of the feeling of self, peculiar to the ancient world, and
which appears to have reached its highest point in Stoicism— the Pla-
tonic system, in perfect harmony with the connection of ideas above
expressed, was distinguished by a striving towards what is most
directly opposed to that principle, namely, towards the Christian idea
of humility. The-word ταπεινὸς which, at the pomt of view generally
taken by the ancient world, was employed, for the most part, in a bad
sense, as indicating a slavish self-debasement,! is to be met with in
Plato and the Platonists,-as the designation of a pious, virtuous
temper.” |
This philosophy would have us recognize in man’s personality, not a
mere transitory appearance, but something destined to higher unfold-
ings. The life of the individual it regarded, not as an aimless sport in
the periodical changes of the universe, but as a stage of purifying dis-
cipline and preparation for a higher state of existence. It did not
require the suppression of any purely human want, but taught that the
satisfaction of it was to be sought after and waited for. It pointed toa
higher stage of being, where the soul, disencumbered of its dross, would
attain to the unclouded vision of truth.
It was in no sense, certainly, the general drift and purpose of Plato,
to set up an abstract religion of reason, in opposition to the existing
forms of worship ; but he took his stand rather m opposition to that
exclusive enlightenment of the understanding, which merely analyzes
and destroys, and which was peculiar to the Sophists. His religious
speculations rested on a basis altogether historical. He connected him-
self with the actual phenomena of the religious life, and with the tradi-
tions lymg before him; as we see in his remarks on the doctrine of the
gods and on divination. He sought to embody in his speculations the
truth which lay at the bottom here, and to separate it from all admix-
ture of superstition. And, in like manner, this general drift of a posi-
tive philosophy that sought to understand history, passed over, from
the original Platonism, to the derivative Platonism of this age; and m
1 Even in Aristotle we find the ταπεινὸν
united with the dvdparodadec. Ethic. Eu-
dem. III. 3.
2To denote the disposition of submis-
siveness to the divine law of order in the
universe, the word ταπεινὸν is used in con-
nection with κεκοσμημένον, and opposed to
the impious spirit of self-exaltation. De
legibus, IV. vol. VIII. ed. Bipont. p. 185 ;
and Plutarch (de sera numinis vindicta, c.
III.) says of the humiliation of the wicked
brought about by punishment: ἦ κακία
μόλις ἄν γένοιτο σύννους Kal ταπεινὴ Kal
κατάφοβος πρὸς τὸν ϑεόν.
3 To avail myself of an expression, which
Schelling, in the new shaping of his philos-
ophy, has made classical, — positive philos-
ophy, as opposed to the mere logical science
of reason, negative philosophy.
20 PLATONISM.
this latter form, to speak generally, in spite of all the foreign additions,
the tendency of the original Platonism may be clearly traced. It
still contmues to be its aim, under every new modification, to explore
in all directions the marks of a connection between the visible and invis-
ible worlds, between the divine and the human in history, and to
discover, in the great variety of religious traditions! and modes of wor-
ship, different forms of one revelation of the dive.
In opposition to unbelief which appealed to the strife between
different religions as evidence against the truth of any, an apologetic
tendency, which flowed from Platonism, pointed out the higher unity
lying at the root of this manifoldness ; and the coincidence of ideas, in
the different forms of revelation, was made available here, as evidence
Jor the truth. Thus the effort to arrive at an understanding of history,
to come at some comprehensive view, reconciling the oppositions of
historical development, gave birth to a peculiar religious and philosophi-
cal eclecticism— as such phenomena are usually found marking the
conclusion of any great series of historical evolutions. Arrived at
the limits of such a series, we feel constrained to look over once more
the whole, which now les unfolded as one in all its parts; just as the
traveller, near the end of his journey, gladly pauses to survey the road
he has left behind hin.
By distinguishing form from essence, the spiritual from the sensual,
the idea from the symbol which served for its representation, it was
deemed possible to find the just medium between the extremes of
superstition and unbelief, and to arrive at aright understanding of
the different forms of religion. The devout and profoundly meditative
Plutarch, who wrote near the close of the first century, may be
considered the representative of this direction of mind to religious
speculation, which was now fully developed. In regard to the relation
of different religions to one another, he thus expresses himself:? ‘ As
sun and moon, sky, earth and sea, are common to all, while they have
different names among different nations; so, likewise, though there is
but one system of the world which is supreme, and one governing
providence, whose ministering powers are set over all men, yet there
have been given to these, by the laws of different nations, different
names and modes of worship; and the holy symbols which these nations
used, were, In some cases, more obscure, in others, clearer; but in all
cases, alike failed of bemg perfectly safe guides m the contemplation
of the divine. For some, wholly mistaking their import, fell into
superstition ; while others, in avoiding the quagmire of superstition,
plunged unawares into the opposite gulf of infidelity.” The reverential
regard for a higher necessity in the religious institutions of mankind,
the recognition of a province elevated above human caprice, 15 shown
by Plutarch, in the following remark, where he confronts the stoics
with the phrase from an Orphic hymn, which was often on their lips,
as a motto of their pantheism.? ‘“‘ As Zeus is the beginning and centre
1 Συνάγειν ἱστορίαν, οἷον ὕλην φιλοσοφίας 2 See de Iside et Οβίτϊ 6. ;
ϑεολογίαν τέλος ἐχούσης. De defectu ora- 8 Ζεὺς ἀρχὴ, Ζεὺς μέσσα, Δίος δ᾽ ἐκ πάντα
culorum, ¢. 2. τέτυκται. Adv. Stoic. c. 31.
NEW PLATONISM— PLUTARCH. 91
- of all,—every thing has sprung from Zeus, men should first correct
and improve their ideas of the gods, if any thing impure or wrong has
found its way into them. But, if this is beyond their power, they
should then leave every one to that mode in which he finds himself
placed by the laws and religious traditions of his ceuntry.” He cites
here, in evidence of a higher necessity, lying at the foundation of these
institutions, the words of Sophocles, witnessing of an innate andeternal
law in the heart of humanity: (Antig. 467.) “ The divine — religion
—1is something imperishable; but its forms are subject to decay.
God bestows many good things on men; but nothing imperishable ; for,
as Socrates says, even what has reference to the gods, is subject to
death.” 1
Plutarch is filled with sadness, in thinking of those who take part in
the public worship only from respect to the multitude, while they look
upon the whole thing asa mere farce. ‘They hypocritically mimic
the forms of prayer and adoration, out of fear of the many ;— repeat
words that contradict their philosophical convictions ; and, when they
offer, see in the priest only the slaughtermg cook.”? He rebukes
those, who, following the fashion of Euemerus, in attempting to explain
everything in the doctrine of the gods after a natural way, wage war
with the religious convictions of so many nations and races of men, in
that they are seeking to draw down the names of heaven to earth,
and to banish nearly all the religious belief that had been implanted
in men from their birth.? He sees men wandering between these two
extremes ; — either confounding the symbol with what it was designed
to represent, and thus giving rise to superstition —as, for instance, when
the names of the gods were transferred to their images, and thus led
the multitude to believe that these images were the gods themselves,
and when, in Egypt, the animals consecrated to the gods became con-
founded with the latter ;*—or else running into the opposite views, which
were occasioned by these errors, and resulted in infidelity.
If the manner in which Plutarch ‘explains and contemplates the
opposition between superstition and unbelief, shows, when applied to
the phenomena of his time, an madequate and partial view of the
subject, this must be attributed to that fundamental view, belonging to
the essence of the Platonic philosophy, according to which, everything
is referred back to the intellectual element,— to knowledge in religion,—
and the deeper practical ground of religious conviction, and of the
religious life, —their connection with the moral bent of the affections, —
is overlooked. Hence, he considers the main source of both superstition
and unbelief to be intellectual error—in the former of a positiye, in
the latter of a negative kind ; only, m the case of superstition, there is,
moreover, a movement of feeling, which arises out of those erroneous
notions of the gods, whence they become only objects of fear.® But he
1 ἸΤολλὰ καλὰ τοῦ ϑεοῦ διδόντος ἀνϑρώ- 8 De Iside et Osiride, c. 23.
ποις, ἀϑάνατον δὲ μηδέν: ὥστε ϑνήσκειν Kat ἘΠ ΠΟ γ1ς
τὰ ϑεῶν, ϑεοὺς δὲ οὐ κατὰ τὸν Σοφοκλέα. 5 Ἢ μὲν ἀϑεότης λόγος ἐστὶ διεψευσμένος"
De defectu oraculorum, c. 9. ἡ δὲ δεισιδαιμονὶα πώϑος ExAGyou φευδοῦς
2 See Plutarch’s tract: Non posse suavi- ἐγγεγενημένον. c. 2.
ter vivi secundum Epicurum, c. 22.
22 NEW PLATONISM— PLUTARCH.
does not seem to have found that a παϑὸος hes at the ground of many
shapes of unbelief, as well as of superstition; and both disorders of
the spiritual life have their proper seat in the direction of the moral
affections, in the disposition ; that the παϑὸς is, therefore, usually the
original, the intellectual error the derivative and symptomatic cause,
of the evil. Thus Plutarch ascribes it merely to a false notion of the
gods, that they are represented by the superstitious as angry, and
threatening punishment; but he is not prepared to understand such a
stage of religious development well enough to perceive, that there is a
bottom truth, by virtue of which the gods can be represented only in
tlis relation to the religious consciousness of one who feels himself
estranged from God. Hence he erred also, in supposing that nothing
more was necessary for the recovery of the superstitious man, than to
lead him, simply by the intellectual operation, to the knowledge of the
gods, and of the fact that good only, and nothing that is evil, proceeds
from them ;— not perceiving, that the representation of the gods,
above alluded to, might itself be nothing else than a reflex of the
superstitious man’s own state of mind, and therefore to be got nid of
only by an immediate operation on the nature of the man himself.
This error, agai, stood in some connection with another circumstance ;
namely, that although he defended, against the stoics, the Platonic
doctrine of punishments,’ as a necessary means of reformation, and of
purifying and deterrmg men from evil, and wrote a treatise expressly
to vindicate the divine justice in punishing the wicked,? yet to that
conception of God’s holiness and to that apprehension of sin, grounded
in and intimately connected with it, which belong to the Theism of
the Old Testament, he was too much a stranger. Hence, the Old
Testament idea of God, as the Holy one, considered from his own
Platonic position, must be unintelligible to him; and he might easily
seem to himself to miss in Judaism the right notion of God’s good-
ness.3
It was the purpose, then, of this apologetic and reforming philosophy
of religion, to counteract unbelief, as well as superstition, by setting
forth the ideal matter contained in the old religions. From this
position and with this object in view, Plutarch says, in his exhortatory
discourse to a priestess of Isis:4+ “ As it is not his long beard and
mantle that makes the philosopher, so is it neither linen robe nor shorn
head that makes the priest of Isis. But the true priest of Isis 1s he
_ who first receives the rites and customs pertaining to these gods from
the laws, and then examines into their grounds, and philosophizes on
1 Against Chrysippus, for instance, who
puts this doctrine on a level with the stories
with which old women frighten the children ;
Tov περὶ τῶν ὑπὸ Veod κολάσεων λόγον, ὡς
οὐδὲν διαφέροντα τῆς Ἀκκοῦς καὶ τῆς Αλφι-
τοῦς, di ὧν τὰ παιδάρια τοῦ κακοσχολεῖν αἱ
γυναῖκες ἀνείργουσιν. De Stoicorum re-
pugnantiis, c. 15.
* His work on the Delay of Divine Pun-
ishments.
8 De Stoicorum repugnantiis, c. 38, where
he refers to the example of the Jews, to
prove that the conception of the gods as
χρηστοί was by no means to be found every
where. And here we may remark, that we
would not deny the Jews themselves were
partly in fault for the diffusion of such rep
resentations of their religion.
4 Ὁ τὰ δεικνύμενα καὶ δρώμενα περὶ τοὺς
ϑεοὺς τούτους, ὅταν νόμῳ παραλάβῃ, λόγῳ
ζητῶν καὶ φιλοσοφῶν περὶ τῆς ἐν αὐτοῖς
ἀληϑείας. ο. 8.
er
a=")
NEW PLATONISM — PLUTARCH.
the truth they contain.”’ With some profoundness of meaning, Plutarch
compares the old myths,— considered as representations of ideas,
arising from a refraction of the divine light in a foreign substance, a
re-appearance of it, broken by the intervention of some heterogeneous
medium, — to the rainbow in relation to the sun’s light.4
We find here the first beginnings of an attempt to reconcile the
natural and supernatural in religion; to reconcile the position of the
rationalist with that of the supranaturalist, the scientific interest with
the religious ; — tendencies and ideas, which, outsteppmg already the
position maintained by the old Nature-religion, came forward to
meet the Theism of revelation; and it was by the latter, first, that any
such reconciliation could be brought about, and a true understanding
of the religious development of humanity made possible.
Plutarch distinguishes two different stages or positions of knowl-
edge; that which goes immediately to the divine causality, and that
which dwells on the natural causes, serving as instruments to the
former. ‘The ancients,” he says, ‘directed their attention simply
to the divine in phenomena, as God is the beginning and centre of ail,
and from him all things proceed; and they overlooked natural causes.
The moderns turned themselves wholly away from that divime ground
of things, and supposed every thing could be explained from natural
causes. Both these views are, however, partial and defective ; and
the right understanding of the matter requires that both should be
combined.’’? In attempting to show how a natural phenomenon may
be a sign of the future, he says, “ Divination and Physics may both
be right; one serving to point out the causes which have brought
about the phenomenon; the other, the higher end it is mtended to
subserve.’?? ‘They who suppose the significancy of signs is made
naught by the discovery of natural causes, forget that their argument
against the signs of the gods would also apply to those mvented by
human art; since in the latter case too, one thing is made by human
contrivance to serve as the sign of something else; as for example,
lights to serve as beacons, sun-dials to indicate time, and the like.”
This distinction of the natural from the divine, in the codperation
of both, was employed, in a noticeable manner, by Plutarch, for the
purpose of so defending the divinity of the oracles, as to avoid, at the
same time, superstitious representations. While some were of the opin-
ion, that the god himself dwelt in the prophetess at the Delphic shrine,
employed her as his blind instrument, speaking through her mouth and
suggesting every word she uttered; by others, these representations
were seized upon for the purpose of turnmg the whole into jest, and
De defectu oraculorum, c.
1 Kadarep οἱ μαϑηματικοὶ τὴν piv ἔμφα- παραλείπουσιν.
σιν εἶναι τοῦ ἡλίου λέγουσι ποικιλλομένην
τῇ πρὸς τὸ νέφος ἀναχωρήσει τῆς ὄψεως,
οὕτως ὁ μῦϑος λόγου τινὸς ἔμφασις ἐστιν
ἀνακλῶντος ἐπὶ ἄλλα τὴν διάνοιαν. De
Iside et Osiride, c. 20.
2"Odev ἀμφοτέροις ὁ λόγος ἐνδεης τοῦ
προσήκοντός ἐστι, τοῖς μὲν τὸ AV οὗ καὶ ὑφ᾽
οὗ, τοῖς δὲ τὸ ἐξ ὧν καὶ δι’ ὧν ἀγνοοῦσιν ἢ
47.
\ ὃ Ἐκώλυε δ᾽ οὐδὲν καὶ τὸν φυσικὸν ἐπι-
τυγχάνειν καὶ τὸν μάντιν, τοῦ μὲν τὴν
αἰτίαν, τοῦ δὲ τὸ τέλος καλῶς ἐκλαμβάνον-
toc: ὑπέκειτο γὰρ τῷ μὲν ἐκ τίνων γέγονε
καὶ πῶς πέφυκε, ϑεωρῆσαι, τῷ δὲ πρὸς τί
γέγονε καὶ πῶς πέφυκε ϑεωρῆσαι. Pericles,
c 7.
94 NEW PLATONISM— PLUTARCH.
making the doctrine of such a divine influence on the human soul,
and every idea of inspiration, ridiculous.t They laughed at the bad
verses of the Pythoness, and inquired why it was, that the oracles, once
_given in poetry, should now be uttered in the form of prose. But Plu-
tarch sought to unite the recognition of the divine causality with that of
the human individuality which served it as an organ; and by distinguish-
ing in the oracles the divine and the human, to find in this case, also, the
just medium between superstition and unbelief. ‘We are not to
believe,” says he, ‘that the god made the verses; but, after he has
communicated the moving impulse, each of the prophetesses is moved
ina way that corresponds to her own peculiar nature.2 For let us
suppose the oracles were not to be spoken, but recorded in writing, we
should not, 1 imagine, ascribe to the god the strokes of the letters, ‘and
find fault with him because the writing was not so beautiful as that of
the imperial edicts. Not the language, nor the tone, nor the expres-
sion, nor the measure of the verse, proceeds from the god ; — all this
comes from the woman. He simply communicates the intuitions, and
kindles up a light in the soul with regard to the future.” ? ‘“ As the
body uses many organs, and the soul uses both the body and its parts
as organs, so the soul has now become the organ of the god. But the
adaptation of an organ consists in its answering, with its own natural
activity, the purpose of him that employs it as a means to represent
the work of his ideas. This, however, it cannot represent pure and
unadulterated, as the work exists in its author; but much foreign matter
becomes necessarily mixed up with it.’ 4 CTE it is impossible,’” he
says afterwards, “‘to force lifeless things, which remain constant to
themselves, so as to be used in a way that contradicts their natural
character — so that a lyre, for mstance, can be played as a flute, or a
trumpet as a harp; if the artistic use of each particular instrument
consists precisely in this, that it be used conformably with its
peculiar character — then it is really impossible to say how a being,
possessed of a soul endowed with free will and reason, could be used
otherwise than according to the character, power or nature which dwelt
in him before.” So, according to this view, the difference of the
several individualities of character, and of the several modes of culture,
will continue to appear in the manner in which the inspiring agency of
the divine causality exhibits itself through each. The peculiar appear-
ances in such states of enthusiasm, (ἐνθουσιασμός.) he explains as arising
from the conflict of the two tendencies, —the movement imparted from
without, and that belongmg to the proper nature of the individual ;
just as when to a body falling by the law of gravitation to the earth,
a curvilinear motion is communicated at the same time.
1 The sarcasm in Lucian’s dialogue, Zed¢
ἐλεγχόμενος, may serve as an example.
% What the poets say, when possessed by
the Muses, is true. But when forsaken by
the goddesses, and left to sing for themselves,
they are out, and contradict what they had
said before ; ‘and one must excuse them if
they perceive not the truth as men, when
the agency has vanished which hitherto
swells in them, and by which they invented.”
5 Ἐκείνου τὴν ἀχὴν τῆς κινήσεως ἐνδι-
δόντος, ὡς ἑκάστη πέφυκε κινεῖσϑαι τῶν
pele De Pythiz oraculis, ὌΣ %,
ὃ ’Exeivog μόνας τὰς φαντασίας παρίστησι!
καὶ φῶς ἐν τῇ ψυχῇ ποιεῖ πρὸς τὸ μέλλον.
4 De Pythiz oraculis, ο. 21
ὩΣ, «τ ὼ..-.....-
VISIBLE AND INVISIBLE DEITIES. 25
By this speculative mode of apprehending the popular religion,
men would be led, moreover, to reduce Polytheism to some higher
unity, lying at its root. The recognition of an original unity being a
thing absolutely necessary for reason, Polytheism either proceeded
out of that unity, or must be reduced back to it; it continually felt
itself impelled to derive the multitude of gods from one original
essence. Now, by the speculative mode of apprehension, the conscious-
ness of this unity could not fail to be developed and rendered still
more distinct, and the relation of the manifold to unity clearly pre-
sented. Thus Plato had already sought to bring back Polytheism to
some such higher unity, had derived all existence “ from the Creator
and Father of the Universe, who is hard to find, and whom, when
found, it is impossible to make known to all.”’! So now, too, this new
philosophy of religion rose to the idea of one simple origmal essence,
exalted above all plurality and all becoming; the only true Being ;
unchangeable, eternal ;? from whom all existence, and first of all, at
the summit of existence, the world of gods, nearest related to himself,
in its manifold gradations, has emanated. In these gods, that unfolded
perfection, which in the Supreme essence was more included and
hidden, becomes known ; they exhibit in different forms, the image of
that Supreme essence, to which uo one can rise, except by the loftiest
flight of contemplation, after it has rid itself from all that pertains to
sense —from all manifoldness. They are the mediators between man,
scattered and dissipated by manifoldness, and the Supreme Unity. A
distinction was next made of the purely spiritual, invisible deities, and
those in nearer contact with the world of sense, by whom thé life radi-
ating from the Supreme essence is diffused down to the world of sense,
and the divine ideas, so far as that is possible, actualized in it — the
manifest gods ; 5 the gods in the process of becoming ; the θεοὶ γενητοί
in contradistinction from the ὧν ; the spirits that, according to Plato,
animate the worlds. Thus it was contrived to hold fast the position of
the old Nature-religion, which lived and moved in the intuition of na-
ture, and to brig it into union with the recognition of a supreme
original essence, and of an invisible spiritual world, to which man’s
spirit strove to rise from the sensuous things that had hitherto chained
it. Accordingly, two different stages in religion now presented them-
selves ; that of the multitude, with minds dissipated and scattered in
the manifold, who can have intercourse qnly with those mediatorial
deities approaching nearest to them; and that of the spiritual men,
living in contemplation, who rise above all that is sensuous, and soar
upwards to the supreme origial essence. Hence, agai, arose two
different stages, or positions, in respect to the divine worship; the
purely spiritual position, which corresponds to the relation with the
original essence, exalted above all contact with the sensible world; and
that of sensuous worship, which is adapted to the relation with those’
gods who are connected more nearly with the world of sense. From
1 In Timeus. * Plutarch. de εἰ apud Delphos, c. 20.
2 Εἰς ὧν évi τῷ viv τὸ ἀεὶ πεπλήρωκε 8 Θεοὲ φανεροί as contradistinguished
καὶ μόνον ἐστι τὸ κατὰ τοῦτον ὄντως ὃν. from the ἀφανεῖς.
VOL. I.
26 NEW PLATONISM.
this point of view, it is said, in the work on “ Offerings,” cited under
the name of Apollonius of T'yana: “‘ We shall render the most appro-
priate worship to the deity, when to that God whom we called the first,
who is one, and separated from all, after whom we must recognize the
others, — when to him we present no offermgs whatever ; kindle to him
no fire, dedicate to him no sensible thing ; for he needs nothing, even
of what could be given him by natures more exalted than ours. There
is no plant the earth produces, no animal the air nourishes, no thing
that in relation to him would not be impure. In relation to him, we
must use only the higher Word, —that, I mean, which is not expressed
by the mouth, —the silent, mer word of the spirit.’”’ Even prayer, ex-
pressed in words, he would say, is beneath the dignity of that original
essence, so exalted above all that is of sense ;“‘and from the most glori-
ous of all beings, we must seek for blessings by that which is most
glorious in ourselves. But this is the spirit, which needs no organ.”’?
This highest position of spiritual worship m reference to the Supreme
essence, was set up as a rival of Christianity, and as a means of dis-
pensing with it. |
We must not, however, transfer over to this Supreme essence of the
new Platonic philosophy of religion, the Christian conception of God,
as Creator and Governor of the world. The fundamental position of
the ancient world —deification of nature in life, separation of the divine
and human in science — appears, also, in this final shaping of phil-
osophic thought — with which that position ended — agam prominent
and distinct. It belonged, no doubt, to the lofty dignity of that Su-
preme eine: that, wrapt in its transcendent perfection, it could enter
into no contact with the sensible world; whence also it followed, that
the only worship worthy of it, is the contemplation of the spirit raised
above all that is sensible ; and this is, therefore, set over against prac-
tical life, as a subordinate position. This conception of spiritual wor-
ship is, accordingly, quite as distinct from the Christian, as the
conception of the Supreme essence itself is. At the extreme pomt
and summit of its speculation, this philosophy of religion proceeded
still further in refining on the conception of the Supreme essence. In
Plato is to be distinguished what he says concerning the idea of the
absolute — the good in itself, exalted above all being ?— and what he
says of the Supreme Spirit, the Father of the Universe.* But the new
Platonists substituted that idea of the absolute, in place of the Supreme
essence itself— as the first simple, which precedes all existence ; of
which nothing determinate can be predicated ; to which no conscious-
ness, no selfcontemplation can be ascribed; inasmuch as this would
immediately imply a duality, a distinction of subject and object. This
highest of all can be known only by the intellectual intuition of the
spirit, transcending itself, declaring itself free from its own lmits.*
1 In Eusebius Preeparat. evangel. 1. IV. 2 In the Republic.
ο. 13. and Porphyry de abstinentia carnis, 1. 8 In the Timeeus and Philebus.
II. § 34, who cites these words of Apolloni- * As Plotinus says: Τῆς γνώσεως διὰ
us of Tyana, and busies himself with ex- νοῦ τῶν ἄλλων γιγνομένης καὶ τῷ νῷ νοῦν
plaining and applying them. γιγνώσκειν δυναμένων, ὑπερβεβηκὸς τοῦτο
DEFENSE OF IMAGE WORSHIP. ΟἿ
With this barely logical direction, whereby it was possible to arrive at
the conception of such an absolute, the ὄν, there united itself a cer-
tain mysticism, which, by a certain transcendent state of feeling, could
communicate to this abstraction a reality for the soul. Such an ab-
sorption of the spirit in that super-existence, (τὸ ἐπέκεινα τῆς οὐσίας.)
even to entire union with it, or such a revelation of the same to the
spirit raised above itself, was considered as the highest end to be
reached by the spiritual life. Porphyry relates that this was experi-
enced by him once, in his sixty-eighth year; and by his teacher, Plo-
tinus, four times.?
By virtue of the gradations in the evolution of the chain of exist-
ence, from that transcendent origmal ground down ‘to the world of
sense, and by virtue of a symbolic interpretation connected with this
doctrine, it was made possible to appropriate everything that belonged
to the existing cultus, spiritualized after this manner. Thus, 6. g. the
rhetorician Dio Chrysostom, who wrote in the time of Trajan, makes
Phidias speak in defense of images of the gods, in the followimg lan-
guage: “ὁ It cannot be said, that it would be better for men simply to
lift their eyes to the heavenly bodies, and that there were no images
at all. All these, the man of reason worships, and believes that he
beholds from afar the blessed gods. But love to the gods makes every
one wish to be able to honor them near at hand, so that he may ap-
proach and touch them, offer to them with implicit faith, and crown
them.” Thus, he says, ‘it les in the essence of human.nature, to en-
jeavor to make present before our senses the absent objects of our
love. Hence the Barbarians, who had no art, were obliged to transfer.
their worship to other, certainly far less appropriate. objects ; — to
mountains, trees and stones.”’* Similar arguments are employed by
Porphyry, in justification of image-worship.® ‘“‘ By images addressed
to sense, the ancients represented God and his powers — by the visible
they typified the mvisible for those that learned to read in these figures,
as in books, a writing that treated of the gods. Weare not to wonder,
if the ignorant consider the images only as wood or stone; for just so,
they who are ignorant of writing, see nothing in monuments but stone,
nothing in tablets but wood, and in books but a tissue of papyrus.”
We see that this spiritualizmg apprehension of the old polytheistic
religion had gone on to form itself— independent of the influence of
Christianity, as a mean of conciliation between superstition and unbe-
lief — out of the spirit of the Platonic philosophy, so far as this extended
its influence into the religious consciousness. For when Plutarch wrote,
in whom we find this direction of mind already fully developed, Chris-
τὴν τοῦ νοῦ φύσιν, τίνι ἂν ἁλίσκοιτο ἢ ἐπι-
3ολῇ ἀϑρόᾳ. Anecdota greeca ed. Villoi-
son. Venet.1781. T. II. p. 237.
1 Thus Porphyry relates of him in the
account of his life: Ἐφάνη ἐκεῖνος 6 ϑεὸς
6 μῆτε μορφὴν μῆτε τινα ἰδέαν ἔχων, ὑπὲρ
δὲ νοῦν, καὶ πᾶν τὸ νοητὸν ἱδρυμένος" “ῷ δὴ
καὶ ἐγὼ ἅπαξ λέγω πλησιάσαι καὶ ἑνωθῆναι,
and of Plotinus he says, it was his highest
aim ἑνωϑῆναι καὶ πελάσαι τῷ ἐπὶ πᾶσι ϑεῷ,
and four times, during his abode with Por-
phyry, he had attained to this, ἐνεργείᾳ ἀῤῥη-
τῳ καὶ ob δυνάμει.
2 See Dio Chrysostom’s remarkable dis-
course on the knowledge of the gods. Orat.
XII. ed. Reiske. 11. Vol. I. p. 405, et seq.
8 In Eusebius Preparat. evangel. 1. IIL.
a
Geode
28 NEW PLATONISM.
tiamty, certainly, had as yet produced no influence on the spiritual
atmosphere at large. But a new zeal in behalf of the old religion, in
which men were striving, with all their might, to keep the breath of life,
was to be awakened by this philosophy of religion, now that the ancient
rites were threatened with destruction by Christianity, from a new
positive religious interest; and so there arose, out of those already
existing ideas, a new polemical and apologetic direction, having for
its end to preserve erect the rotten fabric of Paganism. Yet artifi-
cial and violent expedients cannot help any cause long; and by this
effort, often too artificial, the untenable character of the religion men
were laboring to uphold, was badly concealed. These philosophical
refiners of religion were themselves preparing for after times, by this
means, many a weapon against the popular religion, of which the
Christians well knew how to avail themselves. Already Plutarch em-
ployed the doctrme concerning demons, as intermediate bemgs between
gods and men, for the purpose of defending the traditions of the popu-
lar religion, and rescuing the dignity of the gods — transferring from
the latter many things to these middle bemgs, who, he maintained, had
been confounded with the others! According to Plutarch’s doctrine,
these demons, half related to the gods, half to men, serve as the
means of intercourse between both.2- But he supposed that also among
these demons, there was a graduated subordination, according as the
divine or the sensuous element? predommated in them. Where the
latter was the case, it gave rise to malicious demons, with violent de-
sires and passions; and to conciliate these, and avert their destructive
influences, was the design of many of the noisy and rude forms of
cultus. Such were the ones which had given occasion to human sacri-
fices. With this idea, Porphyry fell in, representing these demons as
impure beings, related to matter, from which these Platonists derived
all evil. These take delight in bloody offerings, by which their sensu-
ous desires are gratified; they prompt to all evil impulses; they seek
to draw men from the worship of the gods by pretending to be such
themselves, and to give spread to unworthy opmions concernmg the
gods, and concerning the Supreme God himself. Their delusive arts
have been successful from of old. Hence those unworthy and inde-
‘cent notions and stories of the gods, which are diffused among the
multitude, and have received countenance even from poets and philoso-
phers.t It is easy to see, how well such explanations would serve the
purpose of the Christians, in their attacks on the popular religion ;
and we can perceive, how the same representations, passing from one
side to the other, and modified in different forms, might be seized
upon, sometimes for the defense, sometimes for the assault of
Paganism.
It was impossible, however, that religious knowledge and religious
1 Plutarch. de defectu oraculorum c. 12 τες, ὥσπερ ὑπηρέταις Kal γραμματεῦσι.
et seq. 8 The παϑητικόν and ἀλόγον.
2 What seemed incompatible with the 4 In Eusebius Preparat. evangel. 1]. 1V
exalted dignity of the gods, was transferred c. 21, 22.
to them, ταῦτα λειτουργοῖς ϑεῶν ἀνατιϑέν-
ITS ARISTOCRATIC TENDENCIES. 29
life should make progress among the people by these explanations, to
them so unintelligible. ‘The people remained fixed to the externals of
their worship ; they clung firmly to that old superstition which it was
attempted to reanimate, without troubling themselves about these more
spiritual views. Hence Dionysius of Halicarnassus could say,! “ that
but few take any part in this philosophical view of religion. But the
many, who are destitute of philosophical culture, are “accustomed to
understand those mythical stories in the worst possible way; and one
of two-things is the case: either the gods are despised for taking an
interest in such pitiable affairs, or else men abandon themselves to the
worst abuses, because they find the same among the gods.”
Again, inseparable from that stage of progress at which the ancient
world stood, there was, together with a lingermg zeal— not freed
however from the shackles of egoism—for civil liberty, a certain
aristocratic spirit. ‘This, as we have seen already, made itself felt in
religion. ‘The higher religious position, which necessarily supposed
philosophical culture, could not be transferred to the multitude; they
seemed as if excluded from the higher life, capable of religion only in
the form of superstition. The great body of tradesmen and mechanics .
were considered as unsusceptible of the higher life, which alone
answered to man’s true dignity,?—as abandoned to common life.®
Platonism itself was entangled in this aristocratic spirit of Antiquity,
and opposed the stage of science, whence alone it was possible to soar
to pure truth in religion, to that of opmion (δόξα) among the multi-
tude (οἱ πολλοί.) where the true must ever be mixed up with the false.
And, in like manner, it was remote also from the aim of this new
philosophy of religion, to elevate the people to any higher stage of
religious development ;—for which, indeed, it was destitute of the
means. Plotinus distinguishes two different stages, that of the noble-
minded (the oxovdaioi) and that of the gross multitude (the πολλοί.)
None but the former attain to the Highest ; the others remain behind,
conversant with the merely human (the opposite to the Divine.) And
at this stage of common life, again, are to be distinguished, those who,
in some sort, take an interest and part in virtue, and the wretched
mass, as the day-laborers, —the better class of whom, however, must
busy themselves with providing for the daily wants of life ; the rest aban-
don themselves to all that is vile.* It was not till the word that went
forth from the carpenter’s shop had been published abroad by fisher-
men and tent-makers, that these aristocratic notions of the ancient
world could be overthrown.
As it is usually found to happen with particular intellectual tenden-
cies at epochs of transition, that while aiming to hold fast the old, they
have been already forced to pass beyond it, and so must themselves
1 Archeol. 1. II. c. 20, near the end. πων: τοῖς μὲν σπουδαίοις πρὸς τὸ ἀκρότατον
2 Biocg βώναυσος.
8 Οὐ γὰρ οἷοντ᾽ ἐπιτηδεῦσαι τὰ τῆς ἀρετῆς
ζῶντα βίον βάναυσον ἢ ϑητικόν. Aristote-
les Polit. 1. IIT. ¢. 5.
4 Ὥς διττὸς ὁ ἐνθάδε βίος, ὁ μὲν τοῖς
σπουδαίοις, ὁ δὲ τοῖς πολλοῖς τῶν ἀνϑρώ-
καὶ τὸ ἄνω, τοῖς δὲ ἀνϑρωπικωτέροις, διττὸς
αὖ ὧν, ὁ μὲν μεμνημένος ἀρετῆς μετίσχει
ἀγαϑοῦ τινος, 6 δὲ φαῦλ ος ὀχλ ος οἷον χειρο-
τέχνες τῶν πρὸς avayKny τοῖς ἐπιεικεστέ-
pore. Ennead. 11:2. X.c¢. 9.
30 NEW PLATONISM.
lead over to the new, which they would hinder in its development; so
it happened with this philosophy of religion, in its relation to the posi-
tion of the old world on the one hand, and to Christianity on the other.
While the new Platonism was for holdmg and defending the former of
these, it yet contributed itself to excite deeper religious wants, which
sought satisfaction in something better; to set afloat religious ideas,
iu which there dwelt a power unknown to those who expressed them,
and which must serve to prepare for Christianity a way of introducing
itself into the culture of the times. There was called forth, by the
influence of this particular direction of mind on religious life, a longing
which tended to a diferent end. But by this undefined longing, ac-
companied with no clear conciousness of its import, ardent spirits
were also exposed to many dangerous delusions, before they could find
the satisfying object. This state of feeling drew out fanatics, and
procured for them a hearing.
There were roving about at that time in the Roman empire, which
united together the East and the West, numbers who boasted of divine
revelations and supernatural powers, men in whom, as usually happens
in such times of religious ferment, the se/f-deception of fanaticism was
mixed with more or less of intentional fraud. For an example, we’
may mention that Alexander of Abonoteichus, in Pontus, whose life
Lucian has written in his usual satiric manner, and who, all the way
from Pontus to Rome, found believers in his pretended arts of magician
and soothsayer, and was reverenced and consulted as a prophet, even
by men of the first standing. Doubtless, to the better class belonged
Apollonius of Tyana, famous in the age of the apostles.’ It is impos-
sible, however, to form any certain judgment of his character, so
imperfect are our means of information. Those who, like Philostratus,
(at the close of the second century,) attempted, with their marvellous
stories, to represent him as a hero of the old popular religion, have
done most to injure his reputation with posterity. He travelled about,
seeking to reanimate religious faith; but by giving nourishment to a
prurient curiosity about matters that should remain hidden from man,
he also promoted fanaticism. He spoke against a superstition, which,
in leading men to suppose that offermgs and sacrifices could purchase
impunity for crime, served as a prop for superstition: he explained
that, without a good moral disposition, no kind of outward worship can
be pleasing to the gods. He spoke against the cruel gladiatorial shows ;
for when the Athenians, who were celebrating such games, invited him
to their public assembly, he replied, that he could not tread on a spot
stained by the shedding of so much human blood, and wondered the
gods did not forsake their Acropolis. When the person who presided
over the Eleusinian mysteries declined to allow the privilege of initiation
to Apollonius of Tyana, it is difficult to tell whether the Hierophant
meant honestly, and regarded Apollonius as a magician, who dealt in
unlawful arts, or whether he was not, rather, jealous of the great influ-
ence, unfavorable to the priesthood, which Apollonius exercised over
the people; for this is said to have been so great, that already many
thought it a greater privilege fo have the society of Apollonius than to
APOLLONIUS OF TYANA. 81
be initiated into the mysteries. The words with which he is said to
have concluded all his prayers, and in which he summed up every par-
ticular request, are characteristic of the man: “give me, ye gods,
what I deserve.”’! These words do not imply directly a spirit of self-
exaltation ; he intended simply to express by them the conviction, that
prayer can avail nothing, unless im connection with a virtuous life; —
that the good man only can expect blessings from the gods. At the
same time, he is said to have remarked himself, that if he belonged to
the good, God would give him more than he asked, therefore more than
he desired. Still we cannot fail to perceive, in this language, a posi-
tion in the judgment of one’s self, quite opposed to that of Christianity.
If a letter consoling a father for the death of his son, which has
been ascribed to Apollonius, is genuine, it gives an insight into his
pantheistic tendency. At all events, we may recognize here, as we
may in so many other appearances of this age, the pantheistic element,
into which, as the unity lying at its root, the dissolving system of
Polytheism was now passing.” In this letter, the doctrme is advanced,
that birth and death are such only in appearance ; that which separ-
ates itself from the one substance, the one divine essence, and is caught
up by matter, seems to be born; that which delivers itself again from
the bonds of matter, and reunites with the one divine essence, seems
to die. ‘There is an interchange between becoming visible and invisi-
ble.2 In all, there is, properly speaking, but the One essence, which
alone does and suffers, by becoming all things to all; the eternal God,
to whom men do wrong, when they deprive him of what should be
attributed to him, by transferrmg it upon other names and persons. *
‘¢ How cam we grieve for one, when by change of form, not of essence,
instead of a man he becomes a god?”’® So Plotinus, when dying, is
said to have remarked, that he should endeavor to convey back the
divine in man to the divine in the universe.°®
On every side was evinced the need of a revelation from heaven,
such as would give inquirmg minds that assurance of peace which
they were unable to find in the jarring systems of the old philosophy,
and in the artificial life of the reawakened old religion. That zealous
champion of the latter, Porphyry, alludes himself to the deep-felt
necessity ; which he proposed to supply, leaning on the authority of
divine responses, by his Collection of Ancient Oracles. On this point
he says,’ *¢ The utility of such a collection will best be understood by
those who have felt the painful craving after truth, and have some-
μένη τὸ ἰδίον, ἀδικουμένη Te.
1 Aointé μοι τὰ ὀφειλόμενα. Philostrat. ;
5 πρρόπου μεταβάσει καὶ οὐχὶ φύσεως.
1. IV. f. 200, ed. Morell. Paris, 1608,—c. 40.
f. 181, ed. Olear.
2 Ep. 58 among those published by Olea-
rius in the Works of Philostratus.
3 Θώνατος οὐδεὶς οὐδενὸς ἢ μόνον ἐμφάσει,
καϑώπερ οὐδὲ γένεσις οὐδενὸς ἢ μόνον ἐμ-
φάσει: τὸ μὲν γὰρ ἐξ οὐσίας τραπὲν εἰς φύσιν
ἔδοξε γένεσις. τὸ δὲ ἐκ φύσεως εἰς οὐσίαν
κατὰ ταῦτα ϑώνατος.
4 'Τὴν πρώτην οὐσίαν, 7 δὴ μόνη ποιεῖται
καὶ πάσχει, πᾶσι γινομένη πάντα, ϑεὸς
ἀΐδιος, ὀνόμασι δὲ καὶ προσώποις ἀφαιρου-
6 Πειρᾶσϑαι τὸ ἐν ἡμῖν ϑεῖον ἀνάγειν
πρὸς τὸ ἐν τῷ παντὶ ϑεῖον. Porphyr. vit.
Plotin. ὁ: 2.
7 Περὶ τῆς ἐκ λογίων φιλοσοφίας in Euseb.
Preeparat. 1. 1V.c. 7, near the end: Ἣν δ᾽
ἔχει ὠφέλειαν ἡ συναγωγὴ μάλιστα εἴσονται
ὅσοι περὶ τὴν ἀλήϑειαν ὠδίναντες ηὔξαντό
ποτε τῆς ἐκ ϑεῶν ἐπιφανείας τυχόντες ἀνά-
παυσιν λαβεῖν, τῆς ἀπορείας διὰ τὴν τῶν
λεγόντων ἀξιόπιστον διδασκαλίαν.
32 NEW PLATONISM.
times wished it might be their lot to witness some appearance of the
gods, so as to be relieved from their doubts by information not to be
disputed.”
The life of such a person, from his youth up, harrassed with doubts,
unsettled by the strife of opposite opinions, ardently longing after the
truth, and conducted at length, through this protracted period of un-
satisfied craving to Christianity, is delineated by the author of a sort
of romance, (partly philosophical and in part religious,) who belonged
to the second or third century. This work is called Zhe Clementines,
and though a fiction, is clearly a fiction drawn from real life; and we
may safely avail ourselves of it, as presenting a true and characteris-
tic sketch, which might doubtless apply to many an inquiring spirit
belonging to those times.
Clemens, a noble Roman, who lived about the time of the first diffu-
sion of the gospel, gives the followmg account of himself. ‘I was,
from my early youth, exercised with doubts, which had found entrance
into my soul, 1 hardly know how. Will my existence terminate with
death; and will no one hereafter be mindful of me, when infinite time
sinks all human things in forgetfulness? It will be as well as if I
had not been born! When was the world created, and what existed
before the world was? If it has existed always, it will continue to
exist always. If it had a beginning, it will likewise have an end.
And after the end of the world, what will there be then? if not per-
haps the silence of death! or, it may be, something of which no
conception at present can be formed. Incessantly haunted,” he goes
on to say, ““ by such thoughts as these, which came, I know not whence,
I was sorely troubled, so that I grew pale and emaciated — and, what
was most terrible, whenever I strove to banish away this anxiety as
foolish, I only experienced the renewal of my sufferings in an aggravated
degree ; which occasioned me great distress. I was not aware that 1
had in these thoughts a friendly companion, guiding me on towards
eternal life, as I afterwards learned by experience, and thanked the
great Disposer of all for granting me such guidance, since it was by
these thoughts, so distressing at first, that I was impelled to seek till
I found that which I needed. And when 1 had attained to this, then
I pitied, as miserable men, those whom in my former ignorance I was
in danger of considering most happy. As such thoughts, then, dwelt
in me from my childhood, I resorted to the schools of the philosophers,
hoping to find some certain foundation, on which I could repose; and
I saw nothing but building up and tearing down of theories — nothing
but endless dispute and contradiction: sometimes, for example, the
demonstration triumphed of the soul’s immortality, then again that of
its mortality. When the former prevailed, I rejoiced ; when the latter, I
was depressed. Thus was I driven to and fro by the different repre-
sentations ; and forced to conclude, that things appear not as they are
in themselves, but as they happen to be presented on this or that side.
I was made dizzier than ever, and from the bottom of my heart, sighed
for deliverance.” As he could come to no fixed and certain conviction
by means of reason, Clemens now resolved to seek relief in another
ITS RELATIONS TO CHRISTIANITY. 33
way — to visit Egypt, the land of mysteries and apparitions, and hunt
up a magician, who could summon a spirit for him from the other
world. ‘The appearance of such a spirit would give him intuitive
evidence of the soul’s immortality. No arguments would afterwards
be able to shake his belief in what had been thus made certain to him
by the evidence of his senses. But the advice of a sensible philoso-
pher dissuaded him from this project, and from seeking the truth by
forbidden arts, to which he could not resort and ever hope again to
obtain peace of conscience. In this state of mind, full of doubts, un-
settled, inquiring, distressed and agitated, he came in contact with the
gospel, preached in demonstration of the Spirit and of power—and his
case may illustrate that of many others.
If, now, we take a general survey of the religious state of the pagan
world, as it has thus been exhibited, we cannot fail to observe many and
various oppositions to, and points of possible union with, Christianity ;
oppositions capable also of becoming points of union, and points of
union capable also of becoming oppositions. Opposed at one and the
same time against Christianity, stood the powers of infidelity and of
superstition. Zhe force of infidelity—the sole supremacy of the under-
standing, denymg everything above nature, the wisdom of the nil
adimrart — set itself to oppose Christianity, as it did everything else
that called in requisition man’s religious nature. By such as had
taken this direction, Christianity was put in the same category with all
appearances of fanaticism and superstition; but there was also an
infidelity, at the root of which lay that need of believmg, which could
no longer be satisfied by anything that the present state of the ancient
world, in religion and philosophy, could afford ; just as we have seen it
represented in the case of the above-mentioned Clemens: and such
unbelief could be overcome by the force of divine truth in the gospel ;
the unbelief itself became here a preparatory momentwm to the recep-
tion of Christianity. On the other hand, the dominion of a superstition
clinging to sense opposed the entrance of a religion which proclaimed
the worship of God in spirit and in truth; and this superstition was in
close alliance with the old religion, which had now been elevated to a
new sway over the spirit. But that sway was something unnatural,—
it was a last effort of expiring life: and at the root of a Y oreat propor-
tion of the superstition lay, as we have seen, a need, seeking for its
satisfaction, which could be found only in Christianity ;—the need
of redemption —of a healing of the deep-felt schism within— of recon-
ciliation with the unknown God, after whom the conscious or uncon-
scious need was seeking. By means of an unconscious, undefined
craving of this sort, many no doubt fell victims to various deceptive
arts; and it was necessary that the power exercised by such arts
over the minds of men, should be overcome by Christianity, before it
could pave its way to their hearts: but there also dwelt in the gospel
a power to lay bare and expose all deceptive arts, and to penetrate
through every delusive show, to the inmost recesses of man’s being.
Platonism prepared the way for Christianity, by spiritualizing the
religious modes of thinking; by bringing back polytheism to a certain
94 NEW PLATONISM.
unity of the consciousness of God; by awakening many ideas closely
allied to Christianity, as, for example, the idea of a redemption, in the
sense of deliverance from the #47 — the blind power of nature opposed
to the divine;! of elevation to a stage of divine life removed beyond the
influence of natural powers.? But that which is best suited to form a
preparatory position, is capable also of bemg most easily turned into
one of fierce hostility, where an interest is felt in maintaining the old
position against the higher one which has presented itself; and in this
Platonism, we still discern the spirit of the old world, though pregnant
already with foreign elements. The new Platonism could not bring
itself to acquiesce, particularly, in that hwmility of knowledye and that
renunciation of self which Christianity required. It could not be
induced to sacrifice its philosophical, aristocratic notions, to a religion
which would make the higher life a common possession for all mankind.
The religious eclecticism of this direction of the spirit could do no
otherwise than resist the exclusive and sole supremacy of the religion
that suffered no other at its side, but would subject all to itself. Yet
this philosophy of ¥eligion found it impossible to prevent the ideas and
wants it had awakened, from leading beyond itself, and to Christianity.
Platonism, it is true, revived the faith in a superterrestrial nature and
destination of the spirit; but the manner in which the doctrine of the
soul’s immortality, reduced to the ideas of an eternity of the spirit, and
of the soul’s preéxistence, became united here with the transmigration
of souls, failed to satisfy the universal religious wants of mankind. I,
according to this doctrine, even those souls— which applied, however,
in the end, only to such as had attained by philosophy to the intuition
of truth —if even those souls which, when freed from the bonds of
their earthly existence, could rise to a life wholly above sense, wholly
divine, must yet, after a certain time, yield again to the force of des-
tiny, and plunge once more into the circle of an earthly life; this was
not an expectation answering to the desires of the human spirit. And
it may be conceived what power the proclamation of eternal life, in the
Christian sense, must have exercised over a want thus excited, and yet
left unsatisfied.®
There could not fail to arise, then, out of this school itself, an oppo-
sition of views: on the one side, were those who held this position im
hostility to Christianity ; on the other, those to whom it proved a pomt
of transition to Christianity. But then these latter, again, were
exposed to a peculiar danger. ‘Their earlier prejudices might react in
such a way as to pervert their mode of apprehending and of shaping
1 Of attraction and repulsion, of every
description of γοητεία, the ἀγοητεύτον.
2 We may mention here also the idea of
an αἰώνιος ζωῆ, which God possesses. Plu-
tarch. de Iside et Osiride c. 1. The idea
of a kingdom of God, depending on the
condition that the divine element in man
gains the supremacy ;— in the language of
Psammon, an Egyptian priest in the time
of Alexander the Great: “Otc πάντες ἂν-
ϑρωποι βασιλεύονται ὑπὸ ϑεοῦ: τὸ γὰρ
ἄρχον ἐν ἑκάστῳ καὶ κρατοῦν, ϑεῖον ἐστιν.
In the Life of Alexander, c. 27, near the
end.
3 We have an illustration of it in Justin
Martyr’s account of his own religious his-
tory, at the beginning of his dialogue with
Trypho, where he relates how he was led
from Platonism to embrace Christianity
[2
JUDAISM. 30
Christian truth. In this way, much foreign matter, drawn from their
previous opinions, might unconsciously be conveyed over with them to
Christianity.
Religious Condition of the Jewish People.
In the midst of the nations addicted to the deification of nature in
the form of Polytheism or of Pantheism, we see a people among whom
the faith in one Almighty God, the absolutely free Creator and Gov-
ernor of the world, was propagated, not as an esoteric doctrine of the
priests, but as a common possession for all, as the central point of life
for a whole people and state. And necessarily connected with the faith
in a holy God, was the recognition of a holy law as the rule of life,
was the consciousness of the opposition between holiness and sin — a
consciousness, which, at the esthetic position held by Nature-religien,
though it occasionally flashed out in single gleams, yet could not be
evolved with the same strength, élearriess and constancy. This rela-
tion of the Hebrew people to other nations suffices of itself to defeat
every attempt which might be made to explain the origin of the
religion of this people in the same manner as that of other religions.
It is a fact bearing witness of the revelation of a living God, to whom
the religion owed its existence and its progressive development; and
of the peculiar course of trammg, whereby this nation was formed to
be the organ for preserving and propagating this revelation. A Philo
might, with good reason, say of this people, that to them was entrusted
the prophetic office for all mankind; for it was thew destimation, in
opposition to the nations sunk im the worship of nature, to bear witness
of the living God. ‘The revelations and leadings of the Divine hand
vouchsafed to them, were designed for the whole human race, over
which, from the foundation here laid, the kingdom of God was to be
extended. Theism and the Theocracy must be embodied in an out-
ward shape, as pertaining exclusively to a distinct people, in order that
from the envelope of this national form might issue forth the kingdom
of God, embracing all mankind. Yet as the idea of the Theocracy
cannot, by forms and rules from without, be realized in the life of a
single people, and generally not m the rude stock of human nature,
unennobled and persisting in its estrangement from God, there could
not fail to exist here a disproportion between the revealed idea and its
outward manifestation; and in this very circumstance was grounded
the prophecy of a future conciliation. The idea must strive, beyond
the form of appearance, which as yet does not answer to it, towards a
development more conformable to its essence and fulness; and it con-
tains in itself the prophecy of such a development. If history in gen-
eral partakes, by its own nature, more nearly of the prophetic charac-
ter in proportion as there dwells in ita pervading reference to the
great moments of history, to that which has significancy as bearing on
the progress of mankind as a race; then the religion and history of this
people must be filled, in a preéminent degree, w ith prophetic elements.
The destinies of this nation were so ouided as ever to call forth more
- strongly the consciousness of that breach, that imward disunion, of
36 JUDAISM.
which we have spoken above, and the longing after deliverance from
it. This deliverance is one and the same with the restoration of the
fallen Theocracy; with which belongs also the participation of all
nations in the worship of the living God. The appearance of him by
whom this was to be accomplished, of him who is the true theocratic
King, forms therefore the central pomt of the prophetic element, which,
although unfolded by particular prophecies with special clearness and
distinctness of vision, yet here, 1s not merely some accessory individual
thing added from without, but had been grounded by an inherent
necessity in the whole organism of this religion and national history.
The idea of the Messiah is the culminating point of this religion, to
which all the diffused rays of the dive in it converge.
While the religious belief of the Greeks and Romans suffered a vio-
lent shock in the revolutions which these nations experienced, the
indwelling power in the theistic faith is clearly manifested, when we
see it preserving itself unshaken amid all the political storms that agi-
tated the Hebrew people. Nay, the oppressions suffered under the
dominion of foreign nations served but to render this faith more firm ;
although the right understanding of its import did not keep up at an
equal pace. But as everything that develops itself in human nature
is exposed to the corruptions lyimg within it, revealed religion could not
escape the same. Even Christianity, the absolute religion of man-
kind, could not be exempted from this necessity; only it possessed
the power of coming forth ennobled from the conflict with these corrup-
tions, taking advantage of them to free itself from the admixture of
foreign elements. This power did not reside in Judaism; as it was
not designed to endure for all times, as a religion in this form, but to
give place, by the dissolution of this form, for that higher creation
which was foretold by it. If this form, instead of making way for that
higher development, would maintain its own existence for a still longer
term, it must, in surviving itself, merely drag itself along, as a thing
effete. And here too it will be seen again, that what is designed as a
_ preparatory stage, when it attempts to assert its own independence,
not understanding itself according to its spirit and idea in relation to
the historical development, may turn round into opposition with that
higher stage, for which it was its very purpose to prepare.
What has just been said is to be applied to the direction of the reli-
gious spirit which governed the great mass of the Jewish people. With
them, the theocratic consciousness, misapprehended according to the
notions of their fleshly minds, served but to foster a national pride, of
which it had become the foundation. Men fastened on the letter— the
letter, understood according to the contracted views of minds turned
only on the world; and clung by the sensible form and envelop, with-
out being able to perceive the spirit they revealed and the ideas they
contained, because there was no congenial, recipient spirit to meet the
divine truth as it was offered. The sentence was here verified, pro-
nounced by our Lord himself, “‘ He who has, to him shall be given ;
and he who hath not, from him shall be taken even that which he
hath.”
FALSE PROPHETS. 37
By the consciousness of the declining condition of the Theocracy, it
is true, that the yearning after the promised epoch of its glorious resto-
ration, and by the feeling of distress under the yoke of foreign and
domestic tyrants, the longing after the Deliverer, after the appearance
of Him from whom that glorious restoration was to come, the Messiah,
had been aroused to greater activity. But the same groveling sense
which led to a misapprehension of the nature of the Theocracy gen-
erally, could not fail to lead also to a misapprehension of this idea, which
forms the central pomt and mark towards which the whole Theocracy
was aiming. From that worldly sense which was attached to the idea
of the Theocracy, and that worldly turn of the religious spirit gen-
erally, could only result a secularizing also of the idea of the Messiah.
As the great mass of the people were bowed down by the sense of out-
ward much more than of mward wretchedness, disgrace and bondage,
it was chiefly a deliverer from the former whom they expected and
yearned after, in the Messiah. The inclination to the supernatural
took here an altogether worldly shape ; the supernatural, as it pictured
itself to the imagination of the worldly heart, was but a fantastic imi
tation of the natural magnified to the monstrous. Thus the deluded
Jews, destitute of a sense for the spiritual apprehension of divine
things, expected a Messiah who would employ the miraculous power,
with which he was divinely armed, in the service of their earthly lusts;
who would free them from civil bondage, execute a severe retribution
on the enemies of the Theocratic people, and make them masters of the
world in a universal empire, whose glory it was their special delight to
set forth in the fantastic images suggested by their sensuous desires.
There was a great want of such leaders and teachers. of the people
as could have instructed them respecting the nature of their religion
and of the Theocracy, and undeceived them of their erroneous fancies.
Most of their guides were blind leaders of the blind, men who only
confirmed the people in their perverse inclinations and in the errors
thence resulting. Great mischief had been occasioned particularly by
a fanatical zealot, Judas of Gamala, or the Galilzean, who, about the
year 11 after the birth of Christ, took upon himself to oppose the census
or registration decreed by Augustus Cesar. A people that had
incurred the forfeiture of their liberty, as a just punishment for their
sins, and would continually incur it more and more ;—such a people
he called upon to throw off, at once, the yoke of Roman bondage. He
stimulated those, who, in disposition, were widely removed from serving
God as their Lord, to recognize Him as their only Lord, by suffering
no vestige to remain of the dominion of a stranger over the people that
belonged to God alone. While others were for awaiting the deliver-
ance to be wrought by the power of Géd, through the Messiah, he, on
the contrary, required, that they should first lay hands to the work
themselves. God —said he — will help those only, who do their own;
but by this he meant nothing else than the resistance of mere arbitrary
will to a power placed by God’s appointment over a people that had
not understood their calling, that had been unfaithful to it, and who, by
WOU; I. 4
38 JUDAISM.
virtue of their disposition, were no longer capable of freedom.!- From
this exciting cause proceeded that wild fanaticism of the Zealots,
formed out of an impure combination of political and worldly-religious
elements ; a combination which in all times has introduced the most
fatal mischiefs among nations; as was illustrated, indeed, by the his-
tory of this people down to the period of their total extinction as a
State. When John the Baptist, after his call from God to become a
preacher of repentance, caused a divine voice to be heard in the wilder-
ness of the degenerate people, sought to bring them to the conscious-
ness that it was by the disposition of the heart the way must be pre-
pared for the regeneration of the Theocracy, and directed the longing
wishes of his contemporaries away from the earthly to the divine, yet
notwithstanding the great effect which he produced by the command-
ing power of his words, he found little sympathy with that which was
the true aim and spirit of his preaching, and at last fell the victim of
a league struck between worldly and spiritual tyranny —a martyr to
that truth, which, with a denunciatory zeal that regarded no conse-
quences, he held up against all the wickedness of his age. ‘The death
οἵ John foreshadowed the fate which was to terminate the earthly
course of one greater than himself, to bear witness of, and prepare the
way for whom, was his divine vocation.
Incomprehensible, therefore, to men given up to such blindness, was
what the Son of God told them of the true freedom, which he had
been sent from heaven to bestow on those who sighed under the bon-
dage of sm. As with their earthly sense they knew not the Father,
so also they could not discern in Jesus, the Son ; because they had no
ear for the voice of the Father, witnessing of him, in the wants of the
human heart. The same temper which made them disregard the
warning prophetic words of John the Baptist, rendered them deaf also
to the warning call of the greatest among all the prophets ; and as he
had foretold them, they became, even to their rum, through the influ-
ence of the same disposition, a prey to the artful designs of every
false prophet who knew how to flatter the wishes which such a dispo-
sition inspired. When the temple of Jerusalem was already in flames,
one of those false prophets could persuade crowds of the people, that
God was about to show them the way of deliverance by a miraculous
sign, — such a sign as they had often demanded of him who would
have shown them the true way to true deliverance, and who did refer
them to the true signs of God in history, —and thousands of deluded
men fell victims to the flames or to the Roman sword. Josephus, who
was no Christian, but who contemplated with less prejudice than others
the fate of his nation, of which he was an eye-witness, closes his recital
of this event with the following remarkable words: ‘‘ The unhappy peo-
ple would suffer themselves, at that time, only to be cheated by impos-
tors who were bold enough to lie in the name of God. But to the mani-
fest prodigies that portended the approaching destruction they paid no
regard; they had no faith in them: — like men wholly infatuated, and
1 Joseph. Archeol. 1. XVIII. c. 1, de B. J. 1. Il. ¢. 8, § 1.
THE PHARISEES. 90
as if they had neither eyes nor soul, they heeded not what God was
announcing.”
Among the Jewish theologians in Palestine, we find the three
different main directions, which are commonly observed to make their
appearance in opposition to each other, on the decay of the forms of a
positive religion. First, the traditional tendency, which mixes up with
the original religion many foreign elements, aiming to combine all
these imto an artificially constituted whole ; which holds tenaciously to
form and letter, without the living spirit; and substitutes, in the place
of the real essence of the religion, an effete orthodoxy and a dead
ceremonial. ‘Thus is there called forth, in the next place, the reaction
of a reforming tendency; but a reaction which, if it has proceeded
rather from the mtelligential than from the religious element, if the
sense of negation rather than the positive religious interest predomi-
nates, easily swerves from the just moderation in polemics, and runs
into the extreme of expunging, together with the foreign elements, much
that is genume and good. But the unsatisfied want which both these
tendencies leave in men of more profound and warmer feelings, usually
impels the latter to another reaction, — the reaction of a predominantly
subjective tendency, of predominant feeling and intuition by the
feelings, which, as opposed to the tendencies above described, is desig-
nated by the name of mysticism. These three main directions of the
religious spirit, which often recur under different forms, we recognize,
in the present case, in the three classes called the Pharisees, the
Sadducees and the Hssenes.
The Pharisees 1 stood at the summit of legal Judaism. They fenced
round the Mosaic law with a multitude of so-called “ hedges,” whereby
its precepts were to be guarded against every possible infringement.
Thus it came about, that, under this pretext, many new statutes were
added by them, particularly to the ritual portion of the law. These
they contrived, by an arbitrary method of mterpretation,—a method
which in part tortured the letter and in part was allegorical, — to find
in the Pentateuch ; appealing at the same time to an oral tradition,
as furnishing both the key to right exposition, and the authority for
their doctrines. They were venerated by the people as the holy men,
and stood at the head of the hierarchy. An asceticism, alien to the
original Hebrew spirit, but easily capable of entering into union with
the legal sectarianism at its most extravagant pitch, was wrought by
them into a system. We find among them a great deal that is similar
to the consilis evangelicis, and to the rules of Monachism in the later
church. On painful ceremonial observances they often laid greater
stress than on good morals. ΤῸ a rigid austerity in the avoidance of
every even seeming transgression of ritual precepts, they united an
easy sophistical casuistry which knew how to excuse many a violation
1The name is derived from “parash,” the sense, “to set apart,” parush, w375,
wr); either in the sense “to expound,” which indeed sounds nearer like the Greek
whence “poresh, wnid, the ἐξηγητὴς τοῦ φαρισαῖος, one separated from the profane
νομοῦ κατ᾽ ἐξοχὴν, a title claimed by the Multitude, the xi] Dy- one who would
Pharisees, according to Josephus; or in be regarded as holy
40 JUDAISM.
of the moral law. Besides those who made it their particular business
to interpret the law and its supplemental traditions, there were among
them those, also, who knew how to introduce into the Old Testament,
by allegorical interpretation, a peculiar Theosophy; and this they
propagated in their schools;—-a system which, starting from the
development of certaim ideas really contained in the Old Testament in
the germ, had grown out of the fusion of these with elements derived
from the Zoroastrian or Parsic system of religion; and at a later
period, after the time of Gamaliel, with such also as had been derived
from Platonism. ‘Thus to a ritual and legal tradition came to be added
a speculative and theosophic one.?
It would be as wrong, certainly, to confound these Pharisees together
im one class, as to pursue the same course with the later monks. We
must distinguish among them the several gradations of honestly meant
though misguided zeal, till it diverges to mock-holiness and hypocrisy
thirsting for power. Although the egoistic interest of an hierarchial
caste was the governing principle with many, yet there were some for
whom the legal way, with all its efforts and conflicts, possessed perfect
truth ; some who had been led, by their course of life, to pass through
the same painful experiences of which Paul, the former Pharisee,
bears witness in the seventh of his epistle to the Romans. But
one thing was wanting to them; the humility with which those who
feel the poverty of their own spirit, go forth to meet the divine grace.
The Sadducees were for restoring the original Mosaic religion in its
purity, and expunging every thing that had been added by Pharisaic
traditions. But as they did not follow out the thread of historical
progress which marked the development of the divine revelations, but
_arbitrarily cut it short, so they could not understand the original
Theism in the Jewish religion. That direction of mind which shows
hostility to the progressive development of the religious consciousness,
required by what was already contained or implied in the original,
cannot fail to misunderstand the original itself, — cannot fail to seize it
on a single side and to mutilate it. The Sadducees were too deficient
in the more profound sense of religion and of the religious need, to be
able to distinguish the genuine from the spurious in the Pharisaic
theology.
Directly at variance as were the two systems of Phariseeism and
Sadduceeism, still they had something in common. This was the one-
sided legal principle which they both maintained. And indeed by the
Sadducees this principle was seized and held after a manner still more
exclusively one-sided than by the other sect; since with them all
religious interest was confined to this point; and since they misinter-
preted or denied every thing else that belonged to the more fully
developed faith of the Old Testament. Moreover, the essential charac-
ter of the law in its spirit, as distinguished from its national and
1 In what is here said, I have taken into Testament, has made against the manner
view the well-grounded objections which in which the subject was presented by me
Dr. Schneckenburger, in the seventh Dis- before.
sertation of his Introduction to the New
THE SADDUCEES. 41
temporal form, in its strictness and dignity, was recognized by them
still less than by the Pharisees. While the Pharisees attributed the
highest value to ritual and ascetic works of holiness, with the Saddu-
cees—as, perhaps, the name they gave themselves may denote —
uprightness in the relations of civil society passed for the whole.
Startig from this principle, there was nothing in their view of morality
which presented a point of contact for the feeling of religious need,
which most readily emerges from the depth of the moral life. Add to
this, that they ascribed divine authority, an authority binding on
religious -conviction, only to the Pentateuch.t The observance of the
law, understood after their own way, was for them the only thing fixed
and certain; in respect to all other things, they were inclined to doubt
and disputation.” a
As the belief in the spirit’s destination for an eternal existence —
beyond this earth found no recipiency in this, their one-sided intelli-
gential direction of mind, holding converse only with the worldly,
they expressly denied the doctrines of the resurrection and of the
immortality of the spirit, because no such doctrimes could be proved
from the letter of the Pentateuch alone. These doctrines they reckoned
1 Ready as I am to acknowledge the
weight of the arguments brought by Winer
(in his Biblische Realworterbuch) against
the statement here made, yet I cannot be
induced to abandon it. Very true, it does
not admit of being proved from the passa-
ges of Josephus, that the Sadducees denied
the authority of all other books of the
canon. Itis only evident from those pas-
sages, that they were opponents of tradi-
tion; and were for deriving the substance
of the legal precepts to be observed from
the letter of the law alone, without allowing
validity, in this regard, to any other source
of knowledge. But neither can it by an
means be proved from them, that they
judged respecting the canon precisely as
did the Pharisees. Although Josephus, (c.
Apion. c. 8.) taking his position on the
ground of Jewish orthodoxy, might thus
describe the canon as of universal validity,
yet it by no means foflows, that that hete-
rodox sect, which departed in so many oth-
er things from what was elsewhere consid-
ered as important for the religious interest,
—that this sect might not also differ from
the same in their judgment concerning the
canon. If the Sadducees, notwithstanding
their denial of doctrines so important to
the general religious interest as those of
personal immortality and of the resurrec-
tion, could yet attain to the most consider-
able offices of the state, how was an opin-
ion concerning the canon, which certainly
had no stich vital connection with practi-
cal life, to offer any obstacle to this promo-
tion? Josephus says of them, that when
they were called to administer public affairs,
they did not venture to act according to
their own principles, but were constrained
4*
to yield to what was required by the Phar-
isees ; since otherwise they must fall by the
popular rage, which would be excited against
them. Ὁπότε γὰρ ἐπ’ ἀρχὰς παρέλϑοιεν,
ἀκουσίως μὲν καὶ KAT ἀνώγκην, προςχωροῦσι
δ᾽ οὖν οἷς ὁ φαρισαῖος λεγει, διὰ τὸ μὴ ἄλ-
Awe ἀνεκτοὺς γενέσϑαι τοῖς πλήϑεσιν. Αν-
cheol. 1. XVIII. ¢. 1, § 4. These words
refer immediately, without doubt, to church
principles of administration; yet I cannot
avoid the inference from analogy, that the
Sadducees would have acted in precisely
the same way, in regard to other things, not
less important in their relation to the com-
mon religious interest; such, for instance, as
their denial of immortality ; that is, would
have made no public demonstration of their
real convictions, although it must necessari-
ly have been the case, that, with such differ-
ence of opinions, violent contentions would
sometimes arise in the Sanhedrim. See
Acts, 23:9. So now, there may have been
a distinction of an exoteric and esoteric
position in their judgment concerning the
canon; and while manifesting a certain
respect for the whole canon, they may have,
notwithstanding this, ascribed a decisive
authority in matters of faith, to the Pen-
tateuch alone. Indeed, it cannot well be
conceived, how they could reconcile the
acknowledgement of an equal authority
belonging to all the books of the Old Tes-
tament, with their denial of immortality
and of the resurrection.
2 Josephus describes the skeptical ten-
dency of the Sadducees in Archeol. 1.
XVIII. c. 1, § 4: Φυλακῆς δὲ οὐδαμῶν
τιμῶν μεταποίησις αὐτοῖς ἢ TOV νωμον.
Πρὸς γὰρ τοὺς διδασκάλους σοφιας ἣν μετία:
σιν, ἀμφιλογεῖν ἀρετὴν ἀριϑμοῦσιν
‘
42 JUDAISM.
also among the foreign additions that had been made to the original
doctrines of Moses, from which additions they were wishing to purify
Judaism. To such a direction of mind, it is ever peculiar to declare
all doctrines surreptitious, which do not lie, expressed in so many words,
in the religious records still recognized as authoritative, although these
doctrines may be contamed there im the spirit, including within itself
the germ of a future development. But it is more difficult to conceive
how the Sadducees found it possible to reconcile their denial of a world
of spirits and of the existence of angels!—to which denial they were
impelled by the same direction of mind — with their principle of
recognizing everything as religious doctrme which could be shown to
lie, in so many words, in the Pentateuch. It is easy to see here, how
they were seeking for their own opinions, which had originated and
were grounded in a state of mind wholly peculiar to themselves, a point
of union and support in the authority which they recognized only just
so far as the case admitted. Most probably, in explaining the angelic
appearances, (the Angelophaniai,) they departed from their principle
of literal interpretation, and considered them merely as visions by
which God revealed himself to the Fathers. 2
Although it cannot be proved, from the notices of Josephus, that they
denied a special Providence, yet it is clear, that im strict conformity with
their tendency to negation, they made God, as far as possible, an idle
spectator of the affairs of the world, taking much less share in the
concerns of men than the Theocratic principle required. Their direction
of mind must have impelled them ever nearer to a Deism which
abolished all revelation, and consequently, also, the essence of the
Jewish religion itself, though at the outset they had simply in view
the restoration of that religion to its primitive simplicity. The prin-
ciple of their spiritual bent must have led them further than they
intended themselves to go. In perfect harmony with this mode of
thinking was also the severe, cold, heartless disposition which Josephus
ascribes to the Sadducees. According to his account, they were for
the most part persons of wealth, who led a life of ease, and, satisfied
with earthly enjoyments, would open their minds to no higher aspi-
rations. ὃ
1 Acts, 23, 8. or merely allowing himself to conclude,
2 As we are to infer from Origen’s words,
if we compare them with a passage in Jus-
tin Martyr, (Dialog. ec. Tryph. Jud. f. 358,
ed. Colon,) where he speaks of a party
among the Jewish theologians, that denied
the personal existence of angels, and ex-
plained all appearances of them as merely
transient forms of the manifestation of a
divine power, which God caused to go out
from himself and then withdrew. Origen,
in the words alluded to, ascribes to the
Sadducees, δόξας περὶ ἀγγέλων, ὡς οὐχ
ὑπαρχόντων, ἀλλὰ τροπολογουμένων τῶν
περὶ αὐτῶν ἀναγεγραμένων καὶ μηδὲν ὡς
πρὸς τὴν ἱστορίαν ἀληϑὲς ἐχόντων. Τί may
admit of some question, whether Origen
was following here some historical accounts,
from the necessary connection of ideas in
his own mode of thinking, that if they did
not ascribe literal truth to the narratives of
the angelic appearances, they must then
have explained them allegorically. The
comparison of his statement, however, with
that of Justin Martyr, renders the former
the more probable.
8 Although Josephus was himself a Phar-
isee, yet we have no reason to suspect what
he says of the Sadducees, for he constantly
shows himself impartial in his judgments
he moreover frequently exposes, without re-
serve, the bad traits of the Pharisees, and
we have no cause, therefore, to charge him
here with malicious feelings, injurious to
the truth. Certainly we cannot infer from
THE ESSENES. 43
It remains, that we should speak of the Essenes or Esszeans, whose
relation to the two parties just described has already been exhibited
in a general manner. About two centuries before the birth of Christ,
there arose,in the quiet country lying on the west side of the Dead Sea,
a society of piously disposed men, who, in these solitudes, sought a
refuge from reigning corruptions, from the storms and conflicts of the
world and the strifes of parties; precisely as the monastic system
sprung up at a later period. ‘Thus they are described by the elder
Pliny, who felt constrained to express a sort of respect for their inde-
pendence and their contentment within themselves. ‘On the western
border of that lake,” says he, ‘‘ dwell the Essenes, at a sufficient dis-
tance from the shore to avoid its pestilent effluvia — a race entirely by
themselves, and, beyond every other in the world, deserving of won-
der; men living in communion with nature; without wives, without
money. Every day, their number is replenished by a new troop of set-
tlers, since they are much visited by those whom the reverses of fortune
have driven, tired of the world, to their modes of living. Thus hap-
pens, what might seem incredible, that a community in which no one is
born, yet continues to subsist through the lapse of centuries. So fruit-
ful for them is disgust of life in others.”! From this first seat of the
Essenes, colonies of them had been formed in other parts of Palestine ;
in remote and solitary districts of the country, which must have
answered best to their original design, but also in the midst of villages
and towns. A transplantation of this sort would naturally lead to
many deviations from the original strictness of their principles, to many
alterations of their discipline. Although there was one class of Hsse-
nes who, as we may gather from the accounts of Josephus, were will-
ing to act as magistrates, yet it is evident that these, residing amidst
civil society, could not observe all those rules which bound, with the
force of law, such as lived secluded from human intercourse. As is
wont to happen in similar communities, there must, in this case, have
naturally sprung up many orders of the sect, various forms of relation
to, and modes of connection with, the original society. Indeed, the his-
torian Josephus expressly distinguishes four different orders, of which
the Essenes were composed. Many contradictory statements, which
occur in the several accounts of this sect, admit thus of bemg most
easily reconciled.?
\
the character of the doctrines of the later
Careans, who were temperate opponents of
the Pharisaic traditions, what must have
been the character of the Sadducean doc-
trines. The general question still remains
unsettled, whether the latter doctrines had
any outward connection whatever with the
former, although the heresy-hunting spirit
of their adversaries would naturally be glad
of the chance to confound them with these.
1 Ab occidente litora Esseni fugiunt,
usque qua nocent. Gens sola et in toto
orbe preter cxteras mira, sine ulla femina,
omni venere abdicata, sine pecunia, socia
palmarum. In diem ex xquo convenarum
turba renascitur, large frequentantibus, quos
vita fessos ad mores eorum fortune fluctus
agitat. Natur. hist. 1. V. c. 15.
2 Josephus cites μοίρας τέσσαρας of Es-
senes, B. J. 1. II. c. 8, § 10, which several
grades, it is true, would, according to his
testimony, have reference simply to the
length of time spent in this community;
but from the marks which are given, we
may doubtless infer, that there were other
modes of classification among them besides
that which bore reference to the circum-
stance just mentioned.
8 As, for instance, while Pliny makes
them reside only on the border of the Dead
44 JUDAISM.
If we may always distinguish, among mystic sects, the more practi-
cal and the more speculatively inclined, we must reckon the Essenes
with the former class, without overlooking in them, however, at the
same time, a certain speculative and Theosophic element. This, their
peculiar mystic turn, might have sprung, in the first place, indepen-
dently of external influences, out of the deeper religious sense of the
Old Testament, a spiritualization of the letter, proceeding from the tem-
per of mind which gave birth to the allegoric mterpretation. Such
mysticism has made its appearance, after much the same manner,
among people of the most diverse character, among the Hindoos, the
Persians, and Christian nations. It would lead, certainly, to the great-
est mistakes, if from the resemblance of such religious phenomena,
whose relationship can be traced to their common ground of origin in
the essence of the human mind itself, we should be ready to infer their
outward derivation one from the other. How much that is alike may
not be found in comparing the phenomena of Brahmaism and of
Buddhaism with those of the sect of Beghards in the middle ages,
where the impossibility of any such derivation is apparent to every
body? We are ready to admit, however, that the Hssenean mysticism,
although it did not spring originally from any outward cause of excite-
ment, yet, having once made its appearance, received into itself many
foreion elements. But should the question now arise — whence did
these elements come ? — we find our thoughts reverting far more natu-
rally to old Oriental, to Parsic, Chaldaic elements — many ideas from
that source having been propagated, since the time of the exile, among
the Jews—than to elements of Alexandrian Platonism, according to
the usual supposition at the present time; for it is difficult to conceive
how the latter could already have exerted so powerful and wide-
extended an imfluence in Palestine, at the period when this sect arose.
The peculiar asceticism of the Essenes by no means warrants us to
infer that they must have been acquainted with the Platonic doctrine
of the ὕλη, smce that asceticism may be explaimed as well from the
influence of the Oriental spirit; while this doctrine itself, without the
addition of the Oriental spirit, would have led to no such peculiar bent.
We should also duly weigh, that Josephus and Philo, writers to whom
we are indebted for our most important information respecting this sect,
have both, though the latter still more than the former, clothed the
opinions of the Essenes in a garb peculiarly Grecian, which we may
rightly consider as not originally belonging to them. We must there-
fore be cautious of attributmg too much importance to many things
they advance, which have been derived simply from that source ;
especially as, in modern times, the Hssenean doctrines have given
occasion to very arbitrary combimations and modes of representing
historical facts. 3
Besides the diversities above mentioned, which must have been
Sea, Josephus (de B. J. 1. II. ο. 8,§ 4,) says ina fragment of his defence of the Jews,
that there were many of them dwelling in preserved by Eusebius Cesar. (Preeparat.
every town; Philo, (quod omnis probus Evangel. 1. VII. c. 8,) that they lived in
liber ὁ 12,) that they lived κωμηδὸν, τὰς many towns and villages of Judea, in pop-
πόλεις ἐκτρεπόμενοι, and the same writer, ulous districts. ;
THE ESSENES. 45
introduced gradually among the Essenes, as they began to relax from
‘their primitive eremetical severity and submit to the intercourse of civil
life, we may notice another remarkable difference among them. In
strict accordance with the Oriental element of their original ascetic
turn, was the life of celibacy—a thing alien to the spirit of the
primitive Hebraism, by which a fruitful marriage was reckoned among
the greatest blessings and ornaments. Hence we see already among
the Hssenes, that reaction of the original Hebrew spirit against the
foreign ascetic element— which is analogous to something we shall
hereafter have more frequent occasion to notice in the history of sects.
There was a party of the Essenes which differed from the others, in
tolerating the mstitution of marriage.?
It accorded with the character of this sect to unite the contemplative
life with the practical; but in accommodation to the diversities already
mentioned, the extent to which this was done must also have been
various. The practical bent of the Hssenes would naturally incline
them to a life of industry. Such a life was probably intended, as in
the case of the later monks, to answer a two-fold purpose ; to occupy
the senses, so as to prevent any disturbance from that quarter of the
higher activity of the mind; and to furnish themselves with the means,
while independently providing for their own subsistence, of contribut-
ing, at the same time, to the necessities of others. The occupations
of peace were those about which they employed themselves; differing
according to their different habits of life, according as they dwelt in
communion with nature or jomed in the intercourse of civil society ;
agriculture, the breeding of bees and of cattle, mechanical handiworks:
They had sought to explore the powers of nature, and apply them to
the healing of diseases. Connected with their secret doctrines, there
was also a traditional knowledge relating to this subject. hey were
in possession of old writings which treated of such matters. Health
of body and of soul they were in the habit of connecting together, as
well as the cure of both. Their science of nature and their art of
medicine seem to have had a religious, Z’heosophie character.2 As
they strove to explore the secret powers of nature, so were there also to
be found among them, such as claimed for themselves, and endeavored
to cultivate, a gift of prophecy. A particular method of ascetic prepa-
ration, by which one might become qualified for searching into the
future, was taught among their secret traditions.* For this purpose
they employed sacred writings; whether they were the Scriptures of
the Old Testament, from the words of which they sought, by various
interpretations, to unravel the secrets of futurity, just as the Bible was
used for similar purposes in later periods ; or whether they were those
other writings, belonging to the sect, in which their secret doctrines
were unfolded. All this bears the impress of the old Oriental spirit,
certainly not of the elements of Grecian culture.
1 See Joseph. B. J. 1. ΤΙ. c. 8, ὁ 13. πρὸς ϑεραπείαν παϑῶν ῥίζαι te ἀλεξητήριοι
2 Joseph. B. J. 1. IL c. 8, § 6: Σπουδά- καὶ λιϑῶν ἰδιότητες ἐνερευνῶνται.
Covow ἐκτόπως περὶ τὰ τῶν παλαιῶν συγ- 8 Διαφύόροις ἁγνείαις ἐμπαιδοτριβοῦμενων
γράμματα, μάλιστα τὰ πρὸς ὠφέλειαν ψυχῆς See Joseph. B. J. 1. IL c. 8, § 12,
aut σωματὸος ἐκλέγοντες. Ἔνϑεν αὐτοῖς
46 JUDAISM.
By their consciousness of the equality of the higher dignity in man’s
nature, of the oneness of the divine image in all, to which the Old
Testament of itself might have led them,! they rose above the narrow
limits within which the developement of the human species was con-
fined by the prejudices of antiquity. They considered all men as
rational beings, destined to the enjoyment of personal freedom; they
rejected slavery and suffered no slave to exist in their community, — in
every kind of service mutually helping one another. As it was their
idea to restore back the community founded originally by the Almighty
in nature, and thereby to reconcile those differences which civil society
had imtroduced among men, accordingly the distinctions of poverty and
of wealth were also done away among them. ‘There was a common
treasury, formed by throwing tegether the property of the individuals
who entered into the society, and by the earnings of each one’s labor,
out of which the necessities of all were provided for, — a community of
goods, which, however, did not preclude the right of private property,
and which was probably modified by the diversities already described. ,
There can be no doubt that this sect, by exciting a more earnest and
lively spirit of devotion, by arousing the sense of the godlike within
the little circles over which their influence extended, produced those
wholesome fruits which have always sprung out of practical mysticism,
wherever the religious life has become stiffened into mechanical forms.
It was owing to their inoffensive mode of life, commanding universal
respect, that they were enabled to preserve and extend themselves
without molestation, amidst all the strifes of party, and all the revolu-
tions to which Palestme was subjected, down to the extinction of the
Jewish state.
They were particularly distinguished, in that corrupt age, among the
Jews, on account of their industry, charitableness and hospitality ; on
account of their fidelity, so different from the seditious spirit of the
Jews, in rendering obedience to magistrates as the powers ordained
of God, and on account of their strict veracity. Every yea and nay ©
was to possess, in their society, the validity of an oath; for every oath,
said they, presupposes already a mutual distrust, which ought not to
find place in a community of honest men. In one case only might an
oath be administered among them, and that was, in confirming those
who, after a novitiate of three years, were received among the number
of the initiated.
Although now, under the view just presented, we cannot fail to
recognize in this sect a sound practical bent, yet we should doubtless
be under a mistake, if, led by the one-sided representations of the
1 This view naturally resulted both from
the development of the Old Testament idea
respecting the image of God, and from the
recognition of the origin of mankind from
a single pair; as,on the contrary, slavery
found its justification in the prevailing mode
of thinking among Pagans; their misap-
prehension of the higher nature common
to the species, and their assumption of an
original difference of races, in virtue of
which, some, by their reason, were destined
and suited to rule over others, and these
latter, with their bodily powers, to serve
them as tools. Thus Aristotle, in his work
on Politics, 1. I. 6. 2, says: Τὸ μὲν δυνώμε-
νον TH διανοίᾳ προορᾶν ἄρχον φύσει καὶ
δεσπόζον φύσει. Td δὲ δυνάμενον τῷ σώματ'
ταῦτα ποιεῖν ἀρχόμενον καὶ ὀύσει δοῦλον
THE ESSENES. 47
Alexandrian Jew, Philo,! we imagined the Essenes might be taken as
an example of the purest practical mystics, at an equal remove from
all heosophic and speculative fancies,? and from all superstition and
slavery to ceremonies. ‘The fact, which has already been stated, of
their affectation of the prophetic gift, is, of itself, inconsistent with this
view of the matter; and their whole secret lore can hardly be imagined
to have consisted simply of ethical elements, but we are here forced to
the supposition of a peculiar Z’heosophy and Pneumatology. Why else
should they have made so great a mystery of it? This supposition
gathers strength, when we are informed that the candidates for admis-
sion into the sect, among other obligations, took an oath that they would
reveal to no one the names of the angels which were to be communi-
cated to them. It is confirmed again by the cautious secrecy with
which they kept the ancient books of the sect. Even Philo himself
makes it probable, when he says that they busied themselves with a
φιλοσοφία διὰ συμβόλων, a philosophy resting on the allegoric interpreta-
tion of the Bible; since every mode of the allegoric interpretation of
scripture is accompanied, side by side, with a certain speculative sys-
tem. ‘There is nothing to warrant us im supposing that it was the
ideas of the Alexandrian Theology which constituted the basis of their
scheme. ‘There seems to have been grounded in this Theosophy of
theirs a certain veneration of the sun, which we have to explain from
the intermingling of Parsic rather than of Platonic doctrines. It was
a daily custom with them to turn their faces devoutly towards the
rising of the sun, and chaunt together certain ancient hymns, handed
down in their sect, which were addressed to that luminary, purporting
that his beams should fall upon nothing impure.? To this may be
added their doctrine concerning the soul’s préexistence. Descended
from some heavenly region, it had become imprisoned in this corporeal
world, and after having led a life worthy of its celestial origin, it would
be liberated again, and rise to a heavenly existence befitting its nature.
This also, which was the fundamental doctrine of their asceticism, may
be traced just as well to old Oriental tradition as to the Alexandrian
men. Indeed, the latter writer was scarce-
ly capable of looking at anything otherwise
1 In his writings, above cited. Although
Josephus, too, as we have already observed,
has given nothing that can be called an ob-
jective description of this sect ; notwithstand-
ing that when a youth of sixteen, he com-
pared the different Jewish sects together,
in order to choose between them, and en-
deavored, along with the rest, to make him-
self acquainted with the sect of the Essenes,
though he hardly went beyond the period
of a novitiate among them, and perhaps in
regard to their esoteric doctrines, was no
better informed than Philo;—yet he might
obtain a more accurate knowledge of the
sect than the Alexandrian Jew; and his
account, savoring as it does, with a smack
of the Grecian taste, yet wears a more his-
torical character than that of Philo, which
was evidently written with the distinct pur-
pose in view, of holding up the Essenes to
the Greeks, as a pattern of practical wise
than in the light of his Alexandrian Pla-
tonism. He must involuntarily find again
his own ideas wherever any point of union
enables him to introduce them.
21 cannot at all agree with those who
seize upon the words of Philo, in his book,
quod omnis probus liber § 12, where he
says, that of the three parts of philosophy,
the Essenes accepted only Ethics, for the
purpose of sketching out, after this hint,
the main features of the Essenean system.
It is impossible not to see, that in these
words, the matter is set forth in an altogeth-
er subjective point of view; and _ besides,
what Philo here asserts is contradicted by
the more precise and accurate testimony of
Josephus.
8 Joseph. de B. J. 1. IL. ο. 8, § 8, et 9.
48 JUDAISM.
Platonism. The original birth-place of this doctrime is, in truth, the
East, from which quarter it first found its way ito Greece.
If we may trust the words of Josephus,! they did indeed send gifts
to the temple, and thus expressed their reverence for the origmal
establishment; dischargmg in this manner the common duty of all
Jews, as it was their principle to fulfil every obligation that bound
them; yet they did not visit the temple themselves,? perhaps because
they looked upon it as polluted by the vicious customs of the Jews.
They thought that the holy rites could be performed in a worthier and
more acceptable manner within the precincts of their own thoroughly
pure and holy community. In like manner, also, they performed their
sacrificial offerings, for the presentation of which, within the pale of
their own society, they believed themselves best prepared by their
ascetic lustrations. ‘The authority of Moses standmg so high with
them, there is not the least reason for supposing they would wholly set
aside the sacrificial worship appointed by him, unless it were true, per-
haps, that they looked upon the original Mosaic religion as having been
corrupted by later additions, and among these additions reckoned also
the sacrificial worship, as we find asserted in the Clementines; which
however, so far as it regards the Essenes at least, admits not the
shadow of a proof. Now it is singular, it must be admitted, how, as
Jews, they could entertain the opinion, that they might be allowed to
offer sacrifices away from Jerusalem. But caprice in the treatment of
whatever belongs to the positive in religion forms, indeed, one of the
characteristic marks of such mystic sects. And it might well accord
with the spirit of such a sect, that in proportion as they looked upon
the sacrificial worship, instituted by Moses, as a holy service, they
should be so much the less disposed to take any part in its celebration,
amidst all the wickedness in the desecrated temple at. Jerusalem; and
should maintam that only among the really sanctified, the members
of their own sect, was the true spiritual temple, where sacrifices could
be offered with the proper consecration.®
1 Archeol. 1. XVIII. ὁ. 43. Eic dé τὸ
ἱερὸν ἀναϑήματά τε στέλλοντες ϑυσίας οὐκ
ἐπιτελοῦσι διαφορότητι ἁγνειῶν, ἃς νομί-
ζοιεν, καὶ δ αὐτὸ εἰργόμενοι τοῦ κοινοῦ
τεμενίσματος, ἐῳ’ αὑτῶν τὰς ϑυσίας ἐπιτε-
λοῦσι.
2 For the word εἰργόμενοι cannot possibly
be taken in any other sense than that of the
middle voice.
8 Even from Philo’s language in the
tract: Quod omnis probus liber, § 12, it is
impossible to extract that meaning which
some have wished to find in it; viz. that the
Essenes gave a spiritual interpretation to
the whole sacrificial worship, and rejected
outward sacrifices entirely. ’Ezecd7 καὶ ἐν
τοῖς μάλιστα ϑεραπευταὶ ϑεοῦ γεγόνασιν,
οὐ ζῶα καταϑύοντες, ἀλλ᾽ ἱεροπρεπεῖς τὰς
ἑαυτῶν διανοίας κατασκευάζειν ἀξιοῦντες.
Philo is starting here from the doctrine of
the Alexandrian theology, that the true
worship of God is the purely spiritual, con-
sisting in the consecration of the life of the
spirit to God. This idea he represents as
having been realized by the Essenes, whom’
he describes as Therapeutz, in the true
sense of the word. Simply for the sake of
contrast, he mentions animal sacrifices,
which were usually held to constitute the
main part of the service; and,in so doing
he by no means athrms that the Essenes
had entirely rejected the sacrificial worship.
Not the negative but the positive is here the
essential point. Had it been his intention
to say that the Essenes rejected the sacrifi-
cial worship of Moses, he must have ex-
pressed this in a quite different tone. In
this connection, Philo could have said the
same thing of himself, and of every other
Jew, possessed, according to his opinion, of
a truly spiritual mind. By attaining to the
knowledge that the true sacrifice is the
spiritual sacrifice of one’s self, one is not
led, certainly, according to his doctrine to
AT ALEXANDRIA. 49
With such mystical sects, it not unfrequently happens, that in con-
nection with a bent of mind turned wholly inward, is found a disposi-
tion to set value upon certain external religious rites, which seems
quite incongruous, two opposite elements being thus brought in con-
tact — spiritual religion and slavery to forms. So it was with the
Kssenes. In a painfully superstitious observance of the Sabbath day of
rest, according to the letter, not the spirit, of the law, they went even
beyond the Jews; with this difference, however: that the custom in
their case sprung out of an honest piety, while the Pharisaic casuistry
knew how to accommodate the interpretation of the law, so as to suit
the mterest of the passmg moment. They not only carefully avoided,
like other Jews, all contact with uncircumcised persons, but, being
separated, within their own body, into four different grades, they who
had attained to the highest, dreaded the pollution of a touch from the
member of an inferior grade; and they had recourse to ablutions,
whenever an accident of this sort occurred. In general, they attached
greater importance than other Jews to purification, by bathing in cold
water, as a means of holiness. ‘To their ascetic notions, the oriental
and healthful practice of anointing with oil seemed an unholy thing;
so that any one who had happened in any way to become thus defiled,
felt obliged carefully to cleanse himself. They scrupulously avoided
_ all food save such as had been prepared within their own sect. They
would die rather than partake of any other. All this, then, should
satisfy us, that while we grant a due respect to the religious spirit
of this people, we ought not to be so far misled as to consider them
the representatives of a simple and unalloyed practical mysticism.
Essentially different from the form of culture which prevailed in
Palestine, was the shape and direction taken by the Jewish mind, on
that spot, where, through a period of three centuries, it had been un-
folding itself under circumstances and relations wholly peculiar,—
amidst those elements of Hellenic culture, that, transplanted into the
old seats of an altogether different civilization, had on this foreign soil
gamed the .supremacy,—in the Grecian colony of Alexandria in Egypt.
From an intermingling of Hellenic and Jewish mind, proceeded
forth here one of the most influential of appearances, which had an
important bearing, particularly on the process of the development of
Christianity in human thought. We see here, how that great historical
event, which, more than three hundred years before the birth of Christ,
shattered the nations of the East, should serve to prepare the way for
such a process. The world-subduing arms of Alexander, as afterwards
the ‘weapons of Rome, were to subserve the highest aim of man’s his-
tory, by uniting and bringing within the influence of each other, parts
hitherto separated, so that the minds of men might be prepared to
set aside the outward sacrificial worship.
In this case, therefore, there is not the least
opposition betwixt Philo and Josephus, but
he is speaking of an entirely different thing.
In the passage cited from Josephus, we can-
not, for the purpose of reconciling a contra-
diction that does not exist, understand “ sac-
VOL. I.
rifice” in the second instance differently from
that in the jirst, as referring to bloodless
sacrifices, — the symbolical offerings of the
gifts of nature. In this case, Josephus
would have expressed the opposition after
a different manner.
΄
50 THE JUDAISM i:
grapple with Christianity, receive it into their thought, and work upon
it with self-activity. Plutarch looked upon it as the great mission of
Alexander, to transplant Grecian culture into distant countries,’ and
to conciliate and fuse into one, Greeks and barbarians. He says “4
him, not without reason, that he was sent of God for this purpose ;?
though he did not divine, that this end itself was to be only subsidiary
to, and the means of, a higher, —to make the united peoples of the East
and West more accessible for the new creation that was to proceed
from Christianity, and in the combination of the elements of Oriental
and Hellenic culture, to prepare for Christianity a material in which it
might develop itself. If we look away from that ultimate purpose,
if we do not fix our eye upon the higher quickening spirit, destined to
convey into that combination, holding within itself the germ of corrup-
tion, the principle of a new life, we may, in such a case, indeed ask
the question, whether that union was really a gai to either party,
whether at least the gain was not everywhere accompanied with an
equal loss, smce the fresh life of the national spirit must in such cir-
cumstances be constantly repressed by the forcibly obtruded influence
of the foreign element. It required something higher than any ele-
ment of human culture, to introduce into that combmation a new living
principle of development, and to unite peculiarities the most diverse,
without prejudice to their original essence, into a whole in which each
part should be mutually a complement to the other. The true living
fellowship between the East and the West, in which both the great
peculiar principles that belong together for a complete exhibition of the
type of humanity should be united, could first come only from Christ-
ianity. But as preparatory to this step, the mfluence which for a
period of three centuries went forth from Alexandria, that centre of
the intercourse of the world, was of great importance.
Tn the course of these centuries, the peculiar asperity and stiffness
of the Jewish character must have been considerably tempered by
intercourse with the Greeks,® and by the transforming influence of the
Hellenic culture, which here preponderated. ‘The ulterior eflect might
proceed to shape itself in two different ways. Hither the religions
element, which most strongly marked the Jewish peculiarity, might
yield, under the overpowering influence of the foreign national spirit
and of the foreign culture, and the Jews would suffer themselves to be
misled, in ridicule of their old religious records, now become unintelli-
gible to them, to assort with the Greeks among whom they dwelt, or,
true to the religion of their fathersin the main, they might be forced
to seek a conciliating mean betwixt this and the elements of Hellenic
are which exercised an involuntary power over their minds, and
which they were moreover induced to make their own, in subserviency
to an apologetic interest.
1 Τὰ βαρβαρικὰ τοῖς ἑλληνικοῖς κεράσαι, 8 Philo reckons the number of Jews re-
καὶ τὴν ἑλλάδα σπεῖραι. See Plutarch’s J. siding in Alexandria and the countries ad-
orat. de Alex. virtute s. fortuna, § 10. jacent, at “a hundred myriads.” Orat. in
2 Κοινὸς ἥκειν ϑεόϑεν ἁρμοστὴς καὶ δι- Flaccum § 6.
αλλακτὴς τῶν ὅλων νομίζων. L. ec. c. 6.
Ἀ
AT ALEXANDRIA. ol
We doubtless find some indications that the former of these effects
was not wholly wanting; as, for instance, when that zealous champion
of Judaism, the Alexandrian Philo, places in contrast with Moses, who,
while in favor at the Egyptian court, still remains faithful to his people,
those renegades! “that trample on the laws in which they were born
and bred, upturn those customs of their country which were liable to
no just censure, and in their predilection for the new, become utterly
forgetful of the old.” In another passage,” he rebukes those ‘‘ who are
impatient of the religious institutions of their country ; who are ever on
the alert for matter of censure and complaint against the laws of reli-
gion; who thoughtlessly urge these and the like objections in excuse of
their ungodliness:? Do ye still make great account of your laws, as if
they contained the rules of truth? Yet see, the holy Scriptures, as you
term them, contain alse fables, such as you are accustomed to laugh
at, when you hear them from others.” ἢ
Yet, in the main, the power of their religious faith, so deeply rooted
in the mind of this people, was too great over them to be weakened by
the influence of that foreign culture ; and hence the former οὗ the ef-
fects above mentioned, was certainly the more rare, and the latter the
more frequent case. It was this: the Jews, completely imbued with
the elements of Hellenic culture, endeavored to find a mean betwixt
these and the religion of their fathers, which they had no wish to re-
nounce ; and to this end availed themselves of the system most in vogue
with those who busied themselves with religious matters in Alexandria,
that of the Platonic philosophy, which had already become a mighty
power over their own intellectual life. At the same time, they were
very far from consciously entertaining the idea or wish to sacrifice the
authority of their ancient religion and of their sacred writings to the
authority of a human philosophy. On the contrary, they learned, from
a comparison of the religious knowledge existing among their own peo-
ple with that which might be found among the Egyptians and Greeks,
to understand more clearly the distinguished character of their ancient
religion, the divine agency manifested in the guidance of their people,
and the destination of that people
1 De vita Mosis 1. I. f. 607,§ 9. Νόμους
παραβαίνουσι, καϑοὺς ἐγεννήϑησαν καὶ é-
τράφησαν, ἤϑη δὲ πάτρια, οἷς μέμψις οὐδεμία
πρόζεστι δικαία, κινοῦσιν ἐκδιητημένοι καὶ
διὰ τὴν τῶν παρόντων ἀποδοχὴν οὐδενὸς ἔτι
τῶν ἀρχαίων μνήμην λαμβάνουσιν.
2.1)8 confus. ling. f. 320, § 5. Θὲ μὲν
δυσχεραίνοντες TH πατρίω πολιτείᾳ, ψόγον
καὶ κατηγορίαν ἀεὶ τῶν νόμων μελετῶντες
τούτοις καὶ τοῖς παραπλησίοις, ὡς ἂν ἐπι-
βώϑραις τῆς ἀϑεότητος αὐτῶν οἱ δυσσεβεῖς
χῶνται.
3 He is speaking of the confusion of
tongues at Babel.
+ Also in the passage (de nom. mutat. p.
1053. § 8) where Philo quotes the scoffing
language of an ἄϑεος and ἀσεβῆς, the bit-
terness with which he speaks would seem
to indicate that the scoffer was an infidel
as bearing upon the whole human
Jew. Ina pagan this scoffing would have
struck him as no such singular thing. He
looks upon it as a punishment of the fool-
hardiness of this man, that he soon after
hung himself; iv’ ὁ μιαρὸς καὶ δυσκώϑαρτος
μηδὲ καϑάρῳ ϑανάτῳ τελευτήσῃ. By means
of his allegoric interpretation, Philo wishes
to remove that which furnished this man an
oceasion for his scoffing, that others might
not draw upon themselves a like punish-
ment. He describes here a whole class of
such people, who were waging an irrecon-
cileable war with sacred things, and search-
ing for matter of calumny wherever the
letter admitted of no befitting sense. "Evvox
τῶν φιλαπεχϑημόνων καὶ μώμους ἀεὶ τοῖς
ἀμώμοις προςάπτειν ἐϑελόντων καὶ πόλεμον
ἀκήρυκτον πολεμούντων τοῖς ἱεοοῖς.
52 THE JUDAISM
race ; and their conviction that this was indeed the high destination of
the Jews, could only be strengthened and confirmed by such a compari-
son. So says the individual whom we would choose to name as the
representative of these Alexandrians, viz. Philo.! ‘ That which is the
portion only of a few disciples of a truly genuine philosophy, the knowl-
edge of the Highest, has become the inheritance of the whole Jewish
people by laws and customs.” He calls the Jews priests and prophets
for all mankind.2 He was conscious of the relation to universal history
lying at the ground of the particular in the history of his nation —saw
how the Theocratic people, as such, had a mission to fulfil which regarded
entire humanity. He describes them as a priestly people, whose call-
ing it was to mvoke the blessing of God on all mankind.? He says,
with this reference, that the offermg, presented for the whole people,
was meant for the entire race of man.+*
The spirit of Judaism enabled him to understand, that religious truth
should be a public thing, the common property of all. Considering
how easily a Jew at Alexandria might be tempted, under such mduce-
ments as were held out by the traffic in religious mysteries, to set up
another description of mysteries in competition with those of the Greeks,
it is the more worthy of remark, how decidedly Philo took his stand
against every such tendency, greatly distinguishing himself, m this re-
spect, from the heathen Platonists. It well nigh seems, as if he found
cause to warn his fellow-believers themselves against the fascmations of
mystery, by which they also could be attracted.® ‘‘ All mysteries,”’
says he, “all parade and trickery of that sort, Moses removed from the
noly giving of the law; since he did not wish those that were tramed
under such a form of religious policy, to be exposed, by having their
minds dazzled with mysterious things, to neglect the truth, and to fol-
low after that which belongs to night and darkness, disregarding what
is worthy of the light and of the day. Hence no one of those that
know Moses, and count themselves among his disciples, should allow
himself to be initiated into such mysteries, or initiate others; for both
the learning and the teaching of such mysteries is no triflmg sin. For
why, ye initiated, if they are beautiful and useful things, do ye shut
yourselves up in profound darkness, and confer the benefit on two or
three alone, when you might confer it on all, were you willing to pub-
lish in the market-place what would be so salutary for every one, so
that all might certainly participate of a better and happier hfe?’’ He
points to the fact, that in the great and glorious works of nature, there
is no mystery, all is open. He bears witness of the mere empty mech-
anism, into which the mysteries had then degenerated ; men — he says
—of the worst character, and crowds of abandoned women, were ini-
tiated for money.
1 De caritate f. 699, ὁ 2: Ὅπερ ἐκ φιλοσο-
diac τῆς δοκιμωτάτης περιγίνεται τοῖς ὁμι-
ληταῖς αὐτῆς, τοῦτο καὶ διὰ νόμων καὶ ἔϑῶν
Ἰουδαίοις, ἐπιστήμη τοῦ ἀνωτάτου Kal πρες-
βυτώτου πάντων. τὸν ἐπὶ τοῖς γενητοῖς
ϑεοῖς πλάνον ἀπωσαμένοις. ;
2 De Abrah. f. 364, § 19.
8 De vita Mosis I. f. 625, § 27. “Ev’vove,
ὅπερ ἔμελλεν ἐξ ἁπάντων τῶν ἄλλων ἱερᾶσ-
ϑαι, τὰς ὑπὲρ τοῦ γένους τῶν ἀνϑρωπων
ἁπάντων ἀεὶ ποιησόμενον εὐχάς.
4 De victimis f. 258, at the end, § 3.
5 De victimas offerentib. f. 856, § 12:
Μηδεὶς μῆτε τελείσϑω τῶν Μωῦσέως φοιτη-
τῶν καὶ γνωρίμων μῆτε τελείτω..
AT ALEXANDRIA. 58
These religious philosophers among the Alexandrian Jews, of whom
we speak, can be rightly understood and judged of, only by taking into
view their entire position, —the fundamental principle of their system,
which had been formed out of contradictory elements, —as well as their
relation to the two opposite parties, between which they were endeavyor-
ing to gain a reconcilmg mean. On the one hand, they held firmly to
the religion of their fathers. They were devoted to it with true revy-
erence and love, and looked upon the records of it as a work of the
Divine Spirit. Every thing im these records, and particularly in the
Pentateuch, passed with them as, in one and the same sense, divine.
From these, in their opimion, were to be drawn all stores of wisdom.
On the other hand, their minds were preoccupied by a philosophical
culture at variance with these convictions. They were themselves un-
conscious of the conflicting elements that filled their minds, and must
have felt constrained to seek after some artificial method of combining
them into a harmonious whole. Thus would they be involuntarily
driven to emply in the old records of religion, which for them possessed
the highest authority, a sense foreign to these records themselves, sup-
posing Fall the while, that they were thus ronily exalting their dignity
as the source of all wisdom.
As to the parties between which they ἐρέων and which they had
particularly in mind in their interpretation of the sacred writings, they
were two; standing related to the two several tendencies, im connection
with which, also, the philosophy of religion according to Platonism, as
already set forth by us, had gone on to shape itself among the Pagans ;
—a skeptical, and a superstitious tendency. On the one side were
philosophically educated Greeks, who used what they knew of the Old
Testament Scriptures according to their different turns of thinking
either with trifling spirit, to ridicule it, or with more earnestness “of
intention, stepping forth as defenders of the interests of true piety,
to charge it with unworthy representations of God.t_ And there were
Jews themselves, who, under the influence of foreign culture, had broke
loose from the religion of their fathers, and joined themselves with these
opponents. On the other side, were those no less arrogant than narrow-
minded Pharisaical scribes, who would apprehend the things of God
with fleshly sense, sought the highest wisdom in little verbal refinements,
and by their grossly literal interpretations were led away into the most
1 Thus Philo, in his second book de plan-
tatione Noae, § 17, defends the Old Testa-
ment against those who found something
blasphemous in the expression where God
is called an inheritance (κλῆρος) of men, as,
for instance, with reference to the Levites.
Kai viv εἰσί τινες τῶν ἐπιμορφαζόντων
εὐσέβειαν, of τὸ πρόχειρον τοῦ λόγου παρα-
συκοφαντοῦσι, φάσκοντες οὔϑ᾽ ὅσιον οὔτ᾽
ἀσφαλὲς λέγειν ἀνϑρώπον ϑεὸν κλῆρον.
We might suppose that this attack on the
Old Testament proceeded from Jews, who,
by the preponderant influence of their Greek
education, had become alienated from the
5*
religion of their fathers, and inclined to a
certain species of Deism that avoided an-
thropopathism. But the manner in which
Philo expresses himself seems more accor-
dant with the supposition that he had pagans
in view; for if he were speaking of apostate
Jews, his language would doubtless have
been more excited and bitter, as it usually
is in such cases. The allusion is to such
pagan accusers of the Old Testament, as it
seems to me, in a passage to be found only
in the Armenian translation of quest. in
Genes. 1. III. § 3, ed Lips. opp. Philon. T
VII. p. 5.
δά THE JUDAISM
absurd and extravagant opinions! — men who, from their fundamental
principle of adhering to the letter, and their low, sensual views, came to
form the rudest notions of God and divine things, —of God’s shape, of his
anger, of his arbitrary will,— and by such notions contributed most to
bring Judaism into contempt with the educated Greeks.”
Now the object of those Jewish philosophers in religion, like that of
the heathen Platonists, was, by making the distinction between spirit
and letter, idea and symbol, in the old records of religion, to strike out
for themselves a direct middle course betwixt the above mentioned
extremes. ‘There was this truth lymg at the basis of their endeavors,
that in those exhibitions of truth which belong to the religious province,
matter and form are not so related to each other as in other writings ;
that here, where the form is something that cannot fully answer to the
immeasurable greatness of the matter, the mind must read between the
lines with its thoughts directed towards the divine, in order to a cog-
nizance of the divine matter in its earthly vessel. This principle had,
moreover, a special title to be employed in its application to the Old
Testament, imasmuch as within the latter dwells a spirit enveloped
under a form still more limited and more limiting than elsewhere,
struggling towards a future revelation and development, whereby it
was destined to be freed from this confinement. But'as the conscious-
ness of this spirit—first revealed by Christianity — was to them
wanting, they might the more naturally, on this very account, allow
themselves to be guided by a foreign spirit, in interpreting the religion
of their fathers. It was a foreign principle, borrowed from the Platonic
philosophy, from which they started in pursuit of the key to the spiritual
understanding of the Old Testament. Instead of referrmg its contents
to the end of practical religion, they were hunting everywhere after
universal ideas, only hid under an allegorical cover, —such ideas as
had been formed in their own minds from intercourse with the Platonic
philosophy. ‘To excite the receptive mind to explore these ideas, they
represented as the highest aim of those writings.
One extreme opposed itself to the other. Over against that slavery
to the letter which characterized a narrow, sensual Labbinism, stood a
tendency to evaporate everything into wniversals. ‘The necessary
means of arriving at a knowledge of the spirit contained under the cover
of the letter were despised. The overleaping those mediating momenta
of logical, grammatical and historical interpretation, met its own penalty,
in the manifold delusions which ensued. Wholly a stranger to the
history, the manners and the language of the ancient people, and
despising the rules of grammatical and logical mterpretation, a Philo
found many difficulties im the Greek version of the so called Seventy
Interpreters, in which he was accustomed to read the Old Testament,
1 Philo, (de somniis 1]. I. f. 580, ὁ 17,) de-
scribes them thus: Τοὺς τῆς ῥητῆς mpay-
ματείας σοφιστὰς καὶ λίαν τάς ὀφρῦς ἀνε-
σπακοτας.
2 Thus Philo, (de plantat. Noae 1. II. f.
219, § 8.) directs his discourse against those
who took every thing in a literal sense in
the account of Paradise. He says of them:
Πολλὴ καὶ δυσϑεράπευτος ἢ ein tera. He
says, those sensual notions of God led to
the destruction of practical religion; ἐπ’
εὐσεβείας καὶ ὁσίοτητος καϑαιρέσει ἐκϑεσ-
μότατα ὄντα εὑρέματα. ᾿
AT ALEXANDRIA. δὰ
—aversion of the O. T. which was not only current at Alexandria, but
of the highest authority, on account of the story of its miraculous origin.
They were difficulties, however, which he might have easily solved by
means of the helps above mentioned. He frequently overlooked here
the simplest sense, which first offered itself, and instead of this, sought
amore profound one, which was merely what had been put imto the
words by himselft But in addition to this, that mistaken reverence
for the sacred writings, that exaggerated view of the influence of the
Holy Spirit, whereby the inspired writers were considered merely as
passive organs, contributed no small share im compelling men who
regarded every thing as in one and the same sense divine, and wholly
overlooked the medium of connection between the divine and the human,
to find at the position in which they had thus placed themselves, much
that was difficult and revolting — much that they must labor to remove
by an arbitrary spiritualization. Thus the one-sided swpernaturalistic
element of the Jewish position led directly to the opposite extreme of
an arbitrary rationalism,?—an error which might have been avoided
by that method of conciliatory mediation between the supernatural and
the natural which was presented in our statement of the views of
Plutarch.
Yet these Alexandrian Jews were well aware of the difference be-
tween the mythical religion of other nations and the historical religion
of their own people. ‘They did consider, it is true, the historical and
literal sense as a veil for those universal ideas, the communication of
which to the human mind was the highest aim of God’s revelations;
but still they insisted also, in the main, on the objective reality and
truth of the history and of the letter, and ascribed to both their impor-
tance as a means of religious and moral training for such as could not
soar to those heights of contemplation. ar was it from their thoughts,
to deny the reality of the supernatural m the history of their nation,
and to allow it only an ideal significancy. ‘‘ He who will not believe the
miraculous as miraculous,” says Philo, in defending the Old Testament
history, ‘* proves by this, that he knows not God, and that he has never
sought after Him; for otherwise he would have understood, by looking
at that truly great and awe-inspiring sight, the miracle of the Universe,
that these miracles (referring to the guidance of God’s people) are but
child’s play for the divine power.®? But the truly miraculous has _be-
come despised through familiarity. ‘The unusual, on the contrary,
although in itself insignificant, yet through our love of novelty, transports
us with amazement.’”*
1 We have a remarkable example in the
work Quis rerum divinar. heres, f. 492, §
16, where, in the phrase ἐξήγαγεν αὐτὸν ἔξω,
he looks for some deeper meaning, in the
apparently unnecessary repetition of the
word ἔξω ; and again, in the case where the
repetition of the noun, according to the
Hebrew usage, leads him to conceive of a
two-fold subject, and furnishes him an oc-
casion of introducing his idea of the Lo-
gos
2“ Hiner rationalistisch-idealistischen Will-
kuhr.”
8 De vita Mosis 1. IT. § 38: ΕΣ dé τις τού-
τοις ἀπιστεῖ, ϑεὸν οὔτ᾽ oidev οὔτ᾽ ἐξήτησε
πώποτε. Ἔγνω γάρ ἂν εὐϑέως, ὅτι τὰ πα-
ράδοξα δὴ ταῦτα καὶ παράλογα ϑεοῦ παιδία
εἰσὶν, ἀπιδὼν εἰς τὰ τῷ ὄντι μεγάλα καὶ
σπουδῆς ἄξια, γένεσιν οὐρανοῦ. κ. τ. A.
4 Ταῦτα μὲν πρὸς ἀλήϑειαν ὄντα ϑαυμά-
ola, ᾿καταπεφρόνηται τῷ συνῆϑει. Τὰ δὲ
μὴ ἐν ἔϑει καὶ ἂν μικρὰ h καταπληττόωμεϑα
τῷ φιλοκαίνῳ
56 THE JUDAISM
Still they found individual passages, the literal understanding of
which presented insurmountable difficulties, — difficulties, it might be,
for any rational apprehension whatever, or for their own minds, at the
particular position assumed by their philosophy of religion. Such
especially were those passages, in interpreting which, the Rabbins,
who explained every thing according to the letter, fell, no doubt, into
absurd and fantastic representations ; as, for instance, in the account of
Paradise. Now here, it was beyond the power of the Alexandrians,
from their own position, to find a means of conciliation between the
divine and human, answering to the necessities of reason ; as, for example,
in distinguishing between a fact lying at the bottom, and the purely
symbolical character of a form of tradition. They were forced to push
the opposition to the altogether literal mode of apprehension so far as to
deny the reality of the literal and historical facts throughout, recog-
nizing only some ideal truth, some universal thought, that presented
itself to them out of the train of speculations created by a fusion of the
Platonic philosophy with religious ideas of Judaism.1 But it was far
from the intention of a Philo, m maintaining such views, to derogate
from the authority of the sacred writings. On the contrary, as he
referred every thing they contained to the inspiration of the Divine
Spirit, so he recognized the wisdom of that Spirit in permitting the
writers actuated by Him, to represent many things in such a form, as,
literally understood, could give no tenable sense whatever; to the end
that those who would otherwise be tempted to rest satisfied with the
bare letter, and search no farther, might be excited to explore that
ideal sense lying at the bottom ;? to conduct to this, being, in truth,
the highest aim of the divine revelations. Hence such stones of stumb-
ling must be scattered here and there, as means of excitement for the
spiritually blind.3
Thus there came to be a two-fold position in respect to religion and
the understanding of its records ;—a faith clinging to the letter and to
the history, and a contemplation soaring to the ideas veiled under the
historical and the literal facts. The first was, as we see, in the main,
common to both positions. Yet many individuals separated already
into opposite parties, at the point where the higher spiritual apprehen-
sion did not admit of being joined with an adherence to the reality of
the literal and historical facts, but these latter must be wholly given up. °
This, however, was not the only difference between the two positions.
The difference lying at the root, and which developed itself out of this
root, could not fail to exert a more wide-reaching influence on the whole
mode of apprehending religion. From this source sprang such opposite
views as follow. By those who adhered invariably to the principle of a
barely literal interpretation, whatever had been said after an anthropo-
pathic manner, in condescension to the sensuous many, concerning
1 After pointing out the difficulty of un- 2 Μόνον οὐκ ἐναργῶς προτρέπων ἀφίστασ
derstanding in a literal sense, the account az τοῦ ῥητοῦ. Quod deterior potiori insid
of the creation of the woman, in Genesis, 6. ’ ἢ
Philo concludes thus; Τὸ ῥητὸν ἐπὶ τούτου ὃ Τὰ σκάνδαλα τῆς γραφῆς, ἀφορμαὶ τοῖς
μυϑῶδές ἐστι. Legis. alleg. 1. II. § 7. τυφλοῖς τὴν διανοίαν.
AT ALEXANDRIA. 5T
God, concerning the wrath of God, concerning His vindictive justice,
was taken literally. This apprehension of religion after human analo-
gies is, for men at such a stage of culture, a necessity, and subserves
their interest, so far as it deters them from sin by the fear of punishment.
But those who occupy the higher spiritual position, recognize in all this
only a pedagogical element, and purify the idea of God from all admix-
ture of the human.! It was an opposition, then, between the appre-
hension of God as man, and the apprehension of God not as man.? B
this separation of everything pertaining to man, the idea of God was
evaporated toa somewhat wholly without attributes, wholly transcend-
ental; and the Being, (6»,) goodness im itself, the Absolute of
Platonism, was substituted for the Jehovah of the Old Testament. By
soaring upward, beyond all creaturely existence, the mind, disenfran-
chismg itself from sense, attains to the intellectual mtuition of this
Absolute Being, concerning whom it can pronounce only that he is,
waiving all other determinations, as not answering to the exalted nature
of the Supreme Hssence.? In accordance with this opposition of views,
is the distinction which Philo makes between those who are in the proper
sense sons of God, having elevated themselves, by means of contempla-
tion, to the highest Being, or attamed to the knowledge of him im his.
rmimediate self-manifestation,t and those who have come to the knowl-
edge of God only as he declares® himself in his works, in creation, in
the revelation, still enveloped in the letter, of Holy Writ ; those who
attach themselves only to the Logos; consider this as the Supreme God
himself; — rather sons of the Logos than of the true Being (ὄν) The
former, moreover, need no other motives to a moral life, than love to the
Supreme Being for his own sake ;— the principle of disinterested love
of God. ‘The others, who find themselves at that lower position, where
God is known only after the analogy of man, must be trained to virtue
by the hope of reward and the fear of punishment. Philo himself
remarks, that answering to the two principles in religion according to
which God is represented in the one case as man, and in the other, not
1 This two-fold position is implied, in the
book Quod Deus immutab. § 11, where the
writer distinguishes that which answers to
the truth in itself, and that which had been
merely so expressed. Tot νουϑετῆσαι χάριν
τοὺς ἑτέρως μὴ δυναμένους σωφρονίζεσϑαι,
ὅσα παιδείας καὶ νουϑεσίας, ἀλλ᾽ οὐχὶ τῷ
πεφυκέναι τοιοῦτον εἶναι, λέλεκται.
2 This opposition between a positive ap-
prehension of God as man, and a nega-
tive apprehension of God, to the exclusion
of all human attributes, and every thing
anthropopathiec, occurs often in Philo’s writ-
ings. The comparison of Numb. 23: 19,
and Deut. 1: 31, may be said to be classi-
cal with him, on this subject. “Ev μὲν, ὅτι
οὐχ ὡς ἄνϑρωπος ὁ ϑεὸς, ἕτερον δὲ, ὅτι ὡς
ἄνϑρωπος. Quod Deus immutab. § 1].
Comp. also the Arménian translation of the
tract, Quest. in Genes. 1. I. § 55.
3 Οὐδεμᾷ τῶν γεγονότων ἰδέᾳ παραβάλ-
λουσι τὸ ὃν, ἀλλ᾽ ἐκβιβάσαντες αὐτὸ πάσης
ποιότητος ψιλὴν ἄνευ χαρακτῆρος τὴν ὕπαρ-
Ew καταλαμβάνεσϑαι, τὴν κατὰ τὸ εἶναι
φαντασίαν μόνην ἐνεδέξαντο, μὴ μορφώ-
σαντες αὐτό. Quod Deus immutab. § 11.
4 ΠῸ this knowledge of God in his self-
manifestation, Philo refers in the following
passage: Μὴ ἐμφανισϑείης μοι δὶ οὐρανοῦ :
γῆς ἢ ὕδατος ἢ ἀέρος ἤ τινος ἁπλῶς τῶν ἐν
γενέσει, μηδὲ κατοπτρισαίΐμην ἐν ἄλλῳ τινὶ
τὴν σὴν ἰδέαν ἢ ἐν σοὶ τῷ ϑεῷ, ete. Vid. Leg.
allegor. 1. III. § 83. And where he says,
that as light can be seen only by means of
light, so God, only by his own self-mani-
festation. Συνόλως τὸ φῶς ap’ οὐ φωτὶ BAE-
πεται; τὸν αὐτὸν δὲ τρόπον καὶ 6 ϑεὸς
ἑαυτοῦ φέγγος Ov δἰ αὐτοῦ μόνου ϑεωρεῖται.
De prem. et peen, § 7.
5 The opposition between ὄν and λόγος,
εἶναι and λέγεσϑαι
58 THE JUDAISM
Ρ)
as man, are the two principles of fear and of love in συϑ] σοι. Those
that have attained to the last mentioned stage are to him the men of pure
intellect or pure spirit, who have freed themselves from the dominion
of sense.
Thus, to the sensuous anthropo-morphism and anthropopathism, which
characterized the grosser mode of apprehension among the Alexandrian
Jews, Philo opposed a one-sided spiritualism, whereby the idea of God
was emptied of all determinate contents,— the real side of the Old
Testament Theism, the objective truth, and reality at bottom im the
Old Testament notions of God’s holiness, of his wrath, and of his
vindictive justice, were totally misapprehended, — whereby all such
ideas of God were explained away,— a spiritualism far better suited
to the Brahminic or the Buddhist system, than to the proper religion of
the Old Testament. We have here, then, already, the appearance of
a mystical Rationalism, placed m connection with the Jewish Supra-
naturalism ;—a prototype of tendencies, which at still later periods,
more frequently recur, where the simplicity of revealed religion be-
comes overcharged with human inventions. The same individual, who,
as we have seen, protested so strongly against the Grecian mysteries,
introduced into Judaism that aristocratic distinction of the ancient
world, between an esoteric and an exoteric religion; and with it, after
the example of Platonism, the justification of falsehood, as a necessary
means for training-the uninitiated many. 3
Now it is indeed true, that this mystic Rationalism, pushed to its
extreme consequences, leads to the principle that positive religion is to
be regarded simply as a means for training the many; a means which
the wise can afford to dispense with, and which for them has no longer
any significancy. And this mode of thinking, moreover, was actually
earried, by many of the Alexandrian Jews, to an extreme where it
must have finally resulted in the denial of the supra-naturalist principle
itself. These Jews left’ off the observance of the ceremonial law, thus
drawing upon themselves the charge of heresy from the more religious
class, and may, doubtless, have brought the entire Alexandrian theology
into bad repute.? ‘The observance of the outward forms of worship,”
said they, “ belongs to the many. We, who know that the whole is
but a symbolical veil of spiritual truth, have enough in the idea, and
need not concern ourselves with external forms.” But with the habit
of thinking peculiar to Philo and his class, and which has been ex-
1 TLap’ 6 μοι δοκεῖ τοῖς προειρημένοις δυσὶ
κεφαλαίοις τῷ τε “ ὡς ἄνϑρωπος καὶ τῷ οὐχ’
ὡς ἄνϑρωπος 6 ϑεός" ἕτερα δύο συνυφῆναι
ἀκόλουϑα καὶ συγγενῆ, φόβον τε καὶ aya-
πην᾽ τοῖς ϑεοπρεπῶς αὐτὸ δὶ αὐτὸ μόνον τὸ
ὃν τιμῶσι τὸ ἀγαπᾷν οἰκειότατον, φοβεῖσϑαι
δὲ ἑτέροις. Quod Deus immutab. § 14.
2 Vid. Quod Deus immutab. § 14, and de
Cherubim, ὁ 5, in both which passages the
well-known words of Plato in the Repub-
lic, relating to falsehoods that may be jus-
tified in certain cases, where they can be
used for the benefit of simple persons or the
sick. Vid. 1. II. p. 257, 1. III. p. 266, Vol.
VI. Ed. Bipont. These remarks of Plato,
which were grounded, indeed, in the whole
aristocratic spirit of the ancient world, ex-
erted, through various intermediate chan-
nels, a great influence on the moral sense
of men in the first centuries after Christ,
and even modified a part of Christian edu-
cation.
8 Philo de migrat, Abraami, ὁ 16: Εἰσί
τινες, of τοὺς ῥητοὺς νόμους σύμβολα von-
τῶν πραγμάτων ὑπολαμβάνοντες, τὰ μὲν
ἠκρίβωσαν, τῶν δὲ ῥαϑύωως ὠλιγώρησαν.
AT ALEXANDRIA. o9
plained above, such an extreme, to which his own avowed principles
led, did not fall in. He says of those more decided and consistent
Idealists, ‘‘as if they lived for themselves alone in a desert, or as if
they were souls without bodies, and knew not anything of human society,
they despise the faith of the many, and are willing to inquire only after
pure truth, as it is in itself; when the word of God should have taught
them to strive after a good name with the people, and to violate none
of the reigning customs, which divine men, who were superior to us,
have founded. As we must take care of the body, because it is the
soul’s mansion, so are we bound to be solicitous for the observance of
the letter of the law. When we observe this, that also will become
clearer, of which the letter is a symbol; and we shall escape thereby
the censures and upbraidings of the multitude.’ 1
In Egypt, the native land, in after times, of the anchorite and
monastic life, this contemplative bent of the religious mind, which we
have described thus far, led to results somewhat analogous to that later
phenomenon. With a view of devoting themselves wholly to the con-
templation of divine things, many withdrew from the world and retired
into sohtude. Philo was one of these ;— but he was forced to learn,
from his own experience, that the man carries his inward enemy into
solitude with him,—vthat he cannot flee from himself and the world
within his own breast. He gives us, himself, the result of his expe-
rience.2 ‘ Often I left kindred, friends, and country, and retired into
the wilderness, that I might raise my thoughts to worthy contempla-
tions: but I accomplished nothing so ;—— my thoughts, either scattered
abroad, or, wounded by some impure impression, fell into the opposite
current. But sometimes I find myself alone with my soul, in the midst
of thousands, when God dispels the tumult from my breast; and so
He teaches me that it is not change of place that brings evil or good ;
but all depends on that God who steers the ship of the soul in the
direction he pleases.” Already among the Alexandrian Jews arose
the opposition between a contemplative and a practical direction of the
religious life, of which Philo testifies, — the opposition between efforts
directed solely towards the human, and those directed solely to the
divine ?— the Therapeutic life, devoted entirely to God, and the moral
life, devoted entirely to exhibitions of love for man. Already was the
same spectacle witnessed, which, at later periods, became a common
occurrence in the large cities. The opposition of the worldly to the
contemplative ascetic propensity became the occasion of divisions in
the domestic circle. Philo observes that he knew many a father, given
to luxurious livmg, to be abashed by the abstemious, philosophic life of
a son, and for that reason to retire from all intercourse with him.‘
1 De migrat. Abraami, f. 402.
2 Leg. allegor. 1. 11. § 21.
3 As Philo describes it. Of the latter
tendency he says: "ἄκρατον ἐμφορησάμενοι
τὸν εὐσεβείας πόϑον πολλὰ χαίρειν φρά-
σαντες ταῖς ἄλλαις πραγματείαις ὅλον ἀνέ-
ϑεσαν τὸν οἰκεῖον βίον ϑεραπείᾳ ϑεοῦ. Οἱ
δὲ οὐδὲν ἔξω τῶν πρὸς ἀνϑρώπους δικαίων
ὑποτοπήσαντες εἶναι μόνην τὴν πρὸς ἀνϑρώ-
πους ὁμιλίαν ἠσπάσαντο, τῶν τε ἀγαϑῶν
τὴν χρῆσιν ἐξ ἴσου πᾶσι παρέχοντες διὰ
κοινωνίας ἵμερον καὶ τὰ δεινὰ κατὰ δύναμιν
ἐπικουφίζειν ἀξιοῦντες. The φιλόϑεοι and
the φιλάνϑρωποι. De decalogo, ὁ 22.
4 Ἤδη δὲ καὶ πατέρας oida διὰ τὸ ἀβρο-
δίαιτον, αὐστηρὸν καὶ φιλόσοφον βίον παι-
δῶν ἐκτραπομένους καὶ δὶ αἰδῶ τὸν ἀγρὸν
πρὸ τῆς πόλεως οἰκεῖν ἑλομένους. De pro-
fugis, ὁ 1.
60 THE THERAPEUTA.
As Philo was anxious to find a just middle course between that class
who were entangled in the letter, and the Spzritualists in religion, so
again, he sought after some method: of conciliation between the two
last mentioned tendencies, the practical and the contemplative, the
anthropological and the theological. He held a combmation of them
both to be the more perfect way, and looked upon each, by itself and
separated from the other, as but half the whole. The discipline of
the practical life seemed to him the first step of purification and prepa-
ration necessary for entering the entirely contemplative hfe. Already
he felt himself called upon to protest against the exaggerated estimate
put on the ascetic life. ‘‘ When you see one,” says he, “who never
takes his food or his drink at the proper time, or who disdains the bath
and the unction, or who neglects the clothing of his body, or torments
himself with a hard couch and night watchings, deceiving himself with
this show of abstemiousness, inform him of the true way to continence,
for the course he has chosen 15 labor to no purpose. By hunger, and
the other kinds of self-torture, he is destroying both body and soul.’ 3
He speaks of people who, without bemg ripe for such a step, rushed
suddenly on a strictly Therapeutic life, the renunciations of which they
were too weak to endure, and hence were soon forced to abandon it.3
And he must rebuke also the secret wickedness covered up under the
outside show of a rigid asceticism.* “Truth,” says he, ‘ may rightly
complain of those who, without any previous trial of themselves, leave
the occupations and trades of social life, and say they have renounced
its honors and its pleasures. They wear contempt for the world as an
outside show, but do not really contemn it. That slovenly, austere
look, that abstemious and miserable life, they use as baits; as if they
were friends to strict morals and the government of self. But closer
observers, who penetrate within, and are not to be led wrong by out-
ward appearances, cannot be imposed upon thus.”? Philo would have
those persons only who had been tried in the active duties of social
life, pass over to the contemplative ; as the Levites were permitted to
rest from the active service of the temple only after having passed
their fiftieth year. Human virtue should go first, — the divine follow
after.”
This ascetic, contemplative propensity, which we observed in the
bud among the Alexandrian Jews, gave birth to a spiritual society,
composed of men and unmarried women, which sprung up in the
neighborhood of Alexandria; a society, whose name simply, — the
T herapeute,’— denotes the striving after a life abstracted from worldly
things and consecrated to the contemplation of God. Their principal
seat was in a quiet and pleasant district on the border of lake Meeris,
1 Ἡμιτελεῖς τὴν ἀρετὴν, ὁλόκληροι ol παρ’ ἀρεσκείαν καὶ τὸν συνεχῆ Kal ἀκάματον πό-
ἀμφοτέροις εὐδοκιμοῦντες. De decalogo, ὁ Udy ea ἐνεγκόντες. De profugis, § 7.
22. ες. § 6. :
2 The tract Quod déterior potiori insid. 5 Τνωρίσϑητε οὖν πρότερον τῇ Kat’ ἀνϑρώ
7. πους ἀρετῇ, ἵνα καὶ τῇ πρὸς ϑεὸν συσταϑῆτε.
8 Such as went ἐπ’ αὐλὰς τῆς ϑεραπείας De profugis, f. 555, § 6.
and ϑᾶττον ἢ προςελϑεῖν ἀπεπῆδεσαν, τὴν 6 Θεραπευταὶ καὶ ϑεραπευτρίδες.
αὐστηρὰν δίαιταν αὐτῆς καὶ τὴν ἄνπνον
THE THERAPEUTA. 61
not far from Alexandria. Here they lived, like the later anchorites,
shut up singly in their cells,! their only employment being prayer and
the contemplation of divine things. The basis of their contemplation
was an allegoric interpretation of scripture, and they had old theosophic
writings, which served to guide them in their more profound invésti-
gations of scripture, according to the principles of the Alexandrian
Hermeneutics. Bread and water constituted their only diet, and they
practised frequent fasting. They ate nothing until evening, for through
contempt of the body they were ashamed, so long as sun-light was
visible, to take sensible nourishment, to acknowledge this dependence
on the world of sense. Many of them fasted for three or even six
days in succession. Every sabbath they came together, and as the
number seven was particularly sacred with them, they held a still more
solemn convocation once in every seven weeks. ‘They celebrated, on
this occasion, a simple love-feast, consisting of bread seasoned with salt
and hyssop; mystic discourses were delivered, hymns which had been
handed down from old tradition were sung, and amidst choral music,
dances of mystic import were kept up late imto the night. The pas-
sage of their fathers through the Red Sea, on their departure from
Kgypt, is supposed to have been symbolically represented by the
exhibition of these choirs and dances. As they were used to give to
all historical facts a higher sense, bearmg upon the life of the spirit, it
is not improbable that they had something of the like nature in view in
this celebration. Perhaps they considered the departure from Egypt
as a symbol of the deliverance of the spirit from the bondage of sense,
of its elevation from sensible things to the divine.?
Many features of relationship between the sect of the Therapeutze ᾿
and that of the Essenes, might seem to render probable the derivation
of the one from the other ; and this is the prevailing opinion in modern
times. It might be fancied also that the same signification was to be
recognized in the names of both these communities; for if we follow
the derivation which Philo himself favors m a passage of the book
concerning the Therapeutic mode of life, —and the name of this sect,
according to one sense of the radical Greek word, signifies a physician,
and the Essenes* so denominated themselves, as physicians of the soul
and of the body, —it would be evident that the one is but a translation
of the other. But this explanation of the name of the Therapeut
can hardly be considered the right one. On the contrary, it snits
much better with the peculiar spiritual bent of the Therapeute, and
with the theological language of the Alexandrians, if we suppose they
applied this name to themselves, as the genuine spiritual worshippers
of God, the Contemplatists.t The features of resemblance between
1 Yeuveia, μοναστήρια.
2 See Philo de sacrif. Abel et Caini, § 17:
Διάβασις ἐπὶ Gedv τοῦ γεννητοῦ καὶ φϑαρ-
τοῦ τὸ πάσχα εἴρηται.
8 After the Chaldee ‘ON , physician.
* Philo often uses the following expres-
sions as synonymous: — γένος ϑεραπευ-
τικὸν, γένος ἱκετικὸν, γένος ὁρατικὸν, ὁ
ἰσραὴλ = ἀνὴρ ὁρῶν τὸν ϑεὸν. De victi-
τ τ 6
mas offerentib. f. 854. ἱκέται καὶ ϑερα-
πευταὶ τοῦ ὄντως ὄντος. De monarchia, f
816. ἀνδρὸς ἱκέτου καὶ φιλοϑέου ϑεὸν μόνον
ϑεραπεύειν ἀξιοῦντος. De decalogo, f. 760.
οἱ πολλὰ χαίρειν φράσαντες ταῖς ἄλλαις
πραγματείαις, ὅλον ἀνέϑεσαν τὸν οἰκεῖον
βίον ϑεραπείᾳ ϑεοῦ. L. III. de vita
Mosis, f. 681. τὸ ϑεραπευτικὸν αὐτοῦ (τοῦ
ϑεοῦ) γένος.
62 JUDAISM.
these societies, as wéll in the form of their association as in the cireum-
stance of their repudiating slavery, as a thing contrary to nature, are
yet by no means such as to warrant the theory of an outward connection.
Analogous tendencies of the Jewish mind in Palestine, and of the
Jewish-Alexandrian mind in Egypt, might have easily produced two
such mystic fraternities, dependently of one another, with a form
adapted to the different countries. The Essenes owed their origin, as
we have seen, to the existence of a practical mysticism, which is ever
wont to be called forth by such party oppositions as were there mani-
fested ; and the society of the Therapeutz appears to us as a natural
efflux of the peculiar religious tendency which had developed itself
among the Alexandrian Jews.
Neither the Essenes nor the Therapeutze ought to be regarded as
isolated phenomena, confined exclusively to certain countries. There
were 1 this case, more general tendencies, which belonged to the signs
of the times, at work beneath the surface ; and the influence of such
tendencies was at that time more widely spread than in Palestine and
Egypt. In manifold forms of appearance which the history of Jewish-
Christian sects, in the first centuries after Christ, leads us to recog-
nize or to presuppose, this influence is distinctly visible.?
Having thus given an outline of the different main directions of the
religious and theological mind among the Jews, we would now consider
more particularly the relation of the same to Christianity. Looking
at the great mass of the Jewish people, we find that the predominance
of the worldly spirit, which would apprehend the divine under notions
of sense, the rage for the wonderful described by St. Paul, confidence
in the inalienable rights of their theocratic descent according to the
flesh and in the outward show of legal righteousness, constituted the
chief obstacles to the reception of the gospel. Whenever men, in this
position of mind, were led, under the impulse of momentary impres-
sions, to embrace Christianity, it might easily happen, that because
they saw their earthly expectations were not fulfilled, and they had
always remained Jews in their mode of thinking, they would soon
renounce again in the same outward way, that to which properly they
had always remained strangers. Or if they continued to be Christians
outwardly, they were never penetrated with the spirit of the gospel.
Christianity itself, they apprehended only after a fleshly manner, mix-
ing it up with all their Jewish delusions; and the faith in one God, as
well as in Jesus as the Messiah, they converted into an opus operatum,
wholly without influence on the inner life. They were such men as
Justin Martyr describes,? who deceived themselves with the notion, that
although they were sinners, if they did but have the knowledge of
1 The language of Philo himself intimates
this, when he says of the Therapeute:
Πολλαχοῦ μὲν οὖν τῆς οἰκουμένης ἐστὶ τοῦ-
To τὸ γένος. Ἔδει γὰρ ἀγαϑοῦ τελείου
μετασχεῖν καὶ τὴν λλάδα καὶ τὴν Βαρβα-
pov. De vita contemplativa, § 3.
2 In the dialogue, c. Tryph. f. 370. The
vords of Justin Martyr directed against
such Jews, arguing that there can be no
forgiveness of sin without repentance:
"AAW οὐχ ὡς ὑμεῖς ἀπατᾶτε ἑαυτοὺς καὶ
ἄλλοι τινὲς ὅμοιοι ὑμῖν κατὰ τοῦτο, οἵ
λέγουσιν, ὅτι κἄν ἁμαρτωλοὶ wat, ϑεὸν δὲ
γινώσκωσιν, οὐ μὴ λογίσηται αὐτοῖς κύριος
ἁμαρτίαν.
ITS RELATIONS TO CHRISTIANITY. 63
God,! the Lord would not charge sin to their account ; such falsifiers
of the gospel as the apostle Paul often rebukes ; such nominal Christ-
ians as James writes against. But as the Pagans, on the other hand,
could not be under the same temptation to hold a merely preparatory
position as the end itself, as Christianity must have presented itself to
them as im direct opposition to what they were before, hence it was the
case, as Justin Martyr affirms, that converts, in greater numbers and of
more genuine character, proceeded from the body of the Pagans, than
from the great mass of the Jews.2 Yet in every case, where the feel-
ing of the higher necessities of man’s nature, the recipiency for the
divine element, made its appearance, although it might be enveloped
under some still predominating element of sense, Christianity could
find an entrance through all such obstacles. The expectation of the
Messiah, although clouded by a strong coloring of sense, could prepare
the way for it to such hearts, and they would then go on to, become
continually more spiritual in their views, through the power of Christ-
ian faith. |
As to the particular systems of Jewish theology which have passed
under our review, it may be observed, first, of the cold, egoistic Sad-
duceeism, which suffered no aspiration after things beyond the limits of
an earthly existence to emerge, that it presented no point of union
whatever for the gospel. At least, even m that case where the gospel
found, as it did everywhere, a medium of entrance in the simply human
element at bottom, which could not be wholly suppressed, the conver-
sion of the Sadducees was not one for which the way had been pre-
pared by the previous mode of thinking: and for the very reason that
the previously existing habit of thought formed here no transition-point,
and no medium of union between the two, it is impossible to conceive
of any intermingling of Sadduceeism with Christianity. Where it has
been attempted to find the traces of such a mixture, in the case of
some deniers of the doctrine of the resurrection in the apostolic age,
this has been done without any sufficient grounds, —as the fact may be
traced to altogether different causes.?
In the tase of the Pharisees, spiritual pride, selfrighteousness, the
narrowness and arrogance of a dead scripture-learning, and the
absence of what our Saviour terms poverty of spirit, were in general,
the hindrances to faith. We must be careful, however, to distinguish
among the Pharisees, the two classes, which have been already pointed
out. ‘To those who, from the legal position, were striving with a certain
honest earnestness after righteousness, the law might, without doubt,
serve in the end as a school master to bring them to Christ. Through
that painful struggle described by Paul, from his own experience, in
the seventh chapter of the epistle to the Romans, they might obtain
peace in believing. But those Pharisees who came to Christianity
1 Such vain and empty knowledge of God vodc, ἀληϑέστεροι of ἄπὸ τῶν ἐϑνῶν καὶ
as that which St. John is contending against mvororepot.
in his first epistle. 8 See my History of the Planting and
2 Justin Martyr, Apolog. 1. 11. f. 88. Training of the Christian Church by the
Πλείονάς τε καὶ ἀληϑεστέρους τοὺς ἐξ ἐϑνῶν Apostles.
τῶν ἀπὸ Ιουδαίων καὶ Σαμαρέων χριστια-
64 ALEXANDRIAN JUDAISM.
without passing through any such crisis of the,imner life, might be
liable to the temptation of blending their previous Pharisaical mode of
thinking with the recognition of Jesus as the Messiah, — who for
them, however, was not in any true sense, the Saviour, —and of wishing
at the same time, to hold fast by their nghteousness of works.
In Christianity there was also present an element of mysticism.
And on this side it might particularly attract that description of
religious mind which was exhibited in the societies of the Essenes and
Therapeute. But the mystic element, carried to an undue extreme,
which suppressed everythmg else that belongs to the purely human in
our nature, might mislead men to shut themselves up within a little
contracted circle of feelmg and intuitions, and to bar themselves
against every other influence which might strive to reach them. ‘To
meet Christianity with that poverty of spirit which it requires, must
often have been the hardest task, also, for swch men, if they must start
from the position of their imagined spiritual perfection. And even if,
attracted by the mystic element in Christianity, they surrendered to
its power, yet they could not have appropriated to themselves that
poverty of spirit, in any such measure as to be able to receive Christ-
ianity into their hearts in its unstinted entireness. Hasily might such
persons be tempted to carry over with them their supercilious the-
osophy and asceticism, insomuch that the divine foolishness of the
gospel must forfeit its true character; and this was the source whence
sprung many sects, corrupting in their influence on Christianity, the
germs of which we find already in the epistle of Paul to the Colossians,
and in his pastoral letters.
As to the Alexandrian theology, there were in it, as we have seen,
two elements, —a mystico-rationalist element, sprung from the in-
fluence of the Platonic philosophy on the Jewish theism; and a supra-
naturalist element, derived from the Jewish national spirit and educa-
tion. These were blended together, or they might be said, rather, to
subsist one beside the other, than to be united by any sort of organic
interpenetration. Unless a new and higher power had come in to
influence this process of development, one of two things must, doubt-
less, have been the final result; either the supranaturalist element
would have been overpowered and crushed by the mystico-rationalist,
or the latter of these by the former. And if the last had been the
case, the Alexandrian theology might then have paved the way for a
certain mystic religion of reason, which had used historical Judaism
simply as a symbolical drapery. Whoever, now, is unable to perceive
the significancy of faith in a God above nature — the significancy of
Christianity as a religion proceeding out of supernatural facts in
history, —to him this greatest among all the great phenomena in the
history of the world, whereby the faith m a positive religion was once
more introduced with such overwhelming power among men, must ap-
pear like the stumbling upon a monstrous retrograde step, by means of
which the race was placed ages back from the goal which it had been
already on the very pomt of reaching. Considered from such a point
of view, it could not but be regretted, that instead of a primal type of
ITS RELATIONS TO CHRISTIANITY. 65
humanity — that ethereal idea of Alexandrian theology, — the Son of
man must appear in flesh and blood; instead of an ideal word, the
Word that became flesh must dwell among us. Yet the scanty thoughts
that are constantly recurring under manifold shapes in the writings of
Philo, the representative of that tendency, witness of its poverty,
and show that without the infusion of a new creative spirit of life, it
must have led of itself to its own dissolution.
Those two elements, combined together in the Alexandrian theology,
might operate in different ways, — either to secure a point of union
for Christianity, or to call forth an opposition to it.
The preponderance of Grecian culture and of the idealist element
operated in the case of these Alexandrian Jews, as doubtless, also, of
others over whom the Grecian culture generally had acquired great
influence, — as for instance, of a Josephus, — very much to repress
the expectation of a personal Messiah. With this expectation van-
ished the most important pomt of agreement and possible union
between their system and Christianity; but with it vanished also that
stone of stumbling, which the preaching of the cross must have proved
to such as gave an earthly shaping to that idea of the Messiah. But
yet we cannot suppose that the Alexandrian theology could have
stripped away all those expectations, which were so deeply rooted in
the religious spirit of the Jewish people, and so closely interwoven
with the national sympathies and the national pride itself. Even
Philo expresses the conviction that the Mosaic law, the temple, and
the temple service are designed for perpetuity. Regarding the
calamities of the Jews as a mghteous punishment, he cherished the
hope, that when they should one day become converted, they would be
gathered from all the nations among which they were scattered or in
captivity, by some extraordinary appearance from heaven, and led
back to Jerusalem. Their piety, inspiring reverence and awe, would
repress the attacks of their enemies, or secure the victory on their
side. Then would a golden age begin from Jerusalem. Every thing
would be again restored to that primeval state from which mankind had
become estranged by their fall from the heavenly image. ΑἸ] nature
would then become once more subject to man, and no hostile power
remain behind to annoy him.? We see here what peculiar shaping
ship of God could cease to be connected
1 Vid. de vita Mosis, 1. IT. § 3, concerning
é- with it.
the Mosaic laws. Τὰ δὲ τούτου μόνου βέ-
Baa, ἀσάλευτα μένει παγίως ἀφ᾽ ἧς ἡμέρας
ἐγράφη μέχρι νῦν καὶ πρὸς ἔπειτα πάντα
διαμένειν ἐλπὶς ἀυτὰ αἰῶνα ὥσπερ ἀϑάνατα,
ἕως ἂν ἥλιος καὶ σελήνη καὶ ὁ σύμπας οὐρα-
voc Te καὶ κόσμος Ὦ. And concerning the
revenues of the temple at Jerusalem, he
says, that they will endure as long as this hu-
man race and the world. ’Eq@’ ὅσον τὸ
ἀνϑρώπων γένος διαμενεῖ, ἀεὶ καὶ αἱ πρόςο-
δοι τοῦ ἱεροῦ φυλαχϑήσονται συνδιαιωνίζου-
σαι παντὶ τῷ κόσμῳ. De monarch. |. II. §
3. So far was he from thinking that the
temple would ever be destroyed, or the wor-
6*
‘2 See Philo’s tract, de execrationib. ὁ 9:
Oi πρὸ μικροῦ σποράδες ἐν “Ἑλλάδι καὶ
Βαρβάρῳ, κατὰ νήσους καὶ κατὰ ἠπείρους
ἀναστώντες ὁρμῇ μιᾷ πρὸς ἕνα συντείνουσιν
ἀλλαχόϑεν ἄλλοι τὸν ἀποδειχϑέντα χῶρον
ξεναγούμενοι πρός τινος ϑειοτέρας ἢ κατὰ
φύσιν ἀνθρωπίνην ὄψεως ἀδήλου μὲν ἑτέ-
ροις, μόνοις δὲ τοῖς ἀνασωζομένοις ἐμφανοῦς.
Comp. de przem. et poenis, § 19. Concern-
ing the reconciliation of nature with re-
formed man, where he had certain passages
of the prophets before his mind, consult de
prem. et poenis, § 15.
66 ALEXANDRIAN JUDAISM.
the common Jewish notions of the Messiah’s time and the attendant
phenomena had taken, in the spiritualizing schools of the Alexandrians,
Thus was Christianity met in the present case also, not deed by
the craving after a personal Messiah, but yet by a desire for the
universal re-establishment of the Theocracy, —for a glorious state of
the world. It is possible that, with the doctrme concerning the oppo-
sition between the idea and its manifestation ; with the recognition of
a defect,! inherent in everything that appears in the world of sense ;
with the excited aspiration after a godlike life, raised above all sensual
alloy, might be aroused the sense of a need of redemption, — the idea of
it, and faith in its actual realization. Thus many of the peculiar ideas
belonging to the Alexandrian philosophy of religion, as for instance,
the idea of a mediating divine Word, through whom the world is con-
nected with God ; of his high-priestly office in relation to the phenom-
enal world; of the first heavenly man; of a godlike life? might, by
conducting to Christianity, become converted from a mere ideal
element into a real one. Christianity might present itself to men of
this Alexandrian school, as a Gnosis, which now for the first time
taught a right understanding of the spirit of the Old Testament. The
epistle ascribed to Barnabas contams examples of such points of
transition, through which men of Alexandrian culture might be led
over to Christianity.
But it is possible, too, that the mystzco-rationalist element in the
system of the Alexandrian Jews, which, in its self-sufficiency, would not
admit the want of any new revelations, as well as the Jewish, which
held fast to the traditional religious forms as of eternal validity, might
oppose itself to Christianity. And both these tendencies combining
together, might lead to peculiar corruptions of it; on the one side, by
introducing an ¢dealistie element, resolving everything else into itself,
and the distinction between esoteric and exoteric religious doctrme ; on
the other, by making of it merely a spiritualized Judaism. We shall
come across these influences again in the history of sects.
Individual ideas of the Alexandrian theology found their way also
into those regions where the writings and studies of these men had not
been introduced. They were connected with a doctrine concerning
spirits, formed out of Jewish Oriental elements. There was a longing
to lift the veil which covers the world of spirits, to have fellowship
with it. Men busied themselves with legends and fictions respecting
apparitions of the highest imtellizences under the envelope of a human
body.? It was such a vague foreboding tendency of mind, impatient
1.10 God willed to judge the human
μις ἀληϑινῆς Cone. Legis allegor. I. § 12.
race without mercy, He could only condemn
them, since no man remains free from fault
from his birth to his death.” Quod Deus
immutab. § 16. The συγγενεῖς παντὶ yev->
νητῷ κῆρες. ---- Ἰαντὶ γεννητῷ καὶ ἂν orov-
δαῖον Ἦ, παρ᾽ ὅσον ἦλϑεν εἰς γένεσιν, συμφυ-
ὲς τὸ ἁμαρτάνον. Hence the necessity of
sin offerings. De vita Mosis, 1. III. § 17.
2 Ζωὴ αἰώνιος ἣ πρὸς τὸ ὃν καταφυγή. De
profugis, ὁ 15. Ζωὴ ἀΐδιος. § 18. Δύνα-
But such language might easily proceed
from the same common source of the mind,
and it is only the most narrow understand-
ing that can suppose, that in every case
where it occurs, it must have been derived
from Philo, or at least from this Alexan-
drian theology.
8 Simon Magus, for instance, who appro-
priated to himself ideas of this sort that
were floating about in the East. See alse
PROSELYTES. 67
of the limits of this earthly existence, and aspiring after communications
from the unseen world, that preceded and accompanied the highest
revelation.
Among the remarkable coincidences which prepared the way for the
appearance of Christianity, must be reckoned the dispersion of the
Jews among Greeks and Romans. ‘Those of them who were Phar-
isaically disposed, took great pains to make proselytes. ‘The wavering
authority of the old national religions, the unsatisfied religious necessities
of so many, came in to aid them. MReverence for that powerful being,
the God of the Jewish people ; for the hidden sanctities of the magnifi-
cent temple of Jerusalem, had long since found its way among pagans.
Jewish magicians (Goetz) ventured on many deceptive tricks, in the
employment of which they were extremely skilful, to produce surprise
and bewilderment. Hence the inclination to Judaism, particularly im
several of the large capital towns, had become so widely extended,
that, as it is well known, the Roman authors, in the time of the first
emperors, often make it a subject of complaint} and Seneca, in his
tract concerning superstition, could say of the Jews, ‘‘ the conquered
have given laws to the conquerors.’’! The Jewish proselyte-makers,
blind teachers of the blind, havmg no conception of the essential
character of the religion themselves, could impart none to others.
Substituting a dead particularistic monotheism in the place of poly-
theism, they led those who chose them as guides, often merely to
exchange one superstition for another ; and so furnished them with new
means for hushing the accusations of their conscience ; ---- whence our
Saviour’s rebuke, directed against this class of men, that they made
their proselytes two-fold more the children of hell, than themselves.
But here, however, we must distinguish with precision, the two classes
of proselytes: the proselytes in the strict sense of the word, the prose-
lytes of justice, who took upon them circumcision and the whole cere-
monial law ; and the proselytes in the wider sense, the proselytes of the
gate, who simply pledged themselves to the renunciation of idolatry,
to the worship of God, to abstain from the pagan excesses, and from
everything that seemed to stand connected with idolatry. The former
class usually became slaves to all Jewish superstition and fanaticism,
and allowed themselves to be led blindfold by their Jewish teachers.
The more difficult they had found it to bow themselves to a yoke which
must have proved so burdensome to the national habits of a Greek or
a Roman, the observance of the Jewish ceremonial law, the less could
they be made conscious that all this should have been to no purpose,
that they enjoyed thereby no advantage over others, that they should
renounce this imagined righteousness. Hence such proselytes were
often the fiercest persecutors of Christianity, and suffered themselves
to become tools of the Jews, in exciting the pagans against the Chris-
tians. It is to this class, the language of Justin Martyr to the Jews
should be applied. “The proselytes do not simply not believe, but
the fragment of the apocryphal writing, 1 Victoribus victi leges dederunt.
Προςευχὴ ᾿Ιωσὴφ, in Orig. in Joann. T. 11. 2 The so called seven precepts of Noah.
§ 25. 8 His words are as follows: (Dialog. c.
68 PROSELYTES.
they blaspheme the name of Christ two-fold more than yourselves, —
and they would murder and torture us, who do believe on him; for
they strive in every respect to become like you.” ‘Those proselytes
of the gate, on the other hand, had adopted from the Jewish system
the principles of theism, without becomimg wholly Jews. They had
obtained some knowledge of the sacred writings of the Jews, and had
heard of the great Teacher and King who was to come,—the Messiah.
In what they had read im that Greek translation of the Old Testament,
which to a reader not a Jew was often wholly unintelligible, or in what
they had heard from Jewish teachers, there was much that still remamed
dark to them, — they were in the condition of inquirers. By means
of the ideas they had acquired from the Jews, concernmg the unity of
God, the divine government of the world, the divine judgment, con-
cerning the Messiah, they were better prepared for the gospel than
other pagans ; — and because they believed themselves already to have
less; because they had, as yet, no perfected system of religion, and
were eager for new instruction in divine things; because they had no
sympathy with Jewish prejudices; for all these reasons, the gospel
could find its way more easily to them than to the native Jews. From
the beginning, their attention must have been drawn to a doctrine which
engaged, without making them Jews, to secure for them a full partici-
pation in the fulfilment of all those promises of which the Jews had
told them. Hence it was to these proselytes of the gate, (the φοβούμενου
τὸν θεὸν, εὐσεβεῖς, of the New Testament,) that the preaching of the
gospel was usually directed, according to the Acts of the Apostles,
after it had been rejected by the blinded Jews; and here the seed of
the divine word found not unfrequently a receptive soil, in souls anxious
for salvation. There were those also, without doubt, among the prose-
lytes of the gate, who, falling short of the true earnestness in seeking
after religious truth, were only wishing, m every case, to have a con-
venient way which would lead*to heaven without the necessity of self-
denial, and who, undecided between Judaism and paganism, in order,
at all events, to go safe, sometimes invoked Jehovah m the synagogue,
and sometimes the gods in the temples.1
Tryph. f. 350,) Οἱ δὲ προσήλυτοι οὐ μόνον given a picture of this class of men, the
οὐ πιστεύουσιν, ἀλλὰ διπλότερον ὑμῶν BAa- ter utrumque viventes :
σφημοῦσιν εἰς TO ὄνομα αὐτοῦ καὶ ἡμᾶς τοὺς —_—‘Tnter utrumque putans dubie yivendo cayere,
εἰς ἐκεῖνον πιστεύοντας καὶ φονεύειν καὶ rat gaa Mpereyinae are prsuedio?
ἰκί 4 ὴ “4 EE Σ uid in synagoga decurris ai ariszeos
αἰκίξειν, βούλονται, κατὰ πάντα POO, Ut tibi heerlen fiat, quem denegas ultro?
ἐξομοιοῖσϑαι σπεύδουσιν. : Exis inde foris, iterum tu fana requiris.
1 Commodianus, in his Instructions, has
CHURCH HISTORY.
SECTION FIRST.
RELATION OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH TO THE UNCHRISTIAN WORLD.
I. PROMULGATION OF CHRISTIANITY.
1. Promulgation of Christianity generally ; Hindranees to its Spread ; |
Causes and Means of its Progress.
lr we contemplate the essential character of Christianity in its rela-
tion to the religious state of the world as it has just been described,
we shall be at no loss to see what it was that tended on the one hand
to further, and on the other to retard the progress of the christian
faith. Our Saviour referred to the signs of the times as witnessing
of him, — and, in like manner, this contemplation will disclose to us,
in the movements of the intellectual world then goimg on, the signs
which heralded the new and great epoch im the history of the world ;
and it will be clear to us that, as has been intimated in the introduction,
the same tendencies, which, singly and by themselves, presented the
stoutest opposition to Christianity, and most effectually debarred its
entrance, must, when combined together, only serve to hasten its
triumph. It was a fact grounded in the relation of Christianity to the
point of attaimment which the general life of humanity had then
reached, that the obstacles opposing themselves to the power which
was destined to the sovereignty of the world, were converted into
means for its advancement. We must therefore contemplate both in
their connection with each other.
What, in the first place, particularly served to make possible and to ἡ
facilitate the introduction of such a religion everywhere, was its own
peculiar character, as one raised above every kind of outward, sensible
form, and hence capable of entermg into all the existing forms of
human society, since it was not its aim to found a kingdom of this
world. How Christianity could adapt itself to all earthly relations,
and, while it allowed men still to remain in them, yet by the new spirit
which it gave them, the divine life which it breathed into them, how
it was enabled to raise men above these relations, is distinctly set before
us by a Christian, living in’ the early part of the second century, who
thus describes his contemporaries:! ‘ The Christians are not separated
1 The author of the letter to Diognet.
το ᾿ς CONFLICT WITH UNGODLINESS.
from other men by earthly abode, by language, or by customs. They
dwell nowhere in cities by themselves; they do not use a different
language, or affect a smgular mode of life. They dwell in the cities
of the Greeks, and of the Barbarians, each as his lot has been cast;
and while they conform to the usages of the country, in respect to
dress, food, and other things pertaining to the outward life, they yet
show a peculiarity of conduct wonderful and striking to all. They
obey the existing laws, and conquer the laws by their own living.”
But this same loftier spirit, which could merge itself in all the forms
it found at hand, must yet; while it coalesced with all the purely human,
come into conflict with all the wngodly nature of mankind, with what-
ever issued from it and was connected with it. It announced itself as
a power aiming at the renovation of the world; and the world sought
to maintain itself in its old ungodly character. While Christ came not
to destroy but to fulfil, so too he came not to bring peace upon the
earth, but the sword. Hence the necessary collision with prevailing
modes of thinking and manners. Christianity could find entrance every-
where, precisely because it was the religion of God’s sovereignty in the
heart, and excluded from itself every political element; but to the
fundamental position of the old world, which Christianity was to over-
throw, belonged religion as an institution of the State. The pagan
religion, as such, was so closely interwoven with the entire civil and
social life, that whatever attacked the one, must soon be brought mto
conflict also with the other. This conflict might, in many cases at least,
have been avoided, if the early Church, like that of later times, had
been inclined to accommodate itself to the world, more than the holi-
ness of Christianity allowed, and to secularize itself, in order to gain
the world as a mass. But with the primitive Christians this was not
the case; they were much more inclined to a stern repulsion of every-
thing that pertained to paganism, even of that which had but a seem-
ing connection with it, than to any sort of lax accommodation; and
assuredly it was at that. period far more wholesome, and better adapted
to preserve the purity of Christian doctrine and of the Christian life,
to go to an extreme in the first of these ways than in the last.
And the religion which thus opposed itself to these deep-rooted
customs and modes of thinking, which threatened to shake to the
foundation what had been established by ages of duration, came from
a people despised for the most part in the cultivated world, and at first
found readiest admission among the lower classes of society ;— a cir-
cumstance which sufficed of itself to make the learned aristocracy of
Rome and Greece look down on such a religion with contempt. How
should they hope to find more in the shops of mechanics, than in the
schools of the philosophers! Celsus, the first writer against Christian-
ity, jeers at the fact,’ that wool-vorkers, cobblers, leather-dressers, the
1 In Origen, c. Cels. 1. III. f.55: Ὁρῶμεν οὐδὲν φϑέγγεσϑαι, τολμῶντας, ἐπειδὰν δὲ
δὴ Kal κατὰ τὰς ἰδίας οἰκίας ἐριουργους καὶ τῶν Taidwy ἰδίᾳ λάβωνται καὶ γυναίκων
σκυτοτόμους καὶ κναφεῖς τοὺς ἀπαιδευτοτά- τινῶν σὺν αὐτοῖς ἀνοήτων ϑαυμάσιά τινα
Tove τὲ Kal ἀγροικοτώτους ἐναντίον μὲν τῶν διεξιόντας.
πρεσϑυτέρων καὶ φρονιμωτέρῳν δεσποτῷν
CONFLICT WITH SUPERSTITION. 71
most illiterate and vulgar of mankind, were zealous preachers of the
gospel, and addressed themselves, particularly in the outset, to women
and children.” Of a faith which, adapted to all stages of culture,
presupposed a like want in all, the men of this stamp had not the
remotest conception. ‘Their standing objection against the Christians
was, that they preached only a blind faith ;! they should prove what
they advanced on philosophic grounds. And as Christianity had against
it, on the one hand, the pride of culture, and was placed in the same
class with all kinds of superstition; so, on the other, it found in super-
stition itself, and in fanaticism, its fiercest enemies. It had to contend
no less with the rudeness than with the cultivation of the world.
Without question it is true, the old popular religions had been shaken
by the attacks of unbelief, and robbed of their authority; but we have "Ὁ
seen also, how men had resorted back with renewed fanaticism to the
old religion; and hence the bloody struggle in its defence. The dread-
ful rage of the populace against the Christians is a sufficient indication
of the tone of religious feeling which existed at that time among them;
— the superstition called forth by the assaults of unbelief held stronger
dominion perhaps than ever over the people, and a part of the educated
class. ΤῸ the multitudes, who at this period moved in the dim twilight
of superstition, Plutarch thought he might apply the language of
Heraclitus in describing the world of dreams: “ they found themselves,
while awake in broad daylight, each in his own world,” —a world that
excluded every ray of reason and truth. These men, who would see
their gods with the bodily eye, and were used to carry them about
engraved on their rings, or in miniature pictures which served as amu-
lets, so that they might kiss and worship them at pleasure ; how often
did they throw out to Christians the challenge, ‘‘ show us your God!” ?
And to such men came a spiritual religion, brmging with it no worship
of sensible objects, no sacrifices, temple, images, nor altars: — bald
and naked, as the pagans reproachfully represented it.
There was, indeed, generally diffused, at this time, as we have already
remarked, a spirit of inquiry, and of longing after some new communi-
cation from heaven. In spite of the pertinacity with which men clung
to the old superstition, there existed a susceptibility, in various ways,
for new religious impressions. But this longing, which, having no
distinct consciousness of its object, was directed by blind feeling, easily
exposed men also to deception, and opened the way for every species
of fanaticism.
Quite at the beginning of the second century, Celsus supposed he
could account for the rapid progress of Christianity, from the credulity
of the age; and referred to the multitude of magicians that were
trying to deceive men by a pretended exhibition of supernatural powers,
and who with many found ready belief, creating a great sensation for
the moment, which however soon subsided. Yet there was a great
difference, as Origen justly replied to Celsus, between their mode of
1 Πίστιν ἀλογόν.
2 As we may see from the Apologies, particularly Theophilus ad Autolycum.
ΤᾺ SUPERNATURAL INFLUENCES.
proceeding and that of the preachers of the gospel. Those magicians
flattered men’s sinful inclinations, they fell in with their previous modes
of thinking, and required the renunciation of nothing. On the other
hand, whoever in the primitive times would be a Christian, must break
loose from many of his hitherto favorite inclinations, and be ready to
give up everything for his faith. ‘Tertullian says,! that more were
deterred from embracing Christianity by unwillingness to forfeit their
pleasures, than by the fear of hazarding their life. And the excitement
of mind occasioned by such wandering fanatics and magicians, disap-
peared ag suddenly as it was awakened. That it was quite otherwise
with the power working in Christianity, appeared evident from the
permanence of its effects, in their ever widening circle, — a testimony
which Origen could cite from history against Celsus. |
But the influence of such people, of which the opponents of Chris-
tianity themselves bear witness, presented a new obstacle to its progress.
It must force its way through the rmg of delusions, within which those
people had succeeded in charm-binding the minds of men, before it
could reach their consciences and hearts. The examples of a
Simon Magus, an Elymas, an Alexander of Abonoteichos, show in what
way this class of people opposed the progress of the gospel. It needed
striking facts, addressed to the outward sense, to bring men entangled
in such deceptive arts, out of their bewilderment to the sober exercise
of reason, and render them receptive of higher spiritual impressions.
ΤῸ this end served those supernatural effects, which proceeded from ~
the new creative power of Christianity, and which were destined to
accompany it, until it had entered completely into the natural process
of human development. The Apostle Paul appeals to such effects,
witnessing of the power of the Divine Spirit which inspired his preach-
ing, as well-known and undeniable facts, in epistles addressed to the
churches which had beheld them; and the narratives in the Acts
illustrate, with particular examples, the power of those effects, in first
arresting the attention, and in dispelling those delusive influences. The
transition from that first period in the process of the development of
the church, in which the supernatural, immediate and creative power
predominated, to the second, in which the same divine principle dis-
played its activity in the form of natural connection, was not a sudden
event, but took place by a series of gradual and insensible changes.
We are not warranted, nor are we in a condition, to draw so sharply
the line of demarkation between what is supernatural and what 1s
natural in the effects proceeding from the power of Christianity, when
it has once taken possession of human nature.
The church teachers, until after the middle of the third century,
appeal in language that shows the consciousness of truth, and often
before the pagans themselves, to such extraordinary phenomena, as
conducing to the spread of the faith ; and however we may be disposed to
distinguish the facts at bottom from the pomt of view in which they
1De spectaculis, c. 2. Plures denique invenias, quos magis periculum voluptatis,
quam vite, avocet ab hac secta
SUPERNATURAL INFLUENCES. 73
are contemplated by the narrator, we must still admit the facts them-
selves, and their effects on the minds of men. It remains, therefore,
undeniable, that even subsequent to the Apostolic times, the spread of
the gospel was advanced by such means. Let us present some of these
cases in their living connection with the character and spirit of those
times. The Christian meets with some unhappy man, plunged in
heathenish superstition, and diseased in body and soul, who had hoped
in vain to get relief in the temple of Esculapius,—the resort of mul-
titudes at that time, who sought a cure for their diseases in dreams
sent from the god of medicine. He had tried also to no purpose the
various incantations and amulets of pagan priests and magicians. The
Christian admonishes him not to look for help from impotent dumb idols,
or from demoniacal powers, but to betake himself to that Almighty God
who only can help. He hears the prayers of such as invoke His aid
in the name of Him by whom He has redeemed the world from sin.
The Christian employs no magic formulas, no amulets; but simply
calling upon God through Christ, he lays his hand on the sick man’s
head, in believing confidence in his Saviour. The sick man is healed ;
and the cure of the body leads to that of the soul. There were, — par-
ticularly at this period of the rending asunder and breaking up of the
old world on its way to dissolution, — multitudes of persons, laboring
under bodily and mental diseases, who, as we have already observed,
believed themselves under the dominion and persecution of some de-
moniacal power. ‘The whole might of the ungodly, the destroying
principle must be roused to action, when the healing power of the
divine was to enter into humanity. The revelation of heavenly peace,
bringing back all to harmony, must be preceded by the deep-felt inward
disunion, which betrayed itself in such cases. ‘There was no want,
either among Pagans or Jews, of those who pretended to be able, by
various methods, — perfuming with incense, embrocations, medicinal
herbs, amulets, adjurations expressed in strange enigmatical formulas,
— to expel those demoniacal powers. [ἢ every case, if they produced
any effect, it was only to drive out one devil by means of another, and
hence the true dominion of the demoniacal power must, by their means,
have been much rather confirmed than weakened. ‘The words which
our Saviour himself spoke, in reference to such transactions, found
here their appropriate application. ‘‘ He that is not with me, is against
me.’ But how much belief, at that time, these pretended exorcists
could inspire, is shown by the prayer of thanks which the Emperor
Marcus Aurelius offers to the gods, because he had learned from a
wise instructor, to trust in none of the tales about the incantations and
exorcisms of magicians and wonder-workers.+
It so happens now that one who has vainly sought relief from such
impostors, falls in with a devout Christian. The latter recognizes here
the power of darkness, and thinks of looking for no other cause of the
disease. But he is confident of this, that his Saviour has overcome
11. 6. Td ἀπιστηνικὸν τοῖς ὑπὸ τῶν περὶ δαιμόνων ἀποπομπῆς Kal τῶν τοιού-
τερατευομένων καὶ γοητῶν περὶ ἐπῳδῶν καὶ των λεγομένοις.
VOL. i, i
14 SUPERNATURAL INFLUENCES.
that power, and that in whatsoever shape it may manifest itself, it must
yield to him. In this confidence, he prays, and witnesses of him, who
by his sufferings triumphed over the gates of Hell; and his prayer,
drawing down the powers of Heaven, works deeply upon the distracted
nature of the sick man. Peace succeeds to the conflicts that had
raged within; and led to the faith by this experience of a change ἴῃ
his own personal condition, he is now first delivered, in the full sense,
from the dominion of evil,—thoroughly and permanently healed by
the enlightening and sanctifying power of the truth; so that the evil
spirit, returning back to the house, finds it no longer swept and gar-
nished for his reception.
Of such effects, Justin Martyr witnesses, when, addressing himself
to the pagans,! he says: “That the kingdom of evil spirits has been
destroyed by Jesus, you may, even at the present time, convince your-
selves by what passes before your own eyes ; for many of our people,
of us Christians, have healed and still continue to heal, in every part
of the world, and in your city (Rome), numbers possessed of evil
spirits, such as Gould not be healed by other exorcists, simply by adjur-
ing them in the name of Jesus Christ, who was crucified under Pontius
Pilate.’ We learn from Ireneus, that the cure of such disorders not
unfrequently prepared the way for the conversion of men to Christian-
ity ; for he says, that often they who had been delivered from evil
spirits attained to the faith, and united with the Church.2. The inward
conflicts of a soul that could find no longer the satisfaction of its
religious wants in what the old world had to offer, may have frequently
been the occasion of such forms of disease ; and by the Christian in-
fluence, the disorder was overcome in its cause, and not in its symptoms
merely. As a particular gift, quite distinct from the healing of those
demoniacal diseases, Irenzeus mentions other modes of restoring the
sick, by the laying on of the hands of Christians,?— raising of the
dead, (i. e. such as seemed to be dead) who afterwards remained living
in the church for many years. He appeals to the variety of gifts
which the true disciples of Christ had received from him, and which
they employed, each after his own measure, for the benefit of other
men. What was thus wrought by the Christians, simply from love,
and without any expectation of temporal reward, through prayer to
God and invocation of the name of Christ, he contrasts with the jug-
gling tricks resorted to as a means of livelihood. Origen recognizes
in the miraculous powers still existing in his time, though already
sensibly diminished, a proof of what served in the first times of the
appearance of Christianity particularly to advance its progress.° In
his defence of Christianity against Celsus, he cites examples from his
own experience, where he had been himself an eye-witness of the fact,
1 Tn his first Apology, p. 45. 4 Καὶ νεκροὶ ἠγέρϑησαν καὶ παρέμειναν
2"Qote πολλάκις καὶ πιστεύειν αὐτοὺς σὺν ἡμῖν ἱκανοῖς ἔτεσιν.
ἐκείνους τοὺς καϑαρισϑέντας ἀπὸ τῶν πνευ- 5 Tac τεραστίους δυνάμεις, ἃς κατασκευ-
μάτων καὶ εἶναι ἐν τῇ ἐκκλησίᾳ. Ady. heres, αστέον γεγονέναι ἐκ τοῦ ἴχνη αὐτῶν ἔτι
1. IT. ο. 82, ὁ 4. Ed. Massuet. σώζεσϑαι παρὰ τοῖς κατὰ τὸ βούλημα τοῦ
8 "Αλλοι δὲ τοὺς κάμνοντας διὰ τῆς τῶν Adyov βιοῦσιν. c. Cels. 1.1. § 2.
χειρῶν ἐπιϑέσεως ἰῶνται.
SUPERNATURAL INFLUENCES. 75
how, by invocation of the name of God and of Jesus, in connection with
the preaching of his history, many were healed of grievous diseases
and states of insanity, which had withstood all other means of the
healing art.! It is a remarkable fact, attested by Tertullian and Origen,
that so many were conducted to Christianity by extraordinary psycho-
logical phenomena. ‘Tertullian relates, that the greater part came to
the knowledge of the true God by means of visions.2 Now although
this church father was inclined to exaggeration generally, and to lay »
too much stress on such appearances in particular; yet what he says
here is confirmed by the testimony of Origen. The latter asserts that
‘“¢ Many have come to Christianity, as it were against their will, their
affections bemg suddenly changed, by a certain Spirit, from the hatred
of the gospel to such love of it as makes them ready to lay down their
lives for it, — and this through the medium of visions which occurred
to them when awake or in dreams.’’? He calls God to witness, that it
was most remote from his inclination to attempt adding anything to the
glory of Christianity by false statements ;— although he could relate
many things seemingly incredible, which he had himself witnessed.
Such testimonies are full of instruction, since they make us acquainted
with the manner in which conversions, at this period, were often brought
about. We shall, indeed, have to trace these phenomena, not so much
to a divine miraculous agency, operating from without, as to the power
with which Christianity moved the spiritual life of the period. From
the manner in which the divine principle of life in Christianity, — the
new force that had come in among mankind,—and the principle of
paganism came into collision with each other, extraordinary phenomena
in the world of consciousness could not fail to result, through which the
crisis in the religious life of individuals must pass, ere it arrived at its
end.
Yet as each particular miracle, wrought by Christ, was but a single
flash from the fullness of the Godhead dwelling in him, and was to
operate simply to this end, that the immediate selfmanifestation of this
fullness might be brought nearer before the mimds of men; so too are
all succeeding miracles but single flashes, issuing forth from the imme-
diate divine power of the gospel, and contributing to introduce the
revelation of this itself into the religious consciousness. Without this
itself, and its relation to man’s nature, and to the peculiar conditions
of man’s nature in this particular period, all else would have been to
no purpose ; and that which the divine power in the gospel wrought
immediately by itself in man’s nature, still allied to God though es-
tranged from its original source, continued ever to be the main thing,
the end for which all else was but subsidiary and preparatory. It 15
this which the Apostle Paul places above all other kinds of evidence,
1 Τούτοις γὰρ καὶ ἡμεῖς ἐωράκαμεν πολ-
λοὺς ἀπαλλαγέντας χαλεπῶν συμπτωμάτων
ἐκστώσεων καὶ μανιῶν καὶ ἄλλων μυρίων,
ἅπερ οὔτ’ ἄνϑρωποι οὔτε δαΐμονες ἐϑερά-
πευσαν. c. Cels. ]. III. ο. 24.
2 Major pene vis hominum e visionibus
Deum discunt. De anima, ec. 47.
8 Πολλοὶ ὡσπερεὶ ἄκοντες προσεληλύϑασι
χριστιανισμῷ, πνεύματός τινος τρέψαντος
αὐτῶν τὸ ἡγεμονικὸν αἰφνίδιον ἀπὸ τοῦ
μισεῖν τὸν λόγον ἐπὶ τὸ ὑπεραποϑανεῖν
αὐτοῦ, καὶ φαντασιώσαντος αὐτοὺς ὕπαρ ἢ
ὄναρ. c. Cels. 1. 1. c. 46
76 CHRISTIAN EXAMPLE.
above all particular miracles, and describes as the demonstration of
the Spirit and of power.t And as this divine power showed its efficacy
on the inner life of. the man, so it manifested itself, with an attractive
force, in the outward appearance and actions of that life; and it was
this, which, more than everything beside, wrought to the conversion of
the heathen.
To this experience Justin Martyr makes his appeal,” where, after’) τυ.
citing the words of our Lord, ‘ Let your light so shine before men,o\"
that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is
in Heaven,” he adds: ‘‘ Our Lord would not have us recompense evil
for evil, but requires that, by the power of patience and meekness, we
should draw all from the shame of their evil passions. And we can
point out many among us, who, from overbearing and tyrannical men,
have been thus changed by a victorious power, when they have
seen how their neighbors could bear all things, or observed the sin-
gular patience of their defrauded fellow-travellers, or come to be
acquainted with Christians in any of the other relations of life.” The
distinguished virtues of the Christians must have shone forth the more
brightly, as contrasted with the prevailing vices; their severity of
morals, sometimes even carried to excess, as opposed to the general
depravation of the age; their hearty fraternal love, in contrast with
that predominant selfishness which separated man from man, and ren-
dered each distrustful of the other, insomuch that men could not
comprehend the nature of Christian fellowship, nor sufficiently wonder
at its fruits. ‘‘ See,’’ — was the common remark, —‘‘ how they love one
another.”? “This seems so extraordinary to them,—says Tertullian,?—
because they are used to hate one another. See how, among the
Christians, one is ready to die for the others ; this seems so wonderful
to them, because they themselves are far more ready to murder one
another.”” Although a brotherly union of this sort excited suspicion in
those who were used to watch everything with the jealous eye of police
espionage, and several persecutions of the Christians were thereby
occasioned; yet on all minds not narrowed by such habits or not
abandoned to fanaticism, a quite different impression must have been
produced, and the question could hardly fail to arise in them, “ What
is it, which can thus bind together the hearts of men, m other respects
wholly strangers to one another?” In a time when civilization had
degenerated to effeminacy,’ in a time of servile cowardice, the life-
renovating enthusiasm, the heroism of faith, with which the Christians
despised tortures and death, when the question was whether they
1 A passage, which, indeed, came to be
misunderstood at a very early period, be-
cause too much importance was attached
to the outward. Thus it was Origen’s opin-
ion that the ἀπόδειξις πνεύματος καὶ duva-
μξως is so predicated of the ἀπόδειξις ---- διὰ
τὰς προφητείας καὶ τὰς τεραστίους δυνάμεις.
c. Cels. 1. I. § 2.
2 Apologet. II. f 63.
3 Sed ejusmodi vel maxime dilectionis
operatio notam nobis inurit penes quosdam.
Vide, inquiunt, ut invicem se diligant. Ipsi
enim invicem oderunt. Et pro alterutro
mori sint parati, ipsi enim ad occidendum
alterutrum paratiores. Apologet. ὁ. 39.
4 This view of the matter is expressed in
the language of the Pagan Ceecilius, in the
Octavius of Minucius Felix, (ὃ 9;) Occul-
tis se notis et insignibus noscunt et amant
mutuo pene ante quam noverint.
5 Ipsa urbanitate decepti, says Tertullian
of his contemporaries.
CHRISTIAN HEROISM. 77
would do what was contrary to conscience, —this heroism of the Christ-:
ians did indeed strike many so forcibly as an appearance foreign to the
age, that they were inclined to consider a character so well befitting the -
heroic days of antiquity, but not these more refined and gentle times, a
matter of reproach.! But although the ordmary Roman statesmen,
though the followers of a set worldly prudence, though the cool Stoic
who required everywhere philosophic demonstration, —saw in the spirit
with which the Christians, in testimony of their faith, went to death,
nothing but blind enthusiasm ; yet the confidence and the cheerfulness
of these suffering, dying men, could not fail to make an impression on
iess hardened or less prejudiced minds, whereby they would be led to
inquire more deeply into the cause, for which men could be thus
impelled to sacrifice their all. Outward force could effect nothing
against the inward power of divine truth; it could only operate to ren-
der the might of this truth more gloriously manifest. Hence Tertul-
lian concludes his ‘‘ Apology’? with these words, addressed to the
persecutors of the Christians: “ All your refinements of cruelty can
accomplish nothing; on the contrary, they serve as a lure to this sect.
Our number increases, the more you destroy us. The blood of the
Christians is the seed of a new harvest. Your philosophers, who exhort
to the endurance of pain and death, make fewer disciples by their
words, than the Christians by their deeds. That obstinacy, for which
you reproach us, is a preceptor. For who that beholds it, is not
impelled to mquire into the cause? And who, when he has inquired,
does not embrace it; and when he has embraced it, does not himself
wish to suffer for it ὕ 2
Add to this, that Christianity appeared when the time was now
fulfilled, that the glory of the ‘ eternal city”’ must depart from her:
for so long as that power still had dominion over the minds of men,
and swallowed up all other interests, small place was left for that
feeling of need which lea men to Christianity. But when all was now
becoming old and withered, which had hitherto been an object of
enthusiastic love and had given a certain buoyancy to the soul,
Christianity appeared, and called men from the sinking old world to a
new creation, destined fof eternity. As Augustin finely expresses it,
“‘ Christ appeared to the men of a decrepit, dying world, that, while
all around them was fading, they might through him receive a new
youthful life.” And the higher life which Christianity imparted,
required no brilliant outward relations for the manifestation of its
glory, like what had been wondered at as great in the old civic virtue.
Into the midst of circumstances and situations the most cramping and
depressing, this divine life could find its way, and cause its glory to
shine forth in weak and despised vessels, and raise men above all that
would bow them down to the earth, without their over-stepping the bounds
1 Well enough for the ingenia duriora illa ipsa obstinatio, quam exprobratis, ma-
robustioris antiquitatis ; but not forthe tran- gistra est. Quis enim non contemplatione
quillitatem pacis and the ingenia mitiora. ejus concutitur ad requirendum, quid intus
Tertull. adv. Nat. I. ο. 18. in re sit ?
2. Semen. est sanguis Christianorum —
Τάς
. 18 INFLUENCE ON THE LOWER CLASSES.
of that earthly order, in which they considered themselves placed by an
overruling providence. ‘The slave, in his earthly relations, remained a
slave still, and fulfilled all the duties of his place with far greater
fidelity and conscientiousness than before ; and yet he felt himself free
within, showed an elevation of soul, an assurance, a power of faith and
of resignation, which must have filled his master with amazement.
Men in the lowest class of society, who had hitherto known nothing m
religion but ceremonial rites and mythical stories, attamed to a clear
and confident religious conviction. The remarkable words, already
quoted from Celsus, as well as many individual examples of these first
Christian times, show us how often from women,! who, as wives and
mothers, let a spiritual light shine out im the midst of pagan corruption ;
how often from young men, boys and maidens; from slaves who put
their masters to shame, Christianity was diffused through whole
families. ‘‘ Every Christian mechanic,” says Tertullian, “has found
God, and shows him to you; and then points out to you everythmg in
fact you require to know of God; although Plato Gn Timeeus) says,
that it is hard to find the Creator of the universe, and impossible after
one has found him, to make him known to all.” In lke manner,
Athenagoras: “ With us you may find ignorant people, mechanics, old
women, who, though unable to prove with words the savig power of
their religion, yet by their deeds prove the saving influence of the dis-
position it has bestowed on them ; for they do not learn words by rote,
but they exhibit good works; when struck, they strike not again;
when robbed, they do not go to law; they give to them that ask them,
and love their neighbors as themselves.”
The gross material notions, which we find to have prevailed among
a large portion of the early Christians, as for example, among the
Chiliasts, have frequently been set forth as a reproach to Christianity.
But precisely in this, is its distinguishing character manifest, — that as
it is not a system of notions, but an announcement of facts, it could
be brought within the range, even of a material habit of thinking, could
lower itself down to its comprehension, mix in with it, and even in this
material form, by the power of those facts, communicate a divine hie,
and thereby gradually ennoble the entire nature of the man, with all
its powers and propensities, and so also spiritualize the habits of think-
ing. And in connection with this phenomenon, we must take still
another ; that, at the same time, the pole of humanity most opposite to
this was seized by Christianity with overwhelming power, as is evident
when we compare the Gnostics with those Chiliasts. So deeply
marked, from the first, on the developing process of this religion, 18
the impress of its divinely human character, by virtue of which it
could and must attract the opposite poles of man’s nature, entering as
well into these as into all the other intermediate stages. And it was,
as we shall see, precisely by means of this, its distguishing charac-
1 Compare the words of the pagan Czcil- et mulieribus credulis sexus sui facilitate la-
jus in the Octavius of Minucius Felix,where bentibus plebem profane conjurationis in-
he says, speaking of the Christians: (c. 8) stituunt.
Qui de ultima fece collectis imperitioribus
DIFFUSION OF CHRISTIANITY. T9
teristic, that the more general diffusion and triumph of Christianity
over the old world were advanced.
2. Propagation of Christianity in Particular Districts.
The great highways by which the knowledge of the gospel was to be
diffused abroad, had already been opened by the intercourse of nations.
The easy means of inter-communication within the vast Roman empire ;
‘the close relation between the Jews dispersed through all lands, and
those at Jerusalem; the manner in which all parts of the Roman
empire were linked in with the great capital of the world; the con-
nection of the provinces with their metropolitan towns, and of the
larger portions of the empire with the more considerable cities, were
all circumstances favorable to this object. These cities, such as Alex-
andria, Antioch, Ephesus, Corimth, were centres of commercial,
political and literary correspondence ; and hence became also the prin-
cipal seats, chosen for the propagation of the gospel, where the first
preachers tarried longest. Commercial intercourse, which had served
from the earliest times, not merely for the exchange of worldly goods,
but also for transmitting the nobler treasures of the mind, could now
be used as a means for diffusing the highest spiritual blessings.
As a general thing, Christianity at first made progress in the cities ;
for as it was needful, above all, to gain fixed seats for the propagation
of the gospel, the first preachers, passing rapidly over the country,
had to propose their message first in the cities, whence it might after-
wards be more easily diffused through the country by native teachers.
On the other hand, in the country, greater obstacles must necessarily
have been encountered, owing to the entire rudeness, the blind super-
stition, and the heathen fanaticism of the people: oftentimes also to
the want of a knowledge in the early preachers of the old provincial
dialects ; while in the towns, they could, for the most part, make them-
selves sufficiently well understood in the Greek or the Latin language.
Yet we know from Pliny’s report to the Emperor Trajan, from the
account given by the Roman Bishop Clemens,! and from the relation
of Justin Martyr,” that this was not the case everywhere: and that in
many districts, country churches were formed very early; and Origen
says expressly,’ that many considered it their duty to visit not only the
cities, but also the country towns and villas. ‘That this was so, seems
evident moreover from the great number of country bishops in particu-
lar districts.
In the New Testament, we find accounts of the dissemination
of Christianity in Syria, in Cilicia; probably also in the Parthian
empire, at that time so widely extended ;* in Arabia; in Lesser Asia,
and the countries adjacent ; in Greece, and the bordering countries as
1 Ep. 1. Corinth. c. 42. V. 13,) greets from his wife in Babylon, —
2 Apologet. II. f. 98. whether it was the then capital of Seleucia,
3c. Cels. 1. ILL. c. 9: Τινὲς ἔργον πεποί- or more probably the old fallen Babylon, —
ἡνται ἐκ περιέρχεσϑαι ob μόνον πόλεις, leads to the conjecture, that he was residing
ἀλλὰ καὶ κώμας καὶ ἐπαύλεις. ι in those countries.
* For the circumstance that Peter (1 Ep.
80 MESOPOTAMIA. PERSIA.
far as Illyricum; in Italy. But we are greatly deficient in further and
credible accounts, on.this subject ; the later traditions, growing out of
the eagerness to trace each national church to an apostolic origin,
deserve no examination. We confine ourselves to what can be safely
credited.
The ancient legend of the correspondence by letter between a
prince belonging to the dynasty of the Abgares or Agbares, the Agbar
Uchomo, (who ruled over the small state of Edessa Osrhoéne of Meso-
potamia,) and our Saviour, to whom he is said to have applied for the
cure of a grievous disorder, is entitled to no credit; nor that of his
conversion by Thaddeus, one of the seventy disciples. Eusebius found
the documents from which he drew up his narrative, in the public
archives of Edessa; and permitted himself to be deceived by them.
The letter ascribed to Christ is m no sense worthy of him, and bears
throughout the marks of having been compiled from several passages
of the gospels. It is moreover inconceivable how anything, written by
Christ himself, could have remained down to Eusebius’ time, unknown
to the rest of the world. Finally, the letter of Abgarus is not
couched in such langnage as would have been used by an oriental
prince. Whether in other respects, there is any truth lying at the
bottom of the account, we cannot know. It is only certain, that Christ--
lanity was early diffused in this country ; yet it is not till between the
years 160 —170 we find indications that one of those princes, Abgar
Bar Manu, was a Christian. The learned Christian Bardesanes is said
to have stood very high with him ; and we are informed by this writer,
that Abgar forbade the selfmutilations usually connected with the wor-
ship of Cybele, under a severe penalty, (the loss of their hands to
those who were guilty of it.) From this alone, it is by no means clear
that he was a Christian ; but it is also on the coins of this prince, that
the usual symbols of the Baal worship of this country are, for the first
time, wanting; and the sign of the cross appears in their place.t In
the year 202, the Christians of Edessa had already a church, built, as
it seems, after the model of the temple at Jerusalem.?
If Peter preached the gospel in the Parthian empire,? some seed of
Christianity, at an early period, may have easily reached Persia also,
which then belonged to that empire; but the frequent wars of the
Parthians with the Romans hindered the communication between Par-
thian and Roman Christians. The above-mentioned Bardesanes of
Edessa, who wrote in the time of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius, notices
the spread of Christianity in Parthia, Media, Persia, Bactria.* After
the restoration of the ancient Persian empire to its independence, under
1 Bayer, historia Edessena e nummis il-
lustrata, 1. III. p.173. But Bayer places
him, no doubt incorrectly, as late as A. C.
200.
“In the chronicle of Edessa, compiled
from ancient documents, about the middle
of the sixth century, it is reported, in ex-
pressions which presuppose a document
not written by the hand of a Christian, that
by the violence of a flood the templum ev-
clesiz Christianorum had been destroyed.
V. Assemani Bibliotheca orientalis, T. I. p
391.
8 According to the tradition preserved in
Origen; Euseb. III. 1, also the apostle
Thomas.
4 Euseb. Preparat. Evang. 1. VI. c. 10
e
ARABIA. 81
the Sassanides, the Persian Christians become better known to us by
the attempts of the Persian Mani, in the last half of the second century,
to form a new code of religious doctrines by the fusion of old Oriental
systems of religion with Christianity. |
In Arabia, the great number of Jews residing in that country might
afford a medium of access for the preaching of the gospel; but the
same circumstance would also present a powerful hinderance ; and the
latter, no doubt, was much more the case than the former. It is clear,
from his own words, that the Apostle Paul, soon after his conversion,
retired from Damascus to Arabia. But to what purpose he applied his
residence in this country, and what he accomplished there, remains
uncertain. If the country called India, in a tradition of which we
shall presently speak, is to be taken as meaning a part of Arabia, then
the Apostle Bartholomew preached the gospel to the Jews m Arabia,
and took with him, for this purpose, a gospel written in the Hebrew
(Aramaic) language,—probably that compilation of our Lord’s dis-
courses by Matthew, which hes at the basis of our present gospel
according to St. Matthew.? Allowing this to be so, then in the last half
of the second century, the learned Alexandrian catechist, Pantzenus, was
teacher of a portion of this people. In the early part of the third
century, the great Alexandrian church father, Origen, labored in the
same field. Yet we must doubtless suppose here, only that part of
Arabia is meant, which was already in subjection to the Roman empire.
We have the account, namely, from Husebius,? that at that time the
Arabian commander sent an order to Demetrius, bishop of Alexandria,
and to the then prefect of Egypt, earnestly requesting, that Origen
might be allowed to come to him, since he was desirous of conferring -
with him in person.4 Assuredly, this Arabian commander was not the
hereditary chief of some wandering tribe of Arabs, as a person of that
class could hardly be supposed to have ever heard anything of Origen ;
but a Roman governor, whom the fame of the great teacher, — cele-
brated at this time for his holy life, his wisdom and scientific attamments
even among the pagans,—might have moved to seek a personal
conversation with him on religious subjects. Perhaps he belonged to the
number of truth-seeking men among the pagans of those times. If so,
Origen would not have failed to avail himself of this interview, for the
purpose of winning over the governor to the side of the gospel. Αἱ a
somewhat later period, we find Christian churches in Arabia, with which
Origen stood in some more intimate connection. ‘To the further propa-
gation of the gospel in these parts in still later times, the nomadic life
of the people and the influence of hostile Jews presented great obstacles.
The ancient Syro-Persian church, whose remains have been preserved
down to the present moment on the coast of Malabar in the Kast Indies,
1See my History of the Planting, &c. suggests some person of the Roman office
Vol. I. p. 126. of dux Arabix,) ἀνεδίδου γράμματα Δημη-
2 See my History of the Planting, &. τρίῳ τε τῷ τῆς παροικίας ἐπισκόπῳ καὶ TO
Vol. I. p. 131, Remark. τότε τῆς Αἰγύπτου ἐπάρχῳ παρὰ τοῦ τῆς
51, VI. c. 19. ’ApaBiac ἡγουμένου, (as ἃ dux Arabie after-
4*Emvord¢ τις τῶν στιρατιωτικῶν, (which wards occurs in the Notitia imperii.)
82 INDIA.
names the Apostle Thomas as its founder, and professes to be able to
point out the place of his burial. Were this a tradition handed down,
independent of other accounts, within the community itself, we could
not, it is true, consider it as credible testimony ; but neither should we
be warranted to assert absolutely its falsity.1. Yet this church, of which
we find the earliest notice in the reports of Cosmas Indicopleustes,
about the middle of the sixth century, might perhaps be indebted for
its existence to a later mercantile colony of Syro-Persian Christians,
and having brought with it the traditions of the Greek church, might
have simply transmitted these, but after a time forgotten the channel
from whence it had originally derived them. We must examine more
closely, then, these traditions themselves. But the Greek traditions,
although old, are yet very indefinite and uncertain. The unsettled use
of the geographic name India contributes to this uncertainty. Ethiopia,
and Arabia Felix, the adjacent Insula Dioscoridis, (the island Diu
Zocotara, near the mouth of the Arabian Gulf,) were designated by this
name.” ‘These countries, however, maintained by trade a lively iter-
course with India proper, and could thus furnish a channel for the
propagation of Christianity in the latter. Gregory of Nanzianzen says®
that Thomas preached the gospel to the Indians; but Jerome understands
the India here meant to be Ethiopia. If the tradition in Origen,
which makes Thomas the Apostle to the Parthians, were credible, it
would not be so very remote from the former legend, since the Parthian
empire touched, at that time, on the boundaries of India. In all events,
such legends are not deserving of much confidence. Eusebius’ relates,
as we have observed already, that Panteenus undertook a missionary
_ tour to the people dwelling eastward, which he extended as far as India.
There he found already some seeds of Christianity, which had been
conveyed thither by the Apostle Bartholomew, as well as a Hebrew
gospel which the same Apostle had taken with him. The mention of
the Hebrew gospel is not at all inconsistent with the supposition, that
India proper is here meant, if it may be assumed that the Jews who
now dwell on the coast of Malabar, had then already arrived there.
The language of Eusebius seems to intimate, that he himself had before
his mind a remoter country than Arabia, and rather favors the suppo-
sition, that he meant to speak of India proper. Yet it may be a question,
whether he was not himself deceived by the name. ‘To settle the
controverted question, what countries we are to think of here, we must
compare also the later accounts of the fourth century. Inthe time of
1Jt becomes the conscientious inquirer,
who leans neither on the side of arbitrary
doubt nor on that of arbitrary assertion, to
express himself, in matters of this sort, as
my friend.and honored colleague Ritter has
done, in his instructive remarks on this
point, in the Erdkunde von Asien: (Bd. IV.,
1516 Abtheilung, S. 602,) “ What European
science cannot prove, is not therefore to be
rejected as untrue, but only to be regarded
as problematical for the present; by no
means, however, is any structure to be
erected upon it, as a safe foundation.”
2 According to Ritter (1. c. S. 603,) to be
explained from the fact that not only Indian
trade colonies — the Banianes, Banig-yana,
according to the Sanscrit,trade-people, (see
Ritter, 1. ὁ. S. 443.) had settled there, and
that the whole region furnished staple
places for Indian wares, but that there
were the few direct intermediate stations for
the uninterrupted commerce with foreign
India.
8 Orat. 25.
4 Ep. 148.
§ L.-I. ο, 10.
AFRICA. 89
the Emperor Constantine,! there was a missionary, Theophilus, with
the surname Indicus, who came from the Island Diu, (Διβοῦς,) by
which is to be understood the above mentioned island, Zokotara. He
fund in his native land, and in the other districts of India,? which he
visited from there, Christianity planted already, and had only many
things to correct.
We next cross over to Africa. Zhe country in this quarter of the
world, where Christianity must be disseminated first, was Mgypt ; for
here were presented, in the Grecian and Jewish culture at Alexandria,
those points of contact and union of which we have already spoken.
Even among the first zealous preachers of the gospel, we find men of
Alexandrian education, as, for mstance, Apollos of Alexandria, and
probably also Barnabas of Cyprus. The epistle to the Hebrews, the
epistle ascribed to Barnabas, the gospel of the Egyptians, (εὐαγγ ἀκ δα
Aiyvatiovs,) in which the Alexandrian-theosophic taste displays itself, —
the Gnosis in the first half of the second century, —are proofs of the
influence exerted by Christianity, at a very early period, on the philosophy
of the Alexandrian Jews. An ancient tradition names the evangelist
Mark as the founder of the Alexandrian Church. From Alexandria,
Christianity must have easily found its way to Cyrene, on account of
the constant mtercourse and the congeniality of spirit between the two
de But although the gospel early found its way into the parts of
ower Egypt inhabited by Grecian and Jewish colonies, yet it would
not be so easy for it to penetrate thence into Middle, and particularly
iato Upper Egypt; for in those parts, the foreign Coptie language, the
dominion of the priests, and the old Egyptian superstition stood in
the way. Yeta persecution of the Christians in Thebais, under the
Emperor Septimius Severus,’ proves that Christianity had already made
progress in Upper Egypt, as early as the last times of the second
century. Probably, in the first half of the third century, this province
had a version of the New Testament in its own ancient dialect.
Respecting the diffusion of Christianity in Hthiopia (Abyssinia) we
find, in these centuries, no distinct and credible account. History is
silent as to the consequences which resulted from the conversion of ~
that court-ofiicer of Candace, Queen of Meroe, which is related in the
Acts.* We shall find the first certain indications of the conversion of
a part of Abyssinia, through the instrumentality of Frumentius, in the
fourth century. Yet the question might be raised,? whether some
seeds of Christianity may not, even earlier than this, have been brought
into other districts of this country by Jewish Christians; and whether
many Jewish customs, and the significancy which is ascribed by one
party to the baptism of Christ,® may not be traced to this fact.
In consequence of their connection with Rome, the gospel early found
its way to Carthage, and to the whole of proconsular Africa. This
church at Carthage becomes first known to us, onward from the last
1 Vid. Philostorg. hist. 1. III. ο. 4 and 5. has somewhere directed attention to the
2°Exeivev τίς τὴν ἄλλην ἀφίκετο Ἰνδικὴν. same inquiry.
δ᾽ Euseb. |. VI. c. 1. 6 See Journal of a three years’ residence
* Chap. 8. in Abyssinia, by 5. Gobat, p. 254. Lon-
δ The late Hr. Rettig, if I mistake not, don, 1834.
84 GAUL. GERMANY.
years of the second century, through the presbyter Tertullian; but
even then it appears to have been ina very flourishing condition. The
Christians in those districts were, at that time, already very numerous,
and it was a matter of complaint, that Christianity continued to spread,
in town and country, among all ranks, and indeed in the highest. To
pass over those passages where Tertullian expresses himself rhetori-
cally, we find in his tract addressed to the governor, Scapula,” that he
could speak already of a persecution of Christians in Mauritania.
After the middle of the third century, Christianity had now made such
progress in Mauritania and Numidia, that under Cyprian, Bishop of
Carthage, a synod was held, consisting of eighty-seven bishops.
Passing over to Europe, we have in Rome a principal seat for the
propagation of Christianity, yet not the only one. Flourishing com-
munities, at Lugdunum (Lyons) and Vienna, come to our knowledge
during a bloody persecution, in 177. The great number of Christians
from Asia Minor, whom we find here, and the intimate connection of
these communities with those of Asia Minor, lead to the conjecture,
that the commercial intercourse between these districts of France and
Asia Minor, an original seat of the Christian church, had led to the
formation of a Christian colony in Gaul. For a long time, the pagan
superstition in the other parts of Gaul withstood the further spread of
Christianity. Even so late as the middle of the third century, few
Christian communities were to be found there. According to the nar-
rative of the French historian, Gregory of Tours, seven missionaries
came, at that time, to Gaul from Rome, and established communities
in seven cities, over which they became bishops. One of these was
that Dionysius, first bishop of the community at Paris, whom the later
legends confounded with Dionysius the Areopagite, who was converted
by the Apostle Paul at Athens. -Gregory of Tours, who wrote near
the end of the sixth century, m a time when so many fables were propa-
gated respecting the origm of church communities, is, we allow, no
eredible witness; at the same time there may be some truth lying at
the ground of this account. One of these seven, Saturnin, founder of
the community at Toulouse, becomes known to us by a much older
document, —the relation of his martyrdom.
Irenzeus, who became bishop of the community at Lyons sometime
after the above mentioned persecution of 177, speaks of the spread of
Christianity in Germany.’ But we must here distinguish the different
parts of Germany, — the districts in subjection to the Roman empire,
and the still larger portion of free, independent Germany. Very easily
might it happen, that a seed of Christianity should find its way into the
first of the countries just mentioned, on account of their connection with
the province of Gaul. But the case was quite different with those
hardy tribes, that so fiercely maintained their ancient state of rudeness
and freedom, and repelled everything from abroad. Irenzus, it is
1 Apologet.c. 1. Obsessam vociferantur ditionem, et jam dignitatem transgredi ad
civitatem ; in agris,in castellis,in insulis hoc nomen.
Christianos; omnem sexum, etatem, con- 2 Cap. 4.
8 Adv. Her. 1.1. ο. 10
SPAIN. BRITAIN. 85
true, says elsewhere,! “‘ Many tribes of the barbarians have the words
of salvation, written in their hearts, without paper and mk, by the Holy
Ghost.”’? He recognized, in the efficacious power of Christianity, its
distinguishing nature, by virtue of which, it could reach men in every
stage of cultivation, and by its divine energy penetrate to their hearts;
but it is also certain, that Christianity would nowhere long maintain
itself with purity, in its distinguishing essence, unless it entered deep
into the whole intellectual development of the people, and unless, along
with the divine life proceeding from it, it gave an impulse, at the same
time, to all human culture.
The same Lrenzeus is the first who speaks of the diffusion of Christ-
lanity in Spain, (ἐν ταῖς ᾿Ι1βηρίαις.) The tradition, which we find
already at the beginning of the fourth century in Eusebius,’ that the
Apostle Paul had preached the gospel in Spain, cannot, it is true, be
received as credible testimony ; for in those times the propensity was
but too strong to convert suppositions, inferences and conjectures, not
always rightly formed, into facts; and so what St. Paul himself writes,
(Romans xv. 24,) concerning his intention, might easily give occasion
to this report. But when the Roman Bishop, Clemens, says,‘ that the
Apostle Paul went as far as the bounds of the West, (τέρμα τῆς δύσεως.")
the expression can hardly be understood as referring to Rome ; indeed, it
most naturally applies only to Spain ; and as Clemens was probably him-
self a disciple of the Apostle,it cannot possibly be supposed that he would
be deceived in the same manner as might happen with those who came
after him. It must be admitted, we find no room for a journey of the
Apostle Paul to Spain, unless we suppose that he was set free from his
imprisonment mentioned in the Acts, and after his release carried the
purpose into effect, which he had previously announced. but this we
must of necessity suppose, if we acknowledge the genuineness of the
second epistle to Timothy, and cannot bring ourselves to consent to
very tortuous interpretations of single passages.
Of the extension of Christianity thus early also to Britain, Tertul-
han is a witness;® although in that quite rhetorically expressed
passage, that the gospel had penetrated already into those parts of
Britain not subjected to the Roman dominion, the truth may be some-
what exaggerated. A later tradition, im Bede, of the eighth century,
reports that Lucius, a British king, requested the Roman bishop
Eleutherus, in the latter part of the second century, to send him some
missionaries. But the peculiarity of the later British church is evi-
dence against its origin from Rome; for in many ritual matters it
departed from the usage of the Romish church, and agreed much more
nearly with the churches of Asia Minor. It withstood, for a long
time, the authority of the Romish papacy. ‘This circumstance would
1L. III. c. 4. against all the forced interpretations of
2 Sine charta et atramento scriptam ha- these words, which have been set forth of
bentes per Spiritum in cordibus suis salutem. late. See my History of the Planting, ete
ele Le. 10, § 2. Vol. I. p. 455.
4 Ep. I v. δ. 6 Adv. Jud. c. 7.
5 We cannot avoid once more protesting
VOL. I.
86 PERSECUTION. ITS CAUSES.
seem to indicate, that the Britons had received their Christianity,
either immediately or through Gaul, from Asia Minor, —a thing quite
possible and easy, by means of the commercial intercourse. The later
Anglo-Saxons, who opposed the spirit of ecclesiastical independence
among the Britons, and endeavored to establish the church supremacy
of Rome, were uniformly inclined to trace back the church establish-
ments to a Roman origin; from which effort many false legends as well
as this might have arisen.
We now pass over to the conflicts which the church within the Ro-
man empire had to sustain with the state.
3. Persecutions of the Christian Church.
First, the Causes of them.
It is quite important to a just understanding of the nature of these
persecutions, to be rightly informed, in the first place, of their causes.
Many have been surprised, that the Romans, a people in other respects
so tolerant, should exhibit so impatient and persecuting a spirit against
the Christians; but whatever is said about the religious tolerance of
the Romans, must be understood with considerable restriction. The
ideas of man’s universal rights, of universal religious freedom and
hberty of conscience, were quite alien to the views of the whole
ancient world. Nor could it be otherwise ; since the idea of the state
was the highest idea of ethics, and within that was included all actual
realization of the highest good: — hence the development of all other
goods pertaming to humanity was made dependent on this. ‘Thus the
religious element also was subordinated to the political. There were
none but state religions and national gody It was first and only
Christianity that could overcome this principle of antiquity, release
men from the bondage of the world, subvert particularism and the
all-subjecting force of the political element, by its own generalizing
Theism, by the awakened consciousness of the oneness of God’s image
in all, by the idea of the kingdom of God, as the highest good, compre-
hending all other goods in itself, which was substituted in place of the
state as the realization of the highest good, whereby the state was
necessitated to recognize a higher power over itself. Looked at from
this pot of view, which was the one actually taken by the ancient
world, a defection from the religion of the state could not appear other-
wise than as a crime against the state.?
Now all this must be especially true, in its application to the one-
sided political principle which swallowed up every other interest,
peculiar to the ancient Romanism. We recognize this principle in
what Cicero lays down as a fundamental maxim of legislation.2? No
1 As Varro had before distinguished a
theologia philosophica et vera, a theologia
poetica et mythica, and a theologia civilis,
80 Dio Chrysostom, who flourished in the
tirst half of the second century, (orat. 12,)
distinguishes three sources of religion; the
universal religious consciousness, the ἔμφυ-
τος ἅπασιν ἀνϑρώποις ἐπίνοια ; poetry end
morality left to propagate itself in freedom ;
and legislation, which constrains, threatens
and punishes, — τὸ νομοϑετικὺν, TO ἀναγ-
Kaiov, TO μετὰ ζημίας Kai προστώξεων ; —
although he rightly fixes upon the first only,
as the universal and original source, whence
all the rest has been derived.
2 De legib. 1. Il. ¢. 8.
PERSECUTION. ITS CAUSES. 81
man shall have for himself particular gods of his own; no man shall
worship by himself any new or foreign gods, unless they are recognized
by the public laws, (uisi publice adscitos.) Although the ancient
laws in the times of the emperors were no longer so strictly observed,
although foreign customs had been constantly gammg ground in Rome,
and the ancient policy no less constantly declining, yet now there were
many additional reasons to those which had previously existed, for
guarding against the introduction of new religions. There prevailed,
indeed, at this time, a sensitive dread of every thing with which a
political aim could be connected, and the jealousy of despotism could
be easily induced to suspect political aims, even where nothing of the
kind was intended. Religion and religious associations seemed well
calculated to serve as a cover for political plots and conspiracies.
Hence the advice of Mzcenas to Augustus, in the well known dis-
course reported by Dio Cassius, where, although the very words of
Meecenas may not be used, yet the historian expresses the prevailing
views of the Roman state at this period. ‘* Worship the gods in all
respects according to the laws of your country, and compel all others
to do the same. But hate and punish those who would introduce any
thing whatever, alien to our customs in this particular; not alone for
the sake of the gods, because whoever despises them is incapable of
reverence for any thing else ; but because such persons, by introducing
new divinities, mislead many to adopt also foreign laws. Hence con-
Spiracies and secret combinations, —the last things to be borne in a
monarchy. Suffer no man either to deny the gods,! or to practise
sorcery.”? The Roman civilian, Julius Paulus, cites, as one of the ruling
principles of civil law in the Roman state, the following: ‘‘ Whoever
introduced new religions, the tendency and character of which were
unknown, whereby the minds of men might be disturbed,? should, if
belonging to the higher rank, be banished; if to the lower, punished
with death.’ Itis easy to see, that Christianity, which produced so
great, and to the Roman statesman so unaccountable an agitation in the
minds of men, must fall into this class of religiones nove. We have
presented here, then, the two points of view, under which Christianity
came necessarily into collision with the laws of the state. 1. Jt
induced Roman citizens to renounce the religion of the state, to the
observance of which they were bound by the laws, —to refuse compliance
with the * cerimonias Romanas.”” Hence many of the magistrates,
who felt no personal antipathy to Christianity, explained to Christians,
when arraigned before them, that they might comply, at least out-
wardly, with what the laws required; viz. observe the religious
ceremonies prescribed by the state ; that the state was concerned only
with the outward act, and in case that were performed, they might
believe and worship in their heart, whatever they chose; or that they
might continue to worship their own God, provided only they would
worship the Roman gods also. 2. Jt introduced a new religion, not
1 ᾿Αϑέῳ εἶναι, the very term applied to 2 De quibus animi hominum moyentur.
the Christians
88 PERSECUTION. ITS CAUSES.
admitted by the laws of the state into the class of religiones licite.
Hence the common taunt of the pagans against the Christians, accord.
ing to Tertullian; non licet esse vos —“‘ you are not permitted by the
laws;”’ and Celsus accuses them of secret compacts, contrary to the
laws.1
Without doubt, the Romans did exercise a certain religious tol-
eration, but it was a toleration not to be separated from their poly-
theistic religious notions and their civil policy, and which, by its own
nature, could not be applied to Christianity. They were in the habit
of securing to the nations they had conyuered, the free exercise of
their own religions,” inasmuch as they hoped by so doing to gain them
over more completely to their mterests, and also to make the gods of
those nations their friends. The Romans, who were religiously inclined,
attributed their sovereignty of the world to this policy of conciliating
the gods of every nation. Even without the limits of their own
country, individuals of these nations were allowed the free exercise of
their opinions ; and hence Rome, mto which there was a constant influx
of strangers from all quarters of the world, became the seat of every
description of religion. ‘‘ Men of a thousand nations,” says Dionysius
of Halicarnassus,‘ ‘‘ come, to the city, and must worship the gods of their
country, according to the prevailing laws at home.” It doubtless
happened, that with certain modifications, many things taken from
these foreign modes of worship, were introduced into the public worship
of the Roman state; but then a special decree of the senate was
requisite, before any Roman citizen could be allowed to jom in the
observance of any such foreign rites. At this particular period, indeed,
when the authority of all national religions was on the wane; when
the unsatisfied religious need required and sought some new thing; and
this was offered by the conflux of strangers from all countries into
Rome ; it was frequently the case, that Romans adopted the forms of
those foreign modes of worship, which did not as yet belong to the
religions recognized by the state (to the religionibus publice adscitis :)
but this was an irregularity, which such as possessed any portion of the
old Roman spirit attributed to the corruptions of the times and the
decline of ancient manners. Like many other evils, which could not
be suppressed, it was left unnoticed. The change, moreover, might be
the less strikmg, since those who had adopted the foreign rites,
observed at the same time the Roman ceremonies. Occasionally,
however, when the evil threatened to get the upper hand, or when a
zeal was awakened in behalf of the ancient manners and civic virtues,
laws were passed for restraining profane rites (ad coercendos profanos
ritus) and repressing the growth of foreign superstitions, (the
1'Q¢e συνϑήκας κρύβδην παρὰ τὰ vevo- τὰ οἰκεῖα τιμῶσιν ἄγειν καὶ διαζῇν. Joseph.
μισμένα ποιουμένων. Τ,. 1. ο. 1. Archeol. 1. XVI. ο. 2. § 4.
2 See the words of Marcus Agrippa, in 8 See the Pagan’s language in Minucius
his plea for the religious freedom of the Felix, and in Aristides’ Encom. Rome.
Jews: Τὴν εὐδαιμονίαν, ἣν νῦν τὸ σύμπαν 4 386. Aristid. 1. 6. and Dionys. Halicar-
TOV ἀνϑρώπων “γένος δὶ ὑμᾶς ἔχει τούτῳ nass. Archeol. 1. II. ς. 19.
μετροῦμεν, τῷ ἐξεῖναι κατὰ χώραν ἑκάστοις
PERSECUTION. ITS CAUSES. 89
valescere superstitiones externas ;!) every religion, not Roman, being
regarded as a superstition by the Roman statesman. With these
views, it is clear that the best emperors, who were seeking to restore
the old life of the Roman state, must therefore be hostile to Christ-
lanity, which appeared to them only as a superstitio externa; while
worse rulers, with nothing of the old Roman spirit, but at the same
time not rising above the prejudices of a contracted nationality, might,
from indifference to the old Roman policy in general, calmly look on
when Christianity was making encroachments on all sides.
The Jews also had the free and undisturbed exercise of their religion
secured to them by decrees of the senate and imperial edicts, and the
God of the Jews was regarded by many as a powerful national God ;
they accused the people “only of narrow-heartedness and intolerance,
because they hostilely excluded the worship of other gods; or they
found a reason for this in the jealous character of that Being himself,
who would have no other gods beside him. Judaism was a religio
licita tor the Jews; and hence the Christians were reproached, as if
they had contrived, by appearing as a Jewish sect, to slip in at first
under the cover of a tolerated religion.2 Yet for ‘all this, the Jews
were by no means allowed to propagate their religion among the
Jtioman pagans ; — the laws expressly forbade the latter, under severe
penalties, to receive circumcision. It was the case, indeed, at this
time, that the number of proselytes from the pagans was greatly multi-
plied. This the public authorities sometimes allowed to pass unnoticed ;
but occasionally severe laws were passed anew to repress the evil; as
for instance, by the senate under the emperor Tiberius,? by Antoninus
Pius, by Septimius Severus.
The case was altogether different with Christianity. Here was no
ancient, national form of worship, as in all the other religions. Christ-
lanity appeared rather as a defection from a religeo leita, —an
insurrection against a venerable national faith. This is brought as a
charge against the Christians, in the spirit of the prevailing mode of
thinking, by Celsus.2 “The Jews,” he says, ‘are a nation by them-
selves, and they observe the sacred institutions of their country, —
whatever they may be,— and in so doing, act like other men. It is
right for every people to reverence their ancient laws; but to desert
them is a crime.’’ Hence the very common taunt thrown out against
the Christians, that they were neither one thing nor the other, neither
Jews nor pagans, but genus tertium. A religion for mankind must
have appeared, — as viewed from that position of antiquity according
1 Tacitus places together, in a proposition
to the senate, the phrases “ Publica circa
bonas artes socordia, et quia externe super-
stitiones valescant.” Annal. 1]. XI. ¢. 15.
A lady of rank is accused as superstitionis
ren. ‘Annal. 1. XIII. ¢. 32.
* Sub umbraculo religionis saltem licite.
— Tertullian.
ὅ The senatus consultum de sacris Zgyp-
tiis Jud: τρί pellendis. Tacit. Annal.
ΑἸ Ὁ,
9:
£A religion proceeding from an ἐστασια-
κέναι πρὸς τὸ κοινὸν τῶν ᾿Ιουδαΐων. ce. Cels.
l. IIL. ec. 7. For keeping the Christians
united together ἀξιόχρεως ὕὑπόϑεσις oTU-
ac: «6G, Lib c7i&
5 Δεῖν πάντας ἀνϑρώπους κατὰ τὰ πάτρια
ζῇν, οὐκ ἀν μεμφϑέντας ἐπὶ τουτῷ. Χριστι-
ανοὺς δὲ τὰ πάτρια καταλιπόντας καὶ οὐχ’
ἕν τι τυγχανόντας ἔϑνος ὡς "Ιουδαῖοι, ἐγκτή-
τως προστίϑεσϑαι τῇ τοῦ ᾿Ιησου διδασκαλ-
hie, | Ta Ve) Bb.
90 PERSECUTION. ITS CAUSES.
to which every nation had its own particular religion, —a thing con-
trary to nature, threatening the dissolution of all existing order. The
man that can believe it possible, — says Celsus,—for Greeks and
Barbarians, in Asia, Europe and Lybia, to agree in one code of religious
laws, must be quite void of understanding.! But what had been held
impossible, seemed more likely every day to be realized. It was now
perceived, that Christianity steadily made progress among people of
every rank, and threatened to overthrow the religion of the state,
together with the constitution of civil society which seemed closely
interwoven with the same. Nothing else remained, therefore, but
to oppose the inward power, which men were unwilling to acknowledge,
by outward force. As well the whole shape and form of the Christian
worship, as the dea of a religion for mankind, stood in direct contra-
diction with the point of religious development hitherto attained. It
excited suspicion:to observe, that the Christians had nothing of all
that which men were accustomed to find m every other form of wor-
ship ; nothing of all that which the Jews had in common with the
pagans. So Celsus calls it the countersign of a secret compact, of an
invisible order, that the Christians alone would have no altars, images
or temples.2_ Again, the intimate brotherly union which prevailed
among the Christians, the circumstance that every one among them, in
every town where fellow-believers dwelt, immediately found friends,
who were dearer to him than all the friends of this world — this was
something that men could not comprehend.? The Roman police were
utterly unable to fathom the nature of the bond which so united the
Christians with one another.. The jealousy of despotism could every-
where easily see or fear political aims. Τὸ the Roman statesman, who
had no conception of the rights of conscience, the unbending will,
which could be forced by no fear and by no tortures to yield obedience
to the laws of the state in reference to religion, to perform the pre-
scribed ceremonies, appeared a blind obstinacy, inflexibilis obstinatio,
as men called it. But such an unconquerable wilfulness must have
presented itself to those rulers, who were accustomed to servile
obedience, as something extremely dangerous ; and many would sooner
pardon in the Christians their defection from the worship of the gods,
than their want of reverence for the emperors, in declining to take any
part in those idolatrous demonstrations of homage which pagan flattery
had invented, such as sprinkling their,images with mcense, and swear-
ing by their genius, ‘I will assuredly,” said Tertullian, “ call the
emperor my lord— but im the common acceptation— but when I am
not forced to call him Lord in the place of God. In other respects, I
am free of him; for I have only one Lord — the Almighty and eternal
God —the same who is also the emperor’s Lord. How should he
wish to be the Lord, who is the father of his country?”?* Whata
1 His words are: Ὁ τοῦτο οἰόμενος οἷδεν
οὐδὲν. L. VIII. c. 72.
2 Πιστὸν ἀφανοῦς καὶ ἀποῤῥῆτου κοινω-
νίας σύνϑημα. L. ΜΠ]. c. 17.
3 See the language of the pagan in Mi-
nucius Felix, cited above, at page 76.
* Dicam plane imperatorem dominum,
sed more communi, sed quando non cogor
ut dominum Dei vice dicam. Czterum
liber sum illi, dominus enim meus unus est,
Deus omnipotens, et zternus, idem qui et
ipsius. Qui pater patriz est, quomodo
dominus est? Apologet. ο. 34.
PERSECUTION. ITS CAUSES. 91
contrast to this free, high-hearted spirit of the Christians, is offered in
the sort of language with which the supercilious and self-conceited
philosopher, Celsus, addresses them: ‘* Why should it be a wrong thing,
then, to acquire favor with the rulers among men, since these have
been exalted to the control over the things of this world, not without a
divine providence? And when it is required of you to swear by the
emperor among men, there is nothing so mischievous in this; for what-
ever you receive in life, you receive from him.”’* Whenever, on the
anniversary of the emperor’s accession to the throne, or at the celebra-
tion of a triumph, public festivals were appomted, in which all were
expected to participate, the Christians alone kept away, to avoid that
which was calculated to wound their religious or moral feelmgs, which
was uncongenial with the temper of mind inspired by their faith. It
cannot be denied that, in this case, many went to an extreme, and
shrunk from joining even in such demonstrations of respect and of joy
as contained in them nothing that was repugnant to Christian faith and
decorum, because they were associated in their minds with the pagan
religion and manners, — such, for example, as the illumination of their
dwellings, and the decorating them with festoons of laurel. On one
occasion, a certain sum of money was distributed by the emperor as a
gratuity among the soldiers. All presented themselves, as was cus-
tomary, with garlands on their heads, for the purpose of receiving their
portion; but one Christian soldier came with the garland in his hand,
because he held the practice of crowning to be a pagan rite. Such
acts were, indeed, but overdoings of individuals or of a party ; — where, -
however, the earnest temper at bottom might deserve respect ;— and the
majority were far from approving such excess of zeal: but the mistake
of individuals was easily laid to the charge of all. Hence the accusa-
tion, so dangerous in those times, of high treason, (crimen majestatis, )
which was brought against the Christians. Men called them “ irrever-
ent to the Czesars, enemies of the Czsars, of the Roman people”
Cirreligiosos in Czesares, hostes Czesarum, hostes populi Romani.) In
like manner, when only a minor party among the Christians regarded
the occupation of a soldier as incompatible with the nature of Christian
love and of the Christian calling, it was converted into an accusation
against all, and against Christianity generally. ‘‘ Does not the em-
peror punish you justly?’ says Celsus; ‘‘ for should all do like you,
he would be left alone, —there would be none to defend him ; the
rudest barbarians would make themselves masters of the world, and
every trace, as well of your own religion itself, as of true wisdom,
would be obliterated from the human race ; for believe not that your
supreme God would come down from heaven and fight for us.” ὃ
1 Τοὺς ἐν ἀνϑρώποις δυνάστας καὶ βασι-
λέας ἐξ :ευμενίζεσϑαι.
2 Δέδοται γὰρ τούτῳ τὰ ἐπὶ γῆς, καὶ ὅτι
ἄν λαμβάνῃς ἐν τῷ βίῳ, παρὰ τούτου λαμβά-
vere. c. Cels. 1. ὙΠ: c. 63 et 67.
8 Tertullian, in his book, de idololatria,
complains because so many Christians had
no hesitation to take a share in such festiv-
ities. Christ, he observes, had said, Let your
works shine, at nunc lucent taberne et
januze nostre, plures jam invenies ethnico-
rum fores sine lucernis et laureis, quam
Christianorum. De idololatria, ο. 15.
4 Tertullian wrote his book, “de corona
militis,” in defence of this soldier against
the accusations he met with from his fellow-
believers.
5 L. VIIL. c. 68.
92 PERSECUTION. ITS CAUSES.
If the Christians were accused generally of morosely withdrawing
themselves from the world and from the courtesies of civil and social
life, this charge was grounded partly in the relation itself of Christianity
to paganism, as that relation was present to each one’s own conscious-
ness; but in part also to a certain one-sided tendency, growing in the
first place out of the development of the Christian life in its opposition
to the pagan world. So the Christians were represented as men dead
to the world, and useless for all affairs of life;+ dumb in public—
loquacious among themselves; and it was asked, what would become
of the business of life, if all were like them?
Of this kind were the causes by which the Roman state was moved
to persecute the Christians ; but all persecutions did not proceed from
the state. Zhe Christians were often victims of the popular rage.
The populace saw in them the enemies of their gods; and this was the
same thing as to have no religion at all. The deniers of the gods, the
atheists, (ἄϑεοι,) was the common name by which the Christians were
designated among the people; and of such men the vilest and most
improbable stories could easily gain belief: — that in their conclaves
they were accustomed to abandon themselves to unnatural lust; that
they killed and devoured children ;— accusations which we find circu-
lated, in the most diverse periods, against religious sects that have
once become objects of the fanatic hatred of the populace. The
reports of disaffected slaves, or of those from whom torture had wrung
the confession desired, were next employed to support these absurd
charges, and to justify the rage of the populace. If in hot climates
the long absence of ram brought on a drought; if in Egypt the Nile
failed to irrigate the fields ; if in Rome the Tiber overflowed its banks;
if a contagious disease was raging ; if an earthquake, a famine, or any
other public calamity occurred, the popular rage was easily turned
against the Christians. ‘‘ We may ascribe this,” was the ery, *‘ to the
anger of the gods on account of the spread of Christianity.” Thus it
had become a proverb in North Africa, according to Augustine, “ If
there is no rain, tax it on the Christians.” 2 And what wonder is it
that the people so judged, when one who claimed to be a philosopher,
when a Porphyry assigned as the cause why no stop could be put to a
contagious and desolating sickness, that by reason of the spread of
Christianity, Esculapius’ influence on the earth was over.
There was, besides, no want of individuals who were ready to excite
the popular rage against the Christians ; priests, artisans and others,
who, like Demetrius in the Acts, drew their gains from idolatry ;
magicians, who beheld their juggling tricks exposed; sanctimonious
Cynics, who found their hypocrisy unmasked by the Christians. When, _
in the time of the emperor Marcus Aurelius, the magician whose life
has been written by Lucian, Alexander of Abonoteichus, observed that
his tricks had ceased to create any sensation in the cities, he exclaimed,
ςς The Pontus is filled with atheists and Christians ;”’ and called on the
1 Homines infructuosi in negotio, in publico muti, in angulis garruli. See the words of
the Pagan in Minucius Felix.
2 Non pluit Deus, duc ad Christianos.
CHRISTIANS UNDER TIBERIUS. ᾿ 93
people to stone them, if they did not wish to draw down on themselves
the anger of the gods. He would never exhibit his arts before the
people, until he had first proclaimed, “If any Atheist, Christian or
Epicurean has slipped in here as a spy, let him begone!”” An appeal
to popular violence seems, at this time, to have been considered the
most convenient course, by ¢he advocates of religion among the
pagans! Justin Martyr knew that Crescens, — one of the common
Pseudo-cynics of the period, who were sanctimonious demagogues, —
attempted to stir up the people against the Christians ; and that he
had threatened Justin’s own life, because he had stripped him of his
disguise.
From these remarks on the causes of the persecutions, the conclu-
sion is obvious, that until Christianity had been received, by express
laws of the State, into the class of lawful religions, (religiones licite,)
the Christians could not enjoy any general and certain tranquillity in
the exercise of their religion; within the Roman empire they were
constantly exposed to the rage of the populace and to the malice of
individuals. We shall now proceed to consider the ever-changing
situation of the Christian church, under the governments of the
several emperors who were so differently affected towards it.
4. Situation of the Christian Church under the several Emperors.
It is related by Tertullian,? of the emperor Tiberius, that he was
moved by Pilate’s report concerning the miracles of Christ and his
resurrection, to propose to the senate, that Christ should be received
among the gods of Rome; but that the senate set aside the proposition,
lest they might yield somewhat of their ancient prerogative of decidmg
all matters relatmg to “new religions,’ upon their own movement
(e motu proprio;) that the emperor, however, did not wholly desist
from his object, but went so far at least, as to threaten with severe pen-
alties all such as should accuse the Christians on the ground of their
religion. But an author so wanting in critical judgment as Tertullian,
cannot possibly be received as a credible witness for a story which
wears on its face all the marks of untruth. Should the account be
considered as an exaggerated one, but as still having some slight
measure of truth at its foundation, even such an hypothesis could not
be maintained; though it amounted to no more than this, that the
emperor once proposed to grant to the Christians a free toleration. It
is neither credible, on the ground of Pilate’s character, that what he
saw in Christ left on him any such lasting impression as this account
assumes ; nor is it probable that any such effect would have been pro-
duced by his report on the mind of Tiberius. Certainly it would not
be in keeping with the servile character of the senate under Tiberius, for
them to act, as they must have acted, according to this account; and
as there were no accusers as yet of a Christian sect, there was no
occasion for passing a law against such accusers. In fact, the succeed-
ing history shows that no such previous law of Tiberius could have
1 See the Timocles in Lucian’s Jupiter Tragoed. 2 Apologet. c. 5 et 21
94 CHRISTIANS UNDER CLAUDIUS.
existed. Probably Tertullian had allowed himself to be deceived by
some spurious document.
At first, the Christians were confounded with the Jews; conse-
quently, the order issued under the emperor Claudius, in the year 53,
for the banishment of the turbulent Jews, would involve the Christians
also, if there were any at that time in Rome, and if Christianity made
its first converts there among Jews, who continued to observe the Jew-
ish customs. Suetonius says, “‘ the emperor Claudius expelled the
Jews from Rome, who were constantly raising disturbances, at the
instigation of Chrestus.’”?! We could suppose, that some factious Jew
then living, of this name, one of the numerous class of Jewish freedmen
in Rome, was intended. But as no individual so universally known as
the Chrestus of Suetonius seems to have been considered by that writer,
is elsewhere mentioned ; and as the name of Christus (zgloros) was
frequently pronounced Chrestus (χρήστος) by the pagans; it 1s quite
probable that Suetonius, who wrote half a century after the event,
throwing together what he had heard about the political expectations
of a Messiah among the Jews, and the obscure and confused accounts
which may have reached him respecting Christ, was thus led to express
himself in a manner so vague and indefinite.
Christianity meanwhile, had been continually making progress among
the pagans in the Roman empire; and the worship of God, shaped
according to the principles of the apostle Paul, rendered it no longer
possible to mistake the Christians for a Jewish sect. Such was the
case particularly with the Roman communities, as the persecution, soon
to be mentioned, shows; for this could not have arisen, if the Christ-
jans, as men who were descended from Jews and observed the Mosaic
laws, had been held to be simply a sect of that people. They must
have already drawn on themselves, m the capital of the world, the
fanatical hatred of the populace, as the tertiwm genus, neither one
thing nor the other. Already had the popular feeling given currency
to those monstrous reports above noticed, of unnatural crimes to which
the secret sect of these enemies of the gods abandoned themselves.”
It was not the principles of the civil law of the empire, —it was this
popular hate, which furnished the occasion for this first persecution of
the Christians in Rome. But its immediate cause was something
wholly accidental; and that precisely so reckless a monster as Nero
must be the first persecutor of the Christians, was hkewise owing im-
mediately to a concurrence of accidental circumstances. Yet there
was something intrinsically significant in the fact, that the individual by
whom the renunciation of everything on the side of the divine and
moral was most completely carried out, that the impersonation of
creaturely will revolting against all higher order, must give the first im-
pulse to the persecution of Christianity. |
The moving cause which led Nero, in the year 64, to vent his fury
against the Christians, was originally nothing else than a wish to divert
1Jmpulsore Chresto assidue tumultuan- (Annal. 1. XV. ο. 44,) “per flagitia invisos,
tes Roma expulit. quos vulgus Christianos appellabat,” must
2 We believe the passage in Tacitus, have reference to these reports.
CHRISTIANS UNDER NERO. 95
from himself the suspicion of being the author of the conflagration of
Rome, and to fix the guilt on others ; and as the Christians were already
become objects of popular hatred, and the fanatic mob were prepared
to believe them capable of any shameful crime that might be charged
upon them, such an accusation, if brought against the Christians,
would be most easily credited.t He could make himself popular by
the sufferings inflicted on a class of men hated by the people, and at the
same time secure a new gratification for his satanic cruelty. All being
seized whom the popular hate had stigmatized as Christians, and there-
fore profligate men,? it might easily happen that some who were not
really Christians would be included in the number.?
Those arrested ag Christians were now, by the emperor’s commands,
executed in the most cruel manner. Some were crucified; others
sewn up in the skins of wild beasts and exposed to be torn in pieces by
dogs; others, again, had their garments smeared over with some com-
bustible material, and were then set on fire to illuminate the public
gardens at night.
This persecution was not, indeed, in its immediate effects, a general
one; but fell exclusively on the Christians in Rome, accused as the
meendiaries of the city. Yet what had occurred in the capital, could
not fail of bemg attended with serious consequences affecting the situa-
tion of the Christians, — whose religion, moreover, was an unlawful one,
— throughout all the provinces.
The impression which this first and truly horrible persecution, by
a man who presented so noticeable a contrast with the great historical
phenomenon of Christianity, left behind it, endured for a long time on
the minds of the Christians. Nor was it altozether without tr uth, when
the image of the Antichrist, — the representative of that last reaction of
the power of ungodliness against the divine government and against
Christianity, — was transferred to so collossal an exhibition of self-will
rebelling against all holy restramts, and even passing over to i side
of the unnatural,* as was presented in the character of Nero. It may
often be observed, that the impression left by a man in whom an impor-
tant principle, connected with the history of the world, has manifested
ΠῚ Abolendo rumori subdidit reos, says
Tacitus of Nero.
2 Quos per flagitia invisos vulgus Chris-
tianos appellabat, says Tacitus.
3 In the interpretation of Tacitus’ account
of this transaction, several points may be
doubtful. When he says, Primo correpti,
qui fatebantur, the question arises, what did
they confess ?—that they had set the fire,
or that they were Christians? When he
says, Deinde judicio eorum multitudo ingens
haud perinde in crimine incendii, quam
odio humani generis convicti sunt, the
question occurs, does the latter refer to all,
to those that “ confessed,” as well as the rest,
—so that, by Tacitus, all are pronounced
free from the alleged crime of being the
authors of the conflagration; or do the words
refer only to the multitudo ingens, so that
the first named class, qui fatebantur, were
designated as being really guilty of setting
fire to the city? If the latter be the case,
and if the fatert is to be referred to the
incendium, and this account deserves conti-
dence throughout, we must conceive here
of persons actually employed by Nero for
the perpetration of the deed ; — not Chris-
tians, but such as the people designated by
the name of Christians, — hated, abomina-
ble men. These, perhaps with the hope of
bettering their fate, may then have de-
nounced. many others as Christians, among
whom may have been some who really
were, and others who were not such,
4A characteristic trait of Nero
scribed by ‘Tacitus, —“ incredil: ..
pitor.” Annal. 1. XV. c. 42.
1S de-
um Cue
90 CHRISTIANS UNDER DOMITIAN.
itself, or from whom a great power of destruction has gone forth, is not
so immediately effaced, nor room allowed for the thought that such a
person has really ceased to exist; as we see in the examples of the
emperor Hrederic II., and of Napoleon. So it was in the ease of this
monstrous exhibition of the power of evil. The rumor prevailed among
the heathen people, that Nero was not dead, but had retired to some
place of secrecy, from which he would again make his appearance,! — a
rumor which several adventurers and impostors took advantage of for
their own ends. Now this rumor assumed also a Christian dress, and it
ran, that Nero had retired beyond the Euphrates, and would return as
the Antichrist,? to finish what he had already begun, the destruction of
that Babylon, the capital of the world.
Since the despotic Domitian, who ascended the imperial throne in 81,
was in the practice of encouraging informers, and of removing out of the
way, under various pretexts, those persons who had excited his suspicions
or his cupidity, the charge of embracing Christianity would, in this reign,
be the most common one after that of high treason (crimen majestatis.”)
In consequence of such accusations, many were condemned to death, or
to the confiscation of their property and banishment to an island.‘
The emperor moreover was secretly informed that two individuals
were living in Palestine, of the race of David and Jesus, who were
engaged in seditious undertakings. The seditious tendency of the
Jewish expectations of a Messiah were already well known, and the
language of the Christians, in speaking of the kingdom of Christ, was
often misunderstood.® He caused the individuals who had been accused
to be brought before him, and convinced himself that they were poor,
innocent countrymen, quite incapable of engaging in any political
schemes; he therefore allowed them to return in peace to their homes.®
But from this, certainly, it cannot be inferred, that the emperor re-
voked those measures which had been adopted against the Christians
generally, and which had another motive.’
The emperor Nerva, who assumed the government in the year 96,
was by the natural justice and philanthropy of his character, an enemy
to that whole system of information and sycophancy which had been
the occasion of so much evil in the time of his predecessors. ‘This of
1 The words of Tacitus are: Vario super
exitu ejus rumore eoque pluribus vivere
eum fingentibus credentibusque. Hist. 1.
E68:
2In the Pseudo-Sibylline books: Ei7’
avaxauwet ἰσάζων ϑεῷ αὑτόν.
8 The words of Dio Cassius, 1. LX VII.
5.14: ἔγκλημα ἀϑεότητος, ὑφ᾽ ἧς καὶ ἄλλοι
εἰς τὰ τῶν Ιουδαίων ἤϑη ἐξοκέλλοντες πολ-
λοὶ κατεδικάσϑησαν. The uniting of the
charge of ἀϑεότης with that of an inclina-
tion to Jewish customs, may have allusion
to Christianity, if ἀϑεότης is not to be un-
derstood as barely referring to the denial of
the gods of the state religion. At all
events, the charge of ἀϑεότης, if applied to
the embracing of Judaism, which was at
least the worship of a well-known national
god, and for the Jews a lawful religion,
could, a fortiori, be brought against the con-
version to Christianity.
4 Besides Dio Cassius, another historian
cited in the chronicle of Eusebius, namely,
Bruttius, says that many suffered martyr-
dom under the reign of this emperor.
5 For evidence of this, see Justin Martyr,
(Apolog. 1. IL ¢ 58.) ᾿Ακούσαντες βασι-
λείαν προσδοκῶντας ἡμᾶς, ἀκρίτως avo po-
πινον λέγειν ἡμᾶς ὑπειλήφατε.
6 Hegesippus in Euseb. 1. III. c. 19 and 20.
7 Tertullian certainly expresses himself
in too general a manner, when he says,
(Apologet. c 5,) that Domitian made but
one attempt to persecute the Christians ;
but that he desisted from his purpose, and
recalled those that had been banished.
CHRISTIANS UNDER NERVA. UNDER TRAJAN. YT
itself was favorable to the Christians, inasmuch as the crime of passing
over to their religion had been one of the most common subjects of
accusation. Nerva set at liberty those who had been condemned on
charges of this nature, and recalled such as had been banished; he
caused all the slaves and freedmen, who had appeared as accusers of
their masters, to be executed. He forbade generally the accusations
of slaves against their masters to be received. All this must have
operated favorably on the Christians, as the complaints brought against
them proceeded frequently from ill-disposed slaves. Accusations on
such accounts as had furnished the matter of the great number of con-
demnations under the preceding reign, were in general no longer to be
allowed; and among these Christianity was probably included. Thus
it is true, the complaints against the Christians must, during the short
reign of Nerya, have been suspended; yet no lasting tranquillity was
secured to them, since their religion was not recognized by any public
act as a religio licita ; and we may easily conceive, that if Christianity,
during these few years, could be diffused without opposition, the fury
of its enemies, which had been held in check, would break forth with
fresh violence on this emperor’s death.
These consequences ensued under the reign of Trajan, after the year
99; since this emperor, a statesman in the Roman sense, could not
overlook the encroachments on all sides of a religious community so
entirely repugnant in its character to the Roman spirit. And the law
issued by him against close, associations, (the Hetzerize,) for the pur-
pose of suppressing the factious element in many districts, might easily
be turned against the Christians, who formed a party so closely united
together. It was at this time, (A. D. 110,) the younger Pliny, whose
noble susceptibility to all purely human feelings shines forth so amiably
im his letters, came, as proconsul of Bithynia and Pontus, into countries
over which many Christians were dispersed. A great number of them
were arraigned before his tribunal. He was thrown into embarrass-
ment, as he had never before taken a share in such transactions ; as
there was no settled law on the matter, except the general principles of
the civil law of the empire, relating to “ religiones nove et peregrine,”
and as the number of the accused was so great; ‘for many,” he writes
to the emperor, ‘of all ages, of every rank, and of both sexes would
be involved in the danger; for the contagion of this superstition has
seized not only cities, but also, the villages and open country.” The
temples were deserted, the ordinary rites of worship could not for a
long time be celebrated, and victims for sacrifice were rarely purchased.?
Pliny, like a lover of justice, did not allow himself to prejudge the case,
but took all pains to inform himself as to the character of the Christian
sect. He questioned such as had for many years been separated from
the Christian community, and apostates are usually little inclined to
1 Dio Cassius mentions, in connection 2Plin. 1. X. ep. 97. Prope jam desolata
with the crimen majestatis, the charge of templa, sacra solennia diu intermissa, vic-
ἀσέβεια, also of the ἰουδαϊκὸς βιὸς, although tim, quarum adhuc rarissimus emtor in
certainly by ἀσέβεια, we are not to under- yeniebatur.
stand the ἀϑεότης, or Christianity.
VOL. I.
98 CHRISTIANS UNDER TRAJAN.
speak well of the society to which they formerly belonged. Following
the brutal custom of Roman justice, which paid no regard to man’s
universal rights, he applied torture to two female slaves, who held the
office of deaconesses in the Christian communities, for the purpose of
extorting from them the truth. And after all he could learn only, that
the Christians were in the custom of mecting together on a certain day,
(Sunday;) that they then united in a hymn of praise to their God,
Christ; and that they bound one another,!— not to the commission of
crimes,? — but to refrain from theft, from adultery; to be faithful mm
performing their promises, to withhold from none the property intrusted
to their keeping ;? that after this they separated, and met again in the
evening at a simple and innocent meal.* But these latter assemblies
had been discontinued m comphance with the emperor’s edict against
the Hetzeriz.
If we compare Pliny with his friend Tacitus, so far as it concerns
their relation to Christianity, the former distinguishes himself at once
by the greater freedom and impartiality of his judgment. ‘Tacitus,
without entering into any further investigation of the facts, allows him-
self to be swayed by his prejudices against everything not Roman,
against a religion coming from the Jews, the founder of which had been
executed by the order of a Roman governor, a religion which found so
many adherents among people of the lower class; he is carried away
by the popular reports which fell in with those prejudices. He reckons
Christianity among the many new and bad customs, which from all
quarters of the world flowed together and found sympathy in the great
capital, Rome.® He sees in it nothing but an exitiabilis superstitio, —
in the Christians, only homines per flagitiis invisos, — men hateful for
their crimes, and who deserved the severest punishments.® Pliny does
not allow himself to be hurried at once to a conclusion by his own
prejudices or prevailing rumors. He considers it his duty to enter ito
a careful investigation of the case, before he decides. The result of
his inquiry was favorable to the Christians, in so far as the judgment
was based on purely moral grounds, and the general right of mankind
to freedom in the worship of God was recognized. But Pliny shares in
common with Tacitus the partial and contracted views of the Roman
statesman, which prevented him from taking that elevated stand. He
‘sees m a religion which absorbs the whole interest of men, and makes
them forget everything else, nothing but a superstitio prava,’ — or as
we might express it, by converting the phrase into modern language, a
misty pietism. He requires, inasmuch as he looks upon religion as a
matter of the state, unconditional obedience to the laws of the empire.
1 An allusion to the baptismal vow, the
sacramentum militie Christians, to which
there is frequent reference in the practical
homilies.
2 A plain contradiction of those popular
rumors respecting the objects had in view in
the secret assemblies among the Christians.
8 Whoever by such a sin violated his
baptismal vow, was excluded from the fel-
lowship of the church.
4 Plainly in contradiction of the popular
rumors respecting those unnatural repasts
of the Christians, the epulee Thyestex.
5 Quo cuncta undique atrocia aut puden-
da confluunt celebranturque.
6 Sontes et novissima exempla meritos.
7 Not exitiabilis, because he was obliged
to acknowledge that the Christians were
blameless in their lives.
CHRISTIANS UNDER TRAJAN. 99
‘With the character of the religion he has nothing to do. Whatever that
might be, defiance of the imperial laws must be severely punished.?
The Christians must deny their faith, invoke the gods, offer incense
and pour out libations before the image of the emperor, together with
the images of the gods, and curse Christ. If they declined so. to do,
and, after having been thrice called upon, by the governor, to abjure
their faith, continued steadfastly to confess that they were Christians
and would remain so, Pliny condemned them to death, as obstinate
confessors of a religio illicita, who dared publicly defy the laws of the
empire. They who complied with the governor’s terms, were pardoned.
It is no matter of wonder, considermg the rapid and powerful
spread of Christianity in this country, if the faith of many, who had
come over to the religion during the peaceful times of Nerva, was of
no such nature as to stand the trial of persecution. Sudden and
extensive conversions of this kind are not apt to prove the most
thorough. So was it in the present case; many who had embraced
Christianity, or were on the point of embracing it, drew back at the
threatening prospect of death, and the consequences of this change
were visible in the increase of the numbers who participated in the
public religious ceremonies.
In observing the effect of his measures, Pliny fell into the same mis-
take into which statesmen, crafty in all other things, have often fallen,
with regard to concerns which stand related to what is highest and most
free in human nature. The happy issue which for the moment seemed
to attend the course he had chosen, led him to hope that by degrees
the new sect might easily be suppressed, if the same method should
continue to be pursued; if severity were suitably blended with mild-
ness; if the obstinate were punished to terrify the others, while such
as were disposed to retract, were not driven to desperation by the
refusal of pardon. |
In submitting the report of these transactions to the emperor Trajan,?
he requested his advice particularly on the following questions:
whether a distinction was to be made of different ages, or the young and
tender were to be treated precisely in the same way with the more ma-
ture ?° whether any time was to be allowed for repentance, or every
person who had once been a Christian was in every case to be punish-
ed? whether the Christians were liable to punishment simply as such,
or only on account of other offences? It is plain, from the judicial
proceedings of Pliny above described, how most of these questions
ought, according to his own view of the case, to be answered; and the
emperor approved of these proceedings; moreover, in deciding the
questions submitted to his authority, he went on the same principles.
‘The Christians, he did not place in the same class with ordinary crim-
1 His words are: Neque enim dubitabam,
qualecunque esset, quod faterentur, pervi-
caciam certe et inflexibilem obstinationem
debere puniri.
Sais Op. Oi.
which we have followed thus far, bears the
This report of Pliny,.
indubitable marks of genuineness on its
face. No one but the Roman statesman
could so write on the affair.
8 This question was probably occasioned
by the fact that many children and youth (see
above) were found among the Christians.
“
| ae,
100 CHRISTIANS UNDER TRAJAN.
inals, for whom the governors in the provinces caused search to be made
by the police.t They were not to be sought after ; but when informa-
tion was lodged against them, and they were arraigned before the
tribunal, they must be punished. In what way, the emperor does not
explain; he even admits that on this point no certaim rule of general
application, could be given.? It appears, however, that the punishment
was. generally understood to be death. Moreover, Trajan accorded
pardon to such as manifested repentance.
As early a Christian writer as Tertullian found that this decision
involved a contradiction. If the emperor considered the Christians as
guilty, he ought to have directed that, like all other criminals, they
should be sought out and delivered over to punishment ; if he regarded
them as innocent, punishment was in all cases alike unjust. Without
doubt, a correct judgment, when the matter 15 considered in its purely
moral aspect; but this was not the view of it taken by the emperor.
He stood in the position of a politician and a gudge, governed by the
laws of the Roman State. He was of the opinion, that open contempt
of the ““ Roman ceremonies,”’ open resistance to the laws of the empire,
could not be suffered, in any case, to go unpunished, even though no
act was connected with it of a morally punishable nature.’ Thus the
emperor believed himself obliged to proceed, whenever such unlawful
conduct attracted public attention; but he wished, as far as possible,
to ignore it, so that indulgence might be exercised to the full extent
compatible with due regard for the laws. Agreeing with Pliny, that
Christianity was but a fanatic delusion, he too probably imagined, that
if severity were tempered with clemency, if too much notice were not
to be taken of the matter, and if open offences were neither suffered to
go unpunished, nor prosecuted with ngor, the hot enthusiasm would
easily cool to indifference, and the cause gradually expire of its own
accord. If Christianity had possessed no higher principle, the result
would have justified the emperor’s opinion.
The change produced by the rescript of Trajan was this: Christ-
ianity, which hitherto had tacitly passed for an “ unlawful religion,”
(a religio illicita,) was now condemned as such by an express law.‘
ployment of this name. But when Tiberi-
an says, that he had not become tired of
destroying the Christians, this assuredly
does not agree Ἧτο well with the above-
1 The εἰρηνάρχους, Curiosos.
2 Neque enim in universum aliquid, quod
quasi certam formam habeat, constitui po-
test.
_ 8 Like Pliny; see his language cited on
‘page 99, note 1.
* According to a document preserved in
the chronicle of Johannes Malalas, (1. XI.
p. 273, ed Niebuhr,) Tiberianus, Preefect of
Palestina prima, had informed the empe-
ror, that the Christians offered themselves
in crowds, and that nothing could be ac
complished by the effusion of blood. Moved
by this information, the emperor issued a
new edict, forbidding the execution of the
Christians. Against the authenticity of the
writing here communicated, we would not
adduce the name “ Galileans,” which is ap-
plied to the Christians in no other document
of this period. There might have been
some particular local reason for the em-
cited rescript of Trajan, which expressly
commands that the Christians should not
be sought after. And the statement that the
Christians hastened to surrender themselves,
hardly agrees with the times. It was the
more violent persecutions, which first called
forth such an enthusiastic tendency. Neith-
er can we regard the report of the martyr-
dom of the bishop Ignatius of Antioch as
a document belonging to this period. In
this narrative we do not recognize the Em-
peror Trajan, and therefore feel ourselves
compelled to entertain doubts, with regard
to every thing reported in this account; as,
for example, that Christians were already,
in the reign of this emperor, thrown to
wild beasts.
CHRISTIANS UNDER TRAJAN. —HADRIAN. -101
It was the emperor’s design, that the Christians should be subjected
only to legal trials ; but the impulse had been now given to a move-
ment to which no limits could be fixed. With the political opposition
associated itself the religious, which exercises a vastly greater power
on men’s passions. The open war of paganism with the spiritual
might that threatened its destruction was lighted up. -The fanatical
rage of the populace imagined it had found a point of union and sup-
port in the laws, and the “Christians were laid bare to their assaults,
These commenced in the first years of the government of Hadrian,
who was elevated to the imperial throne in 117. There were govern-
ors who looked on the shedding of human blood with indifference, and
who were very ready to sacrifice persecuted men to the popular fury,
in order to gain for themselves the good will of their provinces, or w ho
also shared in the fanaticism of the people. They might the more
easily believe they could pursue this course with impunity, or even
with the emperor’s approbation, because they knew he was ardently
attached to the sacred customs (the sacra) of his country. When, in
the year 124, he made a tour through Greece, and procured himself to
he initiated into all the Hellenic mysteries, the enemies of Christianity
thought it a favorable opportunity to begin their persecutions of the
hated sect. The two learned Christians, Quadratus and Aristides,
were hence induced to present, each of them, to the emperor, an
apology in behalf of their companions in the faith. But a still greater
influence than could possibly have come from such apologetic writings,
was doubtless produced on an emperor who loved justice and social
order, by the representations of Serrenius Granianus, proconsul of
Asia Minor, who complained of the disorderly attacks of the populace
on the Christians. In consequence of this complaint, the emperor
issued a rescript to his successor in office, Minucius Fundanus.}
Hadrian declared himself decidedly against a practice, whereby the
innocent might be disturbed, and opportunity would be given to false
accusors of « extorting money by ep al ees
nal such as were suspected of Christianity.”
1 The genuineness of the rescript is
proved, not only by its being cited in an
apology which the bishop Melito of Sardis
addressed to the second successor of this
emperor, (Euseb. 1. [V.c. 26,) but still more
clearly by tts contents ; for it cannot be sup-
posed, that a Christian would have been
contented with saying so little to the ad-
vantage of his fellow-believers. That Ha-
drian treated the Christians with gentleness,
appears evident, from the praise bestowed
on him by some Christian, who probably
wrote not ‘long after this time, in the fifth
hook of the “Pseudo- Sibyllines : ᾿Αργυρό-
κρανος ἀνὴρ, τῷ δ᾽ ἔσσεταί τ’ οὔνομα πόντου,
ἔσται καὶ πανώριστος ἀνὴρ καὶ πάντα νοήσει.
2 Tam of the opinion that Rufinus had
before him the Latin original, but that
Eusebius, as usual. has not ‘translated with
sufficient accuracy. Eusebius says, (1. VI.
οὕ
to bring before the tribu-
No accusations against
c. 9.) iva μὴ τοῖς συκοφάνταις χορηγία Ka-
κουργίας παρασχεϑῇ. Rufinus, ne calum-
niatoribus latrocinandi tribuatur occasio.
It is not easy to see, how it could ever oe-
cur to Rufinus to translate the general term,
κακουργία, into the special one, latrocinatio,
when the context furnished no occasion
whatsoever for such a change; while on the
other hand, it is easy to see how Eusebius
might loosely employ a general term to ex-
press the special one of the original. La-
trocinari is here synonymous with concutere
elsewhere. ‘Tertullian’s words to the Gov-
ernor Scapula, when the latter began to ap-
pear as a persecutor, may serve to explain
the sense: Parce provincise, que, visa in-
tentione tua, obnoxia facta est concussioni-
bus et militum et inimicorum suorum
cujusque.
102 CHRISTIANS
Christians were to be received, but such as were in the legal form; the
Christians were no longer to be arrested on mere popular clamor.
When legally brought to. trial, and convicted of doing contrary to the
laws,! they were to be punished according to their deserts; but a
severe punishment was also to be inflicted on false accusers. Similar
rescripts were sent by the emperor to many other provinces? If by
“‘domg contrary to the laws” in this reseript, were meant criminal
conduct, or any ‘infraction of civil order, without reference ‘to religion,
we should be obliged to consider it as a proper edict of toleration,
whereby Christianity was received into the class of ‘lawful religions ;’
but had this been the emperor’s intention, he would certainly have
explained more distinctly what was meant by acts contrary to the laws.
After the rescript of Trajan, a particular declaration, distinctly
expressed, was required, unless the silence itself was to be permitted to
operate to the disadvantage of the Christians.? Hadrian’s rescript
was properly directed only ὁ against the attacks of the excited populace
on such as were reported to be Christians ; it only required a legal
form of trial, which had been also the will of Trajan. At best, the
vague expressions of the rescript might be turned to the advantage of
the Christians, by those who were so disposed.* It was not so much
his regard for Christianity, or the Christian people, as his love of jus-
tice, that led the emperor to the adoption of these measures; for Ha-
drian, as we have already remarked, was a strict and zealous follower
of the old Roman, and, it may be added, the old Grecian religions, and
looked upon the sacred rites of foreigners with disdain.® This temper
of mind shines out through the remarkable letter which the emperor
wrote to the Consul Servianus.® It is true, Christianity, in itself,
forms no part of the subject of this letter, but is only mtroduced by the
way. He is speaking simply of the multifarious and restless activity of
the Alexandrians, of their polypragmatie character, and of the peculiar
religious syncretism, which had sprung up in that common centre of the
commerce of the world. A vein of sarcasm runs through the whole.
‘‘'Those who worship Serapis,’ says Hadrian, ‘‘ are Christians, and
those who call themselves bishops of Christ, are worshipers of Sera-
pis.
1 Eos adversum leges quicquam agere.
2 According to Melito of Sardis. See
Euseb. 1. IV. c. 26.
3 If Melito of Sardis (1. ¢.) says after-
wards to the Emperor Marcus Aurelius,
that his predecessors had honored Christi-
anity together with other modes of worship,
πρὸς ταῖς ἄλλαις ϑρησκείαις ἐτίμησαν, very
little can be inferred from this; for whoev-
er claimed an emperor’s protection for
Christianity, would naturally make the
most of what had been done, or seemed to
have been done, for the Christians, by his
predecessors.
1 Tertullian (ad Scapulam, c. 5,) cites
the examples of two magistrates who took
advantage of this rescript, to procure the
There is no ruler of a synagogue, no Samaritan, no presbyter of
acquittal of Christians. Vespronius Can-
didus dismissed a Christian who had been
arraigned before him, because it was con-
trary to good order to follow the clamor of
the multitude, (quasi tumultuosum civibus
satisfacere.) Another, Pudens, observing
from the protocol (elogium) with which a
Christian was sent over to him, that he
had been seized in a disorderly manner and
with threats, (concussione ejus intellecta, )
dismissed him. witn the remark, that in
conformity with the laws, he could not hear
men, where there was no certain, legal ac-
cuser.
5 Vid. #lius Spartian. vita Hadriani,
c. 22.
6 Flavii Vopisci Saturninus, c. 8
UNDER HADRIAN. 103
the Christians, who is not an astrologer, a soothsayer. The patriarch
of the Jews himself, when he comes to Egypt, is forced by one party to
worship Serapis, by the other, Christ.1. They have but one God, who
is none. Him, Christians, Jews, and all races, worship alike.”2 He
touches on Christianity, merely as one element im this mixture of reli-
gions. The picture floating before his mind is rather the general
aspect of Alexandrian life, or such exhibitions of it as might be pre-
sented, for example, in Gnostic sects, which started into existence there
as purely Christian communities. At the same time, it is impossible
not to perceive from this description, how very far Hadrian: was from
respecting Christianity, or monotheistic religion generally.
The account, therefore, appears incredible, which we have from a
historian belonging to the early part of the fourth century, Adlius Lam-
pridius,® that the emperor had it in view to place Christ among the
Roman gods, and hence caused to be erected, in all the cities, temples
without images, which were called “ Hadrian’s temples’? (templa Hadri-
ani)* ; but that he was prevented, by the representations of the priests,
from carrying out his design. This report probably sprung from the
same source with that of so many other fictitious legends, — the desire
of accounting for something, the true cause of which was unknown; in
the present case, from the desire of explaining the object of these tem-
ples, which had been left unfinished. United with this, was the exag-
gerated opinion, resting on a few misapprehended facts, of the empe-
ror’s favorable disposition towards Christianity. On so slender a foun-
dation, men thought themselves warranted to transfer to this emperor
a mode of thinking which they found in others who came after him,— as,
for instance, in Alexander Severus.
Under this government, so favorable to the Christians in the Roman
empire, they suffered a serious persecution in another quarter. A
certain Barcochba, — who pretended to be the Messiah, and under whom,
as their leader, the Jews once more revolted against the Romans,—
endeavored to prevail on the Christians in Palestine to renounce their
faith, and join m the insurrection. Failing of his purpose, he caused
those that fell into his hands to be executed in the most cruel manner.
After the death of Hadrian, A. p. 138, the rescripts issued by him
lost their power; at the same time, under the government of his sue-
cessor, Antoninus Pius, various public calamities, famime, an inundation
of the Tiber, earthquakes in Asia Minor and in the island of Rhodes,
ravaging fires at Rome, Antioch and Carthage, rekindled the popular
fury against the Christians to greater violence than ever.’ The mild
and philanthropic emperor could not approve of such injurious treat-
acterized the class whom he calls “ Greecu-
le? (Sat. ELL. Ως
2 Unus illis Deus nullus est. Hune Chris-
1 Tlli, qui Serapim colunt, Christiani sunt,
et devoti sunt Serapi, qui se Christi episco-
pos dicunt. Nemo illic archisynagogus
Judzxorum, nemo Samarites, nemo Christi-
anorum presbyter non mathematicus, non
haruspex, non aliptes. Compare this with
Juvenal’s description of the braggart dis-
position, the boastful pretension to clear
understanding of all matters, which char-
tiani, hunec Judzi, hunc omnes venerantur
et gentes.
8 Alex. Sever. c. 24.
4‘Adpovaveia, mentioned already in Aristid
orat. sacr. }.
5 Julii Capitolini vita Antonini Pii, ¢. 9.
104 THE CHRISTIANS UNDER
ment of a part of his subjects. In different rescripts, addressed to
Grecian States, he declared himself wholly opposed to these violent
proceedings. The indulgence shown by this emperor to the Christians
would appear to have been carried to a still greater length, might we
regard as genuine a rescript ascribed in all probability to him, (not to
his successor, Marcus Aurelius,)—the rescript to the Assembly of
Deputies in Asia Minor, (τρὸς τὸ χοιγὸν τῆς ᾿“σίας 3) for in this he
declares expressly, that the Christians were to be punished only when
convicted of political crimes; that, on the other hand, whoever accused
them on the score of their religion, should be liable himself to prosecu-
tion. But the author of this rescript speaks rather the language of a
Christian than of a pagan emperor, especially of one whose distin-
guishing praise was his “ singular and scrupulous regard for the public
ceremonies,” (insignis erga czerimonias publicas cura et religio. Fa-
bretti marmor.) The succeeding history, moreover, does not notice the
existence of such an edict.!
Under the reign of the succeeding emperor, Marcus Aurelius the
philosopher, A. D. 161, many public calamities occurred, particularly a
destructive pestilence, whose ravages gradually extended from Ethiopia
through the entire Roman empire as far as Gaul. Such events could
not fail to produce the same injurious impression of hostility to the
enemies of the gods, on the feelings of the multitude. It was during
this time, the magician Alexander stirred up the zeal of the people for
their gods, promising them miraculous aid from these higher powers,
and exasperating their hatred against the Christians. If the persecu-
tions of this reign, however, had sprung only from the popular fury,
and if Aurelius had been similarly disposed with his predecessors, this
fury might have been restrained also under the influence of his adminis-
tration. But, on the contrary, we now see the higher authorities of
the state leagued together with the people in the cause of oppression.
In Asia Minor, the Christians were persecuted with such extreme
violence, that Melito, bishop of Sardis, who appeared as their advocate
before the emperor, said,? “the race of God’s worshipers in this
country are persecuted as they never were before, by new edicts ; for
the shameless sycophants, greedy of others’ possessions, — since they are
furnished by these edicts with an opportunity of so domg,— plunder
their innocent victims day and night. And let it be right, if it is done
by your command, since a just emperor will never resolve on any unjust
measure ; and we will cheerfully bear the honorable lot of such a death.
Yet we would submit this single petition, that you would inform yourself
respecting the people who excite this contention, and impartially decide
whether they deserve punishment and death, or deliverance and peace.
But if this resolve, and this new edict, — an edict which ought not so
1 Rusebius, it is true, says that Melito of this rescript, though it would have been far
Sardis refers to this rescript in his apology more favorable to the Christians than the
addressed to the succeeding emperor. But edict he actually cites.
it is remarkable, that Melito, in the frag- 2 EKuseb. 1. IV. c. 26.
ment introduced by Eusebius, fails to quote
MARCUS AURELIUS. 105
to be issued even against hostile barbarians, — comes from yourself, we
pray you the more not to leave us exposed to such public robbery.”
These words of Melito, in which he shows no less of Christian dignity
than of Christian prudence, lead us to several reflections. Already,
after the edict of Trajan, Christians once accused might be punished -
with death; and this edict had never been officially revoked, though
the clemency of the last emperors may have operated to prevent its
being rigorously executed. But Melito says, that a new and terrible
edict had been issued by the proconsul, inviting men to lodge informa-
tions against the Christians. This is the more extraordinary, as it
happens to be under the government of an emperor who was by no
means inclined to the disorderly practice of information,! and as it
appears to have been the policy of Aurelius, in other cases, to dimimish
the penalties affixed to crimes by the laws.2_ And we can hardly sup-
pose the proconsul would venture to issue a new edict on his own
responsibility. Indeed, Melito himself seems not to have believed
otherwise, than that the edict proceeded from the emperor. His ex-
pr essions of doubt were necessary, to enable him, with due respect for
the imperial authority, to invite a repeal of the obnoxious edict.
Perhaps by glancing at the philosophical and religious system of
Marcus Aurelius, considered in its relation to Christianity, we shall be
prepared to understand better his views and conduct with regard to it.
The Stoic philosophy was not calculated to make him a friend to the
Christians. What he esteemed as the highest attainment, was that
composure in view of death, which proceeded from cool reflection, from
conviction on scientific grounds — the resignation of the sage, ready to
surrender even personal existence to the annihilation demanded by the
iron law of the universal whole. But a thing altogether unintelligible
to. him, was the enthusiasm, springing out of a living faith, and a well-
assured hope, grounded on that faith, with which the Christians met
death. A conviction which. by arguments of reason could not be
communicated to all, appeared to him as nothing but fanaticism; and
the way in which many Christians, really under fanatical excitement,
even courted death, might confirm him in these views. He, too, like
Pliny and Trajan, could see nothing in disobedience to the laws of the_
empire on matters of religion, but blind obstinacy.
Let us quote the emperor’s own language respecting the Christians,
as we find it in his Meditations.? ‘* The soul,” he says, ‘‘ when it must
depart from the body, should be ready to be extinguished, to be dis-
persed, or to subsist a while longer with the body. But this readiness
must proceed from its own judgment, and not from mere obstinacy,’ as
with the Christians ; it must be arrived at with reflection and , dignity,
so that you could even convince another, without declamation.” Judg-
ing the Christians from this point of view, though he found them euilty,
in other respects, of nothing immoral, though he could hardly credit
the popular rumors which had been so often ‘yefuted, yet he might still
1 Julii Capitolini vita, c. 11. 4 Μὴ κατὰ ψιλὴν παράταξιν, ἀτραγώδως,
a Fy Ὁ δ 24. pervicacia, obstinatio.
$i. XI.c. 8.
106 MARCUS AURELIUS —
regard them as enthusiasts, dangerous to social order; and when he
observed how Christianity, under the least mild governments, was
continually making encroachments on all sides, he might consider him-
self called upon to check its further progress by energetic measures.
We must see in Marcus Aurelius, not barely the Roman statesman
and the Stoic philosopher, but also the man of a child-hke piety of
disposition, for which he was indebted, as he tells us himself,’ to the
influence of a pious mother on his education; and assuredly, he had
received in this way something of more substantial worth than an
abstract religion of reason could have given him. ΤῸ the question,
(often proposed to the Christians,) where have you seen the gods, or
whence know you their ezistence, that you so reverence them? he
answers; ‘in the first place, they make themselves visible even to the
eye of sense ;’? — where we may suppose he had in mind, either those
visible deities, the heavenly bodies, or, what is more probable, appear-
ances of the gods in visions and dreams. ‘‘ But again, I have never
seen my own soul, and yet I respect it. So too 1 come to know the
existence of the gods, because I constantly experience the effects of
their power, and hence I reverence them.”’? And certainly there
was truth lying at the ground of those experiences, although Marcus
Aurelius knew not the “ unknown God”’ from whom they came, and to
whom they were designed to lead him, as the God of revelation; as
for example, when he says, on a retrospect of the divine providence
which had gnided him along from childhood, ‘‘ so far as it depended on
the gods, on the influences coming from them, on their aids and sugges-
tions, I might have attained already to a life in harmony with nature ;
but if I still fall short of this mark, it is my own fault, and must be
ascribed to my neglect of following the admonitions, I might almost
say, the express instructions, of the gods.’’® We find traces in his
writings of an honest self-examination; we see how very far he was
from confounding dimself with the ideal of the wise man, how the sense
of his own deficiency disposed him to gentleness towards others. It is
true, such kind of self-knowledge, which, for others, led the way to
Christianity, could not conduct him thither, because he was skilful in
interpreting those inner experiences by his Stoic doctrine of fatalism,
which made the bad necessary, no less than the good, to the realization
of the harmony of the universe. And in this view, also, he found
comfort in ἃ stoical resignation; for says he, ““ When you see others
sin, reflect that you also sm in various ways, and are just such as they.
And though you abstain from many sinful actions, yet you have within,
the inclination to commit them, though you may be restrained from
indulging it, by fear, by vanity, or some similar motive.’’* He belonged
to the class of those, who, like the Platonists above mentioned, were
seeking for a middle way between superstition and infidelity. He de-
sired a cheerful piety, without superstition. He believed honestly, as
appears evident from the passages above cited, in the reality of the gods,
1 Παρὰ τῆς μητρὸς τὸ ϑεοσεβές. STs ΤΟΣ
2. XII. c. 28. 4L. XL. c. 18
HIS VIEWS OF RELIGION. 107
and of their appearances. With other devout pagans of his time, he was
convinced that the gods revealed in dreams, sent to those that honored
them, the knowledge of remedies for bodily disease, and imagined that
he had experienced such assistance himself in several cases of sickness.!
When the pestilence, already mentioned, was raging in Italy, he looked
upon it as a warning to restore the ancient worship in its minutest
particulars. He summoned priests from all quarters to Rome, and
even put off his expedition against the Marcomannians, for the purpose
of celebrating the religious solemnities by which he hoped that the evil
might be averted.2 The multitude of victims which he caused to be
sacrificed in the preparation for that war, provoked ridicule, even from
many of the pagans.®
It may easily be explained, then, how an emperor, with the love of
justice and the gentleness which we see expressed in the actions and
writings of Marcus Aurelius, could yet, from a political and a religious
interest, become a persecutor of the Christians. We have a law from
him, which condemns to banishment on an island, those “that do any
thig whereby a superstitious fear of the deity could be insinuated into
men’s excitable minds.’’* That this law was pointed at the Christians,
cannot, indeed, be asserted ; masmuch as there were, under this goy-
ernment, an unusual number of magicians and popular impostors, by
whose practices such a law may have been called forth. But it may
easily be conceived, that Marcus Aurelius, like Celsus, who wrote at
that time against the Christians, would not seruple to place the latter
in the same class with the others. This prince was inclined to pardon
such as confessed thcir crimes and showed signs of penitence, even in
cases where he could have punished without bemg severe.> But the
Christians could not be induced to acknowledge they had done wrong ;
they rather persisted in that. which was forbidden by the laws. It was,
perhaps, for this reason, the emperor directed that every means should
be employed to constrain them to a renunciation of their faith ; and
only in the last extremity, when they could not be forced to submit,
was the punishment of death to be inflicted. But an ill-advised human-
ity, aiming to spare the effusion of human blood, might easily become
the occasion of much cruelty.
Bringing together what offers itself to our notice as peculiar in the
character of the persecutions of this time, we find two things particu-
larly worthy of remark: first, that search was made for the Christians,
by express command ; although, indeed, such search was often antici-
pated by the popular fury. We have seen above, that, according to
Trajan’s rescript, the Christians were expressly distinguished ftom
those criminals for whom it was the duty of the provincial authorities
to make search. Now, on the contrary, diligent search was made for
them; and they were often obliged to conceal themselves to save their
ἘΠΕῚ Le. 17. *Relegandum ad insulam qui aliquid
2 Jul. Capitol. c. 13 et 21. fecerit, quo leves hominum animi sunersti-
8 Hence the epigram, οἱ λευκοὶ βόες Μάρ- tione numinis terreantur, in the Pandects.
κῳ τῷ Καίσαρι; ἄν σὺ νικήσῃς, ἡμεῖς ἀπωλό- 5 See the example in Capitolinus, cap. 13.
μεϑα. Ammian. Marcellin. 1. XXYV. ο. 4.
108 MARCUS AURELIUS —
lives, as appears from the several accounts of the persecutions, and
from the assertions of Celsus.!
this: when the Christians aceused, after repeated summons, persisted
in refusing to deny their faith, they were executed without torture.
Now it was attempted to force them to a denial by tortures. An edict
which agrees in all respects with this practice, is still extant. under
the name of the Emperor Awrelian,? and as in style and conteuts it
bears every mark of authenticity, may, doubtless, be the edict against
the Christians, originally addressed by this emperor (Aurelius) to the
presidents of the’ provinces. It runs thus: “‘ We have heard that the
laws are violated by those who in our times call themselves Christians.
Let them be arrested; and unless they offer to the gods, let them be
punished with divers tortures ; yet so that justice may be mingled with
severity, and that the punishment may cease, as soon as the end is
gained of extirpating the transgressors.”” The last clause is altogether
in the character of Marcus Aurelius. The governors were to keep
steadily in view the one object, which was to put down Christianity im
its collision with the State religion, and to brmg men back to the wor-
ship of the Roman gods. They were not to act by the promptings of
blind passion; but even such a clause was plainly insufficient to place
Next, the practice hitherto had been
a check on cruel and arbitrary measures.?
We proceed now, under the guidance of authentic records, to take a
1 Celsus, speaking of the Christians, that
not without reason they do every thing in
concealment: “Ate διωϑούμενοι τὴν ἐπηρτη-
μένην αὐτοῖς δίκην τοῦ ϑανάτου. 1,. 1. ο. 1.
Ἤτοι φεύγοντες καὶ κρυπτόμενοι ἢ ἁλισκό-
μενοι καὶ ἀπολλύμενοι. L. VIII. c. 41.
Ὑμῶν δὲ κἂν πλανᾶται τις ἕτι λανϑάνων,
ἀλλὰ ζητεῖται πρὸς ϑανώτου δίκην. 1,.
VIIL. ¢. 69.
2 A name which, as Pagi and Ruinart
rightly conjectured, probably stands for
Aurelius.
3 The edict, which is preserved to us in
the actis Symphoriani, of which we shall
afterwards speak, reads in the original as
follows: “ Aurelianus Imperator omnibus
administratoribus suis atque rectoribus.
Comperimus ab his, qui se temporibus nos-
tris Christianos dicunt, legum precepta
violari. Hos comprehensos, nisi diis nos-
tris sacrificaverint, diversis punite cruciati-
bus, quatenus habeat districtio prolata jus-
titiam et in resecandis criminibus ultio ter-
minata jam finem.” Certainly no unpreju-
diced person can suppose this edict to be
spurious, as there was no imaginable end to
be gained by a forgery, as it is conceived
wholly in the spirit of pagan statesmen,
and expressed in the official language of
the times. If it belonged to the age of
Aurelian, whose name it bears, the martyr
in whose history it stands, must have per-
ished in that reign. But it can hardly be
assumed, that the persecution under this
emperor proceeded so far as to the effusion
of Christian blood, (see beyond.) The
manner, too, in which the Christians are
spoken of, as a sect by no means old, suits
better to the time of M. Aurelius than that
of Aurelian, when the Christian sect had
now been so long known. ‘The charge
brought against the Christians, that by the
exercise of their religion they violated the
laws of the empire, would hardly be so
stated in the time of Aurelian, since Chris-
tianity had at that time been already for
the space of fifteen years admitted into the
class of “religiones licitz.’ No doubt,
therefore, Aurelius is the proper reading,
instead of Aurelianus, such names being
frequently confounded with each other.
But Lucius Aurelius Commodus is out of
the question, since he was well disposed
towards the Christians. So it can only be
M. Aurelius Antoninus. What Gieseler has
said against this hypothesis, in the second
vol. of his Church History, (2 te Auflage, S.
134,) does not suffice, to say the least, to
invalidate the above reasoning. ‘The lan-
guage of the concluding clause is somewhat
singular, it is true, for the age of the An-
tonines; yet I find nothing in particular in
it, which is quite foreign to the Latinity of
that age; and it by no means seems so
clear to me that the Emperor M. Aurelius
would not have employed the words rectores
(rector provincie see Tacit. Annal. 1. II. ς.
4,) and administratores, to designate the va-
rious governors.
MARTYRDOM OF POLYCARP. 109
nearer view of the manner in which these persecutions were conducted
in the provinces, and of the behavior of the Christians under them.
We have first to notice that which befel the church of Smyrna, in
167, and in which the aged and venerable Bishop Polycarp, a disciple
of the Apostle John, gave up his life. Of this persecution we have a
detailed account, in a circular letter addressed by the church of
Smyrna to other Christian churches.t_ The proconsul of Asia Minor,
at that time, does not appear to have been personally hostile to the
Christians ; but the heathen populace, with whom the lower class of
Jews had united themselves, were fiercely hot against them. The
proconsul yielded to the popular violence and to the demands of the
law. He endeavored to move the Christians by threats, by displaying
before them the instruments of torture, and the savage animals to
which they were to be thrown, to deny their faith; if they remained
firm, he condemned them to death. In one respect, he certainly
evinced too ready a compliance with the ferocious will of the people.
He chose deaths that were painful and ignominious; such as being
thrown to wild beasts or perishing at the stake — punishments he was
not compelled to resort to by the laws. Yet it must be allowed, that
if the laws denounced death in general terms, as the penalty for per-
severance in Christianity, it was considered right to assume, that such
as were not Roman citizens ought to suffer a more painful death than
those who were.?
Under the most agonizing torments, calculated to excite pity even in
pagan bystanders, the Christians displayed great tranquillity and com-
posure. “* They made it evident to us all,’ says the church, “ that
in the midst of those suffermgs, they were absent from the body; or
rather, that the Lord stood by them and walked in the midst of them ;
and, staying themselves on the grace of Christ, they bid defiance to the
torments of the world.’ But even here the difference was shown be-
twixt the momentary intoxication of enthusiasm, which, with a rash
confidence in itself, courted and defied danger, and that calm, delibe-
rate submission to God’s will, which first awaited his call, and then
looked to him for the needed strength. A certain Phrygian, Quintus
by name, of a nation peculiarly inclined by nature to fanatical extrav-
agance, presented himself, in company with many others, whom he had
wrought up by his discourses to the same pitch of enthusiastic zeal,
uncalled for, before the proconsul’s tribunal, and declared himself a
Christian. But when the magistrate pressed him, and wrought upon
his fears, by showing him the wild beasts, he yielded, swore by the
genius of the emperor, and sacrificed. After stating this fact, the
1 By portions in Euseb. 1. IV. ο. 15.
More complete in the collections of the
Patres Apostolici.
* To many of the crimes charged on the
Christians by blind popular rumor, such
capital punishments were assigned. Qui
sacra impia nocturnave, ut quem obcanta-
rent, fecerint faciendave curaverint, aut
cruci suffiguntur, aut bestiis objiciuntur.
VOL, I.
Qui hominem immolaverint, sive ejus san-
guine litaverint, fanum, templumve pollue-
rint, bestiis objiciuntur, vel si honestiores
sint, capite puniuntur. Magice artis con-
scios summo supplicio affici placuit, id est,
bestiis objici aut cruci suffigi, ipsi autem
magi vivi exuruntur. Julius Paulus in ser
tentiis receptis.
110 MARCUS AURELIUS —
church adds, ‘“‘ We therefore praise not those who voluntarily sur-
render themselves ; for so are we not taught in the gospel.’’! Quite
different from this was the behavior of the venerable Bishop Polycarp,
now ninety years of age. When he heard the shouts of the people,
demanding his death, it was his intention, at first, to remain quietly in
the city, and await the issue which God might ordain for him. But,
by the entreaties of the church, he suffered himself to be persuaded to
take refuge in a neighboring villa. Here he spent the time, with afew
friends, occupied, day and night, in praying for all the churches
throughout the world. When search was made for him, he retreated
to another villa; and directly after appeared the servants of the police,
to whom his place of refuge had been betrayed by unworthy men, who
enjoyed his confidence. The bishop himself, indeed, was gone; but
they found two slaves, one of whom was put to the torture, and
betrayed the place whither Polycarp had fled for refuge. As they
were approaching, Polycarp, who was in the highest story of the dwell-
ing, might have escaped to another house, by the flat roof peculiar to
the oriental style of building; but he said, ‘¢ The will of the Lord be
done.”” Descending to the officers of justice, he ordered whatever
they chose to eat and drink to be placed before them, requesting them
only to indulge him with one hour for quiet prayer. But the fulness
of his heart hurried him through two hours, so that the pagans them-
selves were touched by his devotion.
The time being now come, they conveyed him to the city on an ass,
where they were met by the chief officer of the police, (eipyvapyor, )
coming, with his father, from the town. He took up Polycarp into his
chariot, and addressing him kindly, asked ‘‘ what harm there could be
in saying ‘ the emperor, our Lord,’ and in sacrificing.”’ At first, Poly-
carp was silent; but as they went on to urge him, he said mildly, “1
shall not do as you advise me.” When they perceived they could not
persuade him, they grew angry. With opprobrious language, he was
thrust out of the carriage, so violently as to injure a bone of one of his
legs. Without looking round, he proceeded on his way, cheerful and
composed, as though nothing had happened. Having arrived before
the proconsul, he was urged by the latter to have respect at least to
his own old age, to swear by the genius of the emperor, and give proof
of his penitence, by joming in the shout of the people, ‘Away with the
godless!’ Polycarp looked with a firm eye at the assembled crowd, _
pointing to them with his finger; then with a sigh, and his eyes uplifted
to heaven, he said, “‘ Away with the godless!’ But when the procon-
sul urged him farther, “‘ Swear, curse Christ, and I release thee.”
“Six and eighty years,” the old man replied, ‘‘ have I served him, and
he has done me nothing but good; and how could I curse him, my Lord
and.Saviour!’? The proconsul still persisting to urge him, ‘“ Well,”
said Polycarp, ‘if you would know what I am, I tell you frankly, 1 am
a Christian. Would you know what the doctrine of Christianity is,
1 Διὰ τοῦτο οὐκ ἐπαινοῦμεν τοὺς προσι- the reading should be ἑκόντας,) ἐπειδὴ οὐχ
όντας ἑαυτοῖς, (where, if it is not bad Greek, οὕτως διδάσκει τὸ εὐαγγέλιον.
MARTYRDOM OF POLYCARP. 111
appomt me an hour and hear me.” The proconsul, who showed here
how far he was from sharing in the fanatic spirit of the people, how
gladly he would have saved the old man, if he could have appeased
the multitude, said, ‘‘ Do but persuade the people.” Polycarp replied,
“To you 1 was bound to give account of myself, for our religion
teaches us to pay due honor to the powers ordained of God, so far as it
can be done without prejudice to our salvation. But those I regard as
not worthy of hearing me defend myself before them.”? The governor
having once more threatened him in vain with the wild beasts and the
stake, caused it to be proclaimed by the herald, in the circus, “ Poly-
carp has declared himself to be a Christian!’ With these words, was
pronounced the sentence of death. The heathen populace, with an
infuriate shout, replied, ‘¢ This is the teacher of atheism, the father of
the Christians, the enemy of our gods, by whom so many have been
turned from the worship of the gods and from sacrifice.”’ The pro-
consul having yielded to the demands of the people, that Polycarp
should die at the stake, Jews and pagans hastened together, to bring
wood from the shops and the baths. As they were about to fasten him
with nails to the stake of the pile, he said, ‘‘ Leave me thus; he who
has strengthened me to encounter the flames, will also enable me to
stand firm at the stake.” Before the fire was lighted, he prayed,
“Lord, Almighty God, Father of thy beloved Son, Jesus Christ,
through whom we have received from thee the knowledge of thyself;
God of angels, and of the whole creation; of the human race, and of
the just that live in thy presence; I praise thee that thou hast judged
me worthy of this day and of this hour, to take part in the number of
thy Witnesses, in the cup of thy Christ.”
What appeared the greatest thing, to this church, was not the mar
tyr’s death of Polycarp im itself; but the Christian manner in which it
was suffered. ‘They expressed it as their conviction, that all had been
so ordered, that he might exhibit what was the essential character of
evangelical martyrdem ;! “for,” so they write, “he waited to be
delivered up, (did not press forward uncalled to the martyr’s death,)
imitating, in this respect, our Lord, and leaving an example for us to
follow ; so that we should not look to that alone which may conduce to
our own salvation, but also to that which may be serviceable to our
neighbor. For this 15 the nature of true and genuine charity, to seek
not merely our own salvation, but the salvation of all the brethren.’”
The death of the pious shepherd contributed also to the temporal
advantage of his flock. The rage of fanaticism, after having obtained
this victim, became somewhat cooled; and the proconsul, who was no
personal enemy of the Christians, suspended all farther search, and
refused to know that another Christian existed.
The second persecution under this emperor’s reign, of which we
1 Σγεδὸν γὰρ πάντα τὰ προάγοντα éyéve- peda, μὴ μόνον σκοποῦντες τὸ KaW ἑαυτοὺς,
το, ἵνα ἡμῖν ὁ κύριος ἄνωϑεν ἐπιδείξη τὸ ἀλλὰ καὶ τὸ κατὰ τοὺς πέλας, ἀγάπης γὰρ
κατὰ τὸ εὐαγγέλιον μαρτύριον. ἀληϑοῦς καὶ βεβαίας ἐστὶν μὴ μόνον ἑαυτὸν
2 Περιέμενεν γὰρ, ἵνα παραδοϑῇ, ὡς καὶ ϑέλειν σώζεσϑαι, ἀλλὰ καὶ πάντας Tors
ὁ κύριος, ἵνα μιμηταὶ καὶ ἡμεῖς αὐτοῦ γενώ- ἀδελφούς.
112 MARCUS AURELIUS—
have any account, fell upon the churches of Lyons, (Lugdunum,) and
of Vienna, in the year 177, and the source from which we derive our
mcre exact knowledge of its details, is a letter from these churches to
those of Asia Minor.t The fanatic excitement of the populace, in these
cities, was the same as at Smyrna, if not still higher; but in addition
to this, the superior magistrates seem to have been infected with the
rage of the lower classes. The bursts of popular fury had gradually
increased in violence; the Christians were’insulted and abused when-
ever they appeared abroad, and were plundered in their own houses.
At length the better known were seized and conducted before the mag-
istrates. Having avowed themselves Christians, they were thrown into
prison ; for during the absence of the governor, or legate, they could
not be brought at once to trial. The legate, on his arrival, immedi-
ately began the examination with tortures, not only for the purpose of
forcing the Christians to abjure, but also of wrmging from them a con-
fession of the truth respecting those absurd stories of unnatural crimes,
of which they were so generally accused. Vettius Epagathus, on learn-
ing that such charges were laid against his brethren, felt constraimed to
present himself at the legate’s tribunal, as a witness of their imno-
cence. He demanded a hearing, since he wished to show that nothing
of a criminal nature was transacted in the Christian assembles. The
legate refused to listen; but only asked him if he too was a Chris-
tian. When he distinctly admitted that he was, he was imprisoned
with the rest, as the Christian’s advocate, (παράκλητος χριστιανῶν.)
Although the testimony of slaves against their masters was, by an
ancient law,? made madmissible in criminal causes,—a law,? it must
be owned, often violated in the arbitrary proceedings of the times of the
empire,* — yet fanaticism would allow no attention to be paid to the
regular forms of justice. The testimony of slaves was welcome, if it
served to establish the incredible charges laid to the account of the
Christians. The torture must be applied to pagan slaves. Terror
made them say what they were required to say, «— that those. abomina-
tions, of which blmd rumor accused the Christians, were practised by
their masters. Men now believed they had a right to indulge them-
selves in every cruelty. No kindred, no age nor sex was spared. In
the firmness and composure of many Christians, under tortures the most
refined, it was seen, say the churches, in their report of these proceed-
ings, ‘‘ how they were bedewed and invigorated by the spring of living
water that flows from the heart of Christ; how nothing is dreadful
where the love of the Father dwells; nothmg painful, where the glory
of Christ prevails.” Pothinus, the aged bishop of the church, a man
of ninety years, infirm with old age and a sickness from which he was
but just recovered, but inspired with the vigor of youth by his zeal to
1 Buseb: 1. V.-c. 1.
2 Vetere senatusconsulto questio in caput
Domini prohibebatur. Tacit. Annal. 1. II.
c..30.
5. Even Pliny seems to have paid no at-
tention to this law, in conducting his inves-
tigations against the Christians.
4 When Tiberius first allowed himself in
this practice, he was in the habit, before he
put the queestio per tormenta, of giving the
slaves their freedom, so as to observe the
law in appearance, —callidus et novi juris
repertor, as Tacitus calls him for this reason
PERSECUTION AT LYONS. 118
bear witness of the truth, was also dragged before the tribunal. The
legate asked him, ‘* Who is the God of the Christians?” He answered,
“You shall come to the knowledge of him, when you show yourself
worthy of 1.) All who surrounded the tribunal, now strove with each
other in venting their rage on the venerable old man. Scarcely
breathing, he was cast into a dungeon, where he survived only two
days. Even those who yielded and denied, gained nothing by their
inconstancy. ‘They were now cast into prison, not, indeed, as Chris-
tians, but as guilty of those crimes with which the Christians were
charged ; and to justify the proceeding, advantage had doubtless been
taken of the fact, that several, under the pains of torture, had acknowl-
edged guilt. Numbers perished in the gloomy cells of the prisons,
where means had been devised for adding to their torment, and even
hunger and thirst employed to aggravate the sufferings of these impris-
oned confessors. On the other hand, to use the language of the church,
‘‘many, who had endured so severe torments that it seemed impossible
for them to be restored by the most careful assiduities, continued to live
in their dungeon, destitute indeed of human aid, but strengthened and
refreshed, in soul and body, by the Lord, so that they could encourage
and comfort the rest. It so happened, ‘by the grace of God, who
wills not the death of the smner, but has joy in his repentance,’ that
the exhortations of these heroes of the faith had a powerful effect on
many who had been’ induced to deny their religion, and the mother
church had the great satisfaction of receiving once more alive from the
prison, those whom she had cast forth as dead.”
The number of the prisoners being large, including several Roman
citizens, who could not be sentenced in the province, it was thought
best by the legate, with regard to them all, to send his report to Rome,
and wait until the emperor’s answer determined their fate. The impe
rial rescript was to this effect, that those who denied should be set free,
and the rest beheaded. In this case, it is evident that Marcus Aure-
lius possessed the same views as Trajan, and was far from giving credit
to the current charges laid against the Christians.
The legate now summoned first before his tribunal all who, in the
previous examinations, had been brought to abjure their faith, and were
awaiting, in prison, the decision of their fate. Nothmg else was
expected than that they would stand by their denial, and thus obtain
deliverance ; but great were the rage and the consternation of the
multitude, at seemg many of these now stand forth and maintain a
steadfast confession, thus passing sentence of death on themselves ; so
that, in the language of the church, none remained without, but such
as possessed none of the marks of faith, no anticipation of the Lord’s
bridal garment, no fear, but had already, by their conduct, dishonored
the way of truth. Those of the prisoners who possessed the rights of
Roman citizenship, the legate ordered to be executed with the sword ;
although, to gratify the fury of the populace, he caused one of these,
Attalus, in violation of the laws, to undergo a variety of tortures, and
at last to be thrown to the wild beasts; and not until after he had
survived the whole, was the εὐνὰς of mercy allowed to put an end to
1 *
114 PONTICUS. BLANDINA. SYMPHORIAN.
his sufferings. The rest were thrown to the wild beasts. Two of these, —
Ponticus, a youth of fifteen, and Blandina, a young woman, — whom
they attempted first to intimidate by makmg them witness the suffermgs
of the others, and then to shake from their constancy by exhausting upon
them all their means of torture, created universal astonishment, at what
God’s power could effect in such weak and tender vessels. Although
the intoxication of enthusiasm, suppressing the natural feelings, is capa-
ble of producing such extraordinary phenomena, yet the enthusiasm of
these martyrs was distinguished by those true marks, a sobriety and
a humility indicating the sense of weakness, and by love and gentle-
ness. ‘hey declined the honors which the Christians were eager to
bestow on them. Even when they were led back to prison, after hay-
ing repeatedly undergone the most exquisite tortures, still they were by
no means confident of victory, well foreseeing the struggle between the
flesh and the spirit. They poimtedly contradicted such as dignified
them with the name of ‘ martyrs.”’ ‘This name,” said they, ‘ prop-
erly belongs only to the true and faithful Witness,’ the First Born
from the dead, the Prince of life; or, at least, only to those martyrs
whose testimony Christ has sealed by their constancy to the end. We
are but poor, humble confessors.’’ With tears, they besought the breth-
ren fervently to pray for them, that they might attain to the glorious
consummation. ‘They received with the kindest love such as had fallen
from the faith; they became their companions im prison, praying, with
many tears, that the Lord would restore these dead once more to life.
Even their persecutors were never mentioned by them with resent-
ment, but they prayed that God would forgive those who had subjected
them to such cruel suffermgs. They left as a legacy to their brethren,
not strife and war, but joy and peace, unanimity and love.
With the mutilation and burning of the dead bodies, the rage of the
populace had finally reached its utmost height. The ashes, with all the
fire had left, was cast into the neighboring Rhone, that not a remnant
of these enemies of the gods might pollute the earth. Neither by
money, nor by entreaties, could the Christians succeed in obtaining
possession of those so dear to them, for the purpose of interment. The
blinded pagans imagined they could, in this way also, confound the
hopes of the Christians. “We will now see,’ said they, “ whether
they will arise, and whether God can help them, and deliver them out
of our hands.” Yet so great was the number of the Christians, that
even here men at last became weary of bloodshed, so that a branch of
the church survived this terrible persecution.
In places where but few Christians dwelt, they could more easily
remain concealed, and the popular rage was not turned against them.
In such districts, the governors did not think it necessary to set on foot
any inquiries for them, except in particular cases, when individuals had
become notorious as enemies of the State religion. A case of this sort
occurred, about this time, in the town of Autun,? at no great distance
from Lyons. No one in the place was thinking of a persecution
1 Maprve Revel. 1: 5. 2 Augustodunum, /¢dua.
THE LEGIO FULMINEA. 115
against the small number of obscure Christians who were to be found
there, when an individual first drew upon himself the public attention.
The noisy multitude were celebrating, with great display, a festival in
honor of Cybele, whose worship, probably derived from Asia Minor
through the same channel which Christianity afterwards found, was
held here in the highest repute. An image of Cybele, in one of the
usual sacred cars, was carried round in procession, accompanied by a
vast crowd of the people. All fell upon their knees ; but Symphorian,
a young man of a respectable family and a Christian, who happened
to be standing by, thought that he could not conscientiously unite in the
ceremony, and when called upon to explain his conduct, he might easily
take occasion to speak of the vanity of idol worship. As a violator of the
public ceremony and a disturber of the peace, he was immediately seized
and conducted before the governor, Heraclius, a man of consular dignity.
Said the governor to him, ‘ You are a Christian. As far as I can see,
you have escaped our notice, because so few of the followers of this sect
happen to be among us.” “I am a Christian,” he replied; ‘* I worship
the true God, who reigns in heaven; but your idol, I cannot worship ;
nay, if permitted, I will dash it in pieces, on my own responsibility.”
Upon this, the governor declared him guilty of a double crime, — against
the religion, and against the laws of the State; and as Symphorian
could be moved neither by threats nor by promises to abandon his faith,
he was sentenced to be beheaded. As they led him to the execution,
his mother cried out to him, ““ My son, my son, have the living God in
thy heart. Be steadfast. There is nothing fearful in that death which
so surely conducts thee to life. Let thy heart be above, my son ; look
up to Him who dwells in heaven. ‘To-day thy life is not taken from
thee, but transfigured to a better. By a blessed exchange, my son.
thou art this day passing to the life of heaven.’’!
According to a report widely diffused among the Christians after
the beginning of the third century, the Emperor Marcus Aurelius was
induced, by a wonderful event, to change the course of policy he had
thus far adopted towards the Christians. While prosecuting the war
with the Marcommanians and Quades, in 174, he, with his army, was
thrown into a situation of extreme peril. The burning sun shone full
in the faces of his soldiers, who were suffering under the torture of
intolerable thirst; while, at the same time, under these unfavorable
circumstances, they were threatened with an attack of the enemy. In
this extremity, the twelfth legion, composed entirely of Christians, fell
upon their knees. Their prayer was followed by a shower of rain,
which allayed the thirst of the Roman soldiers, and by a storm, which
frightened the barbarians. The Roman army obtained the victory,
and the emperor, in commemoration of the event, gave those Christian
soldiers the name of the “‘ thundering legion.”” He ceased to persecute
1The story of the martyrdom of Sym-'
phorian is, in all the essential particulars, so
simple, is so wholly free from the common
exaggerations of later times, is so conform-
able to the circumstances of that period,
that it is impossible to doubt that we have
here a more than ordinarily genuine found-
ation, although the account is in places
rhetorically overwrought. But all the par-
ticulars go to show, that the event took
place very near to the time of the persecu-
tion at Lyons and Vienna.
116 THE LEGIO FULMINEA.
the Christians ; and though he did not receive Christianity immediately
into the class of ‘‘ lawful religions,’ yet he published an edict which
threatened with severe penalties such as accused the pu πὐριρδαα merely
on the score of their religion.?
In this account, truth ‘and falsehood are mixed together. In the
first place, it cannot be true, that the emperor was led to put a stop to
the persecution of the Christians by any event of this time; for the
bloody persecution at Lyons did not take place till three years after-
wards. Again, the ‘thundering legion,” or “the twelfth of the’
Roman legions,’’ had borne this name from the time of the Emperor
Augustus.? The fact at bottom, namely, that the Roman army, about
that time, was rescued from a threatening danger by’ some such
remarkable providence, is undeniable. The heathen themselves
acknowledged it to be the work of Heaven; they ascribed it, however,
not to the Christian’s God, nor to their prayers, but to their own gods,
to their Jupiter, and to the prayers of the emperor, or of the pagan
army; to say nothing of the blind superstition which attributed the
storm to the spells of an Egyptian necromancer.? The emperor, it is
said, stretched forth his hands, in supplication to Jupiter, with the
words, ‘¢ This hand, which has never yet shed human blood, I raise to
thee.’ There were paintings, in which he was represented in the atti-
tude of prayer, and the army catching the rain in their helmets. The
emperor has expressed his own conviction of the matter upon a medal,
where Jupiter is exhibited launching his bolts on the barbarians, who
lie-stretched upon the ground ;° and perhaps, also, at the close of the
first: Book of his Monologues, where he mentions, among the things for
which he was indebted, not to himself, but to the gods and his good
fortune, what had happened among the Quades.® It is certain, there-
fore, that this remarkable event can have had no influence in changing
the disposition of the emperor towards the Christians. But it by no
means follows, that the latter are to be charged with making up a false
story. ‘The matter admits of a natural explanation. It is not impossi-
ble that, in the thundering legion, there were Christians; perhaps a
large number of them; for it is certain that it was but a party among
them, who condemned the military profession. And although it was
difficult for Christians, at all times, and especially under an emperor
so unfavorably disposed, to avoid participating, while connected with a
Roman army, in the rites of paganism, yet they might succeed in doing
8 Dio Cass. 1. LX XT. § 8
1 Tertullian. Apologet. c. 5; ad Scapu-
: 4 Themist. orat, 15: Τίς ἡ βασιλικωτάτη
ἴατη: ὃ..4.. Euseb. 1. V.c. 5
2 Dio Cassius, in his catalogue of the le-
gions existing from the time of this empe-
ror, mentions (1. LV. ¢. 23): Td δωδέκατον
(στρατόπεδον) τὸ ἐν Καππαδοκίᾳ, τὸ kepav-
vooopov. ΑΒ late as the fifth century, we
find mention in the Notitia dignitatum im-
perii Romani, Sect. 27, of the prefectura
legionis duodecimae fulmineze Melitene,
under the dux Armeniz. The province
of Melitene was on the borders of Arme-
nia, towards Cappadocia.
TOV ἀρετῶν.
5 In Eckhel numism. III. 64.
6 Ta ἐν Κονάδοις πρὸς τῷ ypavota. Some
suppose, it is true, that M. Aurelius here
simply designates the place where this was
written. But as a notice of this sort occurs
nowhere else except in the third book, these
words might rather refer, perhaps, to events
in certain places, the remembrance of which
was associated with the preceding medita-
tions.
THE CHRISTIANS UNDER COMMODUS. 117
so, under particular circumstances. The Christian soldiers, then,
resorted, as they were ever wont to do on like occasions, to prayer,
The deliverance which ensued, they regarded as an answer to their
prayers ; and, on their return home, they mentioned it to their brethren
in the faith. These, naturally, would not fail to remind the heathen,
how much they were indebted to the people whom they so violently
persecuted. Claudius Apollinaris, Bishop of Hierapolis in Phrygia,
might have heard the story, soon after the event itself, from the Chris-
tian soldiers belonging to this legion, which had returned to its winter
quarters in Cappadocia; and he introduced it, either in an apology
addressed to this emperor, or in other apologetical works.1 Tertullian
refers to a letter of the emperor, addressed probably to the Roman
Senate, in which he owns that the deliverance was due to the Christian
‘soldiers. But this letter, if it contained, in so many words, a state-
ment of this sort, must, as appears evident from the above remarks,
have been either a spurious or interpolated one. It may be a question,
however, whether the letter contained any distinct affirmation of this
sort, —whether the emperor may not have spoken simply of soldiers,
and Tertullian explained it, according to dis own belief, of Christian
soldiers. He expresses himself, at any rate, with some degree of hesi-
tation. How the Christians might possibly sometimes interpret the
religious profession of the heathens according to the principles of their
own faith, is shown by another account of this event, which we find in
Tertullian. It is in these words: ““ Marcus Aurelius, in the German
expedition also, obtained, through the prayers offered to God by Chris-
tian soldiers, showers of rain, during that time of thirst. When has
not the land been delivered from drought, by our geniculations and
fasts 7° In such cases, the very people, when they cried to the God
of gods, who alone is mighty, gave our God the glory, under the name
of Jupiter.”
It is the less necessary to search after any s¢ngle cause for the ces-
sation of the persecution, since it not only belongs to the nature of the
passion, that rage will finally expend itself, but it is also true, in the
present case, that, only a few years after the last bloody persecution in
France, the government passed into different hands, and thus brought
about an entire change of measures. The depravity of the contempti-
ble Commodus, who succeeded to his father, A. D. 180, was made to
subserve the interests of the Christians, by procuring for them a season
of respite and tranquillity, after their long suffermgs under M. Aure-
lius; for it cannot be supposed that a man like Commodus was capa-
ble of appreciating, in the slightest degree, the worth of Christianity.
1 Where Eusebius represents Apollinaris name fulminea, or something of that sort.
as affirming that the legion received the
name fuminea from this event, the suspi-
cion naturally arises, that he read too hasti-
ly; since it is difficult to suppose, that a
contemporary, who lived in the vicinity of
the winter quarters of that legion, could
have committed so gross a mistake. Per-
haps Apollinaris merely said, the emperor
might now rightly call the legion by the
There is no difficulty in supposing that
some such expression lay at the foundation
of Eusebius’ words, l. V.c. 5. Ἔξ ἐκείνου
τὴν δὶ εὐχῆς TO παράδοξον πεποιηκυῖαν
λεγεῶνα οἰκείαν τῷ γεγονότι πρὸς τοῦ βασι-
λέως εἰληφέναι προσηγορίαν.
2 Christianorum /orte militum.
* 8 Days of prayer and fasting were com-
monly united by the Christians.
>a
118 THE CHRISTIANS UNDER
A certain Marcia, who stood with him in a forbidden connection, was,
for some unknown reason, friendly to the Christians, and enlisted in
their favor also the brutal emperor. It is not impossible, that the
indulgent law cited above from Tertullian, proceeded from this sover-
eign, who was disposed to befriend the Christians, and was afterwards
wrongly transferred to the last years of his predecessor. Under the
government of this emperor, events did occur, in which it was supposed
the effects of such a law might be traced. But it may be a question,
whether it was not too hasty a conclusion, to infer from these events
the existence of the law; whether it did not arise out of a misconcep-
tion. At all events, it seems quite improbable that accusations against
Christians would continue to be received as before, that Christians,
when accused, would be condemned to death by Trajan’s law, while
their accusers, at the same time, were also capitally punished! An
example will, perhaps, set the whole matter in its true light.2 Apollo-
nius, a Roman senator, was accused before the city preefect of bemg
a Christian. His accuser was immediately sentenced to death, and
executed. But Apollonius, who boldly confessed his faith before the
senate, was also beheaded by a decree of that body. Now Jerome,
who, in this case, would hardly be misled by a wrong interpretation of
Kusebius, but spoke rather from a correct knowledge of the facts, says
that the-accuser was a slave of Apollonius; and the ignominious char-
acter of his punishment, death by breaking the limbs, (the suffrmgi
crura,) confirms this account. The accuser, then, as it would seem,
was punished, not as the accuser of a Christian, but as a servant faith-
less to his master. From too broad a conclusion drawn from cases of
this description, it is quite possible, the tradition of the favorable law,
referred to above, may have derived its origin.
Since this emperor, then, had probably made no change, by an ex-
press edict, in the situation of the Christians; since the old laws had
never been distinctly repealed, but everything depended on the altered
tone of the emperor himself; it follows, that the Christians must have
been placed in very precarious circumstances. They were exposed
still, as much as they ever were, to be persecuted by individual gover.
nors, inimically disposed. Thus Arrius Montanus, proconsul of Asia
Minor, began to wreak his vengeance on them; but a vast multitude
1 Ἱστορεῖται δὲ αὕτη πολλά τε ὑπὲρ TOV
Χριστιανῶν σπουδώσαι καὶ πολλὰ αὐτοὺς
εὐηργετηκέναι, ἅτε καὶ παρὰ τῷ Κομμόδῳ
πᾶν δυναμένη. Dio Cass. 1. LX ΧΤΙ. ο. 4.
2 We must allow, this matter gives occa-
sion to many doubts. We must assent to
the remark of Gieseler. so far as this, viz:
that of course, either accusations proceed-
ing from slaves against their masters were
not received at all, or if they were received,
the person from whom they proceeded
might be punished as a criminal. Now
Jerome, (de v. i. ὁ. 42,) does not, indeed,
say, that the slave was executed. The ac-
count in Eusebius, (1. V.c. 21.) might be
one, then, mixed up with false reports, re-
lating, as it did, to an event in the West
He may have been deceived by Greek acta
martyris, in which the false story of the
condemnation of this slave had been fabri-
cated out of the rumor of the law above
mentioned against accusers of Christians.
On the other side, the following considera-
tions should be duly weighed. The narra-
tive of Jerome, in conformity with its pur-
pose, may have been incomplete, and there-
fore may furnish no evidence against the
truth of what Eusebius has added. We
are not obliged to presuppose, that the
judges, especially where the question related
to the death of a slave, acted in perfect con-
sistency with justice.
COMMODUS —SEPTIMIUS SEVERUS. 119
of Christians immediately presented themselves before the tribunal,
with a view to intimidate the proconsul by their numbers, — a proceed-
ing which might easily have been attended with the desired effect,
under a government where the persecutions did not proceed from the
imperial throne, but from the will of imdividuals. In fact, the procon-
sul was intimidated, and contenting himself with condemning to death
a few out of the multitude, he said to the rest,' “If you want to die,
ye wretched men, you have precipices from which you can throw your-
selves, or ropes.’ Irenzeus, who wrote under the reign of this empe-
ror, remarks, that Christians were to be found in the imperial court,
that they enjoyed the same privileges which belonged to all through-
out the Roman empire, and were suffered to go unmolested, by land or
by sea, wherever they chose. Yet the same Irenzeus observes, that
the church, at all times, not excepting his own, sends many martyrs to
their heavenly Father. The apparent contradiction is explained by
what has been said.
The political disorders which followed after the assassination of Com-
modus, in A. D. 192; the civil wars betwixt Pescennius Niger in the
East, Claudius Albinus in Gaul, and Septimius Severus, who finally
obtained the sovereign power in Rome, would, like all other public
calamities, be attended with injurious effects on the situation of the
Christians. Clement of Alexandria, who wrote soon after the death
of Commodus, says, “‘ Many martyrs are daily burned, crucified, be-
headed, before our eyes.”® When Septimius Severus obtained the vic-
tory, and found himself in secure possession of the sovereignty, he man-
ifested, it is true, a favorable disposition towards the Christians ; and
Tertullian’s account may doubtless be correct, that he was induced to
this by an incident of a personal nature, having been restored to health
through the skill of Proculus,® a Christian slave, whom he received
1 Tertullian. ad Scapulam, ο. 5: δειλοΐ,
εἰ ϑέλετε ἀποϑνήῆσκειν, κρημνοὺς ἢ βρόχους
ἔχετε.
2 Τῇ the second century, three proconsuls
are known under this name: the Antoninus
Pius, who was afterwards Emperor; his
grand father; and a third under the Empe-
ror Commodus. 44). Lamprid. vita Com-
modi, c.6 et 7. We most naturally think
of the one who was Tertullian’s contempo-
rary; for if he meant another, he would
probably have given some intimation that
he was speaking of an older man. . This
proconsul, as we learn from Lampridius,
stood in high estimation with the people.
Perhaps it was his eagerness to acquire this,
that led him to persecute the Christians.
5.Τ, IV. c. Heres. c. 30: Hi, qui in regali
aula sunt fideles.
£L. IV. c. 33, v. 9.
5 L. IL stromat. p. 414.
6 Thus we are informed by Tertullian, in
his work addressed to Scapula, ο. 4: Pro-
eulum Christianum, qui Torpacion cogno-
minabatur, Euodiz procuratorem, qui eum
per oleum aliquando curayerat, requisivit
et in palatio suo habuit usque ad mortem
ejus. In respect to the right understanding
of these words, it may be disputed, whether
the term Euodix, (which moreover is writ-
ten in different ways,) is a proper name or
not, and how the word procurator should
be taken. It might mean, “an overseer of
the causeways ;” yet probably it is a slave
or freed man from the mansion of some
Roman lady, who held under her the office
of steward or bailiff. Through his connec-
tion with this noble woman, Septimius Sev-
erus, before he became Emperor, may have
come in contact with this man, and the lat
ter offered his services to heal him in some
sickness. The oil, in this case has some
connection probably with the charisma of
healing. according to Mark, 6: 13, and
James, 5: 14. The inadvertent, and where
he had no particular interest in doubting,
credulous Tertullian, is, indeed, not a wit-
ness of any great weight; but the circum-
stantiality with which he speaks of this
matter, as one generally known, miyht point
to something which had a true foundation.
He appeals to the fact, that Caracalla, the
120 THE CHRISTIANS UNDER
into his family, and retained constantly by his side. He knew that
men and women of the highest rank in Rome, senators and their
wives, were Christians ; and protected them from the popular indigna-
tion.!
could break outin particular provinces ; and we know, from several of
the works of Tertullian which were composed in these times, that one
actually took place in proconsular Africa. The festivities in honor of
the emperor, where the absence of the Christians excited public atten-
tion, might easily have been the ocgasion of it.?
‘Tf, in this reign, the law against ‘ close associations ’’ was renewed,?
this circumstance must have operated, as under the government of T'ra-
jan, to the disadvantage of those whose union had always been declared
to be a collegium illicitum. Finally Severus, in the year 202, passed
a law which forbade, under severe penalties, a change, either to Juda-
ism or to Christianity.4 That he held it necessary to enact such a pro-
hibition, which was in truth mvolved in the earlier laws, shows how
little these laws were then regarded. It may be a question, too, how
the matter of this law of Severus is to be interpreted. If.the emperor
forbade the change to Christianity, (Christianos fieri,) merely im the
sense in which he forbade the change to Judaism, (Judzeos fieri,) it
would seem to be implied, that he held it necessary, only to check the
farther inroads, as well of Christianity as of Judaism, but had no wish
to disturb those who were already Christians, in the practice of their
religion ; — and such a tacit recognition of Christianity must certainly
be regarded as an advantage gained by the Christian party in the em-
pire. But, as may be mferred from what we have already said, the
situation of the Christians, in this case, was quite different from that of
the Jews. In the case of Judaism, it was naturally assumed in the
prohibition, Judzeos fieri, that the Jews, as a nation, were to remain
unmolested in their right to the free exercise of their own religion ; and
in the criminality of the act, Judzeos fieri, this law pronounced the
criminality of all other Roman citizens, who had heretofore passed over
to Judaism. But in the case of the Christians, no such distinction as
this could be made; so that, as it concerned them, the law would pro-
nounce all to be criminal, without exception, who had ever become
But as the old laws remained still im force, violent persecutions
son of Severus, was very well acquainted
with this Proculus ; that Caracalla himself
was lacte Christiano educatus, whether it
was, that he had a Christian for his nurse,
or had spent his childhood amidst Chris-
tians in the service of the imperial house-
hold. With this may be compared what
/Elius Lampridius says in the life of this
emperor, (c. 1,) namely, that the playmates
of Caracalla, when he was seven years old,
had, contrary to his father’s will, led him to
embrace Judaism, (ob Judaicam religionem
gravius verberatus,) and in connection with
the -last, should be kept in mind what we
quoted recently from. Celsus, that Chris-
tianity was propagated among the children.
But although Septimius Severus may have
had Christians among the members of his
household, yet it by no means follows, that
he was himself favorable either to Chris-
tianity or its followers.
1 Tertullian says of Septimius Severus,
(in the passage just referred to,) Clarissi-
mas feminas et clarissimos viros sciens hu-
jus sectze esse, non modo non lesit, verum
et testimonio exornavit et populo furenti
in nos palam restitit.
2 See above, p. 91.
8 As may be inferred from the fact that
he issued a rescript directing that those
“qui illicitum collegium coisse dicantur,”
should be accused before the Preefectus
urbi. Vid. Digest. 1. XII. tit. XII. 1. § 14.
4 ΜΠ Spartiani Severus, c. 17: Judeos
fieri sub gravi poena vetuit. Item etiam
de Christianis sanxit.
SEPTIMIUS SEVERUS. 121
Christians. We should possess the words of the law itself, however, in
order to decide with any certainty as to its true meaning.
At all events, so explicit a declaration, from an emperor who had
thus far, shown himself personally favorable to the Christians, could
only operate to render their circumstances still more distressmg. In
many districts, the persecution was so fierce, that it was looked upon
as a sign of the speedy appearance of the Antichrist.1 In Egypt and
in proconsular Africa, this seems to have been particularly the case ;
yet these persecutions were certainly not general.
- At a period somewhat earlier, the threat of lodging an information
with the magistrates, had already been employed to extort money from
the Christians ;? and many had bargained, at a certain price, with
informers, or greedy policemen, for the privilege of not being disturbed
im the exercise of their religion.? But as, under this government, the
laws against the Christians continued to be neither strictly nor univer-
sally carried into effect, such proceedings became more common, doubt-
less, than in earlier persecutions. And it was now the case, that entire .
communities purchased freedom from disturbance in this νὰν. Many
bishops thought that, by this course, they consulted best for the inter-
est of their churches.? But such measures would be opposed, not only
by such as cherished a fanatic longing after martyrdom, but also on the
score of prudence, and of zeal for the dignity and purity of the Chris-
tian name. On the score of prudence, because it was only individuals,
after all, who could be satisfied thus; and the rage or cupidity of
others would only be excited the more ; ®— on the score of interest for
the honor and purity of the Christian name, because Christians became
associated, by this course, with those who purchased immunity with
bribes from the punishment due for unlawful or nefarious crimes or
pursuits.” When the advocates of this course pleaded, in their
defence, that men ought to give to Cesar the things that are Cesar’s,
and to God the thmgs that are God’s, Tertullian answered them
thus: ‘“‘He who would extort money from me, in this way, demands
nothing for the emperor, but rather acts against him, since, for the sake
of gold, he lets the Christians go free, who are guilty by the laws.”> It
appears to him remarkable, that,-at a period when so many new regu-
lations were devising for the improvement of the revenue, when so
1 Euseb. 1. VI. c. 7.
2 The concutere Christianos. — Quid dicit
ille concussor? Da mihi pecuniam, certe
ne eum tradat. Tertullian. de fuga in per-
secutione, c. 12.
8 Tu pacisceris cum delatore vel milite
vel furunculo aliquo preside, sub tunica et
sinu, quod aiunt, ut furtivo, quem coram
toto mundo Christus emit, imo et manumi-
sit, says the high-hearted Tertullian, as the
opponent of such transactions. |. ¢.
Parum est, si unus aut alius ita eruitur.
Massaliter tot ecclesiz tributum sibi irro-
gaverunt. Tertullian. 1. c. c. 13.
> To this Tertullian sarcastically alludes :
VOL. I. 11
Ut regno suo securi frui possent, sub ob
tentu pacem procurandi.
6 Neque enim statim et a populo eris tu-
tus, si officia militaria redemeris, says Ter-
tullian, 1. 6. 6, 14.
7 Tertullian says, with reference to this,
(1. ο. 6. 13): Nescio dolendum an erubes-
cendum sit, cum in matricibus beneficiario-
rum et curiosorum inter tabernarios et
lanios et fures balnearum et aleones et le-
nones Christiani quoque vectigales conti-
nentur.
8 Miles me vel delator vel inimicus con-
cutit, nihil Cesari exigens; imo contra
faciens, cum Christianum, legibus humanis
reum, mercede dimittit. Tertullian, ].c.c.12
122 THE CHRISTIANS UNDER CARACALLA.
many new taxes were introduced, it had never occurred to any one, to
propose the free profession of Christianity, at a certain rate, fixed by
law. Thus, owing to the great number of the Christians, of which all
were aware, the public revenue would be greatly increased.*
The situation of the Christians continued to be the same under the
government of the insane Caracalla, although the cruel emperor him-
self was the occasion of no new persecutions. Everything depended
on the accidental temper of the different governors. Many of these
were active in devising expedients for saving, without open violation of
the laws, the lives of those Christians who were arraigned before their
tribunals.2 Others were furious, from personal hatred, or to flatter the
people. Others, again, were contented to proceed according to the
letter of the law enacted by Trajan. In a letter to one of the perse-
cutors of the Christians, the proconsul Scapula, Tertullian remarks,
that if he would use the sword only against the Christians according
to the original laws, and as was still done by the governor of Maurita-
nia, and by the governor of Leon, in Spain, he might discharge every
lawful duty of his office, without resorting to cruelty. Trajan’s law,
then, was not always the governing rule. |
We will now select a few dividual examples which may serve to
illustrate the character of the persecutions of this time.* In the year
200, some Christians belonging to the city of Scillita in Numidia, were
brought before the tribunal of the proconsul Saturninus. He said to
them, ‘‘ You may obtain pardon of our emperors (Severus and’ Cara-
ealla,) if in good earnest you will return to our gods.” One of them,
Speratus, replied, ‘* We have mjured no man; we have spoken ill of
none ; for all the evil you have brought upon us, we have only thanked
you. We give praise for it all to our true Lord and King.” ‘The
proconsul replied, ‘‘ We also are devout; we swear by the genius of
the emperor our master, and we pray for his welfare, as you too must
do.” Hereupon Speratus: “1 know of no genius of the ruler of this
earth; but I serve my God in heaven, whom no man hath seen nor can
see. Ihave defrauded no man of his dues. Ihave never failed to pay
τ Tanta quotidie zrario augendo prospi-
ciuntur remedia censuum, vectigalium, col-
lationum, stipendiorum, nec unquam usque
adhuc ex Christianis tale aliquid prospec-
tum est, sub aliquam redemptionem capitis
et sectze redigendis, cum tantz multitudi-
nis nemini ignote fructus ingens meti pos-
Set. ie. 6: 12:
2 Tertullian relates, that a preeses even
went so far as to furnish the Christians
himself with the means of so answering the
questions of the judge, as to get discharged.
Another released at once a Christian who
had been brought before him, declaring it
contrary to the laws to yield to the demands
of his fellow-citizens, —i. 6. if we take tu-
multuosum as neuter; or perhaps the cor-
rect reading may be, he discharged the
individual as a factious person, who must
‘settle the matter with his fellow-citizens ;
viz. do what would satisfy them, — dimisit
quasi tumultuosum, civibus suis satisfacere
(ut — satisfaceret.) A third subjected a
Christian to slight torture, and as he yield-
ed at once, dismissed him without requiring
anything more of him, expressing at the
same time his regret to the assistant judges,
that he had anything to do with such busi-
ness. Another tore in pieces the elogium
or writ, when a Christian, seized by violence,
was brought before him, declaring that se-
cundum mandatum, — the law of Trajan, —
he would listen to no complaint in the ab-
sence of the accusers. See Tertullian. ad
Scapulam, ec. 4.
’'The documents from which we take
them, are in Ruinart: Acta Martyrum, the
Acta Martyrum Scillitanorum, and Acta
Perpetuz et Felicitatis.
MARTYRDOMS IN AFRICA. 123
the custom upon all which I purchase, for I acknowledge the emperor as
my lord; but I can worship none but my Lord, the King of kings,
the Lord of all nations.’’ Upon this the proconsul ordered the Christ-
ians to be conducted back to their prison until the next day. When
they appeared again, he addressed them once more, and granted them
a space of three days for reflection. But Speratus answered in the
name of the rest; “1 am a Christian, and we all are Christians; we
abandon not our faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Do with us as you
please.’ Having thus confessed themselves Christians, and refused to
pay due honor to the emperor, they were sentenced to decapitation.
On receiving their sentence, they thanked God, and at the place of
execution, they again kneeled and gave thanks.
Some few years afterwards, three young men, Revocatus, Saturnius,
and Secundulus, and two young women, Perpetua and Felicitas, were
arrested at Carthage, all of them being still catechumens. ‘The story
of their imprisonment and of their suffermgs presents us with many a
fine trait of the power of Christian faith, combined with Christian —
tenderness of feeling. Perpetua, two and twenty years of age, who was
a mother, with her child at the breast, had to struggle not alone with
the natural feelings which shrunk from death, and with the weakness
of her sex. The hardest conflict which she had before her was with
those purely human feelings, grounded in the sacred ties of nature,
feelings which Christianity recognizes in all their nights, and makes
even more profound and tender, but yet causes to be sacrificed to the
One Thing for which all else must be yielded. The mother of Perpetua
was a Christian, but her aged father was still a pagan. His daughter
was dear to him, but he dreaded also the disgrace connected with her
sufferings as a Christian. When she was first brought to the police
office, her aged father came and urged her to recant. Pointing to a
vessel that lay on the ground, she said, “‘Can I call this vessel any-
thing else than what it is? No. Neither can I say to you anything
else, than that I am a Christian.” ~ In the meantime, she was baptized ;
for the clergy usually found no difficulty in purchasing, at least, from
the overseers of the prisons, admission to the Christians in confinement,
for the purpose of administering to them the offices of religion ; although,
in the present case, even this was perhaps unnecessary, as the prisoners
were not as yet placed under a rigorous guard. Perpetua said, “‘ The
Spirit bade me pray for nothing at my baptism but patience.’ After
a few days they were thrown into the dungeon. ‘I was tempted,”
said she, ‘for I had never been in such darkness before. O what a
dreadful day! The excessive heat occasioned by the multitude of pris-
oners, the rough treatment we experienced from the soldiers, and,
finally, anxiety for my child, made me miserable.’’? The deacons, who
administered to them the communion in the dungeon, purchased for
the Christian prisoners a better apartment, where they were separated
from other criminals. Perpetua now took the child to herself in the
dungeon, and placed it at her breast; she recommended it to her
mother; she comforted her friends; and felt cheered herself by the
possession of her babe. ‘The dungeon,” said she, ‘ became a palace
to me.”
124 THE CHRISTIANS UNDER CARACALLA—
The report reached her aged father, that they were about to be
tried. He hastened to her and said, “‘ My daughter, pity my grey
hairs, pity thy father, if I am still worthy to be called thy father. If
I have brought thee up to this bloom of thy age, if I have preferred thee
above all thy brothers, expose me not to such shame among men. Look
upon thy son, who, if thou diest, cannot long survive. Let that lofty
spirit give way, lest thou plunge us all into rum. For if thou diest
thus, not one of us will ever have courage again to speak a free word.”
Whilst saying this, he kissed her hands, threw himself ‘at her feet, and
called her with tears not his daughter, but his mistress. «‘¢ My father’s
grey hairs,” said the daughter, ‘‘ pamed me, when I considered that
he alone of my family would not rejoice that I must suffer.” She re-
pled to him, ‘“ What shall happen when I come before the tribunal,
depends on the will of God; for know, we stand not in our own strength,
but only by the power of God.” On the arrival of this decisive hour,
her aged father also appeared, that he might for the last time try his
utmost to overcome the resolution of his daughter. Said the governor
to Perpetua, “" Have pity on thy father’s grey hairs, have pity on thy
helpless child. Offer sacrifice for the welfare of the emperor.”? She
answered, “‘ That I cannot do.” “ Art thou a Christian?’ ‘ Yes,”
she replied, “41 am a Christian.” Her fate was now decided. They
were all condemned together to serve, at the approaching festival, on the
anniversary of the young Geta’s nomination,! as a cruel sport for the
people and soldiers in a fight of wild beasts. They returned back re-
joicmg to the dungeon. But Perpetua did not suppress the tender
feelmgs of the mother. Her first act was to send a request to her aged
father that she might have the child, whom she wished to give the
breast ; but he refused to part with it. As to Felicitas, on her return
to the dungeon, she was seized with the pains of labor. The jailer said
to her, ““ If thy present sufferings are so great, what wilt thou do, when
thou art thrown to the wild beasts? This thou didst not consider, when
thou refusedst to sacrifice.’’ She answered, ‘I now suffer myself all
that I suffer; but then there will be another who shall suffer for me,
because I also will suffer for him.’’ A custom which had come down
from the times of human sacrifices, under the bloody Baal-worship
of the Carthaginians, still prevailed, of dressing those crimmals who
were condemned to die by wild beasts, in priestly raiment. It was
therefore proposed, in the present case, that the men should be clothed
as the priests of Saturn, and the women as the priestesses of Ceres.
Nobly did their free, Christian spirit protest against such a proceeding.
‘‘ We have come here,” said they, “of our own will, that we may not
suffer our freedom to be taken from us. We have given up our lives,
that we may not be forced to such abominations.””? ‘The pagans them-
selves acknowledged the justice of their demand and yielded.
After they had been torn by the wild beasts, and were about to re-
ceive the merciful stroke which was to end their sufferings, they took
leave of each other, for the last time, with the mutual kiss of Christian
love.
1 Natales Ceesaris
HELIOGABALUS— ALEXANDER SEVERUS. 125
A more quiet season for the Christian Church began with the reign
of the ignoble Heliogabalus, A. D. 219. But we have already ex-
plained the singular phenomenon, that the worst princes proved to.
be the most favorably disposed towards the Christians. Helioga- .
balus was not a follower of the old religion of the state, but even
devoted to a foreign superstition which united with itself the most
abominable excesses, the Syrian worship of the Sun. This worship he
wished to make predominant in the Roman empire, and to blend with
it all other religions. To this end he tolerated Christianity, as he did
other foreign religions. Had he ever proceeded to the execution of his
plan, he would assuredly have met with the most determined opposition
from the Christians.!
From an entirely different source proceeded the favorable disposition
of the noble-minded and devout Alexander Severus, (from the year
222 to 235,) an emperor wholly unlike to his abandoned predecessor.
This excellent prince possessed a ready sympathy with all that is good,
and a reverence for everything connected with religion. He was at-
tached to that religious eclecticism, the grounds of whose origin we
have earlier explained. But he distinguished himself from others of
the same principles, by giving Christianity a place in his system. In
Christ he recognized a Divine Being, equal with the other gods; and
in the domestic chapel (the Larareum) where he was used to offer his
morning devotions, among the images of those men, whom he regarded
as bemgs of a superior order —of Apollonius of Tyana, of Orpheus —
stood also the bust of Christ. It is said that it was his intention to
cause Christ to be enrolled among the Roman deities. The words of
our Saviour, which this emperor was constantly repeating, ‘“‘ As ye
would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise,’—a
maxim which, taken alone, is but little suited, it must be confessed, to
mark the distinguishing character of Christianity,—he caused to be
engravyen on the walls of his palace and on public monuments. When
the mother of this emperor, Julia Mammea, resided at Antioch, she
sent for Origen, the great teacher of the Alexandrian church; and we
may be certain that this father, who, more than any other, knew how to
make Christianity intelligible to a foreign mode of thinking, availed
himself of this opportunity to do this in the case of Mammezea, who exer-
cised a great influence over the feelings of her son. The declarations
of this emperor on several occasions are based on the recognition of
Christianity as a religio licita, and of the Christian church as a law-
fully existing corporation; as, for example, when, in recommending a
new mode of appointment to the civil offices of the state, he referred
for a model to the regulations in Christian churches; and when in a
dispute betwixt the guild of cooks and the Christian church in Rome,
respecting a lot of land which the latter had appropriated, he decided in
favor of the church; saymg, ‘It was better that God should be wor-
shipped in whatever manner, on that spot, than that it should be given
1 1]. Lamprid. vit. c. 3, 6, 7
11:
126 THE CHRISTIANS UNDER MAXIMINUS —
up to the cooks. In view of this so favorable disposition of Alexander
Severus towards the Christians, and of the declarations which imply a
tacit recognition of Christianity, as a religio licita; it is the more singu-
lar that he should still omit taking the decisive step, by which ‘he
would have given to the Chr istian church the greatest, the most
certain and the most lasting advantage — that of adopting Christianity
by an express law of the empire among the tolerated religions. It is
evident from this fact how difficult it was for a Roman emperor to effect
a change in anything that related to the public religion of the state.
In fact, it was under the reign of Severus, that the civilian whose
authority stands so high in the Roman law, Domitius Ulpian, collected
together in the seventh of his ten books, De officio proconsulis,! the
rescripts of the emperors against the Christians.”
The rude Thracian, Maximinus, who in the year 235 raised himself
to the imperial throne, after the assassination of the excellent Alexander
Severus, hated the Christians on account of the friendly relations in
which they stood with his predecessor, and persecuted in particular
those bishops who had been on terms of intimacy with him.’ In addi-
tion to this, several of the provinces, as Cappadocia and Pontus, were
visited with destructive earthquakes, which re-enkindled the popular
hatred against the Christians. The fury of the people, under such an
emperor, had free scope; and it was, moreover, encouraged by hostile
governors. The persecutions were confined, indeed, to single provinces,
so that the Christians could save themselves by flying from one proy-
ince to another. But although the persecutions were less violent than
in other times, they made the greater impression, because they fell on
those who, during the long interval of peace, had become unused to
violence.*
A more favorable period for the Christians returned again with the
accession of Philip the Arabian, in the year 244. It is said, that this
emperor was himself a Christian.? We have a circumstantial account
which states, that on the vigils of Easter, the night after Easter Sun-
day, he presented himself for the purpose of joming in the worship of
a Christian assembly ; that he was met at the door by the bishop of the
church,® and told that, on account of his past crimes,’ he could obtain no
admittance there, until he had submitted to the penance of the church ;
and that the emperor actually consented to comply with the terms pre-
scribed. But this story does not harmonize with all we otherwise know
respecting the emperor Philip; for in no part of his public life, not
even on his coins, has he left the least trace of his Christianity ; but he
everywhere appears as a follower of the pagan religion of the state.
1 Of which the fragments are to be found 5 Eusebius, in his Church History, makes
in the Digests, 1. I. tit. XIV.c.4, and the use of the expression: κατέχει λόγος. But
following. in the Chronicle he calls him distinctly,
2 Lactant. institut. 1. V.e. 11: Ut doce- the first Christian emperor.
ret, quibus oportet eos poenis affici, qui se 6 According to the later tradition of Be-
cultores Dei confiterentur. bylas, bishop “of Antioch.
3 Euseb. 1. VI. c. 28. 7 The assassination of his predecessor,
4 Vid. ep. Firmiliani Cesareens. 75 apud Gordianus, was doubtless one of the crimes
Cypr. and Orig. Commentar. in Matth. T. here meant.
Ill. p. 857. Ed. de la Rue.
PHILIP THE ARABIAN. Te
Origen, who was on terms of correspondence with the imperial family,
and who wrote, during this reign, his work against Celsus, gives us to
understand, indeed, that the Christians now enjoyed a season of quiet ;
but we find in this writer no intimation of the fact, that the ruler of the
Roman empire was a Christian, when assuredly he had occasion to
mention it, if it was true. The only possible way of explaining this
would be to say, that the emperor, led by political motives, kept his con-
version to Christianity a secret. But then again, this statement could
not be reconciled with the other, namely, that he had visited a Christian
assembly, especially on such an occasion, or that he had submitted to
the penance of the church. We find, indeed, the first traces of the
tradition respecting the conversion of this emperor to Christianity in an
author of no less credit than Dionysius of Alexandria, who wrote under
the reign of Valerian, the second in succession after Philip. He says
of Valerian, that ‘‘ He showed more good will towards the Christians,
than even those emperors who were held to be Christians themselves.’’?
By those emperors, we can conceive no others to be meant than the
present Philip, and Alexander Severus. Probably, then, the well-in-
formed Dionysius placed them both in the same class. Philip, like
Alexander Severus, might have included Christianity in his system of
religious eclecticism; and the exaggerated legend made of him a
Christian. But the assassination of his predecessor, and many other
actions of which he was known to be guilty, seemed inconsistent with
his Christianity ; to solve the contradiction, the legend added this fig-
ment of the occurrence at the Easter vigils.
But instead of dwelling longer upon this exaggerated story, we will
cite, before we pass to new trials of the Christian church, the remarkable
words of that great ecclesiastical teacher and writer of those times, —
Origen, — respecting the trials which the church had already encoun-
tered, and respecting her then external condition and future prospects.
In relation to the earlier persecutions, he remarks,’ “* As the Christians.
who had been commanded not to defend themselves against their ene-
mies by outward force, observed the mild and philanthropic injunctions ;
what they could not have gained, had they been ever so powerful, in
case they had been permitted to wage war, that they received from the
God who constantly fought for them, and who, from time to time,
constrained to peace those who had arrayed themselves against the
Christians and would have exterminated them from the earth; for in
order to remind them, when they saw some few of their brethren ex-
posed to sufferings on account of their religion, that they should be the
bolder and despise death, a few, now and then, so few that they may
easily be numbered, have died for the Christian religion;* while God
has always prevented a war of extermination against the whole body of
Christians, since it was his pleasure that they should remain, and that
the whole earth should be filled with this saving and most holy doc-
1 He had written letters to the emperor, 8 L. Ill. c. 8.
and to his wife Severa, which have not + ’OAéyot κατὰ καιροὺς καὶ σφόδρα εὐαρί-
been preserved. Sunto. ὑπὲρ τῆς Χριστιανῶν ϑεοσεβείας
2 Euseb. 1. VII. c. 10 τεϑνήκασιν.
128 CHRISTIANS UNDER PHILIP THE ARABIAN.
trine. And yet, on the other hand, in order that the weaker brethren
might breathe freely, delivered from their fear of death, God has taken
care of the faithful, scattering, by his mere will, all the assaults of their
enemies, so that neither emperor, nor governor, nor the populace, has
been able to rage against them longer.” In reference to his own times,
he observes, ‘‘he number of the Christians, God has caused contin-
ually to increase, and, some addition is made to it every day; he has,
moreover, given them already the free exercise of their religion ;} al-
though a thousand obstacles still hinder the spread of the doctrines of
Jesus in the world. But since it was God who willed that the doctrines
of Jesus should become a blessing also to the heathen, the machinations
of men against the Christians have all been turned to shame, and the
more emperor, governor and the populace have endeavored to destroy
the Christians, the more powerful have they become.”’? He says, that
among the multitude who became Christians, might be found men of
wealth and of high stations in the government, as also rich and noble
women ;° that the teacher of a Christian church might now, indeed, ob-
tain honor and respect, but that the contempt which he met with from
others exceeded the respect which he enjoyed from his brethren in the
faith.* He says, moreover, that those absurd accusations against the
Christians were still believed by many, who carried their prejudice so
far as even to avoid speaking with them.® He writes, that by the
divine will, the persecutions against the Christians had long since
ceased ; but he adds, with a glance to the future, that this time of
tranquillity would, in its turn, certainly come to an end, when the
calumniators of Christianity had once more diffused abroad the opinion,
that the cause of the many disturbances (in the latter part of this
emperor’s reign) was the great multitude of the Christians, who had so
increased their numbers, because they were no longer persecuted.®
Thus he foresaw, that the persecutions had not yet come to an end,
and the opinion that the decline of the state religion and the unceas-
ing progress of Christianity was bringing calamity upon the Roman
empire, would, sooner or later, brig on another persecution of the
Christians. ‘If God,” says he, “ grants liberty to the tempter, and
gives him the power to persecute us, we shall be persecuted. But if
it is God’s will that we should not be exposed to these sufferings we
shall, in some wonderful way, enjoy tranquillity, even in the midst of a
world that hates us; and we trust in him who has said, Be of good
cheer, I have overcome the world. And in truth he has overcome
the world. In so far, then, as he who has overcome the world, wills
Ἤδη δὲ καὶ παῤῥησίαν ἐπιδέδωκεν. Τ,.
VII. c. 26.
2 Τοσούτῳ πλείους ἐγίνοντο καὶ κατίσχυ-
ον σφόδρα. Lc.
3 Πγγνὲς τῶν ἐν ἀξιώμασι, καὶ γύναια τὰ
ἁβρὰ καὶ εὐγενῆ. 1,. 1Π «. 9.
4 Καὶ νῦν δὲ πλείων ἐστίν ἡ παρὰ τοῖς
λοιποῖς ἀδοξία τῆς παρὰ τοῖς ὁμοδόξοις νο-
μιζομένης δόξης καὶ οὐ πᾶσιν, (an allusion
to the parties existing among the Chris-
tians.) L.c.
5L. VI. c. 28. Origen says, that Jews
had spread abroad those reports about the
murder of children, &c., against the Chris-
tians.
6 Καὶ εἰκὸς παύσεσϑαι τὸ ὡς πρὸς τὸν ;
βίον τοῦτον τοῖς πιστεύουσιν ἐγγινόμενον
ἀδεὲς, ἐπὰν πάλιν οἱ παντὶ τρόπῳ διαβάλ
λοντες τὸν λόγον, τὴν αἰτίαν τὴν ἐπὶ τοσοῦ-
το νῦν στάσεως ἐν πλῆϑει τῶν πιστευόντω:
΄ τ
νομίσωσιν εἶναι. Τ,. 1Π. ο. 15
ORIGEN’S REMARKS, 129
that we should overcome it, since he has received from the Father
power to overcome the world, we rely upon Ais victory.! But if it is
his pleasure that we should again strive and battle for the faith, then
let the enemy come, and we will say to him, “‘ We can do all things
through him that strengthens us, Jesus Christ our Lord.” Although
Origen was too sensible and sagacious to place great confidence in the
peaceful times which the Christian church then enjoyed, though he saw
that new struggles must be undergone, yet he was firmly persuaded
that the day was coming when Christianity, by virtue of its intrinsic,
divine power, would come forth victorious out of them all, and gain the
dominion over entire humanity. As Celsus had said, that in case all
behaved like the Christians, the emperor would be left without an army,
the Roman empire would fall a prey to the wildest barbarians, and
consequently all culture become extinct ; to this Origen replied, “ If, as
Celsus says, all did as I do, then the barbarians also would receive the
divine word, and become the most moral and gentle of men. All other
religions would cease from the earth, and Christianity alone be supreme,
which indeed is destined one day to have the supremacy, since the divine
truth is continually bringing more souls under its sway.”* The con-
viction which Origen here expresses, — that Christianity, by its own
intrinsic power, would in addition to its other conquests, subdue all the
rudeness of the savage stock of* human nature, and bestow all true cul-
ture on the barbarians,—this conviction was nothing new, but from
the beginning given with the Christian consciousness itself. The
Apostle Paul describes Christianity as a power that should reach as
well to Scythians as to Greeks, and impart the same divine life to both
these national stocks, binding them together in one divine family ; and
Justin Martyr testifies that no barbarian or Nomadic race was to be
found, in which prayers did not ascend to God in the name of the cruci-
fied. But the really new,— wherein we perceive the change which
the onward progress of history, during the course of this century, had
produced in the mode of thinking among Christians and in their antici-
pations of the future development of God’s kingdom, —was, that Origen
confidently avows the expectation that Christianity, working outward
from within, would overcome and suppress every other religion, and
gain the dominion of the world. Such an anticipation was foreign to
the thoughts of the older teachers ofthe church. They could conceive
of the Pagan state in no other relation than one of constant hostility to
ΤΊ render the passage, (1. VIII. ς. 70,)
according to what seems to me to be a ne-
cessary correction of the text: Διόπερ εἰς
ὅσον νικῆσαι (instead of ¢) ἡμᾶς (this I in-
sert) αὐτὸν βούλεται, λαβὼν ἀπὸ τοῦ πατ-
ρὺς τὸ νικᾷν τὸν κόσμον, ϑαῤῥοῦμεν (δὲ I
omit) τῇ ἐκείνου νίκῃ.
2 Δηλονότι καὶ οἱ βάρβαροι, τῷ λόγῳ τοῦ
ϑεοῦ mpoceAtovrec, νομιμώτατοι ἔσονται, καὶ
πᾶσα μὲν ϑρησκεία καταλυϑήσεται, μόνη δὲ
ἡ Χριστιανῶν κρατῆσει" ἥτις καὶ μόνη ποτὲ
κρατήσει, τοῦ λόγου ἀεὶ πλείονας νεμομένου
woyac. L. VIII. ς..68:
8 Dial. c. Tryph. f. 345, ed. Colon: Οὐδὲ
ἕν γὰρ ὅλως ἐστί τὸ γένος ἀνϑρώπων, εἴτε
βαρβάρων, εἴτε ἑλλήνων, εἴτε ἁπλῶς ᾧτινι-
ovv ὀνόματι προσαγορευομένων ἢ ᾿Αμαξοβθί-
wv ἢ ἀοίκων καλουμένων ἢ ἐν σκηναῖς κτη-
νοτρόφων οἰκούντων, ἐν οἷς μὴ διὰ τοῦ ὀνό-
ματος τοῦ σταυρωϑέντος ᾿Ιησοῦ εὐχαὶ καὶ
εὐχαριστίαι τῷ πατρὶ καὶ ποιητῇ τῶν ὅλον
γίνονται
130 THE PERSECUTION
Christianity, and expected the triumph of the church only as the result
of a supernatural interposition, at the second coming of Christ.
What the sagacious Origen had foretold, with regard to impending
persecutions, was soon verified. Indeed, at the very time he was in-
diting these words at Czesarea in Palestine, they had already begun to
be verified in another district of the empire. When the enthusiastic -
followers of the old religion observed the encroachments which, during
this long season of peace, Christianity had made on every side, threat-
ening the destruction of all they held dearest, the fanatic spirit would
be excited in them to so much the greater degree of violence. And so
it was, that even before the change of rulers, a certain dividual made
his appearance in Alexandria, who imagined that he had been called
by a revelation of the gods,” to arouse the people to war in defence of
their ancient sanctuaries, against the enemies of the gods; and by his
means the fury of the extremely excitable populace of that city was
kindled against the Christians. They had already suffered much from
this quarter.
It had repeatedly been the case before, that a government favorable
to the Christians was immediately succeeded. by another under which
they were oppressed—the reign of Antoninus Pius, for example, by
that of Marcus Aurelius— of Marcus Aurelius by that of Maximinus
the Thracian. So it proved once more, when, in 249, Decius Trajan
conquered Philip the Arabian, and placed himself on the throne of the
Ceesars. It would be natural for an emperor, zealously devoted to the
pagan religion, who succeeded to a government which had been lenient
towards the Christians, to consider himself bound to reénforce the
ancient laws, now fallen into desuetude, and to carry them into more
rigorous execution against the religion which, during the preceding
reign, had become so much more widely diffused. In many parts of ᾿
the empire the Christians had now enjoyed undisturbed peace for a
period of thirty years; in several districts, for a still longer time. A
persecution, following after so many years of tranquillity, could not
fail to prove a sifting process for the churches, where many had for-
gotten the conflict with the world to which they were called as Christ-
ians, and the virtues which they should maintain in this conflict. It
was in this light, as such a process for the sifting and cleansing of the
churches, now asleep and become worldly under the long enjoyment of
quiet, that this new persecution was regarded by the bishop Cyprian of
Carthage. It was thus he expressed himself before the Christians under
his spiritual guidance, soon after the first storm of the persecution was
over.2 ‘Tf,’ said he, “‘the cause of the disease is understood, the
cure of the afflicted part is already found. The Lord would prove his
people; and because the divinely prescribed regimen of life had be-
1 This is expressed by Justin Martyr, in 2 Dionysius, bishop of Alexandria, in 2
the Dial. c. Tryph. f. 358, where he says of letter to Fabius, bishop of Antioch, cited in
the dpyovtec, —"O. οὐ παύσονται Yava- Eusebius, (1. VI. c.41,) calls him, ‘O κακῶν
τοῦντες καὶ διωκοντὲες τοὺς τὸ ὄνομα τοῦ TH πόλει ταύτῃ μώντις καὶ ποιητῆς.
Χριστοῦ ὁμολογοῦντας, ἕως πάλιν παρῇ καὶ 3 In his sermo de lapsis.
καταλύσῃ πώντας.
UNDER DECIUS TRAJAN. 131
come disturbed in the long season of peace, a divine judgment was
sent to re-establish our fallen, and I might almost say slumbering faith.
Our sins deserve more; but our gracious Lord has so ordered it, that
all which has occurred seems rather like a trial than a persecution.
Forgetting what believers did in the times of the apostles, and what
they should always be doing, Christians labored, with insatiable desire,
to increase their earthly possessions. Many of the bishops, who, by
precept and example, should have guided others, neglected their divine
calling, to engage in the management of worldly concerns.” Such
being the condition of things in many of the churches, it may be easily
understood that a persecution, which was now so unusual an occurrence,
and which in the present case, became after the first outbreak, so ex-
tremely violent, must have produced a powerful impression.
It was certainly the design of the emperor, to suppress Christianity
entirely. In the year 250, he ordered rigorous search to be made for
all suspected of refusing compliance with the national worship, and the
Christians were to be required to conform to the ceremonies of the
Roman religion. In case they declined, threats, and afterwards tor-
tures were to be employed to compel submission. If they remained
firm, it was resolved to inflict, particularly on the bishops, whom the
emperor hated most bitterly, the punishment of death. ‘There was a
disposition, however, to try first the effect of commands, threats, per-
suasions and the milder forms of chastisement. By degrees, recourse
was had to more violent measures; and gradually the persecution
extended from the capital of the empire — where the presence of an
emperor known to be hostile to the Christians made it the most severe
at the beginning —into the provinces. Wherever the imperial edict
was carried into execution, the first step was publicly to appomt a day
against which all the Christians of a place were to present themselves
before the magistrate, renounce their religion, and offer at the altar.
In the case of those who before the end of the time fled their country,
nothing further was done; except that their goods were confiscated,
and themselves forbidden to return under penalty of death. But if
they were unwilling to make so immediate a sacrifice of their earthly
goods for the heavenly treasure, if they waited, in the expectation that
some expedient might perhaps yet be found whereby both could be re-
tained, then, unless they had voluntarily presented themselves by the
day appointed, the examination was commenced before the magistrate,
assisted by five of the principal citizens.! After repeated tortures,
those who remained firm were cast into prison, where the additional
suffermgs of hunger and thirst were employed to overcome their resolu-
tion. ‘The extreme penalty of death appears to have been resorted to
less frequently. Many magistrates, whose avarice exceeded their zeal
for the laws, or who were really desirous of sparing the Christians,
gladly let them off, even without sacrificing, provided they bought a
certificate, or libel, as it was called, attesting that they had satisfactorily
1 Cyprian. ep. 40. Quinque primores illi, expression edicto renders it not probable,
qui edicto nuper magistratibus fuerant cop- to say the least, that this regulation was
ulati, ut fidem nostram subruerent. The confined to Carthage alone
192 THE PERSECUTION
complie 1 with the requisitions of the edict.! Some Christians pursued
a bolder course, and instead of providing such certificates, maintained,
without appearing before the authorities, that their names were entered
on the magistrate’s protocol, along with those by whom the edict had
been obeyed (acta facientes.)? Many erred through ignorance ; sup-
posing themselves guilty of no violation of religious constancy, when
they did nothing contrary to their professed faith either by sacrificmg
or burning incense; but only allowed others to report that they had
done so. But this proceeding the church always condemned as a tacit
abjuration.®
The effect produced by this sanguinary edict among the Christians
in large cities, such as Alexandria and Carthage, may best be described
in the words of the Alexandrian bishop Dionysius.* “All,” says he,
‘‘ were thrown into consternation by the terrible decree ; and of the more
reputable citizens,° many presented themselves immediately, of their own
accord: some, private individuals, impelled by their fears ; others,
such as were invested with some public office, and were forced to do it
by their employment ;° while others still were conducted forward by
their relations and friends. As each was called by name, they
approached the unholy offermg; some pale and trembling, as if they
were going not to sacrifice, but to be themselves sacrificed to the gods,
so that the populace, who thronged around, derided them; and it was
plain to all, that they were equally afraid to sacrifice and to die.
Others advanced with more alacrity, carrying their boldness so far as
to avow they never had been Christians. In all of these, was verified
the saying of our Lord, ‘how hardly can a rich man enter into the
kingdom of heaven.’ As to the rest, some followed the example of
these two classes of the more reputable; others betook themselves to
flight, and others were arrested ; of these last, a part μοὶ ἃ out, indeed,
till the manacles were fastened on, and some even suffered themselves
to be imprisoned for several days; but they abjured before they were
summoned to appear at the tribunal. Others endured their tortures to
a certain point, but finally gave in. Yet the firm and ever blessed pil-
lars of the Lord, who through him were made strong, and endured,
with a power and steadfastness worthy of, and corresponding to, the
strength of their faith, became wonderful witnesses of his kingdom.”
Among these, Dionysius mentions a boy, of fifteen years, Dioscurus by
name, who, by his apt replies and constancy under torture, forced the
1 Those who procured such a certificate
were styled /ibellatict.
2 Cyprian. ep. 31. Qui acta fecissent, li-
cet presentes, cum fierent, non affuissent—
ut sic scriberetur mandando.
8 The Roman clergy, in their letter to
Cyprian, say: Non est immunis a scelere,
qui ut fieret imperavit, nec est alienus a
crimine, cujus consensu licet non a se ad-
missum crimen tamen publice legitur.
4 Euseb. 1. VI. ο. 41.
5 Οἱ περιφανέστεροι, the persone insignes,
on whom the attention of the pagans was
always first directed, and who, above all
others, were exposed to danger.
ὁ Among the persone insignes, a distine-
tion was made between the ἰδιωτεύοντες,
who appeared voluntarily before the citil
authorities and complied with the edict, and
the δημοσιεύοντες, of ὑπὸ τῶν 'πράξεων
ἤγοντο, who were obliged by their official
duties to appear in the places of public re-
sort, and were therefore under the necessi-
ty of deciding immediately, whether they
would obey the edict, or render themselves
liable to the penalty by their disobedience
publicly expressed
UNDER DECIUS TRAJAN. 133
admiration of the governor himself, who finally dismissed him, declaring
that, on account of his minority, he was willing to allow him time for
better reflection.
If the number of the wavering, or of those who fell im the conflict,
was great, yet were there, also, many glorious exhibitions of the power
of faith, and of Christian devotedness. At Carthage, we find a cer-
tain Numidicus, who, for his exemplary conduct in the persecution,
was, by bishop Cyprian, made a presbyter. ‘This man, after having
inspired many with courage to suffer martyrdom, and seen his own
wife perish at the stake, had himself, when half burned and covered
under a heap of stones, been left for dead. His daughter went to
search under the stones for the body of her father, in order to bury
it. Great was her joy at finding him still giving signs of life, and when
her filial assiduities finally succeeded in completely restoring him. <A
woman had been brought to the altar by her husband, where she was
forced to offer, by some one holding her hand. But she exclaimed, ‘“ I
did it not, —it was you that did it ;’’ and she was thereupon condemned
to exile! In the dungeon at Carthage, we find confessors of Christ,
whom their persecutors had endeavored, for eight days, by heat, hun-
ger and thirst, to force to abjuration, and who now saw death by stary-
ation staring them in the face.? Certain confessors at Rome, who
had already been confined for a year, wrote to the bishop Cyprian in the
following terms:? ‘“‘ What more glorious and blessed lot can, by God’s
grace, fall to man, than, amidst tortures and the fear of death itself, to
confess God, the Lord ; than, with lacerated bodies, and a spirit depart-
ing, but yet free, to confess Christ, the Son of God; than to become
fellow-sufferers with Christ, in the name of Christ? If we have not
yet shed our blood, we are ready to shed it. Pray then, beloved Cy-
prian, that the Lord would daily confirm and strengthen each one of
us, more and more, with the power or his might, and that he, as the
best of leaders, would finally conduct his soldiers, whom he has disci-
plined and proved in the dangerous camp, to the field of battle which
is before us, armed with those divine weapons which never can be
conquered.” #
The hatred of the emperor was particularly directed against the
bishops, and perhaps the punishment of death was expressly intended
for them alone. At the very outset of the persecution, the Roman
bishop Fabianus suffered martyrdom. Several of the bishops withdrew
from their communities, till the first tempest of the persecution was
over. This course might be an act of weakness, if the fear of death,
threatened first to themselves, impelled them to it. But they might
also be actuated by loftier motives; they might look upon it as their
duty, since their presence served merely to exasperate the pagans, to
contribute, by their temporary absence, to the preservation of the peace
of their flocks, and moreover, so far as was consistent with steadfast-
ness to the faith and the discharge of their pastoral duties, to secure
1 Cyprian. ep. 18. 8 Ep. 26.
2Ep. 21. Luciani ap Cyprian. 4 Ephes. 6, 11.
VOL. I. 2
134 THE PERSECUTION
their own lives for the future services of their communities and of the
church. But such a step was ever liable to different interpretations,
and the bishops, particularly those in the large capital towns, on whom
all eyes were turned, exposed themselves to many an accusation. Even
the bishop Cyprian could not escape these censures, when, moved by
the cry of these furious pagan people, who demanded his death, he with-
drew, for a period, into a place of concealment.! His later conduct, at
least, shows that he knew how to overcome the fear of death, and the
frankness and peace of conscience with which, in a letter to the Roman
church, he explaims his conduct, clear him from all reproach.? ‘ Im-
mediately,” he writes, “‘on the first commencement of the troubles,
when the people, with furious clamors, had frequently demanded my
death, I retired for a while, not so much out of regard for my own safe-
ty, as for the public peace of the brethren, lest the disturbances which
had begun, might be increased by my obstinate presence.”” This con-
duct was in accordance with the principles which he recommended to
others in all similar cases.? ‘* Thus our Lord,” he says, ‘‘ commanded
that, in times of persecution, we should give way and fly; he pre-
scribed this rule, and followed it himself. For, as the crown of mar-
tyrdom comes from the grace of God, and can only be gained when the
hour for receiving it is arrived, he who retires for a season, while he
still remains true to Christ, denies not the faith, but abides his time.’
There was some difference, it must be allowed, between the case of all
other Christians, and of one who had the office of a pastor to adminis-
ter, and duties to fulfil towards souls which were committed to his care.
But Cyprian waived none of these obligations. He could truly say, that
although absent in the body, yet im spirit he was constantly present with
his flock, and by counsel and act, endeavored to guide them according
to the precepts of the Lord.t The letters which he sent from his re-
tirement by means of certain ecclesiastics, through whom he main-
tained a constant correspondence with his people, show how truly he —
could say this of himself; how vigilantly he labored to maintain the
discipline and order of his church, and to provide, in every way, for
the wants of the poor, who were hindered by the persecution from pur-
suing their ordinary employments, and for the relief of the prisoners.
The same principles of Christian prudence which moved him to avoid
a momentary danger, were also exhibited in his exhortations to his
flock, whieh, while they enforced the duty of Christian constancy,
warned against every approach to fanatical extravagance. ‘I beg of
you,’ he writes to his clergy,® ‘‘ to use all prudence and care for the
preservation of quiet; and if our brethren, in their love, are anxious to
visit those worthy confessors whom divine grace has already honored
by @ glorious beginning, yet this must be done with caution, and not in
crowds, lest the suspicion of the heathen should be excited, lest our ac-
cess to them should be wholly prohibited, and, in our eagerness for too
1 The Roman clergy, in their letter to the sa, quod utique recte fecerit, propterea
Clerus at Carthage, express themselves with quod sit persona insignis.” Ep. 2.
some doubt on the matter: “They had 2 Ep. 14. 3 De lapsis.
learned Cyprianum secessisse certa ex cau- 4 Ep. 14. 5 Ep. 4
UNDER DECIUS TRAJAN. 135
much, we should lose the whole. Be careful, then, that, for the greater
safety, this matter be managed with due moderation ; so that even the
presbyters who administer the communion to the prisoners in their
dungeon, may severally take their turns, as well as those deacons who
go to assist; for, by this alternation of persons and change of visitors,
the thing will be rendered less obvious. Indeed, we must in all things,
with meekness and humility, as becomes the servants of God, accom-
taodate ourselves to the times, and seek for the preservation of peace
and the best good of the people.” He advised his church to regard
this persecution as an admonition to the duty of prayer.t ‘ Let each
of us,” he says, “ pray to God, not for himself alone, but for all the
brethren, according to the example which our Lord has given us, where
we are taught to pray, not as individuals, each for himself, but as a com-
mon brotherhood, all for all. When the Lord shall see us humble and
peaceful, united among ourselves, and made better by our present suf-
fermgs, he will deliver us from the persecutions of our enemies.”
From a comparison of the letters of Cyprian which belong to this
period, with those of Dionysius of Alexandria, we may conclude, that
the persecution became gradually more severe ; a fact to be accounted
for, however, without supposing that any new edict was issued by the
emperor Decius. As so many had wavered on the first menace of the
magistrate, it was the more confidently hoped that the Christians
might be altogether suppressed without resorting to extremities, if they
were but deprived of their bishops, who constantly inflamed their zeal
for the faith. ‘The management of the whole matter had, at first, been
intrusted to the city and local magistrates in the several provinces;
persons who, from their acquaintance with the individual citizens, best
knew how to approach them, and who could find out those means which
were adapted to operate most effectually upon each individual, accord-
ing to his particular character and his particular connections. The
severest punishments, at first, were imprisonment and exile. But when
it was seen that the hope which had been excited by the first success-
ful result, was disappointed, the proconsuls took the matter into their
own hands; and the proceedings against those whose constancy had
been the cause of this disappointment, became more violent, in order
that they might be forced, at least, to yield like the rest. Hunger and
thirst, the more refined and cruel methods of torture, in some cases the
punishment of death, inflicted even upon such as were not»connected
with the sacred office, were now employed. But it was natural that, in
course of time, men would grow tired of their fury, and the excited
passions become cool again. The change, moreover, which took place
in the provincial governments, when the old proconsuls and presidents,
with the beginning of the year 251, laid down their office, might, for a
time, have been favorable for the Christians. Finally, the attention of
Decius himself was more withdrawn from his persecutions of the Chris-
tians, by political events of greater importance to him, the insurrection
in Macedonia, and the Gothic war. In this last war, towards the
1 Ep. 7.
136 PERSECUTION UNDER GALLUS AND VOLUSIANUS.
close of the year, he lost his life. ‘The calm which the Christians en
joyed in consequence of this change, continued under the reign of
Gallus and Volusianus, through a part of the following year, 252. But
a destructive pestilence, which had broke out in the preceding reign
and was now gradually spreading its ravages through the whole Roman
empire, besides drought and famine in several of the provinces, excited,
as usual, the fury of the populace against the Christians.! An impe-
rial edict appeared, requiring all Roman subjects to sacrifice to the
gods, in order to obtain deliverance from so great a public calamity.?
The public attention was again arrested, by observing how many with-
drew from these solemnities because they were Christians. Hence
arose new persecutions, to mcrease the number of sacrifices, and to
‘sustain everywhere the declining mterests of the ancient religion.
On the approach of these new trials,'the bishop Cyprian wrote a letter
of encouragement to the African church of the Thibaritans,? in which he
thus addresses them. ‘“‘ Let no one, my dearest brethren, when he
observes how our people are scattered by the fear of persecution, be
disturbed because he no longer sees the brethren together, nor hears
the bishops preach. We, who may not shed others’ blood, but must
be ready to pour out our own, cannot, at such a time, all meet in the
same place together. Wherever it may happen, in these days, that a
brother is separated awhile from the church, in body, not in spirit, by
the necessity of the times, let him not be moved by the fearful cir-
cumstances of such a flight, nor appalled at the solitude of the desert,
which he may be obliged to make his refuge. He is not alone, who
has Christ for a companion im his flight; he is not alone, who, pre-
serving the temple of God inviolate, is not without God, wherever he
may be. And if robber or wild beast fall upon the fugitive in the
desert or on the mountains; if hunger, thirst or cold destroy him; or
if his flight lead him over the sea, and the storm and waves overwhelm
him ; still Christ is present, to witness the conduct of his soldier, wher-
ever he fights.”
The bishops of the metropolis, under the eye of the emperor, became
naturally the first mark for persecution; for how could it be expected
to put down the Christians in the provinces, if their bishops were tole-
rated in Rome? Cornelius, who, at the hazard of his life, entered on
his office while Decius was yet emperor, was first banished, then con-
demned to death. Lucius, who had the Christian courage to succeed
him in the office during these perilous times, became his follower also,
soon afterwards, in banishment and in martyrdom.
Yet the wars and the insurrections which occupied the attention of
Gallus, prevented him from prosecuting with vigor any general perse-
cutions in the provinces ; and these events, which terminated, in the sum-
mer of the year 253, with his assassination, at length restored tranquil-
lity and peace to the Christians throughout the empire.
The emperor Valerian, in the first year of his reign, treated the
1 See Cyprian’s Apology for the Chris- quz edicto proposito celebrare populus ju
tians against the charges of Demetrianus. _ bebatur.
2 Cypriani ep. 55 ad Cornel. Sacrificia, 3 Ep. 56.
UNDER VALERIAN — CYPRIAN. 137
Christians with unusual clemency ; indeed, he is said to have had many
of them about him, in his own palace! But if, at first, he gave him-
self no concern’ about the affairs of religion, and let things take their
course, without any intention, however, of leaving the old state religion
to perish, yet the ever increasing multitude of the Christians, whose
influence reached even into his own court, may have been used as an
argument to convince him of the necessity of some stricter measures.
It was manifestly his object, at first, when, m 257, he suffered himself
to be induced to alter his conduct towards the Christians, to check the
advance of Christianity without bloodshed. The churches were only
to be deprived of their teachers and pastors, and particularly of their
bishops. Next, the assembling of the churches was prohibited. Thus
the trial was made, whether the end could be accomplished without the
effusion of blood. |
The forms of procedure, in the first persecution under this emperor,
are most clearly presented in the protocols or minutes of exammation,
in the cases of the bishops Cyprian and Dionysius. The proconsul Pa-
ternus summoned Cyprian before his tribunal, and thus addressed him.
«ς ΠῚ 6 emperors Valerian and Gallienus have sent me a rescript, m
which they command, that all who do not observe the Roman religion
shall immediately adopt the Roman ceremonies. I ask, therefore, what
are you? what do you answer?” Cyprian. — “1 am a Christian and a
bishop. I know of no other god than the true and only God, who cre-
ated the heavens, earth and sea, and all that they contain. This God
we Christians serve; to him we pray, day and night, for ourselves, for
all men, and for the welfare of the emperors themselves.” The pro-
consul. — ““ Do you persist, then, in this resolution?” Cyprian.— “A
good resolution, grounded on the knowledge of God, cannot be
altered.’’ Upon this, the proconsul, in compliance with the imperial
edict, pronounced upon him the sentence of banishment; and at the
same time, having explained to him, that the rescript had reference not
only to the bishops, but also to the presbyters, proceeded thus: “1
desire, therefore, to know of you, who the presbyters are who dwell in
this city.” Cyprian.—‘ Your laws have justly forbidden against
informing; therefore I cannot inform you; but in the places where
they preside, you will be‘able to find them.” Proconsul. — “* The ques-
tion relates to this place. To-day I am prosecuting the investigation
here, in the place where we are.” Cyprian. — ‘“‘ As our doctrine forbids
a man to inform against himself, and it is likewise contrary to your own
rules, so neither can they inform against themselves; but if you seek
for them, you will find them.” The proconsul dismissed him with the
declaration, that the assembling of the Christians, in whatsoever place,
a τῇ visiting of Christian cemeteries, were forbidden under pain of
eath.
The design, at present, was only to separate the bishops completely
from their churches ; but spiritual ties are not to be sundered by any
earthly power. We soon find not only bishops and clergy, who con-
1 See the letter of Dionysius of Alexandria, in Eusebius, 1. VII. c. 10.
12"
198 PERSECUTION UNDER VALERIAN.
tinued to be the special objects of persecutions, but also the laity,
even women and children, subjected to the scourge, and then con-
demned to imprisonment, or to labor in the mimes. They had probably
been seized at the graves, or in the forbidden assemblies. The bishop
Cyprian was active in providing, from his place of exile at Curubis, for
their bodily and spiritual wants, and in proving his sympathy by words
and deeds of love. On sending them, for their support and for the
relief of their sufferings, a large sum of money, taken from his own
income and the treasury of the church, he thus addressed them:! “ In
the mines, the body is refreshed not by beds and pillows, but by the
comforts and joys of Christ. Your limbs, wearied with labor, recline
upon the earth; but with Christ, it is no punishment to lie there. If
the outward man is defiled, the inner man is but the more purified by
the spirit from above. Your bread is scanty; but man lives not by
bread alone, but by every word of God. You are in want of clothing,
to defend you from the cold; but he who has put on Christ, is provided
with clothing and ornament enough. Even in the fact, my dearest
brethren, that you cannot now celebrate the communion of the Lord’s
supper, your faith may still be conscious of no want. You celebrate
the most glorious communion; you present God the costliest offering,
since the holy scriptures declare, that to God the most acceptable sac-
rifice is a broken and a contrite heart. You present yourselves to God
as a pure and holy offering.” ‘‘ Your example,’ he writes to the
clergy, “‘ has been followed by a large portion of the church, who have
confessed and been crowned with you. United to you by ties of the
strongest love, they would not be separated from their shepherds by
dungeons and mines. Even young maidens and boys are with you.
What power do you now possess of a victorious conscience ; what tri-’
umph in your hearts; when you can walk through the mines, with im-
prisoned body, but a heart conscious of the mastery over itself; when
you know that Christ is with you, rejoicing over the patience of his
servants, who, in his own footsteps, and by his own way, are entering
into the kmgdom of eternity !”’ :
The emperor must soon have learned, that nothing could be accom-
plished by such measures. This local separation could not tear the
bishops from their connection with their flocks. By letters, by ecclesi-
astics, whose travels preserved the means of correspondence, they still
acted upon the churches as if they were in the midst of them, and
their state of exile only made them dearer to their people. Wherever
they were banished, a little church gathered round them; so that in
many countries where the seed of the gospel had never been scat-
tered, it was by such exiles, whose life as well as lips bore testimony to
their faith, the kingdom of God was first introduced. Thus the bishop
Dionysius, who had been banished to a remote district of Lybia, could
say of his exile:? “ We were, at first, persecuted and stoned; but
soon, not a few of the pagans forsook their idols, and turned to God.
It was by us, that the first seed of the divine word was conveyed to.
1 Ep. 77. 2 Euseb. 1. VII. c. 11
CYPRIAN, BISHOP OF CARTHAGE. 139
that spot; and, as if God had conducted us thither for this sole
purpose, he brought us back again after we had fulfilled the com-
mission.”
Valerian thought it necessary, therefore, to employ more vigorous
and severe measures to effect a total suppression of Christianity. In
the following year, 258, appeared the edict. ‘‘ Bishops, presbyters
and deacons were to be put to death immediately by the sword;
senators and knights were to forfeit their rank and their property,
and if they still remamed Christians, to suffer the like punishment ;
women of condition, after being deprived of their property, were
to be banished. Those Christians who were in the service of the
palace,” —slaves and freedmen are, without doubt, particularly intended
here, — ‘‘ who had formerly made profession of Christianity, or now made
such profession, should be treated as the emperor’s property, and after
being chained,! distributed to labor on the various imperial estates.’ 2
From this rescript, it is evident the emperor had it especially in view,
to deprive the Christians of their spiritual heads, and to check the pro-
gress of Christianity in the higher classes. Unnecessary cruelty did
not enter into his design; but yet, the people and the governors did
not always stop here, as we may learn from certain martyr legends of
the time, against the authenticity of which no valid objection can be
urged.
‘The Roman bishop Sixtus, and four deacons of his church, were the
first who suffered martyrdom in consequence of this rescript, on the
sixth of August, 258.
In the provinces, the new governors had provisionally recalled from
exile those who had been banished under their predecessors, and were
now causing them to await in retirement,— where they were obliged to
remain, — the decision of their fate by the new rescript expected from
Rome. Cyprian resided at a secluded villa m the neighborhood of
Carthage, until he heard he was to be conveyed to Utica, there to
suffer the sentence of the proconsul, who for the present happened to
be residing in that place. It was his choice to give his last testimony,
by word and by sufferig, like a faithful shepherd, in the presence of his
flock ; he therefore yielded to the persuasions of his friends, and with-
drew himself for a while, until the proconsul should return. From
the place of his concealment, he addressed the last letter to his church. ,
1 Perhaps, according to one reading,
branded also.
2 The rescript of the emperor to the sen-
ate, in the original, is extant in Cyprian,
ep. 82, ad. Successum: Ut episcopi et pres-
byteri et diacones in continenti animadver-
tantur; senatores vero, egregii viri et (the
second et is doubtless surreptitious, — the
egregii viri are the equites themselves, as
the senatores are the clarissimi,) equites
Romani, dignitate amissa, etiam bonis spo-
lientur, et si, ademptis facultatibus, Chris-
tiani esse perseveraverint, capite quoque
mulctentur; matronz vero, ademptis bonis,
in exsilium relegentur; Cesariani autem
quicunque ye] prius confessi fuerant, vel
nune confessi fuerint, confiscentur et vincti
in Cesarianas possessiones descripti mit-
tantur. Instead of descripti, (distributed, )
another text has, scripti, or inscripti, —
branded. That as early as the persecution
of Decian, Christians were branded on the
forehead, may be gathered from a passage
in Pontius’ Life of Cyprian: Tot confesso-
res frontium notatorum secunda inscriptione
signatos. The prima inscriptio, namely, the
inscriptio crucis, χαρακτὴρ, σφραγὶς τοῦ
σταυροῦ, was that received at baptism. Yet
the position of the words would better cor-
respond, perhaps, with the common reading
3 Ep. 83.
140 PERSECUTION UNDER VALERIAN.
(Τ have allowed myself,’’ he says, ‘to be persuaded to retire for a
short time, since it becomes the bishop to confess the Lord in the
place where he presides over the church of the Lord, so that the whole
church may be honored by the confession of their bishop. For what-
ever proceeds from the lips of the confessing bishop, in the moment of
confession, comes, under the guidance of the divine Spirit, from the
mouths of all. Let me, then, in this secret retirement, await the return
of the proconsul to Carthage, that I may learn from him the commands
of the emperor in relation to the laity and the bishops among the
Christians, and speak whatever it may please the Lord, in that hour,
to cause me to speak. But do you, my dearest brethren, in conform-
ity with the directions which, according to the doctrme of the Lord,
you have often received from me, study to preserve quiet. Let no one
of you lead the brethren into tumults, nor voluntarily give himself up
to the heathen. The only time for any one to speak, is after he has
been apprehended ; in that hour, the Lord, who dwells in us, speaks in
us.”’ At length the proconsul returned; and when, on the fourteenth
of September, the fatal sentence was pronounced by hin, the last words
of yore were, “‘ God be thanked.” 4
his persecution ended with the reign of its author, sien Valerian,
by the unfortunate issue of the war, ‘became, in the year 259, a pris-
oner in the hands of the Persians, and his son Gallienus, who had already
been associated with him in the government, obtained the sole authority.
With regard to all public affairs, and so, consequently, to the main-
tenance of the national worship, this prince was more indifferent than
his father. He immediately published an edict, by which he secured
the Christians in the free exercise of their religion, and commanded
the cemeteries, as well as other buildings and lands belonging to the
churches, which had been confiscated in the preceding reign, to be
restored. He thus recognized the Christian church as a legally exist-
ing corporation ; for no other, according to the Roman laws, could hold
common property.
But as Macrianus had usurped the imperial authority in the East
and in Egypt, it was not till after his overthrow, in the year 261, that
the edict of toleration, by Gallienus, could go into effect in these prov-
inces.2, Hence, while the Christians of the West were already in the
enjoyment of repose, the persecutions might still be going on in these
provinces, under the laws of Valerian. A remarkable example which
occurred at this period in Palestine, is mentioned by Eusebius.? Marius,
a Christian soldier of Czesarea Stratonis, was about to be invested with
the office of centurion. Just as he was to receive the centurion’s staff,
(the vitis,) another soldier, the next claimant to the office, stepped
forward and declared that, according to the ancient laws, Marius was
incapable of holding rank in the Roman army, because he was a Chris-
tian, and did not sacrifice to the gods and to the emperor. Upon this,
1 He was condemned as inimicus Diis but the rescript by which the same edict,
Romanis et sacris legibus. after the defeat of Macrianus, was applied
2 Kusebius, (1. VII. c.13,) has not pre- also to Egypt.
served the original edict of this emperor, SRV Lien 5
THE CHRISTIANS UNDER GALLIENUS—AURELIAN. 141
a delay of three hours was granted to Marius, within which time he
must decide whether he preferred to remain a Christian. Meanwhile
the bishop Theotecnus led him into the church. On the one hand, he
pointed to the sword, which the centurion wore at his side, and on the
other, to a volume of the gospels, which he held up before him. He
was to choose between the two; the military office and the gospel.
Without hesitation, Marius raised his right hand, seized the sacred vol-
ume. ‘‘ Now,” said the bishop, ‘hold fast on God, and may you
obtain what you have chosen. So depart in peace.”’ He bravely con-
fessed, and was beheaded. 16
By the law of Gallienus an essential change, prolificof consequences,
would necessarily be produced in the situation of the Christians. The
important step at which many an emperor, still more favorably dis-
posed to Christianity than Gallienus, had hesitated, was now taken.
Christianity was become a religio licita; and the religious party that
threatened destruction to the old state religion and all the institutions
connected with it, had now for once attained a legal existence. Many
a prince, who at an earlier period, in accordance with the existing laws,
would have had no scruples in persecuting the Christians, would now
doubtless be shy of attackmg a corporation, once established by law.
This was shown directly, in the case of the second successor of Gal-
henus, Lucius Domitius Aurelian, who became emperor in 270. Sprung
from a low rank, and educated im pagan superstition, he could be hard-
ly otherwise than hostilely disposed towards the Christians from the
first; for he was not only devoted, with singular fanaticism, to the
Oriental worship of the Sun,—which doubtless would not have pre-
vented him, however, from showing toleration to various other foreign
rites (sacra,) —but he was also in every respect a blind devotee to
the old religion. ‘The well-being of the state seemed to him closely
connected with the proper administration of the ancient rites (sacra.)
When on an occasion of threatenmg danger from a war with German
tribes, certain persons in the Roman senate moved that, according to
the ancient practice, the Sibylline books should be opened and consulted
for advice, other senators replied, that there was no need of having
recourse to them; the emperor’s power was so great, that it was un-
necessary to consult the gods. ‘The matter remamed for the present,
and was not called up again till afterwards. But the emperor, who
perhaps had been informed of these proceedings in the Roman senate,
expressed his displeasure, and wrote to them, “1 am surprised, that
you have hesitated so long about consulting the Sibylline books, as if
you were conducting your deliberations in a Christian church, and not
in the temple of all the gods.”’!_ He called upon them to support him
in every way by the ceremonies of religion; since it was no disgrace
to conquer with the assistance of the gods. He declared himself
ready to defray all expenses which might be incurred in offering every
description of sacrifice, and to furnish captives for that purpose from all
1 This language perhaps may have con- Christians among the senators themselves,
veyed a suspicion that there were several who had an influence on the deliberations
THE CHRISTIANS UNDER
nations. Human sacrifices, then, must have been included! We may
presume, therefore, that this emperor was not averse to the shedding
of the blood of the Christians m honor of his gods. He was inclined
by natural temperament to harsh and violent measures. Yet in the
first years of his reign, he engaged in no persecution of the Christians.
He even showed by his conduct on one occasion, in the third year, that
he recognized the Christian church as a lawfully existing corporation ;
for a dispute having arisen among the Christians of Antioch, as to the
individual who should be their bishop, the church applied to the empe-
ror himself and submitted it to his arbitration, whether the bishop Paul
of Samosata, long since deposed on account of his doctrinal opinions,
but who had found a patroness in Queen Zenobia, now vanquished by
Aurelian, should not at last be compelled to resign his office. The
emperor decided, that the one should be bishop who was recognized as
such by the bishop of Rome, his own residence. It was not till the year
275, when busied with warlike enterprises in Thrace, that with a view
perhaps to show his gratitude to the gods, who, in his opmion, had thus
far so signally favored him, and to conciliate their good will for the
future, he resolved to dismiss all farther scruples, and proceed to
severities against the Christians. But before he could carry his plan
into effect, he was assassinated in a conspiracy.?
For more than fifty years, the Christian church remained in this
condition of peace and repose. Meanwhile, the number of Christians,
in every rank of society, went on increasing. But without doubt,
among the multitude who embraced Christianity at a time when it
required no sacrifice to be a Christian, not a few were counterfeits,
bringing over with them into the Christian church the vices of pagan-
ism. ‘The outward form of the church underwent a change, with the
increased wealth of its members, and instead of the simple places of
assembly, splendid churches began to be erected in the large cities.
The emperor Dioclesian, who from the year 284 was the sole ruler, but
soon after 286 shared the sovereignty with Maximian Herculius,
seemed, at least to outward appearance, no otherwise than favorable to
the Christians; for the stories of persecutions in the earlier years of
this emperor are at variance with the records of authentic history, and
altogether unworthy of credit. Christians held offices of trust in the
imperial palace. They were to be found among the principal eunuchs
and officers of the bed-chamber, (cubiculariis ;) although it could not
be fairly presumed, it is true, from this circumstance alone, that the
emperor was governed by any special regard for the Christians, — since
from an early period, Christians had been members of the Czesarian
household, (Czesariani, )—and if but one individual were such, his zeal
and prudence might have a great influence in bringing the majority of
1 Flav. Vopise. c. 20.
2 Eusebius says, in his History of the
Church, that Aurelian died as he was upon
the point of subscribing an edict against
the Christians. In the book, De mortibus
persecutorum, it is said, the edict had al-
ready been issued, but could not reach the
more distant provinces until after the death
of the emperor. Others represent the per-
secution as having already begun. But it
is most probable, that the report of Euse-
bius, who says the least, contains the truth,
ahd the rest was added through exaggera-
tion
DIOCLESIAN. 149
his associates to embrace Christianity, or in causing that none but
Christians should be chosen to these offices.
The chief chamberlain (prepositus cubiculariorum) Lucianus was
probably one of this class, a man in high favor with his prince, and to
whom Theonas, bishop of Alexandria, imparted much wise counsel as
to the management of his office, m a letter which has come down to
our times.t He exhorts him to assume nothing to himself, because
many in the palace of the emperor had been brought through him to
the knowledge of the truth; but rather to thank God, who had used him
as the. instrument of so good a work, and given him great authority
with the emperor, in order that by his means the reputation of the
Christian name might be promoted. If he recommends to him the
greater zeal and prudence, inasmuch as the emperor, though not a
Christian himself,? yet entrusted to Christians, as his most faithful
servants, the care of his life and person, still we ought not to infer too
much from an expression of this kind, as to the emperor’s favorable
opinion of Christianity. The bishop allowed himself, without doubt,
to transfer the judgment of his own mind to that of the emperor; in-
deed, this would seem natural from the fact that many who had entered
into the service of the palace as pagans, had been converted by the
influence of this Lucian. In case the charge over the imperial library
should be committed to any one of the Christian chamberlains,* this, it
was represented, would be a very important occurrence; the favored
individual was exhorted to take advantage of the opportunity thus
afforded him, to render the emperor favorably disposed towards Christ-
ianity. He should not show contempt for pagan literature, but let it
be seen that he was a proficient in it; should praise it, and use it for
the emperor’s entertainment. Only at times he should introduce some
notice of the sacred scriptures, and endeavor to lead the emperor to
remark their superiority. It might so happen im the course of conver-
sation, that Christ would be mentioned; in that case, it might be grad-
ually shown, that he is the only true God.4
1 This letter was first published in the 3d
vol. of D’Archery’s Spicilegium, f. 297, and
again reprinted in Galland’s Bibl. patr. T.
IV. It cannot be certainly ascertained, it
must be allowed, who the emperor was that
is spoken of in this letter, nor who the bish-
op Theonas was, by whom it was written.
It states how Christianity was glorified by
the persecutions, how its diffusion was pro-
moted by them, and finally, how peace was
granted to the church by good princes. Per-
secutionum procellis velut aurum in fornace
expurgatum enituit et ejus veritas ac celsi-
tudo magis semper ac magis splendent, ut
jam, pace per bonum principem ecclesiis
concessa, Christianorum opera etiam coram
infidelibus luceant. By this prince we might
understand Constantine; but if he were
intended, the immediately preceding perse-
cution of Dioclesian would doubtless have
been more distinctly noticed. If this had
So important did it seem
been written subsequently to the final tri-
umph of Christianity, which followed the
Dioclesian persecution, the author assured-
lv would not have employed so indistinct a
phraseology as: Quia nos maleficos olim et
omnibus flagitiis refertos nonnulli priores
principes putaverunt. On the other hand,
these words suit well to the times of Dio-
clesian. Moreover, the situation of the
emperor, which is here the subject of dis-
course, appears by no means such as would
apply to the case of Constantine, especial-
ly after he had become master of the East.
The expression, “pacem concedere,” is so
general, that it might be properly applied
to the tranquil situation which the Chris-
tians owed to Dioclesian.
2 Princeps, nondum Christiane religioni
adscriptus.
8 For the librarian was still a payan.
4 Insurgere poterit Christi mentio. Expli
144 THE CHRISTIANS UNDER
to the wise bishop to warn against an intemperate zeal, which, by aim
img at too much at once, might occasion more imjury than advantage.
To Roman statesmen the thought would naturally present itself, that
that the ancient political glory of the emperor stood intimately con-
nected with the old national worship, and that it was impossible to re-
store the one without the other. Now, as it was Dioclesian’s wish to
bring back the ancient splendor of the Roman empire, it might appear
to him necessary for this purpose, to infuse life into the old religion now
fast going to decay, and to destroy that foreign faith which was con-
stantly extending itself on every side, and threatening to acquire the
sole dominion. In an inscription belonging to a somewhat later date,
where the emperor boasts of having suppressed Christianity, it is
brought as a charge against the Christians, that they were ruining the
state. In the edict whereby Galerius put an end to the persecution
of which he was himself the author, he declared that it had been the
intention of the emperors to reform and correct everything according to
the ancient laws and constitution of the Roman state.2 We are not to
believe, therefore, that the cause which held back this emperor from a
persecution in which, on the grounds that have just been mentioned, he
might have been induced to engage at a still earlier period, was any
recognition of human rights and of the limits of the civil power in mat-
ters of conscience, to which the earlier Roman emperors had been
strangers. How entirely foreign to the views of Dioclesian was a
recognition of this kind, is evinced by the principles he avows in a law
directed against the Manichzean sect, A. D. 296; though it may be
admitted, that he entertained towards this sect a peculiar aversion, on
account of its having arisen among his enemies the Persians.? ‘ The
immortal gods have, by their providence, arranged and established what
is right. Many wise and good men are agreed that this should be
maintained unaltered. They ought not to be opposed. ‘No new reli-
gion must presume to censure the old; since it is the greatest of
crimes, to overturn what has been once established by our ancestors,
and what has supremacy in the state.’’ Would not the principles here
avowed, necessarily make Dioclesian also an enemy and persecutor of
Christianity ? +
But if, during so long a period, he could never bring himself to the
resolution of openly becoming such, some counteracting cause must
have been at work on the other side. Beside the influence of the
Christians more or less immediately about his person, he may have
been induced to hesitate by reasons similar to those which, in the work,
cabitur paulatim ejus sola divinitas. Omnia
hee cum Christi adjutorio provenire pos-
sent.
1 Christiani, qui rem publicam evertebant.
2 Nos quidem volueramus juxta leges
veteres et publicam disciplinam Romano-
rum cuncta corrigere.
8 This edict, known already to Hilarius,
author of the Commentary on the Epistles
of St. Paul, bears every internal mark of
genuineness; and no motive can be im-
agined, either in pagan or Christian, for
fabricating it. The diffusion of that sect,
at this earlier period, in Africa, which is
pre-supposed in the edict, is a thing by no
means impossible.
4 Neque reprehendi a nova vetus religio
deberet.
tractare que semel ab antiquis tractata et
definita sunt, statum et cursum tenent. et
possident.
Maximi enim criminis est, re- |
DIOCLESIAN AND GALERIUS. 145
De mortibus persecutorum, he is said afterwards to have urged against
the proposition of his son-in-law Galerius, in the conference at Nicomedia,
soon to be more particularly noticed ; —namely, that the Christians, after
a long period of time, had at length become a lawfully existing religious
community ; that they were widely diffused through every part of the
empire ; that there would be a profuse shedding of blood, and the public
tranquillity might easily be disturbed ; and finally, that the effusion of
blood had hitherto served rather to advance Christianity than to procure
its subversion. Anxious as Dioclesian might be to raise up the old
Roman religion, yet assuredly he would never have overcome these
scruples, if he had not been hurried on by some more powerful influence.
The pagans could not but see, that the time when their ancient cere-
monies must cease and the hated Christian become predominant, was
fast approaching ; and they must have expended every effort to prevent
the decisive crisis. The pagan party, to which belonged statesmen,
priests, self-styled philosophers, such as Hierocles,! needed only a pow-
erful instrument to carry their schemes into execution. Such a one
they found in Dioclesian’s son-in-law, the Ceesar, Caius Galerius Max-
imian. This prince had raised himself from obscurity by his warlike
talents. Educated in the blind superstition: of paganism, he was
devoted to his religion, and moreover made great account of sacrifices
and divinations. Whenever he performed these ceremonies in time of
war, where Christian officers were present, the latter were used to sign
themselves with the cross, the symbol of Christ’s victory over the king-
dom of darkness, in order to protect themselves against the influence
of those hostile (demoniacal) powers, whose agency, as they supposed,
was visibly manifested in the pagan worship.
Now as the Christians saw in paganism, not a barely subjective
notion, a work of human imagination or fraud, but a real outward
power, hostile to Christianity ;? so the pagans beheld, after their manner,
in Christianity, such a power in relation to the operations and appear-
ances of their own gods; and the pagan priests might say: the sign
of the cross, hateful to the gods, keeps them from being present and
from manifesting themselves at the sacrifices and other rites consecrated
to their service.®
1 Not the author of the Commentary on
the Golden Verses.
2 When the triumph of Christianity was
already decided, and paganism no longer
presented itself, as so formidable a power
in life, to the Christian consciousness;
namely, in the fourth century, — another
view of the matter could be admitted, and
Eusebius of Cesarea could say, that the
pagan art of divination ought to be traced,
not to the influence of the gods, nor even
to demons, but to human fraud, which was
sufficient to account for the whole. After
having spoken of the deceptive arts of pa-
gan priests and magicians, exposed in the
times of the Emperor Constantine, he says:
Ταῦτα δῆ τις Kai πλείω τούτων ἔτι συνώ-
yor, εἴποι ἄν μὴ ϑεοὶς εἶναι, μηδὲ μὴν δαί-
VOL. I.
.
μονας τοὺς τῶν κατὰ πολεῖς χρηστηρίων
αἰτίους, πλάνην δὲ καὶ ἀπάτην ἀνδρῶν γοη-
τῶν. Euseb. Preparat. evangel. 1. 1V.c. 2.
8 This is the view of the matter which
presents itself to us, particularly when we
compare the following passages: Lactant.
Institut. 1. IV. ο. 27; de mortibus persecuto-
rum, ¢c. 10; and Euseb. vit. Constantin. 1. I.
c. 50. In the passage first mentioned, it 1s
said: Cum Diis suis immolant, si assistat
aliquis signatam frontem gerens, sacra nul»
lo modo litant. Nec responsa potest con-
sultus reddere vates. Et hee sepe causa
precipua justitiam persequendi malis regi-
bus fuit. Aruspices conquerentes, profa-
nos homines sacris interesse, egerunt prin
cipes suos in furorem. True, it might be
said, the Christians had only transferred
146 UNDER DIOCLESIAN AND GALERIUS.
There were, up to this time, many Christians connected with the mil-
itary service, both in the higher and lower ranks; and they as yet had
never been compelled to do any thing contrary to their conscience.
This is evident, not only from Eusebius’ narrative, but from a particu-
lar incident worthy of being noticed, which took place m 295.1 At
Teveste, in Numidia, a young man, Maximilanus, was brought before
the proconsul, as a proper subject for military duty. Immediately as
he came up, and was about to be measured, to see if his size tallied
with the standard of the service, he exclaimed, ‘‘I cannot serve as a
soldier ; I cannot do what is wrong; I am a Christian.” The proconsul
took no notice of these words, but calmly ordered him to be measured.
Being found of the standard height, said the proconsul to him, without
noticmg his confession of Christianity, ‘‘ Take the badge of the service,?
and be a soldier.” The young man replied, “I shall take no such
badge ; I wear already the badge of Christ, my God.” Hereupon said
the proconsul, who was a pagan, with a sarcastic threat, ‘‘ I shall pres-
ently send you to your Christ.” “ Would you but do that, ” said the
youth, “‘ you would confer on me the highest honor.” Without further
remark, the proconsul directed the leaden badge of the service to be
hung round his neck. ‘The young man resisted, and im the ardor of
his youthful faith, exclaimed, “I accept not the badge of the service
of this world, and if you hang it about me, I shall break it off, for it is
useless, I cannot wear this lead on my neck, after having once received
the saving token of my Lord, Jesus Christ, whom you know not, but
who has suffered for our salvation.”” The proconsul endeavored to ex-
plain to him, that he might be a soldier and a Christian at the same
time ; that, in truth, Christians were to be found, performing military
service without seruple, in the body guard of all the four Cresars, Dio-
ciesian, Maximian Herculius, Constantius Chlorus and Galerius. But
as the youth of one and twenty years could not consent to yield up oo
own conviction to the example of others, he was sentenced to death ;'
their own subjective point of view to the οὐδεμιᾶς τις ϑεῶν δημοσίας ὀφελείας ἤσϑετο.
pagans, and the legend respecting the ori-
gin of this persecution had thus arisen ; but
we have no good reason whatever to call in
question this explanation, derived from the
very life of the times, and which answers
to the views mutually conditioning each
other, of both Christians and pagans, with
regard to the relation of their respective
religious positions to one another. Thus
the Christians appeal to the testimony of
their adversary, Porphyry, to show that by
the power of Christianity the influence of
those demoniacal powers in paganism was
hindered ; for Porphyry complains, that a
pestilence in some city or other, could not
be arrested, because the appearance and
healing influence of Esculapius was scared
away by the worship of Jesus. Porphyry’s
language, in his book against C hristianity,
is as follows : Νυνὶ δὲ ϑαυμάζουσιν, δἰ τὸς
σούτων ἐτῶν κατείληφε τὴν πόλιν ἡ νόσος,
᾿Ασκληπίου μὲν ἐπιδημίας καὶ τῶν ἄλλων
ϑεῶν μηκέτ᾽ οὔσης. ᾿Ιησοῦ γὰρ τιμωμένου
Enseb. Preeparat. evangel. 1. V.c. 1.
1 The time can be definitely determined,
since the mention of the consuls in the
actis Maximiliani, a report drawn up by an
eye witness, furnishes a certain chronolog-
ical datum.
2 Signaculum militiz.
8 He received his sentence to death with
an expression of thanks to God. To the
Christians around, he said, when he was
led away from the ‘midst of ‘them to execu-
tion, “ My dearest brethren, strive with all
your power, that you may attain to the
vision of the Lord, and that he may bestow
on you also such a crown.” And he begged
his father, — who would not persuade him
to do contrary to his conscience, —re-
garding him with a joyful face, to present
the new garment which he caused to be
made for him on his entrance into the mili-
tary service, to the soldier who was to exe
cute the sentence of death on him.
THE DIOCLESIAN PERSECUTION. 147
yet, in the sentence, nothing was said of his Christianity, but only his
refusal to do military service assigned, as the reason for his punish-
ment. Here, then, is good evidence, that the soldiers also could still
openly profess Christianity, and that, if they only did their duty in other
respects, they were not compelled to take any part in the pagan cere-
monies.
Only a few years elapsed, however, after this occurrence, when the
case was altered. Religious and political motives induced Galerius, in
the first place, to remove from the army all that refused to sacrifice.
It was easy for him to bring it about, that an order should be sent to
the army, requiring every soldier to join in the sacrificial rites. Per-
haps the celebration of the third lustrum since the elevation of Maxi-
mianus Herculius to the dignity of Czesar and Augustus,? was chosen
as a befitting occasion for issuing such an order to the army ;—it be-
ing a festival usually celebrated with sacrifices and sacrificial banquets,
in which all the soldiers were required to take a part. Many gave in
their commissions,’ and soldiers of all ranks, from the highest to the low-
est, quitted the service, that they might remain steadfast to their faith.
Only a few were sentenced to death, —perhaps none except where
some peculiar circumstances of the case furnished a pretext, at least in
appearance, not only for dismissing them from the service as Christians,
but also for punishing them as guilty of treason. Such as were not
careful to express in moderate language and behavior their honest
indignation at the unrighteous demand, might easily be represented,
according to the military code, as refractory subjects. We have an
illustration of this in the case of Marcellus the centurion, who was con-
nected with the army at Tingis, (now Tangiers, ) in Africa.
While the legion was celebrating the festival in honor of the Cesar,
after the pagan fashion, with sacrifices and banquetings, the centurion
Marcellus rose up from the soldier’s table, and throwing down his staff
of office, his belt and arms, exclaimed, ‘‘ From this moment I cease to
serve your emperor as a soldier. I despise the worship of your gods
of wood and stone, which are deaf and dumb idols. Since the service
involves the obligation of sacrificing to the gods and to the emperors,
I throw down my staff and belt, renounce the standards, and am a
soldier no longer.”’* The two facts were now put together, that Mar-
cellus had publicly cast off the badges of the service, and that he had
indulged, before all the people, in abusive language towards the gods
and the emperors. For this he was condemned to death.
These were the first premonitory signs of the persecution. Diocle-
sian, for several years, could not be induced to proceed any farther.
At length, in the winter of the year 303, Galerius came to Nicomedia,
in Bithynia, on a visit to his aged and infirm father-in-law, who was
already meditating to retire from the government. On this occasion
Galerius employed every art of persuasion, seconded by many zealous
1 Eo quod indevoto animo sacramentum 8 As Eusebius relates, 1. VIII. ec. 4.
militiz recusaverit, gladio animadverti pla- 4 Ecce, projicio vitem et cingulum, re
cuit. nuntio signis et militare recuso.
2 Dies natalis Ceesaris.
148 THE DIOCLESIAN
pagans among the state officers, to brmg about a general persecution
of the Christians. Dhoclesian finally yielded; and one of the great
pagan festivals, the Terminalia, which occurred on the 22d of Febru-
ary, was selected for the onslaught. At the first dawn of day, the
magnificent church in that city, then the imperial residence, was broken.
open, the copies of the Bible found in it were burned, and the whole
church abandoned to plunder and then to destruction. The next day,
was published an edict, to the following effect: ‘* All assembling of the
Christians, for the purpose of religious worship, was forbidden; the
Christian churches were to be demolished to their foundations; all
manuscripts of the Bible should be burned; those who held places of
honor and rank, must either renounce their faith or be degraded; in
judicial proceedings, the torture might be used against all Christians,
of whatsoever rank; those belonging to the lower walks of private life,
were to be divested of their rights as citizens and freemen; Christian
slaves were to be incapable of receiving their freedom, so long as they
remained Christians.” ‘i’o what extent Christians in humble life were
to lose the enjoyment of their rights, was not clearly defined, but free
scope left for applying the law to particular cases. It is rendered cer-
tain, by the edict in which the emperor Constantine afterwards annulled
all the consequences which resulted from this persecution in the East,
that in some instances free born Christians were made slaves, and put
to the lowest and most degrading servile employments, for which they
were the least suited by their former habits of life.
A Christian of noble rank suffered himself to be hurried, by his
inconsiderate zeal, into a violation of that precept of the gospel which
enjoins respect towards all in authority. He openly tore down the
edict, and rending it contemptuously, exclaimed, ‘* Victories announced
again over the Goths and Sarmatians! ‘The emperor treats the Chris-
tians, his own subjects, no better than the conquered Goths and Sarma-
tians.”” Welcome was the occasion thus furnished by the delinquent
himself, for condemning him to death, not as a Christian, but as a vio-
lator of the imperial majesty.
The impression produced by this edict must have been the more ter-
1 Euseb. vit. Constantin. 1. II. ο. 32, et seq.
To arrive at the fullest knowledge possible
of what this edict contained, it is necessary
to compare the two incomplete and inaccu-
rate reports of it im Eusebius, (hist. eccles.
1. VILL. c. 2,) and in the book de Mortib.,
as also the translation of Rufinus. The
prohibition of assemblies for religious wor-
ship is not expressly mentioned, indeed, in
any one of these places; but from the na-
ture of the case, it is tacitly implied by the
_ edict itself. But it is clear, also, from the
credible and official records of the first pe-
riod of the persecutions in Proconsular Af-
rica, that such a prohibition was positively
expressed. The most obscure is the pas-
sage in Eusebius, respecting the true mean-
ing of which there has been no little dis-
pute: Τοὺς ἐν οἰκετίαις εἰ ἔτι ἐπιμένοιεν ἐν
τῇ τοῦ Χριστιανισμοῦ προϑέσει, ἐλευϑερΐίας
στερεῖσϑαι. By ἐν οἰκετίαις, nothing else
can be understood, according to the usage
of the language, than men of the laboring
class, slaves. To bring meaning into the
passage, therefore, we must look round for
some other interpretation of the word ἐλευ-
Sepia than that which first presents itself. By
the phrase, “deprived of their freedom,”
might be understood, “ithrown into chains
and imprisoned.” See above, p. 139, the
edict of Valerian against the Ceesarianos.
It is the safest course, however, to follow
Rufinus, who might have seen the original
edict: “Si quis servorum permansisset
Christianus, libertatem consequi non pos-
set.” If this is right, the translation of
Eusebius, it must be admitted, was very
defective.
PERSECUTION. 149
rific, masmuch as.it became known, in many of the provinces, near the
time of the Haster festival, and in several districts on the very day of
Easter.1 It is quite evident that the plan now was, to extirpate Chris-
tianity from the root. There was something novel in the undertaking
to deprive the Christians of their religious writings. It differed from
the mode of proceeding in the former persecutions, when it was hoped
to suppress the sect by removing away their teachers and guides. ‘The
importance of these documents, as a means of preserving and proypa-
gating the Christian faith, must now have been understood. And there
can be no doubt that the destruction of every copy of the Bible, had
such a thing been possible, would have proved more effectual than the
removal of those living witnesses of the faith, whose example served
only to call forth a still greater number to supply their place. On the
other hand, could the plan have been carried out, to destroy every ex-
isting copy of the scriptures, the very source would have been cut off,
from which true Christianity and the life of the church was ever
freshly springing with unconquerable vigor. Let preachers of the gos-
pel, bishops and clergy, be executed ; it was all to no purpose, so long
as this book, by which new teachers could always be formed, remained
in the hands of the Christians. ‘The transmission of Christianity was
not, in itself, it is true, inseparably and necessarily connected with the
letter of the scriptures. Written, not on tables of stone, but on the liy-
ing tablets of the heart, the divine doctrine, once lodged in the human
soul, could preserve and propagate itself through its own divine power.
But exposed to those manifold sources of corruption in human nature,
Christianity, without the well-spring of scripture from which it could
ever be restored back to its purity, would, as all history teaches, have
been soon overwhelmed, and have become no longer recognizable under
the load of falsehoods and corruptions. Yet how was it possible for
the arbitrary human will to succeed in actually executing this cun-
ningly devised means for the suppression of Christianity ? How could
the arm of despotism, though disregarding all private rights, yet reach
so far as to grasp and destroy every existing copy, not only of those
scriptures which were deposited in the churches, but also in so many
private dwellings? The blind policy of the kingdom of lies is ever
true to its character, in imagining that nothing can escape its investi-
gation, and that, by fire and sword, it can destroy what is protected by
1 Eusebius and Rufinus place the publi-
cation of the edict in the month of March,
which harmonizes well with its first publi-
cation at the imperial residence, Nicomedia.
In Egypt, according to Coptic accounts, it
was published on the first of Parmuthi, 1. 6.
by Ideler’s tables, the 27th of March;—
which also harmonizes with the rest. See
Zoéga Catalog. codd. Copt. Rome, 1810,
f. 25, of the fragments of the Coptie acta
Martyrum, published by Georgi, Rome,
1793, Preefat. 109, where Georgi’ propo-
ses an unnecessary emendation, and other
passages. When these Coptic accounts,
however, which contain a good deal that is
13*
fabulous, represent the persecution as fol-
lowing immediately after the victory over
the Persians, to express Dioclesian’s thanks
to the gods for the success of his arms, this
must be an anachronism ; unless the first per-
secution among the soldiers was confound-
ed with this second one. What is stated in
these Coptic records, about the cause of the
persecution, — viz. that a Christian metro-
politan had released the son of the Persian
King, Sapor, who had been committed to
him for safe keeping. hardly admits of being
reconciled in any way with the history as
known to us.
150 THE DIOCLESIAN
a higher power and necessity. The infatuated zeal for the preserva-
‘tion of the old religion proceeded to such length with many, that they
would fain have seen burnt with the holy scriptures of the Christians,
some of the noblest monuments of their own ancient literature; that
they were for having every thing destroyed which could be used by
Christians as a testimony against paganism, and as a means of transi-
tion to their own faith. They called for a law, ordering the destruc-
tion of all the writings of antiquity which did such good service for the
Christians.! It may be easily conceived that, where individuals of this
stamp, or men who would sooner do too much than too little to gam the
emperor’s favor, were found among the governors and provincial mag-
istrates, there would exist already, in the executing of this first edict
for the surrender of the scriptures and the suspension of all assemblies
for religious worship, an occasion for the exercise of every species of
oppression and cruelty towards the Christians, — especially as by this
same edict, Christians of all ranks and conditions were hable to the
torture in judicial investigations.
But there were, also, magistrates of an entirely different temper,
who endeavored to soften, as far as possible, the rigor of these measures,
and executed them with as much lenity as they could, without a man-
ifest infraction of the imperial edict. They very willingly allowed
themselves to be deceived; or even suggested means of evading the
edict, by an apparent compliance with its requisitions. Mensurtus,
bishop of Carthage, had taken the precaution to remove all manuscripts
of the Bible from the church at Carthage to his own house, as a place
of greater security, leaving behind only the writings of heretics. When
the search-officers arrived, they seized the latter, askmg no further
{questions. These, too, were religious writings of the Christians, — and
nothing was said in the edict as to what sacred writings were intended,
nor of what Christian party. But certain senators at Carthage took
pains to expose the artifice to the proconsul Annubenus, and advised
him to cause search to be made in the house of the bishop, where the
whole would be found. But the proconsul,— who, it should seem,
therefore, was willing to be deceived, — declined to follow the advice.”
When Secundus, a Numidian bishop, refused to surrender the sacred -
scriptures, the officers of police demanded if he would not give them
then some useless fragments, or any thing he pleased.? Such, very proba-
bly, may have been the meaning, also, of the proconsul’s legate, when
he repeatedly put the question to the Numidian bishop Felix, “‘ Why
do you not give up your useless writings ?’’* So the question of the
1 This is said by the North-African writer, defendere, sed veritatis testificationem ti-
Arnobius, who in these times composed in mere.
defence of Christianity, his diputationes
adversus gentes. Lib. III. ec. 7: Cum alios
audiam mussitare indignanter et dicere:
oportere, per Senatum aboleantur ut hee
scripta, quibus Christiana religio compro-
betur et vetustatis opprimatur auctoritas.
Arnobius remarks, in objection to this pro-
posal: Intercipere seripta et publicatam
yelle submergere lectionem, non est Deos
2 Augustin. brevicul. collat. c. Donatistis,
ἃ. III. c. 13. Optat. Milev., ed. du Pin,
p- 174.
8 Aliqua ἔκβολα aut quodcunque.
4 Quare scripturas non tradis supervacu
as, doubtless with intentional ambiguity, so
that the words might be understood in the
sense, that all the sacred writings of the
Christians were useless.
ee τ
PERSECUTION. 151
preetorian prefect to Felix, the African bishop, ‘‘ Why do you not sur-
render the sacred writings ?— or perhaps you have none;’’ was evi-
dently shaped with a view to suggest the desired reply.1
This critical and trying period brought to light both good and evil
in the great body of Christians. The weak faith, the false zeal of en-
thusiastically excited feelings, and the true mean of genuine, evangeli-
cal good sense, were both discernible in the different modes of behavior.
Some yielded to the fear of torture and death, and gave up their copies
of the Bible, which were immediately committed to the flames in the
public market-place. These, who passed by the name of Traditores,
were excluded from the fellowship of the church. Others — and exam-
ples of this class we find particularly in North Africa, where a certain
leaning to enthusiasm belonged to the native temperament of the peo-
ple — challenged the pagan magistrates to do their office, and courted /
martyrdom with a fanatic zeal. Such persons declared, without being
asked, that they were Christians, that they had copies of the sacred
scriptures, but that they would surrender them on no account; or they
disdainfully spurned those means of evasion which were offered to them
by humane magistrates. They refused to comply with the suggestions
of those who were desirous of executing the imperial ordinance only in
form, and who would have them surrender other writings mstead of the
Bible. They imagined that they ought to follow the example of Elea-
zer, 2 Maccab. 6, who would not even seem to eat of the swine’s
flesh. There were others again, who, oppressed with debts, or con-
scious of grave transgressions, either wanted to rid themselves of a life
that was burdensome to them in an honorable and seemingly pious
manner, or sought in martyrdom an expiation of their sms; or who
were ambitious of the honor which would be paid them by the brethren
in the cells of their prison, or greedy of the gifts which they might
hope to receive there.2—_ Among the bishops themselves, there were in-
dividuals who applauded every mode of Confessing the faith, and gave
countenance to that fanatic zeal by which they were seized themselves.
Others endeavored to unite, to steadfastness in the faith, Christian pru-
dence and sobriety, — and at the head of these stood the Bishop Men-
surius, of Carthage. He would not consent to it, that such persons as
had themselves invited the pagan magistrates to do their worst, in the
way above mentioned, should be honored as martyrs. In these oppo-
site tendencies of the religious spirit here manifested, we may discern
the germ of those divisions which broke out in the church of North
Africa, after peace from without had been once more restored.
Let us now proceed as before, to contemplate in detail, some exam-
ples, derived from authentic sources, of the power of Christian faith
and the intrepidity of Christian courage. In an inland town of Numi-
dia, a band of Christians, — among whom was a lad in the tenderest
1 See the acta Felicis in Ruinart. tionis vel carere vellent onerosa multis
2 Vid. Augustin. brevicul. collat. c. Do- debitis vita, vel purgare se putarent et quasi
natistis, d. ILI. c. 13, T. IX. opp. ed. Bene- abluere facinora sua, vel certe adquirere
dictin. f.568: Quidam facinorosi argueban- pecuniam et in ecustodia deliciis perfrui
tur et fisci debitores, qui occasione persecu- De obsequio Christianorum.
19. THE DIOCLESIAN
years, — were seized in the house of a church-reader, where they had
assembled under the direction of a presbyter, for the purpose of read-
ing the scriptures and celebrating the communion. They were brought
to Carthage, to be arraigned before the tribunal of the proconsul, sing-
ing hymns to the praise of God all the way. Several of them were
put to the torture, for the purpose of drawimg confessions from the rest.
One of them exclaimed, in the midst of his sufferings, ‘‘ Ye are wrong,
unhappy men; you lacerate the imnocent. We are no murderers, —
we have never defrauded any man.—O God, have pity! I thank
thee, O Lord, — give me power to suffer in thy name. Deliver thy
servants out of the prison of this world —I thank thee, and yet am
unable to thank thee, — to glory! I thank the God of the kmgdom.
It appears, —the eternal, the imperishable’ kingdom! Lord, Christ,
we are Christians, we are thy servants; thou art our hope.” While
he thus prayed, the proconsul said to him, ‘‘ You should have obeyed
the law of the emperor.” He replied, with a strong spirit, though in
a weak and exhausted body, “I reverence only that law of God which
I have learned. For this law, I am willing to die. In this law, I am
made perfect. There is no other.” In the midst of his tortures,
another cried out, ‘‘ Help, O Christ! I pray thee, have compassion, —
preserve my soul, that it fall not into shame. O give me power to suf-
ἴον." ΤῸ the reader in whose house the assembly was held, said the
proconsul, ‘ You ought not to have received them.’ He replied, under
the rack, ‘I could not do otherwise than receive my brethren.” ‘‘ But
the emperor’s command,” said the proconsul, ‘ should have been of
more consequence to you.” ‘“* God,” he replied, ‘is greater than the
emperor.” ‘Have you in your house,” demanded the proconsul,
‘any sacred writings?’ ‘“‘ Such have I,” he replied, “ but they are
in my heart.”” Among the other prisoners was a Christian maiden,
named Victoria, whose father and brother were still pagans. The
brother, Fortunatianus, had come for the purpose of persuading her to
renounce her religion, and thus procuring her release. When she
steadfastly declared that she was a Christian, her brother pretended
that she was not in her right mind. But said she, “ This is my mind,
and I have never altered it.” The proconsul asked her if she would
not go with her brother. ‘ No,” she replied, *‘ for 1 am a Christian,
and ‘they are my brethren who obey God’s commands.” As to the lad,
Hilarianus, the proconsul supposed he would be easily intimidated by
threats ; but even in the child, the power of God proved mighty ; ‘* Do
what you please,” he replied; “1 am a Christian.” ἢ
The persecution once begun, it was impossible to stop half-way. The
first measures failing of their object, it became necessary to go farther.
The first step against the Christians was the most difficult ; the second
did not linger. Certain occurrences, moreover, had happened, which
1 The sources are the Acta Saturnini, form; but with an introduction, running
Dativi et aliorum in Africa. Baluz Miscell. ‘remarks, and a conclusion, written by some
T. II. Ruinart,in the above cited collec- Donatist. Yet the acta proconsularia, which
tion of Du Pin. It is true, the report has form the ground-work, may still be easily
not been preserved in its simple, original recognized.
PERSECUTION. 168
placed the Christians in a more unfavorable light, or which at least
could easily be turned to that account. A fire broke out in the impe-
rial palace of Nicomedia: it was quite natural to ascmbe such an
occurrence to the desire of revenge in the Christians, — and the accu-
sation may have had its good grounds, without involving in the disgrace
the whole Christian church of that period. Among so large a number
of Christians, there might perhaps have been some who allowed them-
selves to be urged on by passion, which they excused to themselves
under the plea of religion, to forget thus far what manner of spint be-
came them as disciples of Christ. Certain it 1s, however, that this
charge against the Christians could never be substantiated. The sen-
sitive author of ‘‘God’s Judgments on the Persecutors,” maintains that
the fire was kindled by Galerius himself, to give him an opportunity of
accusing the Christians, —a statement that cannot be received on such
authority alone. The emperor Constantine ascribes the fire to lght-
ning, and looks upon it as a judgment of God. ‘The truth is, as Euse-
bius candidly admits, the real cause was never ascertained, — enough
that the Christians were accused of conspiring against the emperors,
and multitudes of them thrown into prison, without discrimination of
those who were or were not liable to suspicion. ‘The most cruel tor-
tures were resorted to, for the purpose of extorting a confession ; but
in vain. Many were burned to death, beheaded or drowned. It is’
true, that fourteen days after, a second fire broke out, which, however,
was extinguished without damage, so that the supposition becomes cer-
tainly more probable that it was the work of an incendiary.1
Some disturbances which, soon after this event, arose in Armenia
and Syria, afforded new occasion of political jealousy against the Chris-
tians. It was intimated that the clergy, as the heads of the party,
were particularly liable to suspicion; and under this pretext, the edict
was issued, which directed that all of the clerical order should be seized
and thrown in chains. Thus in a short time the prisons were filled
with persons of this class. It is seen on various occasions, how strong
was the inclination to fasten upon the Christians charges of ἃ political
character ; nor were the Christians always careful to avoid every even
seeming ground for such charges as their enemies were seeking to bring
against them. A young Christian from Egypt, who had been appre-
hended at Czesarea in Palestine, being asked of what country he was,
by the Roman proconsul, replied, “1 am of Jerusalem, which lies tow-
ards the rising sun, the city of the saints.”” The Roman, who perhaps
was not aware, in his ignorance, that even such a place existed as the
earthly Jerusalem, which might be known to him only by its Roman
name, Adlia Capitolina, — and who was still more ignorant of the heay-
enly Jerusalem,—immediately concluded that the Christians had
founded somewhere in the East a city, which they intended to make
the central point of a general insurrection. The matter appeared to
1Lactantins (de mortib.) relates this. familiar with the particulars of these events
. Itis mentioned by no other author. But than others. Yet it is possible he may have
Lactantius, who probably resided himself been deceived by some rumor then current
at that time at Nicomedia, would be more in the city.
154 THE DIOCLESIAN PERSECUTION.
him one of grave importance, and he plied the young man with a great
many questions under the torture. Procopius, a presbyter of Pales-
tine, when called upon to sacrifice, declared that he knew of only one
God, to whom men were bound to bring such offermgs as he would
accept. Being then required to offer his libation to the four sove-
reigns of the empire, the two Augusti, and the two Ceesars, he replied,
— doubtless, to show that men are bound to acknowledge but one God
as their Lord,—with the Homeric verse, ‘“ The government of ntany is
not good ; let there be one ruler, one king.”’? It seems, however, that
it was construed into a political offence, as if he meant to censure the
existing Tetrarchy.?
_ All the prisons being now filled with Christians of the spiritual order,
a new edict appeared, commanding that such of the prisoners as were
willing to sacrifice, should be set free, and the rest, by every means,
compelled to offer. This was followed at last, in 804, by a fourth and
still more rigorous edict, which extended the same order to the whole
body of Christians.* In the cities, where the edict was most strictly
executed, public proclamation was made through the streets, that men,
women and children, should all repair to the temples. Every individ-
ual was summoned by name from lists previously made out ; at the city
gates all were subjected to rigid examination, and such as were found
to be Christians immediately secured. At Alexandria, pagans them-
selves concealed the persecuted Christians in their houses, and many
of them chose rather to sacrifice their property and liberty, than to be-
tray those who had taken refuge with them.® Sentence of death, it is
true, was not formally pronounced on the refractory ; but we may well
suppose, that an edict which authorized the employment of every
means to compel the Christians to sacrifice, would, still more than an
unconditional decree of death to confessors, expose them to every cru-
elty which the fanaticism of a governor, or his desire οἵ courting the
imperial favor, might dispose him to inflict. Each one doubtless felt
sure of never being called to account for any excesses he might be
guilty of against the Christians. Already did the persecutors fondly
imagine that they should triumph over the fall of Christianity. Already
was added to the other honorary titles of the Augusti, the glory of hav-
ing extinguished the Christian superstition and restored the worship. of
the gods. “Ἅ Amplificato per orientem et occidentem imperio Romano,
et nomine Christianorum deleto, qui rempublicam evertebant. Super-
stitione Christiana ubique deleta et cultu Deorum propagato.” Yet
at the very time they were thus triumphing, the circumstances were
already prepared by Providence, which were destined to work an entire
change in the situation of the Christians.
One of the four regents, Constantius Chlorus, who presided as Czesar
over the government of Gaul, Britain and Spain, possessed naturally
a mild and humane disposition, averse to persecutions. He was more-
1 Euseb. de martyrib. Palestine, c. 9. ἘΠ OB ὍΣ ὩΣ
2 Οὐκ ἀγαϑὸν πολυκοιρανίη" εἷς κοίρανος 5 Athanas. Hist. Arianor. ad Monachos
ἔστω, εἷς βασιλεύς. Ilias II. 204. § 64.
3 Euseb. de martyrib. Palest. c. 1.
LAST OUTBREAK OF PERSECUTION. 155
over, though not himself a decided Christian, yet evidently a friend to
Christianity and its professors ; — whether it was, as Eusebius affirms,
that he really perceived the vanity of paganism, and without being a
Christian was an upright monotheist, — or whether, as is more probable,
he was, like Alexander Severus, an eclectic in his religion. Those
Christians about his person who continued steadfast in their faith, he
treated with special regard and confidence ; it being a common remark
with him, that one who has proved unfaithful to his God, would be still
less likely to remain faithful to his prince, Yet what Eusebius relates
about his method of putting their Ae a to the proof, wears but
little appearance of probability. As he could not, while a Cesar, show
an open disregard to the edict that had been issued by the Augusti,
he suffered the work of destroying the churches to proceed far enough
to save appearances. In Gaul, where he usually resided, the Christians
enjoyed perfect liberty and quiet, while the persecutions raged in other
provinces. In Spain, he may not have been able to effect so much;
but it is certain, that in no one of his provinces was the persecution of
the same character as in other districts of the empire. ‘The influence
of this emperor, so favorable to the Christians, was still more efficient,
when, in 305, Dioclesian and Herculius abdicated the sovereignty,
and he was elevated, in conjunction with Galerius, to the dignity of
Augustus.
On the other hand, there now entered the line of the Czesars, a man
who, in blind heathenish superstition and cruelty, perfectly resembled
the emperor Galerius, who nominated him to that station. This was
Caius Galerius Valerius Maximinus.: It is natural to suppose, that in
the provinces committed to his care, — Syria, with the adjacent parts of
the Roman empire, and Egypt, — the persecutions would be renewed
with increased violence. At times, it is true, men grew weary of their
own rage, when they saw that their efforts were to no purpose. The
imperial edict flagged im its execution, the persecution slept, and the
Christians enjoyed a temporary respite; but when their enemies per-
ceived that they recovered breath, maddened to think they had not
succeeded in extinguishing Christianity and restorimg Paganism to its
ancient splendor, their fury broke out afresh, and a new storm, more_
violent than ever, arose. hus, at length, in the year 808, and about
the eighth year of the persecution, after much effusion of blood im the
states of Maximinus, from the time of his accession, a season of tran-
quillity had commenced. The Christians who had been condemned to
labor in the mines, were treated with greater lenity and forbearance.
But, all at once, the Christians of these provinces were startled out of
their transient repose by a furious storm. A new and more rigorous
command was addressed by the emperor to all the officers of his gov-
ernment, from the highest to the lowest, both in the civil‘and in the
military service, directing that the fallen temples of the gods should
be restored, that all free men and women, all slaves, and even little
1 So say the work De mortib. perscutor. very account, they demanded Gallic bishops
c. 16, and a letter of the Donatists to the for their judges. Optat. Miley. de schis-
Emperor Constantine, in which, on this mate, Donatistar. 1. 1. ¢. 22.
156 EDICT OF TOLERATION.
children, should sacrifice, and partake of what was offered at heathen
altars. All provisions in the market were to be sprinkled with the
water or the wine which had been used in the sacrifices, that the Chris-
tians might thus be forced into contact with idolatrous offerings. ΤῸ
such length did fanaticism and despotic power proceed! New tortures
and a fresh effusion of blood ensued.
Again there was a respite, which lasted till the beginning of the
year 310. Christians confined to the mines in Palestine were allowed
to meet together for worship, put the governor of the province, observ-
ing this in one of his visitations, reported it to the emperor., The
prisoners were now kept apart and put to severe labor. Thirty-nine
confessors, who after much suffering were enjoying a season of rest,
were beheaded at once. It was the last blood that flowed in this
persecution, tranquillity having for some time been already restored to
the Christians in the West.
The instigator of the persecution himself, the emperor Galerius,
softened by a severe and painful disease, the consequence of his ex-
cesses, had perhaps been led to think that the God of the Christians
might, after all, be a powerful bemg, whose anger punished him, and
whose favor he must endeavor to conciliate. At any rate, he could
hardly fail to be struck with the fact, that all his bloody and violent
proceedings had inflicted no material harm on Christianity. So, in the
year 311, the remarkable edict appeared which put an end to the last
sanguinary conflict of the Christian Church m the Roman empire.
It declared, that it had been the intention of the emperors to reclaim
the Christians to the religion of their fathers, in departing from which,
they had invented laws according to their own fancy, and given birth
to a multitude of sects,— a reproach frequently thrown against the
Christians of this age.1 But as the majority of the Christians, in spite
of every measure to the contrary, persevered in their opinions, and it
had now become evident, that they could not worship their own Deity,
and at the same time pay due homage to the gods, the emperors had
resolved to extend to them their wonted clemency. They might once
more be Christians, and would be allowed to hold their assemblies,
provided only they did nothing contrary to the good order of the Roman
state, (ita ut ne quid contra disciplinam agant;) ‘let them now, there-
fore, after experiencing this proof of our indulgence, pray to their God
for our prosperity, for the well-being of the state, and for their own;
that the state may still continue to be, in all respects, well maintained,
and they themselves may be enabled to live quietly in their own homes.”
1“ Behold, since you have left the unity
of ancient tradition, the authority of the
fathers, you have been led entirely by your
own caprice, and have fallen from one in-
novation into another; hence the multitude
of your sects.” The Latin words of the
decree, — Siquidem quadam ratione tanta
eosdem Christianos voluntas (such caprice
ἐθελοϑρησκεία,) invasisset et tanta stultitia
occupasset, ut non illa veterum instituta
sequerentur, que forsitan primi parentes
eorundem constituerant; sed pro arbitrio
suo atque ut hisdem erat libitum, ita sibi-
met leges facerent, quas observarent et per
diversa vanos populos congregarent.
2 The emperor had probably explained
himself more distinctly on this point, in a
rescript which has not come down to us.
WRITINGS AGAINST CHRISTIANITY. 157
Attacks on Christianity. Defence of Christianity against these
writings.
While the ancient world, in order to maintain itself on its own reli-
gious foundation, was endeavoring to suppress Christianity by force,
the culture of the age enlisted itself in the same cause and entered
the contest with its writings. Intellectual weapons were combined with
outward violence in attacking the new principle which had begun to
reveal its power in human life. In these written assaults of Chris-
tianity, the relation of the religious and’ moral principles of the then
existing world, and of its different intellectual tendencies — as set forth
by us in the introduction — to this new principle which was now enter-
ing into the life of humanity, may be easily recognized. If He whose
external appearance was the perfectly unsullied mirror of his divine
life, still did not fail to distinguish, m the hostile judgments passed
upon his own person, the sins against the Son of Man from those
against the Holy Ghost, much more should we feel it incumbent on us
to institute a like distinction between the judgments of misapprehension
and of calumny passed upon Christianity, where its divine life exhibited
itself under circumstances and forms exposing it to such various debas-
ing mixtures. In the ferment which Christianity produced on its first
appearance, many impure elements necessarily became mixed with it,
which were destined to be expelled during the purifyig process of its
development. The crisis brought on by Christianity, which was to
introduce a genuine healthfulness of the spiritual life, must needs call
forth also some considerable degree of morbid action, as a necessary
means of arriving at that ultimate healthy condition. Much that
savored of a jealous and narrowly exclusive spirit, would naturally be
engendered by that opposition to the world, in which the new faith must
first display itself before it could furnish the world with the principle
of its own renovation. Now in order to judge rightly of these impure
admixtures in their relation to the essence of Christianity, and to discern
the higher element lying at the ground of them, it was necessary that
Christianity itself should be studied and understood in its essential
character. Whoever contemplated these phenomena from some out-
ward position, and by the very peculiarity of this point of view found
himself opposed to Christianity, would easily confound these accidents
attending the process of its development, with the essential thing itself,
and from his knowledge of the former, imagine that he comprehended
the latter. This remark we shall have to apply to everything which
wears the form of opposition to Christianity in these centuries.
Thus Lucian, — of whose peculiar bent on religious matters we have
spoken before, — fixing on certain accidental marks by which his atten-
tion had been caught, could place Christianity in the same class with
the various appearances of fanaticism and boastful jugglery which he
made the butt of his ridicule. When he heard of men who were said
to possess the power of curing demoniacs, and of healing other diseases,
he placed them down on the same list with the common vagabond exor-
cists and magicians. He has most to say about the Christians, in a
VOL. I. 14
158 WRITERS AGAINST CHRISTIANITY.
work where, in his own peculiar style, he has described the life and
self-procured death of the Cynic philosopher, Peregrinus Proteus. This
personage, according to Lucian’s account, was one of those notorious
hypocrites, who understood the art of concealing their vanity and
wickedness under the Cynic guise, and of enchaining the multitude by
various other fraudulent tricks. Yet it may be a question, how far this
picture, drawn by satire, answers to the truth, or whether it contains
any at aybr ere canton: Ἢ as we have a description of this mdividual by
another contemporary,’ which would lead us to form an altogether
different view of his character; unless we choose to assume that this
other contemporary suffered himself to be imposed upon by a hypo-
critical show of moral earnestness and zeal. This Peregrinus then, as
we are told, jomed himself for a while with the Christians, and being
imprisoned for confessing Christianity, acquired among them the highest
consideration. All which account may be a pure invention of Lucian
for the purpose of connecting his hero with the Christians, that he
might have a good opportunity for satirizing the latter.
The importance which was given, from the Christian point of view,
to the individual, personal existence, as destined, in its entireness, for
endless duration; the lively confidence of faith in an eternal life and
resurrection ; the opposition to the whole previously existing world into
which Christianity caused its followers to enter; the hearty brotherly
love which bound them to each other ;—all these Lucian acknowledges
as effects which had proceeded from the man who was crucified in
Palestine. But without troubling himself to seek for profounder rea-
sons to account for effects so great, and, as he himself admits, so
abiding, he throws them into the same class with all the other kinds of
fanaticism which he ridicules. ‘They still worship,” says he of the
Christians, “‘ that great man who was crucified in Palestine, because it
was he by whom the initiation into these new mysteries was “introduced
into human life. These poor creatures have persuaded themselves that
they are all immortal, and shall live for ever. For this reason they
despise death itself, and many even court it. But again, their first law-
giver” has persuaded them to believe that, as soon as they have broken
loose from the prevailing customs and ‘denied the gods of Greece,
1 Aulus Gellius, (in his Noctes Attics,
]. XII. c. 11,) tells us that while residing at
Athens, he visited this Peregrinus, who
lived in a hut without the city. He calls
him virum gravem et constantem. He cites
from his mouth the maxim: wickedness
ought to be shunned, not from fear of pun-
ishment or disgrace, but only from love of
goodness; virum sapientem non peccatu-
rum, etiamsi peccasse eum dii atque homi-
nes ignoraturi forent. If the purely moral
effort which these words express, was real-
ly his own, it is not difficult to see how he
might thus be mduced to attach himself to
Christianity ; while at the same time, he
soon fell away from it, because he could not
bring himself to believe the facts which it
announced. Yet we do not hold this to be
probable, for the following reason, if there
were no other, viz. we believe, that if any
thing of this kind had happened, some trace
or other of such an occurrence would have
been preserved in the meena traditions of
this period.
2 We find no good reason for supposing
that Paul is intended by this expression ;
but we must conceive of the same person,
whom he characterizes as the ἀνεσκολοπισ-
μένος σοφιστῆς, and of whose laws he is
speaking, — the sole founder of Christiani-
ty. We recognize, also, the allusion to
what Christ himself had said respecting
brotherly love. In this particular descrip-
tion by Lucian, we do not remark a single
element which could be considered as be-
longing peculiarly to the Apostle Paul.
LUCIAN — ARRIAN. 159
reverencing instead of these their crucified teacher, and living after
his laws, they stand to each other in the relation of brethren. Thus
they are led to despise everything alike, to consider everything else
as profane, adopting these notions without any sufficient grounds of
evidence.”’?? Under the example of Peregrinus, he gives a lively des-
cription.of the sympathy displayed by the Christians for those confessors
who were languishing in prison. ‘‘ When he was incarcerated,” says
Lucian, ‘the Christians, who regarded it as a great calamity, spared
no expense and no sacrifice to procure his liberation. Findmg this to
be impossible, they were exceeding careful, that he should in all
respects be well provided for. And from the early dawn, old women,
widows and orphans might be seen waiting at the doors of his prison ;
the more respectable among these, having bribed the keepers, slept near
him in the dungeon. Then various dishes were brought in; and
religious discourses were delivered in his presence. Even from cities
in Asia Minor deputies from the Christian communities were sent to
assist In protecting and consoling him. ‘They show incredible despatch
in a public concern of this sort. In a brief space they give away all.”
Again, Lucian accuses the Christians as an ignorant, uncultivated
set, of excessive credulity ; whence it happened that their charitable
disposition was in many ways imposed upon. ‘If a magician, an
impostor, who is apt at his trade, comes among them, having to deal
with an ignorant class of people, he can shortly make himself rich.”
He describes the Christians as men ‘‘ who thought it the greatest sim
to take a morsel of food which, in their opinion, was forbidden, and
who would rather do anything than this.” Peregrinus was excluded
from their community, “‘ because he had offended even against their
laws, for he had been seen to eat something or other which is forbidden
among them.” It is possible that Lucian had in mind here the example
of Jewish Christian communities ; or, perhaps, the very punctilious and
superstitious observance of the regulations adopted by the apostolic
council at Jerusalem, (Acts xv.) which prevailed after the suppression
of the more liberal spirit of St. Paul, may have given occasion to such
a judgment. At all events, we cannot fail to see how, in this case,
the contracted views of believers led to a misapprehension as to the
essential character of their religion.
The stoic Arrian, who lived at a somewhat earlier period than
Lucian, judged of the Christians—as the emperor Marcus Aurelius
had done before — strictly according to the relation of the stoic philoso-
phy to Christianity. In his work, which aims to elucidate the principles
of his master Epictetus,’ he starts the question, “‘ Whether by msight
of reason into the laws which govern the system of the universe it
might not be possible to acquire the same intrepidity in view of death,
which the Galilzeans attained to by mad fanaticism and custom.”
1"Avev τινὸς ἀκριβοῦς πίστεως. referring to extracts read from the sacred
2 Ecclesiastics visited him, and gave re- Scriptures. By the “ἐν τέλει," who re-
ligious discourses in the cell, where he was mained with him during the night, may
confined;—unless the words “ λόγοι iepoi doubtless be meant also Ecclesiastics.
αὐτῶν ἐλέγοντο," are to be understood as 8 Diatrib. L IV. ¢. 7.
160 WRITERS AGAINST CHRISTIANITY.
It may easily be understood, from what we have said respecting the
relation of the Wew Platonism to the religious stage of development in
the ancient world, and to Christianity, that while on one hand it might
serve as a transition-pomt to the Christian faith, and a source from
whence to borrow the scientific form to be used in the explanation and
defence of Christian truth; so on the other, it would be the school
from which the most numerous as well as the most formidable antago-
nists of the same religion would proceed. Perhaps the first man who
felt sufficiently interested in the subject to attack Christianity in an
express work, was from this school; viz. Celsus, who under the govern-
ment of Marcus Aurelius, when it was attempted to extirpate Chris-
tianity by the sword, attacked it at the same time with the weapons of
his witty and acute intellect. He wrote against the Christians a work
in two books, entitled *‘ The true doctrine.” 1
Origen himself, however, started the conjecture, that this Celsus
was no other than the person otherwise known as Celsus the Epicurean,
Lucian’s contemporary and friend. Still it is plam, from the uncer-
taimty with which he expresses himself, that he was led to this conjec-
ture, not by any evidence of historical tradition, but only by the identity
of the name; and that he was thrown into doubt again by the internal
evidence presented in the work itself. Now since it is by no means
impossible, that two authors of the same name should write at the same
period — especially when the name is not an unusual one — the infer-
ence from the identity of names must be extremely uncertaim, unless
supported by some agreement also in the way of thinking.
Lucian was induced by the last mentioned Celsus to publish his life
1 Λόγος ἀληϑῆς, Orig. ec. Cels. 1. 1. c. 4.
Several learned writers have supposed it
might be inferred from Origen’s language,
(c. Cels. 1. LV. c. 36,) that besides the work
just mentioned, which, as to its essential
contents may be restored from the fragments
preserved in Origen’s reply, Celsus wrote
another work, in two books, against Chris-
tianity. But we cannot think that the in-
terpretation of the passage which lies at
the basis of their theory, is the correct one.
The passage is this: Ὁ ᾿Επικούρειος Κέλ-
σος, εἴγε οὗτός ἐστι, καὶ κατὰ Χριστιανῶν
ἄλλα δύο βίθλια συντάξας. Τ cannot un-
derstand ἄλλα, in this connection, as refer-
ring to other works against Christianity,
besides the one of which alone Origen uni-
formly speaks, and which it is his business
to refute; but I understand by it other
works than those known to belong to Cel-
sus, in which he betrays his Epicureanism
without any attempt at concealment. “ The
Epicurean Celsus, if indeed,—so I con-
sider myself warranted by the Greek usus
loquendi of this period to understand the
word εἴγε, while at the same time I ac-
knowledge the original difference between
εἴγε and εἴπερ, ---- τῇ indeed he is the same
with the one who wrote two other books
against the Christians.” By the other
books, in this case, none can be meant but
that one work which Origen undertook to
refute. Precisely this was the point in ques-
tion, whether the Hpicurean could be the
author of that work. Whether the same in-
dividual had composed two other works be-
sides, against Christianity, was a question
that did not belong here. Had it been
Origen’s intention to designate two books
distinct from that work, he would have ex-
pressed himself somewhat as follows: ‘O
καὶ ταῦτα Ta βίβλια καὶ ἄλλα δύο, ete.
Moreover, the prefixing the words, κατὰ
Χριστιανῶν, confirms my interpretation.
And if Celsus had written another addi-
tional work against the Christians, two
cases only can be supposed. Hither Origen
had read this work also, or else he had
merely been informed that Celsus had writ-
ten such a work, without having seen it
himself. In the first case, he would not
have failed to take some notice, in this con-
troversy, of what Celsus had said in his
other work against the Christians. In the
second case, he would, at least, not have
omitted to declare distinctly, that the other
work of Celsus had never come under his
eye, a8 he does in fact observe where he is
speaking of a writing of Celsus, which we
shall have occasion to mention hereafter
-“-
CELSUS. 16]
of the magician Alexander of Abonoteichus, a work which he dedicated
to that friend. ‘This fact would correspond with the views expressed
in the work of Celsus against Christianity. For the antagonist of
Christianity places it in the same class with all phenomena belonging to
the art of magic, and compares it with the latter when he attempts to
account for its origin and diffusion. He might naturally wish, also,
to know more about the great magician who had made so much noise
in his day, with a view to avail himself of this knowledge in behalf of
his own scheme of enlightenment, which would throw all religious phe-
nomena, transcending the ordinary standard, mto the same category.
This Celsus had written a book, as Origen also was aware, against
pretended enchantments,! and which was mtended to counteract the
fraudulent tricks of those vagrant Goetz. It is described by Lucian as
a work well adapted to lead men back to sober thought.2_ Now it might
very easily happen,' that on these principles, the same zeal against
fanaticism would induce Celsus to write against those who endeavored
to deceive the multitude by their pretended art of magic, and against
the Christians who insisted on their own miraculous gifts. Celsus does,
in fact, compare, in one place, the miracles of Christ with the works of
magicians who learned their art from the Egyptians, and for a few
oboh exhibited them im the open market-place, pretending to expel evil
spirits from men, to drive away diseases by a breath, to call up the
souls of heroes, to charm into their presence costly viands, to make
dead things move as if they were alive ; and he asks, “Shall we, be-
cause they do such things, consider them as sons of God — or shall we
say these are the tricks of wicked and pitiable men?’’®? Origen was
doubtless wrong in supposing that in these words Celsus conceded the
reality of magic ; and that the only way therefore, of reconciling this
concession with the attack on magic by the same Celsus, if he were the
same, was to assume that, to subserve a particular end, he here pre-
tended to believe what he did not actually believe. For Celsus might
express himself thus, even though he looked upon those magicians as
no better than jugglers, skilful in deceiving the senses by a certain
sleight of hand ;* and the same writer, in his work against the magicians,
may have undertaken to show how such deceptions were brought about.
Yet it must be admitted, that in another passage of the work against
the Christians, Celsus expresses himself as though he considered magic
to be an art possessed of a certain power, though held by him in no great
account.® He says he had heard it from Dionysius, an Egyptian musi-
cian, that magic exercised an influence over uneultivated and profligate
men, but not over those who had received a philosophical education.
- This view of magic may be easily traced back to a common opinion
among the Platonists of that period, who supposed that by taking
1 Κατὰ μάγων. καὶ δυναμένοις ihe τοὺς ἐντυγχά-
2 He says in his tract, dedicated to this νοντας.
Celsus, and entitled, ANE Eavdpoc or Pevdo- 8 Orig. c. Cels. 1. I. ἢ 28.
μάντις, (δ 12. .) addressing himself to Cel- Α Μέχρι φαντασίας φαινόμενα τοιαῦτα.
sus : Oic κατὰ μάγων συνέγραψας, καλλίοσ- 5 ¢, Cels. ]. VI. c. 41.
τοις τὲ ἅμα Kal ὠφελιμωτάτοις συγγράμμασι
14*
162 WRITERS AGAINST CHRISTIANITY.
advantage of certain attractive and repulsive powers in nature — certain
magnetic influences—it would be possible to exercise a great control
over such as were still fettered by the bonds of nature, though not over
those who had risen to freedom, and lived in the divine element which
is exalted above all natural forces. With this the assertion first quoted
from Celsus may be easily reconciled, that magic, as practised in
Egypt, its proper home,! so influenced men at a subordinate stage
of culture, that sights, and affections of whatever kind, might be
produced in them at pleasure. It may be questioned, however, whether
Lucian’s friend would have conceded as much as this to magic.
iuucian praises the mild temper and the moderation of his friend.
But in Celsus’ work against the Christians we see no marks of such
qualities as these ; but we feel that we have to do with a man of vehe-
ment passions, a man altogether incapable of allowing the cause which
he attacks, to be right on any side whatever. At the same time, we
cannot be certain, that Lucian’s opinion of his friend was according to
truth. Besides, there are those who find no difficulty in preserving
their temper until certain topics are introduced, when they flash out,
at once into fire and flames. And especially on religious matters,
nothing is more common than for men of acute minds, who have en-
trenched themselves in some negative position of the understanding and
feel jealous of every eccentric appearance in this province, to lose all
selfpossession whenever powerful phenomena of the religious life are
presented to their notice. The heat with which Celsus attacks Chris-
tianity betrays his own oppressive sense of the power with which it
was extending itself on all sides.
There can be no doubt, that the Celsus who was Lucian’s friend,
favored for the most part the school of Epicurus. But in the work
against Christianity, very little is to be found which indicates a ten-
dency to this way of thinking, and even this little vanishes under a
more careful examination. On the other hand, the marks of an entirely
opposite system are everywhere apparent.
In this book we certainly perceive a mind which would not consent
to surrender itself to the system of any other individual; we find our-
selves in contact with a man who, by combining the ideas predominant
in the general philosophical consciousness of his time, the popular
ideas — so to speak — of that period, had framed a system of his own,
of which he felt rather proud, and which, after he had appeared as a
polemic in his work against the Christians, it was his intention to unfold
in another performance, under a more positive form. In this second
work, he meant to show how it would be necessary for those to live,
1 And so the possession of the art of
magic was ascribed. by those who acknowl-
edged its reality, particularly to the Egyp-
tian priests. Moreover, Celsus (1. I c. 28)
brings forward the story, borrowed perhaps
from the Jews, that Jesus, on account of his
poverty, was obliged in Egypt to let him-
self out for wages, and there learned the
arts by which he performed his pretendéd
miracles, and contrived to attain to such
eminence as to be worshipped as a divine
being. Ὅτι οὗτος διὰ πενίαν εἰς Αἴγυπτον
μισϑαρνήσας κἄκεϊῖ δυνάμεων τινων πειρα-
ϑεὶς, ἐφ᾽ αἷς Αἰγύπτιοι σεμνύνονται, ἐπανῆλ-
Sev, ἐν ταῖς δυνάμεσι μέγα φρονῶν καὶ dv
αὐτὰς Gedy αὑτὸν ἀνηγόοευσεν.
CELSUS. 163
who were willing and able to follow him. Whether this plan was ever
executed, we are not informed.}
But in this system, the main ideas are borrowed from Platonism.
Among these we reckon the idea of the Absolute, the ὄν, to which the
contemplative spirit of the philosopher alone could soar ; —the distine-
tion between the highest, primal Being or Essence, and his self-mani-
festation in the Universe — between the Highest, who reposes in being,
and the second god, who reveals himself in becoming ; — the world,
as the Son of the Supreme God ; — the idea of the celestial luminaries
as divine essences, of the higher intelligences animating those heavenly
bodies, of the gods appearing visible in the phenomenal world,? as
opposed to the invisible, hidden deities presiding over the several parts
of the world — the national gods to whom the different portions of the
world are subject, and to whom men are bound to render due homage,
by acknowledging this dependence grounded on the nature of the
earthly life; the idea that the imperishable element in human nature,
the spirit alone, derives its origin from God; that this element, possess-
ing an affinity to God, exists in the human soul; the hypothesis of a
power struggling against the divine and formative principle in the
world, of the ὕλη as the source of evil; hence of evil in this world as
something necessary. From this ὕλη are derived the evil spirits, the
powers that struggle against the divine, against reason.
These ideas, scattered through his work, betray not the Epicurean
certainly, but one who had appropriated nearly all he possessed from
the current ideas of the New Platonic philosophy of religion. Though
we cannot but suppose that Celsus, in opposing the Christian mode of
thinking, and for the purpose of bantering the Christians, said many
things which he did not seriously mean; yet assuredly we have no
reason to suppose that the tinge of Platonism which appears every-
where through the surface, was assumed merely out of pretence. And
however strong we may be inclined to suppose the tendency to eclecti-
cism was at this particular period of time, still we cannot consider it to
be natural or probable that Epicurean views would be blended with so
predominating an element of New Platonism. But whoever this Celsus
may have been, he is for us an important individual, being, in fact, the
original representative of a kind of intellect which has presented itself
over and over again in the various attacks made on Christianity: ‘wit
and acuteness, without earnest purpose or depth of research ; a worldly
understanding that glances merely on the surface, and delights in hunt-
ing up difficulties and contradictions. His objections against Chris-
tianity serve one important end. They present, in the clearest manner,
the opposition between the Christian standing ground and that of the
ancient world; and, in general, the relation which revealed religion
will ever be found to hold to the ground assumed by natural reason.
1 Origen, at the conclusion of his work, These words, too, clearly prove, that Origen
begs of his friend Ambrosius, that if Cel- had no knowledge of a second work of
sus had actually executed this plan, he Celsus against Christianity.
would procure for him this work also, that 2 Θεοὶ φανεροί.
he might take measures for its refutation.
164 WRITERS AGAINST -CHRISTIANITY.
Thus many of his objections and strictures became testimonies for the
truth.
- How the divine foolishness of the gospel, the faith whereby the
highest truth was to be made the common property of all mankind,
must needs appear to the twilight wisdom, and aristocratic culture of
the ancient world, may be seen in those remarks of Celsus, where he
objects to the Christians,! that they refused to give reasons for what
they believed, but were ever repeating, ‘‘ Do not examine, only believe ;
thy faith will make thee blessed. Wisdom isa bad thmg in life, fool-
ishness is to be preferred.””? He makes the Christians say, ‘‘ Let no
educated, no wise man approach; but whoever is ignorant, unculti-
vated, — whoever is like a child, let him come and be comforted.’
This objection was, in part, called forth by the divine paradox of the
gospel itself; but in part, there was also a one-sided tendency among
the Christians themselves to set up faith as something opposed to
culture and scientific inquiry,—a course which led to the misappre-
hension of Christianity itself, and to accusations which had no other
ground than this misapprehension.
we find another of the directly opposite character, showmg how much
the religion which was thus accused of demanding and encouraging
implicit faith, claimed and excited intellectual inquiry, called into
requisition the powers of thought. We refer to the objection drawn
from the multitude of conflicting sects among the Christians.4 ‘In
the outset,”’ says πο, “‘ when the Christians were few in number, they
may, perhaps, have agreed among themselves. But as their numbers
increased, they separated into parties, mutually attacking and refuting
each other, and retainmg nothing in common but their name, if indeed
they did that.”"® He accuses them of calumniating each other, and of
refusing to yield up a single point for the sake of unanimity.’
In objecting to Christianity the many oppositions of human opinion
which it called forth, Celsus testifies against himself. How could a reli-
gion of bare faith, a religion that called the unenlightened and repelled
the wise of this world, give birth to such a multitude of heresies? If
he had not been so superficial an observer, he could not have failed to
be struck with this contradiction; and in endeavoring to resolve it, must
have had his attention directed to that peculiarity, by which Christian-
ity is so clearly distinguished from all preceding phenomena in the
Along with this class of objections’
1A similar objection to Judaism and
Christianity is made also by Galen, that
celebrated physician of the second and third
centuries, —a man incapable of rising to
the higher fields of thought. From the po-
sition at which he contemplates the world,
on one particular side of it, and by the
mere understanding, he observes: “Iva μὴ
τίς evdic Kar ἀρχὰς ὡς εἰς Μωῦσοῦ καὶ
Χριστοῦ διατριβὴν ἀφιγμένος νόμων ἀναπο-
δείκτων ἀκουῇ. De different. puls. 1. IL
c. 4.
oT: T. 6:9.
8L. III. c. 44: Δῆλοίΐ εἰσιν, ὅτι μόνους
τοὺς ἠλιϑίους καὶ ἀγεννεῖς καὶ ἀναισϑῆτους
καὶ ἀνδράποδα καὶ γύναια καὶ παιδάρια πεί-
Sew ἐϑέλουσί τε καὶ δύνανται. -
1. Clement of Alexandria observes, that
pagans and Jews were used to bring this
objection against Christianity; μὴ δεῖν πισ-
τεύειν διὰ THY διαφωνίαν τῶν αἱρέσεων.
Strom. |. VIL f. 7585. Ed Paris, 1641.
5 L. III. ο. 10, and the following.
6 Στάσεις ἰδίας ἔχειν ἕκαστοι ϑέλουσι,
σφᾶς αὐτοὺς ἐλέγχουσιν, ἑνός, ὡς εἰπεῖν, ἔτι
κοινωνοῦντες, εἴγε κοινωνοῦσιν ἔτι, τοῦ ὀνό-
ματος.
ΤΙ, V.c. 63: Βλασφημοῦσι δὲ εἰς ἀλλή-
λους οὗτοι πάνδεινα ῥητὰ καὶ ἄῤῥητα καὶ
οὐκ ἂν εἴξαιεν οὐδὲ ca ὁτιοῦν εἰς ὁμόνοιαν
Pe
CELSUS. 165
intellectual world. Celsus was of the opinion, that these oppositions
of knowledge, so hotly conflicting with each other, would bring about
the dissolution of Christianity. But history has decided against him ;
it has shown how the indwelling power of unity in Christianity could
overcome these oppositions, and make them subservient to its own ends.
Celsus then, as we see, was aware of the fact, that many different
sects existed among the Christians. But he did not give himself the
pains, which a lover of justice and of truth would have done, to distin-
guish what was grounded in the original Christian doctrine, and what
had been added by these sects; what was acknowledged as true doc-
trine by the great body of Christians, and what was adopted only by
this or that particular party. He was somewhat deeply read in the
religious records of the Christians, and had heard a great deal repeated
which was derived from them. But the spirit in which he had read
and heard all this, was not one that prepared him to receive, or made
him capable of understanding it; but one which, keeping him on the
alert for opportunities of ridicule and misrepresentation, must find these
opportunities. He threw the religious writings, as he had done the
religious parties of the Christians, into one class, without examining
either into the origin of them or into their character. Whatever he
could lay hold of, belonging to the most opposite parties, — to those
fanatical spiritualists, the Gnostics, and to those gross anthropomorph-
ists, the Chiliasts, — which served to present Christianity on different
sides in the most unfavorable light, was eagerly welcomed by him.
Sometimes he objects to the Christians that they had nothing in com-
mon with all other religions, —neither temples, images nor altars; at
others, — opposing an abstract knowledge of God to the religion that
had its birth in historical facts, he calls them a miserable sense-
bound, sense-loving race,! who would acknowledge nothing but that
which was palpable to the outward senses. He preaches to them,
that men should close their senses and turn away from all sensible
things, so as to have the intuition of God through the eye of the mind.
On the watch for every weak spot which the Christians might expose,
and which he could take advantage of in assailing their faith, the pams
taken by many to work into form the traditions relating to the history
of Christ did not escape his notice. ‘ Many of the faithful,’ says he,
‘*‘ who have come, as it were, out of the fit of intoxication to their sober
senses, alter the evangelical narrative from the shape in which it was
first recorded, in three, four, manifold ways, that they may have where-
with to deny objections.” He brings this to prove the position, that
the more prudent and discreet among the Christians could not help
1 Δειλὸν καὶ φιλοσώματον γένος. Τ,. VII.
c. 36. Παντελῶς τῇ σαρκὶ ἐνδεδεμένοι καὶ
μηδὲν καϑαρὸν βλέποντες. L. ο. c. 42.
2 The remarkable words of Celsus, (1. IT.
c. 27,) are: Τινὰς τῶν πιστευόντων ὡς ἐκ
μέϑης ἥκοντας εἰς τὸ ἐφεστάναι αὑτοῖς με-
ταχαράττειν ἐκ τῆς πρώτης γραφῆς τὸ εὐαγ-
γέλιον τριχῆ καὶ τετραχῆ. καὶ πολλαχῆ καὶ
μεταπλάττειν, iv’ ἔχοιεν πρὸς τοὺς ἐλέγχους
ἀρνεῖσϑαι. Origen supposes that what Cel-
sus says can apply only to the Gnostics,
who allowed themselves in the practice of
altering the evangelical records to suit their
peculiar doctrines. Celsus, however, could
hardly have in view this class of men, but
more probably referred to those who, by
their criticism of the text, springing out of
some apologetical interest, were for remov-
ing what might prove offensive to the sen
sus communis.
166 WRITERS AGAINST CHRISTIANITY.
feeling the insuperable difficulties in those accounts, and therefore felt
themselves called upon to remove these difficulties by their emenda-
tions. But even this is still a witness in favor of the inward power with
which these facts had found their way into the religious consciousness ;
since notwithstandmg the stones of stumbling that offered themselves
to the common understanding, still, when these accounts came to be
spread among the cultivated, ‘they could win conviction on their side.
In like manner Celsus bears witness, against his will, of the distin-
guishing peculiarity of the gospel, and at “the same time of that which
lay at the very ground of his own want of susceptibility to its power,
when he imagines he can ridicule Christianity, because it invites sin-
ners only to participate in the kingdom of God, and excludes such as
are wholly without sin. ‘They who invite us,” says he,! “to become
initiated into other religious mysteries, begin by proclaiming ‘ Let him
approach who is free from all stains, who is conscious of no wickedness,
who has lived a good and upright life ;’ — and this they proclaim who
promise purification from sins. But let us hear who it is these Chris-
tians call: ‘ Whoever is a sinner,’ say they, ‘ whoever is foolish, unlet-
tered, im a word, whoever is wretched, him will the kingdom of God
receive.’ ”’ And then he asks, ““ But how? Was not Christ sent in
behalf of those who are sinless 2. As Celsus was wanting in a just sense
of the nature of sm, and hence could express surprise that Christ did
not announce himself as sent particularly in behalf of the sinless, so
too he was without a presentiment of the soul-transforming power which
Christianity carries with it, of that mystery of an entire moral renova-
tion of the nature estranged from God, which Christ sets forth in his
conversation with Nicodemus. He had no conception of the fact, that
by the power of divine love, a change could be produced, begimning
from within and working outwards, which no fear of punishment could
ever effect from without. His words bearmg on this subject are well
deserving of notice.? ‘It is manifest to every one, that it lies within
no man’s power to produce an entire change in a person to whom
sin has become a second nature, even by punishment, to say nothing
of mercy ; for to effect a complete change of nature is the most diffi-
cult of things ; but the sinless are the safer companions in life.”
It is evident, that with the habit of thinking which expresses itself in
the passages already cited, Celsus would be incapable of understanding
another point which belongs to the characteristic marks of the Chris-
tian position as distinguished from that of antiquity, namely, the nature
of humility. In virtue of his Platonism, he did, indeed, see that the
ταπεινότης, Which, from the ordinary ethical position of antiquity, was
looked upon only as something wrong and evil, might also be a virtue;
and hence he refers to the passage in Plato’s fourth book of the Laws,
which has already been cited on page 19. But instead of recogniz
ing in this something typical and prophetic in relation to Christianity,
he derives the Christian idea of humility from a misunderstanding of
1 Lib. ΠΙ. c. 59. 8 Οὐδεὶς ἂν οὐδὲ κολάζων πάντῃ μεταβά-
2 Τί δὲ ; τοῖς ἀναμαρτῆτοις οὐκ ἐπέμφϑη ; Aor, μῆτι γε ἐλεῶν. 1,. 1Π.. c. 65
L. c. ¢. 62. ae rs
‘
:
CELSUS. 167
that Platonic sentrment.t The true nature of humility was a matter
too foreign to his own way of thinking and apprehension, to make it
easy for him to understand the Christian life on this particular side.
Thus, in those carricatures of humility which came under his observa-
tion in exceedingly imperfect exhibitions of the Christian life, he was
unable to discern the truth at bottom; and he seized on such morbid
offshoots, to represent the essence of Christian humility itself as a mor-
bid thing ; —as if, according to the doctrine of the Christians, the hum-
ble man was a creature ‘for ever on his knees, or rolling im the dust,
a man who dressed meanly and sprinkled himself with ashes.’’?
It may appear strange, that Celsus, who taunts the Christians for
their self-abasement before God, should accuse them at the same time
of the directly contrary error, immoderate pride, a foolish self-exaltation
towards God. But as he had no proper conception of true humility,
so neither had he any just conception of true loftiness,— both being
intimately connected together in the Christian consciousness, according
to the words of Christ, who makes the humiliation of self the condition
of man’s exaltation. At the position held by the natural man, these
appear as incompatible opposites; but they find their resolution in
Christianity. Hence Celsus must necessarily mistake the Christian
ground of standing on both sides. Hence he could attack it on both
these opposite aspects. He ridicules the Christians for presuming to
ascribe to themselves, to man, compared with the rest of creation, such
worth and dignity in the sight of God, as they did, when they tanght
that God had created all things on man’s account, and when they rep-
resented man as the end of. the creation and of the government of the
‘world. ‘The importance which Christianity attached to personal exist-
ence, struck him as singular and strange. It appeared to him, in _
accordance with the prevailing view of the ancient world, that the uni- —
versal whole was the only end worthy of the divine mind; and that man
was of account only as an integrant part of this whole, subjected to
those unchangeable laws of its evolution which operate with iron neces-
sity. ‘It is not for man,” says he, ‘“ that every thing has been given ;
but every thing grows and decays for the sustentation of the whole.’’#
How little capable he was of understanding, indeed, the great idea,
that all things have been created for man, is evident from the form
of some of his objections. ‘ Although it might be said that trees,
plants, herbs grow for the sake of man, yet might it not be said with
the same propriety that they grow also for the wildest animals?”’* And
comparing these latter with man, he observes°— ‘* We with great labor
and care are scarcely able to support ourselves; but for the brutes
_ every thing grows spontaneously, without any sowing and ploughing of
1 ἸΙαράκουσμα τῶν ἸΠλάτωνος λόγων. LL. to the ignorance of those who propose to
VI. c. 15. do what is right, but fail for want of knowl-
2L. VI.c.15. Origen justly replies, “If edge.”
there are some who, through ignorance and 8*Exaota τῆς τοῦ ὅλου σωτηρίας eivexa
the want of a right understanding of the γίνεταί τε καὶ ἀπόλλυται. 1, ΤΥ͂. ο. 69.
true doctrine of humility, do this, the * I..c.¢,.75.
Christian system is not therefore to be ac- wT, Ge 70.
cused; but it must be charitably imputed
168 WRITERS AGAINST CHRISTIANITY.
theirs.” In his passionate opposition to what Christianity teaches
respecting the worth of human nature, he goes so far as to exalt the
brutes at man’s expense.! ‘If you say, God has given you the power
to capture the brutes and make them subservient to your ends, we will
say, that before cities, arts, trades and weapons had existence, men
were torn by wild beasts, not they taken by men.” Instead of mark-
ing how in the brutes nature is striving upward to man, he adduces the
bees and the ants as examples to show, that even the order of civil soci-
ety is no prerogative of τη." What the Christians taught concerning
a particular providence, and concerning God’s care for ‘the well: heing
of individuals, appeared, therefore, to him as vain arrogance, as an alto-
gether anthropomorphite notion. “It is not for man,” he asserts,® “ any
more than for lions or eagles, that every thing in the world has been
created ; but it is in order that the world, as ‘the work of God, might
present a complete and perfect whole. God provides only for the whole :
and this his providence never deserts. And this world never becomes
any worse. God does not return to it after a long interval. He is as
little angry with man as he is with apes or flies.” Like a consistent
Platonist, Celsus rejects every thing teleological in the creation and
government of the world. A redemption, according to his doctrine, is
wholly out of the question. For in this world, evil is a necessary thing.
It has no origin, and will have no end. It remaims constantly as it is,
just as the nature of the universe generally remains eternally the same.*
The ‘vam is the source, whence what we term evil ever springs afresh.
By this Platonic principle, a redemption, triumphing over evil, is ex-
cluded. Celsus conceives the evolution of the universe as a circle con-
stantly repeating itself according to precisely the same laws. With
such notions of God’s relation to the world, and to man im particular,
with such mistaken views of the worth and significance of personal
existence, he could bring against the Christian view of God’s govern-
ment of the world, and of his method of salvation, and especially of the
work of redemption, the objection so often repeated in after times,
ἐς that the universe has been provided, once for all, with all the powers
necessary for its preservation and for developing itself after the same
laws; that God has not, like a human architect, so executed his work,
that at some future period it would need repair.®
Characteristic of the man, is the way in which Celsus treats the
history of Christ. In part, he follows the stories set in circulation by
the Jews; in part, other spurious or mistaken traditions, and partly, the
evangelical narratives, which, because he possessed no single collective
intuition of Christ’s person, he could not understand in their true
1To avoid the mistake of many, who
have supposed they found, in what Celsus
here says, a token of his leaning much rath-
er to the side of Epicureanism than Platon-
ism in his mode of thinking, it should be
duly considered, that passion and obstinacy
lead him here to push every thing to the
extreme, and that even according to the
New Platonic principles, a soul bearing
some affinity to that of man, but only
checked in its development by the con-
straint of the ὕλη, was supposed to exist in
brute animals.
21 C0: 8;
§ Tad Vi. ex09.
4 L. c. 6. 62, and the following.
5 Οὔτε τῷ ϑεῷ καινοτέρας δεῖ ιορϑώσεως
eGeGx89.
CELSUS. ‘ 169
significance.t Wherever he thinks the evangelical narratives can be
made to answer his purpose, he considers their authority to be unim-
peachable ; but when they refuse to lend themselves to his polemical
interest, he denies their truth.2 The Jew whom he introduces as an
opponent of Christianity, is made to say, that he had many true things
to state in relation to Christ’s history, and altogether different from
those reported by his disciples, but he purposely kept them back.®
Yet Celsus, whose perfect hatred of Christianity led him to collect
together everything that could be said with the least show of probability
against it, would not have failed, certainly, to avail himself of such
accounts, if they were really within his reach. We must consider this,
therefore, with Origen, as one of those rhetorical tricks of which Celsus
set the example for later antagonists of Christianity.
Accordingly, he assails the position that Christ was wholly free from
sin ; 4 yet without producing a single action of Christ to show the contrary.
Among other stories, he lays hold of the wholly unfounded tradition
respecting the uncomliness of Christ’s person,’ to represent it as incon-
sistent with the supposition that Christ partook of the divine nature
beyond all other men.®. !
In respect to the resurrection of Christ, it did not occur to him to
deny the reality of his death; but he denied the truth of the accounts
concerning his reappearance after he had risen. Without entering into
any careful examination of these accounts, he leaves it optional, either
to suppose them pure inventions, or cases of optical delusion — visions
belonging to the same class with the apparition of ghosts.’ The objec-
tions which Celsus urges against the reality of Christ’s miracles and
of his resurrection, harmonize perfectly with his ignorance of the true
significancy of these facts. ‘‘ Why did Christ perform no miracle when
challenged to do so by the Jews in the temple?”’® ‘If he really
intended to manifest his divine power, he ought to have shown himself
to those who condemned him, and generally to 8}}.᾿ 5 How he is com-
pelled, from- overlooking the connection of the dive with the human
in history, to testify against himself, appears once more in a very
remarkable manner, where he says, ‘‘ How is it, that a man, who was
mcensed with the Jews, should destroy them all at a stroke and send
up their city in flames !—so utterly nothing were they before him ; —
but the Great God, angry and threatening, sends his own son, as they
say, and he must suffer all this.” 1°
Thus, to the man who was incapable of understanding the true import
of Christ’s appearance, the course of history generally, the signs of
1 Origen aptly characterizes the sources appearance in the form of a servant, and
of information of which Celsus availed the literal interpretation of Isaiah 53.
himself: Εἶτ’ ἐκ παραπουσμάτων, εἴτε καὶ
ἐξ ἀναγνωσμάτων, εἴτ᾽ ἐκ διηγημάτων ᾿Ἰου-
δαϊκῶν. L. II. ο. 10.
23. ee. 34,
ΒΤ cc 13.
4 Μηδὲ ἀνεπίληπτον γεγονέναι τὸν Ἰη-
σοῦν. J..¢.c. 41 and 42.
__© Which tradition had grown out of the
idea, — pushed to the extreme, —of Christ’s
VOL. I. y
6 Aunyavov, ὅτῳ ϑεῖόν τι πλέον τῶν ἄλ-
λων προςῆν μηδὲν ἄλλου διᾳφέρειν: τοῦτο
δὲ οὐδὲν ἄλλου διέφερεν, ἄλλ᾽ ὥς φασι μι-
κρὸν καὶ δυσειδὲς καὶ ἀγεννὲς ἣν. 1,..1Υ.
G75.
7L. 11... 55; L VILe 35.
8 L. I. c. 67.
91,. 11. ο. 63 and 67.
ΔΟΡῚ IV. δ..78.
170 WRITERS AGAINST CHRISTIANITY.
the times, must also be unintelligible. He could not perceive that
men whose anger had been excited against the Jewish people, served
as instruments of the divine justice to inflict the penalty which that
people had brought upon themselves by the accumulated measure of
their guilt.
From the same school of Platonism proceeded, in the latter half of
the third century, another opponent of Christianity, — one in whom we
recognize a man of noble spirit united with profound intellectual attain-
ments, altogether the reverse of Celsus. Porphyry, a Phoenician by
birth, was a man of the Kast, in whom the Oriental basis of character
had been completely fused with the elements of Grecian culture. ‘The
account which comes from the church historian Socrates,! that he had
originally been a Christian, and only became embittered against Chris-
tianity on account of the ill treatment he had suffered from some of
his fellow-believers, resembles, too much to deserve any credit, one of
the common stories by which men endeavored to account, from outward
causes, for an opposition grounded in the inward bent of the mind itself.
In all that belongs to Porphyry, no trace can be discovered of his hav-
ing once been a Christian; for, assuredly, those ideas of his which are,
or rathér which seem to be, related to Christianity, cannot mghtly be
considered as any evidence of this sort. In part, those ideas sprung
naturally out of that part of Platonism which may claim some relation-
ship with Christian doctrines, and which was more distinctly brought
out by the effort to refine paganism and hold it up in opposition to
Christianity ; and in part, they showed the power exerted by Christianity
even over those minds that were opposed to it; as, for instance, when
Porphyry describes the triad of Christian principles, Faith, Love, and
Hope, — though not apprehended according to the profound meaning
of St. Paul—as the foundation of genuine piety.2 If Porphyry had
not been a disciple of Plotinus, it is possible that by the fusion of
Oriental Theosophy with Christianity he might have become a Gnostic.
‘That speculative direction, opposed to the Oriental Gnosticism, which
he received from Plotinus, the union of a Theosophy based on Plato
nism with the spiritualized polytheistic system, rendered him a violent
enemy of Christianity, which could not be forced to accommodate itself
to his eclectic theory.
. Porphyry, in the letter to his wife, calls it the noblest fruit of piety
to worship God after the manner of one’s country.* Christianity, then,
would be hateful to him, if on no other grounds, because it was a religion
that conflicted with the national worship. As it was his wish that such
a worship should be maintained as could not otherwise be reduced to
harmony with the fundamental ideas of his philosophical religion than
by artificial interpretations, unintelligible to the multitude, he was
necessarily betrayed into many self-contradictions. He was, as we
have seen, a zealous advocate of image-worship; and in encouraging
17, II. ¢. 23. Sw περὶ ϑεοῦ: πίστις, ἀλήϑεια, ἔρως, ἐλπίς.
2 In his letter to his wife, Marcella, which 8 Ep. ad Marcellam, ed. Mai. c. 18, where
was published by Mai, in Milan, 1816, (6. perhaps the reading should be: Τιμᾷν τὸ.
24:) Téooapa στοιχεῖα wadiota κεκρατύν- ϑεῖον κατὰ τὰ πάτρια.
PORPHYRY. 171
this, he countenanced at the same time the old superstitions, since the
people associated with these images their ancient notions. And yet
he writes to his wife: “ Zhat man is not so much of an Atheist who
neglects to worship the images of the gods, as he who transfers to God
the opinions of the multitude.”
He wrote a work against Christianity, in which he endeavored to de-
tect contradictions in the.sacred scriptures, — contradictions between the
Apostles — especially between the Apostles Peter and Paul.t Doubt-
less he may have adroitly availed himself, in this work, of the weak
spots presented, not by the matter itself which he was attacking, but
by the manner in which men had set forth and defended it; as, for
example, when he was led by those harmonists who regarded the New
Testament only as a rigid unity, to point out the discrepancies existing
in the same, — of which, as we may suppose, he would be sure to make
a false use; when, as Celsus had done before him,” he seized upon the
artificial, allegorical interpretations, resorted to for the purpose of so
explaining the Old Testament as to show that every part of it was
equally divine and 'that every Christian doctrine might be found in it,
and turned them into an argument to prove that the Old Testament
admitted of no worthy sense to the natural and simple apprehension.
Not without good reason could he say of such explanations, that men
had contrived to dazzle and bewilder the judgment by pompous show.®
Yet what he could assert with so much justice against this artificial
interpretation of the Old Testament, fell back with no less weight
against himself and the school to which he belonged, who took the same
unwarrantable liberties in interpreting the Greek religion and its fables.
There is another work of Porphyry’s, respecting which our informa-
tion is more accurate, where too he has spoken against Christianity, and
may have intended, imdirectly at least, to present some check to its
progress, —a system of Theology such as could be drawn up from the
ancient, pretended responses of the Oracles. He aimed im this way,
as we have already observed in the Introduction, to supply the craving
now awakened for religious instruction on the basis of some divine
authority that could be relied on —an interest by which many were led
along to Christianity. Now, among the responses of the Oracles, some
are to be found which relate to Christ and Christianity, — an evidence
of the power of the Christian religion, which had so early infused its
influence into the spiritual atmosphere, and already pressed itself upon
the heathens from all that surrounded them. Hence many were at a
loss to know how they should act
1 Where he has recourse to the fallacious
argument grounded on the well-known in-
cident at Antioch, Gal. 2.
2 See c. Cels. 1. I. c. 17; 1. IV. c. 48.
ὃ The words of Porphyry, which very
aptly characterize this sort of self-delusion
in the interpretation of the records of re-
ligion, are as follows: Διὰ τοῦ τύφου τὸ
κριτικὸν τῆς ψυχῆς καταγοητεύσαντες. Eu-
seh. hist. eccles. 1. VI. ο. 19.
* Περὲ τῆς ἐκ λογίων φιλοσοφίας, of which,
with regard to it, and sought for
in many respects very interesting work,
considerable fragments have been preserv-
ed in the twelve sermonib. curat. affect. of
Theodoretus, in Augustine’s work de Civi-
tate Dei, after a Latin version, in which
Augustine had read it; and especially in
that great literary store-house, the Praepa-
rat. Evang. and Demonstrat. Evangel. of
Eusebius. Maii has published a new frag-
ment in connection with the letter to Mar-
cella.
172 WRITERS AGAINST CHRISTIANITY.
advice from the Oracles or from the priests who spoke in their name.
The responses given in answer to these applications differed in tone and
import, according to the different modes of thinking of the priests who
gave them. It wasa case of frequent occurrence, in the first centuries,
that the women became zealous Christians, while their husbands remamed
wholly devoted to Paganism. In a case of this sort, a man inquired
of Apollo what god he should propitiate in order to bring back his wife
from Christianity.t The pretended Apollo, who knew doubtless the
force of conviction among the Christians, gave for a response, “‘ that he
might sooner write on the flowing stream, or fly on the empty air, than
change the mind of his wife after she had once become impure and
godless. Leave her, then, to lament her deceased God.”? Apollo
appears, next, justifying the judges who had condemned Jesus to death
as a revolter against Judaism: ‘ for the Jews acknowledged God, at
least more than the Christians,’’ (the common judgment of the pagans.
See the preceding history.)
Many of the pagans were led to suppose from what they had heard
concerning Christ, that he might be worshipped as a god along with the
other gods, and they consulted the Oracle on this pot. It is notice-
able that the priests, who composed the response in this case, were
cautious against saying anything disrespectful of Christ himself. The
answer was, ‘‘ He who is wise, knows that the soul rises immortal from
the body; but the soul of that man is preéminent in piety.” ? When
they inquired further, why Christ had suffered death, it was responded,
“ΠῸ be subjected to the weaker sufferings is always the lot of the body,
but the soul of the pious rises to the fields of heaven.” * Here Por-
phyry himself takes occasion to explain that Christ, therefore, must not
1 Maii infers from this place, altogether
without reason, that Porphyry’s Marcella
was a Christian. Porphyry undoubtedly
cites here the question of another, as he does
frequently in this work. The letter to
Marcella contains no evidence whatever
that she was a Christian, but rather proves
the contrary.
2 Augustin. de civitate Dei, 1. XTX. c. 23.
The strength of religious conviction among
Jews and Christians became proverbial, as
we see from the words of the celebrated
physician Galen, where he is speaking of
the great difficulty of bringing about any
change in the opinions of those who are de-
voted to particular schools of medicine or
philosophy, and makes use of the following
comparison: Θᾶττον ἄν τις τοὺς ἀπὸ Muii-
σοῦ καὶ Χριστοῦ μεταδιδώξειεν, ἢ κ, τ. A.
De different. pulsuum, 1. III. ο. 8, ed. Char-
ter, T. ΗΓ f. 68.
8 Ὅτι μὲν ἀϑανάτη ψυχὴ μετὰ σῶμα προβαΐί-
VEL,
γιγνώσκει σοφίῃ TeTynuevoc, ἀλλά γε
᾽ ψυχή ; ΄ ΄ ΄
ἀνέρος εὐσεβίῃ προφερεστάτη ἐστὶν ἐκεί-
vov.
Euseb. Demonstrat. evang. 1. IIT. p. 134.
4 Σῶμα μὲν ἀδρανέσιν βασάνοις αἰεὶ προ-
βέβληται:
ψυχὴ δ᾽ εὐσεβέων εἰς οὐράνιον πέδον ἴζει.
It may be, that Porphyry was occasionally
deceived by spurious oracles, that had been
interpolated either by Alexandrian Jews, or
other and older pagan Platonicians. It is
quite possible also, that oracles of this de-
scription had been interpolated by some oth-
er more rightly thinking pagan, under the
name of the god or the goddess ; — though
it may be very well conceived, and indeed
is more natural to suppose, that these ora-
cles were actually given on the occasions
specified. But assuredly the suspicion is
altogether unfounded, that they were in-
vented by some Christian, for Christians
would certainly have never been able to
make up their minds to say so little of Christ.
The example being once given of such pa-
gan oracles in relation to Christ, Christians
might then be led, no doubt, to invent oth-
ers. In the oracular response cited by
Lactantius, (institut. ]. VI. c. 13) the words
concerning Christ, ϑνητὸς ἐῆν κατὰ oap-
κα, σοφὸς τερατώδεσιν ἔργοις, and several
others, betray their Christian author
HIEROCLES. 173
be calumniated; they only should be pitied who worship him as God.
“That pious soul, which had ascended to heaven, had by a certain
fatality become an occasion of error to those souls which were destined
to have no share in the gifts of the gods and in the knowledge of the
eternal Zeus.”
The list of authors who wrote against Christianity is closed by Mero-
eles, president of Bithynia, and afterwards prefect of Alexandria.
The time which this writer chose for making his attack, was the last
which any man of noble and generous feelings would have been disposed
to choose, that of the Dioclesian persecution. And it was particularly ἢ
unbecoming in Mierocles to obtrude himself on the Christians in the
character of a teacher, as he was himself one of the instigators of the
persecution, and a principal instrument in carrying it into effect. Yet
he assumed the air of one who was actuated by an impartial love of
the truth, and who wrote with the kindest feelings towards the Chris-
tians, entitling his performance, ‘‘ Words to the Christians, from a lover
of truth.” + In this work, he repeats over a great deal that had been
said already by Celsus and Porphyry. He indulges himself in retail-
ing the most abominable falsehoods about the history of Christ. In
particular, for the purpose of at once glorifying the old religion and
attacking the Christian faith, he made use of a comparison of which
probably he has no claim to be considered the original inventor. ΤῸ
give the declining religion of paganism a new impulse in its resistance
to the overwhelming power of Christianity, it was necessary to direct
men’s attention to those heroes of the old religion who could be set up,
it was imagined, in opposition to him on whom alone the faith of the
Christians reposed. Thus the lives of the ancient sages,— of Py-
thagoras, for example, as exhibited by the New-Platonic philosopher,
J amblichus, —were colored over with a tinge of the miraculous, if not
purposely for an object of this sort, at least ‘under the influence of such
a tendency, which reigned supreme in the religious consciousness of the
pagans. But men did not wish to go back for the pictures of such
heroes of the faith to hoary antiquity, they wanted to find them nearer
home. ‘The appearance of men who had occasioned unusual excitement ἢ
in the public mind, of such men, for example, as Apollonius of Tyana,
were made available against Christianity in two different ways. One
class, who were in the habit of referring all eccentric phenomena of
the religious spirit alike to fanaticism or fraud —as Lucian, who places
Apollonius of Tyana on the same level with Alexander of Abonoteichus,
—would avail themselves of this comparison to account*also for the
appearance and effects of Christianity. Others, again, would oppose
Apollonius, as a prophet and worker of miracles among the Greeks, to
the founder of the new religion. This was the course adopted by
Hierocles. He wanted to deprive the miracles of Christ of their force
of evidence, by the miracles of this Apollonius. He considered every
fable which the rhetorical Philostratus, ages after the alleged events,
had drawn from unauthentic sources, or out of his own imagination, to
1 Λόγοι φιλαλήϑεις πρὸς τοὺς Χριστιανούς
15*
174 THE CHRISTIAN APOLOGISTS.
be entirely worthy of credit; as, for example, that Apollonius under-
stood the language of brutes; while the apostles, uneducated, lymg
men,— jugglers, as Hierocles abusively called them without attempting
to prove it, —are declared to have stated nothing but falsehoods. “ You
hold Christ to be God,” said he, ‘‘ because he is reported to have made
a few blind men see, and to have performed some other works of the
like kind; and yet the Greeks hold an Apollonius, who was the author
of so many miracles, not to be a god, but only a man particularly
beloved of the gods.”” Such was the peculiar method of argument
adopted by Hierocles.1
In this very hfe of Apollonius, used by Hierocles, and composed by
the rhetorician Philostratus the elder, a favorite of Julia Domna the
wife of Septimius Severus, some have supposed they discovered a side
aim against Christianity. But there is no single passage of the work
which furnishes any evidence that such was its design, while opportuni-
ties were not wanting to introduce in some way or other remarks hostile
to Christianity, as, for instance, where he speaks of the Jews. On the
other hand, he mentions the divine vengeance inflicted on Jerusalem,
of which the Roman arms were only the instrument,? in such a way as
would be favorable to the Christian interest, and might be supposed,
indeed, to dicate that he was unconsciously influenced by the prevail-
ing mode of contemplating that event among the Christians. Yet the
remarks on the preceding page are not wholly mapplicable to the case
of Philostratus. Whether it sprang from a conscious design, or from
an involuntary interest, the effort is apparent to give dignity to his
hero as a counter-picture to Christ; and in doing this we need not
suppose he was influenced by any polemic aim against the Christian
faith, but only by a wish to set forth the splendor of the Greek religion
in rivalship with Christianity. It may be that the miracles of Christ,
of which he had informed himself, furnished the occasion for many
scattered embellishments of his own invention, although no reference
of this kind is to be found so distenct and palpable as to leave this
beyond question.
These attacks on the Christian church were met, from the time of
the Emperor Hadrian and onwards, by men who stood up for the de-
fence of Christianity and of the Christians. We reserve it for another
portion of our history to speak more in detail of these apologists and of
their writings. Here we shall simply remark that these apologies were _
of two different forms, and had two distinct objects in view. One class
of them were expositions of Christian doctrine, designed for the use
of enlightened Pagans generally ; the other class had a more official
character, as the authors advocated the cause of the Christians before
emperors, or before the proconsuls and presidents of the provinces.
1 See, respecting him, Lactant. 1. V. ο. 2; 3 As Dr. Baur also supposes, in his Essay
de mortib. persecutor. c. 16. Euseb. adv. on Apollonios of Tyana, (in the Tiibinger
Hierocl. Zeitschrift fiir Theologie, Jahrg. 1832, 4tes
2L. VI. c. 29, he makes Titus say, in Heft, also separately printed,) although I
reference to the destruction of Jerusalem: cannot allow that all the references to the
Μὴ αὐτὸς ταῦτα εἰργάσϑαι, Fed δὲ dpynv history of Christ which Baur finds in this
φήναντι ἐπιδεδωκέναι τὰς ἑαυτοῦ χεῖρας. book, are sufficiently proved.
THE CHRISTIAN APOLOGISTS. 175
As they could not obtain a personal hearing, it was necessary for them
to speak through their writings. ‘The supposition that the forms of
address to the emperors, to the senate, and the governors, were mere
drapery, after the fashion of the declamations practised in the Pagan
rhetorical schools, is certainly inconsistent with the situation and temper
of the Christians of this time. It is far more natural to suppose that
the authors of such writings were seeking to correct the judgment of
the civil authorities respecting Christianity and its adherents. We
cannot wonder, however, that these apologies seldom or never produced
their desired effect on the authorities of the state; for the latter would
hardly give themselves the time, or find themselves in a suitable mood,
to examine with calmness what these apologists had to advance. Even
master-pieces of apologetic art, which these productions, written from the
fullness of conviction, certainly were not, could, in this case, have effected
nothing ; for there was no possible way in which they could recommend
Christianity so as to meet the politico-religious views of Roman states-
men. In relation to the fundamental position of a Roman, it was of no
avail, though they bore witness, with the force of inspiration, of those
truths, the more general recognition of which was certainly owing, in
the first place, to the revolution in the opinions of mankind brought
about by Christianity ; though they appealed to the universal rights
belonging to man by his creation; though they assumed as a point which
every man must concede, that religion is a matter of free conviction
and feeling, that belief cannot be forced, that God cannot be served
with the worship of constraint. ‘It belongs to the human rights and
natural power of each individual,” says Tertullian, ‘to worship the
God in whom he believes ; it is not the part of religion to force religion :
it must be embraced voluntarily, not imposed by constraint, as sacrifices
are required only from the willing heart. Although, then, you compel
us to sacrifice, you will still gain nothing for your gods.”’! But by the
principle of the laws of the Roman empire, which here came imme- —
diately into consideration, there was no question respecting the inward
religion, but only respecting the outward fulfilment of the laws, the
observance of the ““ Roman ceremonies.”? ‘There was nothing here
that taught any distinction between men and citizens. The apologists
might appeal to the blameless lives of the Christians, they might chal-
lenge the magistrates to subject them to the severest judicial examina-
tions, and punish the guilty, but this could avail nothing. The more
intelligent had long since ceased to believe those fantastic reports of
the populace. Like Pliny, they could not accuse the Christians, as a
body, of any moral delinquency. But yet the Christian life appeared
to them incompatible with the ‘‘ Roman manners,’ and Christianity a
feverish fanaticism danyerous to the good order of the Roman state.
It was a sound and healthy feeling that induced the apologists of
Christianity to assume the existence of a prophetic element, not in
1 Humani juris et naturalis potestatis est suscipi debeat, non vi, cum et hostiz ab
unicuique, quod putaverit, colere, nec alii animo libenti expostulentur. Ad Scapu-
obest aut prodest alterius religio. Sed nec lam, c. 2.
religionis est, cogere religionem, quz sponte
Ἃ
110 THE CHRISTIAN APOLOGISTS.
Judaism alone but also in Paganism, and to make appeal to this, as
the apostle Paul, at Athens, in proclaiming the God of revelation,
appealed to the presentiment of the unknown God in the immediate
consciousness of mankind, and to those forms in which this consciousness
had been expressed by the words of inspired poets. Christianity, in
truth, is the end to which all development of the religious consciousness
must tend, and of which, therefore, it cannot do otherwise than offer a
prophetic testimony. Thus there dwells an element of prophecy not
barely in revealed religion, unfolding itself beneath the fostering care
of the divme vintager (John xv.) as it struggles onward from Judaism
to its complete disclosure in Christianity, but also in religion as it grows
wild? on the soil of paganism, which by nature must strive unconsciously
towards the same end. But though the apologists had a well-grounded
right to search through those stages of culture from which they them-
selves had passed over to Christianity, in quest of such points of agree-
ment, —for which purpose they made copious collections from the
ancient philosophers and poets,— yet they were too closely involved in
the very process of development to be able rightly to understand the
earlier culture, as well in that part of it which was opposed to Chris-
tianity as in that which was in relationship with it and led to it. Very
easily might it happen that they would be led involuntarily to transfer
their Christian mode of apprehension to their earlier positions, and
allow themselves to be deceived by mere appearances of resemblance.
Add to this, that Alexandrian Jews and pagan Platonists may have
already introduced many forgeries under the famous names of antiquity,
which could serve as testimonies in behalf of the religious truths taken
for granted by Christianity in opposition to pagan Polytheism. And
at a time when all critical skill, as well as all interest in critical inquiries,
were alike wanting, it would be easy for men who were seeking, under
the influence of a purely religious interest, after the testimonies of the
ancients, for such a use, to allow themselves to be imposed upon by
spurious and interpolated matter. This happened not seldom with the
Christian apologists.
Thus, for instance, there were interpolated writings of this description
passing under the name of that mythic personage of antiquity, the Gre-
cian Hermes (Trismegistus) or the Egyptian Thoth; also under the
names of the Persian Hystaspes, (Gushtasp) and of the Sibyls, so
celebrated in the Greek and Roman legends, which were used in good
faith by the apologists. Whatever truth at bottom might be lying in
those time-old legends of the Sibylline prophecies,” of which the pro-
11 here make use of an expression,
coined for this purpose by Schelling, a man
endowed above all others with the gift of
finding its right word for the expression of
the idea,—to mark the notion of nature-
religion in its relation to the religion of
revelation. In like manner, Clement of
Alexandria styles the Hellenic philosophy,
in its relation to Christianity, the ἀγριέλαιος.
Strom. VI. f. 672.
2The prophetic element, as a natural
power in nature-religion, is characteristical-
ly distinguished from the supernatural pro-
phetic element of revealed religion. Thus
we find the character of the former ex-
pressed in ancient verses, cited under the
name of the Sibyl, in Plutarch de Pythiz
oraculis, c. 9: Ὡς οὐδὲ ἀποϑανοῦσα λήξει
μαντικῆς, ἀλλ᾽ αὕτη μὲν ἐν τῇ σελήνῃ περί-
εἰσι τὸ καλούμενον φαινόμενον γενομένη
πρόσωπον, τῷ δὲ ἀέρι τὸ πνεῦμα συγκραϑὲν
ἐν φῆμαις ἀεὶ φορῆσεται καὶ κληδόσιυ. ἐκ δὲ
TERTULLIAN. 117
found Heraclitus, five hundred years before Christ, had said, “ their
unadorned, earnest words, spoken with inspired mouth, reached through
a thousand years,’’! the consciousness of such a prophetic element in
Paganism, that which in these predictions was supposed to refer to the
fates of cities and nations, and more particularly to a last and golden
age of the world? gave occasion to divers interpretations taken from
Jewish and Christian points of view; and as it had been the practice
from very early times, with both pagans and Jews, to interpolate spu-
rious verses, accommodated to their respective religious views and
principles, under the name of Sibylline prophecies? so Christian fiction,
from the very first century after Christ, added its own quota to the
rest. When Celsus reproached the Christians with interpolating many
scandalous things into the Sibylline writings, Origen in his reply could
appeal to the fact that the more ancient Sibylline writings were full of
interpolations. With this use of the so called Sibylline prophecies, all
Christians, however, were not satisfied. Celsus mentions, among other
Christian sects, the Sibyllists,® and Origen accounts for it by supposing
that Celsus might some time or other have heard how this name of
reproach had been applied to those who quoted the Sibyl as a prophet-
ess, by other Christians who did not approve of this practice. This,
however, is not to be so understood as to imply that those opponents
of the Sibylline prophecies had ascertained, on grounds of criticism,
the spuriousness of these writings,® and for this reason refused to coun-
tenance such a fraud for pious purposes ; more probably, they revolted
a priori, at the very supposition that anything of the nature of a pro-
phetic power existed among the heathen.
While, by others, the testimonies, genuine and interpolated, derived —
from their own literature, were employed against the Pagans, Tertullian
chose a different course. Inclined to perceive in all culture, science
and art, the falsification of original truth, he preferred to appeal to
the involuntary utterances of the immediate, original voice of God in
nature. He adduced, as evidence for Christian truth agamst Poly-
theism, the spontaneous expressions of an irrepressible, immediate,
religious consciousness in common life,—the testimony of the soul,
which he held to be Christian by nature,’ — the testimony of the simple,
uncultivated, ignorant soul, previous to all cultivation.’ In his apolog
before the pagans he makes appeal to this witness of the soul, “‘ which,
though confined in the prison of the body, though led astray by wrong
τοῦ σώματος μεταβαλόντος ἐν TH γῇ πόας
καὶ ὕλης ἀναφυομένης, βοσκήσεται ταύτην
ἱερὰ ϑρέμματα χρόας τε παντοδαπὰς ἴσχον-
τα καὶ μορφὰς καὶ ποιότητας ἐπὶ τῶν σπλάγ-
χνων, ἀφ᾽ ὧν αἱ προδηλώσεις ἀνϑρώποις
τοῦ μέλλοντος.
1 Σίβυλλα μαινομένῳ στόματι ἀγέλαστα
καὶ ἀκαλλώπιστα καὶ ἀμύριστα φϑεγγομένη
χιλίων ἐτῶν ἐξικνεῖται τῇ φωνῇ διὰ τὸν
ϑεόν. Plutarch. de Pythie oraculis, c. 6.
2 Ultima Cumezi carminis xtas ; vid. Vir-
gil, IV. Eclog.
3 Varro, in his great archzological work,
treated, already in his time, of the different
constituent parts of the Sibylline books,
and of the interpolated verses. See Dio-
nysius of Halicarn. Archeol. 1. IV. c. 62.
47. VII. c. 56: Ὅτι παρενέγραψαν εἰς
τὰ ἐκείνης πολλὰ καὶ βλάσφημα
5c. Cels. 1. V. Ὁ. 61.
6 Testimonium anime naturaliter Chris-
tiane. Apologet. 6. 17.
7 De testimonio anime, 6. 1: Te simpli-
cem et rudem et impolitam et idioticam
compello, qualem habent, qui te solam ha-
bent, illam ipsam de compito, de trivio, de
textrino totam.
8 Apologet. c. 17.
178 THE CHRISTIAN APOLOGISTS.
training, though enfeebled by the desires and passions, yet when it
comes to itself, as out of a fit of mtoxication, as out of a sleep, out
of a disease, and when conscious of its healthful condition, calls God
by this name alone, because it is the proper name of the true God.
Great God — good God—and what God gives, — these are common
expressions with all. It adjures also this God as its judge, in such
expressions as these: — God is my witness — to God I commit my cause
— God will requite me. Finally, in using these expressions, it looks,
not to the Capitol, but upward to heaven; for it knows the seat of
the living God — from Him and from thence it descended.” !
1 Que, licet carcere corporis pressa, licet nus, et quod Deus dederit, omnium vox
justitutionibus pravis cireumscripta, licet est. Judicem quoque contestatur illum,
libidinibus ac concupiscentiis evigorata, li- Deus videt, et Deo commendo, et Deus mihi
cet falsis Diis exancillata, cam tamen re- reddet. Denique, pronuntians hee, non ad
sipiscit, ut ex crapula, ut ex somno, ut ex Capitolium, sed ad ccelum respicit. Novit
aliqua valetudine, et sanitatem suam pati- enim sedem Dei vivi, ab illo et inde de-
tur, Deum nominat, hoe solo nomine, quia _ scendit.
proprio Dei veri. Deus magnus, Deus bo-
SECTION SECOND.
HISTORY OF THE CHURCH CONSTITUTION, OF CHURCH DISCIPLINE, AND
OF SCHISMS IN THE CHURCH.
I. History oF THE CONSTITUTION OF THE CHURCH.
1. Of the Constitution of Church Communities generally.
In considering the history of the formation of the Christian church
constitution, two different epochs must be carefully distinguished: The
jirst epoch of its formation, as it sprang immediately, in the Apostolic
age, out of the peculiar essence of Christianity, — that essential char-
acter of Christianity whereby it is wholly distinguished, as well from
the Old Testament position, as from all previous forms of religious com-
munity ; and secondly, the epoch in which this original form of fellow:
ship among Christians became gradually changed under various foreign
influences, reaching down to the end of this period of the history. We
speak first, then, of the foundation laid for the constitution of Christian
communities in the Apostolic age.
A. The first foundation for the constitution of Christian communi-
ties in the Apostolic age.
What Moses expressed as a wish,! that the Spirit of God might rest
upon all, and all might be prophets, is a prediction of that which was
to be realized through Christ. By him was instituted a fellowship of
divine life, which, proceeding from the equal and equally immediate re-
lation of all to the one God, as the divine source of life to all, removed
those boundaries within which, at the Old Testament position, the devel-
opment of the higher life was still confined; and hence the fellowship
thus derived, essentially distinguishes itself from the constitution of all
previously existing religious societies. There could be no longer a
priestly or prophetic office, constituted to serve as a medium for the
propagation and development of the kingdom of God, on which office
the religious consciousness of the community was to be dependent.
Such a guild of priests as existed in the previous systems of religion,
empowered to guide other men, who remained, as it were, in a state of
religious pupilage; having the exclusive care of providing for their
religious wants, and serving as mediators, by whom all other men must
first be placed in connection with God and divine things; such a
priestly caste could find no place within Christianity. In removing out
of the way that which separated men from God, in communicating to
1 Numbers, 11: 29.
180 CONSTITUTION OF THE CHURCH.
all the same fellowship with God, Christ also removed the barrier which
had hitherto divided men from one another. Christ, the Prophet and
High Priest for entire humanity, was the end of the prophetic office
and of the priesthood. ‘There was now the same High Priest and Medi-
ator for all, through whom all, become reconciled and united with God,
are themselves made a priestly and spiritual race; one heavenly King,
Guide and Teacher, through whom all are taught of God; one faith,
one hope, one Spirit which should quicken all; one oracle in the hearts
of all, the voice of the Spirit proceeding from the Father ;— all were
to be citizens of one heavenly kingdom, with whose heavenly powers,
even while strangers in the world, they should be already furnished.
When the Apostles applied the Old Testament idea of the priesthood
to Christianity, this was done invariably for the simple purpose of show-
ing that no such visible, particular priesthood could find place in the
new community ; that since free access to God and to heaven had been,
once for all, opened to believers by one High Priest, even Christ, they
had, by virtue of their union to him, become themselves a spiritual peo-
ple, consecrated to God; their calling bemg none other than to dedi-
cate their entire life to God as a thank-offering for the grace of redemp-
tion, to publish abroad the power and grace of him who had called
them out of the kingdom of darkness into his marvellous light, to make
their life one continual priesthood, one spiritual worship springing from
the temper of faith working by love, one continuous testimony for their
Saviour (compare 1 Pet. ii. 9, Rom. xii. 1, and the spirit and whole
train of thought running through the epistle to the Hebrews.) So, too,
the advancement of God’s kingdom in general and in particular, the
diffusion of Christianity among the heathens and the good of each par-
ticular community, was now to be, not the duty of one select class of
Christians alone, but the most immediate concern of each individual.
Every one, from the position assigned him by the invisible Head of the
church, should codperate in promoting this object by the special gifts
which God had bestowed on him, — gifts grounded in his peculiar na-
twre, but that nature renewed and ennobled by the Holy Spirit. There
was no distinction here of spiritual and secular; but all, as Christians,
should, in their mner life, in temper and disposition, be dead to the un-
godlike, to the world, and in so far separate from the world, — men
animated by the Spirit of God and not by the spirit of the world. The
individual predominant capabilities of Christians, sanctified, made godly
by this Spirit and appropriated as organs for its activity, should be
transformed to charismata, gifts of grace. It was thus, therefore, the
Apostle Paul began his exposition of spiritual gifts, addressed to the
Corinthian church, (1 Corinth. xu.) ‘‘ Once, when ye were heathens,
and suffered yourselves to be led blindfold by your priests to dumb
idols, ye were as dead and dumb as they. Now that through Christ ye
serve the living God, ye no longer have such guides, drawing you along
blindfold by leading-strings. Ye have yourselves for a guide the Spirit |
of God, that enlightens you. Ye no longer dumbly follow; He
speaks out of you; there are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit.”
EQUALITY OF BELIEVERS— DIFFERENT CHARISMATA. 181
The essence of the Christian community rested on this: that no one
individual should be the chosen, preéminent organ of the Holy Spirit
for the guidance of the whole ; but all were to codperate,—each at his
particular position, and with the gifts bestowed on him, one supplying
what might be wanted by another, — for the advancement of the Chris-.
tian life and of the common end. In this view of it, the New Testa-
ment idea of the charisma becomes important; the charisma, by which
is designated the individuality and diversity in the operations of the
Spirit that quickens all, as contradistinguished from that which in
all is the same ; the pecwl¢ar kind and manner or form of the activity
of that common principle, so far as it is conditioned by the peculiar nat-
ural characteristics of each individual. Just as the unity of that higher
Spirit must reveal itself im the manifoldness of the charismata, so must
all these peculiarities, quickened by the same Spirit, serve as organs,
mutually helping each other for one common end, the edification of the,
church. We understand edification here, according to the general and
original sense of the term in the writings of St. Paul, as referring to
the advancement and development, from its common ground, of the
entire life of the church-community. The edification of the church,
m this sense, was the common work of all. Even edification by the
word was rot assigned exclusively to one individual; but every man
who felt the inward call to it, might give utterance to the word in the
assembled church. Referring to the same end, there were likewise
different gifts, grounded in the diversity of peculiar natures, quickened
by the Holy Spirit; according as, for example, the productive, (proph-
ecy,) or the receptive, (interpretation, the dvepynveia,) or the’ critical
faculty, (proving of spirits ;) according as the capacity for feeling and
intuition, or that of sober reflective thought predominated; according
as the Divine, in its overwhelming force, had the preponderance, and
the Human, in its independent development, gave place to it; or a har-
monious cooperation of both the Divine and the Human prevailed ;
according as the momentaneous and sudden seizure of inspiration had
the ascendency, or what was contained in the Christian consciousness
became unfolded through a process of thought quickened by the Holy
Spirit, (Gvhere again there were manifold gradations, from an ecstatic
elevation of mind down to the uniform, discreet and cautious unfold-
ing of the understanding, speaking with tongues, prophecy, the
ordinary gift of teaching,) in fine, according as the prevailing ten-
dency was to the theoretical or to the practical, (the Gnosis or the
Sophia. )
Since Christianity did not destroy any of the natural distinctions
grounded in the laws of the original creation, but sanctified and enno-
bled them; for our Saviour’s words, that he came not to destroy but
to fulfil, apply also to the natural world; so, although the dividing
wall between man and woman, in respect to the higher life, was
removed by Christ, and in him man and woman become one, yet Chris-
tianity would have the woman remain true to the particular sphere and
destination assigned her by nature. Women were excluded from taking
VOL. I. 16
182 CONSTITUTION OF THE CHURCH.
any public part in the transactions of the church assemblies ;
they were referred to their appropriate sphere of activity within the
bosom of the family, or some corresponding place in the administration
of church affairs. The Apostle Paul, (1 Cor. xiv. 34,) mterdicts the
female part of the church alone from publicly speaking in the assem-
blies; which makes it evident again, that no other exception existed to
the universality of this right among the Christians. But this last men-
tioned exception continued to be made, after the same manner, in suc-
ceeding times. Even the enthusiastic Montanists recognized it; only
maintaining that the extraordinary operations of the divme Spirit ‘were
not bound by this rule. In proof of this, they referred to the case of
the prophecying women, mentioned in 1 Corinth. xi. 5; but incorrectly,
since the Apostle simply speaks here of a practice that prevailed in the
Corinthian church, without approving that practice, but with a design
of correcting it in a later part of the epistle. This will be evident on
comparing 1 Corinth. xi. 5, with xiv. 34.1
As the inner fellowship of divine life introduced by Christianity
strove, however, from the beginnmg, to exhibit itself m an outward
fellowship, it must necessarily appropriate to itself some determimate
form, answering to its own essence, a form in which this union could
appear and shape itself as a spiritual body; because without such form
no association, for whatever purpose, can have actual bemg and sub-
sistence. ΤῸ this end, a certain organization was necessary; a cer-
tain relative superordination and subordination of the different members,
according to the different positions assigned them im reference to the
whole; a certain guidance and direction of the common concerns,
and therefore separation of organs destined for that particular end.
And this stands in no manner of contradiction with what we asserted
respecting the essential character of Christianity and the fellowship
grounded therein, and respecting the mutual relations of Christians to
each other. On the contrary, the natural relation of members to one
another points already to such an organic form in the constitution of
the community as a necessary thing. Tor, as there were individualities
of character predominantly productive, and others of a more receptive
bent; as there were those preéminently calculated to guide and rule ;
and, as the Christian life shaped itself after the form of these natural
peculiarities, which it ennobled—the natural talent bemg elevated to
a charisma—the result was, that some members of the community
would come to be possessed of the gift which is designated in the epistles
of St. Paul as the χάρισμα κυβερνήσεως (governments. ) This mutual rela-
tion of gifts, grounded in the natural talents of imdividuals, pointed to
ἃ corresponding position of the several members of the community m
their relation to one another.’ The χάρισμα κυβερνήσεως required a corres-
\
1 The Hilary, who wrote commentaries
on the epistles of St. Paul, is remarkable
for the freedom from prejudice with which
he contemplates Christian antiquity. In
speaking of these matters also, he correct-
ly distinguishes the earlier from the later
practice of the church. Primum omnes
docebant et omnes baptizabant, ut cresceret
plebs et multiplicaretur, omnibus inter initia.
concessum est, et evangelizare et baptizare
et scripturas explorare. Hilar. in epist
Ephes. c. IV. v. 12.
ITS ORGANIZATION —NOT MONARCHICAL. ΤΩ
ponding office, the fitness for which had been conferred by that gift, in
the organization of the church. This was a whole, composed of equal
members, all the members being but organs of the community, as this
was the body quickened by the Spirit of Christ. ΑἸ] these members,
as organs of the whole and of the one Spirit which gave it life, were to
codperate, each im his appropriate place, for the common end; and
some of the members acted in this organization of parts as the preémi-
nently guiding ones. But it could hardly work itself out in a natural
way from the essence of the Christian life and of Christian fellowship,
that this guidance should be placed in the hands of only one individual.
The monarchical form of government was not suited to the Christian
community of spirit.
The preponderance of one individual at the head of the whole might
too easily operate as a check on the free development of the life of
the church, and the free codperation of the different organs, in whom
the consciousness of mutual independence must ever be kept alive.
The mdividual on whom everything depended, might acquire too great
an importance for the whole; and so become the centre, round which
all would gather, so as to obscure the sense of their common relation to
that only One, who should be the centre for all. The Apostles stood
to the collective body of Christians in a relation which corresponded
only to their peculiar position in the development of the church, and
which, for that very reason, could not be transferred to another office ;
since they alone were to be the bearers of Christ’s word and spirit for
all ages; the chosen witnesses of his personal appearance and ministry,
of his resurrection to a new and more glorious state of beg; the ne-
cessary intermediate links by which the whole. church was connected
with Christ. This was a relation of dependence and subordination,
grounded in the nature of the historical development, which could not
be repeated. And these apostles themselves, to whom this position in
the guidance of the church belonged, how far were they from any
thought of exercising a constrainmg preponderance in its affairs, to lord
it over the faith, of which the foundation had once been laid, and which
was now to develop itself with freedom, and give shape to everything
by its own inherent power alone! How much respect they showed for
the free development of the collective body !- They endeavored to gain
the free codperation of the communities in all the affairs which con-
cerned those communities —a point on which we shall speak more
particularly hereafter. Peter and John place themselves in their
epistles in the same class with other presiding officers of the communi-
ties, instead of claiming a place above them as general rulers of the
* church. How difficult it might be to find in the communities an indi-
vidual uniting in himself all the qualifications for guiding the affairs of
the body, and who alone possessed the confidence of all! How much
easier to find in every community several fathers of families, whose
peculiarities together might supply the deficiencies of each as an indi-
vidual, one of whom might enjoy the most confidence in this, and the
other in that class of the community, and who together therefore mignt
be qualified for such a function. Monarchy in , spiritual things does
184 CONSTITUTION OF THE CHURCH.
not harmonize with the spirit of Christianity ; for this points everywhere
to the feeling of a mutual need of help, to the necessity and to the
great advantage as well of common counsel as of common prayer.
Where two or three are assembled in the name of the Lord, he prom-
ises to be in the midst of them.
Besides, Christianity freely appropriated to its own use such already
existing forms as were adapted to its spirit and essential character.
Now in the Jewish synagogue, and in all the sects that sprung out of
Judaism, there existed a form of government which was not monarchical,
but aristocratic ; consisting of a council of elders, 0°2p.1, πρεσβύτεροι, who
had the guidance of all affairs belonging to the common interest. ΤῸ
this form, Christianity, which unfolded itself out of Judaism, would most
natur ally attach itself. ‘The same polity, moreover, would appear most
natural, in whatever part of the Roman empire communities were
founded among the pagans, for men had long been used to see the
affairs of state administered by a senate, by the ‘assembly of decuriones.
It is an evidence of the relationship between the ecclesiastical and civil
administration, that at a somewhat later period, the clergy were denom-
inated ordo, the guiding senate of the community; since ordo stands
preéminently for the ordo senatorum.
The guidance of the communities was accordingly everywhere en-
trusted to a counsel of elders. It was not necessary that these should
be the oldest in years, though some respect doubtless was had to age.
But age here was a designation of worth, as in the Latin ‘ senatus.”’
and in the Greek “γερουσία. Besides the usual name πρεσβύτεροι,
given to these heads of the community, there were also many others,
denoting their appropriate sphere of action, as ποιμένες, shepherds ;
123 ἡγούμενοι, προεστῶτες τῶν ἀδελφῶν. The founding of communities
among the pagans led to another name, more conformed to the Gre-
cian mode of designating such relations, than the appellations above
cited, which clearly show their Jewish origin. This name was ἐπίσκοποι,
borrowed from the city form of government among the Greeks,! and
applied to the presiding officers of the Christian communities, as over-
seers of the whole, leaders of the community.
That the name ἐπίσκοποι or bishops, was altogether synonymous with
that of Presbyters, is clearly evident from those passages of scripture,
where both appellations are used interchangeably. Acts 20, comp.
v. 17 with v. 28; Ep. to Titus, c. 1, v. 5 with v. 7 and from those
where the office of deacon is named immediately after that of bishop,
so that between these two church offices there could not still be a third
intervening one. Hp. to Philipp. 1: 1; 1 Tim. 8: 1 and 8. This
interchange in the use of the two appellations shows that they were
perfectly identical. ven were the name bishop originally nothmg
more than the distinctive title of a president of this church-senate, of
a Primus inter pares, yet even in this case such interchange would be
quite inadmissible. Likewise in the letter which Clemens, the disciple
of Paul, writes in the name of the Roman church, the deacons are
1 See on this point, my Hist. of the Planting, &., Vol. I. p. 198
PRESBYTERS AND BISHOPS. 185
named immediately after the bishops, as the presiding officers of the
communities.
But we here go on the supposition, that in each town, from the be-
ginning onward, one single community formed itself under the guidance
of a senate of elders. Are we warranted to suppose this? An oppo-
site hypothesis has been proposed by several writers im more recent
times.? It is held, according to this view, that there were not single
churches formed from the beginning, especially in the larger towns ;
but as Christianity was introduced from many different quarters and
by different preachers, szngle, small communities must have been
founded, independent of one another, which remained separate, and
held their assemblies at different places. Not till later, then, would
one community be formed from tle coming together of these several
conventicles. Of such separate conventicles preceding the formation
of one community, indications are supposed to be found in those pas-
sages of St. Paul’s epistles, where one person, with the church assem-
bling im his house, is greeted. Coloss. 4: 15; 1 Cormth. 16: 19;
Rom. 16: 5—14, 15; Philem. 2. Each of these small communi-
ties is supposed to have had its own presiding officer, and in this sense
the monarchical was the original form of government in the constitution
of the church. According to one view, the contentions of these little
bands and their presiding officers with one another, first caused the
want to be felt of greater unity and closer connection under a common
head; by which the gradual formation of the episcopal government of
the church would be promoted. According to the other view, the
name ἐπίσκοποι designated originally the function of these local presi-
dents, and the name presbyters, the collegial union of these several
presidents of communities.
Such an atomic theory, however, corresponds, certainly, least of all, to
the essence of Christianity, of the Christian community of Spirit, which
tended everywhere to fellowship and unity, and ecrpyed with it the
consciousness of all belonging together to one body.? Everywhere in
the epistles of the New Testament, Christians of the same city appear
as members associated together to form. one. érxAnoia. ‘This unity
never represents itself as something whichis yet to take place, but as
the original form, having its ground from the beginning in the essence
of the Christian consciousness; and the party divisions which threat-
ened to dissolve this unity, appear rather as a morbid affection which
had crept in later, as in the Corinthian church. And if portions of
the church sometimes formed separate assemblies in the houses of such
individuals as possessed local conveniences for the purpose, or who
were eminently qualified to edify those who assembled in their dwell-
1 See Cap. 42.
2 Dr. Kist of Leyden; see his Essay on
the Origin of the Episcopal Power in the
Christian Church, translated from the Dutch
in Illgen’s Zeitschrift fiir die historische
Theologie, Bd. II., 2tes Stiick, S. 48, — and
ΤῸ»
Dr. von Baur, in his Treatise on the Pas-
toral Letters.
ὃ Comp. what I have said in objection to
this theory; in my History of the Planting,
&e., p. 49 and 199; also Rothe, in his work
Uber die Anf inge ‘der Christlichen Kirche
p- 197, and onward.
186 CONSTITUTION OF THE CHURCH.
ings, by the preaching of the word ;! yet this was something which
did not occur till later, when the communities that were already regu-
larly organized became more numerous; and those who met in such
assemblies did not, by so doing, separate themselves from the great
whole of the community which subsisted wnder that guiding senate.
Of course the distinction, which has its sole ground in the theory above
mentioned, between bishops and presbyters, vanishes; and all we can
admit is, that the latter was particularly the name of dignity, the
former the name designating the function, or particular sphere of
activity. |
These presbyters or bishops’ then, as we may call the same function-
aries considered under different pots of view, had the general super-
intendence of the communities, the direction of all affairs pertaining to
the common interest; but the office of teaching was not committed ex-
clusively to them; for, as we have remarked above, all Christians,
originally, had the right of pourmg out their hearts before the brethren,
and of speaking for their edification, in the public assemblies. It does
not follow, however, from this, that all the members of a community
_were fitted for the ordinary and regular office of teaching ; a distinc-
tion is to be made between a gift of teaching, such as, like every other
cultivated talent, stood constantly at the command of him that once
possessed it, and those effusions proceedmg from the inspiration of the
moment,? which were connected with msulated and transient states
of elevated feeling, such as, in especial manner, belonged to the charac-
teristic features of that primitive time of extraordinary mental excite-
ment from above, when the divine life was first entering within the
limits of the earthly world, and sudden transitions in conversion must
more frequently occur. On such transient awakenings and excitements
of the religious consciousness alone, the care necessary to preserve,
propagate and advance religious knowledge, and to defend the genuine,
pure, apostolic doctrine against the various corrupting tendencies —
already threatening to come n— of Jewish or Pagan modes of think-
ing, could not be made to depend. Christianity claimed for its service
the faculties of knowledge, no less than those of feelmg. Where one of
these two faculties predominated to the exclusion of the other, disturb-
ances of the Christian consciousness and life always ensued. That
healthy and harmonious development, by virtue of which all exclusive
preponderance of single charismata would be precluded, was one of the
characteristic features of the apostolic period. Hence the watchful
counteraction of the Apostle Paul, wherever he noticed any exclusive
tendency of this kind which threatened to interfere with the harmoni-
1Comp. my Hist. of the Planting, etc.,
p. 208.
2 As prophecy, speaking with tongues.
I will take this occasion to point out a pas-
sage in Irenzeus, which serves to confirm
what I have so often advanced, that by the
gift of tongues, was designated something
that differed only in degree, not in kind,
from the prophetic gift,— an inspiration
raised to a higher grade, and suppressing
more entirely the ordinary consciousness.
The passage in Acts, 10: 46, relating to
the gift of tongues, Ireneus, ΠῚ. 12, 15,
explains thus: while the Holy Ghost rested
on them, they poured out their feelings in
the manner of prophecy. Τοῦ πνεύματος
τοῦ ἁγίου ἐπαναπαύοντος αὐτοῖς, προφητεύ-
οντας αὐτοὺς ἀκηκόει.
OFFICE OF TEACHING. 18T
ous and healthy development of the Christian life—as we see in his
first epistle to the Corinthians. Care was to be taken, therefore, that
along with those utterances of extraordinary inspiration, to be connected
with no particular function, there should never fail to be m the commu-
nities such as were qualified to satisfy the need of knowledge, men
capable of unfolding and of defending for them Christian truth: the
function denoted by the λόγος γνώσεως and the χάρισμα διδασκαλίας, This
latter presupposed a certain previous cultivation of the understanding,
a power of clear and discriminating thought, a certain gift of communi-
cation ; all which, if once present, when quickened by the agency of
the Holy Spirit, became a charisma of this kind. Such as possessed
this charisma, were on that account fitted to take care for the continual
preservation of sound doctrine in the community and for the establish-
ment and furtherance of Christian knowledge, without excluding the
codperation of the rest, who were at liberty to assist, each from his own
position, and according to the particular gift which might belong to
him. Hence, in the apostolic age, the gift of teaching, χάρισμα διδασκαλίας,
and-the order of teachers, διδάσκαλοι, who were distinguished by this
gift, are represented as constituting an entirely distinct function and
order. All the members of a community might, at particular seasons,
feel the impulse to address the assembled brethren, or to break forth
before them in acts of invocation or praise to their God; but only a
few possessed that γάρισμα͵ διδασκαλίας, and were διδάσκαλοι.
It is clear of itself, however, that this faculty of teaching is a thing
quite distinct from the talent for administering the outward concerns
of the community, the χάρισμα κυβερνήσεως, which was particularly required
for the office of assessor in the church council, the office of presbyter
or bishop. These gifts, so different in their kind, could not always be.
united in the same individual. In the early apostolic church, to which
all arbitrary and idle distinctions of ranks were so alien, and where
. every office was considered simply with reference to the end it was to
subserve and circumscribed by an inner necessity, the function of
teaching and that of church government, the function of a διδάσκαλος
and that of a ποιμήν, as also the gifts requisite for both,! were hence
also originally distinguished and held separate from each other.?
In the unfolding of these relations, it is necessary to distinguish
different steps, or stages; and we should not be warranted in assuming,
as the original form, every thing which we find in the later portions of
the apostolic times. ‘The historic progress itself must have introduced
many changes; and it would be a mistake if we supposed that every
arrangement in the communities when St. Paul wrote his last epistles
remained the same as when he sent the first. Thus, with regard to the \
ministration of doctrine, the following gradations are to be distinguished
in the progressive development.2 1. It occurred naturally that indi-
viduals, qualified for it by previous cultivation of mind, were, by virtue
1 The χάρισμα διδασκαλίας and the χάρισ- pose of seeing the distinction between the
μα KvBepvacewc. διδάσκων and the προεστώς.
2 Comp. for instance, Rom. 12: 7, 8, and 8 See my Hist. of the Planting, ἕο. p. 210.
the passages already noticed, for the pur-
188 CONSTITUTION OF THE CHURCH.
of this qualification, particularly called to the regular dispensation of
doctrine. 2. Such persons were commonly ordained and set apart as
teachers of the church. 38. The functions of church-teacher and of
elder became more closely connected with each other. It must have
been held a salutary thing, tending to the good order and quiet of the
communities, that among their presiding officers there should be also
those who possessed the talent for administering the office of teaching.
Τῇ in some cases, as in Paul’s farewell address to the elders of the
Church of Ephesus, the care of maintainmg pure doctrine was com-
mitted to the presbyters generally, yet it by no means follows that it
belonged to them to administer the office of teaching in the more
restricted sense ; for the Apostle may be speaking here simply of one
among the general cares of church government. But when, in the
epistle to Titus, it is required of a bishop, that he should not only
himself hold fast the genuine, pure doctrine of the gospel, but also be
able to establish others in it, and confute its adversaries, it is certainly
imphed that the bishop must possess also the gift of teaching. Indeed
under many circumstances of the church, such as those, for example,
which are alluded to in the above mentioned epistle, this would be
highly desirable on account of the threatening danger from the spread
of erroneous doctrines, which was to be met by the paternal authority
of elders of the community, supported by their oral teaching. So,
too, in the first epistle to Timothy (5:17), those of the presbyters
who, to the talent for government, κυβέρνησις, could unite also that of
teaching, διδασκαλία, are counted worthy of double honor; and the
prominence given here to each may be regarded as another proof that
the two were not necessarily and always united.
Besides these, we find only one other church office in the Apostolic
age, that of deacons. ‘The duties of this office were from the beginning
simply external, as it was instituted in the first place, according to
Acts vi, to assist in the distribution of alms. The care of providing
for the poor and sick of the communities, to which many other external
duties were afterwards added, devolved particularly on this office.
Besides the deacons, there were appointed also deaconesses, for the
female portion of the communities, because the free access of men to
the female sex, especially in the Hast, where custom demanded so care-
ful a separation of the sexes, might excite suspicion and give offence.
If the women, in conformity with their natural destination, were excluded
from the offices of teaching and church government, yet the peculiar
qualifications of the sex were now claimed, in this way, as peculiar
gifts for the service of the communities. By means of such deacon- ἡ
esses the gospel could be introduced into the bosom of families, where,
owing to the customs of the Hast, no man could gain admittance.!
They were also bound, as Christian wives and mothers of tried expe-
rience in all the relations of their sex, to assist the younger women of
the communities with their counsel and encouragement.”
1 Asa proof, see the words of Clement γυναικωνῖτιν ἀδιαβλήτως παρεισεδύετο 7
of Alexandria, (St. 1. III. p. 448,) respect- τοῦ κυρίου διδασκαλία.
ing Christian women: Δὲ ὧν kai εἰς τὴν 2 Tertull. de virginib. velandis, c. 9: Ut
DEACONS — DEACONESSES — ELECTORS. 189
As regards the election to these church offices, we are in want of
sufficient information to enable us to decide how it was managed in the
early Apostolic times. Indeed, it is quite possible that the method of
procedure differed under different circumstances. As in the institution
of deacons the apostles left the choice to the communities themselves,
and as the same was the case in the choice of deputies to attend the —
apostles in the name of the communities (1}Cormth. viii: 19), we might
argue that a similar course would be pursued in filling other offices of
the church. Yet it may be that in many cases the apostles themselves,
where they could not as yet have sufficient confidence in the spirit of
the first new communities, conferred the important office of presbyters
on such as in their own judgment, under the light of the Divine Spirit, ,
appeared to be the fittest persons. Z'heir choice would, moreover,
deserve in the highest degree the confidence of the communities (comp.
Acts xiv: 23; Titusi: 5); although when St. Paul empowers Titus to
set presiding officers over the communities who possessed the requisite
qualifications, this circumstance decides nothing as to the mode of choice,
nor is a choice by the community itself thereby necessarily excluded.
The regular course seems to have been this: the church offices were™
entrusted m preference to the first converts of the communities, pro-
vided that im other respects they possessed the requisite qualifications.
(1 Corinth.gvi: 15).4 Clement of Rome cites the following rule, as
one which had been handed down from the apostles, relative to the
appointment to church offices; ‘that they should be filled, according
to the gudgment of approved men, with the consent of the whole com-
munity.’ It may have been the general practice for the presbyters
themselves, in case of a vacancy, to propose another to the community
in place of the person deceased, and leave it to the whole body either to
approve or decline their selection for reasons assigned.2,_ Where asking
for the assent of the community had not yet become a mere formality,
this mode of filling church offices had the salutary effect of causing the
votes of the majority to be guided by those capable of judging, and of
suppressing divisions; while at the same time no one was obtruded on
the community who would not be welcome to their hearts.
Again, as regards the relation in which these presbyters stood to the
communities, they were not designed to exercise absolute authority, but
to act as presiding officers and guides of an ecclesiastical republic ; to
conduct all things with the codperation of the communities as their
ministers, and not their masters. So the apostles regarded this relation
when they addressed their epistles, which treat not barely of matters
of doctrme but of things relating to the life and discipline of the
church, not to the presiding officers of the communities alone, but to
the entire communities. In the instance where the Apostle Paul pro-
experimentis omnium affectuum structe,
facile norint ceteras et consilio et solatio
juvare; et ut nihilominus ea decucurrerint,
per que femina probari potest. ,
1So also Clement of Rome, (cap. 42,)
says of the Apostles: Κατὰ χώραν καὶ πό-
Aeig κηρύσσοντες καϑέστανον τὰς ἀπαρχὰς
αὐτῶν, δοκιμάσαντες τῷ πνεύματι εἰς ἐπισ-
κόπους καὶ διακόνους μελλόντων πιστεύειν.
2 Clement, Cap. 44: Τοὺς κατασταϑέντας
ὑπὸ τῶν ἀποστόλων ἢ μεταξὺ ὑφ᾽ ἑτέρων
ἐλλογίμων ἀνδρῶν, συνευδοκησώσης τῆς ἐκ-
κλησίας πάσης.
—
a
190 CHANGES OF THE CHURCH CONSTITUTION.
rd
nounces a sentence of excommunication from the fellowship of the
church, he conceives himself united in spirit with the whole community
(1 Corinth. v. 4), assuming that regularly, in a matter of such common
concern, the participation of the whole community was required.
B. Changes in the Constitution of the Christian Church after the
age of the Apostles.
The changes which the Constitution of the Christian Church under-
went during this period, related especially to the three following partic-
ulars; 1. the distinction of bishops from presbyters, and the gradual
development of the monarchico-episcopal church government; 2. the
distinction of the clergy from the laity, and the formation of a sacer-
dotal caste, as opposed to the evangelical idea of the priesthood; 8.
the multiplication of church offices.
As to the first of these particulars, we are in want, it is true, of exact
and full information respecting the manner in which the change took
place in single cases; but a comprehensive view on grounds of analogy
will set the matter in a very clear light. Since the presbyters consti-
tuted a deliberative assembly, it would of course soon become the prac-
tice for one of their number to preside over the rest. This might be
so arranged as to take place by some law of rotation, so that the
presidency would thus pass in turn from one to the other. Possibly,
in many places, such was the original arrangement. Yet we find no
trace, at least in history, of anything of this kind. But neither, as
we have already observed, do we, on the other hand, meet with any
vestige of a fact which would lead us to infer that the presidency over
the presbyterial college was originally distinguished by a special name.
However the case may have been, then, as to this point, what we find
existing in the second century enables us to infer, respecting the pre-
ceding times, that soon after the Apostolic age the standing office of
president of the presbytery must have been formed; which president,
as having preéminently the oversight over all, was designated by the
special name of ᾿Επίσκοπος, and thus distinguished from the other pres-
byters. ‘Thus the name came at length to be applied exclusively to
this presbyter, while the name presbyter continued at first to be common
to all; for the bishops, as presiding presbyters, had no official character
other than that of the presbyters
inter pares.+
1 Many of the [ater fathers still have a
right understanding of this process of the
matter. Hilar. in ep. I. ad Timoth.c. 3:
Omnis episcopus presbyter, non tamen om-
nis presbyter episcopus; hic enim episco-
pus est, qui inter presbyteros primus est.
Jerome, (146, ad Evangel.) says that it had
been the practice in the Alexandrian church,
until the times of the bishops Hierocles and
Dionysius, in the middle of the third cen-
tury, for the presbyters to choose one of
their own number as a president, and call
him bishop. And so also there may be
some foundation of truth in the account of
generally. ‘They were only Primi
Eutychius, though it may not be wholly
true, and must be chronologically false.
This person, who was patriarch of Alex-
andria in the first half of the tenth century,
relates, that in the Alexandrian church, up
to the time of the bishop Alexander, in the
beginning of the fourth century, the follow-
ing arrangement had existed: there was a
college of twelve presbyters, one of whom
presided over the rest as bishop, and these
presbyters always chose their bishop out of
their own number, and the other eleven or-
dained him.
BISHOPS RAISED ABOVE PRESBYTERS. 191
- The aristocratic constitution will ever find it easy, by various gradual
changes, to pass over to the monarchical; and circumstances where
the need becomes felt of guidance by the energy and authority of an
individual, will have an influence beyond all things else to bring about
such a change. It may have been circumstances of this kind, which,
near the times dividing the first and second centuries, tended to give
preponderance to a president of the council of elders, and to assign
him his distinctive title, as the general overseer. Already, in the latter
part of the age of St. Paul, we shall see many things different from
what they had been originally ; and so it cannot appear strange if other
changes came to be introduced into the constitution of the communities,
by the altered circumstances of the times immediately succeeding those
of St. Paul or St. John. Then ensued those strongly marked oppo-
sitions and schisms, those dangers with which the corruptions engen-
dered by manifold foreign elements threatened primitive Christianity.!
It was these dangers that had called the Apostle John to Asia Minor,
and induced him to make this country the seat of his labors. Amidst
circumstances so embarrassing, amidst conflicts so severe from within
and from without — for then came forth the first edict of Trajan against
the Christians — the authority of individual men, distinguished for piety,
firmness and activity, would make itself particularly availing, and would
be augmented by a necessity become generally apparent. Thus the
predominant influence of individuals, who, as moderators over: the col-
lege of presbyters, were denominated bishops, might spring of itself
out of the circumstances of the times in which the Christian communi-
ties were multiplied, without any necessity of supposing an ntentional
remodelling of the earlier constitution of the church. In favor of this
view is also the manner in which we find the names “ presbyter” and
“bishop ”’ interchanged for each other until far into the second century.
It may be, that as the labors of the Apostle John in Asia Minor had
a great influence generally on the succeeding development of the church,
such an influence proceeded also from the course he pursued im this mat-
ter, that he was induced by the circumstances of the times to entrust
to certain individual presbyters in particular, who had made themselves
worthy of his special confidence, the care of maintaining pure doctrine,
of warding off those threatening dangers, and of keeping an oversight
over the whole life of the church amidst those scattermgs of the chaff.
The tradition current at the end of the second century, respecting
individuals who had been placed at the head of communities by the
Apostle John and ordained by him as bishops, may have been thence
derived. This would be the truth lying at the bottom in this report,
and there would be no necessity of inferrmg from this circumstance
that an episcopate was designedly founded by this apostle.?
1 These I have more fully unfolded in
my History of the Planting, &c., Vol. II.
2 There is no evidence to establish any
such supposition ; for to indefinite traditions
the force df evidence cannot be ascribed.
In the so called epistles of Ignatius, I per-
ceive, besides that which took its shape
without any preconceived design, an evi-
dent purpose. As the tradition of Ignati-
us’ journey to Rome, where he was to be
‘thrown to the wild beasts, appears to me,
for reasons already alleged, extremely lia-
ble to suspicion ; so his letters, which pre-
suppose the truth of this story, inspire me
OF THE CHURCH CONSTITUTION.
192 CHANGES
This relation of the bishops to the presbyters, we may observe all
along to the end of the second century. It is hence that Irenzeus
sometimes uses the names “ bishop” and *‘ presbyter”’ as wholly synony-
mous, and at others, distinguishes the bishops, as presiding officers,
from the presbyters.! Tertullian also calls the presiding officers of the
Christian communities by the common name of Seniores, including
under this title both bishops and presbyters ; 2 though elsewhere in the
writings of this father, the distinction between bishops and presbyters
is already decidedly drawn. In many respects, Tertullian may be con-
sidered as standing on the boundary line between an old and a new era
in the Christian church.
The novel and violent conflicts, internal and external, which the
church had to encounter in these and the next succeeding times, might
contribute anew to foster the monarchical element in the constitution of
the church. Yet as late as the third century, the presbyters still main-
tained their own footing, as a college of counsellors, at the side of the
bishops, and the latter could undertake nothing of importance without
calling to their assistance the deliberative assembly of presbyters.?
When Cyprian, bishop of the church in Carthage, was separated from
his community by his flight from persecution, if he had business to
transact relating to the interests of the church, he immediately commu-
nicated it to his presbyters remaining behind in Carthage, and excused
himself to them whenever he was obliged to decide any matter without
their assistance. He declares it to be his invariable principle to do
nothing on his own.responsibility and without their advice.* Alluding
to the original relation of the bishops to the presbyters, he calls them his
Compresbyteros. Since,then, in the constitution of the church, two
elements met together, —the aristocratic and the monarchical, — it
could not fail to be the case, that a conflict would ensue between them.
The bishops considered themselves as mvested with supreme power in
the guidance of the church, and would maintain themselves m this
authority. ‘The presbyters would not concede to them this authority,
and would seek to render themselves again more independent. ‘These
strugeles between the presbyterial and episcopal systems belong among
the most important phenomena connected with the process of the devel-
with as little confidence in their authentici-
ty. That a man with death immediately
before him, could have nothing to say more
befitting than such things about obedience
to the bishops, I cannot well conceive; at
least when I transfer myself to the time
when these letters profess to have been writ-
fen. But even supposing the Apostle John
did institute the order of bishops, for the
purpose of satisfying a necessity of the
times, still it would by no means follow,
that this was a form of church government,
either necessary or beneficial for all times.
1 The two names are used synonymous-
ly, (1. IV. 26,) where the successio episco-
patus is given to the presbyteris. In 1. III.
14, he distinguishes them. In the narrative,
Acts, 20: 17, where Paul sends for the
presbyters of the churches of Asia Minor,
Jrenzeus reckons among them also the bish-
ops, in the view that these latter were no
more than presiding elders; in Mileto con-
yocatis episcopis et presbyteris. ‘The con-
fusion spread over the whole subject of the
succession of the first Romish bishops may .
doubtless be owing to the fact, that these
names were originally not so distinguished,
and hence several might bear at the same
time the titles of bishops or presbyters.
2 Apologet. c. 39: Preesident probati qui-
que seniores.
3 Presbyterium contrahere.
4 A primordio episcopatus mei statui,
nihil sine consilio vestro mea privatim sen-
tentia gerere. — Sicut honor mutuus poscit,
in commune tractabimus. Ep 5
RISE OF A SACERDOTAL CASTE. 198
opment of church life in the third century. Many presbyters made a
capricious use of their power, hurtful to good discipline and order
in the communities. Divisions arose, of which we shall speak more par-
ticularly hereafter ; and out of these troubles, the authority of the
bishops, closely united among themselves, came victorious over the pres-
byters, who opposed them single handed. The energy and activity of a
Cyprian contributed in no small measure to further this victory; but it’
would both be domg injustice to him, and changing the point of view
from which the whole matter ought to be contemplated, if we should
charge him with having labored from the beginning, on a systematic
plan, to elevate the episcopal order; as it is generally true, in matters
of this sort, that it hardly lies within the compass of one individual to
change the relations of a whole period after some scheme for his own
agerandizement. Cyprian acted, in this case, rather without bemg con-
scious of any plan, in the spirit of a whole party and of a tendency be-
longing to the entire church in his time. He acted as the representa-
tive of the episcopal system, whose conflict with the presbyterian church
policy had its ground and root in the general process of the develop-
ment of the church. The contentions of the presbyterian parties with
one another might certamly have proved injurious to discipline and
good order in the churches; the triumph of the episcopal system un-
doubtedly promoted their unity, order and tranquillity ; but on the other
hand, it was unfriendly to the free development of church life, and
served, not a little, to encourage the formation of a priesthood, foreign
to the essence of the New Testament development of the kingdom of
God; while on the other hand, a revolution of sentiment for which the
way had already been prepared, an altered view of the idea of the
priesthood, had no small influence on the development of the episcopal
system. Thus does this change of the original constitution of the
Christian communities stand mtimately connected with another and
still more radical change, — the formation of a sacerdotal caste in the
Christian church. Without doubt, many changes m church relations
might flow of themselves out of the historical course of development,
without witnessing of any such revolution in the general apprehension
of Christians, or being at all connected with it. Succeeding the time
of the first Christian inspiration, of that effusion of the Spirit which
made all differences of cultivation retreat more into the back-ground,
came a time when the human element assumed more importance in re-
lation to the progressive movement of the church. Differences in the
degree of cultivation and of Christian knowledge became more strongly
marked; and it might hence happen, that the guidance of church affairs
was surrendered more and more to the above mentioned church senate,
and the edification of the church by the word more and more confined
to those who made themselves preéminent as teachers. But besides
what came of itself in the natural course of historical progress, there
entered in imperceptibly another idea alien to the Christian principle ;
an idea which could not fail to bring about a revolution of views, des-
tined to last for ages, and ever to unfold itself in a wider circle from
the germ which had once heen implanted.
VOL. I.
194 CONSTITUTION OF THE CHURCH.
Christianity had sprung to freedom and self-subsistence out of the
envelope of Judaism, — had stripped off the forms in which it was first
enwrapt, and within which the new spirit lay at first concealed, until by
its own inherent power it burst its way through them. ‘This evolution
belonged more particularly to the Pauline position, from which pro-
ceeded the form of the church in the pagan world. ‘This principle had
triumphantly pushed its way through, in the conflict with the Jewish.
elements which opposed themselves to that free development of Chris-
tianity. In the communities of pagan Christians, the new creation
stood forth completely unfolded; but the Jewish principle, which had
been vanquished, pressed in once more from another quarter. Human-
ity was as yet incapable of maintaining itself at that lofty position of pure
spiritual religion. The Jewish position descended nearer to the mass,
which needed first to be trained in order to the apprehension of pure
Christianity, — needed to be disaccustomed from paganism. Out of
Christianity, now become independent, a principle once more sprang
forth, akin to the Old Testament position, — anew making outward of
the kingdom of God, a new law discipline, destined to serve one day
for the training of rude nations, a new tutorship for the spirit of human-
ity until it should arrive at the maturity of the manly age in Christ.
This retrogression of the Christian spirit to a form nearly related to the
Old Testament position, could not fail, after the fruitful principle had
once made its appearance, to unfold itself more and more, bringing to
light, one after another, all the consequences which it involved ; but a
reaction of the Christian consciousness, striving after freedom, began
also, which was ever bursting forth anew im an endless variety of ap-
pearances, until it reached its triumph at the Reformation.
While the great principle of the New Testament is the unfolding of
the kingdom of God from within, from the union with Christ, brought
about after the like ¢mmediate manner in all, by faith; the readmission
of the Old Testament position, in making the kingdom of God outward,
went on the assumption that an outward mediation was necessary im
order to the spread of this kingdom in the world. Such a mediation
was to form for the Christian church a priesthood fashioned after the
model of that. of the Old Testament. The universal priestly character,
grounded in that common and immediate relation of all to Christ as the
source of the divine life, was repressed, the idea interposing itself of a
particular, mediatory priesthood attached to a distinct order. This
recasting of the Christian spirit m the Old Testament form did not take
place, it is true, every where uniformly alike. Where some Jewish
element chiefly predominated, it might very easily grow up out of
this ;4 where the Pauline element among the pagan Christians had un-
1 Thus in the Jewish-Christian apocry- 1. V.c. 24,) the Apostle John is denomina-
phal writing, called the Testament of the
twelve Patriarchs, (in the Testament III.
of Levi, c. 8,) it is promised of the Messi-
ah, that he should found a new priesthood
among the pagan nations; ποιῆσειὶ ἱερατεί-
av νέαν εἰς πώντα τὰ ἔϑνη. Whether in
the letter of Polycrates, bishop of Ephesus,
a contemporary of Irenzus, (cited in Euseb.
ted ἱερεύς τὸ πέταλον πεφορηκώς, as stand-
ing at the head of the government of the
church in Asia Minor, may indeed be doubt-
ed. ‘The phrase might also be used simply
to designate the highest position of the
spiritual priesthood in the witnessing of the
faith. (See Testament. Levi, c. 8: πέτα-
λον τῆς πίστεως.)
FORMATION OF A SACERDOTAL CASTE. 195
folded itself in opposition to the Jewish, still the Christian spirit, grown
up to independence, but not being able to maintain itself at this lofty
position, by virtue of a relationship springing up in itself with the Jew-
ish position, passed over again to the Jewish. Of such a change which
had now taken place in the Christian mode of thinking, we have a witness
as early as Tertullian, when he calls the bishop summus sacerdos,! a
title certainly not invented by him, but which had been adopted from a
prevailing mode both of speaking and thinking, in a certain portion at
least, of the church. This title presupposes that men had begun already
to compare the presbyters with the priests ; the deacons, or the spiritual
class generally, with the Levites. And so it becomes manifest, how the
false comparison of the Christian priesthood with the Jewish must tend
once more to advance the elevation of the episcopacy over the presby-
terial office. In general, the more men fell back from the evangelical
to the Jewish point of view, the more must the original, free constitu-
tion of the communities, grounded in those original Christian views,
become also changed. We find Cyprian already completely imbued
with the notions which sprang out of this confounding together of the
different pomts of view of the Old and New Testaments. |
In the names by which at first those who administered church offices
were distinguished from the rest of the community, no trace of this
confusion might as yet be found. The Latin expression, ‘‘ ordo,” de-
noted simply the guiding senate of the Christian people, (plebs.) See
, above. Into the Greek words κλῆρος, κληρικοί, men had introduced, it is
true, already in the time of Cyprian, the unevangelical sense of per-
sons preeminently consecrated to God, like the Levites of the Old Tes-
tainent, men employed on the affairs of religion to the exclusion of all
earthly concerns, and who did not gain their living, like others, by
worldly employments, but for the very reason that, for the good of
others, they lived only in intercourse with God, were supported by the
rest, just as the Levites, when the lands were apportioned, received no
particular allotment, but were to have God alone for their inheritance,
and to receive tithes from the rest for the administration of the public
functions of religion, οἵ εἰσιν ὁ κλῆρος τοῦ ϑεοῦ, OF ὧν ὁ κλῆρος ὁ ϑεός ἐστι. ὥρο,
Deuteronom. 6. 18, This notion of a peculiar people of God, (a κλῆρος
τοῦ Yeod,) applied distinctively to a particular order of men among the
Christians, is now, we must admit, in thisesense, something wholly for-
eign to the original Christian consciousness ; for according to this, all
Christians should be a people consecrated to God, a κλῆρος τοῦ ϑεοῦ, and
all the employments of their earthly calling should in like manner be
sanctified by the temper in which they are discharged. Their whole
living and domg,— pointed with one reference to Christ, the great High
Priest of humanity, striking root in the consciousness of redemption,
and bearing witness of its effects, — should hence become a consecrated
thank-offering, and a spiritual worship, (a λογικὴ λατρεία.) This was the
original, evangelical idea. It may be questioned, however, whether
that other notion, so much at variance with the primitive Christian idea,
1 De baptismo, c. 17.
196 CONSTITUTION OF THE CHURCH.
was from the first actually associated with the appellation κληρικοί ag
applied to the clergy. If we trace along the history of its usage, it
becomes much more probable, that this sense was brought*mto the word
at some later period, when a change had taken place in the Christian
mode of thinking, and the original sense was forgotten. The word κλῆρος
signified originally the place which had been allotted to each one in the
community by God’s providence, or the choice of the people directed
by that providence ; hence the church officers were particularly denom-
inated κλῆροι, and the persons chosen to them, «Ampzxoi+
But although the idea of the priesthood, in the purely evangelical
sense, grew continually more obscure and was thrust farther into the
back-ground, in proportion as that unevangelical point of view became
predominant, yet it was too deeply rooted in the very essence of Chris-
tianity to be totally suppressed. In the boundary epoch of Tertullian,
we still find many very significant proofs that there was a reaction of
the primitive Christian consciousness of the) universal priesthood and
the common rights grounded therein, against the arrogated power of
that particular priesthood, which had recently begun to form itself on
the model of the Old Testament. ‘Tertullian, m his work on Baptism,
written before he went over to Montanism, distinguishes with reference
to this matter divine right and human order. ‘In itself considered,”
he says, “the laity also have the right to administer the sacraments
and to teach in the community. The word of God and the sacraments
were by the grace of God communicated to all, and may therefore be
communicated by all Christians as instruments of the divine grace.
But the question here relates not barely to what is permitted in general,
but also to what is expedient under existing circumstances. We may
here use the words of St. Paul, ‘all things are lawful for me, but all
things are not expedient.’ If we look at the order necessary to be
maintained in the church, the laity are therefore to exercise their
priestly right of administering the sacraments, only when the time and
circumstances require it.”’?
Sometimes, in their conflict with the clergy, the laity made good their
original priestly rights, as we learn from those words of Tertulhan the
Montanist, where in a certain case he requires the laity, if they would
have the same rights with the clergy, to bind themselves to the same
1 Thus it is made clear, how the more re-
stricted notion of casting lots in these words
might be lost, though elsewhere the ἀρχαὶ
KAnpwTai are opposed to the ἀρχαῖς yetpo-
τονήῆταις. So at first, in Acts, 1: 17: κλῆ-
ρος τῆς διακονίας ; in Ireneus III. 3: κλη-
ροῦσϑαι τὴν ἐπισκοπὴν. Clemens Alex.
quis dives salv. c. 42, employs κλῆρος and
κληροῦν with reciprocal reference to each
other. Ignat. ep. Ephes. c.11: κλῆρος Ἔφε-
ciwv, by which he understands the collec-
tive body of Christians in that place. It is
true, the Old Testament relations could be
found applied to the Christian church in a
writer as early as Clemens of Rome, (c.
40;) but assuredly this epistle, as well as
͵ὔ
that of Ignatius, although not to such a
degree, had suffered interpolation from a
hierarchical interest. In other passages of
the same epistle, we meet, on the contrary,
with the freer spirit of the original presby-
terial constitution of the church. How
simply, without any mixture of hierarchical
display, is the appointment of bishops or
presbyters. and of deacons, spoken of in
the 42d chapter! A disciple of the Apos-
tle Paul, moreover, is the last person whom
we should expect to find thus confounding
together the points of view peculiar to the
Old and to the New Testaments.
2 De baptismo, c. 17.
FORMATION OF A SACERDOTAL CASTE. 197
duties ; and where in a sarcastic tone he says to them:! “ When we
exalt and inflate ourselves against the clergy, then we are all one, we
are all priests, smce he has made us kings and priests unto God and
his Father.” Rev. 1: 6.
Although the office of teaching in the church assemblies was confined —
more and more to the bishops and presbyters, yet we still find many
traces of that original equality of the spiritual right among all Chris-
tians. Towards the middle of the third century, two bishops in Pales-
tine did not hesitate to allow the learned Origen, although he had as
yet received no ordination, to expound the scriptures before their peo-
ple ; and when reproved by Demetrius, bishop of Alexandria, who was
strongly inclined to hierarchy, they appealed in their defence to the
practice of many bishops of the East who invited competent laymen
even to preach the word.? In the pretended Apostolic Constitutions
themselves, a work otherwise well tinged with the hierarchical spirit,
and compiled, indeed, out of a mass of heterogeneous elements, there
is yet an ordinance under the name of the Apostle Paul to the following
effect,> “If any man, though a layman, is skilful in expounding doe-
trine, and of vener able manners, he may be allowed to teach, for all
should be taught of God.”
In the early times, those who took upon them chweeh offices in the
communities, continued, in all probability, to exercise their former
trades and occupations, supporting themselves and their families in the
same manner as before. ‘The communities, composed for the most part
of poor members, were scarcely in a condition to provide for their
presbyters and deacons, especially as they had from the first to meet
so many other expenses, in supporting helpless widows, the poor, the
sick, and the orphans. It might indeed be, that the presbyters be-
longed to the richer class in the communities, and this without doubt
must have been the case quite often, since their office required, besides
other qualifications, a certain worldly education, such as would more
likely be.found in the higher or middle than in the lower class of the
people. When it is required of the presbyters, or bishops, (1 Timothy,
3: 2,) that they should‘ de patterns to other Christians of hospitality also,
they must have belonged to the better class, of whom the number was
small in the first communities, — and how could such persons be induced
to support themselves on the scanty earnings of the poor! The Apostle
Pau! does, indeed, declare the travelling preachers of the gospel to be
warranted to expect, that those for whose spiritual necessities they
labored would provide for their bodily wants; but it cannot be hence
inferred that the case was the same with those who held church offices
in distinct communities. It would be difficult for the former to unite
the labors necessary for their own maintenance with the duties of their
spiritual calling, although the self-denial of a Paul could make this also
possible. The latter, on the other hand, might at the beginning very
easily unite the prosecution of their labors for a maintenance with the
discharge of their official functions in the church, and the simple way
1 De monogamia,’¢. 12. 2 Euseb. 1. VI. ο. 19. 81, VIIL c. 32
17*
198 CONSTITUTION OF THE CHURCH.
of thinking among primitive Christians would find nothing repulsive in
such a union; convinced as they were, that every earthly employment
could and should be sanctified by the temper with which it was pur
sued, and knowing that even an apostle had prosecuted a worldly call-
ing in connection with the preaching of the gospel. But when the
communities grew larger, and the duties connected with church offices
became multiplied ; when especially the office of teaching came to be
confined chiefly to the presbyters; when the calling of the spiritual
class, if rightly discharged, required all their time and activity, 1 was
often no longer possible for them to provide, at the same time, for their
own support;—and besides, the wealthier communities were now in a
condition to maintain them. Of the common fund which was raised
from the voluntary contributions of each member of the community, at
each service on the Lord’s day, or, as in the North African church, on
every first Sunday of the month,! a part was appropriated for the main-
tenance of the clergy. It was now attempted from design, to separate
the clergy entirely from all worldly employments; and in the third
century, they were already strictly forbidden to undertake any such
business, even a wardship.2, Without doubt, this ordinance might have
avery good reason,,and a very salutary end, namely, to prevent the
clergy from forgetting their spiritual calling in the business of the
world. We see from Cyprian’s book de Lapsis,? how extensively even
then, during long periods of tranquillity, the spirit of the world had
found its way among the bishops, who, immersed in secular business,
neglected their spiritual concerns and the interests of their communti-
ties. But there was assuredly some other cause also which operated
to bring about a change of views whereby the admiistration of a
church office came to be regarded as something which could not possi-
bly be united with worldly employments, and the clergy deemed them-
selves bound to keep aloof from them. |
When the idea of the universal Christian priesthood retired to the
back-ground, that of the priestly consecration which all Christians
should make of their entire life, went along with it. As men had dis-
tinguished, in a way contradictory to the original Christian consciousness,
a particular priesthood from the universal and ordinary calling of all
Christians ; so now they set over against each other a spiritual and a
_ secular province of life and action; notwithstanding Christ had raised
the entire earthly life to the dignity of a spiritual life. And from this
view of the matter, it was deemed necessary to forbid the priestly,
1 The divisiones mensurz, as. salaries
for the clergy in this church, answer to the
monthly collections.
2 Cyprian. ep. 66, to the community at
Furne.
3 Also from the Instructiones of his con-
temporary, Commodianus, 6. 69: Redditur
in culpa pastor secularia servans, (who
gives himself up to secular business ;) and
from Can. 18 of the council of Elvira, (Il-
liberis,) in the year 305: Episcopi, presby-
teri et diaconi de locis suis negotiandi causa
non discedant, nec cireumeuntes provincias
queestuosas nundinas sectentur. Yet even
here it is still supposed that they may in
many cases be obliged so to do, “ad victum
sibi conquirendum,” where, perhaps, though
they had a salary, they yet received no pay
in money. But in these cases they were to
conduct their business by the agency of a
son, a freed man, or some person hired for
the purpose, and never beyond the bounds
of their own province.
ELECTIONS TO OFFICE. 199
consecrated clergy, all contact with the world and the things of the
world. Thus we have here the germ out of which sprang at length
the whole medieval priesthood and the laws of celibacy. But by this
outward holding at a distance of secular things, the worldly sense could
not be charmed away from the clergy, nor the sense for divine things
awakened in them. ‘This external renunciation of the world might be
the means of introducing into the heart a spiritual pride, hiding the
worldly sense under this mask. Cyprian quotes 2 Timoth. 2: 14, as
warranting the prohibition given in the above mentioned letter.1 But
he could not remain ignorant of what, at this particular time, when the
universal Christian calling was commonly regarded as a militia Christi,
must have immediately suggested itself to every one, that these words
applied to all Christians, who, as soldiers of Christ, were bound to per-
form their duty faithfully, and to guard against every foreign and
worldly thing which might hinder them in their warfare. Acknowledg-
ing and presupposing this himself, he concludes, ‘‘ Since this is said of
all Christians, how much more should they keep themselves clear of
being involved m worldly matters, who, engrossed with divine and spirit-
ual things, ought never to turn aside from the church, nor have time
for earthly and secular employments.”’ The clergy, then, were, in fol-
lowing that apostolic rule, only to shine forth as patterns for all others,
by avoiding what was foreign to their vocation, what might turn them
from the faithful discharge of it. But still that false opposition be-
tween the worldly and the spiritual, which we have before described,
found here also a poit of attachment.
In respect to the election to church offices, the ancient principle was
still adhered to, that the consent of the community was necessary to the
validity of every such election, and each one was at liberty to offer
reasons against 1t. The emperor Alexander Severus was aware of this
regulation in the Christian church, and referred to it when he was
wishing to imtroduce a similar practice in the appoimtment to civil
offices in the provinces.2, When the bishop Cyprian of Carthage, while
separated from his community by the persecution, proceeded to nomi-
nate to church offices, individuals about his person, who had distin-
guished themselves in the trials of the time, he excused this arbitrary
procedure, to which necessity compelled him, both to the laity and to
the clergy, writing to them as follows: ‘‘ We are used to call you to-
gether for counsel whenever any are to be consecrated to sacred offices,
and to weigh the character and claims of each candidate im common
deliberation.”
The same principle was also observed in the appointment to the
episcopal office. It was in the third century a prevailing custom,
which Cyprian therefore derived from apostolic tradition, for the bishops
1 Ep. 66. fortune hominum committerentur et capita.
2 Δ]. Lamprid. vit. c. 45: Grave esse, From which language it is also apparent,
cum id Christiani et Judi, (a customary how far the man who so expressed himself,
form then of choosing presiding officers was from doing homage to the Christian
even among the Jews.) facerent in predi- church.
candis sacerdotibus, qui ordinandi sunt, non 8 Ep. 33.
fieri in provinciarum rectoribus, quibus et
200 CONSTITUTION OF THE CHURCH.
of the province, in connection with the clergy, to proceed to fill the
vacant church in the presence of the community, who were witnesses
of the conduct of each individual on whom the choice might fall, and
could therefore give the safest testimony of his character. Cyprian
conceded to the community the right of choosing worthy bishops, or of
rejecting unworthy ones.t This conceded right of approving or reject-
img, was not a mere formality. Sometimes it happened, that before the
usual arrangements for an election could be made, a bishop was pro-
claimed by the voice of the community. Thus there might possibly be
a difference between the will of the community and that of the majority
of the clergy, — the source of many divisions.
In other. concerns of the community also, the participation of the
laity was not yet wholly excluded. Cyprian declared that it had been
his resolution, from the commencement of his episcopal administration,
to do nothing without the consent of the community.? An affair of
this kind which belonged to the general interests of the community,
was the restoration to the fellow ship of the church of a fallen brother ;
and the examination connected with this proceeding was to be conducted
with the assistance of the whole community of Christians; for in Cy-
prian’s judgment, this respect was due to the faith of those who had
stood firm through the trials of persecution.? Besides, there were
individuals, not belonging to the clerical order, who still, on account of
the respect which they personally enjoyed, had obtained an influence:
over the management of church affairs, which even the clergy found it
difficult to oppose. Such were those heroes of the faith, the confessors,
who in the face of tortures and death, or under the actual suffering of
torture, had laid down their testimony before pagan magistrates. We
shall hereafter, in speaking of the schisms of the church, have occasion
to consider more particularly the extent of their influence.
The third, less important change in the constitution of the church
related to the multiplication of church offices. This was in part ren-
dered necessary by the growth of the communities, and the accumula-
tion of business on the hands of the deacons, from whose office many
things had to be taken away; in part, new matters of busmess in the
churches of large capital towns, required new offices for their proper
discharge; in part, the new notions respecting the dignity of the
clerus, led men to believe that what had hitherto been regarded as the
free gift of the Spirit to all or to individual Christians, must be confined
to a particular office in the service of the church. It is clear from
what has been said, that none of these changes, which were conditioned
partly by local circumstances, should be considered universal ones.
The new church offices were as follows: after the deacons, followed the
1 Cyprian, in the name of a synod, to
the communities at Lyons and Astorga, ep.
68: Apostolica observatione ser vandum est,
quod apud nos quoque et fere per provin-
cias universas tenetur, ut ad ordinationes
rite celebrandas, ad eam plebem, cui preepo-
situs ordinatur, episcopi ejusdem provincia
proximi quique conveniant, et episcopus
deligatur plebe presente, que singulorum
vitam plenissime novit et uniuscujusque
actum de ejus conversatione perspexit.
2 Nihil sine consensu plebis gerere. Ep.5.
3 Preesente etiam stantium ‘plebe, quibus
et ipsis pro fide et timore suo honor haben
dus est. Ep. 13.
OFFICES MULTIPLIED. 201
sub-deacons, collateral officers to the former in administering the out-
ward concerns of the church; then, the lectores (ἀνάγνωσται,) who read
the scriptures before the assembled community, and also had the care
of the biblical manuscripts used on these occasions, —a duty performed
at first, probably, by the presbyters themselves, or by the deacons, as
in later times the reading of the scriptures, particularly the gospels,
still continued to be left to the deacons in many churches ;— next, the
acolytes (ἀκόλουϑοι, acolythi) who, as the name indicates, waited on
the bishops while discharging their official functions; the exorcistze,
who made prayer over those who were supposed to be possessed of
evil spirits, (the energumeni ;) finally, the ϑυρωροὶ, πυλωροὶ, ostiaril, whose
business it was to attend to such outward matters as the cleanliness
and good order, the opening and closing, of the places of public worship.
The office of church reader 1s, perhaps, the oldest among these. It
is mentioned as early as the second century by Tertullian.1 The others
are noticed collectively not till about the middle of the third century,
and indeed the whole of them for the first time, in a letter of the Roman J
bishop Cornelius, cited by Eusebius.2 The office of acolyte had its
origin most probably in the hierarchical assumptions of the Roman
church. It did not find its way into the Greek church. The Greek
name of the office is not inconsistent with this view of its origin; for
the Greek language was in frequent use at Rome, and many of the Ro-
man bishops were of Grecian extraction. As regards the office of exor-
cist, the end to be accomplished by it had, originally, been considered
a work of the Holy Spirit confined to no outward institution, — whether
it was supposed that any Christian might be employed as the instru-
ment, who called on the name of Christ with believig confidence in him
as having overcome the power of evil, or whether it was regarded as a
spiritual gift. peculiar to individuals. Now, the free working of the
Spirit was to be confined to a formal, mechanical process. The spirit
of the ancient church, preserved for a longer time in the East,° was
rightly expressed, on the other hand, by the Apostolic constitutions ;
** An exorcist cannot be chosen, for it is the gift of free grace.” #
We now leave the general constitution of the communities, and pro-
ceed to the forms of union by which the individual communities were
bound together.
Forms of union by which the individual communities were bound
together.
4
With the inner fellowship, Christianity produced among its professors
from the first a living outward union, whereby the distantly separated
1 Preescript. heeret. c. 41.
21L. VI. c. 43.
8 In the letter of Firmilianus, bishop of
Czxsarea in Cappadocia, (Cyprian. ep. 75,)
mention is made of the church exorcists.
But Origen describes this sort of influence
as something that was not confined to any
determinate office, but wholly free. He
considers the influence as a thing depend-
ing on the subjective piety of the individual
that exercises it, in Matth. T. XIII. § 7:
Εἴποτε δέοι περὶ ϑεραπείαν ἀσχολεῖσϑαι
ἡμᾶς τοιοῦτόν τι πεπονϑότος τινὸς, μὴ OpKi-
ζωμεν, μηδὲ ἐπερωτῶμεν, μηδὲ λαλῶμεν ὡς
ἀκούοντι τῷ ἀκαϑάρτῳ πνεύματι, ἀλλὰ σχο-
λάζοντες προςευχῇ καὶ νηστείᾳ, ἐπιτύχωμεν
προςευχόμενοι περὶ τοῦ πεπονϑότος.
417,. VIII. c. 26: Οὐ χειροτονεῖται, εὐνοί-
ας γὰρ ἑκουσίου τὸ ἔπαϑλον, καὶ χάοιτος
ϑεοῦ διὰ Χριστοῦ.
202 CONSTITUTION OF THE CHURCH.
were brought near to each other. This ‘union must be realized in a
determinate form, which latter was conditioned by the existing forms
of social life under which Christianity first unfolded itself in the Roman
empire. A system of fraternal equality in the relations of the commu-
nities to each other, would, independent of these determinate circum-
stances, have answered best to the spirit of Christianity, and been most
promotive of its free, uncorrupted manifestation. But those circum-
stances soon gave rise to a system of subordination m the mutual rela-
tion of the communities to each other. This system, as well as every
other social form which had sprung out of the historical development
of the race and contained nothing sinful, Christianity could appropriate
to itself. Yet, since this relation was not sufficiently interpenetrated
with the free and free-making spirit of the gospel, it operated, by its
undue preponderance, to check and interrupt the development of Chris-
tian doctrme and of church life.
We have observed already, that in many districts, Christianity very
early made progress in the open country. Now wherever this was the
case, and the Christians in a village or country town were in sufficient
numbers to form a separate community, it was’the most natural course
for these to choose at once their own presiding officers, presbyters or
bishops, who were quite as independent as the presiding officers of the
city churches. In these first centuries themselves, it is mdeed impos-
sible, from the want of authentic records of so early a period, to poit
out any particular example of this kind; but in the fourth century we
find, in many districts of the Hast, country bishops, as they are called,
( χωρεπισκόπους, ) who, beyond doubt, might trace back their origin to the
oldest times; for in the later period, when the church system of subor-
dination had become established, and the country churches were now
accustomed to receive their presiding officers from the city, it is certain
that no such relation could have arisen; on the contrary, the country
bishops, wherever they yet existed, must have entered ito a struggle
with those of the city, for the preservation of their independence. But
the more common case, as we have likewise already remarked, was for
Christianity to be diffused from the city into the country; and while
the Christians in the immediate neighborhood of the cities were still few
in number, they would most naturally repair on the Lord’s day to the
city to jom in public worship with the assemblies there convened. But
in process of time, when their number was so increased as to enable
them to form a community of their own, they applied to the bishop of
the city church with which they had been connected, to set over them
a presbyter, who consequently remained ever after subordinate to the
city bishop. Thus arose the first greater church union between city
and country communities, which together formed one whole.’ In the
larger cities it might now have become necessary also to separate the
city communities themselves into several divisions ; as in Rome, where,
according to the report of the Roman bishop Cornelius, already referred
1 The presbyters of whom Cyprian, at invenientur in civitatibus suis, were such
his examination before the proconsul, said, presiding officers of country communities
METROPOLITAN AND APOSTOLIC CHURCHES. 203
to, there were in his time six and forty presbyters; though the state-
ment of Optatus of Mileve, that Rome contained, in the beginning of
the fourth century, more than forty churches, is an exaggeration. Yet
in this case, distinct and subordinate filial communities were not always
formed by the side of the one episcopal Head and Mother church ; but
more often, the community remained united as a whole; and only on
Sundays and feast days, when éne church was insufficient to accommo-
date all the members, they were divided into several churches, where
the different presbyters, according to a certain rotation, conducted the
public worship. But it must be admitted, that with regard to the early
shaping of these incipient relations, nothmg can be decided with cer-
tainty, and in default of immediate information on the subject, we can
only infer respecting the past from what we find to have been the case
in the succeeding times.
Again, as Christianity was diffused, for the most part, from the cities
into the country, so, as a general thing, it spread from the principal
cities (μητροπόλεις) to the other provincial towns. Now as these latter
were politically subordinate to the former, a close bond of union and
subordinate relation were gradually formed between the communities
of the provincial towns and those of the principal city or metropolis.
The churches of a province constituted a whole, at the head of which
stood the church of the metropolis. The bishop of this became in rela-
tion to the other bishops of the-province, Primus inter pares. Yet
owing to local causes, this relation did not every where unfold itself in
the same way, and in this period was limited, for the most part, to the |
East. -
A like relation to that between these metropolitan cities and the pro-
vincial towns, existed between the capitals of the larger divisions of the
Roman empire, — as seats of government, channels of commerce and
of all intercourse, — and the latter. It was from such larger capitals,
Christianity was diffused through entire sections of the vast empire; it
was here the apostles themselves had founded churches, appointed over
them their presiding officers, and orally preached the gospel; and to
the churches here established they had written their epistles. Hence,
these churches, which went under the name of ecclesize, sedes apostoli-
cx, matrices ecclesizw, were held in peculiar veneration. When a con-
troversy arose with regard to any regulation or doctrine of the church,
it was the first inquiry, how is the matter regarded in thése communi-
ties, where the principles taught on the spot by the apostles them-
selves, have been faithfully preserved from one generation to another ?
Such ecclesize apostolicee were especially Rome, Antioch, Alexandria,
Ephesus, Corinth.
But all this, which held good of all the churches in the great capital
cities, might be applied in a preéminent sense to the church of Rome, ,
the great capital of the world. The legend that Peter, as well as Paul,
died as a martyr at Rome, is not raised, it is true, beyond all doubt ;
but assuredly it is older than the effort to glorify the Roman church
through the primacy of the Apostle Peter, its founder. From many
other causes ; from the eagerness to confute the Jews and Gnostics, who
204 CONSTITUTION OF THE CHURCH.
‘endeavored to make out a difference between these two great apostles,
by showing that they were united even to a common martyrdom in the
capital of the world; from the stories of the contest between St. Peter
and Simon Magus, the origin of such a legend would admit of being
more easily explained. But these reasons surely are not sufficient to
warrant us in absolutely denying its truth, when so high antiquity
speaks in favor of it; and many difficulties which present themselves
in relation to the concatenation of events, may have their ground in our
defective historical information.’ At all events, the universally diffused
belief, that these two great apostles had taught m the Roman church,
and honored it by their martyrdom, contributed to promote its author-
ity. From Rome, the larger portion of the West had received the gos-
pel; from Rome, the common interests of Christianity, through the
whole extent of the Roman empire, could best be advanced. ‘The Ro-
man bishops, heads of the wealthiest community, were early distin-
guished and known in the most distant lands, for their liberal benefac-
tions to the Christian brethren ;? and a common interest bound all the
communities of the Roman empire to the church of the great capital.
In Rome was the ecclesia apostolica to which the largest portion of the
West could appeal as to their common mother. In general, whatever
transpired in this “‘ apostolic church” could not fail to be well known to
all; for here Christians were continually pourmg in from all quarters of
the world. So Irenzeus, who wrote: in Gaul, appeals,—as he does
also occasionally to other apostolic churches, — in one passage particu-
larly to the ecclesia apostolica in Rome, as the greatest, the oldest,
(which must be doubted,) the universally known, the church founded
by the two most illustrious apostles, where Christians congregate from
the communities of the whole world, and could not fail to learn the doc-
trine taught by the Apostles.’
as if, —what was said in later times, — the
1 Comp. the new inquiry into this matter
in the 3d edition of my History of the
Planting, &c., p. 516, et seq.
2 Euseb. 1. IV. c. 23.
51, 1Π.. ο. 8. According to the ancient
Latin translation, the original Greek text
being unfortunately lost: “ Ad hanc eccle-
siam, propter potiorem principalitatem, ne-
cesse est omnem convenire ecclesiam, hoc
est, eos qui sunt undique fideles, in qua
semper ab his, qui sunt undique, conservata
est ea, que est ab apostolis traditio.” If
the word convenire is taken in the intellect-
ual sense, —all churches must agree with the
Roman church, as the one having preémi-
nence over the rest, — we have a meaning
which is by no means perfectly natural, and
which scarcely in the least degree coincides
with the circle of ideas elsewhere exhibited
in Ireneus. What would be meant by say-
ing, the communities of the whole world
have preserved in the Roman church the
apostolic tradition? It would be under-
stood only in some such way as this; that
the Roman church was the central and repre-
sentative point of all the Christian churches;
whole church was contained virtualiter in the
Roman; an idea of which not the least
trace is to be found in Irenzus, and a mode
of expression foreign to this whole period.
If the passage is really to be understood in
this way, we could not avoid the suspicion,
that here was one of the interpolations. of
which so many indications are to be ob-
served in this writer. But although it is
impossible to decide with perfect certainty
as to the right interpretation of these words,
because we have not the original Greek,
yet there are other ways of explaining them,
which agree more completely with Irenzeus’
mode of thinking as elsewhere exhibited,
and with the connection in this place. In
the first place, I must state that I cannot
approve of the interpretation proposed by
the Licenciate Thiersch in the Studien und
Kritiken, J. 1842, 2tes Heft, S. 527, by
which, we may admit, all difficulties would
be removed. According to that exposition,
the phrase “in qua,” “ἐν ἢ," should refer,
not to the more remote subject, “hance ec-
clesiam,” but to that which stands nearer,
CERTIFICATES OF FELLOWSHIP. 205
Moreover, by means of letters, and Christian brethren who were
travelling, a mutual correspondence was maintained between the most
distant churches m the Roman empire. When a Christian entered a
foreign city, his first inquiry was for the church; and here he was
received as a brother, and supplied with whatever could contribute to
his spiritual and to his bodily refreshment. But as deceivers, inform-
ers, false teachers seeking only to gain more followers for their peculiar
opinions, abused the confidence and charity of the Christians, it became
necessary to adopt precautionary measures to prevent the manifold evils
which might in this way arise. ‘The regulation was therefore adopted,
that in foreign churches those travelling Christians only should be
received as Christian brethren, who could produce a certificate from_
the bishop of the community to which they belonged. ‘These church
letters, — which were as tessarze hospitales, whereby Christians from
every quarter of the world stood in fraternal union with each other, —
received the name of epistolee or literze formatee ; ( γράμματα τετυπωμένα,)
because, to guard against counterfeits, they were drawn up after a cer-
Θ
tain form; (forma, τύπος :}} and also ““ epistole communicatoriz,”
“omnem ecclesiam,” as determining this
antecedent,— every church in which the
doctrine has been preserved pure, as the
author himself explains: “Dummodo ne
in ea per hereticos ipsos traditionis puritas
inquinata sit, sive, ut Irenzi verbis utar,
dummodo in ea a fidelibus cujusvis sint loci
pure conservata sit tradita ab Apostolis ve-
ritas.” But this exposition seems to me
attended with an insurmountable difficulty
already, in the interposed sentence, “hoc est
eos,” etc. If Irenzus intended any such
determination of ecclesia, he would certain-
ly have affixed it immediately to the word
ecclesiam. And after all, it is most natural
to refer the relative to the Roman church
as the principal subject. But now the ques-
tion arises, to what Greek word does the
term “convenire” correspond ; whether to
συμβαίνειν, as Dr. Gieseler, and agreeing
with him, Dr. Nitzsch, in his letter to Del-
briick and Licenciate Thiersch, in the trea-
tise above cited, suppose, or to συνέρχεσϑαι.
If the latter is the word, by coming must be
understood a coming to that place in per-
son, and the passage would have to be ex-
plained thus: On account of the rank
which this church maintains as the ecclesia
urbis, 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 genera-
tion to generation by the Christians from
all countries of the world, who are there
united together. Every deviation from it
would here fall immediately under the ob-
servation of all. As confirmatory of this
imterpretation, might be cited what Athe-
VOL. I. 18
nus says of the city of Rome, (Deipno-
soph. l. 1, ὁ 36:) ““᾿Οἰκουμένης δῆμον τὴν
Ῥώμην, τὴν Ῥώμην πόλιν ἐπιτομὴν τῆς
οἰκουμένης, ἐν 7 συνιδεῖν ἐστιν οὕτως πάσας
τὰς πόλεις ἱδρυμένας." So might one say:
Ἔν τῇ Ῥωμαίων ἐκκλησίᾳ πάσας ἐκκλησίας
ἱδρυμένας." Yet I will not deny the diffi-
culty attending the interpretation of the
second sentence; to the alteration of con-
servata into observata, I can no longer
agree. If we consider συμβαίνειν to be the
word which answers to “convenire,” it
would be the best way, with Gieseler, to
suppose an error of translation, — that the
translator, out of mistake, rendered the
Greek dative into “ab his.” The words
would have to be understood thus: “in
which church the apostolic tradition has
ever been preserved for the Christians of all
countries of the world.” I cannot deny,
that in the comparison of these words with
those at the beginning of the same chapter,
“in omni ecclesia adest respicere omnibus,”
an argument may be found in favor of the
sense just given. But even according to
this interpretation, the same general view
of Rome as that contained in the passage
from Athenzeus, would lie at the basis of
the whole. I think it will be unnecessary
for me to remark here, that I am very far
from being influenced in this investigation
by any protestant interest. At the position
where a scientific understanding of the his-
torical development of Christianity is aimed
at, the interests of Protestantism, which I
profess, could not be in the least endanger-
ed by recognizing a high antiquity of the
Catholic element, both in general and in
particular.
1 How very necessary it was to guard
against the falsification of such church let-
206 CONSTITUTION OF THE CHURCH.
( γράμματα κοινωνικά, ) Inasmuch as they indicated as well that the bear-
ers were in the fellowship of the church, as that the bishops who mutu-
ally sent and: received such letters, were united together in the bonds
of church fellowship. By degrees the church letters (epistole cleric)
were divided into different classes, according to the different objects for
which they were written. ;
It was remarked above, that a closer bond of union existed in the
early times between communities belonging to the same province. We
may add as another effect of the catholic spirit of Christianity, that in
all cases of emergency, in disputes respecting matters of doctrine, of
church life, of church disciplme, common deliberations were frequently
held by deputed members from these communities. Such assemblies
become known to us in the controversies respecting the time of Easter,
and in the discussions on the Montanistic prophecies, towards the close
of the second century. But as a permanent and regular institution,
bound to stated seasons, these provincial synods first make their appear-
ance at the end of the second or beginning of the third century ; and
then, as a peculiar practice of a single district, where local causes may
have led to an arrangement of this kind, earlier than in other countries.
This district was Greece proper, where, from the time of the Achzean
league, the spirit of confederacy had been still preserved; and as
Christianity could attach itself to all national peculiarities, so far as
they contained in them nothing immoral; nay, become so merged in
them as to manifest itself under their peculiar form ; it might well hap-
pen, that the civil spirit of federation, already existing here, passed
over to the ecclesiastical, and gave to the latter, still earlier than in
other countries, a form which was in fact well suited for the common
deliberations of the Christians;—so that out of the representative
assemblies of the city communities, — the Amphictyonic councils, —
sprung the representative assemblies of the church communities — the
provincial synods. As the Christians, in the consciousness that they
were nothing and could do nothing without the Spirit from on High,
were used to begin every important business with prayer, so also at the
opening of these assemblies, they prepared themselves for the public
deliberations by uniting in prayer to Him who had promised to en-
lighten and guide by his Spirit his faithful disciples, when they cast
themselves wholly on him, and to be in the midst of them wherever they
were assembled in his name.!
It seems that this regular institution was at first objected to as an
innovation, so that Tertullian felt himself called upon to stand forth as
its advocate.2 Yet the prevailing spirit of the church decided in favor
of the arrangement, and to the middle of the third century, the annual
provincial synods appear to have been universal,—if we may judge
ters, may be seen from a passage in Euse-_ versis ecclesiis, per qu et altiora queque
bius, 1. LV. c. 23, and another in Cyprian, in commune tractantur, et ipsa representatio
ep. 3. totius nominis Christiani magna venera-
1See the passage of Tertullian, in ἃ tione celebratur.
work written at the beginning of the third 2 Ista solennia, quibus tune preesens pa-
century, (de jejuniis, c. 13:) Aguntur per trocinatus est sermo.
Greecias illa certis in locis concilia, ex uni-
PROVINCIAL SYNODS. 207
from the fact, that we find them observed at the same time in parts of
the church so widely remote from each other as Northern Africa and
Cappadocia.?
These provincial synods might, beyond a doubt, have proved emi-
nently salutary in unfolding and purifying the Christian and church
life, and indeed did prove so im many respects. In these common de-
liberations, the views of different individuals might mutually correct
each others’ errors and supply each others’ defects ; wants, abuses, and
necessary reforms might be discussed more easily and under more dif-
ferent points of view; and the communicated experience of each mem-
ber, made available to all. Certainly also, it savored neither of fanati-
cism nor hierarchical arrogance, if the delegates and presiding officers
of the communities, i the consciousness that they were assembled in
the name of Christ, confidently relied on the guidance of his Spirit,
whose organs alone they wished to be.
But this confidence, in itself so right and so salutary, took a false
and mischievous direction, when 1t ceased to be accompanied by a spirit
of humility and selfrenunciation, by the constantly living consciousness
of the condition to which Christ had attached that promise, that Chris-
tians should be assembled in Ais name. When, unmindful of this condi-
tion, the bishops believed they were entitled merely as bishops to rely
on the illumination of the Holy Spirit, a confidence so ungrounded be-
came the source of all the self-deception of spiritual pride, that expressed
itself in the customary words with which the decrees of such synods
were made known, ‘under the imspiration of the Holy Spirit,’—
*¢ spiritee sancto suggerente.”’
The provincial synods, again, must have operated as a check on the
development of the church, when, instead of providing for the interests
of the communities according to the varying wants of each pomt of
time, they sought to bind mutable things to unchangeable laws.
Finally, it was an evil, that the communities were excluded from all
participation in these assemblies ; that at length the bishops came to
constitute the sole power in them, and by the union which these synods
enabled them to enter into with one another, made themselves more
powerful every day. |
As the provincial synods were used to communicate their decisions
on all important matters of common interest to distant bishops, they
thus served, at the same time, to place the distantly separated portions
of the church in living union with each other, and to preserve them in
this connection. |
Union of the entire Church in one whole, closely connected and inter-
dependent in all its parts. Outward unity of the Catholic Church,
and its Mode of Representation.
Thus from the unapparent grains of mustard seed, scattered in the
field of the world, sprung up a tree, towering above all the plants of
1 Cyprian, ep. 40, and Firmilianus of nos seniores et przepositi in unum convenia-
Cesarea in Cappadocia, in Cyprian, ep.75: mus, ad disponenda ea, que cure nostra
Necessario apud nos fit, ut per singulos an- commissa sunt.
ὡς
208 UNITY OF THE CHURCH
the earth, and spreading its branches in every direction. Such was
that great unity of the catholic church, which, closely connected
through all its scattered parts, was so distinguished in its origin, its
course of development, and its constitution, from all barely human in-
stitutions. The consciousness of being a member of such a body, that
had come off victorious over all opposition of earthly power, and was
destined for perpetuity, must have been felt with the more liveliness
and power by pagans, inasmuch as they had been familiar only with
the political and earthly bond of unfon, but never had a presentiment
of such a spiritual and moral tie bindig men together as members of
the same heavenly community. Still stronger and more elevated must
this consciousness have become in times of persecution, when outward
force tried im vain to sunder this connection. With good right might
the Christians attach importance even to this unity in its outward man-
ifestation, even to this timate external connection, as serving to rep-
resent that higher life, in the fellowship of which all were as one, and to
exhibit the unity of the kmgdom of God. In this outward fellowship
of the church life, they experienced the blessed effects of the imward
fellowship of God’s invisible kingdom ; and to preserve this unity entire,
they entered into conflict with two different parties — those idealistic
sects, which threatened to sever the inward bond of fellowship itself —
the bond of faith; to introduce into the Christian church the old dis-
tinction between a religion for the educated and refined, and a popular
faith, {πίστις and γνῶσις.) and, as was justly charged upon them by
Clement of Alexandria, to divide up the church into a multitude of The-
osophic schools ;4 and next, those men who, blinded by selfwill or pas-
sion, brought in divisions on the ground of mere outward differences,
while in faith they continued to agree with the rest.
But the conflict arismg out of a genuine Christian imterest, and
aimed against some one-sided subjective element that threatened to dis-
solve this wholesome unity of the church, might easily mislead to another
extreme, —an undue estimation of externals, — of the existing church
forms, with which at first this unity was closely knit. Simce that out-—
ward unity was, beyond all doubt, not barely outward, but the image
and expression of the unity within, and im this connection exhibited
itself to the Christian consciousness and experience; men could the
more easily suffer themselves, in this polemic attitude, to be so misled
as to confound, in their conceptions, things which had been fused
together in each one’s feeligs and experience, and to consider them as
inseparably connected. ‘Thus the conception of the church and_its
necessary unity was thrown outward (verausserlichte sich.) This out-
“ward church became the original one for the religious consciousness ;
and, in this its outward form, the only possible medium of fellowship
with Christ. That which in all should, in like manner, have formed
itself outwardly from within, was transferred to this fellowship, medi-
ated by means of a determinate outward organism, in certain visible
forms,— and so the inner and the outward, the invisible and the visible,
1 For the words of Clemens see St. 1. VII. p. 755: Αὐχοῦσι προίστασϑαι διατοιβῆς
μᾶλλον ἢ ἐκκλησίας
ΠΤ
FIRST SPIRITUAL—THEN OUTWARD. 209
inseparably fused together. This association of the Christian conscious-
ness we may perceive already in a writer as early as Irenzus, who
defines, in the first place, the conception of the church subsisting under
this determinate form of constitution, and then puts down the commun-
ion of the Holy Spirit as something first derived from, and mediated
by, the former, when he begins by saying, “ Ubi ecclesia, ibi et Spiritus
Dei,” and then first adds, “et ubi Spiritus Dei, illic ecclesia.” An
entirely different apprehension of the idea of the church and its neces-
sary unity would have presented itself, by reversing the order of these
propositions. ‘It is only at the breast of the church,” as Irenzeus
says, κ΄ that one can be nursed to life. He who takes not refuge in the
church, cannot partake of the Holy Spirit. He who separates himself
from this church, renounces the fellowship of the Holy Spirit.” Such
are the propositions grounded in that association of ideas. It is true,
Trenzeus has in his mind simply such opponents of the church as, by
unchristian doctrine and temper, by selfish interests, had excluded
themselves from the fellowship of the divine life.” Not without good
and sufficient reason could he complain of those ‘ who, from frivolous
causes, divided, and, so far as in them lay, annihilated, the great and
glorious body of Christ.”? With great truth, doubtless, could he say
of them, that it was utterly out of their power to occasion as much good,
as they had done evil through the divisions excited by their means.
But the position held by Treneeus might easily lead to the mistake of ἢ
imputing a bad temper and purpose to all those who, from whatever
tendency, occasioned a reaction against the dominant church system,
excited some movement or other in the church, and hence, divisions.
Now as that which distinguishes the New Testament position from the
Old, is the outward development of the kingdom of God from within
man’s spirit, so we may recognize in this making outward of the king-
dom of God, in this notion of the outward church as an indispensable
mediation, that same confounding together of the Old and New Testa-
ment positions, which we were forced to recognize before, in the notions
of the priesthood and of the Clerus. Indeed, both are necessarily con-
nected ; for the existence and propagation of the church was, in fact,
0 depend on the priesthood and its connection with Christ, of which
the priesthood was to be the medium. ‘To the priesthood was added
afterwards the episcopal system, as the outward mediation and founda-
tion of the outward church unity, — a new step in the progress of The-
ocracy made outward, whose deep-reaching consequences must ever go
on unfolding themselves more widely.
Tn bringing the episcopal system to its completion, we have seen the
important part acted by Cyprian, bishop of Carthage. Not 1688 impor-
tant was his agency in this process of converting the church into an
outward system of mediation, and confounding together the Old and
New Testament positions generally. In this regard, his work, De uni-
1L, Til. c. 24, § 1. χούσας αἰτίας τὸ μέγα καὶ ἔνδοξον σῶμα
2 Semetipsos fraudant a vita per senten- τοῦ Χριστοῦ τέμνοντας καὶ διαιροῦντας, καὶ
tiam malam et operationem pessimam. ὅσον τὸ ἐπ’ αὐτοῖς ἀναιροῦντας.
SL. ΤΥ ο. 83, 8 7: Διὰ μικρὰς καὶ τυ-
18"
210 UNITY OF THE CHURCH —
tate ecclesize, written after the middle of the third century, amidst the
divisions with which he had to contend, constitutes an epoch. This book
contains a remarkable mixture of the true with the false, arising from
that outward view of the church; and we shall recognize, in much that
he says, only the pure expression of the Christian consciousness, when
we strip away from it that outward notion, and understand it after a '
more inward sense ; when we apply to the propositions he lays down the
distinction of the visible and the invisible church. We shall then find
in this work much that is true, directed against a self-seeking, insulat-
ing tendency, that breaks loose from all connection with the fellowship
of life, of which the foundation is Christ. We need only to apply what
he says of the outward relation to a determinate visible form of mani-
festation of the church, to that inner relation to the community of holy
men subsisting in union with Christ its head, whence the divine life
flows forth to the collective body of all the members, which community,
we must-admit, is not necessarily confined to any determinate form of
constitution. ‘Try to pluck away his beams from the sun,” says Cy-
prian, “the unity of the light cannot be so divided asunder. Break
away the twig from the tree, it cannot produce fruit. Cut off the
stream from its fountam, it becomes dry. Just so the church, inter-
penetrated by the light of the Lord, sends its rays through the whole
world. Yet the light which is thus diffused in all directions, is one. In
the lap of that church we were born; we are nourished by its milk,
and quickened by its spirit. Whatever breaks itself off from the origi =~
nal stock, when thus apart by itself, cannot breathe and live.”” But all
this, which is in itself true, Cyprian referred exclusively to the determi-
nate church, connected,—by means of the bishops, its foundation ©
pillars, as the successors of the apostles and inheritors of their spirit-
ual power, — with these apostles, and through them with Christ. His
‘chain of ideas is this: Christ communicated to the apostles, the apos-
tles to the bishops by ordination,! the power of the Holy Ghost; by
the succession of bishops, the power of the Holy Ghost, whence alone
all religious acts can receive their efficacy, is extended, through the
channel of this outward transmission, to all times. Thus is preserved,
in this organism of the church, ever unfolding itself with a living pro-
gression, that divine life, which, flowing from the fountam-head through
this point of mediation, is thus distributed to all the members united
with the organic whole; and whoever breaks off his outward connection
with this outward organism, does, by so doing, exclude himself from
participating in that divine life and from the way to salvation. No one,
by himself alone, can, by faith in the Saviour, have any share in the
divine life that flows from him; no one can, by this faith alone, secure
to himself all the blessings of God’s kingdom; but all this remains neces-
sarily mediated through these organs and the connection with them, —
the connection with the catholic church derived from Christ through
the succession of bishops.
This outward view of the church, however, where it had progressed
1 See on its original form and significancy, my History of the Planting, etc. Vol. I. p. 213
FIRST SPIRITUA].— THEN OUTWARD. 211
so far, called forth a reaction, in the effort after a more spiritual un-
derstanding of its idea, based on the words of Christ himself. A class
of persons, perhaps laymen,! arose in opposition to Cyprian, who appeal-
ed to the promise of Christ, that “‘ where two or three were gathered
together in his name, there he would be in the midst of them ;”’ (Matth.
xviii. 20 ;) every association of true believers, then, was a church. But
Cyprian styled such as urged this objection, corruptors of the gospel.
He accused them of rending these words from their connection, and
hence giving them a false explanation. He maintained, on the other
hand, that Christ had just before established harmony among believers,
the union of hearts in love, as the condition to which the fulfilment of
this promise was annexed. He then proceeded to argue ;? “‘ But how
is it possible for that person to agree with any individual, who does not
agree with the body of the church itself? How can two or three be
assembled in the name ef Christ, who are separated from Christ and his
gospel ?”’ He looks in vain for the fulfilment of the condition of this
promise in men, who, from leaning to the side of their own opinions, had
separated themselves from the church ; for they were the authors of the
schism, — the church had not separated itself from them. But who
is the infallible judge of men’s inward disposition, so as to infer with
certaimty from their outward conduct towards a church, not always free
from blemish, that such a temper exists; where ignorance and misap-
prehension are quite possible, and right and wrong, in the struggle
between the parties, may be on both sides ?
The church once conceived as wholly outward, it must also be con-
ceived as having a necessary outward unity; and this principle estab-
lished, it came next to be thought necessary to settle on some outward
representation of this outward unity, at some one determinate point.
This was at first a thing wholly vague and undefined ; — but it was the
germ from where sprang the papal monarchy of the middle age.
Now it was, without doubt, not an accidental circumstance, that the
Apostle Peter, rather than any other one of the apostles, became the
representative of this unity for the religious consciousness of the West-
ern church. For on him had been bestowed, in virtue of his peculiar
natural character, ennobled by the Holy Spirit, more particularly the
charisma of church government. This gift Christ claimed for the
development of the first community, when he named him the Man of
Rock and made him the man of rock, on which he would build his
church. Yet he said this not to that Peter with whom the human
passed for more than the divine, — not to that Peter whom he called
rather a Satan; but to the one who had uttered the powerful witness
1 Cyprian describes them thus: Nec se dunt—. Unanimitatem prius posuit, con-
quidam vana interpretatione decipiant, quod
dixerit Dominus: Ubicunque fuerint duo
aut tres collecti in nomine meo, ego cum
iis sum. Corruptores evangelii atque in-
terpretes falsi. See next note.
* Extrema ponunt et superiora prete-
reunt, partis memores et partem subdole
comprimentes. Ut ipsi ab ecclesia scissi
sunt, ita capituli unius sententiam § scin-
cordiam pacis ante pramisit, ut conveniat
nobis, fideliter et firmiter docuit. Quomo-
do autem potest ei cum aliquo convenire,
cui cum corpore ipsius ecclesisze non con-
venit ? Quomodo possunt duo aut tres in
nomine Christi colligi, quos constat a Chris-
to et ab ejus evangelio separari 1
3 Non enim nos ab illis, sed illi a nobis
recesserunt.
Zt? UNITY OF THE CHURCH.
of him as the Son of God; and inasmuch as he had uttered this, that
one to whom he could say, ‘‘ Blessed art thou, for flesh and blood have
not revealed this unto thee, but my Father in Heaven.” That peculiar
charisma procured for this apostle the position he assumed in speaking
and acting in the name of all who composed the first community of
Christians. Yet with all this was by no means conceded to him a
preference and precedence over the rest of the apostles. Of any rank,
indeed, of one above another, the question generally was never to be
raised among them. Every assumption of that kind, he who came not
to be ministered unto, but to minister, severely rebuked, (Luke xxi:
24.) The only contention was to be a mutual strife of each to serve
the other. ‘here were three apostles whom Christ, by virtue of their
personal traits of character, distinguished above the rest; Peter was
only one of these. ach of them had his own particular charisma, and
his peculiar position which depended on this. .As Peter was the man
of Rock, working outwardly; so John possessed that charisma by virtue
of which he leaned on the Lord’s bosom, penetrated most deeply into
his being, and into the matter of his discourses. As his own peculiar
charisma and position caused Peter first to appear prominent at the
founding of the church; so his own charisma and position caused John
to retreat more out of view, acting no prominent part until a later
period, when it became important to reconcile the oppositions that had
arisen, to restore peace among the conflicting elements, to tranquillize
and establish the communities when fallen into commotions. The great
apostle to the Gentiles maintained, in a manner the most decided, his
apostolic independence, against that Jewish principle, estimating every
thing by a standard of outwardness, which subsequently, under another
form, mixed itself in with the development of the church; and Paul
could say of himself, that grace had effected more by him than by all
the others.
From these remarks, then, it is clear, that the idea of a primacy of
the Apostle Peter had nothing to fix on but a misunderstanding as well
of the position assigned him in the progressive movement of the church
development, as also of the particular predicates which were given
to him; although it had its good ground, that this peculiar talent
centered precisely in him.
In his work on the unity of the church, Cyprian justly observes, that
all the apostles had received from Christ the same dignity and the same
power with Peter; but he supposes that in one passage, however,
Christ bestows this power on Peter in particular, — says of him in par-
ticular, that on him he will build his church,— gives it in charge to
him in particular to feed his sheep—for the purpose of showing how
the whole development of the church and of the priesthood was to radi-
ate from one point, and thus making clearly evident the unity of the
church, the unity of the episcopal power. The Apostle Peter appears
here as the representative of the one church, abiding in the unity she
derived from the divine appointment, and of the one episcopal power,
1 See my History of the Planting, &c., Vol. II. p. 505, et seq.
PETER’S PRIMACY A MISUNDERSTANDING. 213
which, though distributed among many organs, yet in its origin and
essence is, and ever remains, but one. Whoever, therefore, forsakes
the outward fellowship with the one visible, catholic church, tears him-
self away from the representation of the unity of the church, connected
by divine appointment with the person of the Apostle Peter. How is
it possible for any one to suppose he continues still to be a member of
the church of Christ, when he forsakes the cathedra Petri, on which the
church was founded ?}
But even allowing that the Apostle Peter might be considered as the
representative of the unity of the ¢hurch, still it by no means follows,
that an individual representative of this kind must continue to exist in
the church through every age. Still less does it follow, that this indi-
vidual representative must be connected particularly with the Roman
church ; for although the tradition that the Apostle Peter visited the
‘church at Rome cannot, on good and sufficient grounds, be called im
question, yet certain it is, that he was not the founder of this church,
and that he was never, in any special sense, its presiding officer. This
church could with as little propriety be called the cathedra Petri, as
the cathedra Paul, Irenzeus and Tertullian seem to be aware, indeed,
that Peter and Paul were its founders, that they gave it a bishop, and
honored it by their martyrdom. But that the Roman church held a
prominence, as the cathedra Petri, over all other apostolic churches,
they still remain ignorant. Yet as the idea of an outward unity of the
church could suggest the notion of an outward individual representative
of, that unity, so the recognition of such a historical representation
might easily pass out of the ideal ito the real world, so that the exhi-
bition of the church unity at a determinate point came to be considered
not barely as a thing once existing, but as necessary for the existence
of the church in all times. And as it was no accidental thing, that the
apostle had been made the representative of the church guidance, so
too was it no accidental thmg, that men, when once impelled to seek
for such an outward representation of the church unity for all times,
transferred this dignity precisely to the church of the great city which
was called to rule in the world. As most of the western communities
were used to regard the Roman church as their mother, their ecclesia
apostolica, to whose authority they especially appealed; as they were
in the habit of naming Peter the founder of the Roman church, and to
trace back the tradition of the Roman church to him; and as Rome
was once the seat of the dominion of the word; it so happened that
men began to consider the Roman church as the cathedra Petri, and
to apply what had been said of the Apostle Peter, as the representative
of the church unity, to this cathedra Petri. In the making outward
of the conception of the church, from which this form of the outward
presentation of its unity gradually shaped itself, the way was already
1 Some trace of this mode of explaining solvendi et alligandi in ccelis et in terris
the above passages relating to the Apostle potestatem?” This language shows that he
Peter, may be found even in Tertullian. was not a Montanist when he wrote this book ;
Preescript. heret. c. 22: “Latuit aliquid as is evident by comparing it with what he
Petrum :edificande ecclesie Petrum dic- wrote when a Montanist, in his book de
tum, clayes regni ccelorum consecutum et Pudicitia, of which we shall speak hereafter
-
214 ARROGANT CLAIMS OF ROMAN BISHOPS.
prepared for the conversion of the political supremacy of the “ city”
into this spiritual form,— which moreover contained the germ to the
‘ secularizing of Christ’s kingdom.
In Cyprian we find this transference already complete. As evidence
of this, may serve not only those passages in his book de unitate ecclesiz,
where the reading is disputed ;1—-in an uncontroverted passage, ep
55 ad Cornel., he styles the Roman church the “ Petri cathedra, ec-
clesia principalis, unde unitas sacerdotalis exorta est.”
Without doubt, this idea was still very obscure and vague; but a
false principle once established, the more vague the notion, the more
room would be left for introducing new meanings, and extracting
new inferences. In the minds of the Roman bishops, this idea seems
early to have obtained a more fixed and definite shape; and here the
Roman love of empire seems early to have insinuated itself into ecclesi-
astical affairs, and made its appearance in a spiritual dress. ἴ
Far back we observe already m the Roman bishops traces of the
assumption, that to them, as successors of the Apostle Peter, belonged
a peculiar and ultimate authority in ecclesiastical disputes; that the
cathedra Petri must take precedence of all other apostolic churches, as
the source of the apostolic tradition. Such an assumption was shown
by the Roman bishop Victor, when, about the year 190, he excommu-
nicated the churches of Asia Minor on account of some trifling dispute
relating to mere externals.2, In the Montanistic writings of Tertullian
we find indications, showing that the Roman bishops issued peremptory
edicts on ecclesiastical matters ; ; endeavored to make themselves con-
sidered as the bishops of bishops —episcopos episcoporum ;? and were
in the habit of appealing to the authority of their “‘ antecessores.”’ 4
After the middle of the third century, the Roman bishop Stephanus
allowed himself to be carried away by the same spirit of hierarchical
arrogance as his predecessor Victor. It was his wish, too, in a dispute
by no means important,° to obtrude the tradition of the Roman church
on all other churches as an unalterable and decisive law; and he ex-—
communicated the churches of Asia Minor and of North Africa, which
refused to acknowledge this rule.®
1 Though, in the passage from Cy prian,
“ Qui ecclesix renititur et resistit, [qui ca-
thedram Petri, super quem fundata est. ec-
clesia, deserit] in ecclesia se esse confidit 1"
the suspected clause, here included in brack-
ets, were genuine, yet it would not follow,
that, in this particular instance, he had in
his mind the cathedra Petri subsisting at
his time in the Roman church; but the
phrases, “ ecclesiz reniti,” and “cathedram
Petri deserere,” might rather, according to
the connection, be wholly codrdinate, so
that he would say: he who breaks his con-
nection with the one only church, does by
_ that very act attack the representation of
the church unity which had been attached
by Christ himself to the person of the Apos-
tle Peter. The whole Apostolic and epis-
copal fulness of authority as one, although
manifesting itself through different organs,
appears to him to be “represented in the
spiritual power transferred to the Apostle
Peter. The entire episcopatus, or the ca-
thedra of all the bishops conceived as
one = the cathedra Petri,— hence to re-
nounce obedience to the bishops is the same
as to attack the cathedra Petri.
2 The dispute about the time of celebrat-
ing Easter, of which mention will be made
hereafter.
3 Tertullian, de pudicitia, ο. 1: Audio,
edictum esse propositum et quidem peremp-
torium: pontifex scilicet maximus, quod
est episcopus episcoporum, edicit.
* Tertullian, de virg. velandis.
5 The dispute about the validity of bap-
tism administered by heretics, also to be
noticed elsewhere.
6 Nihil innovetur nisi quod traditum est,
—he declared,—se per successionem ca-
thedram Petri habere. Cyprian, ep. 74 et 75
OPPOSITION TO THEM. TRENAUS—CYPRIAN. 215
But it was far from being the case, that these assumptions of the
Roman bishops could penetrate even through the western church — to
say nothing here of the reaction they had to encounter from the freer
tendencies of the Greek church. In the first named dispute, the com-
munities of Asia Minor, nothing daunted by the arrogant language of
Victor, maintained their own principles, and set over against the tradi-
tion of the Roman church, the tradition of their own sedes apostolice.
Irenzus, bishop of Lyons, in a letter to the Roman bishop Victor,
severely rebuked his unchristian arrogance, although agreeing with
him as to the matter in dispute. “He disapproved of his attempt to
obtrude one form of church life on all the communities; and declared
that nothing was required but unity in faith and in love ; and that this,
instead of being disturbed by differences in respect to outward things,
did but shine forth through these differences with the greater strength.
He recognized the right of all the communities, in such matters, to act
freely and independently, according to their own ancient usage. He
objected to the authority of the tradition of a smgle determmate church
the fact, that tradition often originates in, and is propagated by, sim-
plicity and ignorance. Although Cyprian, as we have before re-
marked, looked upon the Roman church as really the cathedra Petri,
and as the representative of the outward church unity, yet he was far
from inferring thence the right of this church to determme all matters
of church controversy. On the contrary, he mamtained, with firmness
and energy, the independent right of the individual bishops to manage
the affairs of their churches according to their own principles; and he
carried through what he recognized as right, in spite of the oy-
position of the Roman church. In communicating to Stephanus,
bishop of Rome, at the commencement of the second of the above
mentioned controversies, the principles of the North African church,
which he well knew did not accord with the Roman usages, he ad-
_ dressed him in the name of a synod, as one colleague, conscious of an
equality of dignity and of rights, addresses another. ‘In virtue of
our equal dignity,’ says he, ‘‘ and in unfeigned love, we have imparted
these things to you, dearest brother; for we hope, that whatever is
agreeable ‘to piety and truth — will also, in accordanee with your own
true faith and true piety, be pleasing to you. We are well aware,
however, that many are reluctant to part with the opinions they have
once imbibed, and slow to change their principles; but so far as they
can do it, without violating the bond of unity and peace, bindmg them
to their colleagues, cling to many peculiarities which have become cus-
tomary among them. In matters of this sort, we put no restraint, we
impose no law, on any man; since each presiding officer of a commu-
nity has, in the management of these matters, his own free will, and
is accountable for his mode of proceeding to the Lord alone.’’®
1 Euseb. 1. V. ο. 24. aut lezem damus, quando habeat in eccle-
2 Τῶν παρὰ τὸ ἀκριβὲς ὡς εἰκὸς κρατούν- siz administratione voluntatis sus arbitri-
των τὴν Kav ἁπλότητα καὶ ἰδιωτισμὸν συνῆ- um liberum unusquisque przpositus, ratio-
Vevav εἰς τὸ μετέπειτα πεποιηκότων. nem actus sui Domino redditurus.
8 Qua in re nec nos vim cuiquam facimus
216 CYPRIAN OPPOSES THE CLAIMS OF ROME.
After the violent declarations which ensued frem the Roman bishop,
he continued to avow the same principle before a council of more than
eighty of the bishops of North Africa; invitmg each of them to express
his own views with freedom; ‘for no one,”’ said he, ‘‘ should make
himself a bishop of bishops.’”? When Stephanus appealed to the author-
ity of the ancient Roman tradition, and spoke against innovations,
Cyprian replied,! that it was rather Stephanus himself who made the
innovations, and broke away from the unity of the church. ‘‘ Whence
then,” he says, ‘comes that tradition? Is it derived from the words
of our Lord and from the authority of the gospels, or from the instruc-
tions and the letters of the apostles? Custom, which has crept in
among some unawares, ought not to hinder the truth from prevailing
and triumphing; for custom without truth is only inveterate error.”
He finely remarks, ‘‘ that it is no more beneath the dignity of a Roman
bishop than of any other man, to suffer himself to be corrected when he
εἶδ in the wrong; for the bishop ought not only to teach but to learn,
for he becomes even the better teacher, who is daily adding to his
knowledge and making progress by the correction of his errors.” Fir.
milianus also, the bishop of Czesarea in Cappadocia, in expressing his
agreement with Cyprian, declared himself quite strongly against the
unchristian behavior of Stephanus, who forbade the Roman church to
receive the delegates of the North African church into their houses.
He considered it a reproach that one who boasted of being the succes-
sor of the Apostle Peter, on whom was built the unity of the church,
should rend that unity by his uncharitable and arrogant proceedings.
In opposition to the alleged tradition of the Roman church, he pro-
duced the tradition of other ancient churches, as also doctrinal reasons ;
and as evidence that the Romans did not observe, in all points, the
original tradition, and appealed in vain to the authority of the apostles,
he adduces the fact, that in many church matters, they departed from
the customs of the church at Jerusalem, and of the ancient apostolical
churches ;* yet notwithstanding all these differences, the unity and
peace of the catholic church had never been disturbed4
On another and earlier occasion, Cyprian ‘had already shown how
far he was from yielding to the Roman bishops a supreme jurisdiction
in the church, and from countenancing them in the exercise of it.
Basilides and Martialis, two Spanish bishops, had been deposed by a
synod, because they were lbellaticit, and for other offences; and it is
said, they acknowledged themselves the validity of their sentence. In
the place of Basilides, a successor had already been chosen by the pro-
vincial bishops, with the assistance of the church over which he had
presided. The two deposed bishops, however, had recourse to Stepha-
nus, the bishop of Rome, and the latter, assuming a supreme judicatory
power, reversed the sentence of the Spanish ecclesiastical court, and
1 Ep. 74, ad Pompej. 3 Ep. 75.
2Nec consuetudo, que apud quosdam * Eos autem, qui Rome sunt, non ea in
obrepserat, impedire debet, quominus veri- omnibus observare, que sunt ab origine
tas prevaleat et vincat; nam consuetudo tradita, et frustra apostolorum auctorita
sine veritate vetustas erroris est. tem preetendere.
a a ee
CHURCH DISCIPLINE. 217
restored them both to their office; whether it was that he found good
reasons for so domg in what they alleged in their own justification, or
that there was already a strong inclination in the Roman church to
take part with those that appealed to its jurisdiction. A contest now
arose in Spain on the question whether the first or the second sentence
should be respected, and the communities of North Africa were applied
to for their opmion. The North African synod at Carthage, in whose
name Cyprian replied, did not hesitate to declare that the decision of
the Roman bishop was without force, and strongly charged the Spanish
churches not to suffer the two unworthy bishops to continue in office.
Into the question, whether the Roman bishop was justified in prosecut-
ing such a judicial examination, Cyprian did not enter; but he declared
without farther discussion, the unjust sentence, resting as it did on in-
sufficient grounds, to be void. ‘The regular ordination,” he observed,}
(meaning of the successor to the deposed bishop Basilides,) ‘ cannot
be rendered null, because Basilides, after his offences were discovered,
and had been acknowledged too by himself, went to Rome and deceived
our colleague Stephanus, who was at a distance, and not acquainted
with the real circumstances of the case; so that he who had been de-
posed by a just sentence, fraudulently contrived to be reinstated in his
office.” Perhaps the mortification which the ambitious, hierarchical
views of Stephanus experienced on this occasion— although in other
respects Cyprian speaks of him with great moderation —had much in-
fluence in deciding him to the obstinate stand which he took in the
later controversy of which we have before spoken.
Church Discipline. Exclusion from the Fellowship of the Visible
Church. Re-admission to the same.
As the founder of the church had foretold, the process of its develop-
ment could be none other than a process of refining, renewed over and
over again. The idea of a perfectly pure and perfectly holy church
could not be realized in the earthly course of its history ---- for the life
communicated by Christ to humanity can be sustained and transmitted
only in a never ceasing conflict with the power of sin, which resists the
current of that life from without, and even threatens to mix in and
disturb it with its own impurities. The church itself which truly an-
swers to its conception, the church of the regenerate and sanctified,
continues ever to be inwardly affected by the reactions of this principle
of sin never wholly overcome ; and hence in continual need of cleansing.
But this church, though represented in a visible form, is yet in its es-
sence invisible ; and to this its visible appearance various elements be-
come attached, partaking in no respect of that inner essence ;— and
there are no sure and certain marks whereby it is possible to separate
from one another these heterogeneous components. Manifold are the
gradations through which the transition is made from the true church
to the opposite world, which strives to draw her into itself and to trans-
form her by its own spirit; a thing impossible, unless she enter herself
1 Ep. 68.
VOL. I. 19
218 CHURCH DISCIPLINE.
into such a union. Hence the sifting of the chaff from the wheat,
which can be accomplished by no human tribunal, and which strives
prematurely to sever the threads of historical development ordained and
surely guided by divine Wisdom, and would hinder the very work of
the church itself to reform the world, must be left to a higher judgment,
and can only take place after the threads of history have run their
appointed course.
But the church, when left wholly to herself, and unmixed as yet
with the state, might bring about, if not a perfect, yet a certain separa-
tion —so as to exclude from herself the manifestly foreign elements,
showing themselves to be such by marks not to be mistaken ; indeed,
the Jewish synagogues had before exercised a disciplinary judgment of
this kind over their members. The early communities were thus to
seek to secure themselves against the infection of pagan immorality,
aid thereby practically to bear witness, that the mere confession of
faith made no man a Christian ;— that whoever contradicted by his
daily living the laws of Christianity, could not be regarded as a Chris-
tian brother.
Hence the Apostle Paul declared the Christian communities to be
not merely justified, but bound, to eject such unworthy members from
their body. With all pagans, the Christians might eat, and stand im
every social relation; but with such apostate brethren, they were to
avoid all manner of intercourse, for the purpose of practically showing
them, that they could no longer claim the title of Christian brethren.
It was from this point of view, that Tertullian could now say to the
pagans: ‘* Those who are no Christians, are wrongly so called; such
in truth take no part in our religious assemblies ; such receive not with
us the communion; they have by their sins become yours again, since
we hold not even common intercourse with those whom your cruelty
has forced to denial; although we should certamly be likely to tolerate
amongst us more easily those who through constraint than those who
have voluntarily deserted the principles of our religion. Besides, it is
without reason you call those Christians who are not recognized as such
by the Christians, who cannot deny their own.”’?
But the church was designed also to be an institution for training ;
it was not to give up the hope of reclaiming the fallen. By this very
exclusion from the society of the brethren, the fallen members, if they
retained any susceptibility for better feelings, were to be brought to the
sense of their guilt and awakened to a fruitful repentance. If they
manifested any such penitence in their living, they were to be taken
under the fostering care of the church, and at length, after their re-
pentance had been sufficiently proved, once more adopted into the
community. Such was the direction of the Apostle Paul. In later
times, various regulations were gradually introduced, relating to the
cases in which resort should be had to such exclusion from the church
fellowship; to the manner of life which the excluded members ought to
lead; to the proofs of remorse and penitence which they must give, and
1 Ad nation. l. Ic. 5.
CHURCH PENANCE. 219
to the duration of the time of their exclusion, All these points were
differently determined, according to the different nature of the offences,
and the different moral character evinced by the offenders. Those who
stood in this relation to the community, were made a particular class,
designated by the name of pcenitentes. ‘Tertullian requires “ that the
inward compunction of conscience should be manifested also by outward
acts ;! that they should express their sorrow by their whole deportment,
pray for the forgiveness of their sins with fasting, present a confession
of their sins before the community, request the intercessions of all the
Christian brethren, and especially humble themselves before the pres-
byters and the known friends of God.’’? To those who suffered them-
selves, to be kept back by shame from making‘confession before the
church, he says,? “‘ This may be grievous, where one exposes himself to
contempt and to mockery ; where others exalt themselves at the expense
of him who has fallen. But in the midst of brethren and fellow-servants,
where the hope, fear, joy, pain and suffering are shared in common;
because one common spirit proceeds from one common Lord and Fath-
er, — how should you there consider your own as different from your-
self? Why fly from those to whom your grief is as their own, as if
they rejoiced over it? The body cannot rejoice at the suffering of one
of its members. ‘The whole body must share in the pain and cooperate
towards the cure. Where two are together, there is the church ; but
the church is Christ. When you embrace the knees of your brother,
you embrace Christ, you are a suppliant to Christ. And so when they
weep over you, Christ suffers, Christ supplicates the Father. Hasily
is that ever obtamed, which the Son supplicates of the Father.” Ori-
gen writes: 4 ‘‘ the Christians sorrow over those who have been overcome
by lust, or any other noticeable vice, as if they were dead; and after a
long period, if they have given sufficient evidence of a change of heart,
they receive them once more to the standing of catechumens, ag those
risen from the dead.”? When their penitence had been satisfactorily
proved, they were absolved and restored to the fellowship of the church
with the sign of blessing, the laying on of the hands of the bishop and
clergy.
Salutary as these regulations might be, as a means of Christian cul-
ture, in the then existing state of the church, yet here also there was
great danger of confounding the Inner essence with the Outward form,
especially when the outward notion of the church had already become
a fundamental principle. Such must have been the case, for example,
when it was attempted to confine the expression of penitent feelings to cer-
tain uniform signs, and it was thought that in manifesting these consisted
the essence of true penitence itself; and again, when no distinction was
made betwixt absolution and the divine forgiveness of sins. ‘The church
teachers, however, did not fail to point out the true nature of Christian
repentance, and to represent those outward mortifications as merely
signs of an inward grace. ‘‘ When the man condemns himself,” says
1 Ut non sola conscientia preeferatur, sed 21, 6. '
aliquo etiam actu administretur. De peeni- PY. 10.
tentia, c. 9 # c. Cels. 1. III. c. 51.
f
220 CHURCH PENANCE.
Tertullian,! “* God acquits him. So far — believe me —as thou sparest
not thyself, God will spare thee.’”? And the bishop Firmilianus of
Ceesarea in Cappadocia says, in a letter written in the latter half of the
third century: “ With us, the bishops and presbyters meet once a year
to consult together for the recovery by repentance of fallen brethren ;
not as though they could receive from us the forgiveness of sins, but
that they may by us be brought to a sense of their sins and constrained
to render a more full satisfaction to the Lord.2 Cyprian explains him-
self thus:® “We do not prejudge the Lord’s judgment; so that if he
find the sinner’s repentance full and satisfactory, he may ratify our.
decision; but if any man shall have deceived us by a hypocritical
repentance, then let God, who cannot be mocked, and who looketh on
the heart, decide with regard to that which we have failed to explore
to the bottom, and the master correct the judgment of his servants.”
But still it cannot be denied, that the consequences resulting from
that making outward of the conception of the church, and that Old
Testament view of the priesthood, had here already mixed in. Thus
the. judgment on an individual who had rendered himself liable to the
church penance was reckoned among the acts of this priesthood; and
the full power of exercising it, derived from the authority to bind and
to loose, given to the apostles. That one should thus submit himself to
the judgment of the priest, appeared as an act of that humility which
belongs to the essence of true penitence. The notion took such a
shape, that the whole system of church penance came to be considered
as a satisfaction to be done to God.® Perhaps there were some who
opposed this view of the necessity of outward church penance, and who
endeavored to establish the principle that all depended on the direction
of the heart and of the affections towards God, not on external things.®
We say perhaps, —for from the language of Tertullian in combatting
this class, from his own assumed position, we cannot decide with cer-
tainty in what sense that principle was understood. It is certamly
possible, that they may have been a class, who made a false distinction
between the Inner and the Outward in the religious life, and under the
pretext that all depended on the inner direction of the affections towards
God alone, allowed themselves to excuse the failings of the outward life.’
Connected with the remarks here made on. church penance and
church absolution, must be our judgment also of a controversy which
arose with regard to these matters. Had the notion of absolution been
rightly understood, as an announcement of the divine forgiveness of sin,
always conditioned on repentance and faith, instead of bemg converted
into a judicial act of the clergy, a mutual understanding might have
1 De peenitentia, c. 9. Peenitentia; aterm derived from the civil
2 Cyprian, ep. 75. law, which he had studied and practised in
8 In his 52d letter ad Antonian. early life.
4 See the words, in a letter of the Con- 6 Sed ajunt quidam, satis Deum habere.
fessors, in Cyprian, (ep. 26.) Humilitas si corde et animo suspiciatur, licet actu mi-
atque subjectio, alienum de se expectasse nus fiat. De pcenitentia, c. 5.
judicium, alienam de suo sustinuisse sen- 7 “Ttaque se salvo metu et fide peccare,”
tentiam. says Tertullian, — prone, as he was, to in-
5 Satisfactio, in Tertullian’s book de fer evil from the doctrines of his opponents
VENIAL SINS— MORTAL SINS. 221
been easily brought about on the matter of dispute which we are now
about to mention. We allude to the controversy between a milder and
a more rigid party on the subject of church penance.
All were agreed in distinguishing those sins into which all Christians
might fall through the remaining sinfulness of their nature, and those
which clearly indicated that the transgressor was still living under
bondage to sin as an abiding condition; that he was not one of the
regenerate; that he had either never attaimed to that condition, or
had again fallen from it— peccata venalia— and peccata mortalia, or
ad mortem. ‘These terms they had derived from the first epistle of St.
John. Among sins of the second class they reckoned, besides the de-
nial of Christianity, deception, theft, incontinence, adultery, etc.1 Now
it was the principle of the milder party, which gradually became the
predominant one, that the church was bound to receive every fallen
member, into whatever sins he may have fallen, — to hold out to all,
under the condition of smcere repentance, the hope of the forgiveness
of sin. At least, in the hour of death, absolution and the communion
should be granted to those who manifested true repentance. The
other party would never consent to admit again to the fellowship of the
church, such as had violated their baptismal vow by sins of the latter
class. Such persons, — said they, — have once despised the forgive-
ness of sin obtained for them by Christ, and assured to them in baptism.
There is no purpose of divine grace with regard to such, which is
revealed to us; hence the church is in no case warranted to announce
to them the forgiveness of sm. If the church exhorts them also to
repentance, yet she can promise nothing to them as to the issue, since
the power bestowed on her to bmd and to loose has no reference to
such. She must leave them to the judgment of God. The one party
would not suffer that any limits should be set to the mercy of God
towards penitent men; the other would preserve erect the holiness of
God, and feared that, by a false confidence in the power of priestly ab-
solution, men would be encouraged to feel more safe in their sins.
Church Divisions or Schisms.
The schisms, or church divisions in the more limited sense, must be
distinguished from the heresies properly so called. The former were
such divisions of the catholic church, as proceeded from certain out-
ward occasions, aiming at objects connected with the constitution or the
_ discipline of the church ; the latter, divisions which sprung out of differ-
ences and disputes on matters of doctrine. While all that is to be said
of the latter stands intimately connected with the genetic development
of doctrines, the exhibition of the former cannot be separated from the
history of the constitution and discipline of the church ; and each serves
to illustrate the other. In a doctrinal point of view, the history of
church divisions is important only so far as it serves to unfold the doc-
trine on the church ; but the development of this doctrine stands-closely
1 Homicidium, idololatria, fraus, negatio, blasphemia, meechia et fornicatio. Tertullian,
de pudicitia, c. 19.
19*
222 CHURCH DIVISIONS.
connected again with the history of the church constitution. It seems,
therefore, in every view, best suited to our purpose, to annex the history
of church divisions with the section which relates the history of the con-
stitution of the church.
We have to notice in this period two remarkable divisions of the
church, both intimately connected with each other, as well in respect to
the time of their origin, as in respect to the churches and persons, that
especially took part in them. In the history of both, the monarchical
system of episcopacy is seen coming forth victoriously out of the contest
with presbyterianism; in both, Catholicism is seen triumphing over
Separatism ; both divisions conduced to the establishment of the system
of church unity. We refer to the divisions of Felicissimus and to that
of Novatian ; the first proceeding out of the church of proconsular
Africa, the second out of the church of Rome.
In the history of the first mentioned division, the bishop Cyprian of
Carthage appears as the head of a party, and as the most important
among the actors in the scene; and the origin of the schism was imme-
diately connected with the manner in which he arrived at the episcopal
dignity. It will serve, therefore, to give us a clearer understanding of
the whole subject, if we begin with casting a glance at the history of
this man’s life. Cyprian had remained a pagan until the last years of
his manhood. He was by profession a rhetorician, if not an advocate,}
and the rhetorical cast of his style of writing testifies of this ἂν earlier
occupation. In the years of his paganism he had already gained pub-
lic confidence by the uprightness of his 16.323 By the influence of the
presbyter Ceecilius, whose name he afterwards adopted, and who at his
death committed his wife and children to Cyprian’s care, he was
brought to embrace the Christian faith. Although, while a pagan, he
had led a blameless life in the common estimation, yet it by no means
appeared so to himself, after he had learned to contemplate the réquisi-
tions of the divine law, and to know himself in the light of Christianity.
The profound sense of sin, as a power from which man cannot deliver
himself by his own strength, preceded also in his case the experience of
that which grace alone can effect; as he expresses it in the letter ad-
dressed to his friend Donatus, written probably soon after his baptism.
Hence he was now the more inspired with a glowing enthusiasm to reach
that idea of the divine life which Christianity had lighted up within his
soul. And as he interpreted the words of our Lord —“ If thou wilt be
perfect, go sell that thou hast and give it to the poor,” according to the
prevailing views of that period, more closely to their letter than to their
spirit, for the purpose of fulfiling this requisition, he sold the two landed
estates of which he was possessed,? and distributed the proceeds among
1 Jerome says, (ἃ. v. i. c.67,) that he was
a rhetorician, and we have no good reason
to doubt this account. We are under no
necessity of supposing that in what he says
(ep. 1. ad Donatum,) respecting the oppo-
sition between spiritual and worldly elo-
quence, (in judiciis, in concione, pro rostris, )
that he was thinking of his own calling,
and therefore had once been used to such
public discourse.
2 See the biographical sketch of his life,
composed by his disciple, the Deacon Pon-
tius.
8 His garden was soon restored back to
him, probably by the love of the church, as
we may gather from the language of Pon-
CYPRIAN—HIS HISTORY AND POSITION. 293
the poor. The devout zeal which shone forth so brilliantly in his con-
duct even while a neophyte, acquired for him, to a great degree, the
love and esteem of the community. He became the man of the people ;
and the community made use of the influence they could then com-
mand, in his behalf. He was raised by their votes, contrary to the letter
of the church laws, soon after his baptism, in 247, to the dignity of a
presbyter, and as early as the year 248, placed at the head, as bishop.
The community environed his house, for the purpose of compelling him
to accept the episcopal dignity. But this very circumstance, that he
had been raised to the station he occupied by the enthusiastic love of
the church, contributed from the first to create a party against him, at
the head of which stood five presbyters.1 Of these, several, perhaps,
put forward claims themselves to the episcopal office, and looked with
eyes of jealousy on the upstart neophyte who superseded those that had
grown gray in the service of the church. They might also be led on
by other motives to us unknown. Cyprian was well aware of the difii-
cult position he was about to assume, when he shrank back from the
assumption of the chief pastoral office. the whole weight and responsi-
bleness of which stood clearly before him, — attractive as it must have
seemed, on-the other hand, to a man of his peculiar bent and talent for
rule to be placed at the head of the church governance. We discover
here the first ground and the germ of the ensuing controversies. The
five presbyters above mentioned now proceeded with their followers to
contest the episcopal authority of Cyprian ; and as the presbyters were
still mindful of their ancient rights, and still striving to maintain their
former influence in the government of the church, there could be no
want of disputes between a bishop, and especially one like Cyprian, so
resolutely active, in the consciousness of that supreme spiritual power
which he believed himself to possess by divine right, and his antagonists
in the presbyterial college. .
Where men are contending for their rights, even those men in whom ἡ
a life from God has indeed begun, but the strength of the old nature
still makes itself felt, it is usually the case, that instead of emulating
each other, with the spirit of love and self-renunciation, im the fulfil-
ment of duties, they allow, on both sides, their own will and their pas-
sions to give that which is wrong the color of right. So it happened in
the present case. But we are not well enough informed of all the cir-
cumstances to be able clearly to separate the right from the wrong on
either side ; for we have only the representations of one party in the
dispute, —representations which sometimes bear on their very front the
marks of strong excitement.
An unbiassed contemplation will certainly not fail to discover in Cy-
prian, the man inspired and animated with true love to the Redeemer
tius: Hortos, quos inter initia fidei suw the five presbyters: Conjurationis suw me-
venditos, et Dei indulgentia restitutos. mores, et antiqua illa contra episcopatum
1 We see this from the words of Pontius, meum, imo contra suffragium vestrum et
in speaking of Cyprian’s election: Quidam Dei judicium venena retinentes, instaurant
illi restiterunt, etiam ut vineeret; with which veterem contra nos impugnationem suam
compare ep. 40, respecting the intrigues of
224 CHURCH DIVISIONS.
and to his church. It is undeniable that he was devoted to his com-
munity, as a faithful shepherd; that its interests honestly lay nearest
his heart; and that he meant to exercise his episcopal authority for the
preservation of good order and discipline in the flock ; — but it is also
certain, that he was not sufficiently on his guard against that funda-
mental evil of man’s nature, which so easily fastens on what is best m
him, and by which the best qualities may be even perverted and de-
stroyed, —an evil which may be most dangerous to those endowed with
great gifts and powers for the Lord’s service, — most dangerous, where
it exhibits itself under the spiritual garb, — that he was not watchful
enough against the risings and suggestions of self-will and pride. The
point he was contending for, the full power of the episcopate, proved to
him certainly, at times, the rock whereon his spiritual life made ship-
wreck. He forgot, in the bishop, “appointed by God himself and aet-
ing in the name of Christ,” the man, still living m the flesh, and
᾿ exposed, like all other men, to the temptations of sin; im the bishop,
over whom no layman might set up himself to judge, the bishop called
to rule and gifted with an inviolable authority from God, he forgot the
disciple of Christ, of him who was meek and lowly of spirit, and for the
good of his brethren, appeared in the form of a servant. Had he ever
remained true to this spirit of Christ’s disciples, he might assuredly
have gained the victory over his adversaries with far more ease to him-
self and safety to the church, than by all his stir about the inalienable
rights of the episcopate, and his appeals to the dignity of the priestly
office with which God had invested him.
The five presbyters of the opposite party, or some of them at least,
seem to have been at the head of separate communities in'Carthage or
its neighborhood; and they now ventured, in defiance of the bishop
whom they hated, to introduce several arbitrary measures in the man-
agement of their filial communities; or, at any rate, such measures as
Cyprian, from the principles he maintained with regard to the episcopal
system, might properly consider as encroachments on the episcopal
rights. One of them, Novatus by name, president of a community
situated upon a hill in or néar by Carthage, was, so far as we can
judge,! a man of restless and enterprising mind, who, with a fierce spirit
1 The charges which Cyprian himself
brings against him, (ep. 49,) if well found-
ed, do, indeed, place him in the most unfa-
vorable light; but these charges wear every
appearance of being dictated by blind pas-
sion, trusting in deceptive reports without
due investigation, and indulging a most un-
warrantable liberty of drawing conclusions.
A common method in controversies, — to
impute the worst motives to an opponent,
and suppose them just as true as if one
could read into his heart, yet without offer-
ing the least evidence to justify the suppo-
sition. Of Novatus, it was said, that he
was about to be arraigned before an eccle-
siastical court ; his own conscience declared
him guilty; happily for him, the Decian
persecution broke out, and interrupted the
proceedings which had commenced against
him. And now, in order to evade the sen-
tence which awaited him as soon as the
persecution was over, he excited all those
agitations, of which we shall speak hereaf-
ter, and separated himself from the domi-
nant church. How cleverly put together,
yet how improbable is all this! Cyprian
himself, during the Decian persecution,
still recognized Novatus as a lawful presby-
ter, see ep. 5. Now, for the first time, he
knows of this man such wicked things as,
if they were true, would testify against the
bishop who could suffer a man of such a
character to retain the office of presbyter.
Cyprian does, indeed, bring forward facts
against him; but what vouches for the
truth of those facts? How would it have
NOVATUS. 225
of ecclesiastical freedom, spurned from him the yoke of episcopal mon-
archy.! This person, without authority from the bishop, proceeded to
ordain one of his followers, Felicissimus, a man well calculated for the
position of a zealous and enterprising partizan, and who doubtless, by
his personal relations, had great influence in the community, to the
office of deacon in this his own church.? Cyprian declares this act an
encroachment on his episcopal rights ; but it may have been the opinion
of Novatus, on the principles of his presbyterian system, that as a pres-
byter and presiding officer of the church, he was warranted so to pro-
ceed. The right and the wrong in the transaction was a pot certainly
not so clearly made out, at a time when the struggle betwixt the aris-
tocratic and monarchical forms of church government remained still
undecided. Cyprian permitted Felicissimus to retain his office ;
whether it was out of deference to a powerful party, or whether it
was not till later that he was induced, by the hostile proceedings of
Felicissimus, to declare his ordination irregular and a violation of the
episcopal authority. He avoided in the outset, as it should seem, to
take any violent measures; he sought by indulgence and gentleness,
with a prudence befitting the circumstances, to gain over his oppo-
nents.? Perhaps his success would have been complete, if he could have
exercised sufficient control over himself to follow out this course with
patience ; or if the Decian persecution, which broke out soon after, had
not furnished the opposite party too inviting an opportunity to, com-
been possible for this man, if such accusa-
tions could be justly laid against him, to
play the part he did? What is there which
idle tattle will not gradually set a going
amidst party strifes of this kind? The op-
ponents of Cyprian too, as we may infer
from his letter to Pupianus, of which we
shall speak hereafter, had said many hard
things against him.
1So far there may have been truth in
Cyprian’s statement, when he calls him,
(ep. 49:) Fax et ignis ad conflanda sedi-
tionis incendia.
In order to a right understanding of No-
vatus’ conduct in these disputes, it is im-
portant to have the question settled, wheth-
er he was one of the five presbyters who
opposed Cyprian from the beginning. Mos-
heim has urged several objections against
this supposition, the most weighty of which
we shall notice further along. The ques-
tion, we must admit, cannot be decided with
absolute certainty. But yet the whole con-
nection of the history seems to be in favor
of the affirmative. In Cyprian’s fifth letter,
already cited, the names of four presbyters
are introduced, who brought him a petition.
One of these, Fortunatus, belonged, accord-
ing to Cyprian’s own statement, ep. 55, to
the number of the five presbyters. Now
as the name of Novatus occurs here along
with that of Fortunatus, it is highly proba-
ble that all the four presbyters, which seem
1
in this case to have formed one party, were
in fact no other than the old opposition par-
ty, —the five presbyters or presbyterium
Felicissimi. And in the repulsive answer
which Cyprian gave to their petition, we
may perhaps discern a new cause of their
irritation against the bishop. A compart-
son of what Cyprian says respecting the
intrigues of Novatus, ep. 49, with what he
says respecting the intrigues of those five
presbyters, ep. 40, and with what Pontius
reports about the old adversaries of Cy-
prian, speaks for the existence of but one
anti-Cyprian party, which held together
from the beginning, and in which Novatus
occupied an important place.
2 See Cyprian, ep. 49, of Novatus: Qui
Felicissimum satellitem suum diaconum,
nec permittente me nec sciente, sua factione
et ambitione, constituit. All goes to show
that this nomination of Felicissimus to the
office of deacon preceded the schism of
which he was the author; although the
whole subject is involved in much obscurity
on account of our imperfect knowledge of
the circumstances.
8 To this doubtless refers what Pontius
says of Cyprian’s conduct towards his op-
ponents : rattan tamen quanta levitate,
quam patienter, quam benevolenter indul-
sit, quam clementer ignovit, amicissimos
eos postmodum inter et necessarios compu
tans, mirantibus multis !
226 CHURCH DIVISIONS.
mence a public attack on the man, whom from the first they had unwil-
lingly seen placed at the head of the church government.
We have already observed, that at the first beginning of this perse-
cution, Cyprian retired for a while from his community. He had good
reasons, indeed, as we then saw, to justify this step, and the best of all
justifications was his subsequent martyrdom; but still 1t was a step
which would always admit of being differently construed. The enemies
of Cyprian were glad to look upon the thing in its worst light, and
accused him of allowing himself to be influenced to violate his duties as
a pastor, by motives of fear.
Besides this, the party opposed to Cyprian had many opportunities,
arising out of events that transpired in the persecution, to mcrease the
number of their followers, and to excite the minds of men agaist the
bishop. Numbers, as we have already observed in our account of this
persecution, had been induced by their fears, or compelled by torture,
to resort to measures which were regarded as a virtual denial of the
faith, and which actually excluded them from the communion of the
church. But most of them were afterwards seized with compunctions
of remorse, and longed to be restored to the community of the breth-
ren, and to the privilege of participating with them in the Lord’s sup-
per. ‘The question now arose, whether their wishes should be complied
with : — was their petition to be absolutely rejected, or should a middle
course be pursued, by holding out to them, indeed, the hope of being
restored to the fellowship of the church; but before the privilege was
actually granted them, by subjecting their conduct to a longer proba-
tion, and requiring evidence of continued penitence? Should the same
course be pursued with all the lapsed, or should the treatment be
varied according to the difference of circumstances and the character
of the offences? The church at this time was still without any gene-
rally acknowledged principles of church penance m cases of this sort.
There was one party, who were for refusing to grant absolution, on any
conditions, to such as had violated their baptismal vow by one of the so
called mortal sins. Following that Jewish principle which: did not
allow all duties to be regarded alike as duties to Grod, and all sms
alike, as sins against God, men made an arbitrary distinction, — for
which they cited as their authority the passage 1 Samuel 11. 25, — be-
tween sins against God and agaimst man; and to the former was reck-
oned every act of denying the faith, though the degree of guiltiness, if
the denial was simply a yielding to the weakness of sense, might be far
inferior to that involved in some of the so called sins against man.
Cyprian, who was in the habit of calling Tertullian especially his
1 We remarked at page 134, how doubt-
fully the Roman clergy expressed them-
selves with regard to Cyprian’s conduct ;
their words, “ quod utique recte fecerit,’ in-
dicate that Cyprian’s enemies had contrived
to represent the matter in an unfavorable
light. Hence Cyprian intimated. a suspi-
cion that this letter, in which passages oc-
curred which were so strange to him, might
be a forgery, ep. 3. Afterwards, when he
learned that his adversaries had represent-
ed his conduct in an unfavorable light at
Rome, he considered it necessary to justify
himself by a correct account of the whole
course of the affair, and he writes thus to the
Roman clergy, ep. 14: Quoniam comperi,
minus simpliciter et minus fideliter vobis re-
nuntiari, que hic a nobis et gesta sunt et
geruntur.
SCHISM OF FELICISSIMUS. 221
teacher,' might, perhaps, from the study of that father’s writings, have
received a bias towards the principles of the more rigid party with re-
gard to penance. Many passages of his works, written previous to the
Decian persecution, would lead us to conclude, that he was at first in
favor of the principle of granting absolution to none who had committed
a mortal sin; as, for instance, when he says,” ‘‘ he words of the Lord,
who warns while he heals, are ‘ Behold, thou art made whole; sin no
more, lest a worse thing come unto thee.” After he has bestowed
health, he gives the rule of life ; nor does he leave the man thenceforth
to wander about as he lists; but as the man was bound to serve him
by the very fact that he had been healed by him, our Lord threatens
him with the greater severity ; for the guilt is less, to have sinned before
one has known the doctrines of the Lord, but when one sins after he has
begun to know them, there is no place for forgiveness.” ® It may be
said, perhaps, that Cyprian, in this case, meant simply to mark the
greater criminality of a sin committed by a Christian, and that the
passage is to be understood only in a relative sense ; but assuredly more
than this 15 implied in one of his positions laid down in the collection
of Biblical Testimonies.* ‘* That to him who has sinned against, God,
no forgiveness can be granted m the church.’’® Besides the already
cited passages from the Old Testament,® he quotes on this occasion that
from the gospel, relating to the sin against the Son of man, and against
the Holy Ghost ; whence it is plain, how greatly he misunderstood these
‘conceptions, and this antithesis.
But if Cyprian was an advocate of this principle when he first en-
tered on the episcopal office, yet, cherishmg as he did the heart of a
father towards his church, he could not fail to be shaken by the great
multitude of the lapsed, who, sometimes with bitter tears of repentance,
entreated him to grant them absolution. Must all these, many of
whom, as for example, the libellatici, had fallen only from defect of
knowledge, and others from simply yieldmg to the flesh under the
severity of their tortures, remain forever excluded from the blessed
community of their brethren, and, in Cyprian’s view, from that church
in which alone was to be found the way to heaven? The paternal
heart of the bishop revolted at the thought, but he dared not act here
upon his own responsibility. In this state of indecision, he declared
that the fallen should be received and exhorted to repentance ; but that
the decision of their fate should be reserved to that time when, on the
restoration of peace, the bishops, clergy and churches, in joint and
cautious deliberation, after having examined the question in all its
bearings, should be able to unite on some common principles, in rela-
tion to a matter where every Christian was so deeply interested. Be-
1 According to Jerome, de vir. illustr. 5 Non posse in ecclesia remitti ei, qui in
5 Ρ
When he asked for Tertullian’s writings,
he used to say to his secretary, “ Da magis-
trum.”
2 De habitu virginum.
8 Nulla venia ultra delinquere, postquam
Deum nosse ceepisti.
* De testimoniis, 1. II. ο. 28.
Deum deliquit.
6 The same texts which Cyprian quotes
in the epistle to the clergy of Carthage,
ep. 9, on the subject of denial of the faith
under persecution. So also in ep. 11, we
find the antithesis: Minora delicta, qua
non in Deum committuntur.
928 SCHISM OF
sides, there was a great difference between the offences of these fallen
brethren. While some, merely to avoid the sacrifice of their worldly
possessions, had, without a struggle, even hastened up to the altars of
the gods; others had fallen only through ignorance, or under the force
of torture. The disorders of the times made it impossible to examine
carefully into the difference of offences, and the difference of moral
character in the individuals. Moreover, those that had fallen should,
by practical demonstration of their penitence, render themselves worthy
of re-admission to the fellowship of the church, — and the persecution
itself presented them with the best opportunity for this. ‘‘ He who
cannot endure the delay,” says Cyprian, ‘may obtain the crown of
martyrdom.” ;
It was under this view of the case he acted ; directing all the lapsed
who applied for absolution, to look forward with hope to the time for
the restoration of tranquillity, when their cases should be examined.
But some of the clergy, and as Cyprian afterwards learned, his old ad-
versaries, espoused the interest of these men, and, instead οἵ. exhorting
them to peace and order, according to the wishes of the bishop, con-
firmed them in their importunate demands, availing themselves of this
opportunity to foment the wished for division in the church.
Had these lapsed individuals been upheld in their importunate de-
mands by the presbyters opposed to Cyprian alone, without finding any
other support, their resistance to the measures of the bishop wouid have
been of less consequence. But now they found means to gain over to’
their cause a voice which in those days had great influence with the
Christians, — the voice of those witnesses of the faith, who under the
pains of torture had laid down their witness of the Lord, or who, after
having laid down their testimony, confronted martyrdom. It was, in
itself considered, altogether consonant with the spirit of Christianity,
that the last legacy of these men should be a legacy of affection ; that
their last words should be an expression of love to their brethren ; that
they, who, after having victoriously sustained the conflict, were about
to enter into glory, should show sympathy for their weaker brethren,
who had fallen in the struggle; that finally, they should recommend
these fallen to the charitable acceptance of the church. It was just
and right, moreover, that the word of these witnesses of the faith
should be held in peculiar respect, provided only it were not forgotten,
that they were sinful men, needing, like all others, the forgiveness of
their sins, and that, so long as they were in the flesh, they had still to
maintain the contest with the flesh; and provided only, these witnesses
of the faith themselves had not forgotten this, and dazzled by the ex-
cessive veneration which was paid them, had not been, on this very
account, the more exposed to the lurking enemy with which even they,
as sinful men, had still to contend, and turned the momentary victory,
gained by the grace of God, to the nourishment of a spiritual pride.
’ Many fell under this temptation; and controversies were excited and
nourished by such confessors. The poet Commodian, so distinguished
for his moral enthusiasm, held it needful to remind such persons, that
ae
FELICISSIMUS. 229
even by their sufferings they could not expiate sin.1 There were con-
fessors, who, in an authoritative tone, gave to all applicants the peace
of the church, and acted as if it needed only their word to exculpate
and discharge the fallen. Many of the clergy, who, according to Cy-
prian’s advice, ought to have set them right and led them to humility,
rather confirmed them in their delusion, and used them as tools in their
intrigues against the bishop. By their peremptory declarations, oft-
times vaguely expressed, as for example, ‘‘ Let such an individual, with
᾿ξ," — an expression admitting of imterpretations and applications
without limit, —‘‘be received to the fellowship of the church,” they
caused the bishop no slight embarrassment. Those who applied such
vague declarations to themselves, now boasted that the confessors or
martyrs had granted them absolution, and they would brook no delay,
suffer no trial of their conduct. When Cyprian evinced the less dispo-
sition to comply with their impetuous demands, in proportion to the
want which they betrayed of true contrition and humility, he made him-
self extremely unpopular by his resistance. On two sides, he appeared
in an unfavorable light, on the side of his severity against the lapsed
and of his lack of reverence for the confessors.®
He fulfilled his duty as a pastor, by taking a firm and decided stand
against the exaggerated reverence paid to these confessors, which might
be a fruitful source of superstition, and against the false confidence in
their intercession, leading men to feel secure in their sins. He made
the confessors observe, that true confession was not an opus operatum,
but that it must consist in the whole tenor of conduct. “ The tongue,”
he said, ‘‘ which has confessed Christ, must preserve its honor, pure
and untarnished ; for he who, according to our Lord’s precept, speaks
what tends to peace, to goodness and to truth, confesses Christ every
day of his life.” In warning them against false security and pride, he
observes,* “It must be your endeavor to carry out what you have hap-
pily begun. It is but little to have succeeded in obtaining an advan-
tage; it is more, to be able to preserve what you have obtained. Our
Lord taught us this, when he said, ‘ Behold, thou art made whole: sin
no more, lest a worse thing come unto thee.’ Think that he also says
this to his confessor; ‘ Behold thou art made a confessor ; sin no more,
lest a worse thing come unto thee.’ In fine, Solomon and Saul and
many others were able, so long as they walked in the ways of the Lord,
1 See his Instructio, 47 :
Impia martyribus odio reputantur in ignem,
Distruitur martyr, cujus est confessio talis,
Expiari malum nee sanguine fuso docetur.
2 Communicet ille cum suis. According
to Cyprian; ep. 14, thousands of such “ li-
belli pacis” were daily issued by the con-
fessors without examination. ‘Tertullian,
at the close of the second century, speaks
- already of this practice as a traditional
one. “Pacem in ecclesia non habentes, a
martyribus in carcere exorare consueve-
runt.” Ad martyr. c.1. As a Montanist
he speaks carnestly against the excessive
abuse to which this practice was carried ;
VOL. I. 20
!
and intimates that many were made to feel
secure in their sin by these libelli pacis, in-
considerately bestowed by the confessors,
de pudicitia, c. 22. Against the abuses
growing out of recommendatory letters of
the confessors, spurious or genuine, the
council of Elvira speaks on this wise, ¢. 25:
Quod omnes sub hac nominis doria passim
concutiunt simplices.
3 He gives us himself to understand how
much he had to suffer in this way, ep. 22:
Laborantes hic nos et contra invidiz impe-
tum totis fidei viribus resistentes
4 Ep. 6.
230 SCHISM OF
to retain the grace which was given them; but no sooner had they left
the discipline of the Lord, than they were left also by his grace. 1
hear that some are elated with pride; and yet it is written, ‘ Be not
high-minded, but fear.’ Our Lord ‘was led as a sheep to the slaugh-
ter; as a lamb before her shearers is dumb, so opened he not his mouth ;’
and is there any one now, who lives by him and in hin, that dares to
be proud and high-minded, unmindful of the life which He led, and of
the doctrines which He has given us either by himself or by his apos-
tles? If the servant be not greater than his Lord, then let those that
follow the Lord, humbly, peacefully and quietly walk in his footsteps :
the more one abases himself the more shall he be exalted.”’
When a certain confessor, Lucianus, professing to act “‘in the name
of Paul, a martyr,’ and in obedience to his last injunctions, proceeded
to bestow on the fallen the peace of the church, and to furnish them
with the so called certificates of church-fellowship (libellos pacis,) Cy-
prian refused to acknowledge their validity, and observed, “‘ Although
our Lord has given command that the nations shall be baptized and
their sins forgiven in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy
Ghost; yet this man, in ignorance of the divine law, proclaims peace
and the forgiveness of sins in the name of Paul ; — he does not consider
that the martyrs make not the gospel, but the gospel, the martyrs.’
He spoke on this poimt with the same emphasis in the discourse,
already referred to, delivered on his return to his church.2 “ Let no
man deceive himself, the Lord alone can show mercy. He alone can
bestow forgiveness of the sins which have been committed against him,
whv bore our sins; who suffered for us; whom God delivered up for
our offences. ‘The servant may not forgive a crime committed against
his Master, lest the offender contract additional guilt, if he be unmind-
ful of what is written, ‘Cursed is he that putteth his trust in man.’
We must address our prayer to the Lord, who has assured us he will
deny those that deny him, who alone has received all judgment from
the Father. The martyrs require something to be done ; —but what
they require must be written in the law of the Lord ; — we must know,
first of all, that they have obtained from God what they require; and
then only can we do what they require; for it by no means follows, as
a matter of course, that the Divme Majesty will grant what a man has
promised. Hither the martyrs are nothing, if the gospel can be made
void; or if the gospel cannot be made void, then they are not author-
ized to act against the gospel, who by its means become martyrs.
That man can neither say nor do anything against Christ, whose faith
and hope, whose power and glory are nowhere but in Christ.”
Still Cyprian was not -firm and consistent enough in his opposition to
the extravagant respect paid to these witnesses of the faith. He was,
to a certain degree, carried away himself by the prevailing spirit of the
multitude, which he ought to have controlled and guided by the spirit
of the gospel. When the summer heats of an African climate began
1 Quod non martyres evangelium faciant, 2 Sermo de lapsis
sed per evangelium martyres fiant. Ep. 22.
FELICISSIMUS. 231
to multiply cases of sickness, he yielded so far as to grant absolution to
those of the fallen, who in sickness and the fear of death were earnestly
desirous of the communion, and were depending on such certificates
given them by witnesses of the faith. In his report to the Roman
church, he assigns as his reason for so doing, that he wished by such a
comphance in one particular, to assuage, in some measure at least, the
violence of the multitude, and so to counteract the plots of those who
were at the bottom of the mischief, and to remove from himself the ob-
loquy of refusing to the martyrs the respect which belonged to them.”
Thus by his halfway measures of resistance to the violence of this erro-
neous tendency, and by his inconsistency, Cyprian did injury to the inter-
ests of Christian truth and to his own cause. If, on the one hand, he
attacked with the weapons of truth that false confidence in the martyrs’
intercession, on the other hand, he supported it, by yielding his ground ;
for must not the recommendation of the martyr become possessed of a
peculiar power and significance, as soon as it was understood, that those
only who were supported by such a recommendation, might in the hour of
death, simply on the strength of this recommendation, obtain the peace
of the church and receive the communion, while it might easily happen
that many who had not sought for this recommendation of the martyrs,
were distinguished above those who had secured it, by their sincere
contrition and penitence.? Cyprian favored this conclusion, for which
his conduct furnished so natural a pretext, by his peculiar form of
expressing this concession, addressing it ‘‘to those, who by help of the
martyrs may obtain succor from the Lord in their sins.’’? By this in-
consistency, he laid open a weak spot to his enemies, of which they
would not fail to take advantage.
Another circumstance which must have particularly contributed to
give a more decided weight to the opposite party m their connection
with the fallen, was the powerful voice of the Roman church, which
had declared itself in favor of the milder principle, if not in its applica-
tion to all the fallen, at least to those who were sick. Cyprian avowed
also, in making his concession, that he was partly induced to this meas-
ure by his respect for the Roman church, with which he did not choose
to be at variance. But the proceedings of this church had been more
consonant with the spirit of evangelical truth, in directing the fallen to
the one and only Mediator, and allowing of no other distinction among
them, but that of a penitent or impenitent disposition.® In their first
letter addressed to the clergy at Carthage, the Roman church had said
of the fallen, ‘‘ We have, mdeed, separated them from us, yet we have
not left them to themselves; but we have exhorted them and do still
1 Cyprian, ep. 12, 13 et 14. ciunt ;” it was therefore this invidia which
2 Ep. 14: “ Ad illorum violentiam inte-
rim quoquo genere mitigandam —, cum
videretur et honor martyribus habendus, et
eorum qui omnia turbare cupiebant, impe-
tus comprimendus.” Of the other lapsi, on
the contrary, he says, ep. 13: “ Qui nullo
libello a martyribus accepto invidiam fa-
he feared.
3 Auxilio eorum adjuy ari apud Domi-
num in delictis suis possunt.
4 Ep. 14. to the Roman clergy. Standum
putavi et cum vestra sententia, ne actus
noster, qui adunatus esse et consentire circa
omnia debet, in aliquo discreparet.
5 Ep. 2.
932 SCHISM OF
exhort them to repent, if peradventure they may obtain forgiveness from
Him who alone can bestow it. We do this, lest they should become
worse, if deserted by us. If such persons are attacked by sickness,
become penitent for their offences, and anxiously desire the communion,
they should certainly be assisted.”’
Yet by the Christian prudence manifested in the rest of his conduct,
where he understood how to unite mildness with energy; by instruc-
tions and friendly paternal representations, winning over the better
disposed among the confessors; by the firmness with which he main-
tained his ground against the presbyters who were so obstinate in their
opposition ; by the love and esteem in which he stood with the majority
of the church, the bishop Cyprian seemed to have succeeded in restoring
tranquillity at Carthage, and he was rejoicing in the hope, as the Decian
persecution began to wane in its violence, of returning back to the
church from which he had been painfully separated for a year, and of
being able to celebrate with his flock the Easter of the year 251. But
ere his hopes could be realized, he had to learn that the intrigues of
the opposite party were too deeply laid, and too closely and firmly in-
terwoven, to admit of being so easily destroyed. The fire which was
smouldering on in secret, wanted but a favorable occasion to break
forth into an open flame. This occasion Cyprian himself presented by
the exercise of his episcopal power in an important matter.
Before he returned to his church, he had sent two bishops and two
presbyters, as his deputies, with full powers to hold a visitation. They
were to give to the poor of the church, who on account of their age or
sickness could do nothing for their own support, so much out of the
church treasury as might be necessary for the supply of their bodily wants.
They were to add to the earnings of those who had a trade, but could
not gain from it enough for their subsistence, or who wanted money to
purchase the tools and stock necessary for their employments, or who
had been interrupted in their business by the persecution, and were
now wishing to commence it again, so much as might be needed in
these several cases. Finally, they were to draw up a schedule of all
the poor, who were to be supported out of the church funds, with a
notice of their different ages, and of their behavior during the persecu-
tion, in order that the bishop, whose care it was, might become accu-
rately acquatnted with them all, and might promote the worthy, and as
is here particularly specified, the meek and the humble, to such places
in the service of the church, as they might be found qualified to fill.
The last of these arrangements promised the following advantages, —
that the abilities of such persons would be suitably employed in the
service of the church; that they would secure for themselves an ade- -
quate support ; and that, at the same time, a burden would be removed
from the church funds. The qualifications. to which particular attention
was to be directed, namely, meekness and humility, were peculiarly
needful, during this period of ferment and uneasiness in the church, in
those who entered into its service, that the peace of the church might
be restored on a solid foundation, and the first germs of division sup-
pressed. The presbyterian party opposed to Cyprian may not have admit-
FELICISSIMUS. 233
ted the bishop’s right to order such a church visitation, or distribution of
the church funds, on his own responsibility, and without the concurrence
of the whole presbyterial college ; or they may have disputed, at least,
the right in Cyprian, masmuch as they were no longer willing to own
him as their bishop; at any rate, it would be quite contrary to their
plans, should he successfully carry through such an act of episcopal
authority, which must tend to confirm his power in the church, to bind
the church more closely to himself, and thus give strength to his party.
At the head of the oppositign in this instance appeared the deacon
Felicissimus. His official character alone would give him considerable
influence with a portion of his community, for im the church of North
Africa as well as in the nearly related church of Spaim,! the deacons
had more power than they possessed in other, countries. Besides,
from circumstances of which we have no accurate knowledge, he had
become an influential organ of his party, thought he was entitled,
especially, perhaps, because part of the church funds was entrusted to
his care,? to put im his word in a matter that concerned the application
of the money of the church. He employed all his arts of persuasion,
his influence and power, to excite a general spirit of determined oppo-
sition to this episcopal ordinance. He declared in particular to the
poor belonging to the church of Novatus, over which he had been made
deacon, that he should contrive means without fail, of providing for all
their wants; and threatened, in case they appeared before those episco-
pal commissioners, that he would never admit them to the communion
im his church.? This church now became the general resort of all the
1 Concil. Tiliberit. c. 77: Diaconus regens
plebem.
2 That in the North African church, it
belonged to the deacons to keep and man-
age the-church funds, we learn from the
49th letter of Cyprian, where it is brought
as a charge against a deacon, that ecclesi-
asticze pecuniz sacrilega fraude subtract
et viduarum ac pupillorum deposita dene-
gata. And this was the case not only in
North Africa, but also in the churches of an
entirely different quarter of the world; as
we learn from Origen’s complaints of those
deacons who enriched themselves at the ex-
pense of the church, (in Matth. T. XVI.
6. 22:) Οἱ μὴ καλῶς διάκονοι διοικοῦντες τὰ
τῆς ἐκκλησίας χρήματα, ἀλλ᾽ ἀεὶ μὲν ταῦτα
ψηλαφῶντες, οὐ καλῶς δὲ αὐτὰ οἰκονομοῦν-
τες, ἀλλὰ σωρεύοντες τὸν νομιζόμενον πλοῦ-
τον καὶ χρήματα, ἵνα πλουτῶσιν ἀπὸ τῶν
εἰς λόγον πτωχῶν διδομένων, οὕτοι εἰσιν οἱ
κολλυβίσται τραπέζας χρημώτων ἔχοντες,
ἃς κατέστρεψεν ὃ ᾿Ιησοῦς. It is with refer-
ence to this fact, that Felicissimns is ac-
cused of “fraudes” and “ rapine,” ep..55.
Pecunie commisse sibifraudator. Similar
charges were brought against Novatus, the
presbyter and presiding officer of the com-
munity in which Felicissimus had been ap-
pointed deacon. True, these accusations
against both, from the mouth of their ene-
my Cyprian, cannot be considered as credi-
20*
ble testimony against them. An indepen-
dent application of that portion of the church
funds which was deposited in this filial
community,—an application of them which,
with the views they entertained of their re-
lation to the bishop, they may have thought
themselves warranted to make, — an appli-
cation suited perhaps to the objects and
ends of their party, may have been repre-
sented by Cyprian as embezzlement. At
all events, the want of an impartial state-
ment of the whole matter leaves it impos-
sible to assert any thing here with confi-
dence.
8 Every thing here depends on the cor-
rect reading and fnterpretation of those dif-
ficult words in Cyprian, ep. 58: “ commi-
natus, quod secum in morte,” cr “in monte
non communicarent, qui nobis obtemperare
voluissent.” According to the reading “in
morte,” the meaning might be either, if the
phrase “in morte” be referred to Felicissi-
mus, that at his own death he would not
acknowledge them as Christian brethren,
would pronounce them excluded from
church fellowship, —in other words, would
never be reconciled to them;—in which
case, however, it would be difficult to see
how a threat of this kind could be s6 dread-
ful a thing to the Christians at Carthage;
or, what would be a more natural construc-
tion; the phrase “in morte” being referred
234 SCHISM OF
lapsed who were unwilling to wait with patience till the whole matter
relating to their case could be decided. Here, without any preparation,
they were admitted to the communion — here: was the rallymg point of
all the disaffected —a circumstance which must have been attended
with the most disastrous effects on the discipline and order of the com-
munity.
It was these troubles which induced Cyprian to defer his return to
Carthage until after the Easter of 251. He chose this particular time,
because he could reckon on meeting at that time the other bishops of
North Africa, who would be there assembled at the annual synod.
This secured to him two advantages; — united with the collective body
of his North African colleagues, he would be enabled to take a firm
stand against the refractory ; and certain settled principles having been
fixed upon, after mature deliberation, by the synod, with regard to the
proper treatment of the lapsi, he might hope that a limit would be set
generally to the hitherto wavering practice of the North African
church with regard to penance. In this council of the North African
church, it was resolved to adopt a middle course between that exces-
sive severity which cut off the lapsed from all hope, and a lax indul-
gence in complying with their wishes; to maintain the soundness of
church discipline, and yet not drive the lapsed to despair by an uncon-
ditional refusal of absolution and re-admission to the church, whereby
they might be led at length to abandon themselves to their lusts, or to
sink back agam into paganism. First, the different character of the
offences should be carefully investigated,! and to all, not excepting even
the saecrificati, who gave evidence by their conduct of a truly penitent
spirit, the communion was to be granted, at least in cases of mortal
sickness. Should such persons recover, they were not to be deprived
of the privilege they had obtamed by the grace of God, but might re-
main in the fellowship of the church.2— When afterwards the persecu-
tion was renewed with increased violence, another indulgence, prompted
by Christian charity and wisdom, was conceded, namely, that the com-
munion should be granted to all who had given evidence by their conduct
of true penitence, so that they might not enter the conflict unarmed,
but strengthened by communion with the Lord’s body.® But they who
had not given the least evidence of repentance in any of their conduct,
to the subject understood in “ communica-
rent,’ the meaning might be that they, at
their own death, should not be admitted by
him to the fellowship of the church, should
not receive from him, as deacon, whose of-
fice it was to convey the consecrated ele-
ments to the sick, the communion of the
supper. The latter interpretation gives a
good sense, if we bear in mind, that Feli-
cissimus was deacon of a particular parish
church, and that he was well agreed with
Novatus the presbyter and pastor of this
church, so that it was in his power to re-
fuse thé*communion to those who dwelt in
this part of the diocese. An analogous
sense results, if the reading “in monte” be
adopted. In this case, we must suppose
that the community over which Novatus
and Felicissimus were placed, resided on an
eminence in or near by Carthage, — and
hence we might be reminded of the Mon-
tenses, the Donatists at Rome, who were
so called from their place of assembly,
which was situated on a hill. Felicissimus
threatened to exclude those that complied
with the requisition of Cyprian, from com-
munion in this church.
1The different degree of guilt in the
sacrificati, according to the different ways’
in which they had been induced to re-
nounce the faith; and so also in the libel-
latict.
2 Ep. 52.
8 Ep. 54.
FELICISSIMUS. 78958
and first expressed a desire for the communion when on the sick bed,
should not then receive it, because it was not sorrow for sin, but the
fear of approaching death which had prompted the desire, and he was
not deserving of consolation in death, who had not thought of death till
it was near at hand. In this explanation, it certainly is not difficult to
perceive the truly Christian effort to fix men’s attention on the nature
of true repentance, and to warn them against the error of reposing
confidence on the opus operatum of absolution and the communion.!
But as we see, the synod allowed itself, by this purely Christian inter-
est, to be led into the mistake of pronouncing a sentence, too harsh and
indiscriminate in this general form, on those who first expressed signs
of penitence at the hour of death; for although such repentance might
in most cases be false, resulting from mere sensuous impressions, yet in
some cases, known only to the Omniscient, it might also be true. And
it is clear that the synod might have secured its object without resort-
ing to this unwarranted decision, by a more correct and clearer exposi-
tion of the nature of absolution in relation to the forgiveness of sin, as
we have already explained. At this church assembly, sentence of con-
demnation was passed on the party of Felicissimus; and Cyprian,
united with the bishops of North Africa, succeeded im putting an end
to the schism. )
It is true, the party did not at once give up their opposition. They
sought to extend their influence in this part of the church ; and several
of the African bishops, who were at variance with their other colleagues,
or who had been deposed for their bad conduct, united themselves to
this party. They chose in the place of Cyprian, as bishop of Carthage,
Fortunatus, one of the five disorderly presbyters. They sent delegates
to Rome for the purpose of gaining over to their side this principal
church of the West, and there demanded a hearing of the charges
which they had to bring against Cyprian; but they were unable to dis-
solve the bond of friendship existing between the two most influential
bishops of the West, although their clamors excited a momentary sen-
sation. In a letter expressing in a remarkable manner the spirit of the
episcopal theocracy, — a theocracy that savored more of Judaism than
of Christianity,” — Cyprian urged the Roman bishop to defend against
the schismatics the unity of the church founded on the union of the
bishops. In the same letter, he strenuously contends also for the inde-
pendence of the bishops in their own dioceses. ‘“‘ Since it has been
decided by us all,’ he writes, ‘and is, moreover, just and right, that
every man’s cause should be examined into on the spot where the wrong
has been done, and since his own part of: the flock has been allotted to
each pastor, which he is to guide and govern as one who must render to
the Lord an account of his stewardship ; those who are under our juris-
diction ought not to be suffered to go where they please, and by their
deceptions and effrontery interrupt the harmony of the united bishops,
but they should be obliged to prosecute their causes where accusers
and witnesses of their offences can be had.” Θ
1 Ep. 52 2 Ep. 55 ad Cornel.
236 SCHISM OF FELICISSIMUS. ,
Tt is clear even from this exhibition of the case, in which we have
been able to use the reports of only one party as the sources of our in-
formation, that Cyprian’s conduct in this controversy was not wholly
free frora reproach ; and we should, perhaps, find still more to censure,
were it in our power to compare together the reports cf the opposite
parties. In this regard, a letter of ‘Cyprian, addressed to one of the
opposition, Florentius Pupianus, who having maintained a good confes-
sion under the pains of torture, stood in high authority as a martyr, is
particularly deserving of notice ; for this letter is in answer to another,
and hence we may gather from it, what Pupianus had to object against
Cyprian. Although not free from that error of the separatist tendency
which attaches undue importance to the subjective views and feelings,
yet he appears to have been a pious, well-meaning man, — certainly not
disinclined to hearken to reason. He had referred to many charges
against Cyprian, of which we possess no further distinct information.
He asserted that he was at a loss to say what he would not part with,
sooner than enter into terms of fellowship with him as a bishop. He
reminds him that priests should be humble, as even our Lord and his
apostles were humble.?
Cyprian, by virtue of a tendency of mind not uncommon in North
Africa, was inclined to lay too great stress on unusual psychological
phenomena, on presentiments, visions and dreams, and was thus ex-
posed to many delusions. He doubtless insisted -on the voice of the
Spirit, which he pretended to have heard on these occasions, where he
ought to have maintained his positions on rational grounds ; but Pupian
disdained these evidences.‘
The way in which Cyprian replied to this person was certainly not
calculated to remove his scruples. Without entering at all into the
natter of his opponent’s charges, Cyprian continually insists on the
same thing, — the inviolable authority of the bishop ordained of God, —
and declares it impiety for any man to set up himself as a judge over
the judicium Dei et Christi. He maintains that, as the bishop stands
in fellowship with the entire church, so the church rests on the bishop ;
and whoever separates from the bishop, separates from the church.?
His hierarchical arrogance inspired in him dreams and visions, which
he pronounced divine revelations. He pretended that he had heard a
divine voice, saying, ‘‘ He that believes not Christ who appoints the
priest, will be compelled to believe him when he avenges the priest.” ®
He brings im proof of the necessity of the obedience to be rendered to
the bishop, the fact that even the bees had a queen which they obeyed,
and robbers, a captain whom they followed in all things. Moreover,
the way in which he appeals to the testimony of Christians and pagans
1 Ep. 69. words: Quanquam sciam somnia ridicula .
2 This we gather from Cyprian’s answer: et visiones ineptas videri.
Dixisti, serupulum tibi esse tollendum de 5 Unde scire debes, episcopum in eccle-
animo, in quem incidisti. sia esse, et ecclesiam in episcopo; et si quis
: Sacerdotes humiles esse debere, quia et cum episcopo non sit, in ecclesia non esse.
Dominus et Apostoli ejus humiles fuerunt. ὁ Qui Christo non ‘credit sacerdotem fa-
* As may be inferred from Cyprian’s cienti, postea credere incipiet, sacerdotem —
vindicanti.
8
SCHISM AT ROME. 237
concerning his humility, is not exactly suited to refute what Pupian had
said respecting his want of that virtue.1
When Cyprian wrote the above mentioned letter, in the year 253
or 254, — for according to his own account he had then administered
the episcopal office for a period of six years, — the conventicles of this
party, where the holy supper was distributed, still remamed open.?
Pupian had reproached him also with this, that by his fault a part was
separated from the whole community.2 Commodian, who wrote his
Christian Admonitions at a somewhat later period, considered it still
needful to combat this separatist tendency, which, as usually happens,
perhaps continued to be cherished for a short time even after the occa-
sion was forgotten which first called it forth. He rebukes those who
see the motes in others’ eyes, but cannot discern the beam that is in
their own.* δ
The second schism had its origm in the Roman church; and as in
the suppression of the first, Cornelius of Rome codperated with Cyprian
of Carthage, so in this we see Cyprian joined with Cornelius in maimtain-
ing the church unity. This latter division, like the former, sprung out of
a controversy relating to the choice of a bishop, and from the collision
of opposite opmions respecting the proper administration of church pen-
ance ; but with this difference, that in the first case, the schism pro-
ceeded from the laxer party, in the last, from the more rigid one. The
immediate occasion which led to the actual outbreak of this as well as
the other schisms, were various occurrences which took place during
the persecution of Decius. We have already observed, that in the Ro-
man church, the prevailing inclination was on the whole to the milder
principle τῇ regard to the matter of penance ; but there was also in that
church a more rigid party, at the head of which stood Novatian, an
eminent presbyter, who had acquired celebrity as a theological writer.
For the rest, we possess but scanty means of accurate information
with regard to the character of this man, — not enough to enable us to
form any certain conclusions as to the relation of his views on this ques-
tion and of his whole conduct in this affair to the peculiar bent of his
disposition ; for the sayings of exasperated enemies, and representations
which every where bear the marks of passionate exaggeration, are of
course entitled to no credit. When we endeavor to separate the facts
at bottom from the distorted and spiteful representations of Novatian’s
opponents, the following presents itself as the most probable state of the
case. Novatian had been thrown, by fierce conflicts within, from an
earnest frame of mind into one of those states, usually considered in
those times as a demoniacal possession. This was for him, as it was for
1 Humilitatem meam et fratres omnes et
gentiles quoque optime novunt et diligunt;
et tu quoque noveras et diligebas, cum ad-
hue in ecclesia esses et mecum communi-
cares.
’ 2 As Cyprian himself gives us to under-
stand, when he says: Frustra sibi blandiri
eos, qui, pacem cum sacerdotibus Dei non
habentes, obrepunt et latenter apud quos-
dam communicare se credunt.
8 Scripsisti quoque, quod ecclesia nune
propter me portionem sui in dispenso ha-
beat.
4 Cap 66: m
Dispositum tempus venit nostris. Pax est in orbe
Et ruina simul blandiente seculo premit
Preecipitis populi, quem in schisma misistis.
Conspicitis stipulam cohzerentem in oculis nostris,
Et vestris in oculis non yultis cernere trabem.
938 NOVATIANUS.
so many others of that period, the hard way to faith. It was to the
prayer of an exorcist of the Roman church, that he, — who had perhaps
already been touched in various ways by the power of Christianity,—
owed his restoration for the moment. From this violent convulsion of
his whole being, he fell into a severe sickness, whence first resulted his
entire and radical cure. In the course of this sickness his faith be-
came established, and seeing death near at hand, he received babtism
on the sick bed. He found in Christianity peace, rest and sanctifying
power. As he became distinguished for stedfastness in faith, clearness
of Christian knowledge, — of which his writings bear witness, — for a
happy faculty of teaching and for an ardor in the pursuit of holiness,
which afterwards led him to the ascetic life, the bishop Fabian ordained
him presbyter, overlooking the fact that he had first made profession of
his faith and been baptized on the bed of sickness. The Roman clergy
were dissatisfied, from the first, with this procedure ; because they held
to the letter of that church law, which required that no individual bap-
tized on the sick bed, —no clinicus, — should receive ordination; but
the wiser Fabian decided more according to the spirit than according
to the letter of this law,! for its object was simply to exclude from the
spiritual order those who had been induced to receive baptism without
true repentance, conviction and knowledge, in the momentary agita-
tion excited by the fear of death. In Novatian’s case, every appre-
hension of this kind was removed by his subsequent life. For a season,
he exchanged the active life of a practical ecclesiastic for the noiseless
seclusion of the ascetic; but afterwards, perhaps not till he had made
up his mind to place himself at the head of a party, he was induced ©
once more to resume the active duties of his office.”
1 As this is expressed in the 12th canon
of the council held at Neo Cesarea, A. D.
314; for after it had been here declared,
that a person baptized in sickness could not
be consecrated as a presbyter, it was as-
signed as a reason, “ that such faith did not
spring from free conviction, but was forced,”
(οὐκ ἐκ προαιρέσεως yap ἣ πίστις αὐτοῦ,
ἀλλ᾽ ἐξ ἀνάγκης.) Hence too, an exception
was made, viz. unless it might be permitted
on account of his subsequent zeal and faith,
(διὰ τὴν μετὰ ταῦτα αὐτοῦ σπουδὴν καὶ
πίστιν.) This exception might apply to
Novatian.
2 It is particularly important to compare
here the synodal letter of Cornelius, bishop
of Rome, to Fabius, bishop of Antioch. A
fragment of it has been preserved by Eu-
sebius, (1. VI. ο. 43.) This letter deserves
notice as illustrating that tendency of the
church spirit to confound the outward with
the inner life, which became, at an early
period, so markedly prominent, especially
at Rome. It is urged as an _ objection
against Novatian, that his restoration from
a demoniacal frenzy, (see above,) as it was
called, by exorcists of the Roman church,
had been the means of his conversion.
Whether this were the case or not, that
surely could bring no reproach on Nova-
tian’s character as a Christian, which be-
longed simply to the means whereby he
had been led to embrace Christianity. Not
less wanting in good sense than unworthy
of a Christian, was the reproachful lan-
guage of Cornelius, that Satan was the oc-
casion of Novatian’s faith, (6 ye ἀφορμὴ τοῦ
πιστεύσαι γέγονεν ὁ σατανᾶς :) as if the
works of the evil one must not often be-
come subservient to the foundation and in-
crease of the kingdom of God. After his
restoration from this demoniacal disease, it
is objected again, that he fell into a severe
fit of sickness, (which may be very natural-
ly explained ; the crisis in his whole organ-
ic system, for which he was indebted to the
restoration from that frenzy-like condition,
was the cause of the sickness.) and that in
the apprehension of death, he received bap-
tism, but baptism only by sprinkling, as his
condition required, (the baptismus clinico-
rum not being, according to the usual prac:
tice of those times, by immersion,) if it
could be said, indeed, that such a one had
been baptized at all. It is objected, more-
over, that subsequently he received none of
those rites which should have been bestow-
ed on him according to the usages of the
NOVATIANUS. 239
Some slight hints of Cyprian by no means suffice to prove that No-
vatian, previous to his conversion, had been a stoic philosopher, and
that the spirit of the stoic morality, mixing in with his Christianity, had
produced that severe tone of thimking which distinguished him on these
matters. His principles admit of so natural an explanation from the
sternness of his Christian character, he acted im this case so entirely in
the spirit of a whole party of the church in his time, that there is the
less need of attempting to derive them from some outward source, for
which there is not the least ground of historical evidence.1
Here a question arises of considerable importance, as the right an-
swer to it would materially assist us in forming a judgment both as to
the matters in dispute, and as to the character of Novatian. It is
this, —- whether his opposition was, in the first place, to Cornelius as
bishop, or to the milder principles of church penance. According to
the accusations of his passionate opponents, we must, indeed, suppose,
that in the outset he was striving, from motives of ambition, after the
episcopal dignity, and was thence induced to excite these troubles and
throw himself at the head of a party. If it could be proved, that dur-
ing the Decian persecution he still belonged to the milder party, it
might in this way be made to appear probable, that he had been driven
to those extremes by outward causes of excitement. Now the Roman
clergy, in the time of the Decian persecution, and while they were
without a bishop, sent to Cyprian, bishop of Carthage,? a letter in
which he was informed of their decision, that absolution ought to be
church, — not confirmation by the hand of
the bishop. “ How then could he possibly
have received the Holy Ghost?” All this is
so wholly characteristic of the outwardness
and passionate slavery to prejudice of the
hierarchical spirit then acquiring strength
in the Roman church! <A bishop of Rome,
probably Fabianus, — the letter goes on to
say,— ordained him presbyter, against the
wishes of the rest of the clergy, who ob-
jected to the ordination of a person who
had been baptized by sprinkling, on a sick
bed. The bishop, (probably a man of more
liberal spirit,) wished in this case to make
an exception. Cornelius again objects to
him, that during the persecution, he had
shut himself up in a chamber, out of fear ;
and was unwilling to leave it, to perform
the duties of his office in behalf of such as
needed his help. When his deacons asked
him to do this, he turned them off with the
reply, that “he was the friend of another
philosophy.” We can here, to be sure,
merely conjecture what the fact at bottom
is, which lies under the distorted represen-
tation of Cornelius’s hatred. By the érépa
φιλοσοφία, is to be understood, probably,
the secluded life of the ascetic as compared
to that of the practical ecclesiastic. Nova-
tian may have retired, for a season, into
solitude, and withdrawn himself from pub-
lic occupations. This is in keeping with
the austere character which expresses itself
in his principles of penitence ; and he might,
as an ascetic, too, stand in high considera-
tion with the church. Novaiian may have
been wrong in this respect, that by the mis-
leadings of a false asceticism, he forgot Chris-
tian charity, and was unwilling to leave his
spiritual quiet and solitude, to serve the
brethren who needed his priestly offices ;
but Cornelius may have allowed himself to
invent for his conduct on this occasion,
another motive, inconsistent with Nova-
tian’s character.
1 Tt is by no means clear, that Novatian’s
opponents seriously thought of deriving his
peculiar views from any such source as
this. When Cyprian objects to these views,
that they are more stoic than Christian, (ep.
52 ad Antonian,) this naturally refers to
their character only, and not to their ori-
gin; and when he upbraids him, “Jactet se
licet et philosophiam vel eloquentiam suam
superbis vocibus preedicet,” the first alludes
perhaps to the τρίβων, the pallium of the
ἀσκητῆης. (see the preceding note,) or to the
fame of a distinguished dogmatic writer
which Novatian had acquired as author
of the work De regula fidei, or De trinitate.
Thus too, Cornelius speaks of him in the
above cited letter, as Θῦτος ὁ δογματιστὴς,
ὁ τῆς ἐκκλησιαστικῆς ἐπιστήμης ὑπεοασπι-
στῆς.
2 Ep. 31
240 NOVATIANUS.
granted at the extremity of death to all lapsed persons who manifested
true penitence ; —a decision at variance with the principles of the more
rigid party, according to which all who had been convicted of peccata
mortalia should be unconditionally excluded from church absolution.
And yet, according to Cyprian’s testimony, this letter was composed by
Novatian.! But even if Cyprian’s account be entirely correct, yet
from a letter setting forth the common decision of a college of presby-
ters, no certain inference can be drawn with regard to the subjective
opinion of the individual who composed it; for nothing else needed to
proceed from him besides the form and style of composition. It may
be, that Novatian at this time submitted to the voice of the majority,
which he afterwards felt himself bound to oppose. By the same letter,
in fact, notice was also given, that a settled decision on these contro-
verted matters should finally be made, at the restoration of peace, and
after a new bishop had been chosen. Novatian, although himself in-
clined to the severer principles, might the more readily yield for the
moment, in the hope of being able to succeed, when the matter should
be discussed preparatory to the final decision, in procuring an authori-
tative sanction of his own principles. In the same letter, too, he ex-
presses himself doubtfully enough with regard to the significancy of the
absolution imparted in such cases, — ‘‘ God only knows,”’ he says, ‘‘ how
he will dispose of such, and by what rule he will judge them;’’? lan-
guage which imtimates the writer’s own opmion, that absolution could
not with propriety be granted to such persons; that they should only
be recommended to the divine mercy, and the decision of their fate
left with God; although we would not deny that one might express
himself thus from the position of the milder party, in the consciousness
of the deceptive nature of all outward signs of penitence. If Novatian
generally performed at this time the function of secretary to the Roman
church,* he must be considered as the writer also of a somewhat earlier
letter,’ composed in the name of the Roman clergy, in which the same
principles are expressed as in the second. Supposing this to be so, then
what we have just said respecting the relation of the writer’s own opin-
ions to the views expressed in the communication of a public body, must
be applied also to this letter.° It was never objected to Novatian, that
1 He says, for instance, ep. 52, of this let- theological author, in a church where learn-
ter: Novatiano tunc scribente et quod scrip-
serat, sua voce recitante.
2 Deo ipso sciente, quid de talibus faciat
et qualiter judicii sui examinet pondera.
8 See Cyprian, ep. 52: Si nos aliquis
peenitentize simulatione deluserit, Deus, qui
non deridetur, et qui cor hominis intuetur,
de his que nos minus perspeximus, judicet,
et servorum suorum sententiam Dominus
emendet .
4 Which, however, cannot be certainly
inferred from the testimony of Cyprian, al-
ready cited. For it is left doubtful, wheth-
er it was by a mere accident that Novatian
composed that letter, or whether he wrote
it in his official capacity. We must allow
it, however, to be not improbable, that the
ing and talent for composition were not so
common, would be made the church secre-
tary.
ὃ The letter we have cited already at page
134, note 1, and page 226, note 1.
6 In this letter, too, the subjective opinion
of the writer may gleam through the lan-
guage, where he speaks of the admonitions
given to the fallen: “Ipsos cohortati sumus
et hortamur, agere pcenitentiam, si quo
modo indulgentiam poterunt recipere ab eo
qui potest preestare,’— though the words
do not necessarily express as much. In the
severity of tone with which this letter speaks
of those bishops that forsook their commu-
nities, we might likewise recognize the sen-
timents of the more rigid Novatian.
HIS SCHISM FOSTERED BY NOVATUS. 241
his later views contradicted the convictions he had earlier expressed ;
and it admits of bemg easily explained, how it should happen that the
opposition of the more rigid party did not assume a bolder form until
the close of the persecution, when the deliberations respecting the
treatment of the lapsi commenced, and when the milder party obtained
a leader in the person of their bishop Cornelius. We have the less
reason to doubt, that it was his zeal for the more nigid principles
which inspired Novatian from the first, because they accorded so per-
fectly with his character. The accusations of his opponents should not
be suffered to embarrass us; for it is. the usual way with the logical
polemics, to trace schisms and heresies to some outward, unhallowed
motive, even where there is no evidence at all that any such motive
_ has existed. Novatian had on some occasion solemnly declared, after
the Roman bishopric was vacated by the death of Fabian, that he would
not be a candidate for the episcopal dignity — an office to which per-
haps, on account of the high respect entertained for hin, as an ascetic
and a divine, by a large portion of the community, he might easily have
attained. But he said he had no longing for that office. We have no
reason, with the bishop Cornelius, to accuse Novatian im this case of
falsehood. He could say this with perfect sincerity; he, the quiet,
loving ascetic, the theologian glad to be left undisturbed to his dog-
matic speculations, surely had no wish to burden himself with an office
so overwhelmed with cares as that of a Roman bishop had already be-
come. Cornelius knows, indeed, that he secretly aspired after the
episcopal dignity ; but whence had Cornelius the faculty to penetrate
thus into the secret feelings and inmost recesses of his opponent’s
heart? Cyprian himself intimates, that a party strife concerning prin-
ciples, mm the outset wholly objective, had preceded; and it was not
until this dispute made a schism inevitable, that the opposite party set
up another bishop, as their chief, against Cornelius. Inspired by his
ascetic zeal, Novatian was only contending for what he conceived to be
the purity of the church, and against the decline of discipline, without
wishing or seeking for anything besides. Settled in his own convic-
tions, zealous in the defence of them, but averse, by natural disposition,
to everything that savored of a boisterous outward activity, he was,
against his own will, made the head of a party by those who agreed
with him in principles, and compelled by them to assume the episcopal
dignity. In this regard, he could say with truth, in his letter to Dio-
peers bishop of Alexandria, “ that he had been hurried on against his
will.”
The man who, properly, was the moving soul of this party, and
to whose influence, doubtless, it was owing, that they broke entirely
with Cornelius and created another bishop for themselves, came from
a different quarter. ovatus, the Carthagenian presby ter, who. had
been the chief instigator of the troubles in the church of’ North Africa,
had left that country, when Cyprian gained the ascendancy ; whether
1 Cyprian, ep. 42: Diverse partis obsti- εἰ in pejus recrudescente discordia, episcopum
nata et inflexibilis pertinacia non tantum sibi constituit.
mnatris sinum recusavit; sed etiam, _— 2 Ὅτι ἄκων ἤχϑη. Euseb.1. VI. c. 46.
21
; “-
VOL. I.
942 SCHISM OF NOVATIANUS.
it was, that he no longer agreed with the principles of Felicissimus,
and yet could not be reconciled to Cyprian, and would not have him for
his bishop, or whether it was only the faclure of his intrigues against
Cyprian, that induced him to this step. He had betaken himself to
Rome, where he found those disputes already existing in the bud. His
temperament did not allow him to he idle and neutral where strife and
agitation were going on. According to the principles which, in common
with the other four presbyters and Felicissimus, he had advocated at
Carthage, he ought to have leaned to the cause of Cornelius.1 But
whether he had now undergone a radical change in his views on the
matters in dispute, either through the influence of Novatian, his supe-
rior as a theoretical theologian, or in consequence of his ardent temper-
ament, so ready to fly from one extreme to another ; or whether he took
no interest in the real object of the dispute, either at Carthage or at
Rome, but was ofily, in his way, everywhere a friend to the party in
opposition ; whether he was inclined to espouse the cause of that party
which had no bishop at its head, or whether he hated Cornelius for
other reasons — it suffices to know, that Novatus enlisted warmly in the
contest for the principles of Novatian. He was the man, wherever he
might be, at Carthage or at Rome, to become the moving spring of
agitation, although he placed some one else at the head and caused
every thing to move under the name of the latter. Thus may it have
been through his active influence, that the schism became more decided
in its character, and that Novatian was forced by his party to place
himself, as bishop, in opposition to Cornelius.
As to the latter, he had been governed, in his treatment of those
who had fallen during the persecution of Decius, by the milder princi-
ples of the church. He had received many to church fellowship, who
were accused, at least by the other party, of being sacrificati. It was
laid to his account, by Novatian and his followers, that he had polluted
the church by the admission of the unclean; and on both sides, great
liberties were taken in ascribing the actions of the opposite party to se-
cret, motives, calculated to place them in the most unfavorable light.
As Cornelius pretended to believe that Novatian acted under the im-
pulse of an ambitious longing after the episcopal dignity, so a part at
least of Novatian’s followers attributed the mildness of Cornelius towards
others to the consciousness of similar guilt in himself, for he, as they
affirmed, was a libellaticus.2 Both parties sought, as usual in such
cases of dispute, to secure on their own side the verdict of the great
metropolitan churches at Alexandria, Antioch and Carthage, and both
sent delegates to those communities. The zeal shown by Novatian for
1 Mosheim defends Novatian against the
reproach of contradicting himself, by re-
calling the fact, that Novatian was not one
of those five presbyters, and that he agreed
with these and with Felicissimus, not in
every respect, but only in their opposition
to Cyprian. But the evidence above cited
stands in the way of this assertion. The
strongest argument which Mosheim brings
in favor of his opinion is, that Cyprian, who
hunted up every possible charge against
Novatian, yet never accuses him, even when
le had occasion for so doing, of self-contra-
diction. But it may be conceived, that
Cyprian was loth to touch on this point,
because he had reason to fear a retort on
account of his own change of principles
2 Cyprian, ep. 52.
SCHISM OF NOVATIANUS. 243
the strictness of church discipline and the purity of Christian conduct,
to the honesty of which zeal his own life bore testimony, and the author-
ity of certain confessors united with him in the beginning, procured for
his delegates a favorable reception. One bishop, Fabius of Antioch,
was even on the point of deciding in his favor. Dionysius, bishop of
Alexandria, a mild, prudent, hberal minded man, was opposed to the
Noyatian principles from the first; but he began with trying by
friendly persuasions to prevail on Novatian to submit. He wrote in
reply to his application,! “If you have been urged on, as you say,
against your own will, you will prove this by voluntarily turnmg about ;
for there is nothing you ought not to be willing to suffer rather than
create a schism in the church of God. And martyrdom incurred for
the sake of preventing such a schism would be not less glorious, than
martyrdom to avoid being an idolater; nay, it would, in my opinion,
be a nobler act, — for in the one case, you become a martyr for the
peace of your own soul, in the other, for the good of the entire church.
If, then, you should now, either by persuasion or by constraint, restore
the brethren to unanimity, the good you would thus effect would exceed
the evil which you have occasioned. The latter would not be charged
to your account, and the former would redound to your praise. But
should they refuse to follow you, and the affair prove impracticable,
hasten at least to deliver your own soul Follow after peace; and I
bid you farewell in the Lord.’ But Novatian was too firmly set in his
opinions, and too far carried away by his polemic zeal, to listen to such
representations as these. The amiable Dionysius, therefore, now de-
clared more decidedly against him, and used his influence also to draw
away others from his party. He accused him of promulgating the most
mischievous doctrines concerning God, and of misrepresenting the com-
passionate Saviour as an unmerciful being.”
Novatian might now rely with the more confidence on finding support
in North Africa, because Cyprian had himself been hitherto inclined
to favor similar principles on the matter of penitence. But meanwhile
Cyprian, as we have already observed, had changed his views and his
line of conduct, thus bringing upon himself the charge of mconsistency
and fickleness of mind.2 At the same time, he looked upon Novatian
as a disturber of the church unity, who set up himself against a bishop
regularly chosen and appoimted by God himself, and who would prescribe
his own peculiar principles as laws for the entire church.
The controversy with the Novatian party turned upon two general
points; one relatmmg to the principles of penitence, the other to tke
question, what constitutes the idea and essence of a true church? In
respect to the first point of dispute, Novatian had been often unjustly
accused of maintaining, that no person, having once violated his baptis-
mal vows, can ever obtain forgiveness of sin, — he is certainly exposed
to eternal damnation. But first, Novatian by no means maintained
that a Christian is a perfect saint; he spoke here not of all sins, but
1 Euseb. 1. VI. ς, 46. συκοφαντοῦντι.
? Euseb. 1. VIL. c. 8: Τὸν χρηστότατον 8 Ep. 52: Ne me aliquis existimet, a pro-
κύριον ἡμῶν ᾿Ιησοῦν Χριστὸν, ὡς ἀνηλεῆ posito meo leviter recessisse.
944 SCHISM OF NOVATIANUS.
assuming as valid the above-mentioned distinction between ‘“ peccata
venialia ᾿᾿ and ‘ peccata mortalia,”’ he was treating only of the latter.
Again, he was speaking by no means of the divine forgiveness of sin,
but only of the church tribunal, of absolution by the church. The
church, he would say, has no right to grant absolution to a person who,
by any mortal sin, has trifled away the pardon obtained for him by
Christ, and appropriated to him by baptism. No counsel of God, touch-
ing the case of such persons, has been revealed; for the forgiveness of
sin, which the gospel assures us of, relates only to sims committed be-
fore baptism. We ought doubtless to be interested for such fallen
brethren, but nothing can be done for them save to exhort them to
repent, and to commend them to God’s mercy. ‘The sacrificati,”’
Novatian wrote,! ‘ must not be received to the communion ; they should
only be ‘exhorted to repentance, — the forgiveness of their sins must be
left to that God, who alone has power to forgive sin.” That this was
Novatian’s doctrine, even Cyprian, — though in the heat of controversy
he was not always mindful of it, — evidently presupposes, when he says,
“Oh, what mockery of the deceived brethren, what empty cheating of
those afflicted, unhappy men, — to exhort them to a repentance. where-
by they are to satisfy God, and yet deprive them of the salvation which
they were to obtain by this satisfaction! To say to your brother, —
mourn, weep tears, sigh day and night, abound in good works, so thou
mayst wash away thy sins, but after all thou shalt die without the
church. Thou must do all that serves to obtain peace; but the peace
thou seekest, thou shalt not obtain! Who would not give up at once ?
Who would not sink in very despair? Think you, the husbandman
could labor, were it said to him, ‘ Bestow all diligence and care on the
culture of your fields, but you shall reap no harvest?’’’ It must be
allowed that Cyprian, even in what he says here, does not enter enough
into his opponent’s train of thought, and 15 not entirely fair towards him.
For it was, by no means, Novatian’s doctrine, that all the efforts of a
person, doing penance in this sense, were to no purpose. He main-
tained only, that the church was not warranted to announce to him the
forgiveness of sin, which was sought and which divme grace might
bestow.
As we see from Novatian’s declaration in the passage just quoted
from Socrates, the question in this controversy related, in the outset,
only to one of those offences reckoned among the peccata mortalia, only
to acts involving the denial of Christianity. On the supposition that
Novatian was at first so severe only against this class of offences, Cy-
prian was right in attacking the standard of the whole moral judgment
which must lie at the basis of this mode of procedure, — in combatting
the notion, that barely swch offences were to be denominated sins
against God, denial of God, denial of Christianity ; as if every sin were
not a sin against God, a practical denial of God, and of Christianity.
ἐς ΤΆ must be allowed,” says Cyprian,’ “ the sin of an adulterer and de-
ceiver is more aggravated than that of the libellatici; for the latter
1 Vid. Socrat. 1. IV. c. 28. 2 Ep. 52. 8 Ep. 52.
Ἧ
SCHISM OF NOVATIANUS. 245
have fallen into sin by yielding to force, under the wrong impression
that it is enough merely not to have sacrificed, while the former sins
out of free choice. Adulterers and deceivers, according to the apostle
Paul, Eph. 5: 5, are as idolaters.” ‘‘ For since our bodies are the
members of Christ, and each of us is a temple of God, whoever by adul-
tery violates God’s temple, offends God himself; and whoever in com-
mitting sin does the will of the devil, serves evil spirits and false gods :
for evil works proceed not from the Holy Spirit, but from the instigations
of the adversary, and evil desires proceeding from the unclean spirit
impel men to act against God and to serve Satan.”
But later, at least, the Novatian party applied their principle avow-
edly to the entire class of ‘mortal sins ;’? which application Novatian
himself most probably had in mind from the beginning, though the im-
mediate turn of the controversy led him to speak of one description
only of mortal sms. The ascetic was assuredly not disposed to treat
sins of voluptuousness with too much indulgence.
Again, Novatian speaks, in the passage from Socrates, of those only
who had sacrificed. But if Cyprian does not misrepresent Novatian,
the latter, in the outset at least, must, with great injustice, have placed
in the same category, all who had in any way proved unfaithful under
the persecution, as well libellatici as sacrificati, without respect to the
different gradations of guilt, or to the different circumstances that ac-
companied it; and ttterly refused absolution to all libellatici as well as
sacrificati, without considering how many of the hibellatics were guilty
rather of an error and mistake of the understanding, than of an actual
sin.
There is beautifully expressed, in the manner in which Cyprian com-
batted these principles of Novatian,! the loving, paternal heart of the
pious shepherd, following his Master’s example — the animating spirit
of Christian charity and Christian sympathy. Having supposed the
case, that many a libellatic, whose conscience reproved him of no crime,
might be tempted, in despair, to tear himself away, with his family,
from the church, and seek admission into some heretical sect, he ob-
serves— ‘“‘ At the day of judgment, it will be laid to our charge that we
took no care of the wounded sheep, and on account of one that was
diseased, left many sound ones to perish; that while our Lord left the
ninety and nine whole sheep, and went after the one that had wandered
and become weary, and when he had found it, brought it away himself
on his shoulders, we not only do not seek after the fallen, but even
reject them when they return to us.”” He contrasts with this severity
several passages from the apostle Paul, (1 Cormth. 9: 22,—12: 26,
—10: 33, etc.) and then adds, "" The case stands differently with the
philosophers and stoics, who say all sins are alike, and that a sound
man should not easily be brought to bend. © But the difference is wide
betwixt philosophers and Christians. We are bound to keep aloof from
what proceeds, not from God’s grace, but from the pride of a severe
philosophy. Our Lord says, in his gospel, ‘Be ye merciful, even as
21" 1 Ep. 52
246 SCHISM OF NOVATIANUS.
your Father is merciful ;’ and ‘the whole need not a physician, but
. the sick ; but such a physican he cannot be, who says, I take care only
of the sound who need no physician. Behold, yonder lies thy brother,
wounded in battle by his enemy. On the one hand, Satan is trymg to
destroy him whom he has wounded; on the other, Christ exhorts us
not to leave him to perish, whom he has redeemed. Which cause do
we espouse ; on whose side do we stand? Do we help the devil finish
his work of destruction? Do we, like the priest and the Levite in the
gospel, pass by our brother lying half dead? Or do we, like the priests
of God and of Christ, following Christ’s precepts and example, snatch
the wounded man from the grasp of his enemy ; that having done every
thing for his salvation, we may leave the final decision of his case to the
judgment of God?” 49)
Beautifully and truly said as all this was, in opposition to the spirit
of Novatianism, yet Novatian’s principles could neither be touched nor
refuted by it. Novatian too declared that the fallen brethren must be
cared for, and exhorted to repentance. He too acknowledged God’s
mercy towards sinners, and allowed it right to recommend the fallen to
that mercy; but that men could once more surely announce to them
that forgiveness of sins they had trifled away, this he was unwilling to
concede, because he could find ho objective ground for such confidence.
Hence, the only way in which he could be substantially refuted, was to
point out such an objective ground of confidence for all sinners, —
namely, in the merits of Christ, which the sinner needed ever but to
appropriate to himself in believing penitence and believing trust, when
the true relation was unfolded between the objective and subjective in
justification and «egeneration. But on this point, Novatian’s opponents
themselves had not the clearest views ;— for though, in opposing his
principles, they did sometimes refer, indeed, to 1 John 2: 1, 2, yet in
so doing, they expressed themselves as if the forgiveness of sin obtained
by Christ, related properly to those sins alone which had been commit-
ted before baptism; and as if in respect to sins committed afterwards,
there was need of a new and special satisfaction by good works. This
position once taken, Novatian might fairly ask, who can vouch for it,
that such a satisfaction will suffice ?
With regard to the second main point of the controversy,? the idea
of the church, Novatian maintained, that one of the essential marks of
a true church being purity and holiness, every church which, neglect-
ing the right exercise of church discipline, tolerated in its bosom, or re-
admitted to its communion, such persons as, by gross sins, have broken
their baptismal vow, ceased by that very act to be a true Christian
church, and forfeited all the rights and privileges of such a church.
1Ut curatum Deo judici reservemus, the latter part of the fourth century, con-
upon the supposition, that is, that absolu- cisely expressed the two main positions of
tion cannot forestall God’s judgment, but Novatian in these words: “Quod mortale
remains valid at the divine tribunal only peccatum ecclesia donare non possit, immo
when God, who tries the secrets of the quod ipsa pereat recipiendo peccantes.”
heart, finds the temper of the man to cor- Ep. IIL. contra Novatian. Galland, bibl.
respond with this absolution. patr. T. VIL.
2 Pacianus, of Barcelona, who wrote in
SCHISM OF NOVATIANUS. QAT
Hence the Novatianists, as they held themselves to be alone the pure,
immaculate church, called themselves ‘ οἱ cadapoi,” the Pure. It was
rightly urged against Novatian, that individuals could be accountable
and punishable only for their own sins, and not for the sins of others in
which they had no share; that it was only the inner fellowship with
sinners by the disposition of the heart, not outward companionship with
them, that tended necessarily to contaminate; and that 1t was a mere
assumption of human pride, to pretend to the exercise here below of
that judicial power of separation between the true and false. members
of the church, which the Lord has reserved in his own hands. On this
point, Cyprian finely remarks, ‘‘ Though the tares appear to exist in the
church, this should not disturb our faith or our love so far as to lead us
to separate ourselves from the church itself, because there are tares in
it. We should see to it, that we ourselves belong to the wheat, so that
when the grain is gathered into our Lord’s garner, we may receive the
reward of our work. ‘The apostle says, ‘in a great house, there are not
only vessels of gold and of silver, but also of wood and of earth; and
some to honor and some to dishonor.’ Let us labor with all diligence,
that we may be vessels of gold or of silver. To dash the earthen ves-
sel in pieces, belongs to the Lord alone, to whom is also given the rod
of iron. The servant cannot be greater than his Master; and no man
may arrogate to himself what the Father has given only to his Son;
nor suppose himself able to wield the fan to winnow and cleanse the
floor ; or of separating, by mere human judgment, every tare from the
wheat.”
But after all, it was impossible in this direction to find the real point
at issue for the confutation of Novatianism; rather, Novatian and his
opponents were here involved in the same fundamental error and dif
fered only in their application of it. It was the fundamental error of
confounding the notions of the visible and the invisible church. Hence
was it, that Novatian, transferring the predicate of purity and unspot-
ted holiness, which belongs to the invisible church, the community of
the saints as such, to the visible form in which the invisible church
appears, drew the conclusion, that every community which suffered un-
clean members to remain in it, ceased to be any longer a true church.
The same error of conceiving the church as something wholly outward,
which 1165 at the bottom of Novatian’s false application of the predicates
belonging to the notion of the church, is also betrayed when he main-
tains that a person is made impure by outward connection with the
impure in the same church fellowship. But the opponents of Novatian,
who started with the same fundamental error, differ from him only by
τ το GhahGarapetalations the fiotion of the chhnah ἐν ἐν
diated by the succession of bishops, and then deriving the predicates
of purity and holiness from that notion. The church transmitted and
propagated by the succession of bishops was, in their view, as such, a
pure and holy one. Novatian, on the other hand, laid at the basis of
his theory, the visible church as a pure and holy one, and this was, in
his view, the condition of the truly catholic church. The eatholic
church, transmitted by the succession of bishops, ceases, in his opinion,
948 SCHISM OF NOVATIANUS.
to be a truly catholic one, as soon as it becomes stained and desecrated
through the fellowship of unworthy men. ‘The more objective or sub-
jective tendency made all the difference between the two parties, in
their application of the same fundamental principle.
Now, instead of distinguishing different applications of the notion of
the church, Cyprian is contented to distinguish simply a two-fold con-
dition of one and the same church, its condition on earth and its condi-
tion in glory, where the separation has been made complete by the final
judgment. Entangled in this fundamental error of confounding Out-
ward things with Inner, it came about on a subsequent occasion, when
the controversy with Novatianism was no longer before his mind, that
he approached very nearly himself to the Novatian principles, declarmg
to certain Spanish communities,! that by toleratmg unworthy priests
they would be defiled themselves; that they who remained in union
with sinners would become themselves partakers of their sins.”
Out of this controversy too, the catholic church system, so firmly
established and exactly compacted in all its parts, came forth victorious ;
and the Novatianists continued to linger along in the following centuries
only as an insulated and insignificant sect.
1 Ep. 69. lictorum fieri, qui fuerint delinquentibus
2 Consortes et participes alienorum de- copulati.
SECTLUN THIRD.
CHRISTIAN LIFE AND CHRISTIAN WORSHIP.
Christian Life.
Christianity, since it first entered into human nature, has operated,
wherever it has struck root, with the same divine power for sanctifica-
tion; and this divine power cannot be weakened by the lapse of ages
In this respect, therefore, the period of the first appearance of Chris-
tianity could have no advantage over any of the following ages of the
Christian church. ‘here was but one peculiarity of this first period,
viz. that the change wrought by Christianity, in the consciousness and
life of those in whom it was produced, could not fail to be more strongly
marked by the contrast it presented with what they had previously
been, as pagans;—and so the Apostle Paul, in writing to Christians
converted from Paganism, reminds them of what they once were, when
they walked according to the course of this world, accordmg to the
spirit that was then working in the children of disobedience — and
after enumerating some of the prevailing vices of the corrupt pagan
world, says to them, ‘‘and such were some of you; but ye are washed,
but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus,
and by the Spirit of God.” ‘Teachers of the church, who had been
pagans, frequently appeal to such experiences of which they themselves
had been the subjects. Thus Cyprian, under the first glow of conver-
sion, witnesses of itt ‘‘ Receive from me, what must be felt ere it 18
learned, what is not gathered from a course of long continued study,
but seized at once, by the shorter method of grace. ‘While I was lying
in darkness and blind night, tossed about by the waves of the world,
ignorant of the way of life, estranged from the truth and from the light ;
what divine mercy promised for my salvation, seemed to me, in my
then state of mind, a hard and impracticable thing;— that a man
should be born again, and casting off his former self, while his bodily
nature remained the same, become in soul and disposition, another man.
How, said I, can such a change be possible ; that what is so deep-rooted
within should be extirpated at once? Entangled in the many errors
of my earlier life, from which I could see no deliverance, I abandoned
myself to my besetting sins, and despairing of amendment, nurtured
the evil within me as if it belonged to my nature. But when, after the
stains of my former life had been washed away by the water of regen-
eration, light from on high was shed abroad in a heart now freed from
guilt, made clear and pure; when I breathed the spirit of heaven, and
1 Ad Donat.
250 CHRISTIAN LIFE CONTRASTED WITH PAGAN.
was changed by the second birth into a new man, all my doubts were,
at once, strangely resolved. That lay open, which had been shut to
me; that was light, where I had seen nothing but darkness; that be-
came easy, which was before difficult ; practicable, which before seemed
impossible ; so that I could understand how it was that, bemg born in
the flesh, I lived subject to sin—a worldly life, but the life I had now
begun to live, was-the commencement of a life from God, of a life
quickened by the Holy Spirit. From God, from God, I repeat, pro-
ceeds all we can now do; from Him we derive our life and our power.”
Justin Martyr describes thus the change produced in Christians: ?
‘We, who were once slaves of lust, now have delight only in purity of
morals ; we, who once practised arts of magic, have consecrated our-
selves to the Eternal and Good God; we, who once prized gain above
all things, give even what we have to the common use, and share it
with such as are in need; we, who once hated and murdered one anoth-
er, who on account of differences of customs would have no common
hearth with strangers, do now, since the appearance of Christ, live
together with them; we pray for our enemies ; we seek to convince those
that hate us without cause, so that they may order their lives according
to Christ’s glorious doctrine and attain to the joyful hope of receiving
like blessings with us from God, the Lord of all.” Origen appeals to
the effects wrought by Christianity in the communities scattered through
the world, as evidence of the truth of the evangelical history. ‘‘ The
work of Jesus,” he says,? ‘reveals itself among all mankind, where
communities of God, founded by Jesus, exist, which are composed of
men reclaimed from a thousand vices; and to this day the name of
Jesus produces a wonderful mildness, decency of manners, humanity,
goodness and gentleness in those who embrace the faith in the doctrines
of God and Christ, and of the judgment to come, not hypocritically, for
the sake of worldly advantage and human ends, but in sincerity and
truth.”
_ As the contrast of Christianity with paganism — which is none other
than that of the old with the new man — was strongly marked in com-
paring different periods of the life of the same individual, so was it also,
in comparing the Christian life with the pagan, as a whole; for the
opposition now stood forth open and undisguised ; since paganism needed
not as yet to hide itself under any foreign guise. To this contrast,
Origen referred, when he said, “‘ The Christian communities, compared
with those among whom they dwell, are as lights in the world.” ®
The inducements to a mere outward Christianity that presented
themselves in later times, — the worldly advantages connected with the
profession of Christianity as the state religion; custom, which leads men
‘without any special reasons or inward call in their own minds to abide
by the religion of their fathers, — all this, in the period of which we
1 Apolog. II. χρείας ἀνϑρωπικὰς ὑποκριναμένοις, ἀλλὰ
2 ¢. Cels. 1. 1. § 67: Ἐμποιεὶ δὲ ϑαυμα- παραδεξαμένοις γνησίως τὴν περὶ ϑεοῦ καὶ
σίαν πραότητα καὶ καταστολὴν τοῦ ἤϑους Χριστοῦ καὶ τῆς ἐσομένης κρίσεως λόγον.
καὶ φιλανϑρωπίαν καὶ χρηστότητα καὶ ἧμε- Ὅς, Cels. 1. IIL ο..29.Ψ
ρότητα ἐν τοῖς μὴ διὰ τὰ βιωτικὰ ἢ τινας
OUTSIDE CHRISTIANS. ase |
treat — especially the early part of it—could effect nothing for the
advantage of Christianity. The majority forsook a religion recom-
mended to them by education, by the reverence for antiquity, by the
force of custom, by the worldly benefits connected with its observance,
for one which had against it, everything that favored the other, and
which from the very outset required of them many sacrifices, and ex-
posed them to many dangers and sufferings.
Still one must be very slightly versed in human nature to believe
that in any period whatever, there could be a total absence of the
causes that tend to produce a conscious or unconscious hypocrisy in the
reception of Christianity. Even in this period many such mducements
were at hand, particularly in those longer intervals of peace, which the
church oceasionally enjoyed. Says Origen— ‘“‘ There was always a great
diversity among those who sought Jesus, since all did not seek him in
the genuine way, for the sake of their own salvation, and to receive
advantage from Him. There were those that sought Jesus from vari-
ous improper motives ; whence it was, too, that they alone found peace
with Him, who sought Him in the right way—of whom it may with
propriety be said, that they sought Him as the Word which was in the
beginning and was with God, and for the purpose of obtaining from him
fellowship with the Father.”! The charitableness of the Christians
offered to many a strong temptation to unite themselves to the Chris-
tian community, without having become Christians by conviction and in
the temper of their minds; as is evident from the passage before cited
from Origen; and Clemens of Alexandria, too, speaks of those who
hypocritically adopted the Christian profession for the sake of temporal
advantages.”
But besides these pretended Christians, there would be some even
among those within whose hearts some seed of the gospel had been
lodged, whose case would be represented by our Lord’s parable of the
sower. It was not in every heart where the seed fell, that it found the
congenial soil in which it would spring up immediately and bring forth
fruit. In this period, as at all times, there would be those who had
been for ἃ moment touched by the power of truth, but who, neglecting
to follow up the impressions they had received, proved faithless to the
truth, instead of consecrating to it their whole life ; or who, wishing to
serve at one and the same time God and the world, soon became once
more completely enslaved to the world. Whoever failed to watch over
his own heart, whoever failed of seeking earnestly and constantly, with
fear and trembling, under the guidance of the divine Spirit, to distin-
guish and separate in his inmost being what was of the Spirit from what
was of the world, exposed himself to the same causes of dangerous self:
deception and consequently to the same fall, as Christians were liable
to in other times. ‘There are general sources of self-deception having
their seat in human nature itself, to which general sources all particular
1Orig. T. XIX. in Joh. § 3: Εἰσὶ γὰρ τῶν κοσμικῶν προστίασιν, κοινωνικοὺς τῶν
καὶ κατὰ μυρίας ἀποπεπτωκυίας τοῦ καλοῦ ἐπιτηδείων μαϑόντες τοὺς καϑωσιωμένουνς
προϑέσεις ζητοῦντες τὸν ᾿Ιησοῦν.- τῷ Χριστῷ.
2 Βαοπιαῦ I. f. 272: Μεταλήψεως χαρὶν
252 SOURCES OF SELF-DECEPTION.
forms of it may be ultimately referred, and these manifest themselves
outwardly in different ways according to different circumstances. There
are alsa particular sources of self-deception, belonging to different ages
of the world. Everything in fact without us, even what in itself con-
sidered may be for man’s highest advantage, is yet capable, if the true
light has not risen within hin, or if he does not watch over his own
heart, of proving only an occasion of self-deception. Of nothing out-
ward, no situation, relations, or circumstances, can it be unconditionally
affirmed, that by ‘these means vital Christianity must necessarily be
promoted. That which may promote it in one man, may to another,
who uses it otherwise than he ought, prove the occasion of his fall.
The contrast between Christianity and paganism, which was so
strongly marked in the life, contributed to preserve the Chri istian con-
sciousness and’life more pure, and to guard it agaist many a debasing
mixture. But here, also, what proved to some “the means of awaken.
ing many Christian virtues, and in general served to promote the Chris-
tian temper of mind, became to others a source of self-deception ; — to
those, namely, who fancied that by a stern rejection of every thing
pagan, they had quite satisfied the requisitions of Christianity, and made
out of this an opus operatum ;— when they were thus led to conceive
of the warfare with the world in too outward a sense, and on this account
the more easily overlooked the inner conflict with the mward world ;
and spiritual pride, uncharitable fanaticism fastened at the root of their
religion.
Many among the number who had been led along to Christianity by
a profound sense of religious need, fell into a mistake, which hindered
them from rightly appropriating to themselves the gospel, and from
giving themselves up to its dive, trinsic power. ‘The longing after
reconciliation with God and the forgiveness of sin often lay, in truth,
as we have seen already, at the root of the superstition of this period ;
but this longing remained covered under a grossly material form. A
craving of this sort met with eagerness the annunciation of a Redeemer,
the promise of the cleansing away of all sm by means of baptism ; —
but this was the very source, too, of the delusion which led to the mis-
apprehension — say rather the crass, material apprehension of what
Christianity proposed. Such persons sought in Christ, not a Saviour
from sin, but the bestower of an outward and magical annihilation of
sin. Bringing their pagan notions over with them into Christianity,
they were seeking in baptism a magical lustration, which could render
them at once wholly pure. That outward view of the church and the
sacraments, of which we have spoken before, presented beyond doubt
a convenient point of support for this erroneous notion. Hence it was,
that many who meant to embrace Christianity, delayed their baptism
for a long time, that they might meanwhile surrender themselves with-
out disturbance to.their pleasures, hoping to be made quite pure at last
by the rite of baptism. Against such delusions, Tertulhan thus ex-
presses himself:1 “* How foolish, how wrong it is, to put off the duty
1 In his book de pcenitentia,c.6: Quam adimplere et veniam delictorum sustinere,
ineptum, quam iniquum, pcenitentiam non hoc est, pretium non exhibere, ad merce-
SUPERFICIAL VIEWS OF CHRISTIANITY. 958
of repentance and yet expect the pardon of sin; that is, to hold back
the price, and yet reach out the hand for the goods: for it has pleased
the Lord to affix this price to the forgiveness of sin. If those that
sell, then, first examine the money for which they offered the goods, to
make themselves sure that it is neither worn, filed, nor counterfeit, so
we may conceive that the Lord also first makes trial of our penitence
before he will bestow on us the inestimable treasure of eternal life. The
divine grace, full and free forgiveness of sm, awaits those who will come
to baptism ; but we also must do what belongs to our part, in order to
qualify us to receive it. Thou mayst, it is true, obtain baptism easily,
— by thy protestations deceiving him whose business it is to confer it
on thee. But God guards his own treasure,— he will never suffer it
to be surreptitiously obtained by the unworthy. In whatever darkness
thou mayst veil thy work, God still is hght. But many fancy that God
is under a certain necessity of performing even for the unworthy, what
he has once promised, and thus turn his free grace into an obligation.”
Tertullian appeals to experience to prove that in those who come in
this spirit to baptism, the genuine effects of Christianity cannot be man-
ifested, and that such individuals often fall away from their profession,
since they built their house on the sand. With an eye to the same
class, Origen remarks that the whole profit of baptism depends on the
disposition of the recipient; that it is to be enjoyed by him only who
comes to this ordinance with true penitence; that, on the other hand,
baptism redounds only to the condemnation of him who is destitute of
such penitence ; that the spirit of renewal, therefore, which goes with
baptism, is not shared by all! To guard men against the mistake of
such outward Christians, Cyprian, in his collection of scripture proofs
for a layman, (libri testimoniorum,) having laid down the position, that
no man can attain to the kingdom of God, unless baptized and regen-
erated, adds: “It is, however, nothing for one to be baptized, and to
receive the communion, who in his life gives no evidence of reforma-
tion.” ? And the passages he cites on this occasion from the New
Testament, go expressly to show the vanity of such outward Christian-
ity; 1 Corinth. 9: 24, Matth.3:10,—5:16,—T: 22, Philipp. 2: 15.
He then proceeds to say that ‘“‘even the baptized person may lose the
grace bestowed, and will do so unless he continues to remain pure from
sin,” citing in evidence the following passages of warning: John 5: 14,
1 Corinth. 3: 17, 2 Corinth. 15: 2.
It belonged, indeed, to the peculiar essence of Christianity, that as it
was capable of becoming all things to all men, of adapting itself to the
most different and opposite positions of humanity, so it could let itself
down even to those modes of apprehending divine things, which were as
yet altogether sensuous and material; and thus, by the power of a
dem manum emittere. Hoc enim pretio
Dominus veniam addicere instituit; hac
peenitentiz compensatione redimendam pro-
ponit impunitatem. Si ergo qui venditant,
prius nummum, quo paciscuntur, exami-
nant, ne scalptus, neve rasus, ne adulter,
etiam Dominum credimus, peenitentie pro-
γΟΙ. 1.
bationem prius inire, tantam nobis merce-
dem perennis scilicet vite concessurum.
17. VI. John c. 17.
2. III. c. 25, 26: Parum esse baptizari
et eucharistiam accipere, nisi quis factis et
opere proficiat.
954 SUPERFICIAL VIEWS OF CHRISTIANITY.
divine life, beginning from within, transform them gradually from sen
suous to spiritual apprehensions. We should take good care, then, in
estimating the religious appearances of these primitive times, how, from
the material habits of feeling and thinking which they brought along
from some earlier position, we make up our judgment respecting those
who might really be wanting in nothing but the appropriate vessel to
receive the transcendent, divine element that had, in truth, filled their
inner life. In this case, too, the great saying of the apostle might find
its verification, that the divine treasure was received —and for a season
preserved —in earthen vessels, that the abundant power might be of
God and not of man. It would be, therefore, a very superficial and
unjust proceeding, to conclude at once, that men who framed to them-
selvessuch strange conceptions of God, of the things of God and of
his kingdom, could have nothing of the Christian life im them. But in
the case of the class just described, when the sensuous element unduly
predominated, and they would not yield themselves to the purifying
influences of the Spirit of Christ, every motion of the higher life neces-
sarily became vitiated by this sensuous element, and in the end sup-
pressed. Every Christian quality was transformed into some shape of
the flesh and secularized ; — was thus divested of its true significancy.
Thus they apprehended Christ and his kingdom. Even though the ex-
pectation of some future state of sensual bliss, of which their fanatical
imaginations drew ravishing pictures to the fleshly sense, enabled them
to deny the pleasures of the moment, and even to face tortures and
death, yet they might be, notwithstanding all this, strangers to the true
nature of the new birth, by which alone the kingdom of God can be
entered ; — might be wanting in the spirit of ennobling love.
Far be it from us, then, to be looking for any such appearance of the
church in which it was found without spot or blemish, —a condition of
it never to be realized till the final consummation. Nor do the defend-
ers of the cause of Christianity in this period deny the existence of such
blemishes. They acknowledge that among those who called themselves
Christians, were some whose lives contradicted the essential character
of Christianity and gave occasion to the heathen to blaspheme ---- yet
they declare that such would not be recognized as Christians by the
Christian communities ; yet they challenge the heathen to judge every
man by his life, and to chastise those whose morals deserved it, wherever
they found them. ‘Thus Justin Martyr and Tertullian express them-
selves. Says the latter, ‘‘ If you assert that the Christians are, in ava-
rice, in riotousness, in dishonesty, the worst of men, we shall not deny
that some areso. In the purest bodies, some freckle doubtless may be
discovered.”” But neither should we be led away by these blemishes
that attached themselves to the surface of the church, to overlook the
heavenly beauty which shone through them all. When the eye is fixed
exclusively on the one or the other, the picture may be easily colored to
an ideal perfection, or sunk to a distorted caricature. An unbiassed
observation will shun both these extremes.
1 Ad nationes, 1. I. ς. 5.
PROMINENT VIRTUES OF THE CHRISTIANS. 255
That which our Lord himself, in his last interview with his disciples,
described as the test by which his disciples might always be distin-
guished — as the mark of their fellowship with him and the Father in
heaven, the mark of his glory dwelling in the midst of them — namely,
that they loved one another, — precisely this constituted the prominent
mark, plain and striking to the pagans themselves, of the first Christian
fellowship. The names, “ brother”’ and ‘ sister,” which the Christians
gave to each other, were not names without meaning. The fraternal
kiss, with which every one, after being baptized, was received into the
community, by the Christians into whose immediate fellowship he en-
tered — which the members bestowed on each other just before the cel-
ebration of the communion, and with which every Christian saluted his
brother, though he never saw him before,— this was not an empty
form, but the expression of Christian feelings — a token of the relation
in which Christians conceived themselves to stand to each other. It
was this, indeed, as we have had occasion to remark already, which, in
a cold and selfish age, struck the pagans with wonder, — to behold men
of different countries, ranks, relations, stages of culture, so intimately
bound together, — to see. the stranger who came into a city, and by
his letter of recognition (his epistola formata) made himself known to
the Christians of the place asa brother beyond suspicion, finding at
once among those to whom he was personally unknown, all manner of
brotherly sympathy and protection. ,
The care of providing for the support and maintenance of strangers,
of the poor, the sick, the old, of widows and orphans, and of those in
prison on account of their faith, devolved on the whole church. | This
was one of the main purposes for which the collection of voluntary con-
tributions in the assemblies convened for public worship, was insti-
tuted; and the charity of dividuals, moreover, led them to emulate
each other in the same good work. In particular, it was considered as
belonging to the office of the Christian matron to provide for the poor,
for the brethren languishing in prison, to show hospitality to strangers.
The: hindrance occasioned to this kind of Christian activity, is reckoned
by Tertullian among the disadvantages of a mixed marriage. ‘ What
heathen,”’ says he, “ will suffer his wife to go about from one street to
another to the houses of strangers, to the meanest hovels indeed, for
the purpose of visiting the brethren? What heathen will allow her to
steal away into the dungeon to kiss the chain of the martyr? If a
brother arrives from abroad, what reception will he meet with in the
house of the stranger ?1 Τῇ an alms is to be bestowed, store-house and
cellar are shut fast.’’? On the other hand, he counts it among the feli-
cities of a marriage contracted between Christians, that the wife is at lib-
erty to visit the sick and relieve the needy, and is never straitened or
perplexed in the bestowment of her. charities.®
1 Tertullian meant, probably, that a pe- ποῦ to be a stranger’s house to him.
culiar emphasis should be laid on the word 2 Ad uxorem. I. II. ο. 4.
“ stranger,’ —in aliena domo, in the house 8L.c.c. 8: Libere xger visitatur, indi-
which, to a Christian, is a stranger’s,— gens sustentatur, eleemosyne sine tor-
' when the house of a Christian matron ought mento.
256 BROTHERLY LOVE
Nor did the active brotherly love of each community confine itself to
what transpired in its own immediate circle, but extended itself also to
the wants of the Christian communities in distant lands. On urgent
occasions of this kind, the bishops made arrangements for special col-
lections. They appointed fasts; so that what was saved, even by the
poorest of the flock, from their daily food, might help to supply the com-
mon wants.! When the communities of the “provincial towns were too
poor to provide any relief in cases of distress, they had recourse to the
more wealthy communities of the metropolis. Thus it had happened
in Numidia, that certain Christians, men and women, had been carried
away captive by neighboring barbarians, and the Numidian churches
were unable to contribute the sum of money required for their ran-
som ;— they therefore applied to the more wealthy communities of the
great capital. of North Africa. The bishop Cyprian of Carthage very
shortly raised a contribution of more than four thousand dollars,2 and
transmitted the whole to the Numidian bishops, with a letter full of the
spirit of Christian, brotherly affection.? ‘In afflictions of this sort,”
he writes to them, “‘ who ought not to feel pamed, who ought not to
look on the distress of his brother as his own, when the apostle Paul
tells us, if one member suffer, all the members suffer with it; and in
another place says, ‘ Who is weak and 1 am not weak?’ Wherefore in
the present case also it becomes us to regard the captivity of our breth-
ren as if it were our own, and the distress of those now in peril as our
own distress, since we are united together by one bond of love. And
not love alone, but religion ought to urge and stimulate us to redeem
the brethren who are our members. For when the apostle Paul again,
in another place, asks, ‘ Know ye not that ye are the temple of God,
and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?’ we must be reminded
here, if charity alone were not enough to impel us to aid our brethren,
that it 15 the temple of God which has been made captive, and that it
does not become us, by delay, and in neglect of our own distress, to
suffer that temple to remain long in bondage. And when the same
apostle tells us, that ‘as many of you as are baptized have put on
Christ,’ we are bound, in our captive brethren, to see Christ, and to
redeem him from captivity, who has redeemed us from death ; so that
he who delivered us from the jaws of Satan, and who now himself dwells
and abides m us, may be rescued from the hands of the barbarians ;
and he be ransomed for a sum of money, who has ransomed us by his
blood and cross. Meanwhile, he has suffered this to happen to try our
faith — whether each one of us is ready to do for the other, what in
like circumstances he would wish to have done for himself. For who
that respects the claims of humanity and of mutual love, ought not, if
he is a father, to consider it as though his own children were among
those barbarians, and if a husband, as though his own wife were there
in captivity, to the grief and shame of the marriage bond? It is indeed
our earnest hope, that you may never be visited again with a like afflic-
1 Tertullian, de jejuniis, c. 13: Episcopi 2 Sestertia centum millia nummorun..
univers plebi mandare jejunia assolent, — 3 Ep. 60.
industria stipium conferendarum. ᾿
AND CHARITY. 257
tion, and that our brethren may be saved by the mighty power of the
Lord from the recurrence of those dangers to which they are now ex-
posed. But should any similar calamity again befall you, to try the love
and faith of our hearts, delay not to inform us of it by letter; for be
assured, it is the prayer of all the brethren here that nothing of the kind
may again happen, but if it should, they are ready cheerfully and abun-
dantly to assist you.”
That from which such works took the impress of a truly Christian
character, was indeed nothmg else than the temper — which here ex-
presses itself— or Christian love simply following the impulse from
within. This Christian character was no longer present in its purity,
when the charitable action had reference to an outward end; when it was
converted into a ground of merit before God, into a means for extin-
guishing sin. And this disturbing element found entrance whenever
the Christian consciousness became in any way diverted from its cen-
tral point, so as to cease referring to Christ as the sole ground for
salvation. In proportion as the reference to Christ, which the habit
already noticed, of confounding the church with a set of outward forms,
had no tendency to encourage, was forgotten, in the the same propor-
tion rose the estimate which men placed on their own domgs, and on
the merit of good works. This also must be considered as belonging to
the reaction of the Jewish principle, which had been overcome by the
independent development of Christianity among the pagans, but which
afterwards found means of again introducing itself. In the third cen-
tury, we may observe both modes of contemplating acts of charity
running along side by side, and occasionally crossing each other; as
for example, in the tract composed by Cyprian with a view to exhort
Christians, many of whom had grown cold in brotherly love, to the
exercise of this virtue —the tract de opere et eleemosynis. ΤῸ the
father of a family, who, when imvited to some charitable act, excuses
himself on the plea that he is obliged to provide for a large family οἵ
children, he says, ‘“‘ Seek for your sons another father than the frail
and mortal one, even an almighty and everlasting Father of spiritual
children. Let him be your children’s guardian and provider—let him,
with his divine majesty, be their protector against all injustice of the
world. You who are striving more to secure for them an earthly than
a heavenly inheritance, seeking rather to commend your sons to Satan
than to Christ, incur a double sin, in neglecting to secure for your
children the help of their heavenly Father, and in teaching them to prize
their earthly inheritance more than Christ.”
In times of public calamity, the contrast was strikingly displayed be-
tween the cowardly selfishness of the pagans and the self-sacrificmg
brotherly love of the Christians. Let us hear how the bishop Dionysius
of Alexandria describes this contrast, as it was manifested in the different
conduct of the Christians and the pagans during a contagious sickness,
- which, in the reign of the emperor Gallienus, raged in that great capi-
tal. ‘*'T'o the pagans, this pestilence appeared a most frightful calamity
that left nothing to hope for; not sotous. We regarded it asa special
trial and exercise for our faith. It was true of most of our brethren, that,
22"
258 CHRISTIAN DROTHERLY LOVE.
in the fulness of their brotherly love, they spared not themselves. Their
only anxiety was a mutual one for each other; and as they waited on
the sick without thinking of themselves, readily ministering to their
wants, for Christ’s sake, ‘with them they cheerfully gave up their own
lives. Many died, after others, by their care, had been recovered from
the sickness.’ Some of the best among our brethren, presbyters, dea-
cons and distinguished men of the laity, thus ended their lives — so that
the manner of their death, being the fruit of such emiment piety and
mighty faith, seemed not to fall short of martyrdom. Many who took
the bodies of Christian brethren into their arms and to their bosoms,
composed their features and buried them with all possible care, after-
wards foliowed them in death. But with the heathens it was quite
otherwise ; those who showed the first symptoms of the disease, they
drove from them; they fled from their dearest friends. The halfdead
they cast into the streets, and left the dead unburied, making it their
chief care to avoid the contagion, which however in spite of every pre-
caution they could hardly escape.’’?
In like manner, the Christians at Carthage distinguished themselves
by their disinterested conduct from the pagan world, during the pesti-
lence which at a somewhat earlier period, in the reign of Gallus, rav-
aged North Africa. ‘The pagans in a cowardly manner deserted their
own sick and dying. The streets were covered with dead bodies, which
none dared to touch. Avarice alone overcame the fear of death;
abandoned men took advantage of the misfortunes of others to plunder
hem. Meantime the pagans, instead of being led by this calamity to
reflect on their own guiltiness and corruption, accused the Christians,
those enemies of the “wods, as the cause of 10.525 But Cyprian exhorted
his church to look upon the desolating scourge as a trial of their faith.?
‘“‘ How necessary is it, my dearest brethren,” said he to them, “ that
this pestilence which appears among us, bringing with it death and
destruction, should try men’s souls — should show whether the healthy
will take care of the sick; whether relations have a tender regard for
each other; whether masters will take home their sick servants.” It
was not enough, however, to satisfy a bishop who took the Great Shep-
-herd for his example, that the Christians should simply show the spirit
of brotherly love towards each other. THe called his church together
and addressed them as follows: ‘If we do good only to our own, we
do no more than the publicans and heathens. But if we are the chil-
dren of God, who makes his sun to rise and sends his rain on the just
and on the unjust, who scatters his gifts and blessings not barely on
his own, but even on those whose thoughts are far from him, we must
show it by our actions, striving to be perfect even as our Father in
heaven is perfect, blessing those that curse us, and doing good to them
that despitefully use us.”” Animated by his fatherly words, the mem-
bers of the church quickly divided the work among them. ‘The rich
gave of their substance, the poor contributed their labor; and in a
1 Euseb. 1. VII. ¢./22. 2 Cyprian, ad Demetrianum. 8 Lib. de mortalitate.
RELATION OF CHRISTIANITY TO GOVERNMENT. 259
short time, the bodies which filled the streets were buried, and the city
delivered from the danger of a universal infection. :
There were opposite sinful tendencies which Christianty taught men
to avoid, and between which the development of the Christian life had
to make good its way. In these times of despotism it was no rare
thing to find, united with a servile spirit that gave to the creature the
honor which is due to God alone —.with a slavish obedience that sprung
only from fear, a contempt for the laws of the state where they bore
hard on selfish mterests and the restraint of fear was removed. But
Christianity, by the positive spirit which went forth from it, secured men
against both these errors. By it was rendered an obedience that had
its root in the love of God and pointed ultimately to him,— therefore a
free obedience, equally removed from the slavish fear of man on the
one hand, and lawless self-will on the other. The same spirit of Chris-
tianity which inculcated obedience to man for the sake of God, taught
also that God should be obeyed rather than man, that every considera-
tion must be sacrificed, property and life despised, in all cases where
human authority ‘demanded an obedience contrary to the laws and ordi-
nances of God. Here was displayed in the Christians that true spirit
of freedom, against which despotic power could avail nothing. We
haye already had occasion, in the first section of this history, to observe
the effects of the Christian spirit in both these directions. In this sense,
Justin Martyr says, ‘‘ Tribute and customs we seek uniformly, before
all others, to pay over to your appointed officers, as we have been
taught to do by our Master, Matth. 22: 21. Therefore we pray to
God alone; but you we cheerfully serve in all other things, smce we
acknowledge you as rulers of men.”’ Tertullian boldly asserted, that
what the state lost in its revenue from the temples by the spread of
Christianity, would be found to be made up by what it gained in the
way of tribute and customs, through the honesty of the Christians, when
compared to the common frauds resorted to in paying them.? He gives
to those words of Christ in Matthew 22: 21, which were ever on the
lips and in the hearts of Christians, as a maxim of daily life, the follow-
ing interpretation —in opposition to those -who understood them, as he
supposed, in too wide and indefinite a sense:—‘“‘ Let the image of
Cesar, which is on the coin, be rendered to Cesar; and the image of
God, which is in man, be given to God—hence give the money to
Cesar, but yourself to God; for what will be left for God if all belongs
to Ceesar?”’ 8
The principles by which men were bound to act in this case, could
be easily laid down in theory, and easily deduced from the Holy Scrip-
tures and from the nature of Christianity. Hence, in theory, all
Christians were agreed ; but there was some difficulty in applying these
principles to particular cases, and in answering the question in every
instance, how the line was to be drawn between what belonged to Cesar
and what belonged to God—between what might be considered, in
1 Apolog. IT. | tum vectigalibus pereat fraude et mendacio
2 Apolog. c. 42: Si ineatur (ratio,) quan- vestrarum professionum.
ὃ De idololatria, c. 15.
wd
260 POSITION OF CHRISTIANITY, WITH
reference to religion, matters of indifference, and what not. The pagan
religion was, in truth, so closely interwoven with all the arrangements
of civil and social life, that it was not always easy to separate and dis-
tinguish the barely civil or social from the religious element. Many
customs had really sprung from a religious source, whose connection,
however, with religion had long been forgotten by the multitude, and,
remembered only by a few learned antiquarians, lay too far back to be
recalled in the popular consciousness.1 ‘The question here arose,
whether such customs should, like others, be considered as in themselves
indifferent ; whether men might be allowed in such matters to follow
the barely social or civil usages, or whether they should set aside all .
other considerations on the ground of the connection of such customs
with paganism.
Again, Christianity, from its nature, must pronounce sentence of
condemnation against all ungodliness, but at the same time appropriate
to itself all purely human relations and arrangements, consecrating and
ennobling, instead of annihilating them. But the question might arise
in particular cases, as to what was purely human, and adapted there-
fore to be received into union with Christianity ; and what had sprung
originally out of the corruption of human nature, and, being in its
essence ungodly, must therefore be rejected. Christianity having ap-
peared as the new leaven in the old world— and being destined to pro-
duce a new creation in an.old one that. had grown out of an entirely
different principle of life, the question might the more readily occur ;
which of the. already existing elements needed only to be transformed
and ennobled, and which should be purged wholly away? In what
already existed, there might be many things which, through the partic-
ular turn and direction they had assumed in the corrupt world, might
seem uiterly at variance with the essence of Christianity ; but which, at
the same time, by receiving another turn and direction — by being ap-
plied in another way, might really admit of being easily brought into
harmony with it. Now there might be some, who, in condemning the
abuse of these things, might also deny the possible good use of them;
and others, who, in conceiving of their possible good use, might be led
to approve the existing abuse of them.
Finally, many customs may have existed, which would never have
found any place in a state of things that had grown out of Christianity
— which in their origin and nature were alien to pure Christianity —
but which still, under the influence of the Christian spirit, might be so
modified and applied, as to be divested of that which made them wholly |
incompatible with the religion of the gospel. ‘That religion which aimed
nowhere to produce violent and convulsive changes from without, but
led to reforms by beginning in the first place within, — whose peculiar
character it was to operate positively rather than negatively —to dis-
place and destroy no faster than it substituted something better, might,
1 Consult, for example, what Tertullian concerning the religious meaning and ref:
and Clement of Alexandria have been 8018 erence of the custom of crowning, — things
to draw from the stores of their own learn- which assuredly would not easily occur te
ing and the works of other literary men, men in common life.
REFERENCE TO EXISTING INSTITUTIONS. 261
by virtue of this its law of action, suffer many of the existing customs
to remain just as they were, in their old defective forms, aiming simply,
to infuse into them a new spirit, in trust that this would eventually
throw off the unbefitting exterior, and create all things new.
Hence, notwithstandmg that Christians were agreed as to general
principles, disputes might arise among them with regard to the applica-
tion of these principles in particular cases; according as they were led
by their different positions and tendencies of mind to take a different
view of the circumstances — disputes similar to those which at various
periods afterwards were not unfrequently arising, relative to the man-
agement of missions among foreign tribes of men, to the organization of
new churches, and to the disposition of matters not essential (ἀδιάφορα.)
Men were liable to err here on both extremes, — on that of too lax an
accommodation to, or on that of too stern a repulsion of, existing
usages. The aggressive or the assimilating power of Christianity,
which should both be intimately united to secure the healthy develop-
ment of life, might one or the other be allowed an undue predominance.
The few excepted, who had already progressed farther in the genuine
liberty of the gospel, who to deep Christian earnestness united the pru-
dence and clearness of science, these few excepted, the better class of
Christians were generally more inclined to the latter than to the former
of these extremes; they chose rather to reject many of those customs,
which as pagans they had once practised in the service of sim and false-
hood, but which were capable also of another application, than run
the risk of adopting with them the corruptions of heathenism; they
were glad to let go everything which was associated in their minds with
sin or with pagan rites; they chose rather to do too much, than to for-
feit a tittle of that Christianity which constituted their jewel, the pearl
for which they were willing to sell all they had; as in general it is
more natural for men, in the first ardor of conversion, the first glow of
genuine love, to go to excess in opposing the world, than in yielding to
it. The church at large has to pass through periods of development
as to this matter, analogous to those of the individual Christian. Hence,
in the commencing development of the Christian life, the extreme ag-
gressive element must first predominate.
As regards the controversy between the two parties described, one
class appealed to the rule, that men are bound to render unto Cesar
the things that are Czesar’s, — that in matters pertaining to civil order,
they are bound to obey the existing laws,—that they ought not un-
necessarily to give offence to the heathens, nor afford them any occasion
for blaspheming the name of God,— that in order to win all to em-
brace the gospel, it was necessary to become all things to all men. The
other party could not deny that these were scripture principles; but,
said they, while we are to consider all outward, earthly possessions
as belonging to the emperor, our hearts and our lives certainly must be-
long wholly to God. That which is the emperor’s, ought never to be
put in competition with that which is God’s. If the injunction that we
should give the heathen no occasion to blaspheme the Christian name,
must be so unconditionally understood, it would be necessary to put off
262 FORBIDDEN TRADES AND PROFESSIONS.
Christianity entirely. Let them continue to blaspheme us, provided
only we give them no occasion for so doing by our unchristian conduct,
provided they blaspheme in us only what belongs to Christianity. We
should indeed, in every proper way, become all things to all men; but
-yet in no such sense as to become worldly to worldly men ; for it is also
said, “If I yet pleased men, [should not be the servant of Christ.” 1
We see plainly that each of these two parties were correct in the princi-
ples they would maintain ; the only question to be determined was, where
these principles found their right application.
While one of these classes believed that they ‘ought to avoid every
thing which excited attention among the pagans, and which might in-
vite them to resort to persecuting measures, the other condemned all
such prudence and reserve, as a disposition that was either ashamed or
afraid of public confession. Clement of Alexandria rebuked those who,
whenever they met in the street, publicly saluted each other with the
fraternal kiss, and would thus every where draw attention to themselves
as Christians. He calls it a foolish provocation of the pagans.2 He
charges them with falsely wearing that Christian love for a show, which
is an inward sentiment, and of not knowing how to suit their actions
to the time; in doing which, it must be admitted, he makes a wrong
application of the words of Paul in the fifth chapter to the Ephesians.?
Whoever followed a trade or occupation which was contrary to the
generally received Christian principles, was not admitted to baptism,
till he had pledged himself to lay it asides He must enter on some:
new occupation to earn the means of subsistence; or if not im a situation
to do this, he was received into the number of the poor maintained by
the church. [Ὁ these occupations were reckoned all that stood in any
way connected with idolatry, or which were calculated to promote it ;
those, for instance, of the artists and handicraftsmen who employed
themselves in makmg or adornmg images of the gods. There were
doubtless many, who, wishing to pursue these trades for a subsistence,
excused themselves on the ground, that they did not worship the idols,
that they did not consider them as objects of religion, but simply as
objects of art; though, in these times, it assuredly argued a peculiar
coldness of religious feeling, to distinguish thus what belonged to art "Ὁ
and what belonged to religion. Against such excuses Tertullian ex-
claimed with pious warmth,°— ‘‘Assuredly you are a worshipper of idols,
when you help to promote their worship. It is true, you bring to them
no outward victim; but you sacrifice to them your mind; your sweat is
their drink-offerimg, — you kindle for them the light of your 5111. With
these employments were reckoned the various kinds of astrology and of
1 Tertullian, de idololatria.
2 Strom. III. f. 257: Οἱ κατὰ τὰς ὅδους
TOV ἀγαπῆτων ἀσπασμοὶ παῤῥησίας ἀνοήτου
γέμοντες, καταφανῶν τοῖς ἐκτὸς εἶναι βου-
λομένων οὐδὲ ἐλαχίστης μετέχουσι χάριτος.
3 That they should μυστικῶς φιλοφρονεῖ-
ota: ἔννοϑεν, ἐξαγοραζομένους τὸν καιρόν.
* Apostol. Constit. 1. VIII. ¢. 81. Also,
Council of Elvira, can. 62: Si auriga et
pantomimus credere voluerint, placuit, ut
prius actibus suis renuntient, et tunc demum
suscipiantur, ita ut ulterius ad ea non re-
vertantur. Qui si facere contra interdic-
tum tentaverint, projiciantur ab ecclesia.
ὃ De idololatria, c. 6.
GLADIATORIAL EXHIBITIONS. 263
magic, a species of self-deception or of fraud which was at that time so
prevalent and so lucrative.
A remarkable proof, how far the moral and humane feelings of our
nature could be blunted by the force of education and custom, how a
narrow-hearted political tendency could suppress the sentiment of a
common humanity, is presented in that favorite sport of the Roman peo-
ple, the bloody gladiatorial shows ; exhibitions given them by men who
claimed to be cultivated, and which many even of the legislators,
statesmen and self-styled philosophers, countenanced and encouraged.
But the feeling of universal philanthropy, roused into life and acticen
by Christianity, must have struggled, from the first, agaist this cruel
custom, justified and sanctioned as it was by the established laws and
by the prevalent habits of thinking among the Romans. Whoever fre-
quented the gladiatorial shows and the combats of wild beasts, was, by
the general principle of the church, excluded from its communion. Ivre-
neeus names it with abhorrence as the last denial of the Christian chav-
acter, when certain individuals (belonging to the wildly fanatical and
antinomian sects of the Gnostics) did not even refrain from participat-
ing in those bloody shows, alike hateful to God and to men.! Cyprian,
describing the joy of a Christian who has just escaped from the polluted
heathen world, and looks back upon it from his new position, says:? “ If
you cast your eye on the cities, you behold an assembly of men, pre-
senting a more melancholy sight than any solitude. A combat of gladi-
ators 1s in preparation, that blood may appease the lust of cruel eyes.
A man is killed for the amusement of his fellow men; murder is turned
into an art, and crime not only perpetrated, but taught as a profes-
sion.”” ‘Tertullian says to those pagans who defended the gladiatorial
sports,? and who probably drew one of their arguments from the fact,
_ that criminals condemned to death by the laws were sometimes em-
ployed as the actors in them: “ It is well, that crimimals should be pun-
ished ; as who else than a criminal can deny ? And yet no mnocent man
can find pleasure in witnessing his neighbor’s punishment; it behooves
him rather to grieve, when a man, his fellow, has become so guilty as to
subject himself to so cruel a death. But who is my voucher, that it is
always the guilty who are thrown to the wild beasts, or condemned to
other kinds of death ; that innocence also does not sometimes meet with
the same fate, through revenge on the part of the judge, weakness in
the advocate, or the force of torture? The gladiators at least, as you
must allow, come to the combat, not as criminals, but as an offering to
the public pleasure. And however the case may be with those who
are condemned to the gladiatorial combats, yet consider what is this —
that punishment, whose tendency should be to reform those who are
guilty of mimor offences, should tend in fact to make them mur-
derers ?.”’
But it was not the participation in these cruel sports alone, which to
the Christians appeared incompatible with the nature of their calling ;
1Treneus, 1. I.c.6: Ὥς μηδὲ τῆς παρὰ ἀπέχεσϑαι ἐνίους αὐτῶν.
ϑεῷ καὶ ἀνϑρώποις μεμισημένης τῆς τῶν 2 Ep. ad Donat.
ϑεριομάχων καὶ μονομαχίας ἀνδροφόνου ϑεᾶς 8 De spectaculis, c. 19
264 PUBLIC SPORTS.
the same censure extended to all the different public exhibitions of that
period ; to the pantomimes, the comedies and tragedies, the chariot and
foot races, and the various amusements of the circus and the theatre.
Such was the prevailing and passionate fondness of the Romans at that
time for theatrical entertainments, that many were known to be Chris-
tians simply from the fact that they absented themselves wholly from
the theatre.!_ The spectacles, in the first place, were considered as an
appendage of idolatry, by virtue of their origin from pagan rites and of
their connection with several of the pagan festivals. Among the pomps
of idolatry or devil-worship, (πομπὴ διαβόλου,) which the Christians, when
enrolled at their baptism imto the service of God’s kingdom, were
obliged to renounce, (the sacramentum militize Christi,) these spectacles
were particularly included. In the next place, many thmgs occurred
in them which were revolting to the Christian sense of propriety; and
where this was not the case, yet the occupying of one’s self for hours
with mere nonsense — the unholy spirit which ruled in these assemblies
—the wild uproar of the congregated multitude, seemed unsuited to
the holy seriousness of the Christian, priestly character. The Christians
did, in truth, consider themselves as priests, consecrated, in their whole
life, to God; as temples of the Holy Spirit; every thing, therefore,
which was alien to this Spirit, for which they should always keep in
readiness the dwelling im their hearts, must be avoided. ‘God has
commanded,” says Tertullian,? “ that the Holy Spirit, as a tender and
gentle Spirit, should, according to its own excellent nature, be treated
with tranquillity and gentleness, with quiet and peace ; — that it should
not be disturbed by passion, fury, anger, and emotions of violent grief.
How can such a spirit consist with the spectacles? For no spectacle
passes off without violently agitating the passions. When one goes to —
the play, one thinks of nothing else than to see and to be seen. Can
one, while listening to the declamation of an actor, think on the sen-
tence of a prophet, or in the midst of the song of an effeminate stage-
player, meditate on a psalm? If every species of immodesty is abomi-
nable to us, how should we allow ourselves to hear, what we cannot feel
at liberty to speak ; when we know that every idle and unprofitable word
is condemned by our Lord?”
To Tertullian, who was inclined to look upon all art as a lie, a coun-
terfeiting of the original nature which God created, the whole system
of spectacles appeared merely as an art of dissimulation and falsehood.
“<The Creator of truth,” said he,’ ‘loves nothing that is false,—all
fiction is, to him, falsification. He who condemns every thing in the
shape of hypocrisy, cannot look with complacency on him who dissimu-
lates voice, sex, age, love, anger, sighs or tears.”
Weak minded individuals, who allowed themselves to be so far car-
ried away by the power of prevailing custom, which contradicted their —
Christian feelings, as to visit such scenes, might be wounded by impres-
sions thus received, and permanently robbed of their peace.
- 1 De spectaculis, c. 24: Hine vel maxime 2 De spectaculis, ¢. 15.
ethnici intelligunt factum Christianum, de 3’ Lic.
repudio spectaculorum.
PUBLIC SPORTS. 265
We find examples of a distempered state of mind, like the demonia-
eal, which had been brought on by such ward distraction.! Others,
after they had been prevailed upon once or twice by the love of
pleasure, and in spite of their conscience, to indulge in these amuse-
ments, contracted a new taste for them, and by their passionate fond-
ness for the theatre, were, in the end, gradually drawn back again to
heathenism.”
The pagans and the more thoughtless class of Christians were in the
habit of urging the seriously disposed with arguments like the follow-
ing: Why should they withdraw themselves from these public amuse-
ments? Such outward pleasures, addressed to the eye and ear, might
be quite consistent with religion in the heart. God is not injured by
man’s enjoyment, which in its proper time and place may be partaken
of without sin, as long as the fear and the reverence of God remain in
the heart.? Thus Celsus invites the Christians to join in the public fes-
tivals. ‘* God,” he says to them, “‘is the common God of all, — he is
good, stands in need of nothing, is a stranger to all jealousy. What
then should hinder men, however much they may be devoted to him,
from participating in the sports of the people ?’’* Thus it is, that the
cold frivolity of a worldly mind, when it comes in contact with a char-
acter of deeper moral earnestness, commonly assumes the airs of the
philosopher. ‘To such arguments Tertullian replies, the very point to
be shown is, how these amusements can agree with true religion and with
true obedience towards the true God.
Others, infected with the passion for these trifles, who were seeking
for reasons by which to hush their conscientious scruples as Christians,
argued that nothing was made use of in the public spectacles but
God’s gifts, which he had bestowed on men that they might enjoy
them. No particular passage of scripture could in fact be shown
where the shows were expressly forbidden. As to the chariot race,
there could assuredly be nothing sinful in it, smmce Elijah rode in a char-
iot to heaven. ‘The music and dancing of the theatre could not be for-
bidden, for we read in the scriptures of choirs, stringed instruments,
cymbals, trumpets and shawns, harp and psaltery ; we see king David
dancing and playing before the ark ; and the apostle Paul, in exhorting
Christians, borrows images from the stadium and the cireus.® At this
sophistry Tertullian exclaims, ‘“‘ Ah, how adroit a reasoner does human
ignorance imagine itself, particularly when it fears that it may lose
1 For examples, see Tertullian de specta-
culis, c. 26: A woman who visited the the-
atre, came home from there in the sad con-
dition of a person demoniacally possessed.
The evil spirit, having been adjured to tell
why it had taken possession of the soul of
ἃ Christian, said, or rather the patient, who
imagined herself to be speaking in the
name of the demon: “1 in this did perfect-
ly right, for I found her where my own
kingdom is.” Another, the night following
her visit to the theatre, had a frightful vis-
ion, and it was perhaps in consequence of
VOL. I. 23
the alarm into which she was thrown by it,
that five days afterwards she died.
2L. 6. ὁ. 26: Quot documenta de his, qui,
cum diabolo apud spectaculo communican-
do, a Domino exciderunt!
wu. 1, C., 8.
4 Orig. c. Cels. 1. VIII. c. 21:'O ye piv
Sede ἅπασι κοινὸς ἀγαϑός τε καὶ ἀπροσδεὴς,
καὶ ἔξω. φϑόνουι Τί οὖν κωλύει τοὺς μά-
λιστα καϑωσιωμένους αὐτῷ καὶ τῶν δημο-
τελῶν ἑορτῶν μεταλαμβάνειν ;
ὅ The tract de spectaculis, among the
works of Cyprian.
‘206 PUBLIC SPORTS.
some of the pleasures and amusements of the world.” In answer to
the first of these arguments he says: ‘ To be sure, all things are God’s
gifts; but the question is, for what end has God given them, and how
may they be so used as to answer their true end? What is the origi-
nal creation, and what the abuse of sin? for there is a wide difference
between nature in its origimal purity, and nature corrupted, between
the Creator and the Creator’s counterfeiter.” In reply to the second,
he says: ‘Though in scripture there may be found no express prohibi-
tion of theatrical exhibitions, yet it contains the general principles,
from which this prohibition follows of itself. All which is there said
generally against the lusts of the flesh and of the eye, must be applied
also to this particular kind of lust. When we can maintain that wrath,
cruelty and rudeness are permitted in scripture, then may we be at
liberty to visit the amphitheatre. If we are such as we call ourselves,
then let us, if we can, take delight in the shedding of human blood.”
Against such as wrested the scriptures after the manner above
described, the author of the treatise “‘On Spectacles,” in the works
of Cyprian, uses the following language: “I can truly say, 1t were
better that such persons knew nothing of the scriptures than to read
them thus; for the language and illustrations employed to exhort men
to the virtue of the gospel, they. pervert to the defence of vice ; for it
was so written for the purpose of inflaming us with a livelier zeal in
things profitable, while the heathens display so much earnestness on
trifles. Reason itself can draw from the general rules laid down in
scripture those conclusions, which are not expressly unfolded by the
scriptures themselves! Let each take counsel only of himself, — let
each confer only with that person whom, as a Christian, he ought to
represent; he will then never do any thing unbecoming the Christian,
for that conscience which depends on itself and not on another, will then
preponderate.”’ 2
Tertullian invites the Christians to compare with those empty pleas-
ures of the pagan world, the true, spiritual pleasures which had be-
come theirs through faith. ‘Tell me, pray, have we any other desire,
than that which was also the desire of the apostle, to depart from the
world, and be with the Lord? Your pleasures are in the direction of
your wishes. But why are you so unthankful, that you are not satisfied
with, that you do not recognize, the pleasures so many and so great,
which even now are bestowed on you by the Lord. For what is there
more joyous than reconciliation with God, your Father and Lord; than
the revelation of truth, the knowledge of error, the forgiveness of mul-
titudes of past sms? What greater pleasure than the despising of such
pleasures, the contempt of the whole world; than true freedom, the
pure conscience, the guiltless life, and fearlessness of death; than that
you can tread under foot the gods of the pagan world, that you can
expel evil spirits, heal diseases, and pray for revelations? ‘These are
the pleasures, these the entertainments of the Christian ; holy, everlast
1 Ratio docet, que scriptura conticuit. geret. Plus enim ponderis habebit. consci-
2 Unusquisque cum persona professionis entia, qu nulli se alteri debebit, nisi sibi
suz loquatur et nihil unquam indecorum 3 De spectaculis, c. 29.
PUBLIC SPORTS— SLAVERY. 267
ing, not to be purchased with money. And what must those be which
eye hath not seen, ear hath not heard, and which it hath not entered
into the heart of man to conceive?” In like manner, the author of the
above cited treatise in the works of Cyprian remarks: ‘ He can never
look with wonder on the works of man, who has come to know himself
as a child of God. It were letting himself down from his noble preém-
inence, to look with wonder upon any thing else than the Lord. Let
the faithful Christian apply himself with all diligence to the holy scrip-
tures, and in them he will find the worthier spectacles of faith, — ex-
hibitions which even he who has lost his eyesight may enjoy.”
If the mere attending as a looker on at these theatrical entertain-
ments was considered a wrong thing by the Christians, much more would
they reprobate the profession of an actor. In the time of Cyprian,
there was the case of an actor who became a Christian, and then for the
sake of a living set up a school to instruct boys in the art which he
formerly practised. ‘The bishop Cyprian was asked whether such an
individual could be suffered to remain in the communion of the church,
and he declared strongly against it. If a man, said he, is even forbid-
den (Deut. 22: 5) to put on the garment of a woman, and a curse is
pronounced on any one who does this, “ how much more criminal must
it appear, to form the man, by an immodest art, to effeminate and un-
seemly gestures, to falsify the image of God by the tricks of the devil.”
“6 In case such an one,” he adds, ‘‘ pleads the necessity of his poverty,
he may assuredly find relief from that necessity amongst the rest who
are maintained by the church, provided that he can be satisfied with
a homelier but more innocent fare. He must not, however, suppose,
that he is to be hired to leave off sinning, since he does this not for our
sake, but for his own. If the church where he resides is too poor to
support him, let him come to Carthage ; here he may receive whatever
is necessary for his support in food and clothing, provided only he teach
not others who are without the pale of the church what is pernicious,
but learn himself, within the church, what tends to salvation.” 1
Among those social relations which were alien to the nature of Chris-
tianity, and which Christianity found existing at the time of its first
propagation, belonged slavery. By the estrangement of humanity from
God, its original unity was disturbed. Mankind, destined to be one,
split asunder into a multitude of nations, each striving to assert itself
as the whole, and each taking an opposite direction to the other in its
_ course of development. ‘Thus the consciousness of possessing a common
human worth was lost ; and it became possible for man to be placed in
that relation to his fellow in which nature alone should stand to human-
ity, and his own nature to the individual.? A relation so unnatural
could find its justification only by assuming the position, that the differ-
1 Ep. 61, ad Euchrat.
2 So says he who has most distinctly de-
fined the ethical and political conceptions
which presented themselves at the position
gained by the ancient world. So says
Aristotle, Eth. Nicomach. 1. [X. ο. 13. The
relation between master and slave is like
that between the artisan and his tools, the
soul and the body, the man and his horse
or ox; ὁ δοῦλος ἔμψυχον ὄργανον, τὸ δ᾽
ὄργανον ἄψυχος δοῦλος. In this relation,
to speak of ἃ δίκαιον, a φιλία, would be out
of place.
268 SLAVERY.
ence among nations, — which took place at a later period, and origin- :
ated in sin, —that difference, by virtue of which there exists so great
a disparity of mtellectual and moral power, was something original.
Hence men could no longer recognize the fundamental identity of hu-
man nature, and believed one class destined by nature itself to be the
tools of another, and without any will of their own. Thus was this re-
lation a necessary result of the position held by antiquity, when state
and nation constituted the absolute form for the realization of the high-
est good; and thus it could happen, that the nation which was most
ardent for civil liberty, still employed thousands only as slaves... And
‘though their situation was often rendered more tolerable through the
influence of manners and the pure sentiments of humanity, — which,
breaking through unnatural restraints, would introduce a heartier fellow-
ship between master and slave,?—— yet the contradiction between this
whole relation and man’s essential dignity could not thus be set aside ;
and in general it still continued to be the prevailing habit, to regard
slaves not as men gifted with the same rights as all others, but as things.
In a judicial process, slaves who were acknowledged to be implicated in
no guilt, might still be subjected to all the tortures of the rack, for the
purpose of extorting confessions from them. Ifa master was murdered
by one of his slaves, the terrible severity of the Roman laws required
the sacrifice of all the slaves, male and female, which were in the house
when the crime was committed ; and this, too, whatever might be their
number, and even though they were not liable to the slightest sus-
icion.?
: But Christianity brought about that change in the consciousness of
humanity, from. which a dissolution of this whole relation, though it
could not be immediately effected, yet by virtue of the consequences
resulting from that change, must eventually take place. This effect
Christianity produced, first by the facts of which it was a witness; and
next by the ideas which, by occasion of these facts, it set in circulation.
By Christ, the Saviour, belonging to all mankind, the antagonisms
among men resulting from sin were annulled; by him the original one-
ness was restored. These facts must now continue to operate in trans-
forming the life of mankmd. Masters as well as servants were obliged
to acknowledge themselves the servants of sin, and to receive in the
same manner, as a gift of God’s free grace, their deliverance from this
common bondage, — the true, the highest freedom. Servants and mas-
ters, if they had become believers, were brought together under the
same bond of an heavenly union, destined for immortality; they be-
came brethren in Christ, in whom there is neither bond nor free, mem-
1 See above, p. 46, the way in which Aris-
totle seeks to justify this relation, to show
that it is one aimed at by nature herself.
2 Even Aristotle, Eth. Nicomach. 1. IX.
c. 13, makes this distinction in reference to
the relation between master and slave: 3
4 μὲν οὖν δοῦλος, οὐκ ἔστι φιλία πρὸς αὐτὸν,
ἡ δ᾽ ἄνϑρωπος, δοκεῖ γὰρ εἶναι τι δίκαιον
παντὶ ἀνθρώπῳ πρὸς πάντα τὸν δυνάμενον
κοινωνῆσαι νόμον καὶ συνϑῆκης καὶ ῥιλίας
δὴ Ka ὅσον ἄνϑρωπος.
8 Tacitus, Annal. 1. XIV. c. 42, et seq
relates how, in a case of this sort, when the
blood of so many innocent persons of every
age and sex was to be shed, the compassion
of the people was roused, and it was neces:
sary to use force to prevent an insurrec
tion.
SLAVERY. 269
bers of one body, baptized into one spirit, heirs of the same heavenly
inheritance. Servants often became teachers of their masters in the
gospel, after having practically exhibited before them the loftiness of a
divine life, which must express itself even under the most constraining
of relations, and shine forth the more conspicuously by the contrast.!
The masters looked upon their servants no longer as slaves, but as their
beloved brethren; they prayed and sang in company; they could sit
at each other’s side at the feast of brotherly love, and receive together
the body of the Lord. Thus, by the spirit and by the effects of Chris-
tianity, ideas and feelings could not fail of being widely diffused, which
were directly opposed to this relation, so consonant with the habits of
thinking that had hitherto prevailed. Christianity could not fail to give
birth to the wish, that every man might be placed in such a relation as
would least hmder the free and independent use of his intellectual and
moral powers, according to the will of God. Hence the apostle “Paul,
speaking to the servant, says, (1 Cor. 7: 21,) “If thou mayst be made
free, use it rather.” Yet Christianity nowhere began with outward
revolutions and changes, which, in all cases where they have not been
prepared from within, and are not based upon conviction, fail of their
salutary ends. ‘The new creation to which Christianity gave birth, was
in all respects an inward one, from which the outward effects gradually,
and therefore more surely and healthfully, unfolded themselves to their
full extent. It gave servants first the true, inward freedom, without
which the outward and earthly freedom is a mere show, and which,
wherever it exists, can be cramped by no earthly bond, no earthly yoke.
The apostle Paul says, ‘‘ He that is called in the Lord, being a servant,
is the Lord’s freeman.” Tertullian, wishing to show how much supe-
rior this heavenly freedom is to the earthly, observes,? ‘In the world,
they who have received their freedom, are crowned. But thou art ran-
somed already by Christ, and indeed bought with a price. How can
the world give freedom to him, who is already the servant of another ?
All is mere show in the world, and nothing, truth. For even then
thou wast free in relation to man, being redeemed by Christ; and now
thou art a servant of Christ, although made free by aman. If thou
deemest that the true freedom which the world can give thee, thou art,
for that very reason, become once more the servant of man, and the
freedom which Christ bestows, thou hast lost, because thou thinkest it
bondage.” The bishop Ignatius of Antioch writes to the bishop Poly-
carp of Smyrna,’ “Be not proud towards servants and maids; but
neither must they exalt themselves; but they must serve the more zeal-
ously for the honor of God, so that they may receive from God the
higher freedom. Let them not be eager to be redeemed at the expense
of the church, lest they be found slaves of their own lusts.” 4 One of
1The example of Onesimus often re- of hatred to this religion, sent him off to
curred. ‘Tertullian refers to cases in which the house of correction. Apologet. ο. 3:
a master, who had for a long time patiently Servum jam fidelem dominus olim mitis ab
endured the vices of a slave; but who, on oculis relegavit.
observing that he had suddenly reformed, 2 De corona militis, ¢. 13.
and being at the same time told that Chris- 8 Cap. 4.
teanity had wrought this change in him, out 4 The genuineness of the letter is here of
29"
270 CIVIL AND MILITARY OFFICES.
the imperial slaves, Huelpistus by name, who was arraigned with Justin
Martyr and other Christians before the tribunal, expressed himself
thus: “I too am a Christian; I have obtained my freedom from
Christ ; and through the grace of Christ, I am a sharer of the same
hope.” !
On the question whether a Christian could properly hold any civil or
military office, especially the latter, opinions were divided. As the pagan
religion of the state was closely interwoven with all political and social ar-
rangements, every such office might easily place one in situations where
joining in the pagan ceremonies was a thing not to be avoided. For this,
all Christians were agreed, no necessity whatever constituted an excuse.
On this point, Tertullian’s remark was assuredly spoken from the soul of
every believer, — “To be a Christian is not one thing here and another
there. There is one gospel and one Jesus, who will deny all them that
deny him, and confess all them that confess God. With him the believ-
ing citizen is a soldier of the Lord, and the soldier owes the same duties
to the faith as the citizen.” 2
But independent of this was the question, whether such an office,
considered in itself, was compatible with the Christian calling; which
was answered by one party in the affirmative, by another in the nega-
tive. We must here take into view the circumstances in which the
church found itself placed. The prevailing idea of the Christian life
was —to follow in humility, in self-denial and the renunciation of all
earthly good, a Redeemer who had made his outward appearance in
poverty and a low estate, —had veiled his glory under the form of a
servant. The glory of the Christian was with his Saviour in heaven ;
as to his earthly appearance, what was lowly, what was without pomp
or show, like the appearance of his Saviour, whom he loved to follow in
every particular, best suited his wishes. He despised the power and
the glory of this world, above which he felt himself elevated by the
consciousness of sharing in another power and another glory. It is true,
this renunciation of earthly things consisted essentially in the temper
of the heart; and .this, under different external circumstances, might
still remain the same ; the outward possessions of earthly property, of
earthly splendor, such as the temporal relations might require, the ex-
ercise of earthly power and authority in an earthly calling, were not
thereby necessarily excluded ; all this might be, and indeed was to be,
sanctified by Christianity. But the first glow of conversion did not
allow those with whom the living feeling was the predominant power,
soberly to distinguish what pertained simply to the idea and disposition
in itself and what to the manifestation of it and the outward conduct.
They were inclined to take the figure — of following their Lord, who ap-
peared in the form of a servant — in an outward sense, to refer it to an
no importance. At all events, we find a onthe supposition that fidelis is the true
witness of the Christian mode of thinking reading, —a correction warranted perhaps
in the first century. by what Tertullian has just before said re-
1 Acta Mart. Justini. specting the fides pagana. Still the com-
2 De corona militis, c. 11: Apud hune mon reading gives also a good sense: The
tam miles est paganus fidelis, quam paga- unbelieving soldier, who violates the duties
nus est miles infidelis. I have translated of Christian fidelity, is to him as a pagan.
CIVIL AND MILITARY OFFICES. 271
identity of outward circumstances with those in which he had lived.
Thus wealth, worldly power and glory, — which too they so often saw
arrayed against the kingdom of God,—seemed to be shut out from
them, and the first fervor of their zeal led them to disdain all this as
alien to their calling! It is in this spirit Tertullian says:? “ Thou art
bound, as a Christian, to follow thy Lord’s example. He, the Lord,
went about in humility and loneliness, without a certain home, for he
says, ‘The Son of Man hath not where to lay his head ;’ in poor ap-
parel, or he would not have said, ‘ Behold, they that wear soft clothing
are in kings’ houses ;’ without beauty or comeliness of appearance, as
Isaiah had foretold, (cap. 53.) If he exercised his right of authority
over none, not even his own disciples, for whom he performed the most
menial service; if, finally, conscious of his own royal: dignity, he re-
fused to become a king, he gave his disciples the most perfect example
to shun all that is lofty and great in earthly power and dignity, For
who was better entitled to use these things than the Son of God?
What fasces, and how many of them, must have gone before him ;
what purple flowed from his shoulders ; what gold gleamed on his brow
—had he not judged that the glory of this world was alien both to him-
self and to his! What he rejected, therefore, he condemned.” ®
Many Christians, again, from a conscientiousness in itself worthy of all
respect, thought themselves bound to take passages like Matth. 6: 39,
in the literal sense. That tone of mind very generally prevailed, which,
. in leading men to take such words of Christ as positive commands, hin-
dered them on this very account from understanding them rightly,
according to their spirit, — as the expression of that which is rooted in
the essence of Christianity, of that new life and law of living which
proceeds from Christ by an inward necessity. That which ought to
have been applied as referrmg immediately to the disposition alone,
was referred to the outwardness of the act. It revolted their Chris-
tian feelings to suffer themselves to be employed as instruments of-pain
to others, to serve as the executors of laws which, in all cases, were dic.
tated and animated by the spirit of rigid justice, without any mixture
of mercy or love.* é
In general, the Christians became accustomed by their circumstances
at that time, to consider the state as a hostile power, standing im oppo-
sition to the church; and it was as yet, in the main, quite remote from
their ideas to expect that Christianity could and would appropriate to
1 Hence the pagan in Minucius Felix, c.
8, describes the Christians as men who. half
naked themselves, despise honor and the
purple, honores et purpuras despiciunt, ipsi
seminndi.
2 De idololatria, ο. 18.
8 Tertullian, one of the sternest represen-
tatives, it must be allowed, of this mode of
thinking, and in whom it appears, like ev-
erything else that had seized and animated
him, to haye been pushed to the utmost ex-
treme, says, (Gloriam seculi) quam damna-
vit, in pompa diaboli deputavit.
4 Tertullian, where he treats this matter,
in the first place separates those cases in
which a Christian could not be allowed
under any circumstances to administer a civil
office: Jam vero que sunt potestatis, neque
judicet de capite alicujus vel pudore, feras
enim de pecunia, neminem vinciat, nemi-
nem recludat aut torqueat, si hee credibile
est fieri posse. The council of Elvira, can.
56, decreed that magistrates, during the
years in which, as Duumvirs, they had to de-
cide on matters of life and death, ought not
to attend church.
272 CIVIL AND MILITARY OFFICES.
itself, also, the relations of the state.! The Christians stood over against
the state, as a priestly, spiritual race; and the only way in which it
seemed possible that Christianity could exert an influence on civil life,
was (which it must be allowed was the purest way) by tending continu-
ally to diffuse more of a holy temper among the citizens of the state.
When Celsus called on the Christians to take up arms lke other sub-
jects, for the protection of the emperor’s rights, and fight in his ranks,
Origen replied: ‘* We are rendering the emperors a divine assistance,
when we put on a divine armor, wherein we follow the command of the
apostle; 1 Tim. 2: 1. The more devout the man, the more is it in
his power to render the emperor a far better service than can be done
by ordinary soldiers. Again we might thus reply to the heathen:
Your priests keep themselves pure, that they may present the cus-
tomary offerings to the gods with hands unstained by blood. In war,
you do not compel them to take the field. As priests of God it is
their duty to fight, by prayer to him, for those who are engaged in a
just war and for the lawful emperor, that all opposition to those who do
right may be put down. The Christians render greater service to their
country than other men, by forming the hearts of the citizens, and
teaching them piety towards that God on whom the well-bemg of the
state depends, and who receives those who in the meanest cities have
led a good life, into a city which is heavenly and divine.”? ΤῸ another
proposal made by Celsus to the Christians, namely, that they should
undertake the administration of civil affairs in their country, Origen
replies: ‘‘ But we know, that in whatever city we are, we have another
country, which is founded on the word of God; and we require those
who by their gift of teaching and by their pious life are competent to
the task, to undertake the administration of the offices of the church.”
They, on the other hand, who maintained that the Christians were
at liberty to assume the civil and military offices, appealed to examples
from the Old Testament. But here the difference between the two
stages of religious development was held up in reply. Tertullian main-
tains against such, that for the higher stage of Christianity, the claims
rise also higher. ‘Again, the defenders of the military profession quoted
in their defence the instance of John the Baptist, who did not bid the
1 So far from Tertullian’s mind was the
thought, that the emperors themselves would
at some future day be Christians, that in
Apologet. 6. 21, he says: Sed et Cesares
credidissent super Christo, si aut Ceesares
non essent szeculo necessarii aut si Christi-
ani potuissent esse Cxsares. Comp. above,
Ρ. 126.
2 In vindication of the translation given
above to the passage at the end of the
eighth letter against Celsus, I must add a
few critical remarks. In Origen’s words,
the reading εἰς τὸν πολιξα ϑεὸν seems to
me to be the correct one,—the reading εἰς
τὸν TOV ὅλων ϑεὸν, false. It admits of be-
ing easily explained how the predicate,
which was an unusual one in the Christian
sense, might be altered into the phraseolo-
gy common among the Christians ; but not
so easily how the latter could be changed
into the former. ‘But that Origen himself,
speaking from his own Christian position,
should apply the term πολιεύς to God, can-
not appear singular, as the comparison with
the Ζεὺς πολιεύς was hovering before his
mind. The word πόλις, which oceurs so
often in this sentence, favors the supposition
of such an allusion. If this reading is
adopted, the allusion makes it probable that
ἀναλαμβάνοντες should be read instead of
ἀναλαμβάνοντα.
8 De idololatria, ce. 18: Scito non semper
comparanda esse vetera et nova, rudia et
polita, coepta et explicita, servilia et libe-
ralia.
CHRISTIAN ASCETICISM. rag es
soldiers that came to him to relinquish their former calling, but pre-
scribed to them certain rules, by which they might pursue it in a man-
ner well-pleasing to God ; but, it was replied to them, that John stood
on the dividing line between the two economies. But when they
brought forward in their defence the example of the centurion, whose
faith Christ himself had commended, (Luke 7,) and especially the ex-
ample of the believing Cornelius; the force of such an appeal could be
more readily felt by their opponents, and Tertullian himself, that zeal-
ous antagonist of the military profession amongst Christians, believed it
could not be wholly condemned, in the case where such as had become
Christians while they were soldiers, persevered in the calling they had
once chosen, so far as it could be done consistently with their steadfast-
ness in the faith. Agamst the profession of arms was also quoted the
command to Peter, in Matth. 26: 52, to put up again his sword into
its place.2— This command, the opponents of the military calling, m
despite of the context and of the manifest end for which it was given,
would consider as addressed to all Christians.
Christianity, beginning with the consciousness of redemption, the
central point of all that is distinctively Christian, aimed to assimilate
and to appropriate whatever belongs purely to man and to his worldly
relations, for the kingdom of God. All this was to be pervaded with
the divine life, all this was to be ennobled by it. This Christian mode
of appropriating the world manifested itself m opposition to the method
in the two previous stages of human development; one of which was
a secularizing of the spirit, a confounding it with the world and a deif-
cation of the worldly, in paganism; the other, opposition to the world,
arising out of the consciousness of the inward schism of sin, when the
world presented itself to the consciousness only as that which is without
God and contrary to God—the Jewish, legal position. Contemplated
from both these positions, the Christian life was unintelligible in its true
import and significancy. Contemplated from the legal position, it ap-
peared as something too free, verging near to paganism; and from the
heathen position, as something too unfree, too constramed. ‘The Chris-
tian life could not fail to be reproached as a being righteous overmuch,
as the tmmodica superstitio, the nimiwm pietatis,? —sheer pietism. The
Christians must have seemed a race that hated the light, that were dead
to the world, and hence of no use in 1. .
To this charge, laid against the Christians, Tertullian replies :° ‘“‘ How
is it possible they should be such, who live in the midst of you, have
the same food and clothing, the same necessaries of life as yourselves ?
For we are no Brahmins, or Indian gymnosophists, no dwellers in the
woods, no recluses retired from the haunts of men. We well under-
stand what thanks we owe to God, our Lord and Creator; we despise
not the enjoyment of his works. We only moderate that enjoyment,
1 De corona milit. ¢. 2. of his letters, the pagan husband says of
2 De idololatria, c. 19: Omnem postea his wife, a Christian, “ que, dum nimia pia
militem Dominus in Petro exarmando dis- fuit, facta est impia.”
cinxit. 4 See the words cited above, on page 92:
ὃ In an epitaph which Gilbert Burnet dis- “ natio latebrosa et lucifuga,” and the rest
covered at Lyons, and published in the first 5 Apologet. c. 42.
274 CHRISTIAN
that it may not degenerate into excess or abuse. With you, therefore,
we inhabit this world, not without markets, baths, inns, workshops,
fairs, and whatever else is considered necessary to the mtercourse of
life. We also pursue with you the business of navigation, OF WAR, of
agriculture, of commerce; we share in your employments, and con-
tribute of our labor, to your profit, for the public service.” 1
Yet while it was true, that the Christians by no means withdrew
themselves from the intercourse of life, they were, at the same time, in
the frequent habit of setting apart certain days for the purpose of self-
examination and quiet devotion, for the purpose of renewedly conse-
erating their lives to God; so that they might return back, with fresh
zeal and vigor and renovated powers of holy living, to their ordinary
avocations. These days of holy consecration, of penitence and prayer,
which individual Christians appomted for their own use, were often-
times also a sort of fast-days. That they might be less disturbed by
sense whilst their minds were intent on holy things, they were accus
tomed on such days to confine their bodily wants within stricter limits
than usual, or else to fast entirely ; where we must take into considera-
tion the peculiar nature of that hot climate in which Christianity first
began to spread. Whatever they saved by their abstinence on these
days, was appropriated to the maintenance of the poor brethren. There
were also many, who, in the warmth of their first love, after being bap-
tized, immediately gave a large portion of their earthly property, or all
that they had, to the church fund or, to the poor, feeling themselves
constrained to express, in the strongest manner, their contempt of the
earthly things by which their hearts had been hitherto enslaved; to de-
clare most decidedly, — what now had full possession of their hearts, —
the wish to sacrifice, to give away anything, so they might but win the
heavenly pearl. It was to them as though the words of our Lord were
addressed directly to themselves: ‘ If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell
that thou hast and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in
heaven; and come and follow me.’ Within the bosom of the church,
they led a quiet, retired life, maintained themselves by the labor of
their hands, and remained unmarried, that, without being disturbed by
earthly cares, they might devote themselves to prayer, to the study of
the scriptures, to holy meditations, and to active labors for the kmgdom
of God; and all that remained from the earnings of their industry,
after barely satisfying the most necessary wants of life, they devoted to
objects of Christian charity. Such Christians were called the Adste-
nients, the zealous seekers after Christian perfection, continentes, ἀσκῆται.3
There were many others, again, who, through the influence of a pious
1 How far remote the idea of the later pliciter nudus, et nudis pedibus et sine domo
monachism lay from the apprehension of
Christians generally, is evident from a pas-
sage in Irenseus, where he is speaking of
their dependence for the means of support
on the heathens among whom they lived,
1. 1V.c. 30: Etenim, si is qui tibi hee im-
putat, separatus est a gentilium ccetu, et
nihil est alienorum apud eum, sed est sim-
in montibus conversatur, quemadmodum
aliquot ex his animalibus, que herbis ves-
cuntur, veniam merebitur, ideo quod igno-
ret necessitates nostre conversationis.
2’Aokeiv, ἀσκήτης, a current word among
pagans and Christians in this period, to de-
note a peculiarly rigid moral discipline
ASCETICISM. 275
Christian education, had from the earliest years imbibed such a love for
divine things, as made them solicitous to loosen to the utmost every tie
which bound them to the earth. Individuals of this class were to be
found belonging to both the sexes ;—the females were called distinc-
tively πάρϑενοι, virgins.}
Amongst the pagans themselves, it was then the custom of those who
led lives consecrated to meditation, to be ascetics in the sense above
given. Philosopher and ascetic were synonymous expressions.? The
term ‘ philosophy ” was to denote the direction and bent of the whole
life. But it must be admitted, that among the pagans this had already
become also a mask for hypocrisy, as for example, with the notorious
pseudo-cynics. Now it sometimes happened, that these pagan ascetics
were led, in their earnest strivings after perfection, to embrace Christ
lanity ; and after having become Christians, still adhered to their former
habits of life, which, in themselves, contained nothing repugnant to
Christianity ; or that others, in whom Christianity first produced a more
serious turn of life, adopted these habits, as a token of the change that
had been wrought in them. ‘They could avail themselves of the atten-
tion they attracted by publicly appearing in the garb of these philo-
sophical ascetics, — the philosopher’s cloak,’ — and of the respect paid
to them by the multitude on account of their mode of life, to enter into
philosophical and religious conversation with those who, out of respect
or curiosity, gathered round them in the public walks or places of re-
sort; and thus to present to them Christianity as the new and heavenly
philosophy,’ which had come from the East. It was assuredly a picture
taken from the very life of those times, where we are told by Justin
Martyr,® that early one morning, as he made his appearance on the
public walk, he was presently accosted by several with the salutation,
“Good morrow, philosopher ;”’ ® whilst one of them added, that he had
received it as a lesson from his master in philosophy, never to slight
the philosopher’s cloak, but to welcome with every civility those that
appeared in it, and endeavor to draw them into conversation. ‘This
led to a dialogue on the marks of true religion, and on Christianity.
“Ὁ Joy to thee,” exclaims Tertullian to the philosopher’s cloak,’ “a bet-
ter philosophy has deigned to wrap itself in thy folds, since thou hast
began to be the garb of the Christian.”
While spiritual pride could so easily attach itself to this mode of
life, the spirit of Christian love and humility, in such a form, shines
forth with the more splendor, as in the example of that Alcibiades,
1 Of such Tertullian speaks, de cult. fe-
min. 1. II. ο. 9: Aliqui abstinentes vino et
animalibus esculentis, multi se spadonatui
obsignant propter regnum Dei;— and Jus-
tin Mart. Apolog. IL: Πολλοί τινες καὶ
πολλαὶ ἑξηκοντοῦτοι καὶ ἑβδομηκοντοῦτοι,
of ἐκ παίδων ἐμαϑητεύϑησαν τῷ Χριστῷ,
ἄφϑοροι διαμένουσι, ---- which, indeed, is not
to be so understood as if all these had from
3 first purposely adopted such a mode of
Ὁ.
2-See 6. g. Artemidor. oneirocrit. IV.
where he speaks of an ᾿Αλέξανδρος ὁ φιλό-
σοφος, ἔμελε δὲ αὐτῷ, ὄντι ἀνὄρι ἀσκῆτῃ, οὔτε
γάμου, οὔτε κοινωνίας, οὔτε πλούτου ---- and
V.18: ᾿Ἐφιλοσόφησεν εὐτόνως καὶ τοῖς Δλό-
γοις καὶ τῇ ἀσκήσει χρησάμενος ἀκολοῦϑος.
8 Τρίβων, τριβώνιον, pallium.
4 Φιλοσοφία τῶν βαρβάρων.
5 Dial. ο. Tryph. Jud.
6 Φιλόσοφε, χαῖρε!
7 In his tract de pallio.
276 CHRISTIAN
who was one of the imprisoned confessors at Lyons.1 Having accus
tomed himself, as an ascetic, to live on bread and water, he continued
to observe the same habits in the prison; when, by the inward voice of
the Spirit, it was revealed to Attalus, one of the other confessors, that
Alcibiades was wrong in refusing to enjoy what God had created, and
thus giving occasion of offence to other Christians. ΤῸ this admoni-
tion, Alcibiades immediately submitted, and without further scruple
partook indiscriminately of all that was set before him, giving God
thanks.?
Now, though sweh ascetics were fully penetrated with a Christian
spirit, — a spirit of love and humility, — yet we cannot fail to per-
ceive, even here, a one-sided tendency, which, in the earlier stages of
the development of Christian life, might easily become excessive.
Christianity was designed to be the world-subjecting principle. It was
to take up into itself and appropriate to its own ends all that belongs
to man, —all that is of the world. But to bring this about, it was
necessary that it should first enter into a conflict with what had hith-
erto been the world-subjecting principle, — into a conflict with sin and
the principle of heathenism and everything connected therewith, con-
cerning which necessary conflict we have had occasion to speak else-
where. ‘The clearing away of these hindrances must therefore be the
first aim of Christianity ; although indeed this was an object that could
not be really accomplished without the positive appropriation of the
purely human element. In the development, in time, the negative,
ageressive tendency must needs appear first; and of this there might
easily come to be an undue predominance, while the positive appropri-
ating element, without which the problem of Christianity could never be
resolved, might retreat out of sight. Hence a one-sided ascetic ten-
dency easily introduced itself into the earliest stages, into the first
stadium, of the development of the Christian life, and more particu-
larly in the case of those who embraced Christianity with their whole
soul. Wherever this religion awakened in the first place disgust at the
worldly pursuits which had previously swallowed up the life, enkindled
the holy flame of love for the divine, of aspiration after eternal life,
this first movement would readily assume an ascetic shape. With this,
other elements might now intermingle, that had formed themselves, in-
dependent of Christianity, out of the previous process of the world’s
development, and which, without the creative influence of Christianity,
would have taken a much wider sweep, and which could be finally sub-
dued only by the might of this new principle of life. The sprightly,
youthful life of the pagan world had passed over at length into the
sense of inward disunion, of schism, and had given place to the dualis-
tic and ascetic tendencies coming from the East. Accordingly, Christ-—
ianity at its first appearance’ found such tendencies already existing, and
these, which found a point of contact and union in the deep-felt breach,
would have pressed onward to a still more extravagant length, if the
consciousness of redemption proceeding from Christianity had not, in
1 See above, p. 112, and the following. 2 Euseb. 1. V.c. 3
ASCETICISM. 217
proportion as it unfolded itself, deprived them more and more of this
point of union. But beyond a doubt, this already existing tendency to
a misconceived renunciation of the world and of sense, might mix in with
the one-sided negative tendency, which, as we have seen, would first
become-prominent in the development of Christian life, and might m
this way assume a Christian shape and coloring.
Thus arose an undue estimation of the ascetic, contemplative life —
of celibacy — which could go to the extreme of awarding to such life a
much more exalted stage of future blessedness.t1_ It was here, that the
mistaken apprehension of our Saviour’s language to the rich found its
support — that a perfection, surpassing that ordinary standard of the
Christian life which is oceupied in fulfilling the duties of one’s earthly
calling, was denoted ‘by those words — which perfection consisted in
the renunciation of every earthly good, (the germ of the doctrine of
the concilii evangelici.) Now in this manner it became possible, that
an opposition which belonged to the fundamental principles of antiqui-
ty, — but which by the consciousness of redemption, of the princi-
ple of the divine life destined to enoble all that belongs to humanity,
was overcome and banished,—should imperceptibly gain admission
once more into the evolution of Christianity itself;—- we mean, that
opposition between the common and the higher, the practical and the
contemplative life— between divine and human virtue. It is clear,
how this apprehension must have coincided with the notion of a caste of
priests, preéminently consecrated to God, who must hold themselves
aloof from all intercourse with the world; and so too the opinion might
have had its birth, that celibacy. belonged to the perfection of the spirit-
ual order.?
This falsely conceived opposition to the world had already become
the mask for a worldly temper, which would affect the appearance of
holiness, or sought to gain an easier life at the expense of the church.®
Cyprian had to write a tract of admonition and warning against the
showy dress and display which had crept in among the rich virgins, at
Carthage, who had consecrated themselves to God.4 And thus it hap-
pened, that in disdaining what is n harmony with nature, — which 1s also
what corresponds to Christianity, — men devised unnatural forms of rela-
tion between the two sexes; and in this case, nature, so proudly dis-
dained, could easily exercise a dangerous reaction, and sensuality cor-
ruptly intermingle with the spiritual state ; as in the cohabitation of such
virgins with unmarried ecclesiastics, under the pretence of a purely
spiritual connection.®
1 As is done expressly by Origen, Homil.
XIX. in Jerem. § 4. Comp. Cyprian, de
habitu virginum.
2 The council of Elvira, (A. D. 305,) —
from which, however, no inference can be
drawn with regard to the general practice
of the church. This council, where the
one-sided ascetic spirit spoken of above,
prevailed to an eminent degree, decreed
already, can. 33, that bishops, presbyters
and deacons, living with their wives, should
be deposed from their places.
VOL. I. 24
8 See what Tertullian, who was now a
violent, over-heated accuser of the catholic
church indeed, but who must have felt that
he had some ground for such charges, says
against many virgines: A®mulatio illas non
religio producit ; aliquando et ipse venter,
Deus eorum, guia facile virgines fraternitas
suscipit. De idololatria, c. 14.
4 Comp. the tract de habitu virginum.
5 The συνείσακτοι, as they were after-
wards called, subintroductz. Against them,
Cyprian, ep. 62,ad Pompon. Though Cy
278 ASCETICISM OPPOSED BY
And while thus the secluded life of ascetics and ecclesiastics was ex-
tolled above the common life of Christians, another mischievous conse-
quence resulted. ‘They who were occupied in the common business of
life, forgot the greatness of their Christian calling, and thought they
were entitled to lower very much the requisitions as to their own daily
living.
As early as the time of Clement of Alexandria there were those who,
on being advised not to put themselves on a level with the pagans in
their rage for the public shows, but to ponder well what belonged to the
seriousness of the Christian calling, were accustomed to repel such ex-
hortations, and excuse themselves by saying, “‘ We cannot all be philos-
ophers and ascetics; we are ignorant people; we cannot read; we un-
derstand nothing of the holy scriptures; why should we be subjected
to such rigorous demands?” }
Yet we observe many indications, too, that a sound Christian spirit
opposed itself to this false ascetic tendency. Such we find in an ancient
writing known by the name of the Shepherd, which is said to have
been composed by a certain Hermas, and had great authority in the
first centuries. In regard to fasting, it is here said,? ‘“‘Above all, exer-
cise thy abstinence in this, to refrain both from speaking and from hear-
ing what is wrong; and cleanse thy heart from all pollution, from all
revengeful feelings, and from all covetousness; and on the day thou
fastest, content thyself with bread, vegetables and water, and thank
God for these. But reckon up what thy meal on this day would have
cost thee, and give the amount to some widow, or orphan, or to the
poor. Happy for thee, if, with thy children and whole household, thou
observest these thmgs.”’ Clement of Alexandria notices the fact, that
many kinds of pagan worship required celibacy and abstinence from
meat and wie in their priests; that there were mgid ascetics among
the Indians, namely the Samaneans, and hence argued that usages
which may exist also in other religions and even be combined with
superstition, cannot, in themselves considered, be peculiarly Christian.
He then adds, — “ Paul declares that the kingdom of heaven consists
not ἴῃ meat and drink, neither therefore in abstaining from wine and
flesh, but in righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost. As
humility is shown, not by the castigation of the body, but by gentle-
ness of disposition, so also abstinence is a virtue of the soul, consisting
not in that which is without, but in that which is within the man. Ab-
stinence has reference not to some one thing alone, not merely to pleas-
ure, but it is abstinence also to despise money, to tame the tongue, and
to obtain by reason the dominion over sin.” ὃ
prian elsewhere speaks, even in extravagant
terms, of the obligations which were con-
nected with the entrance into such a mode
of life as a connubium spiritale cum Dom-
ino, yet he expresses himself here with be-
coming moderation: Si autem perseverare
nolunt vel non possunt, melius est, ut nu-
bant, quam in ignem delictis suis cadant.
But the council of Elvira decreed, in their
13th canon, that such fallen virgins who re-
fused to return back to their former condi-
tion, should be refused communion, even in
the article of death.
1’AAW ob πάντες φιλοσοφοῦμεν, γράμμα-
ta οὐκ ἔμαϑου. Clemens Peedagog. 1. IIL.
Boas:
2 Lib. TI, Similitud. V.
3 Clemens Strom. 1. III. f. 446, et seq
HERMAS AND CLEMENT. 279
When those people of whom we have spoken above, excused them-
selves from the more:severe requisitions regarding their daily walk,
with the plea, we are not all philosophers, not of the spiritual order, he
replies to them: But are we not all striving after life? What sayest
thou ? How art thou then a believer? How lovest thou God and thy
neighbor? Is that not philosophy? ‘Thou sayest, I have never learned
to read. But if thou hast not learned to read, thou canst not excuse
thyself thus, for not having heard; for there is no need of any one’s
teaching thee this. (All hear the preached word, hear the scriptures
read in the church assemblies.) But faith is not the possession.6f the
wise of this world, but of the wise in God. Faith is taught also with-
out writing ; and its writing, which is adapted even to the knowledge
of the ignorant, is still divine, and is called love. Even the business
of the world may be managed in an unworldly, in a godly manner.” !
Thus Clement insists on the common spiritual and priestly calling of all
believers, and he requires even of those engaged in trades, and of pub-
licans, that they should exhibit philosophy in their practice.2 It was
for the purpose of correcting the opinion of those who considered the
renunciation of all worldly goods as true Christian perfection, misun-
derstanding Christ’s language to the rich young man, that the same
Clement wrote his beautiful tract on the question, ‘‘ What must be the
rich man’s character, in order that he may be saved.”’® In this tract,
he endeavors to show that in Christianity the disposition of the heart
is the essential thing. ‘‘ Our Saviour,” says Clement, “ does not, as
many groundlessly assume, command us to throw away our earthly
goods, but to banish -the opinion of money, the passion for it — that
canker of the soul — the cares, the thorns of worldly life, which choke
the seed of the divine life. What does our Lord teach as something
new, as the only life-giving doctrine, of which those who came before
him knew nothing? What is it, that is peculiarly his own, and the new
creation? Not some outward act, that others also have done; but
something higher, more divine, more perfect, intimated only by the out-
ward act, that all which is foreign, should be torn up, root and branch,
and cast forth from the soul. For even those before him despised out-
ward things, and in fact gave away their earthly goods; but the in-
ward passions of the soul only became the stronger, for they were filled
with vanity, pride and contempt for other men, — as if they had done
something themselves beyond the reach of humanity. A man may have
thrown away his earthly possessions and still retain the desire of them
in his heart ; thus subjecting himself to the double disquietude of hav-
ing to regret his prodigality and of feeling himself deprived of the
necessaries of life. What means would be left of communicating one
to another, if none had the means to bestow? And were this the doc-
_ 1 Πίστις δὲ οὐ σοφῶν τῶν κατὰ κόσμον, not be exactly rendered,) κατὰ ϑεὸν ἀπά-
ἀλλὰ τῶν κατὰ ϑεόν ἐστι τὸ κτῆμα, ἡ δὲ γειν οὐ κεκώλυται.
καὶ ἄνευ γραμμάτων ἐκπαιδεύεται" καὶ τὸ 2 Καὶ ταυτῇ φιλοσοφούντϑιν οἱ ἀγοραῖοι
συγγραμμα αὐτῆς, τὸ ἰδιωτικὸν ἅμα καὶ καὶ οἱ κάπηλοι. Pedagog. 1. III. f. 255
ϑεῖον, ἀγάπη κέκληται. ᾿Αλλὰ καὶ τὰ ἐν κοσ- ὃ Τίς ὁ σωζόμενος πλούσιος; § (1
μῷ κοσμίως, (a play upon words which can-
9
280
MONTANISTIC SPIRIT OPPOSED.
trine of our Lord, how could it fail to be at variance with many other
glorious doctrines of his? Earthly property should be considered in the
light of a staff, an instrument for good uses, to be turned to the proper
account by those who know how to use it rightly.”
Clement recognized a divine order and arrangement in the unequal
distribution of property, which was to serve as a material for Christian
virtue. Community of goods appears to him as a thing repugnant to
the divine plan.t “As food does not advantage us i God’s sight,”
says he, ‘so neither does the married or the unmarried life without
knowledge, but virtuous action done with knowledge.” 2
When the Montanists would have imposed new fasts and new laws of
abstinence on the church, the spirit of evangelical freedom among the
Christians took strong ground against them. They were accused of
not duly distinguishing between the economies of the Old and of the
New Testament; of making laws where, according to the spirit of the
gospel, all should be free, where every one should act without con-
straint, according to his own peculiar temperament and his own indi-
vidual necessities. The only fasts prescribed by God was fasting from
bosom sans.3
Like others whose language we had occasion to cite above, Commo-
dian also rebuked the extravagant estimation in which martyrdom was
held as an opus operatum. He showed, that whoever was a martyr in
disposition, whoever exercised love, humility, patience, was equal to the
martyr without shedding a drop of blood.* ‘Many err,” said he,
“when they say, we have conquered the enemy by our blood; and
they will not conquer him, if he comes to assault them Cif he plunges
them into temptations of another kind.)® Thou, then, who wouldst
become a martyr by the confessions of thy mouth, robe thyself in time
of peace with all goodness, and rest secure.”
If the ascetic tendency was but a transient moment of excess on one
side in the development of the Christian life; we see on the other hand,
from the first, in that which presents the strongest contrast to it, im the
‘ennobled family relation, the power of the Christian principle of life in
its healthy development. And this great effect resulted first from the
fact that the true import of marriage was realized by Christianity ; —
its import as the harmonious union of two individuals separated by sex,
in a higher spiritual oneness of life, by the communication of a divine
life destined to reconcile all antitheses.. Connected with this, was the
fact, that wherever Christianity found entrance, the equal dignity and
worth of the female sex, as possessing a nature created in the image of
l'Qe ἐξ ἐναντίων ὃ κόσμος σύγκειται, Mons (which gives no good sense) patiens fueris, in-
ὥσπερ ἐκ ϑερμοῦ καὶ ψυχροῦ, ξηροῦ τε καὶ
ὑγροῦ, οὕτω κἀκ τῶν διδόντων κἀκ τῶν
λαμβανόντων. ϑιτοτηδί. 1. IIL f. 449.
2 Stromat. |. IV. f. 533.
3 See Tertullian, de jejuniis.
4 Instruct. 48:
Multa sint martyria, que fiunt sine sanguine fuso.
Alienum non cupere, velle martyrium habere,
Linguam refreenare, humilem te reddere debes,
Vim ultra non facere, nec factam reddere contra,
tellige te martyrem esse.
5 Instruct. 62:
Multi quidem errant dicentes, sanguine nostro,
Vicimus iniquum, quo manente,
(Which may be referred either to the near-
est subject iniquus, as I have rendered, or
the more remote sanguis:—they do not
want that victory which is won without
blood.)
Tu ergo, qui queris martyrium tollere verbo
In pace te vesti bonis, et esto securus
DOMESTIC LIFE OF CHRISTIANS. 281
God and allied to the divine no less than the male, was brought dis-
tinctly before the consciousness ; and that the sex was invested with the
rights belonging to it—Jin opposition to the principle of the ancient
W orld, particularly ἢ in the Hast, where the woman was placed in an al-
together subordinate relation to ‘the man.! Thus Clement of Alexandri ἴδ,
gives prominence to the Christian import of marriage and of the family
life, in opposition to those who were given to the excessive ascetic tend-
ency. ‘The genuine Christian,” says he, “has the apostles for his
example ; and in truth, it is not in the solitary life, one shows himself
a man ; but he gets the victory over other men, who, as a husband and
father of a family, withstands all the temptations that assail him im pro-
viding for wife and children, servants and substance, without allowing
himself to be turned from the love of God. The man with no family
escapes many temptations ; but as he has none save himself to care
for, he is of less worth than the man, who has more to disturb him,
it is true, in the work of his own salvation, but accomplishes more in
social life, and in truth presents in his own case a miniature of provi-
dence 1861. 2 Describing the Christian matron, he says:* ‘The
mother is the glory of her children ; the wife, of her husband ; both are
the glory of the wife, and God is the glory of them 8}}. And Tertul-
han:* ‘What a union is that between two believers, having in common
one hope, one desire, one order of life, one service of the Lord? Both,
like brother and sister, undivided in spirit or body, nay, in the true
sense twain in one flesh, kneel, pray and fast together, mutually teach,
exhort, and bear with, each other; they are not separated in the
church of God, and at the Lord’s supper; they share each other’s
troubles, persecutions, joys; neither has any thing to hide from the
other; neither avoids the other; there is free liberty to visit the sick,
to sustain the needy; the harmony of psalms and hymns goes up be-
tween them, and each vies with the other in singing the praise of their
God. Christ rejoices to behold and hear such things, and sends them
his peace. Where there are two, there he is also; and where he is, the
spirit of evil cannot enter.”
It was required of the Christian mistress of a family, that by the
ened of her whole demeanor, by the decency and simplicity of her
dress,° she should show the spirit that ruled within, and thus let her
very appearance shine as a light, in an age characterized by excessive
display, luxury and corruption of manners.
But here again there were two opposite parties. While to some,
poverty of apparel seemed inseparably connected with the essence of
humility, and to be implied in the idea of the servant form of the
Christian life, others said, ‘it is enough to have the disposition which
becomes Christian women. God looks on the heart — the outward ap-
pearance is nothing. Why make a display of the change that has
been wrought in us? Far rather are we bound to furnish the heathens
1 Also in the Ethie. magn. of Aristotle, 4 Ad uxorem, I. II. ο. 8.
1. I. ¢. 34: Xeipov 7 γυν τ᾿ τοῦ ἀνδρός. . ® Comp. Commodian. instructiones, 59, —
2 Stromat. 1. VII. f. 74 the satiric remarks directed against the gau-
ὃ Pedagog. 1. III. f. 256. dy apparel of the Christian women.
24*
282 INTERMARRIAGE OF
no oceasion for blaspheming the Christian name and to accuse Christ-
ianity of being irreconcilable with the customs of the world.t These
earthly goods are in ow7 possession ; why may we not use them? Why
may we not enjoy what we have? For whom were these precious ob-
jects created, if not for us? Who are to enjoy the costly articles if
all prefer the cheap?”? ‘To the latter argument, Clement of Alexan-
dria replied: ‘* Even though all things are given us, though all things
are allowed us; though all things are lawful for us, yet, as the apostle
says, all things are not expedient. God has created our race for domg
good and communicating; he has created every thing for all; every-
thing, therefore, is a common good; and the more wealthy should not |
make of it an exclusive possession. Such reasoning, therefore, is not
humane, does not correspond with our social affections. Love will
rather speak thus: ‘I have it—why should I not bestow it on the
needy ?’”’8
Tertullian says: ‘“ What reasons can you have for going about in
gay apparel, when you are removed from all with whom this is required ?
You do not go the round of the temples, you ask for no public shows,
you have nothing to do with pagan festivals. You have no other than
serious reasons for appearing abroad. It is to visit a sick brother, to
be present at the communion, or a sermon; and if offices of courtesy or
friendship call you among pagans, why not appear in your own peculiar
armor, — especially as you are to mix with unbelievers, —that so the
difference may be seen between the servants of God and of Satan, that
you may serve for an example to them, and that they may be edified
by you?”
Adhering strictly to that religious and moral point of view in which
the marriage relation was. first presented by Christianity, many be-
lieved that where there was no union of hearts by the bond of religion,
where there was rather disunion in regard to the highest concerns of
the inward life, the true significancy of marriage could not be realized.
Hence they discountenanced all marriage relation between Christians
and pagans. ‘Tertullian labors to show how inevitably the pious Chris-
tian woman, who regarded Christianity as the soul of her life, who be-
longed to the church as one of its living members, and felt herself
happy in its communion, must, in a thousand ways, be checked and
disturbed in her religious duties and injured in her feelings, by living
with a heathen. ‘Is there a meeting for prayer,” says he, ‘ the hus-
band will devote this day to the use of the bath; is a fast to be ob-
served, he will on this day make a banquet for his friends. Never will
more hindrances arise from the business of the household, than precise-
ly when the duties of Christian charity call the wife to go abroad.
(Next follows the passage, which we have already quoted, relating to
those duties of the Christian mistress of a family, in the performance of
which she is hindered by her pagan husband.) What shall her hus-
1 Tertullian de cultu feminarum, particu- in the works above referred to, and by Cy-
Jarly 1. II. c. 11. prian, de habitu virginum. Perhaps Ter
2 Clemens Pedagog. 1. 11. ο. 12. tullian and Cyprian had both read this
8 The same thing is said by Tertullian, work of Clement.
CHRISTIANS AND PAGANS. 283
band sing to her, or she to her husband? Would she like to hear any-
thing from the theatre, or from the tavern? What mention is there of
God, what invocation to Christ? Where is the nourishment for faith
by the quoting of scripture in their conversation ?! Where is there re-
freshment of spirit; where, the divine blessing ?”
In the cases just mentioned, the question related to a marriage that
was to be contracted, where as yet no pledge had been given. It was
different, where a connection, which was not to be dissolved but sanc-
tified by Christianity, already existed, and one of the parties became a
convert. This case Tertullian expressly distinguishes from the former.
“ΤῸ is different with those, who, when they came to the faith, found
themselves already connected in marriage with pagans. If such a
marriage is valid with God, why should it not go on with his blessing,
so that it may continue to be spared from many afflictions, disquietudes
and stains, enjoying, as it does on one side, the protection of divine
grace. But where one enters voluntarily and uncalled into forbidden
relations, that is another thing.” ‘The manner in which his wife was
converted to Christianity,’”’ continues Tertullian, “‘may have a strong
impression on the heathen husband himself, so that he may be cautious
how he disturbs her too much, or watches her too narrowly. He has
witnessed a great event, he has seen the proofs of what God has wrought,
he knows that she has become better for the change. Thus are those
the more easily gained over to the faith, to whom the grace of God is be-
come familiar.” It is true, the observance of such a change did not
always make this favorable impression. Many a blind devotee to pa-
ganism, when he observed that his wife, whose manners he was before
obliged to watch with an anxious scrutiny, had become all at once so
domestic and exemplary, — but at the same time that Christianity had
produced the change;:—spurned from him the wife whose vices he
had before tolerated. The case sometimes occurred, too, where the
Christian woman, who was married to a vicious heathen, and previous-
ly, when a heathen herself, had been the pander of his vices, was now
as a Christian forbidden by her conscience to persist in this course.
She endeavored first by exhortations and remonstrances to lead him in
a better way. But as these would be indignantly rejected, she found
herself compelled, in order to avoid participating in his sinful life, to
obtain a separation from him; and this proved the occasion of not a
few persecutions, excited by exasperated husbands.”
It resulted from this Christian point of view in the consideration of
marriage, that it early became a custom to add the sanction of the
church to the civil contract. The presiding officers of the church and
the deaconesses were convoked. It was to be understood that the mar-
1 Ubi fomenta fidei de scripturarum in-
terjectione? according to the reading in
Rigaltius’ edition. According to the read-
ing in that of Famelius. “interlectione,’ —
“by the intermingled reading of the Holy
Scriptures” I+ hardly admits of being de-
termined which is the correct reading. As
the whole passage relates to quotations in
conversetion, the first reading is to the
point. And even if this is the right one, it
follows from it that husband and wife must
possess a familiar acquaintance with the
Bible.
2 See Justin Mart. apolog. II.
284 PRAYER.
riage was contracted by the will of God, and not by the impulse of
passion, and that all was done to the glory of God.! Bride and bride-
groom sat down together at the Lord’s table and partook of the com-
munion. They presented a common offering to the church, and in
return, the blessing of God was specially implored on this new marriage
in the prayer of the church connected with the communion. What im-
portance was attached by the Christians to the sanction of the church,
appears from the following passage of Tertullian :? “In what language
can we express the happmess of that marriage which is concluded by
the church, sealed by the communion, and consecrated by the benedic-
tion; which the angels announce and God the Father ratifies.”
The soul of the whole Christian life was considered to be prayer.
Even they who otherwise differed widely in bent of mind, or habits of
thinking on many important points, were agreed in acknowledging this.
Where the spirit of Christianity brmgs together. the most opposite na-
tures, 16 would be difficult to find a stronger contrast, than that between
‘the practical realism of Tertullian, so inclined to reduce everything to
forms of sense, and the speculative turn of Origen, who was quite too
prone to sublimate everything into spirit. But both appear equally
penetrated with a living Christianity, when they come to discourse of
prayer ; both seem to speak from their own mward experience, and in
both, the essential Christian spirit presses through all individual pecu-
harities. Tertullian, in accordance with a prevailing view of those
early Christian times, contemplates prayer as an exercise of the priestly
office of Christians. ‘It is the spiritual sacrifice,’ says he,? ‘ which
has superseded the sacrifices of the old covenant, Is.1: 11. This pas-
sage informs us what God does not seek; but the gospel teaches us
what he does seek — ‘The hour cometh, and now is, when the true wor-
shippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth; for God is a
spirit.’ We are the true worshippers and the true priests, who pray in
the spirit, and thus offer the sacrifice which is befitting God’s nature,
and well-pleasing in his sight, — that sacrifice which he has sought.
And what is there, which the God who seeks this prayer can withhold
from the prayer that springs from the spirit and from truth? How
much do we read, hear, believe of the proofs of its efficacy!’’ He
then proceeds to describe the peculiar efficacy of Christian prayer ;
to show how it should correspond to the peculiar nature of the religious
constitution under the New Testament; how Christian prayer reveals
its true power, not in delivering men miraculously in the hour of death
and of suffering, but in making them capable of enduring death and suf-
fering with composure and cheerful resignation. ‘“‘ By virtue of im-
parted grace it dulls not the sense of pain, but arms him who suffers
the pain with strength to bear it. The prayer of the Christian draws
down no retribution from heaven, but it averts God’s anger ; it watches
for its enemies; it intercedes for the persecutors; it obtains the for-
giveness of sins; it dispels temptations; it comforts the feeble-minded ;
1 Tenat. ep. IT. ad Polycarp, § 5. first by Muratori, T. II. Anecdotor. bibl.
2 Ad uxor. lL. IL. c. 8. ’ Ambros.
8 Cap. 28, de orat. in the piece published
PRAYER. 285
it refreshes the strong. Prayer is the bulwark of faith.’ Origen
says,! ““ How much has each one among us to say about the efficacy of
prayer, when we would thankfully record the benefits received from
God! Souls which had long lain barren, and which became conscious
of their dearth, rendered fruitful by the Holy Spirit through persever-
ing prayer, have given forth words of salvation full of the intuitions of
truth. What mighty enemies, aiming at the overthrow of our divine
faith, have, time and again, been brought to shame! Our confidence
was in those words, ‘ Some trust in chariots and in horses, but we’ will
remember the name of the Lord our God ;’ and verily we experienced,
that the horse is a vain thing for safety. The power, also, of bewilder-
ing arguments, which might indeed stagger many who are accounted
believers, has been often vanquished by him who trusts in prayer.
How many instances are there of those who have fallen into tempta-
tions difficult to be overcome, but suffered no injury in them, and come
forth unharmed, without being even touched by the smell of the hostile
flames!) And what shall I further say? How often has it happened,
when they have been thrown before ravenous beasts or exposed to ma-
lignant spirits and cruel men, they have reduced them to silence by
their prayers, so that their teeth could not touch us, who were the mem-
bers of Christ! We know that many, who had departed from the pre-
cepts of our Lord, and lay already i in the jaws of death, have been res-
cued by the prayer of penitence.”
The same Father contemplates prayer in its inseparable unity with
the entire life, when he says: “ He prays without ceasing, who suita-
bly unites prayer with action; for active duty is an integrant part of
prayer; since it would be impossible to understand the words of the
apostle, ‘ Pray without ceasing,’ in any practicable sense, unless we
represented to ourselves the whole life of the believer as one entire
and connected prayer,’ of which prayer, commonly so called, forms but.
ἃ part.”
We recognize here a mode of thinking grounded in the essence of
primitive Christianity, intimately connected with the consciousness of
the universal Christian priesthood, which distinguishes the Christian
standing ground as well from the pagan as from the Jewish— the view
of prayer as an act embracing the whole life — making the entire Chris-
tian life a continuous prayer. In this reference, Origen says in his
exposition of the Lord’s prayer: ‘‘ We ought not to think that a set of
words has been taught us which we are to repeat at certain stated sea-
sons for prayer. If we duly understand what was said in regard to the
duty of ‘ praying without ceasing,’ then our whole life —if we do thus
pray without ceasing — must express ‘Our Father which art in heaven;’
such a life having its conversation, not on earth, but always in heaven,
and we being thrones of God, inasmuch as the kingdom of God has its
seat in all who bear the image of the Man from heaven, and have thus
1 De orat. § 13. 8 E? πάντα τὸν βίον τοῦ ἁγίου “μίαν ov
2 De orat. ο. 12. Par TOM ΗΝ μεγάλην εἴποιμεν εὐχῆν.
* De orat. c. 22
286 SEASONS OF PRAYER.
become heavenly themselves.’”’ Clement of Alexandria says :! “‘ Prayer,
if I may speak so boldly, is intercourse with God. Although we do
but lisp, although we address God without opening the lips, in silence,
we cry to him in the inward recesses of the heart ; for when the whole
direction of the inmost soul is to him, God always hears.” ? Again,
when he is wishing to present the ideal of a devout Christian, arrived
at the maturity of knowledge, the same writer says: ὃ. “‘ He will pray in
every place, but not openly, to be seen of men. He prays im every
situation, in his walks for recreation, in his intercourse with others, in
silence, in reading, in all rational pursuits. And although he is only
thinking on God im the little chamber of the soul, and calling upon his
Father with silent aspirations, God is near him and with him, while he
is yet speaking.’”4
Tertullian’s description, above quoted, of the blessedness of a Chris-
tian marriage, shows that uniting together in spiritual songs and the
reading of scripture belonged to the daily edification of Christian fam-
ilies. In like manner Clement cf Alexandria recommends union in
prayer and the reading of the Bible,® as a daily morning employment
for Christian heads of families. The controversial writings of Tertul-
lian concerning matters of church life and morality, where he conceives
of laymen as his opponents, prove that even they were well acquaimted
with the scriptures, and were used to judge concerning the relations of
life from them. |
The Christians were, in general, accustomed to fall in with the cus-
tomary seasons of prayer already fixed upon among the Jews; namely,
the third, the sixth and the ninth hours of the day, as it was then
divided; or at nine, at twelve and at three in the afternoon; not that
they wished to confine the duty of prayer to any stated times, but as
Tertullian explained,® ‘for the purpose of reminding those of their
duty who might be drawn away from it by their worldly business.”
Yet the Christians were accustomed to sanctify with prayer all the
more important portions of the day, and all the more important trans-
actions of life, whether relating to the mind or the body; since even.
the concerns of the world were to be made holy by receiving a heavenly
direction. ‘It behoves the faithful,” says Tertullian, ‘ neither to take
food, nor, to enter a bath, without imterposing a prayer; for the nour-
ishing and refreshing of the spirit should have precedence of the nour-
ishing and refreshing of the body, the heavenly of the earthly.” ‘Thus
too, a Christian, who had received into his house a brother from a dis-
tant land, and entertained him with all the bodily refreshments in his
power, was not to dismiss him without prayer; he was to treat him no
otherwise than if he saw in the stranger the Lord himself; and the
guest was not to look upon the earthly refreshment which he had re-
ceived from his brother as of more value than the heavenly which he
1 Stromat. 1. VII. f. 722. 4 Ὁ δὲ ἐγγὺς ἔτι λαλοῦντος πάρεστιν.
2 Πᾶσαν γὰρ τὴν ἐνδιάϑετον ὁμιλίαν ὁ 5 Hix? καὶ ἀνάγνωσις. Pedagog. 1. I
ϑεὸς ἀδιώλειπτως ἐπαΐει. f. 194. D.
8 Stromat. 1. VIL. f. 728. 6 De orat. c. 25.
COMMON PRAYER. POSTURE IN PRAYER. 987
bestowed on him at parting. On pressing emergencies, affecting either
the church in general, or individual members of it in whom all felt a
special interest, the whole church assembled for prayer; and all gen-
eral deliberations were opened with prayer. It was im prayer, that the
brotherly fellowship, the mutual sympathy of the members of the One
Body was to be specially expressed ; each was to pray in the spirit of
all, and to present the interests of all the brethren, which he regarded
as his own, before the great Head of the Church, and through hin, be-
fore Eternal Love. Thus Cyprian, in his exposition of the Lord’s
prayer, says, ‘‘ The teacher of peace and of mutual fellowship was de-
sirous, not that each individual should pray for himself alone, but that
each should pray for all. We say not, my Father, but our Father ;
nor do we pray, each for the forgiveness of his own sins alone, nor for
limself alone, that he may not be led into temptation, and that he
may be delivered from the evil. Ours is a common prayer; and when
we pray, we pray not for individuals, but for the whole church, be-
cause, bemg members of the church, we are all one. That God who
is the Author of peace and of union, would have each mdividual pray
for all, even as he, in one, has borne us all.” And when Cyprian, the
bishop, in the pressure of persecution, was encouraging his church to.
prayer, he wrote to them: — “ Let each of you pray to God, not for
himself alone, but for all the brethren, as the Lord has taught us to
ray.”
; Convinced that the things of God were to be understood only in the
light of God’s Spirit, and that the heavenly fountain was opened to
man by prayer, the Christians regarded this exercise as the necessary
means to the knowledge of divine things and to the right understand-
ing of scripture. When Origen, that great teacher of the church, who
had availed himself of every human aid accessible in his time for the
understanding of the scriptures and for the unfolding of the doctrines
therein contained, and turned to this purpose all the resources of his
vast learning and profound speculations, was exhorting his disciple, the
young Gregory, (afterwards called Thaumaturgus,) to diligent ‘‘ seek-
ing and knocking” in the study of scripture, he added, “‘ Be not con-
tent, however, with seeking and knocking, to gain insight into the things
of God ; prayer is the most necessary means of all.? Inciting us to
this, our Saviour did not say alone, ‘ Knock and it shall be opened to
you; seek and ye shall find;’ but also, ‘ Pray and it shall be given
Ou.’ 3)
On those days which were specially consecrated to the remembrance
1 The passage in Tertullian, de orat.c. 26, unbelief, if he valued the parting prayer,
which is not without its difficulties, I will the blessing of the Christian brother his en-
here present translated: “But he himself tertainer, as of no account compared with
too, (the brother from abroad,) after having the bodily refreshment bestowed ;) or how
been entertained by the brethren,” —TI sup- shalt thou say, according to the Lord’s pre-
pose in this place exceptus should be read cept, Peace be with this house! unless thou
instead of exemptis,— must not value the returnest to those in the house the blessing,
earthly refreshments more highly than the (previously received from them.)
| heavenly; for thy faith would at once be 2’ Αναγκαιοτώτη γὰρ καὶ ἢ περὶ τοῦ νοεῖν
sentenced ; (1. 6. he would thereby evince his τὰ ϑεῖα εὐχή.
288 POSTURE IN PRAYER. PUBLIC WORSHIP.
of Christ, the Risen, the Christians were accustomed to pray standing
erect, to signify that Christ had raised up to heaven those who were
fallen and sunk in the mire of the earth; on all other days they prayed
kneeling. Yet Origen warned Christians against the selfdelusion
which in the outward form forgot the temper of the heart; he pointed
them from the latter to the former, and labored to show that the latter
was utterly without significance unless connected with the former; was,
in itself considered, an indifferent matter. ‘‘ Before one stretches out
his hands to heaven,” he says,! ‘‘ one must lift his soul upward; and
before one raises up his eyes, one must lift up his spirit to God ; for
there can be no doubt, that among a thousand possible positions of the
body, outstretched hands and uplifted eye are to be preferred above all
others, as imaging forth those directions of the soul which are befitting
in prayer. We are of opinion that this posture should be preferred
where there is nothing to forbid it; for there are certain circumstan-
ces, as sickness, where one may pray even sitting or lymg. And under
certain circumstances, as for example, on board ship, or in situations
which would not allow one to retire for the purpose of offermg up the
suitable prayer, one may pray, without seeming to do so. And since
the bowing of the knee is required when a man is confessing before
God his own sins and imploring the forgiveness of them, he should
know that this posture is the sign of a bowed down and humble spirit.”
Origen supposes the passage in Philip. 2: 10, to refer to such a spirit-
ual bowing the knee in self-humiliation at the name of Jesus. Tertul-
lian and Cyprian explain, that prayer does not consist in the pomp of
outward gestures, but in the direction of the heart to God. ‘ God
hears not the voice, but the heart,” says Cyprian. ‘* He who discerns
the thoughts of men, needs not to be reminded of their ery; thus Han-
nah, in the book of Kings, presents the type of the church. . She sup-
plicated God, not with noisy prayer, but in the silent depths of the
heart. Her prayer was in silence, but her faith was known to God.”
In Commodian’s Collection of rules for the Christian life, we find this
laid down with the rest: that prayer, not accompanied with works of
Christian love, is nothing.”
We now pass from the consideration of the Christian life generally,
and of family devotion, to the forms of public worship.
II. Public and Common Worship of Gtod.
1. Character of the Christian Worship generally.
That in which the peculiar character of the Christian worship was
really grounded, and by which it was clearly distinguished from every
other kind of religious cultus, was that same fundamental intuition out
of which the entire Christian life originally sprang,—the idea of the
universal Christian priesthood — of that worship of God in spirit and in
truth, which is confined to no special time or place, and to no particular
1 Cap. 31. Aut si benefactis ores miseratur egenis,
2 Instruct. 79: Ne dubites quin quod petieris detur oranti.
see AS Tu sane si nudus benefactis Deum adores
Orantem si cupias exaudiri de ccelo i δ Ἐ ΣΎΝ
Rumype de latibulis nequitie vin cla} In totum ne facias sic orationes inepte
PUBLIC WORSHIP. 289
class of actions, but embraces in like manner all the actions of the
whole life. This distinguishing character of the Christian worship
developed itself, among the communities of pagan Christians founded
by the Apostle Paul, first, in contradistinction to Judaism, and after-
wards, in opposition likewise to paganism. Later indeed, and as the
result of that revolution of Christian views which we adverted to in
speaking of the history of the church constitution, a reaction of the
Jewish principle began to manifest itself in the forms of worship, as the
opposition to that principle became more feeble. The simple and spir-
itual character of the Christian worship was, from the first, a very
singular and striking phenomenon to the pagans — particularly the
fact that nothing of that outward pomp and show was to be seen in it
which in all other religions was considered to be so essential — ‘‘ no tem-
ples, no altars, no images!”? When Celsus taunted the Christians on
this peculiarity, Origen replied: “In the highest sense, God’s temple
and image are in the humanity of Christ ; — next, in all actuated by
the spirit of Christ ;——livmg images these, with which no Jupiter of
Phidias is worthy to be compared!”’! Christianity led men to with-
draw from the bustle of the world to the still retirement of the sanc-
tuary within, there to pour out their hearts before Him who chose this
for his peculiar dwelling ; but it also kindled in the hearts of individuals
flames of love which sought after communion, after the means of mutu-
ally lending strength to one another, and rising upward in one common
holocaust to heaven. Fellowship in prayer and devotion was consid-
ered a means of promoting holiness, since it was known that the Lord
was present with his Spirit, in the midst of those who were assembled
together in his name; but nothing could be more distant from the
“ thoughts of Christians generally than to attribute any special sacredness
to the place of meeting. Such a fancy seemed to savor of paganism ; and
it was the less possible for Christians to be led into such a mistake at
the beginning, because their earliest places of assembly were ordinary
rooms in private houses, such as any member of the church, who had a
dwelling suited to the purpose, could furnish. Thus Gaius of Corinth
is called, Rom. 16, the host of the whole church; because the church
was accustomed to assemble in a room of his house. Origen says :?
“ The place where believers assemble for prayer has something about
it wholesome and profitable ;”’ but it is the importance of this spiritual
fellowship only, which he aims to impress. ‘ Christ, with the host of
angels,’ he supposes, ‘‘attends the assembly of the faithful; and hence
such assemblies for prayer should not be despised or neglected, since
they had a peculiar power for him who joins in them with a sincere
heart.” ‘It is not the place, but it is the congregation of the elect,
which I call the church,” says Clement of Alexandria.? Tertullian re-
marks : * ‘‘ We may pray in every place which the occasion or which
necessity may furnish; for the apostles who prayed to God and sang
his praise in the prison, within the hearing of the keepers, surely did
1 ¢, Cels. 1. VIIL § 17. ἰσμα τῶν ἐκλεκτῶν ἐκκλησίαν κάλω. Stro-
2 De orat. ¢. 31. mat. L. VII. f. 715. B.
ὃ Οὐ γὰρ viv τὸν τόπον, ἀλλὰ τὸ ἄϑρο- 4 De orat. c. 24.
VOL. I.
290 WORSHIP. PLACES OF ASSEMBLY.
nothme contrary to the commands of our Lord, any more than did
Paul, when in the ship and before the eyes of all, he consecrated the
Lord’s supper.”’ Acts 27.
It could not fail to happen, indeed, that the principle which tended to
make religion an outward thing, confined: to particular times and places,
— which principle Christianity had overcome, — would once more find
entrance into the Christian life ; but the power of the pure Christian spirit
caused itself to be felt against such depravations when they threatened
to spread farther. Of such a thing Clement of Alexandria testifies
when he says:+ ‘ The disciples of Christ ought so to appear and so to
shape their conduct in their daily living, as, for the sake of propriety,
they strive to appear in the church; they should really be, and not
merely seem to be such,—so gentle, so devout, so amiable. But I
know not how it is that, with the place, they change their appearance
and their manners, just as it is said of the polypus, that it changes its
color with the roots to which it clings. They lay aside the spiritual
demeanor which they assumed in the church, as soon as they leave it,
and put themselves on a level with the multitude with whom they
mingle. ‘They convict themselves of insincerity, and show what was
really the temper of their hearts, by laying off their assumed mask of
decorum. They profess to honor the word of God, but leave it behind
them in the place where they heard it.”
2. The Places of Assembly used by the Christians.
We have already said that the place where the congregations assem-
bled was at first a room in the house of some member of the church.
In large towns, where such a place of assembly could not accommodate
all, it became necessary that smaller portions of the community dwell-
ing at a distance, should choose other places for their meeting on the
Sunday. When aman distinguished for the talent of communicating
doctrinal instruction settled down in a town, he also might form a circle
in the church, who would assemble at his dwelling for the purpose of
hearing his spiritual discourses. Thus the passages in Paul’s epistles
concerning churches in the house of Aquilas and of others will become
intelligible ;2 and to this Justin Martyr alluded, when, in the audience
1 Pedagog. 1. III. f. 257. his house, when he resided at Rome, his or-
2 The church in his house, ἢ κατ᾽ οἶκον dinary home, and when he abode at Ephe-
αὐτοῦ ἐκκλησία. In such passages, the re- sus; comp. Rom. 16: 5, and 1 Corinth. 16:
ference certainly cannot be to places of as-
sembly for entire congregations, since in
several instances this ἡ Kat’ οἷκόν τινος
ἐκκλησία is expressly distinguished from
the whole community; 1 Cor. 16: 19 and
20, — the church at Ephesus assembling in
the house of Aquilas and Priscilla, is first
mentioned, and then besides, a// the breth-
ren, which, according to the above supposi-
tion, would be the same thing. Coloss. 4:
15, is another case of the same sort. Again,
an objection presents itself against this ex-
planation, from the fact that the same
Aquilas should have the church meet in
19. But it is very unlikely, that the com-
munity would have constantly changed its
place of meeting on the arrival of Aquilas.
It is more easy to conceive, that men, who
like the tent-maker Aquilas, were obliged,
on account of their occupation, to provide
themselves with large and commodious
dwellings wherever they took up their resi-
dence, were in the habit of giving up one
apartment of their house for the assembling
of a portion of the community; especially
when such a person was also fitted, as prob-
ably Aquilas was, by his gift of teaching,
to conduct the exercises of small assemblies.
WORSHIP. IMAGES EXCLUDED. 291
which he had with the prefect of Rome, in answer to the question,
‘‘Where do you assemble?” he replied, “* Where each man can and
will. You believe, doubtless, that we all meet together im one place.
But it is not so; for the God of the Christian is not confined to one
spot, but his invisible presence fills heaven and earth, and in all places
he is worshipped by the faithful.’ Justin then adds, that whenever he
came to Rome, it was his custom to take up his residence in one partic-
ular spot, where those Christians who were instructed by him,! and who
wished to hear his discourses, were accustomed to assemble. Other
places of assembly he had not visited.
Gradually such arrangements were made in these places of assembly,
as the proprieties of Christian worship required. An elevated seat was
constructed for the reading of the scriptures and the delivering of the
sermon ;? and a table set for the distribution of the supper, to which, so
early as the time of Tertullian — perhaps not without some mixture of
the foreign Old Testament idea of sacrifice, at least not without furnish-
ing a pretext for the speedy admission of this idea— was given the
name of altar; ara, altare. As the communities became larger and
wealthier, church buildings were erected expressly for the use of the
Christians. This appears to have been the case as early as the third
century, for mention is made already of the ϑρησκεύσιμοι τὸποι, (places of
worship,) of the Christians, in the edict of Gallien.? In the time of the
outward prosperity of the church, under the reign of Diocletian, many
splendid church structures had already arisen in the large cities.
The use of images was originally foreign to the worship and excluded -
from the churches of the Christians ; and so in general, it continued to
be in this period. The confounding of religion and art in paganism,
‘ made the early Christians suspicious of art. As at the pagan position
the sense for the beautiful had often appeared at variance with, and
even opposed to, the moral taste, so the early warmth of Christian zeal
was inclined to reverse the relation. The religious consciousness easily
took an opposite direction to the zsthetic principle of the ancient world ;
and the Holy disdained the beautiful form which had been allied to the
unholy. The idea of the appearance of the godlike in the form of a
servant, an idea so well suited to the oppressed condition of the afflicted
church of this age, men were inclined to push to an undue extreme,
rather than to seek to ennoble the divine by the beautiful form. This
exhibits itself more particularly in the universal opinion of the primitive
church, according to which Christ veiled his intrinsic divine majesty
under an uncomely appearance, which served to conceal it; an opmion
for which they found authority in the Messianic passage, Is. 53: 2, too
literally understood. Thus Clement of Alexandria admonishes the
in the capacity of a διδάσκαλος. Comp. Assemani Bibliotheca oriental. T. I. f. 391,
above, p. 185, and my History of the Plant-
ing, &c., Bd. I. S. 208.
1 This was accordingly ἢ κατ᾽ οἶκον τοῦ
᾿Ιουστίνου ἐκκλησία.
2 Suggestus, pulpitum.
8 See above, p. 140yand the following. If
any confidence is to be placed in the narra-
tive of the Chronicle of Edessa, cited in
(see above, p. 80,) there was a Christian
church structure in Edessa as early as the
year 302; and if the explanation of that
passage by Michaelis, Orientalische und ex-
egetische Bibliothek, Theil. X., S. 61, is
made out, this church was separated thus
early into three parts, according to the pat:
tern of the Jewish temple.
292 WORSHIP. IMAGES EXCLUDED.
Christians against placing too high a value on beauty of person, by
reference to the example of Christ. ‘‘ Our Lord himself is said to have
been without comeliness in his outward appearance ; and who is better
than our Lord? But if he did not reveal himself in that personal
beauty which is perceptible to sense, he appeared in the true beauty
both of soul and of body; of the soul, in goodness; and of the body,
in its destination for an imperishable existence.” ἢ
Church teachers of the most opposite bent of mind, those inclined to
a more sensuous and those to a more spiritual mode of conceiving
divine things — Realists and Idealists, who, on account of these different
intellectual tendencies, might be expected to have different views in
relation to this matter, as we find that different views of the same did
result from such diverse intellectual tendencies in later times — were
yet united on this point by their common repugnance to that practice
of confounding the natural with the divine in paganism, and by their
efforts to preserve pure and uncontaminated the worship of God in
spirit and in truth. Clement of Alexandria is as little favorable to
religious images as Tertullian. ‘‘ We must not cling to the sensuous,”’
he remarks, when speaking against the pagan use of images, ‘‘ but we
must rise to the spiritual. The familiarity of daily sight lowers the
dignity of the divine, and to pretend to worship a spiritual essence
through earthly matter, is to degrade that essence to the world of
sense.” Itis evident from these remarks how foreign, on the whole,
to the notions of Christians in this age must have been images of Christ.
Pagans, like Alexander Severus,? who recognized something of a divine
nature in Christ, and sects which confounded paganism with Christiani-
ty, were the first to introduce images of Christ; as, for example, the
gnostic sect of the Carpocratians, who placed such images beside the
busts of Plato and Aristotle.
It was not in the church, but im the family, that religious images
first came into use among the Christians. In their daily intercourse
with men, the Christians saw themselves everywhere surrounded by
the objects of the pagan mythology, or, at least, by objects offensive to
their moral and Christian sentiments. Representations of this sort
covered the walls in shops, were the ornaments of drinking vessels, and
seal-rings, on which the pagans frequently had engraven the images of
their gods, so that they might worship them when they pleased. It
was natural that in place of these objects, so offensive to their religious
and moral sentiments, the Christians should wish to substitute others
more agreeable to them. Thus they preferred to have on their goblets,
the figure of a shepherd, carrying a lamb on his shoulder, which was
the symbol of our Saviour, rescuing the repentant sinner, according to
the gospel parable. And Clement of Alexandria says, in reference to
1 Pedagog. 1. III. 6.1: Τὸν κύριον αὐτὸν
τῆν ὄψιν αἰσχρὸν γεγονέναι, διὰ ’Hoaiov τὸ
πνεῦμα μαρτυρεῖ.
2 Eusebius says, likewise, hist. eccles. 1.
VIL. c. 18, that pagans were the first to pro-
vide themselves, according to their heathen
notions, with painted images of Christ,
Peter and Paul, as benefactors of mankind.
This admits of being easily explained from
the religious eclecticism of that period.
3 Tertullian, de pudicitia, c. 7: Proce-
dant ipse picture calicum vestrorum. Cap.
10: Pastor, quem in “talice depingis. The
figure of Christ on the cup seems not to-
=
SEASONS OF WORSHIP. 293
the seal-rings of the Christians,! “ Let our signets be a dove, (the sym-
bol of the Holy Spirit,) or a fish,” or a ship sailing towards heaven, (the
symbol of the Christian church and of the individual Christian soul,)
or a lyre, (the symbol of Christian joy,) or an anchor, (the symbol of
Christian hope,) and he who is a fisherman will not be forgetful of the
Apostle Peter, and of the children taken from the water;* for no
images of gods should be engraved on the rings of those who are for-
bidden all intercourse with idols; no sword nor bow, on the rings of
those who strive after peace ; no goblets, on the rings of those who are
the friends of sobriety.’ Yet religious emblems passed from domestic
use into the churches, perhaps as early as the end of the third century.
The walls of them were painted in this manner. ‘The council of Elvira,
in the year 305, opposed this innovation as an abuse, and forbade ‘ the
objects of worship and adoration to be pamted on the walls.” * The
visible representation of the cross may, doubtless, have early found its
way among the Christians, both in their domestic and ecclesiastical life.
This token was peculiarly common with them. It was the sign of
blessing when they rose in the morning and when they retired at night, .
when they went out and when they came in; employed indeed in all
the transactions of daily life. It was the sign which the Christians un-
consciously made, in all cases of sudden surprize.® It was a sensible
expression of the truly Christian idea, that all the transactions of Christ-
ians, as well as their whole life, should be sanctified by the faith in
Christ crucified, by being referred to him; that this faith was the most
effectual means of obtainmg the triumph over, and securing protection
against all evil. It was but too easily, however, that men confounded
this idea with the symbol which represented 1t; and the efficacy of the
faith in Christ crucified was transferred to the outward sign, and a
supernatural, sanctifying, protecting power, attributed to this— an
error, the vestiges of which may be traced as far back as the third
century.
We now pass from the consideration of places of public worship, to
that of the seasons of worship and the festivals of the Christians.
3. Seasons of Public Worship and Festivals.
What we have said in general respecting the essential character of
Christian worship, is also to be applied to the feasts in particular ;
namely, that the spirit of universality in Christianity abolished all sep-
have been pleasing to the Montanistic asce-
ticism.
1 Pedagog. 1. IIL f. 246 and 247.
2 The same allusion as in the case of the
fishermen,— also an allusion to the ana-
gram of Christ’s name, IXOYZ = Ἰησοῦς
Χριστός, Θεοῦ Yidc, Σωτήρ.
8 The Christians, whom the divine teach-
er, the teioc παιδαγωγός, ---- Christ, leads
through baptism to regeneration.
Ὁ Ne, quod colituc et adoratur in parieti-
bus depingatuy. Concil. Illibert. can. 36.
It must be admited, that the interpretation
-
of this canon cannot be settled with entire
certainty. There is a two fold ambiguity.
The phrase “quod colitur et adoratur,”
may be understood as referring to objects
of religion generally, or more strictly to ob-
jects of proper worship, to images of Christ,
or symbolical representations of God, — of
the Trinity. The term “walls,” may also
be understood in two different senses, either
as referring to the walls of the house or
those of the church.
5 Comp. Tertullian, de corona milit. ὁ. 3
294 SEASONS OF WORSHIP.
arative and particularizing limitation; the Christian worship of God
claiming for itself the entire life flowing out from a commerce with
heaven, ~ that clung no longer to the elements of the world, was no longer
to be confined either to any particular place or to a particular time. In
the New Testament fulfilment, i. e., the keeping holy of the entire life
as a life consecrated every day alike to God, the Old Testament law
of the Sabbath must find its resolution. Not barely the observance
of Jewish feasts, but all forms and modes of particularizing the Chris-
tian life by reference to certain times, 15 reprobated by the apostle
Paul, as a Jewish practice,! a descent to servile dependence on the ele-
meuts of the world. Butif men did, notwithstanding, now select certain
days for the purpose of associating with them the remembrance of the
great facts connected with the history of Redemption, to which the
whole Christian life was ever to be referred, for the purpose of making
these occasions central points of Christian fellowship, yet this was by
no means inconsistent with that Christian tendency and intuition which
were at bottom. It was only a descent from the elevation of the pure
spirit, at which even the Christian, still partaking of a double nature,
cannot always sustain himself, to the position of sensuous weakness, —
a descent which must become the more necessary, in the same propor-
tion as the fire of the first enthusiasm, the glow of the first love,
abated. But even in this respect, as well as in reference to the idea of
the priesthood, the particularizing spirit of the Old Testament dispen-
sation introduced a disturbing influence, by fastening itself on that
which had sprung originally from the purer development of the Christian
life.
When the Montanists were wishing to introduce new fasts by law,
which were to be confined to stated times, what Paul had written m
the epistle to the Galatians against the Jewish observance of times
was very justly quoted against them; but Tertullian, the defender of
Montanism, whom we have described above as standing on the dividing
line between the early Christian, the purely evangelical period, and the
Christian Jewish period which was now about to commence, already
shows himself incapable of rightly distinguishing the two positions, that
of the Old and that of the New Testament; for he conceives the
Judaizing spirit, reprobated by St. Paul, to consist simply in the ob-
servance of Jewish festivals, and not im the whole relation correspond-
tng to the Jewish position of particular days,— whatever days they
might be, — to the religious consciousness. According to his view, it
would savor in no respect of Judaism, if feasts which had reference to
what is simply Christian, were placed in such a relation to the religious
consciousness.”
The weekly and yearly festivals of the Christians originated in the
same fundamental idea, which formed the centre of the whole Chris-
1 See my History of the Planting, etc, galium solennitatum observantes sumus;
Bd. I., S. 215, ff. illas enim Apostolus dedocet, compescens —
2 Against this objection of conforming to veteris Testamenti in Christo sepulti perse-
Jewish practices, —“ Galaticari,” Tertulli- verantiam. Quodsi nova conditio in Chris-
an, de jejuniis, c. 14, replies: Galaticamur to, jam nova et solennia esse debebunt
plane, si Judaicarum ceremoniarum, si le-
THE SABBATH. 295
tian life, — the idea of imitating Christ, the crucified and the risen, —
imitating him in his death, by appropriating through faith and repent-
ance the effects of his death, by dying to self and to the world, —imi-
tating him in his resurrection, by rising with him, in faith and through
the power which he imparts, to a new and holy life, consecrated to
God, commencing here in the germ, and unfolding itself to maturity in
another world. Hence, the judzlee was the festival of the resurrection ;
and the preparation for it, the remembrance of Christ’s sufferings with
penitence and crucifixion of the flesh, was the day of fasting and peni-
tence. Accordingly in the week, the jubilee or festival of joy was Sun-
day ; the preparation for it were the days of fasting and prayer conse-
crated to the remembrance of the suffermgs of Christ, and of what pre-
ceded them, on Thursday and Friday. Accordingly, the yearly festi-
vals were in remembrance of the resurrection of Christ, and of his
works after his resurrection and ascension ;— the preparation for these,
were the remembrance of Christ’s sufferings and the fasts. Having
presented this general view, we shall now proceed to consider, more in
detail, the several weekly and yearly festivals.
The opposition to Judaism early led to the special observance of Sun-
day in place of the Sabbath. The first intimation of this change is in
Acts 20: T, where we find the church assembled on the first day of the
week ; 1 a still later one isin Rev. 1: 10, where by the “‘ Lord’s day,”
can hardly be understood the day of judgment. Thus in the catholic
epistle ascribed to Barnabas, at the close of the 15th chapter, Sun-
day is designated as the day of jubilee in remembrance of Christ’s res-
urrection and ascension to heaven,? and of the new creation which then
commenced ; and in the epistle of Ignatius to the Magnesians it is pre-
supposed,’ that even the Jews who had come over to Christianity sub-
stituted Sunday in place of the Sabbath. As the Sabbath was regard-
ed as representing Judaism, Sunday was contemplated as a symbol of
the new life consecrated to the risen Christ and grounded in his resur-
rection. Sunday was distinguished as a day of joy, by being exempted
from fasts, and by the circumstance that prayer was performed on this
day in a standing and not in a kneeling posture, as Christ, by his resur-
rection, had raised up fallen man again to heaven. But as we have
already observed in Tertullian a confounding of the Jewish with the
Christian view of feasts, so we find also in him indications of the trans-
fer of the law of the Jewish Sabbath to Sunday; for by him, attend-
1See my History of the Planting, etc, Sunday: “ ἐν ἡ καὶ ὁ ᾿Ιησοῦς ἀνέστη ἐκ vex-
OL pr aro: f
2 Considering the close connection in
which the resurrection of Christ and his as-
cension to heaven stood with each other in
the Christian consciousness, — since his res-
urrection was regarded as but a transition
point to his entire exaltation above the
region of earth in this new, glorified form
of existence, — I cannot lay so great stress
on the manner in which the writer of this
letter expresses himself with regard to
pov καὶ φανερωϑεὶς ἀνέβη εἰς τοὺς οὐρα-
vovc.”” Nor can I think myself authorized
to infer from it, either that according to the
author’s opinion, Christ’s ascension also oc-
curred on Sunday, or that he conceived the
fact to have been that Christ rose to heaven
immediately after his first appearance to
Mary, as the risen Saviour.
8 Chap. 9: Μηκέτι σαββατίζοντες. ἀλλὰ
κατὰ κυριακὴν ζωὴν ζῶντες.
296 SEASONS OF WORSHIP.
ing to any business on Sunday seems to have been regarded as
sinful.!
Again, the Friday of every week— this day in particular —and
the Thursday were specially consecrated to the remembrance of the
sufferings of Christ and of the preparatory circumstances. On these
days there were meetings for prayer, and fasts. till three o’clock in the
afternoon ; yet nothing in regard to these arrangements was defined by
law. Every one took a part in these observances according to his own
particular necessities and his inclination. Such fasts, united with
prayer, the Christians, — who were fond of comparing their calling to a
militia Christi, — called stationes,? as if they constituted the sentry
duties of the soldiers of Christ ;— hence both these days were named
dies stationum.®
I'hose churches, however, which were composed of Jewish Christians,4
though they admitted, with the rest, the festival of Sunday, yet re-
tained also that of the Sabbath; and it was from these that the custom
became general in the Eastern church of distinguishing this day, as
well as Sunday, by the exclusion of fasts and by the standing position
in prayer; while m the Western, and especially in the Roman church,
where the opposition against Judaism predominated, the custom, on the
other hand, grew out of this opposition, of observing the Sabbath also
as a fast day.°
1 As is to be inferred from Tertullian’s
language, de orat. ¢. 23: Solo die domini-
co resurrectionis non ab isto tantum (the
bowing of the knee,) sed omni anxietatis
habitu et officio cavere debemus, differentes
etiam negotia, ne quem diabolo locum demus.
2 We find the word statio used in this
sense, first in Hermas Pastor, |. III. Simil-
tud. V.— often in Tertullian. Statio was
the technical designation for this half-fast,
as contradistinguished from the proper
jejunia. Tertullian, de jejuniis, c. 14.
3 Feria quarta et sexta, probably = feria
diei quart, sextz ; hence the signification
of the word feria in the Latin phraseology
of the church.
*From the language of the passage,
which has already been cited, Ignat. ep. ad.
Magnes: Οἱ ἐν παλαιοῖς πράγμασιν ἀνα-
στραφέντες, ---- μηκέτι σαββατίζοντες, ἀλλὰ
κατὼ κυριακὴν ζωὴν ζῶντες, it might be in-
ferred, indeed, that the Jewish Christians
had substituted Sunday in place of the Sab-
bath; the inference, however, thus general-
ly expressed, assuredly cannot be true.
5 Tertullian, de jejun. c. 14: Quanquam
vos etiam sabbatum si quando continuatis,
nunquam nisi in Paschate jejanandum. He
objects, as a Montanist,'to his Roman op-
ponents, that they had deprived the Sab-
bath of its due celebration, and sometimes
continued the fast on Friday over into the
Sabbath, when properly the only exception
to be made here was in the case of the pass-
over. The same practice of continuing the
fast on Friday over into the Sabbath, which
This difference in customs became striking whenever
Tertullian the Montanist here attacks, we
find mentioned by Victorinus, bishop of
Petabio in Pannonia, (now Pettau in Stei-
ermark,) near the close of the third centu-
ry, in the fragment on the History of the
Creation, first published by Cave hist. lit.
‘He calls this continuation “ superpositio
jejuni.” Fasting on the Sabbath appears
in this case to have been a preparation for
the jubilee of the communion on Sunday,
as opposed to the Jewish celebration of the
Sabbath, which had been abrogated by
Christ. Hoc die solemus superponere ; id-
circo, ut die dominico cum gratiarum ac-
tione ad panem (the sacrament of the sup-
per,) exeamus. Et parasceve superpositio
fiat, ne quid cum Judeis sabbatum obser-
vare videamus. Galland. bibl. patr. T. IV.
and Routh reliquiz sacree, Vol. III. pag.
237. Oxon. 1815.
The council of Elvira opposed to the er-
ror of the Sabbath celebration, such a con-
tinuation of the fast on Friday over into
the Sabbath; Can. 26: Errorem placuit
corrigi, ut omni sabbati die superpositiones
celebremus. This canon may, without ques-
tion, be differently understood, according as
we refer the phrase “errorem corrigi,” to
something not expressly stated, but sup-
plied by the mind, or to the following con-
text. If it is referred to the last, the coun-
cil must be understood as declaring itself
expressly opposed to these superpositiones.
But the analogy of the whole style of ex-
pression in the other canons of this coun-
cil would rather favor the first interpreta-
FASTS AND FESTIVALS. . 907
members of Eastern churches passed their Sabbaths in churches of the
West. But too soon, the principles of the apostolic church, which,
amidst all the differences m outward things, abode firmly by the unity
of faith and of spirit in the bond of love, was departed from, and wnv-
formity in such matters was required. Tertullian, previous to his con-
version to Montanism, spoke on this disputed point with Christian mod-
eration. He said of the few advocates of the Eastern custom,! “ The
Lord will bestow his grace, so that they will either yield, or else fol-
low their own opinion without giving offence to others.” As early as
the beginning of the third century, the learned Hippolytus was led to
write on this controversy between the Eastern and Western church.”
From the same point of view originated the first yearly festivals
among the Christians; yet here, that opposition between the communi-
ties composed of Jewish and those composed of Gentile Christians,
which had such important mfluence on the unfolding of the life of the
church as well as of its.doctrmes, was strongly manifested at the very
beginnmg. The former retained, with the whole Jewish ceremonial
law, all the Jewish festivals, although gradually they ascribed to them
such Christian import as might naturally present itself. On the con-
trary, among the churches of Gentile Christians, there were probably,
from the first, no yearly festivals whatever, as may be inferred from
the epistles of St. Paul. This then must have been the case also with
the churches of Asia Minor, which assuredly were founded by the
Apostle Paul. But from these churches started the controversies in the
second century respecting the time of the passover; and they appealed
to the authority of an ancient usage introduced by the Apostle John. _
In regard to this pomt,.thus much of truth may doubtless lie at bot-
tom ; that the changes which took place in these churches, after the
times of St. Paul, in the particular form of worship and the introduc-
tion of the annual feast, — which we must assume, and search for its
cause, — might be derived from the Apostle John, whose longer resi-
dence i Minor Asia must have had a lasting influence on the state of
the churches there. As it regards hin, it is in itself probable, that as
he had been accustomed heretofore to celebrate the Jewish annual fes-
tival, and as the feast of the passover, which called to mind the great
facts of which he had been an eye-witness, must have had a peculiar
significancy for him, he may have introduced its celebration when he
took up his permanent residence among the churches of that region.
Thus is it explained how it happened that men were guided there wholly
by the chronology of the Jewish passover.
tion. Ata later period, when the point of
view from which the subject was regarded
in the early Christian times, had passed out
of mind, and the cause of that custom in
the Roman church of fasting on the Sab-
bath was no longer obvious, fables were in-
vented in explanation of the matter; as, for
example, that Peter had fasted on this day
to prepare himself for the dispute with
Simon Magus.
1 De orat. ο. 23.
2 Cfr. Hieronymus ep. 72, ad Vital.
8 The passage, 1 Corinth. 5: 7, contains
in no sort, any allusion to a celebration of
the passover in the Corinthian church, which .
was peculiar to the Christians; but simply _
opposes that cleansing of the heart which
is the result of faith, to the outward Jewish
eelebration of the feast. Comp. my Histo
ry of the Planting, &c., Vol. I. p. 230.
298, SEASONS OF WORSHIP.
Now in modern times, it has become the prevailing opinion,! that the
paschal supper which the Christians of Asia Minor observed in remem-
brance of the last paschal supper of Christ, was the point by which
they determined the time of the Christian paschal supper. But it may
be questioned, whether the most reliable and the oldest document on this
controversy, — the letter of the bishop Polycrates of Ephesus,” — favors
this view. From the language used in this document, it might much
rather be inferred, that in the churches of Asia Minor, the Christians
who followed the Johannean tradition, went on the supposition, that the
14th day of the month Nisan ought to be regarded as the day of
Christ’s passion. Hence it was believed that this day ought ever to be
appropriated to the remembrance of Christ’s passion, since also the
paschal lamb, slain by the Jews on this day, was considered a foretype
of the offering of Christ. At all events, then, it is settled, that in Asia
Minor the celebration of the passover was established wholly according
to the Jewish chronology. Hence it might come about, that the remem-
brance of Christ’s passion was celebrated om another day of the week .
than Friday, the remembrance of Christ’s resurrection on another day
than Sunday. When, on the other hand, in the course of the second
century, annual feasts were introduced also into the Western churches,
men proceeded from.an altogether different pot in determining their
times. Following the same method according to which the weekly fes-
tivals had been arranged, Christians held it necessary that a Friday
should always be consecrated to the memory of Christ’s passion, a Sun-
day to the memory of Christ’s resurrection.
This difference of outward use existed at first, without bemg deemed
of sufficient importance, — since it was an external thing, — to be made
a matter of dispute; it was still kept im mind, that the kingdom of
1 The first start to which was given by
the Dissertation published by myself in the
2d Hefte des Kirchenhistorischen Archiv’s
von Vater, J. 1823. See the history of the
treatises on this subject, —a subject ren-
dered obscure and difficult by the deficien-
cy of ancient accounts and the ambiguity
of the term Pascha, — in Illgen’s Zeitschrift
fiir die historische Theologie, Bd. II. 4tes
Stiick. J. 1832, by Dr. Rettberg.
2 Euseb. 1. V. c. 24. The fragment, pre-
served to us in the Chronicon paschale
Alexandrinum, from a work by Apollina-
ris of Hierapolis, on the feast of the Pass-
over, of which I have made much use in
the Dissertation just referred to, is, to say
the least, suspicious; since in the ancient
lists of the writings of Apollinaris, in EKu-
sebius, in Jerome and in Photius, no such
work is mentioned ; and it were singular if
in the district where he wrote, the usage of
the church in Asia Minor was not followed.
3 Polycrates, in the letter referred to, says
of his predecessors: Πάντες ἐτήρησαν τὴν
ἡμέραν τῆς τεσσαρεςκαιδεκάτης τοῦ πάσχα
κατὰ τὸ εὐαγγέλιον. This, to say the least,
would be singularly expressed, if it is to be
understood as referring only to the paschal
supper to be held on the evening of this
day, which supper, according to the gospel
narrative relating to the last paschal sup-
per of Christ, it was believed should be
held at the beginning of the Jewish feast of
the passover, on the fourteenth day of the
month Nisan. Afterwards it is said: Πάν-
τοτε THY ἡμέραν ἤγαγον οἱ συγγενεῖς pov,
ὅταν τῶν Ἰουδαίων ὁ λαὸς ἤρνυε τὴν ζύμην.
What sense would this afford, if the sub-
ject of discourse were the paschal supper?
It is, in fact, evident of itself, that the pas-
chal supper could be held only on the day
when the Jews removed the leaven from
their houses. This would be idem per idem.
On the other hand, every thing is consist-
ent, if we suppose, that the writer is speak-
ing of the celebration in remembrance of
Christ's passion, on the fourteenth of the
month Nisan. The source of proof ap-
pealed to here was the gospel, by which
may be understood either the evangelical
history generally, or the gospel of John in
particular.
4 Comp. Justin M. Dial. c. Tryph. Jud.
f. 259, and f. 338, ed Colon.
CONTROVERSY CONCERNING THE PASSOVER. - 299
God consists neither in meat nor drink, nor any other kind of external
action.
This diversity, together with several other differences, between the
church of Asia Minor and the church of Rome, first came into discus-
sion when, in the year 162, the bishop Polycarp of Smyrna made a
visit to Anicetus bishop of Rome.t Polycarp alleged that he himself
had observed such a passover with the Apostle John, whose disciple he
was. Anicetus alleged, that his predecessors (in a church consisting of
Gentile Christians from the school of Paul, and in which there were
originally no yearly feasts at all”) had introduced nothing of that sort.
But as it was not supposed that the apostles were agreed in respect to
such outward matters, nor that they would have considered uniformity
in regard to such things as necessary, it was believed that without pre-
judice to the fellowship and unity of Christians, a difference on these
points might be suffered to remain. As a token that the bond of
Christian brotherhood was not to be disturbed by such, and, as it seems,
other still more important points of difference, Anicetus permitted Poly-
carp to preside in the church in place of himself, at the celebration of
the Lord’s supper.
If two books which, about the year 171, the bishop Melito of Sardis
wrote upon the passover,® referred to this dispute, it must about this
time have broken out anew; yet it does not admit of being proved, that
the work contained any reference of that sort. The typical explanation
of the Jewish passover might also have led to the composition of such a
work, independent of this controversy.
But about the year 290, when Victor was bishop of the Roman
church,* the controversy broke out afresh. On the one side stood the
church of Rome, together with the churches of Czsarea in Palestine,
of Jerusalem, of Tyre and of Alexandria; on the other were the
churches of Asia Minor, headed by the bishop Polycrates of Ephesus.
᾿ς The Roman bishop, actuated by that hierarchical spirit, which, as we
have already observed, had already begun to show itself in the Roman
church,* published sentence of excommunication against the churches of
1 At any rate, if we may judge from the
language of Irenzus, cited by Eusebius,
the object of Polycarp’s journey to Rome
was not to settle the disputes respecting
the feast of the passover. No disputes on
this question had as yet arisen; and the
conversation upon it was only cursorily in-
troduced, while the parties were speaking
on the points in which the churches dif-
fered. Neither is it by any means clear,
although it is possible, that the object of
the journey was to discuss those other dif-
ferences. More importance has been some-
times attributed to this visit, than it can
be proved historically to have had.
2 The matter is obscure, as we have in
our hands only a disconnected fragment of
the letter of Ireneeus. Perhaps there was
not as yet even then in the Roman church
any yearly feast; perhaps the difference
at that time had reference to this very point.
— the conflict between the ancient rites ac-
cording to Paul, and the more recent ones
according to John. I speak here only by
way of conjecture.
ὃ Kuseb. I. LV. c. 26. ᾿ ;
4 JT once inferred, from the fact that Ire-
neeus, in his letter to Victor, holds up only
those Roman bishops who preceded Soter,
as patterns of toleration, that a change had
already taken place under the latter; but
if we mark how the phrases in Ireneus,
of (πρὸ) Σωτῆρος πρεσβύτεροι and οἱ πρό
σου πρεσβύτεροι, answer to each other, it
becomes evident that no stress can be laid
on the former of them. Irenzus means -
simply to say, that difference, and withal
that tolerance, did not first begin under the
last bishops, but existed already before
Soter.
5 See above, p. 214.
00 ‘ORIGIN OF THE FEASTS OF
Asia Minor, on account of this trivial point of dispute; but this un
christian proceeding could not fail to encounter decided resistance, in
an age when some portion of the gospel spirit still remained. Irenzeus,
in the name of the churches at Lyons and Vienna, wrote him a letter,
in which he sharply rebuked this method of procedure. He endeav-
ored to make Victor ashamed of his conduct, by comparing it with the
example of his predecessor, Anicetus, and declared to him, ‘* Notwith-
standing these differences, we live together in peace, and our disagree-
ment with regard to the regulation of fasts serves only to make our
unity of faith the more clearly evident.” In the same letter, or another
document originating in the same controversy, he said, ** The apostles
have directed us to let no man judge us in meat or in drink, or in re-
spect of a holy day, or of the new moon or of Sabbath days. Why
then these disputes, why these divisions? We observe fasts, but with
the sour leaven of malice and cunning, rending the church of God; we
observe the externals, so as to let go those weightier matters of faith
and love. We have learned from the prophets, however, that such feasts
and such fasts are an abomination to the Lord.”
As Friday was customarily considered a day of penitence and fasting
preparatory to the celebration of the resurrection Sunday, it was the
practice of these churches, where one Friday in the year was conse-
crated to the remembrance of the passion, and one Sunday to the re-
membrance of: the resurrection of Christ, to make this Friday a day of
penitence and fasting preparatory to the greatest Christian festival, the
celebration of the remembrance of Christ’s resurrection on Easter Sun-
day. Yet with respect to the duration of this season of fasting, nothing
was determined. In order to imitate the temptation of Jesus during
forty days in the wilderness, this fast was extended in some districts
to forty hours, which led afterwards to the forty days,! or Quadragesi-
mal fast.
After the feast of the resurrection followed the feast of Pentecost,
(Whitsuntide,) in remembrance of Christ risen and glorified, as he’
thus revealed himself to the faithful, and at length actively manifested
himself, in a self-subsistent community of divine life, im the effusion
of the Holy Spirit. All this was embraced as one included sum of the
activity and self-revelation of the ascended and glorified Redeemer, in
this prolonged celebration of fifty days. It is evident from this, how
closely connected in the Christian consciousness of this period were the
conceptions of Christ ascended and glorified.2 This entire period was
observed as Sunday ; that is, there was never any fasting ; prayers were
made in the standing and not in the kneeling posture ; it was perhaps
1 Trenzus, in Euseb. 1. V. ¢. 24. he observes : “ Whoever in sincerity of heart
2 This mode of contemplating the sub-
ject was still adopted also by Origen, and
accounts for the manner in which he places
in juxtaposition with the weekly feasts, the
παρασκευαί and Kupiakai, the yearly feasts,
the πάσχα and the πεντηκοστῆ, regarding
the feast of the resurrection as the point at
which the feast of pentecost began. Hence
can say, God has raised us up and set us
with him in heavenly places, celebrates con-
stantly the feast of pentecost.” (Ὁ dv-
νάμενος μετὰ ἀληϑείας λέγειν, συνανέστη-
μεν τῷ Χριστῷ, ἀλλὰ καὶ τὸ συνήγειρε καὶ
συνεκάϑισεν ἡμᾶς ἐν τοῖς ἐπουρανίοις ἐν
Χριστῷ, ἀεΐ ἐστιν ἐν ταῖς τῆς πεντηκοστῆς
ἡμέραις.) Orig. 6. Cels. 1. VIIL ο. 22
CHRISTMAS AND EPIPHANY. 901
the case also, (in many of the churches at least,) that the congrega-
tions daily assembled and celebrated the communion.! Afterwards, two
special events were selected out of this whole period, the ascension of
Christ, and the effusion of the Holy Spirit, to which the celebration of
Pentecost was confined. .
These feasts, as it appears from the passage cited out of Origen,
were the only ones generally observed in this period. That fundamen-
tal view of the whole Christian life, which referred everything to the
sufferings, resurrection and glory of Christ, and the accommodation or
opposition to the Jewish observances, were reasons that these im partic-
ular constituted the only general festivals. The idea of a birth-day
festival was foreign to the Christians of this period generally ; they re-
garded the second birth as the man’s true birth. So far as it con-
cerned the birth of the Saviour, the case must have been somewhat
different, indeed. By him, human nature was to be sanctified from its
earliest development. But this fact could not at first present itself in
so prominent a point of light to the early Christians, so many of whom
had embraced Christianity when now advanced in years, and after a
decisive crisis of their life. It was, moreover, only by degrees that
Christianity could pass over into all the relations of domestic life. Be-
sides, it was, in truth, unknown at what definite time the celebration of
the remembrance of Christ’s birth should be placed, as nothing definite
was ascertained respecting the date of his birth. The case was entire-
ly different with those more ancient annual feasts.
Yet we find even in this period some trace, probably, of the festival of
Christmas. The history of it is closely connected with the history of
another kindred festival, the festival of the manifestation of Jesus in
his character as the Messiah, his consecration to the office of Messiah
at his baptism by John and the beginning of his public ministry, called
afterwards the ἑορτὴ τῶν ἐπιφανιῶν, τῆς ἐπιφανείας τοῦ Χριστοῦ. We find in
later times, that these festivals spread in opposite directions; the for-
mer extended itself from the West to the East, and the latter from the
Hast to the West.2 Clement of Alexandria simply notices, that the
1 We might infer from Tertullian, de
orat. c. 23, where he had said that worldly
business on Sunday was deferred, and
where he subsequently transfers the entire
celebration of Sunday to the pentecost, that
the former practice was observed also
through the whole of Pentecost; which,
however, can hardly be credited. De 140]-
olatria, ο. 14, he says, wishing to withhold
Christians from taking any part in the
heathen festivals: Excerpe singulas sollen-
nitates nationum, Pentecosten implere non
poterunt. The first trace of a limitation
of the pentecost to one day, is to be found
perhaps in the 43d canon of the council of
lvira. This certainly very obscure canon
seems most naturally to admit of being un-
derstood as meaning that some had selected
out of the whole time of pentecost merely
the feast of ascension. On the other hand,
by the pentecost the council understands
VOL. I. 26
only the feast of the effusion of the Holy
Spirit: and hence requires, that it should
be celebrated fifty days after Easter. It
charges the former, who did but wrongly
apply the name of pentecost, of departing
from the authority of Scripture. Ut cuncti
diem Pentecostes post Pascha celebremus,
non quadragesimam, nisi quinquagesimam.
2 The feast of Epiphany, considered as
the feast of Christ’s baptism, stood in high
consideration towards the close of the fourth
century, at Antioch, while the introduction
of the Christmas festival, coming from the
West, met there with a good deal of oppo-
sition. Several Eastern churches, where
men became first acquainted with the fes-
tival of Christmas in the last part of the
fourth century, or still later, but where the
feast of Christ’s baptism had been longer
known, afterwards united both feasts to-
gether; just as in the Western churches a
πῶ)
τ “αὶ
ACTS OF WORSHIP.
(sie)
Gnostic sect of the Basilidians kept the latter festival in his time at
Alexandria. It can hardly be admitted, however, that this sect in-
vented the festival, interested as they were in observing it on the
ground of their doctrines; for we cannot suppose that the catholic
church would ever have received it from the Gnostics. They had most
probably borrowed it from Jewish Christian churches in Palestine
or Syria. With Jewish Christians it probably originated ; for to their
peculiar mode of thinking, this moment in the life of Jesus must have
appeared most important. ‘The Gnostics afterwards gave it their own
interpretation. Clement speaks, at the same time, of individuals who
were disposed to calculate not only the year but also the day of the
nativity of Jesus, and indeed seems to censure such inquiries as idle
and unprofitable, in which, moreover, it was impossible to arrive at.any
certainty. He does not state indeed that they observed the day which
they attempted to determine, as a festival; yet itis probable that the
day which they took so much pains to reckon, they also observed; and
the general shaping of the passage in Clement would seem to indicate
that this was his meaning.1 He could not have alluded, however, to
the Gnostics, of whom he speaks afterwards, for with thew system the
festival of Christmas stood in direct contradiction. Thus these two
feasts answer to two stages of Christian intuition, a lower and a higher ;
that which attached itself immediately to Judaism, and the Christian
stage carried forward to an independent development; the view of
Jesus as the anointed of the Holy Spirit, armed with divine powers
for his work as the Messiah, and of Jesus as the god-man, the Word
become flesh, whose humanity was from the beginning filled with the
divine essence. We pass now to consider the several acts of Christian
worship.
4. The several acts of Christian Worship.
The nature of the single acts of Christian worship will be evident
from what we have remarked respecting its essence generally. As the
elevation of the spirit and heart of the united church to God was the
end of the whole, so instruction and edification by uniting in the com-
mon contemplation of the divine word, constituted, from the first, a
principal part of Christian worship. ‘The mode in which this was done,
might, like the form of the church constitution, be closely connected
with the arrangement of the assemblies of the Jewish communities m
the synagogues. As in the synagogue assemblies of the Jews the
reading of portions from the Old Testament formed the basis of reli-
gious instruction, so the same practice passed over into the Christian
somewhat different meaning was given to
the recent feast of Epiphany, which came
to them from the East. The Donatists re-
fused to adopt the feast of Epiphany, con-
sidering it as an innovation coming from
the Eastern church. Quia nec orientali ec-
clesiw, ubi apparuit illa stella, communi-
cant. Augustini Sermo, 202, § 2. These
are only preliminary remarks, introduced
here in confirmation of the conjecture above
expressed; the subject will be resumed in
the following period.
1 Clemens Stromat, 1. I. f. 340: Eloi δὲ
οἱ περιεργότερον TH γενέσει τοῦ σωτῆ-
ρος ἡμῶν οὐ μόνον τὸ ἔτος, ἀλλὰ καὶ τὴν
ἡμέραν προστιϑέντες" οἱ δὲ ἀπὸ Βασιλείδου
καὶ τοῦ βαπτίσματος αὐτοῦ τὴν ἡμέραν
ἑορτάζουσι.
2 See my History of the Planting, etc,
Vol. I. p. 39.
READING THE SCRIPTURES. SERMONS. 303
assemblies. The Old Testament was read first, particularly the pro-
phetic parts of it, as referring to the Messiah; next, the gospels, and
finally the apostolic epistles.
The reading of the scriptures was of the greater consequence, since
it was desired to make every Christian famihar with them; and yet,
en account of the rarity and high price of manuscripts, and the pov-
erty of a great proportion of the Christians, or because all could not
read, placing the Bible itself in the hands of all was out of the ques-
tion. The frequent hearing of the word must therefore, in the case of
many, be a substitute for their own reading it. The scriptures were
read ina language that all could understand. This, in most of the
countries belonging to the Roman empire, was either the Greek or the
Latin. Various translations of the Bible into Latin made their appear-
ance at a very early period ; since every one who had but a slight knowl-
edge of Greek, felt the want of thus making himself familiar with the
word of God in his native tongue.!_ In places where the Greek or the
Latin language was understood by only a part of the community, the
men of education, the rest being acquainted only with the ancient dia-
lect of their country, which was the case. in many cities of Egypt and
Syria, church interpreters were appointed, as they were in the Jewish
synagogues,” who immediately translated what was read mto the pro-
vincial dialect, that it might be universally understood.?
As early as the third century it was the practice, as we learn from
the complete liturgies of the fourth which are known to us, for the dea-
cons, before the Anagnost began to read, to exhort the community m a
certain customary form of words, to attention and devotion in listening
to the divine πον."
The reading of the scriptures was followed, as in the Jewish syna-
gogues, by short, and originally very simple addresses, in familar lan-
guage, such as the heart prompted at the moment, which contained the
exposition and application of what had been read. On this point, Jus-
tin Martyr expresses himself as follows:° “ΚΞ The presiding officer of the
church gives a word of exhortation, and incites the people to exemplify
in their lives the good things they had listened to.’ It was among
the Greeks, who were more given to the culture of rhetoric, that the
sermon first began to take a wider scope, and to assume an important
place in the acts of worship.®
.
1 Augustin. de doctrina christiana, 1. II.
ec. 11.
2 The DAI, Dragomans.
ὃ 'Epunvevtai γλώσσες εἰς γλῶσσαν, ἢ ἐν
ταῖς ἀνᾳγνώσεσιν, ἢ ἐν ταῖς προσομιλίαις.
Epiphan. exposit. fid. Cathol. ο. 21. Ῥτο-
copius, the martyr, in the persecution of
Dioclesian, united in his own person, at
Scythopolis in Palestine, the offices of
Anagnost, exorcist, interpreter, (from the
Greek into Syriac.) See his Acta.
* As we may see from the words of Com-
modian, against the speaking, particularly
of the female sex, in the church:
Buccina preconum clamat, lectore legente,
Ut pateant aures, et tu magis ohstruis illas.
. L. c. 6579,
5 Apolog. II.
6 When Sozomen, hist. eccles. 1. VII. ο.
19, who wrote in the first half of the fifth
century, says that the practice of preaching
did not exist in the Roman church, the re-
mark could in no case have reference to
the early times ; but, supposing the statement
is to be depended upon, it would simply
amount to this, that by the predominance
of outward show and liturgical pomp, the
sermon was finally pushed out. But the
fact may have been, that this Eastern writer
904 CHURCH PSALMODY. THE SACRAMENTS.
Church psalmody, also, passed over from the synagogue into the Chris-
tian church. The Apostle Paul exhorts the primitive churches to sing
spiritual songs. For this purpose were used the psalms of the Old
Testament, and partly hymns composed expressly for this object, espe-
cially hymns of praise and of thanks to God and to Christ; such hav-
ing been known to Pliny, as in customary use among the Christians of
his time. In the controversies with the Unitarians, at the end of the
second and the beginning of the third centuries, the hymns were ap-
_pealed to, in which from early times Christ had been worshipped as
God. The power of church melody on the heart was soon acknowl-
edged; and hence such as were desirous of propagating peculiar opin-
ions of their own, like Bardasanes or Paul of Samosata, seized upon this
as an instrument well adapted to their purpose.
The visible church required visible signs, for the spiritual facts on
which its inward essence rests. Hence Christ, who meant to found a
visible church, instituted two outward signs, as symbols of the invisible
fellowship between him, the Head of the spiritual body, and its mem-
bers, the believers, and of the union of these members not only with
himself, but with one another — visible means of representing the in-
visible heavenly benefits to be communicated by him to the members of
this body ; and with the believing use of these signs, furnished to the
outward man of sense in behalf of the inward spiritual man, was to be
connected the enjoyment of that fellowship and of those heavenly ben-
efits. As in Christianity and all Christian life, there is nothing which
stands separate and insulated, but all forms one whole, radiatmg from a
common centre, so in the present case, what is represented by these
outward signs was to be something which should proceed on through
the whole ward, Christian life; something which from one single mo-
ment of that life should be diffused over the whole of it; and again,
from other single moments, should be specially awakened and carried
still further onward. Such was baptism, the sign of the first entrance
into fellowship with the Redeemer and witli the church, the first appro-
priation of the benefits which he bestowed on mankind — the forgive-
ness of sins and the inward union of life thence resulting — the partici-
pation in a sanctifying, divine spirit of life; and such was the Lord’s
supper, the sign of a constantly progressive perseverance in this fellow-
ship and in the appropriation and enjoyment of these benefits; both
representing the essentials of the whole Christian life within, in its first
rise and its progressive development. The whole peculiar spirit of the
Christian worship invariably stamped itself upon the mode in which
these outward signs of divine realities were administered ; and again,
the mode of their administration powerfully reacted upon the character
of the worship. The connection of the moments represented by these
outward signs with the whole of the Christian life, the union of the in-
ward and divine things with the outward transactions, were present to
the lively Christian feelings of the early believers; but it was here a
was deceived by false accounts from the the Roman church did not occupy so im-
West. And the mistake may have arisen portant a place in the worship, as in the *
from some observation, that the Sermon in Greek church
BAPTISM. PREPARATION FOR IT. 305
source of great practical mischief, — just as we observed in the case of
the doctrine concerning the church, — that men neglected duly to sep-
arate and distinguish in their conceptions, what was connected together
in their feelings. It was from the same source that the outward con-
ception, not merely of the church, but also of those symbols which were
so closely connected with the being of. the church, proceeded. And
one kind of outward conception reacted upon the other.
We shall speak first of baptism. At the beginning, when it was im-
portant that the church should rapidly extend itself, those who confessed
their belief in Jesus as the Messiah, (among the Jews,) or their belief
in one God, and in Jesus as the Messiah, (among the Gentiles,) were
immediately baptized, as appears from the New Testament. Gradually
it came to be thought necessary, that those who wished to be receivec
into the Christian church, should. be subjected to a more careful pre
paratory instruction, and to a stricter examination.’ This whole class
were denominated κατηχούμενοι, ἀκροαταί, auditores or audientes. By these
appellations they were designated as those who were receiving their
first instruction in Christianity, and who could only be permitted to
hear the reading of the scriptures and the preaching of the word. The
period of probation must have been determined by the different condi-
tions of individuals; yet the Council of Elvira decided generally on a
period of two years. Originally there was but one common name for
all who had not as yet received baptism, but were in the state of pro-
bation and preparation. But as different stages and gradations were
here distinguished, these were also designated by particular names.
Accordingly in Origen we find these catechumens distinctly separated
into two divisions. 1. Those who were for the first time receiving pri-
vate instruction, and 2. Those who were admitted to the meetings of
the church, and who were immediately prepared for baptism.”
1 The assertion advanced by Dr. Rothe,
in his interesting tract, (De discipline ar-
cani, quee dicitur, in ecclesia Christiana ori-
gine. Heidelberg, 1841,) that the instruc-
tion and examination of catechumens re-
lated in the first place to matters of practice
only, and that an important change took
place when, at a later period, the instruction
and examination was directed to matters of
theory, —this assertion I cannot think es-
tablished on good and sufficient grounds.
Both were, from the beginning, united to-
gether, as Christianity required. This is
clear also from the passage in the greater
Apology of Justin Martyr, § 61, where he
says of those who are preparing themselves
for baptism: Ὅσοι dv πεισϑῶσι καὶ πιστεύ-
wow ἀληϑῆ ταῦτα τὰ ὑφ᾽ ἡμῶν διδασκόμενα
καὶ λεγόμενα εἷναι καὶ βιοῦν οὕτως δύνασ-
ϑαι ὑπισχνῶνται. Here instruction in doc-
trine is assuredly presupposed, and the cor-
responding conduct of the life derived from
it, and both supposed to be so united with
each other, that those who wished to re-
ceive baptism should declare themselves
convinced of the truth of the doctrines they
" 20"
had been taught, and bind themselves to
rule their lives by them, — the same method
of uniting doctrine and practice which must
prevail at all periods in the instruction of
catechumens, It is beyond my power to
conceive what conclusion can be drawn
from the words of Celsus, 1. IIT. ο. 50, with
regard to the instruction of catechumens ;
for these words are totally foreign to the
subject, having reference simply to the
mode which the Christians adopted of seek-
ing first to gain access to the uneducated,
to slaves and youth, and bring them over to
Christianity. Neither has the relation of
Clement’s two works (the Paedagogue and
the Stromata) to each other, any thing to
do with the present subject; it answers to
the relation of the πίστις to the γνῶσις,
among the Alexandrians; and the Gnosis
assuredly could not be taught to catechu-
mens. Instruction in the fundamental doc-
trines of Christianity is quite another thing.
2 Origen, ec. Cels. 1. III. ¢. 51, says that to
those who wished to embrace Christianity,
private instruction was first imparted, (by
this cirenmstance he explains their name.
900 APOSTOLIC CREED.
For the private instruction of these catechumens, a distinct office
was instituted in the church. At Carthage the duty was devolved,
after a period of probation, on some individual who had distinguished
himself among the church readers. At Alexandria, where it often
happened that men of education, even the learned, and those habitu-
ated to philosophical reflection, applied to receive instruction in Chris-
tianity, it was necessary that the catechists should be men of liberal
education, qualified to meet the objections and doubts of pagans, and
to follow them on their own position. . Able and learned laymen were
therefore selected here; and this class of catechists led afterwards to
the formation of an important theological school among the Christians.}
Some traces of a confession of faith, which was made at baptism,
are to be found even in the New Testament. Such confessions of
faith were afterwards more fully drawn out, m opposition to Jews, to
pagans and to heretics. These confessions were intended to embrace
those essentials of Christianity, wherein all the churches were agreed.
It was believed that the doctrine expressed in these confessions of faith
proceeded from the apostles; that it was the doctrime which they
preached in living words and in their writings; but it was by no means
the opinion in the beginning, that the apostles had drawn up any such
confession in words. In ¢his sense it was called the κήρυγμα ἀποστολικόν,
the παράδοσις ἀποστολικῇ ; the misconception of this phraseology after-
wards gave birth to the fiction, that the apostles had verbally composed —
such a confession.? This formula of confession was then designated by
the distinctive term of Symbolum. It may be a question, whether, in
this use of the word Symbolum, the allusion was to its general meaning
of “a sign,” in the sense that the words of the confession were a
characteristic, representative sign of the faith, or whether a particular
application of this meaning was intended, having reference to the
σύμβολον στρατιωτικόν, the tessera militaris: so that the confession was, as
it were, the watchword of the miles Christi, communicated to every
one on his admission into the militia Christi. So far as we can trace
the history of the phrase, the first seems to be the more probable sup-
position ; for where the word Symbolum first occurs in connection with
baptism, it has only that general signification.*
ἀκροαταί.) For when they had sufficiently
held to their purpose of leading a Christian
life, they would be introduced into the com-
munity; τοτηνικάδε αὐτοὺς εἰσαγούσιν, ἰδίᾳ
μὲν ποιήσαντες τάγμα τῶν ἄρτι ἀρχομένων
καὶ εἰσαγομένων καὶ οὐδέπω τὸ σύμβολον
τοῦ ἀποκεκαϑάρϑαι ἀνειληφότων. The last
distinction shows evidently that these should
be distinguished from the baptized, who are
afterwards spoken of. It was only the
moral oversight to be extended to the bap-
tized members of the congregation, which
forms the subject of discourse afterwards.
And so Origen describes, not three, but two
classes of catechumens.
1 More on this whole subject hereafter, in
the section relating to the Alexandrian
school.
2 See 1 Pet. 3: 21.—1 Tim. 6: 12, is
not so clear, as this might refer to a profes-
sion voluntarily made by Timothy, from
the impulse of his own feelings, on a spe-
cial occasion, when he was chosen and con-
secrated as a missionary to the heathen.
8 Rufin. exposit. symbol. apostol.
# As. for example, where Tertullian, de
peenitentia, c. 6, says, that baptism, which
by its nature should be a symbolum vite,
becomes to those who receive it without the
right disposition, a symbolum mortis. So
in his work, contr. Marcion. ]. V. ὁ. 1, sym=
bolum is used by him as equivalent to
mark, sign, generally. So in the letter of
Firmilianus of Caesarea, where the “sym-:
bolum trinitatis” is expressly distinguished:
from the confession of faith, and employed*
ITS MEANING AND DESIGN. 307
The very significant word σύμβολον, symbolum, would now give occa-.
sion to many different religious allusions; the one that soon became
predominant was that which fixed on the favorite comparison among the
early Christians of their vocation to a military service (militia. In
the Alexandrian church, on the other hand, where a taste prevailed for
tracing analogies with the pagan mysteries, and sometimes, indeed, in
a way but little suited to the simple character of the gospel, the term
was compared to the watch-word of the initiated.” Others fixed on
another meaning of the word “ Symbolum,” namely, a commercial com-
pact; as if the ‘pledge of a spiritual fellowship was the thing designed
to be represented. Again, the fable recorded by Rufinus,? which
ascribed the aythorship of a confession of faith to the apostles, gave
currency afterwards to the notion, that this confession had been formed
by contributions from each of the apostles; and so the meaning of the
word σύμβολον, cvu3024, a contribution, was applied in the present case to
denote a confession which had grown out of the contributions of the
several apostles.
. This confession was put into the hands of the catechumens as a doc-
ument which contained the essentials of Christianity. Many who had
been led to embrace the faith after much inquiry, after consulting dif
ferent religious writings and reading the scriptures for themselves, of
course did not need it to keep them in the knowledge of Christianity.
It could only serve in their case as a means of convincing them, that
the church with which they wished to become connected, agreed in
doctrine with the holy scriptures from which they had already derived
their faith. Thus Clement of Alexandria invites the heathen to con-
vince themselves what the true Christian doctrine is, by searching the
scriptures, where it was to be found, if they would but apply their
mental powers to distinguish the true from the plausible, the doctrine
really derived from the scriptures from that which merely attached
itself to them in appearance.*
Others, however, obtained their first knowledge of Christianity from
the instruction contained in the confession of faith and imparted in
connection with it, without finding themselves in a situation, till some-
time afterwards, of comparmg with the scriptures what they had thus
received from human tradition. It was of these, the Gnostic Heracleon
remarked :* “ They are led first to believe on the Saviour by the testi-
as a designation of the formula of baptism,
(Baptismus) cui nec symbolum trinitatis
nec interrogatio legitima et ecclesiastica
defuit. Again, ep. 76, Cyprian, ad Mag-
num: “eodem symbolo baptizare,” to bap-
tize with the same formula. Perhaps this
word was originally nothing more than a
designation of the formula of baptism, and
became subsequently transferred to the con-
fession of faith.
1 Stromat. |. V.f. 582. The λοῦτρον com-
pared with the καϑαρσίοις of the pagan
mysteries. In the designation “ φωτισμός,"
borrowed from the New Testament, we can
find. however, no reference to the myste-
ries; for this is assuredly a designation bor-
rowed from the New Testament.
2 Augustin, sermo, 212: Symbolum inter '
se faciunt mercatores, quo eorum societas
pacto fidei teneatur; et vestra societas est
Compmateninn spiritualium.
3JIn his expositio in symbolum aposto-
lorum.
4 Stromat. 1. VIL f. 754 et 55° Δὲ αὐτῶν
τῶν γραφῶν ἐκμανϑάνειν ἀποδεικτικῶς. ---
Διακρίνειν τε τῇ καταλ ηπτικῇ ϑεωρίᾳ, (com-
prehending intuition.) Kai τῷ κυριωτάτῳ
λογισμῷ, (right thinking,) τὸ ἀληϑὲς ἀπὸ
τοῦ φαινομένου.
5. Orig. Tom. XIII. in Joann. § 52
308 ORAL TRADITION OF THE CREED.
mony of men; but when they come to his own words, they believe no
longer on the ground of human testimony alone, but for the sake of the
truth itself;’’ and in reference to the same class, Clement of Alexan-
dria says:1 ‘ The first saving change from heathenism is faith, that is,
a compendious knowledge of all that is necessary to salvation. On this
foundation is built the Gnosis, which is a solid demonstration, derived
from the doctrine of our Lord, of that which has been received by
faith.” Others, who were wholly uneducated, and unable to read any
writing, could only learn from the mouth of others, and never come
themselves to the fountain of God’s word; but still the divine doctrme,
which they imbibed from the lips of others, proved itself independently
a divine power in their hearts. Where the word but once found ad-
mission, an independent Christian consciousness was capable of being
thereby awakened. ‘ Many of us,” says Clement of Alexandria, “have
received the divine doctrine, without the use of writings, in the power
of God through faith.” 3
The few words of this confession of faith needed not, of course, to be
communicated in writing. They were to pass into the heart of the
catechumen ; to pass from the living word into his life; to be expressed
by him as the deep conviction of his heart. Was it wished to attach
to this custom, which arose so naturally, of orally communicating the
confession of faith, some higher meaning? ‘The interpretation most
readily presenting itself was, that the Christian doctrme should not
come to men from without, through the medium of letters, but should
be written in their hearts by the Spirit of God, and propagate itself
there asa living principle. Jer. 31: 83.3 In later times a disposition
to dip into mysteries quite alien from the spirit of the simple gospel,
which disposition had first found entrance into the Alexandrian church
from her leaning to an accommodation with the pagan mysteries and.
from the influence of the Neo-Platonic mysticism, gave to this custom
the meaning, that the most sacred things ought not be entrusted to
writing, lest they should be produced among the uninitiated, and there-
by become profaned : *— while yet the scriptures, the holiest tradition
of the divine, might come into the hands of every heathen; while the
apologists felt no scruples in presenting before the heathen the inmost
mysteries of Christian doctrine ! 3
This confession of faith was made by the catechumens at baptism, in
answers to distinct questions.°
1 Stromat. 1. VII. f. 732, Lit. Ὁ.
2 Stromat. 1. I. f. 319: Οἱ δὲ καὶ ἄνευ
γραμμάτων δυνάμει τὸν περὶ ϑεοῦ διὰ πίσ-
τεως παρειλήφαμεν λόγον.
8 80 Augustin, Sermo 212: Hujus rei
significands causa, audiendo symbolum dis-
citur, nec in tabulis vel in aliqua materia,
sed in corde scribitur:
4 The like play and parade about myste-
ries, to which more importance came to be
attached than they originally possessed, af-
terwards led to the invention of the obscure,
vague and unhistorical idea of a disciplina
arcani, of which, from its very vagueness
and want of foundation, men could make
whatever they pleased.
5 According to the most natural interpre-
tation, 1 Pet. 3: 21, has reference already
to the question proposed at baptism. ’Evre-
ρώτημα, metonymice for the pledge in an-
swer to the questions. Tertullian, de coro-
na milit. c. 3: Amplius aliquid respondentes,
quam Dominus in evangelio determinavit.
Again, Tertullian, de resurrect. c.48, respect-
ing baptism: Anima responsione sancitur.
«The council of eighty-seven Bishops in the
time of Cyprian, respecting these questions :
“ Sacramentnm interrogare,’ (sacramentum
FORM OF RENUNCIATION. 309
With the oral confession of faith was also connected the avowal of a
moral engagement. ‘The transaction was looked upon in the following
light: the candidate for baptism separated himself from the kingdom
of sin, of darkness, of Satan, which, as a heathen devoted to his lusts,
he had hitherto served, and came over to the kingdom of God and of
Christ. He was now, therefore, solemnly to renounce all fellowship
with that kingdom of which he had before been a subject. Giving his
hand to the bishop, he solemnly declared,! that he renounced the devil
and all his pomps,— meaning particularly by these the pagan shows
and things of the like nature —and his angels —an expression proba-
bly based on the notion, that the heathen gods were evil spirits, who
had seduced mankind.? In accordance with the favorite comparison
already alluded to, this pledge was regarded as the Christian’s military
oath, the sacramentum militize christianze, whereby he bound himself to
live and fight as a miles Dei et Christi.
This form of renunciation, which we meet with in the second cen-
tury, should be distinguished from the exorcism, which could not have
sprung so early out of the prevailing mode of thinking in Christian
antiquity. It is true, the idea of a deliverance from the dominion of
the evil spirit in a moral and spiritual respect, of a separation from
the kingdom of evil, and of a communication by the new birth of a
divine life, which should be victorious over the principle of evil, is
to be reckoned among the number of original and essential Christian
ideas ; but the whole act of baptism was to be in truth precise-
ly a representation of this idea; there was no need, therefore, that
any separate act should still be added to denote or to effectuate that
which the whole act of baptism was intended to denote, and to the be-
lever truly and effectually to represent. The case was different with
the form of renunciation. ‘This, like the confession of faith, had refer-
ence to what the candidate was bound, on his part, to do, in order to
enjoy the benefit of baptism. As in Christianity faith and life are
closely conjomed, so the renunciation accompanied the confession.
Hence we find in the second century no trace as yet of any such form
of exorcism against the evil spirit. But the tendency to confound the
inward with the outward, the inclination to the magical, the fondness
for pomp and display, caused that those forms of exorcism which had
been employed in the case of the energumens or demoniacally possessed,
should be introduced in the baptism of all heathens. Perhaps the fact
also had some connection with this change, that exorcism, which in ear-
lier times was a free charisma, had become generally transformed into
a lifeless mechanical act, attached to a distinct office in the church.
In the apostolic constitutions, we find neither the one nor the other.
The first unequivocal trace of exorcism in baptism is found in the acts
is here equivalent to doctrina sacra.) In a
letter of Dionysius of Alexandria, cited in
Eusebius, 1. VII. c. 9: Ἤπερωτῆσεις καὶ
ὑποκρίσεις. Cyprian, ep. 76, ad Magnum,
cites one of these questions: Credis remis-
sionem peccatorum et vitam sternam per
sanctam ecclesiam ?
\
’ 1 According to Tertullian, de corona
milit. ce. 8,— twice, — first, before he went
to baptism, perhaps on his first admission to
the church assemblies, next at baptism it-
self.
2’ Αποτάσσεσϑαι τῷ διαβόλῳ καὶ τῇ πομπῇ
καὶ τοῖς ἀγγέλοις αὐτοῦ.
310 BAPTISM OF THE SICK.
of the council of eighty-five or eighty-seven bishops, which convened at
Carthage in the year 256.1
Τὴ respect to the form of baptism, it was in conformity with the
original institution and the original import of the symbol, performed by
immersion, as a sign of entire baptism into the Holy Spirit, of bemg en-
tirely penetrated by the same.? It was only with the sick, where the
exigency required it, that any exception was-made; and in this case
baptism was administered by sprinkling. Many superstitious persons,?
clinging to the outward form, imagined that such baptism by sprinkling
was not fully valid; and hence they distinguished those who had been
so baptized by denominating them the elimei. The bishop Cyprian ex-
pressed himself strongly against this delusion.* “ It is otherwise,” — he
says, —‘‘ the breast of the believer is washed, the soul of man is cleansed
by the merits of faith. In the sacraments of salvation, where necessity
compels and God gives permission, the divine thing, though outwardly
abridged, bestows all that it implies on the faithful. Or if any one
supposes that they have obtamed nothing because they have been mere-
ly sprinkled with the water of salvation, they must not be so deceived
themselves, as to think that they ought therefore to be baptized over
again, in case they recover from their sickness. But if those who have
once been consecrated by the baptism of the church, cannot again be
baptized, why fill them with perplexity in regard to their faith and the
grace of the Lord? Or is it admitted that they have indeed become
sharers of the grace of the Lord, but in a smaller measure of the divine
largess and of the Holy Spirit, so that they must be considered as
Christians indeed, but yet not placed on the same level with the rest?
No; the Holy Spirit is not given by measure, but poured out in full
on the faithful. or if the day breaks alike on all, and τῇ the sun pours
his light on all in equal measure, how much more shall Christ, the true
sun and the true day m his church, distribute the light of eternal life
with unstinted equality !”’
The formula of baptism, im the name of the Father, Son and Holy
Ghost, which is cited as the traditional one by Justin Martyr, 15. per-
haps not the oldest; but the older is perhaps the shorter formula which
refers only to Christ, to which there is allusion in the New Testament,
which Marcion also insists on in his attempt to bring about a restoration
of the original gospel, and which, amid the disputes concerning the bap-
tism of heretics, still received special recognition. At all events, this
7
1 The North African bishop, Cecilius, of
Bilta, goes on the supposition by his vote
in this case, that exorcism belonged essen-
tially to the whole act of baptism. So too
the votum of the fanatical Vincentius a
Thibari, that the manuum impositio in ex-
orcismo must precede the baptism of here-
tics. But from the 76th letter of Cyprian
ad Magnum, the presence of exorcism in
baptism generally cannot be proved; he is
speaking there simply of exorcism in the
case of energumens, and it is rather Cy-
prian’s object to show that baptism is far
mightier than exorcism. Spiritus nequam
ultra remanere non possunt in hominis cor-
pore, in quo baptizato et sanctificato incipit
Spiritus sanctus habitare. ᾧ
2 See my Hist. of the Planting, etc., Vol.
Bop. 222) ΤΣ
8 See above, p. 238.
4 Ep. 76 ad Magnum.
5 The passage rendered here according
to the sense, to make it intelligible: “ To-
tum credentibus conferunt divina com:pen
dia.”
>
INFANT BAPTISM. Sti
shorter formula contains within it, as must be allowed. all that which in
the longer one is but more fully analyzed and unfolded!
Baptism was administered at first only to adults, as men were accus-
tomed to conceive baptism and faith as strictly connected. We have
all reason for not deriving infant baptism from apostolic institution,? and
the recognition of it which followed somewhat later, as an apostolical
tradition, serves to confirm this hypothesis. Irenzeus is the first church
teacher in whom we find any allusion to infant baptism, and in his mode
of expressmg himself on the subject, he leads us at the same time to
recognize its connection with the essence of the Christian consciousness ;
he testifies of the profound Christian idea, out of which infant baptism
arose, and which procured for it at length universal recognition. Ire-
nzeus is wishing to show that Christ did not interrupt the progressive
development of that human nature, which was to be sanctified by him,
but sanctified it m accordance with its natural course of development,
and in all its several stages. ‘* He came to redeem all by himself; all
who, through him, are regenerated to God; infants, little children,
boys, young men and old. . Hence he passed through every age, and
for the infants he became an infant, sanctifymg the infants ;— among
the little children he became a little child, sanctifying those who be-
long to this age, and at the same time presenting to them an example
of piety, of well-doing and of obedience ; among the young men, he be-
came a young man, that he might set them an example and sanctify
them to the Lord.’’? Itis here especially important to observe, that
infants (infantes) are expressly distinguished from children, (parvulis, )
whom Christ could also benefit by his example; and that they are rep-
resented as capable of receiving from Christ, who had appeared in their
age, nothing more than an objective sanctification. This sanctification
becomes theirs, in so far as they are regenerated by Christ to God.
Regeneration and baptism are in Irenzeus intimately connected ; and it is
difficult to conceive how the term regeneration can be employed, in refer-
ence to this age, to denote anything else than baptism. Infant baptism,
then, appears here as the medium, through which the principle of sanc-
tification, imparted by Christ to human nature from its earliest develop-
ment, became appropriated to children. It is the idea of infant bap-
tism, that Christ, through the divine life which he imparted to and
revealed in human nature, sanctified that nature from the germ of its
earliest development. The child born in a Christian family was, when
all things were as they should be, to have this advantage above others,
that he did not first come to Christianity out of heathenism, or the
sinful nature-life, but from the first dawning of consciousness, unfolded
his powers under the imperceptible preventing influences of a sanctify-
1See my History of the Planting, etc.,
WoL f. Ὁ. 222.
2 The same, p. 224, ff.
83 Treneus, 1. IL. ο. 22, § 4: Omnes enim
per semetipsum venit salvare: omnes, in-
quam, qui per eum renascuntur in Deum,
infantes et parvulos et pueros et juvenes et
seniores. Ideo per omnem yenit xtatem,
et infantibus infans factus, sanctificans in-
fantes; in parvulis, parvulus, sanctificans
hanc ipsam habentes xtatem, simul et ex-
emplum illis pietatis effectus, et justitie et
subjectionis ; in juvenibus, juvenis, exem
plum juvenibus fiens et sanctificans Dom-
ino.
o12 INFANT BAPTISM.
ing, ennobling religion; that with the earliest germination of the natu-
ral self-conscious life, another divine principle of life, transforming the
nature, should be brought nigh to him, ere yet the ungodly principle
could come into full activity; and .the latter should at once find here
its powerful counterpoise. In such a life, the new birth was not to
‘constitute a new crisis, beginning at some definable moment, but it was
to begin imperceptibly, and so proceed through the whole life. Hence
baptism, the visible sign of regeneration, was to be given to the child
at the very outset; the child was to be consecrated to the Redeemer
from the beginning of its life. From this idea, founded on what 1s in-
most in Christianity, becoming predominant in the feelings of Christians,
resulted the practice of infant baptism.
But immediately after Irenzeus,! in the last years of the second cen-
tury, Tertullian appears as a zealous opponent of infant baptism; a
proof that the practice had not as yet come to be regarded as an apos-
tolical institution; for otherwise, he would hardly have ventured to ex-
press himself so strongly against it. We perceive from his argument
- against infant baptism, that its advocates already appealed to Matth.
19: 14, a passage which it would be natural for every one to apply in
thismanner. ‘Our Lord rebuked not the little children, but commanded
them to be brought to him that he might bless them.” Tertullian ad-
vises, that in consideration of the great importance of the transaction,
and of the preparation necessary to be made for it on the part of the
recipients, baptism, as a general thing, should rather be delayed than
prematurely applied, and he takes this occasion to declare himself par-
ticularly opposed to haste in the baptism of children.? In answer to
the objection drawn from those words of Christ, he replies : — ‘‘ Let
them come, while they are growing up; let them come while they are
learning, while they are being taught to what it is they are coming ;
let thenr become Christians, when they are susceptible of the knowledge
of Christ. What haste, to procure the forgiveness of sins for the age
of innocence! We show more prudence in the management of our
worldly concerns, than we do in entrusting the divine treasure to those
who cannot be entrusted with earthly property. Let them first learn
to feel their need of salvation; so it may appear that we have given to
those that wanted.”? Tertullian evidently means, that children should
be led to Christ by instructing them in Christianity; but that they
should not receive baptism, until, after having been sufficiently instruct-
ed, they are led from personal conviction and by their own free choice,
to seek for it with sincere longing of the ae It may be said, indeed,
that he is only speaking of the course to"be followed according to the
general rule; whenever there was momentary danger of death, bap- |
17t has been attempted to prove the
practice of infant baptism from the passage
already cited from Clement of Alexandria,
Pedagog. lib. IIL. f. 247: “ τῶν ἐξ ὕδατος
ἀνασπωμένων παιδίων," which, beyond ques-
tion, refers to baptism; but this can hardly
be considered a valid proof; for as the idea
of the ϑεῖος παιδαγωγός was floating before
Clement’s mind, he could denominate all
Christians παιδία. Beyond doubt, the writer
is speaking in this passage directly of con-
version and regeneration, in reference to all
men.
2 De baptismo, ο. 18: Cunctatio baptismi
utilior est, preecipue tamen circa parvulos
INFANT BAPTISM. 313
tism might be administered, even according to his views. But if he
had considered this to be so necessary, he could not have failed to
mention it expressly. It seems, in fact, according to the principles-
laid down by him, that he could not conceive of any efficacy whatever
residing in baptism, without the conscious participation and mdividual
faith of the person baptized ; nor could he see any danger accruing to
the age of innocence from delaying it; although this view of the mat-
ter was not logically consistent with Ais own system.
But when, now, on the one hand, the doctrine of the corruption
and guilt, cleaying to human nature in consequence of the first trans-
gression, was reduced to a more precise and systematic form, and on
the other, from the want of duly distinguishing between what is out-
ward and what is inward in baptism, (the baptism by water and the
baptism by the Spirit,) the error became more firmly established that
without external baptism no one could be delivered from that inherent
guilt, could be saved from the everlasting punishment that threatened
him, or raised to eternal life; and when the notion of a magical influ-
ence, a charm connected with the sacraments continually gained ground,
the theory was finally evolved of the unconditional necessity of infant
baptism. About the middle of the ¢t/rd century, this theory was
already generally admitted in the North African church. The only
question that remained was, whether the child ought to be baptized im-
mediately after its birth, or not till eight days after, as in the case of
the rite of circumcision. The latter was the opinion of the bishop
Fidus, who proposed the question to a council convened at Carthage.
Cyprian answered it, in the year 252, in the name of sixty-six bishops.1
His answer evinces how full hé was of that great Christian idea which
has just been unfolded, and out of which the practice of infant baptism
proceeded. But embarrassed by his habit of confounding the inward
with the outward, by his materialism, he mingled with 1t much that is
erroneous. He declares himself against the arbitrary limitation οἵ,
Fidus. ‘‘ None of us could agree to your opmion. On the contrary,
it is the opinion of us all, that the mercy and grace of God must be
refused to no human being, so soon as he is born; for smce our Lord
says in his gospel, ‘The Son of man is not come to destroy men’s
souls, but to save them,’ Luke 9: 50, so everything that hes in our
power must be done that no soul may be lost. As God has no respect
of: persons, so too he has no respect of age, offering himself as a Father
with equal freeness to all, that they may be enabled to obtain the
heavenly grace. As to what you say, that the child in the first days
of its birth is not clean to the touch, and that each of us would shrink
from kissing such an object, even this, in our opinion, ought to present
no obstacle to the bestowment of the heavenly grace ; for it is written,
‘to the pure all things are pure;’ and none of us ought to revolt at
that which God has condescended to create. Although the child be
but just born, yet it is no such object that any one ought to demur at
kissing it to impart the divine grace and the salutation of peace, (. e.
1 Ep. 59.
VOL. I. 27
914 INFANT BAPTISM. SPONSORS.
the brotherly kiss, which was given to persons newly baptized, as the
sign of the fellowship of peace in the Lord,) since each of us must be
led, by his own religious sensibility, to thmk upon the creative hands
of God, fresh from the completion of their work, which we kiss in the
newly formed man when we take in our arms what God has made. As
to the rest, if anythimg could prove a hindrance to men in the attain-
ment of grace, much rather might those be hindered whose maturer
years have involved them in heavy sins. But if even the chief of
sinners, who have been exceedingly guilty before God, receive the for-
giveness of sins on coming to the faith, and no one is precluded from
baptism and from grace, how much less should the child be kept back,
which, as it is but just born, cannot have sinned, but has only
brought with it, by its descent from Adam, the infection of the old
death ; and which may the more easily obtam the remission of sins,
because the sins which are forgiven it, are not its own, but those of
another.”
» In the Alexandrian church also, which, m respect to its whole theo-
logical and dogmatic direction of mind was so essentially distinguished
from the church of North Africa, we find prevailing, even at a some-
what earlier period, the doctrine of the necessity of infant baptism.
Origen, in whose system infant baptism could readily find its place,
though not in the same connection as in the system of the North Afn-
\.can church, declares it to be an apostolical tradition ;2 an expression,
by the way, which cannot be regarded as of much weight in this age,
when the inclination was so strong to trace every institution which was
considered of special importance, to the apostles; and when so many
walls of separation, hindering the freedom of prospect, had already
been set up between this and the apostolic age. Also in the Persian
church, infant baptism was, in the course of the third century, so gen-
erally recognized that the sect founder Mani thought he could draw an
argument from it in favor of a doctrine which seemed to him necessa-
rily presupposed by this application of the rite.
But if the necessity of infant baptism was acknowledged in theory,
it was still far from being uniformly recognized im practice. Nor was
it always from the purest motives that men were induced to put off
their baptism. Precisely the same false notion of baptism as an opus
operatum, which had moved some to consider the baptism of infants so
unconditionally necessary, led many others, who mistook indeed, in a
far grosser and more dangerous manner, the nature of this rite, to de-
lay their baptism, that they might, in the meantime, the more freely
abandon themselves to their lusts, and yet, cleansed in ‘the hour of death
by the magical annihilation of their sins, be able to pass without hind-
rance into eternal life. We have already noticed the pious indignation
1 Namely, in its relation to his theory,
that human souls are fallen heavenly essen-
ces, and are to be cleansed from a guilt
which they brought with them; see below.
2 This, expressly i in the fifth book of his
Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans,
according to the Latin translation of Rufi-
nus. In ‘Origen’ s time, too, difficulties were
still frequently urged against infant baptism,
similar to those thrown out by Tertullian.
Comp. his Homil. XIV. in Lucam, (accord-
ing to the translation of Jerome.)
15
Φ9
IMPOSITION OF HANDS IN BAPTISM.
and force with which Tertullian, who was otherwise opposed to haste in
baptism, combatted this error.
Infant baptism, also, furnished probably the first occasion for the ap-
pointment of sponsors or god-fathers ; for as this was a case in which
the persons baptized could not themselves declare their confession of
faith and the required renunciation, it became necessary for others to
do it in their name ; and these at the same time engaged to take care
that the children should be rightly instructed in Christianity, and
trained up im a life corresponding to the vows given at baptism ; hence
they were called sponsors, (sponsores.) ‘Tertullian adds it to his other
arguments against infant baptism, that these sponsors were obliged to
assume an obligation which they might be prevented from fulfilling,
either by their own death, or by the untoward conduct of the child.?
With the act of baptism, several symbolical customs were united,
which flowed from the idea of this transaction, and in which this idea
was to be represented to the senses. ‘Thus it came about that, as the
participation of the universal priesthood of all the faithful was consid-
ered as necessarily united with the introduction to the fellowship of
Christians, so the symbol of priestly consecration was made to follow
the act of baptism. As, in the Old Testament, anointing was the sign »
of consecration to the priestly office ; so oil, which had been blessed
expressly for this purpose, was applied to the newly baptized, as a sign
of consecration to this spiritual priesthood. We first meet with this
custom in Tertullian, and m Cyprian it appears already to constitute
an essential part of the rite of baptism.? The imposition of hands ac-
companied by prayer, with which the act of baptism was concluded, is
beyond doubt a still older custom. ‘The sign of the mmposition of hands
(ἐπίϑεσις τῶν χειρῶν, χειροϑεσία, 12°29) was the common token of religious
consecration, borrowed from the Jews, and employed on various occa-
sions, either to denote consecration to the Christian calling im general,
or to the particular branches of it. The apostles, or presiding officers
of the church, laying their hands on the head of the baptized individ-
ual, called upon the Lord to bestow his blessing on the holy transaction
now completed, to cause to be fulfilled in him whatever was implied in
it, to consecrate him with his Spirit for the Christian calling, and. to
pour out his Spirit upon him. ‘This closing rite was inseparably con-
nected with the whole act of baptism. All, indeed, had reference here
to the same.principal thing, without which no one could be a Chris-
tian, — the birth to a new life from God, the baptism of the Spirit,
Scripture, but from ecclesiastical tradition,
1 De baptismo, c. 18: Quid enim necesse ;
he makes no mention of this unction, Cy-
est, sponsores etiam periculo ingeri? quia
et ipsi per mortalitatem destituere promis-
siones suas possunt, et proventu malz indo-
lis falli.
2L. ο. 6. 7: Egressi de lavacro, perungui-
mur benedicta unctione, de pristina disci-
plina, qua ungui oleo de cornu in sacerdo-
tium solebant. Adv. Marcion, ]. 1. c. 14;
de-res. carn. c. 8. Yet in the book de coro-
na milit. ¢ 3, where he describes the usages
in baptism which were derived not from
prian, ep. 70, in the name of an ecclesiasti-
cal assembly: Ungi quoque necesse est
eum qui baptizatus sit. ut, accepto chrismate,
esse unctus Dei et habere in se gratiam
Christi possit; (the next following words,
respecting the sacrament of the supper, are
manifestly a gloss, disturbing the sense, and
occasioned by the subsequent mention of
the supper,) unde baptizati unguuntur o/eo
in altart sanctificato.
316 BAPTISM. CONFIRMATION.
which was symbolically represented by the baptism of water. Tertul-
lian still considers this transaction and baptism as one whole, belonging
together; although he distinguishes in it the two separate moments,
the negative and the positive, the forgiveness of sin and cleansing from
sin which was mediated by baptism in the name of the Father, Son, and
Holy Ghost, and the importation of the Holy Spirit following thereupon,
upon the individual now restored to the original state of innocence, to
which importation the imposition of hands refers.?
¢ But now, since the idea had sprung up of a spiritual character be-
longing exclusively to the bishops, or successors of the apostles, and com-
municated to them by ordination; on which character the propagation
of the Holy Spirit in the church was dependent; it was considered as
their prerogative to seal, by this consecration of the imposition of hands,
\the whole act of baptism; (hence this rite was called signaculum,
σφραγίς.) It was supposed that a good and valid reason for this rite
could be drawn from the fact that the Samaritans, baptized by a dea-
con, were first endowed with spiritual gifts by the imposition of the
hands of the apostles, which was added afterwards, (Acts 19,7) as this
passage was then understood. So now the presbyters, and in case of
necessity, even the deacons, were empowered to baptize, but the bish-
ops only were authorized to consummate that second holy act. This
notion had been formed so early as the middle of the third century.
The bishops were under the necessity, therefore, of occasionally going
through their dioceses, in order to administer to those who had been
baptized by their subordinates, the country presbyters, the rite which —
was afterwards denominated confirmation. In ordinary cases, where
the bishop himself administered the baptism, both were still united
together as one whole, and thus constituted the complete act of bap-
tism.®
# After all this had been performed, in many of the churches, in those
for instance of North Africa and of Alexandria, there was given to
the person newly baptized a mixture of milk and honey, as a symbol of
filiation into the new life, and as a spiritual application of the promise
1 De baptismo, c. 8: Dehinc manus im-
ponitur per benedictionem, advocans et in-
vitans Spiritum sanctum. He names to-
gether, de res carn. c. 8, in connection with
baptism, all the three things which after-
wards, separated from it and combined
together in one whole, constituted in the
Roman church, the sacrament of confirma-
tion: the wnction, conveying with it the con-
secration of the soul; the signing with the
cross, conveying with it protection from evil ;
the imposition of hands, the illuminatio spi-
ritus.
2 See on this subject, my History of the
Planting, etc., Vol. I. p. 82, ff.
3 Cyprian speaks of a sacramentum du-
plex, water baptism, and spiritual baptism,
represented by the imposition of hands,
(sacramento utroque nasci.) yet both unit-
ed in the church act of baptism, ep. 72, ad
Jubajanum, and ep. 72, ad Stephan. We
must not lose sight here of the unsettled
meaning affixed to the word sacramentum,
according to which it signified any sacred
thing, sacred doctrine, sacred sign. After
citing the example of Philip and the apos-
tles, he says: Quod nunc quoque apud nos
geritur, ut, qui in ecclesia baptizantur, pra-
positis ecclesize offerantur, et per nostram
orationem ac manus impositionem spiritum
sanctum consequantur et signaculo domini-
co consummentur. The same notion occurs
in the contemporary work, as is most prob-
able, de rebaptismate; this act is here de-
nominated baptisma spiritale. Cornelius,
in Euseb. 1. VI. ¢. 43, asks respecting one
who may not have received this confirma-
tion of the bishop: “ How could he without
this become partaker of the Holy Spirit *”
1
9
CONTROVERSIES ABOUT BAPTISM.
concerning the land flowing with milk and honey, to that heavenly
country, with all its blessed privileges, to which the baptized belonged.1
He was then received into the church by the first kiss of Christian
brotherhood, the salutation of peace, of that peace with God which he
now participated in common with all Christians ;? and from henceforth
he had the right of saluting all Christians with this fraternal sign. But
Clement of Alexandria already had to complain that this brotherly kiss,
originally a natural expression of Christian feeling, was become an opus
operatum, a thing of conscious display, by which the suspicion of the
heathens was excited.® His objection to it is, that love evinces itself
not in the brotherly kiss, but in the disposition of the heart.‘
Before taking leave of this subject we must touch on a controverted’
question, which, in the second half of the third century, created no small
agitation. It was the question, what constitutes the validity of baptism ?
What was to be done in the case of a heretic, who, after having received
baptism in his own sect, came over to the orthodox church? Before
any special inquiries on this pomt had as yet been instituted, the
churches in different countries had been in the habit of pursuing differ-
ent courses, just as they happened, as is usual in such cases, to proceed
unintentionally from different starting pomts. In Asia Minor and the
adjacent countries, the point started from was that no baptism was valid,
save that administered in the orthodox church, where alone all religious
acts had their true significancy ; that the baptism of heretics was null
and void, and that the true baptism ought therefore to be administered
to such as came over from the sects, in the same manner as to heathens. ,
This may be easily explained from the asperity of the polemical rela-
tions which existed in these particular districts between the church
and the sects, and from the character of these sects; for instance, the
Gnostic, who departed widely in regard to the most essential points of
doctrine and of practice from the commonly received opimions. Jn the,
Roman church, on the contrary, where too in other respects a bitter
“hostility prevailed against the heretics, the matter was conducted in a
milder spirit, more importance being here attached to the objective side
of baptism. ‘The principle was pursued in practice, that baptism, in.
virtue of the objective significancy of the name of Christ or of the Trin-
ity, with the invocation of which it was administered, always has validity,
by whomsoever and under whatsoever religious views it may be admin-
istered. The heretics, therefore, who came over to the church, were \
recognized as baptized Christians ; and only the rite of confirmation, in
the sense above explained, was bestowed on them by the bishop, that
1See the passage above quoted from
Tertullian’s de corona milit. and ady. Mar-
cion. |. I. ο. 14: Deus mellis et lactis socie-
tate suos infantat, (he causes them to be
known as his new-born children.) Clemens,
Pedagog. 1. I. f. 103: Εὐϑὺς ἀναγεννηϑέν-
τες τετιμήμεϑα τῆς ἀναπαύσεως τὴν ἐλπίδα,
τὴν ἄνω “Ἱερουσαλὴμ εὐαγγελιζόμενοι, ἐν ἡ
μέλι καὶ γάλα ὀμβρεῖν ἀναγέγραπται.
ὁ Osculum pacis, εἰοῆνη. See above.
Ὁ"
8 Τὴ the passage already cited from the
Peedagog, 1. III. f. 256: Οἱ dé οὐδὲν, ἀλλ᾽
ἢ φιλήματι καταψοφοῦσι τὰς ἐκκλησίας, τὸ
φιλοῦν ἔνδον οὐκ ἔχοντες αὐτό. Καὶ γὰρ
δὴ τοῦτο ἐκπέπληκεν ὑπονοίας αἰσχρὰς καὶ
βλασφημίας τὸ ἀναίδην χρῆσϑαι τῷ φιλή-
ματι, ὅπερ ἐγρῆν εἶναι μυστικόν.
4’Ayarn δὲ οὐκ ἔν φιλήματι. ἀλλ' ἐν
εὐνοίᾳ κρίνεται.
318 CONTROVERSIES:
the Holy Spirit might render efficacious the baptism they had received ;
a practice which was one of the occasions of separating confirmation
\from baptism. As the different communities willingly directed them-
selves according to the model of their apostolical mother churches, (the
sedes apostolic, ) it is probable that most of the Western churches
followed the example which had been set them at Rome.
, But towards the close of the second century, the custom, which thus
far had been tacitly observed, became an object of especial inquiry in
τ΄;
Asia Minor; whether it was that the prevailing rire in that region,
being followed also by the Montanistic chur ches, ! was therefore called
in question by those who were glad of any opportunity to oppose the
Montanists, or whether it was for some other reason. The majority
declared in favor of adhering to the old principle. Somewhat later,
when the matter again came up, this principle was solemnly confirmed
by two ecclesiastical councils at Iconium and Synnada in Phrygia.
This led to the discussion of the same question in other countries. ‘Ter-
tullian, most probably while he was still a member of the Catholic
church, wrote in the Greek language a special treatise on the subject,
in which he did not hesitate to depart in this particular from the custom
of the Roman church. ΤῸ defend the necessity of recognizing hereti-
cal baptism, the opposite party had doubtless already appealed to Ephes.
4: 5, 6, “ One Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of
41}, — and had drawn from it the conclusion that wherever men were
found to call on that one God and that one Lord, it was necessary to
recognize the validity of their baptism. ‘But Tertullian replies: ?
‘This can relate only to us, who know and call upon the true God and
Christ. The heretics have not this God and this Christ. These words,
therefore, cannot be applied to them; and as they do not rightly ad-
minister the ordinance, their baptism is the same as none.”’
In the North African church, men willingly followed, for the most
part, the example of the mother church at Rome, but were at the same
time far from submittmg their own judgment to the authority of that
church.? Ata council held in Carthage, over which the bishop Agrip-
pinus presided, seventy bishops of North Africa declared themselves
for the opposite opinion. Yet neither party was disposed as yet to ob-
trude its own views and practice on the other. The churches which
differed on this point, in no case dissolved the bond of fraternal har-
mony on account of a disagreement which so little concerned the es-
sentials of Christianity. But here again, it was a Roman bishop,
Stephanus, who, instigated by the spirit of ecclesiastical arrogance,
domination and zeal without knowledge, attached to this point of dis-
pute a paramount importance. Hence towards the close of the year
253, he issued a sentence of excommunication against the bishops of
Asia Minor, Cappadocia, Galatia, and Cilicia,‘ stigmatizing them as
anabaptists, (avaBarriorai ,)° a name, however, which they could justly
1 See Tertullian, de pudicitia, c. 19. 5 The words of Cyprian, ep. 71 ad Quin
2 De baptismo, c. 15. tum: Nos autem dicimus eos qui inde
3 See above. veniunt, non rebaptizari apud nos, sed bap-
4 Dionysius, in Euseb. 1. VII. ¢.5; Fir- tizari
milianus in Cyprian, ep. 75
RESPECTING BAPTISM. 319
afirm they did not deserve by their principles; for it was not their
wish to administer a second baptism to those who had been already bap-
tized, but they contended that the previous baptism, given by heretics,
could not be recognized as a trwe one.
From Asia, the discussions in regard to this matter extended them-
selves to North Africa. Here there was always a party which stood
firm by the old Roman usages. ‘The earlier discussions were now for-
gotten ; and hence there arose new questions and investigations relative
to this matter. These induced Cyprian, the bishop, to propose the»
point for discussion at two synods held in Carthage im the year 250,
the one composed of eighteen, and the other of seventy-one bishops ;
and both assemblies declared in favor of Cyprian’s views, that the bap-
tism of heretics ought not to be regarded as valid. As he was well
aware! what importance the church of Rome and its followers attached
to traditional customs, and that they held up this long observed practice
in the light of an apostolical tradition, although from the nature of the
thing, cases of this sort could not well occur in the time of the apos-
tles; he expressed himself after the following manner im a letter to
Quintus,? an African bishop, to whom he communicated the decisions
of the first council: ‘¢ This is a case in which we are not to be arbitra-
rily directed by custom, but to be convinced by arguments. For even ᾿
Peter, whom our Lord chose the first, and on whom he founded his
church, did not arrogantly pretend, when Paul afterwards disputed
with him concerning circumcision, Gal. 2,8 that he held the prima-
cy, and that the later and younger apostle should yield obedience to
him ; nor did he despise Paul, because he was once a persecutor of the
church; but he took counsel of the truth and easily acquiesced im the
correct views which Paul succeeded to establish. He thus gave us an
example of unanimity and of patience, that we should not obstinately
cleave to our own way, but rather, when any useful and salutary thing
is occasionally suggested to us by our brethren and colleagues, make it
ours, if it be true and lawful.”” He communicated the decisions of the»
greater council to Stephanus also, the Roman bishop, in a letter written
with great freedom of spirit, though in a tone of forbearance ;* but
Stephanus, in his arrogant reply,® set up against Cyprian the tradition
of the Roman church. He is said to have carried his blind, unchris-
tian zeal so far as to indulge himself in undignified and abusive lan-
guage towards his African colleague, refuse the bishops an audience
who came to him as delegates of the North African council, and even
forbid his church to receive them into their houses! Yet far from Cy-
prian was the thought of submitting his reason to the authority of the
Roman church. He convened at Carthage, in the year 256, a still
larger council, composed of eighty-seven bishops, and this assembly also
acceded to the principles before expressed. In the North African church
was evinced, under this zeal for the exclusive validity of Catholic bap-
1 See above. been preserved in the North African church.
2 Ep. 71. 4 ἘΡ. 72.
8 It is remarkable how constantly the un- 5 See above, p. 216, ff.
biassed, unprejudiced view of this fact had
320 CONTROVERSIES
tism, a fanatical hatred of heretics; an exaggerated opinion of the ex-
clusive doliness of the Catholic church.
But it is noticeable how the
same individual, who held tradition generally in so high esteem, opposed
to it on this occasion, truth and right reason.
“In vain,’’ he says,
‘¢some who were cast im the argument, oppose to us usage, as if usage
were greater than truth, or as if in spiritual things, one must not follow
that better way which has been revealed by the Holy Spirit.” 2
/ Cyprian now endeavored to form a connection with the Asiatics, who
entertained the same views of this matter with himself; and to this end
laid the whole case before one of the most eminent of the Asiatic bish-
ops, Firmilianus, of Ceesarea in Cappadocia.
The latter signified his
entire concurrence in Cyprian’s views,’ and added some well-timed re-
marks on the advantages of common deliberation on spiritual matters,
4when such deliberation is conducted in the spirit of Christ.
ςς Since
divine doctrine transcends the bounds of human nature, and the soul
of man cannot grasp the Whole and the Perfect, therefore is the num-
ber of prophets so great, that the manifold wisdom of God may be ap-
portioned among many. And hence he who has first spoken as a
prophet, is commanded to keep silence when any thing 1s revealed to
another.”’ 1 Cor. 14: 30.
, The Christian moderation of the bishop Dionysius of Alexandria has
‘ been noticed already in a former controversy.*
ing the same temper in this.
We find him manifest-
On the point in question he agreed, it is
fo)
true, with the churches of North Africa and Asia Minor, the same
views having for a long time prevailed in the Alexandrian church ;°
oO
though he differed from them in one respect, that jas more liberal
spirit was rather inclined to make exceptions to the rule,® in regard to
many sects, who in doctrine harmonized completely with the church.
But at the same time he endeavored to maintain brotherly harmony
with the bishops of Rome, and dispose them for peace.
He besought
the Roman bishop Stephanus with earnest representations not to dis-
turb again the Eastern church in her enjoyment of that external peace
which she had obtained from the emperor Valerian, and of the internal
1 See Cyprian’s words, ep. 71: Heereti-
corum sordidam et profanam tinctionem
vero, unico et legitimo ecclesiz catholic
baptismo prponere. Nihil potest esse com-
mune Antichristo et Christo. He styles the
baptism of heretics, “aqua perfida et men-
dax.” The opinions expressed by many
of these bishops manifest the same spirit,
—a premonitory sign of those struggles
which in the fourth century were produced
in these districts by a fanatical separative
spirit.
2 Proinde frustra quidam, qui ratione
vincuntur, consuetudinem nobis opponunt,
quasi consuetudo major sit veritate, aut non
id sit in spiritalibus sequendum, quod in
melius a Sancto Spiritu revelatum. Ep. 73.
8 Cyprian, ep. 75, in a Latin translation,
often literal.
4 See above, the Novatian schism.
5 That the Alexandrian church, too, re-
jected baptism administered in the churches
of heretics, seems necessarily to follow
from the declaration of Dionysius in his
letter to the Roman bishop, Sixtus IL, Eu-
seb. 1. VII. ο. 7, where he says, that when
members of the Catholic church who had
gone over to the heretics, returned back
again to the former, it was not the custom
to re-baptize them, for they had before re-
ceived the holy baptism from the bishop. —
This therefore was the only case. Conse-
quently baptism administered out of the
Catholic church, was not recognized as holy,
as valid.
6 Thus he made an exception of this sort
with respect to the baptism administered in
the Montanist churches, probably because
he entertained milder views respecting their
relation to the universal church. See Basil.
Cesar. ep. 188, or ep. canon 1.
ane
RESPECTING BAPTISM. 921
peace which accompanied it since the suppression of the schism of Νο-,
vatian. ‘Know, my brother,” 1 he wrote, ‘that all the once divided
churches in the East and still beyond are now united together, and that
-all the presiding officers of these churches agree, rejoicing exceedingly
in the peace which, contrary to expectation, has fallen to our lot. All
give praise to God in harmony and brotherly love.” It was probably
in consequence of his negotiations with the Roman church, conducted
in this spirit of love and wise forbearance, that Stephanus did not ven-
ture to excommunicate him with the rest. He continued the corres-
pondence with Sixtus, the successor of Stephanus ; and to maintain the
bond of brotherly love, he even asked his advice in relation to one mat-
ter, where both of them could start from the same principles.?
The emperor Valerian becoming soon after a persecutor of the
Christian church, this outward conflict contributed to hush the disputes
within it; perhaps, also, the successor of Stephanus did not partake of
his blind zeal.
It remains that we should consider somewhat more minutely the
points in dispute between the two parties, and the mode of their devel-
opment on both sides. There were two points of dispute. In respect™
to the first, the Roman party maintained that the validity of baptism
depended simply on its being administered as instituted by Christ.
The formula of baptism, in particular, gave it its objective validity ; it
mattered not what was the subjective character of the officiating priest,
who served merely as an instrument in the transaction; it was of no
consequence where the baptism was admimistered. That which is ob-
jectively divine in the transaction could evince its power, the grace of
God could thus operate through the objective symbol, if it but found
in the person baptized a recipient soul; that person could receive the
grace of baptism, wherever he might be baptized, through fs own
faith, and through his own disposition of heart.’ But Cyprian brings
against his opponents a charge of inconsistency, from which they could
not easily defend themselves. If the baptism of heretics possessed an
objective validity, then, for the same reason, their confirmation must /
also possess an objective validity. ‘‘ For,’ says Cyprian, ‘if a person
born out of the church, (namely, to the new life,) may become a tem-
ple of God, why may not also the Holy Spirit be poured out on this
temple? He who has put off sm in baptism and become sanctified,
spiritually transformed into a new man, is capable of receiving the
Holy Spirit. The apostle says, ‘As many of you as are baptized, have
put on Christ.’ It follows, then, that he who may put on Christ when
on
1 Buseb. 1. V..c. 5.
7c. ὙΠ: ¢. 9.
3 Eum qui quomodocunque foris (with-
out the church,) baptizatur, mente et fide
sua baptismi gratiam consequi. The opin-
ion of the Roman church is by no means
to be so apprehended, as if the employment
of the correct formula of baptism, even of
such a baptism as departed in all respects
wholly from the original institution, could
render it valid. That the question related
to a baptism which in other respects was
administered in the right way, was presup-
posed on both sides. Had the opponents
found it in their power to charge any fault
upon Stephanus and his party in this re-
spect, they would hardly have omitted the
opportunity. Moreover, Dionysius of AJex-
andria, in the question which he proposed
to the Roman bishop, Euseb. 1. VII. ο. 9,
proceeds on the supposition that they were
both agreed on that point.
322 CONTROVERSIES ON BAPTISM.
baptized by heretics, can much more receive the Holy Spirit, which
Christ has sent; as if Christ could be put on without the Spirit, or the
Spirit could be separated from Christ.’”!
The other party maintained, on the other hand, that no baptism could
be valid, unless administered in the true church, where alone the effi-
cacious influence of the Holy Spiritis exerted. If by this was understood
merely an outward being in the church, an outward connection with it,
the decision of the question would be easy. But what Cyprian really
meant here, was an inward subjective connection with the true church
\by faith and disposition of heart. He took it for granted that the offi-
ciating priest himself, by virtue of his faith, must be an organ of the
Holy Spirit, and enabled by the magical influence of his priestly office,
duly to perform the sacramental acts, to communicate, for example, to
the water its supernatural, sanctifying power.? But when the matter.
took this shape — was made thus to depend on the subjective character
of the priest —it became difficult, in many cases, to decide as to the
validity of a baptism, which must be the occasion of much perplexity
and doubt;— for who could look imto the heart of the officiating
priest Ὁ 8
But the Roman party went still farther im their defence of the ob-
jective significancy of the formula of baptism.
Even a baptism where
the complete form was not employed, but administered simply in the
name of Christ, they declared to be objectively valid.4
1 Cyprian, ep. 74.
2 L. c. ep. 70: Quomodo sanctificare
aquam potest, qui ipse immundus est et
apud quem Spiritus Sanctus non est? Sed
et pro baptizato quam precem facere potest
sacerdos sacrilegus et peccator? Ep. 76:
Quando hee in ecclesia fiunt, ubi sit et ac-
cipientis et dantis fides integra.
3 'The author of the book de rebaptis-
mate, which stands among the works of
Cyprian, could therefore make the objec-
tion: Quid dicturus es de his, qui plerumque
ab episcopis pessimz conversationis bapti-
zantur? by those who afterwards, when
their vices came to be known, were deposed.
Aut quid statues de eis, qui ab episcopis
prave sentientibus aut imperitioribus fue-
rint baptizati 1
5. From Cyprian’s letters, and from the
book de rebaptismate, it is clear beyond all
controversy, that the Roman party main-
tained this. If Firmilian, in the 75 ep. Cy-
prian, speaks only of the formula of bap-
tism in the name of the trinitas, it does not
follow, that the opponents had spoken bare-
ly of this. Firmilian gives prominence only
to that point against which he meant par-
ticularly to direct his polemics, the principle,
that the baptismal formula gave to baptism
an objective validity; and hence he does
not distinguish, what would have to be dis-
tinguished in exhibiting the opinion of his
opponents. Yet we see also the other po-
sition of his opponents, which must have
Cyprian main-
floated before his mind, discovering itself,
when he says: Non omnes autem, qui nomen
Christi invocant, audiri, &c. The tract de
rebaptismate, a work of some acuteness, I
have thought myself undoubtedly author-
ized to cite as belonging to this period. I
cannot adopt the opinion, that it is the one
which, according to Gennadius, de script.
eccles., Ursinus, a monk, is said to have
written, not till the close of the fourth cen-
tury, or still later. The writer discourses
like a man who lived in the midst of these
controversies, in the time of the persecu-
tions; all which is inconceivable of an au-
thor belonging to a later period. When he
says, these controversies were to produce
no other fruit, nisi ut unus homo, quicun-
que ille est, magnz prudentiz et constan-
tize esse, apud quosdam leves homines inani
gloria predicetur, we see very clearly that
Cyprian is here meant, and only a contem-
porary could so speak of him. The ex-
pression relative to an ancient apostolic
tradition, “ post tot seculorum tantam seri-
em,” seems, it is true, unbefitting in the
mouth of a man who wrote in the middle
of the third century. But this expression
would in any case continue still to be very
hyperbolical, although employed by a writer
at the end of the fourth century; and it is
the fact generally, that strong hyperboles
are not unusual in the writers belonging to
the African church.
ee ππ πππςπ -“΄ ππὩπὩὰἡἩἸὩΓΤυνπ΄ἷ-σὰὰσὰὰτπὐππσσσασαι "
THE SACRAMENT OF THE SUPPER. 328
tained, on the other hand, that the formula of baptism had no longer /
significancy, when not in the full form instituted by Christ. We per-
ceive here the more liberal Christian spirit of the anti-Cyprian party.
The thought hovered vaguely before their minds, that everything that
pertains to Christianity is properly embraced in the faith in Christ.
Cyprian himself, however, did not venture to limit God’s grace by
such outward things m cases where converted heretics had already
been admitted without a new baptism, and had enjoyed the fellowship
of the church, or died init. ‘ God,’’ he observes, ‘is great im his
mercy, to show imdulgence and not exclude from the benefits of the
church, those who have been received into it informally, and thus fallen
asleep.””2 A remarkable case of this sort is narrated by Dionysius of
Alexandria. There was in the church of Alexandria a converted
heretic, who lived as a member of the church for many years, and par-
ticipated in the various acts of worship. Happening once to be pres-
ent at a baptism of catechumens, he remembered that the baptism
~which he himself had received tn the sect from which he was converted,
probably a Gnostic sect, bore no resemblance whatever to the one he now
witnessed. Had he been aware that whoever possesses Christ in faith,
possesses all that is necessary to his growth in grace and to the salva-
tion of his soul, this circumstance could not have given him so much
uneasiness. But as this was not so clear to him; he doubted as to his
title to consider himself a real Christian, and fell imto the greatest dis-
tress and anxiety, believing himself to be without baptism and the grace
of baptism. In tears, he threw himself at the bishop’s feet, and be-
sought him for baptism. The bishop endeavored to quiet his fears ;
he assured him that he could not, at this late period, after he had so
long partaken of the body and blood of the Lord, be baptized anew.
It was sufficient that he had lived for so long a time in the fellowship
of the church, and all he had to do was to approach the holy supper
with unwavering faith and a good conscience. But the disquieted man
- found it impossible to overcome his scruples and regain his tranquillity.
So destructive to peace of conscience were the effects of such tena-
cious adherence to outward things, of not knowing how to rise with
freedom to those things of the spirit, which the inward man appre-
hends by faith!
We proceed now to the second holy symbol which Christ instituted
for his church, — the Lord’s supper.
The last supper which Christ held with his disciples on earth, must,
from the nature of the case, have been full of meaning, as the parting
meal of Aim who was about to give up his life for their salvation, and
for that of all mankind ; and who
1 In the book de rebaptismate : Invocatio
hee nominis Jesu, quasi initium quoddam
mysterii dominici, commune nobis et cete-
_ ris omnibus, quod possit post modum resi-
duis rebus impleri. The party of Stepha-
nus not badly appealed to the fact, that
Paul testified his joy in knowing that
Christ was preached, even though it were
afterwards, although no longer vis-
not done in the right way, as was the case
with regard to those judaizing Christians,
Philip. 1: 16. Cyprian, who wanted to
deprive them of the use of this text, does
not understand it so well, ep. 73.
2 Ep. 70.
8 Euseb. 1. VII. ο. 9.
324 THE LORD’S SUPPER.
ibe among them as at this meal, yet quite as really, and with a more
powerful divine efficacy and a richer blessing, would manifest among
them his spiritual presence, impart to them himself and all his heavenly
treasures. Besides, this meal was to take the place of the paschal sup-
per, which Christ could no longer celebrate on earth. The feast in
celebration of the foundation and covenant of the Mosaie religious con-
stitution, was now, in accordance with the order of development of
the theocratic economy, to exchange its earthly for a heavenly im-
port, and to assume a relation analogous to the new shaping of the the-
ocracy. The Jewish passover was a festival of thanks for the favor
which the Almighty Creator of nature, who had caused its fruits to
grow for the service of men, showed the people whom he honored with
his especial guidance, when he delivered them from the Egyptian bond-
age. ‘Ihe father of the family, who kept the passover with his house-
hold and distributed wine and bread among the guests, praised God,
who had bestowed these fruits of the earth on man, for the favor he
had shown fis own people. Hence, the cup of wine over which this
giving of thanks was pronounced, was called the cup of praise or thanks-
giving.! Qn the present occasion, then, Christ pronounced the bless-
ing as the master of the household; a blessing, however, which, in its
relation to the theocracy, must receive a new application, to denote de-
liverance from the guilt and punishment of sin; release from the domin-
ion of sin; the bestowment of true moral freedom through the sacri-
fice of Christ for mankind; the preparation for entrance into a heav-
enly country ;— and this was the foundation of the kingdom of God,
which is laid in the forgiveness of sins, and deliverance from sin, for
all humanity. Hence Christ said, when he distributed wine and bread
among his disciples, that this bread and this wine were to be to them, —
and consequently to all the faithful of all times, —his body and his
blood ; — the body which he offered for the forgiveness of their sins,
for their salvation, for the establishment of the new theocratic relation ;
and as these outward symbols represented to them his body and his
blood, so would he himself be hereafter spiritually present with them,
just as truly as he was now visibly among them; and as they now sen-
sibly partook of these corporeal means of sustenance, which represented
to them his body and his blood, so should they receive him, the Saviour,
present in divine power, wholly within them for the nourishment of their
souls; they should spiritually eat his flesh and drink his blood, (John
6,) should make his flesh and blood their own, and cause their whole
nature to be more and more penetrated by that divine principle of
life which they were to receive through their communion with him.
Thus, to praise the effects of his sufferings for mankind, to celebrate .
their intimate life-giving communion with him as members of one spirit-
ual body under one Great Head, they were to keep their feast together
till at length, in the actual possession of that heavenly country, they
should enjoy, in its full extent, the blessedness which had been ob
12 2an DID . TOTHPLov εὐλογίας = εὐχαριστίας
THE AGAPA. | $25
tained for them by his sufferings, without being separated from him,
and should, even in open vision, be united with him in his kingdom.
After the example of the Jewish passover, and of the original insti-
tution, the Lord’s supper was accordingly at first united with a social
meal. Both constituted a whole, representing the communion of the
faithful with their Lord, and their brotherly communion with one
another ; both together were called the supper of the Lord, (δεῖπνον
τοῦ κυρίου, δεῖπνον κυριακόν,.) the supper of love, ( ἀγάπη.) There was ἃ
daily celebration of this Christian communion in the first church at Je-
rusalem; the phrase «Ag» ἄρτον, breaking of bread, in Acts 2: 46, is
most probably to be understood of them both together. In like man-
ner we find them both united in the first church at Corinth; and so it
probably was with the innocent, simple meal of the Christians of which
Pliny speaks, in his report to the emperor Trajan.?_ On the contrary,
in the description given by Justin Martyr, we find the celebration of
the supper entirely separated from those feasts of brotherly love, if
indeed they still continued to exist in those churches which he had
in view. ‘This separation was occasioned partly by similar irregulari-
ties to those which had arisen in the Corinthian church, when the spirit
that prevailed in these feasts became unsuited. to the holy rite which
followed, and partly by local circumstances, which prevented generally
the institution of such social meals. In truth, these meals were espe-
cially calculated to excite the jealousy of the heathens, and gave
birth to the strangest and most malicious reports,* — a circumstance
which may have early led to their abolition or less frequent ohservance.
We now speak first of these feasts of brotherly love, as they were
afterwards, when, separated from the supper of the Lord, they went
under the particular name of agapze, (ἀγάπαι.) At these, all distinc-
tions of earthly condition and rank were to disappear in Christ. All
were to be one in the Lord; rich and poor, high and low, masters and.
servants, were to eat together at a common table. We have the des
cription of such a feast of agape by Tertullian. ‘Our supper,” he
says, ‘‘shows its character by its name; it bears the Greek name of
love; and however great may be the expense of it, still it is gain to
make expense in the name of piety, for we give joy to all the poor by
this refreshment. The cause of the supper being a worthy one, estimate
accordingly the propriety with which it is managed, as its religious end
demands. It admits of no vulgarity, nothing unbeseeming. No one
approaches the table, till prayer has first been offered to God ; as much
is eaten as is necessary to satisfy the demands of hunger, as much is
drunk as consists with sobriety ; every one remembering that the night
also remains consecrated to the worship of God. The conversation is
such as might be expected of men who are fully conscious that God
hears them. The supper being ended, and all having washed their
1See my History of the Planting, &, toaheathen. Ad uxorem].II.¢.4 Quis
Vol. I. p. 30. ad convivium illud dominicum, quod infa-
2 See above, p. 98. mant, sine sua suspicione dimittet 1
8 Tertullian on the hindrances which a 4 Apologet. c. 39.
Christian woman meets with when married
VOL, I. 28
326 THE LORD’S SUPPER
hands, lights are brought in; then each is invited to sing as he is able,
either from the holy scripture or from the prompting of his own spirit,
a song of praise to God for the common edification. It then appears
how he has drunken. ‘The feast is concluded with prayer.” ‘These
agape lost by degrees their true original significancy, which it was im-
possible for them to retain except under the first simple relations of the
communities. They became often a lifeless form, no longer animated
by the original spirit of brotherly love, which removed all distinctions
between men and united together all hearts as one. Many abuses
‘crept mto them, which furnished occasion for the maliciously disposed
to present the whole solemnity in the most unfavorable light. As usu-
ally happens in such cases, some attributed undue importance to the
dead form, as an opus operatum ; others unjustly condemned the whole
custom, without distinguishing the right use of it from its abuse;
neither party being any longer capable of appreciating the simple,
childlike spirit in which this festival had origmated. Wealthy indi-
viduals of the church provided agapze of this sort, and imagined they
had done something peculiarly meritorious ; and here, where all should
be on a level, attention began to be paid to distinction of ranks, and
the clergy, who should have set an example of humility to all, allowed
themselves to be distinguished by outward preferences unworthy of their
callmg.t An ungentle, morose, ascetic spirit condemned these agape
altogether, and eagerly caught at every particular instance of abuse
on these occasions, which was set out in exaggerated colors, for the pur-
pose of bringing into discredit the whole custom. Such was the course
of Tertullian after he became a Montanist.2 Clement of Alexandria
expresses himself with greater moderation ;*® although he declares his
opposition to those who imagined they could purchase with banquets
the promises of God, and who seemed to degrade the heavenly name
of love, by such a particular appropriation of it to these banquets.
“¢ Love,” says he, “‘is indeed a heavenly food. In heaven this heavenly
feast truly exists ; the earthly one is indeed given by love, yet the feast
is not love itself, but only the proof of a benevolence ready to! commu-
nicate. ‘Take care, therefore, that your treasure be not misrepre-
sented ; for the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but right-
eousness, peace and joy in the Holy Ghost. He who shares in this -
latter feast, attains to the most glorious of all possessions, the kingdom
of God, while he strives to belong, even in the present world, to that
holy community of love, the church in heaven. Jove is the divine
thing itself, pure and worthy of God; to communicate zs a work of
love.”
1 A double portion was set before eccle-
siastics, in accordance with a grossly per-
verted and sensual interpretation of the
text, 1 Timoth.5: 17. Tertullian, when a
Montanist, de jejuniis, c.17: Ad elogium
gulz tu pertinet, quod duplex apud te
presidentibus honos binis partibus deputa-
tur. Comp. Apostol. Constitut. 1. II. ¢. 28,
where that which Tertullian very properly
censures, is prescribed as a law. Clement,
Stromat. 1. VII. f. 759, respecting the Gnos-
tic sects: Ἡ συμποτικὴ διὰ τῆς ψευδωνύμου
ἀγάπης πρωτοκλισία.
2 De jejuniis, c. 17: Apud te agape ἴπ᾿
cacabis fervet. Major est agape, quia per
hane adolescentes tui cum sororibus dor-
miunt. So passionate an accuser appears
of course not worthy of credit.
8 Pedagod. 1. 11. f. 142.
SEPARATED FROM THE AGAP2. 327
So long as the agape and the Lord’s supper were united together,
the celebration of the latter formed no part of the divine service. This
service was held early in the morning, and not till towards evening did
the church re-assemble at the common love-feast and for the celebration
of the supper. At this celebration, as may be easily concluded, no
one could be present who was not a member of the Christian church,
and incorporated into it by the rite of baptism. But there was no
reason for excluding unbelieving or unbaptized persons from participat-/
ing in the worship held in the morning.! It is clear from 1 Cor. 14:
23 — 25, that in the age of the apostles, no stranger was withheld from
visiting those assemblies; that, on the contrary, such visits were re-
garded with pleasure, because the salutary impressions which were
thus made on them, might tend to their conversion. The Apostle Paul
desired, that divine service should be so arranged as to exert an influ-
ence in this manner on such persons. We see no reason to justify a
deviation from this practice. There needed to be no fear of spies. The
extravagant reports spread abroad concerning the Christians, could be
best refuted by ocular demonstration Publicity was the best witness
of the mnocence of the Christians. ΤῸ this, moreover, Tertullian ap-
peals, that each one could have convinced himself of the untruth of
those stories, as the churches were so often surprised in their meetings,
and it must thus have been observed what was transacted in them.”
If then the pagans themselves were challenged to testify what they had
seen done in the Christian assemblies when thus surprised, there cer-
tainly was no reason for repelling all visits of strangers for fear of
spies.
i But now, when the celebration of the supper was disjoied from the
agapze and united with the other parts of divine service, it might hap-
pen on this very account, that men would: believe it necessary to con-
fine the participation of unbelievers to those other parts; that at this
celebration and the preparation which went before, they should be
dismissed, because these celebrations, from their very nature, were de-
signed only for the members of the church, and originally all who were.
present partook in the communion of the holy supper. Marcion, the
defender of apostolical simplicity in church life, the warm opponent
of all Jewish, hierarchical peculiarities, combatted the new separation
made between catechumens and the baptized entitled to communion,
and this dismissal of them at certain church prayers united with the
1 Dr. Rothe, in the acute and ingenious
dissertation which has already been referred
to, de disciplina arcani, maintains the opin-
ion, that the admission of unbelievers and
catechumens to the first portion of the ser-
vice was a later arrangement; and that it
was the change which took place in the
catechumenal instruction, (see above, p.
305,) and the introduction of a class of
categhumens into the church assemblies, in
which hitherto none but those that had been
baptized, took a part, which first led to the
comparing of the Christian worship with
the Grecian mysteries, and to the distin-
guishing of a missa catechumenorum, and
a missa fidelium. But I cannot be per-
suaded that the suppositions on which this
opinion rests are sufficiently well grounded,
although I confess, there is a want of pre-
cise data for a certain determination of the
disputed questions. The reasons for my
opposite views, and against Rothe, lie in my
development of the matter itself.
2 Apologet. ο. 7: Quotidie obsidemur.
quotidie prodimur, in ipsis plurimum ceeti-
bus et congregationibus nostris opprimi-
mur.
328 THE LORD’S SUPPER.
supper, as an innovation alien from the original spirit of the apostolic,
or as he said, Pauline church.t He would have the catechumens take
part in all the prayers of the church.?_ He would see nothing offensive
even were they present also at the celebration of the holy supper, with-
out participating in it. Tertullian, on the other hand, objected to the
heretics, — by whom he seems particularly to have had in his mind
the Marcionite party, — that in their assemblies, it was impossible to
distinguish who were catechumens, and who were believers, (baptized ;)
that all entered in alike or at once, and took part m the same prayers ;
that moreover, when pagans came in, the holy, such as it was, was
thrown to dogs and the pearls before swine — viz. the celebration of the
supper was exposed before the eyes of the profane ; although, in truth,
no Lord’s supper —Tertullian proceeding on the assumption that,
among heretics, there could be neither a true baptism, nora true Lord’s
supper.? From this passage it is perfectly clear, not that the pagans
assisted in the divine service, but that they could be present at the
whole without distinction. This was what offended Tertullian. He
demanded that pagans, catechumens and baptized persons should, in
the divine service, take their several places; that certain holy rites
should be performed only in the presence of the last, but remain con-
cealed from the gaze of the profane. It was the new arrangement
combatted by the Marcionites, by virtue of which the divine service
was divided into two portions, the acts in which catechumens and unbe-
lievers might take part, and those in which only the baptized could take
part. Here the comparison with the mysteries of the Greeks, of which
ave have already spoken above, found place; although we cannot assert
that this division proceeded originally out of a comparison with the
Greek mysteries. For those only who had been consecrated by baptism,
could the veil be removed from the hidden sanctuary.* Thus it came
about; that while Justin Martyr did not scruple to sketch out a descrip-
tion of the administration of baptism and of the celebration of the sup-
in the translation would answer to the origi-
nal.
61 cannot concur with Rothe in respect
1 In reference to the position held by such,
Tertullian, prescript. heret. c. 41: Simpli-
citatem volunt essé prostrationem disci-
plinz, cujus penes nos curam lenocinium,
(a corruption of the primitive unity,) vo-
cant.
2 See Jerome on the epist. Galat. 6, 6:
Marcion hune locum ita interpretatus est,
ut putaret fideles et catechumenos simul
orare debere, et magistrum communicare in
oratione discipulis.
8 Tertullian, preescript. heret. c. 41: In-
primis, quis catechumenus, quis fidelis,
incertum est; pariter adeunt, pariter orant,
etiam ethnici si supervenerint. A different
sense presents itself, according as we take
these words with what precedes or with
what follows them. In the first case, the
whole would be a continuation of the same
thought, and by the sanctum we should
have to understand the church prayers. In
the second case, the sense expressed by me
‘
to all the passages in which he is disposed
to find an allusion to the Greek mysteries,
or an affectation of secrecy in imitation of
them. In particular, in the language of
Athenagoras, Legat. pro Christianis, f. 37,
ed. Colon., I can find no trace whatever of
concealment and mystery as to certain sa-
cred rites. Athenagoras speaks of the fact,
that the Christians, who distinguished them-
selves for their zeal in behalf of strict mo-
rality, must expect to be accused by the
pagans, who were slaves to every lust, of
the same unnatural debauchery which they
found existing among themselves, and in
this connection he says: “’Q τί ἀν εἴποιμι
τὰ ἀπόῤῥητα ;" “ What shall I say of that
concerning which one would prefer to be
silent?” Indigna dictu. Not a word here
respecting the mysteries of the Greeks, nor
respecting the sacraments of the Christians.
ITS
CONSECRATION.
829
per for the use of pagans, it was thought, on the other hand, after this
transferring of the conception of the mysteries to the holy supper,
that one ought not to speak of these holy things before the uninitiated..
And this revolution coincides with the time when that great revolution
of the Christian views took place respecting the priesthood. ‘To the
inner connection which here presents itself, it 1s unnecessary to direct
the attention of our readers.
Already in the third century, it became customary, before the prayer
of the church which prepared the way for the celebration of the sup-
per, for the clergyman who presided at this celebration, to admonish
the church to silent devotion, calling upon them to lift up their souls to
Keaven, and the church thereupon responded — Yea, to the Lord we
have lifted them up.
~
It has already been remarked, that the prayer of praise and thanks-
had passed over to the Christian celebration of the supper from the
Jewish passover.
This prayer of praise and thanks was, moreover,
always considered as constituting an essential part of the solemnity :
hence the Lord’s supper obtained its name of the eucharist (εὐχαριστία. *)
The presiding officer of the church, taking up the bread and wine from
the table that stood before him, gave thanks to God, in the name of the
whole church, that he had created the things of nature, which were
here represented by the most essential means of sustenance, for the use
of man; and that he, the Lord of nature, had also, for the sake of
man, given his Son to appear and suffer in human nature.
Both the
thanksgiving for the gifts of nature and the thanksgiving for the bless-
ings of grace were in fact intimately connected; since it 1s not until
man, redeemed, returns back to his filial relation with the Heavenly Fa-
ther, that he truly perceives how all had been bestowed on him by the
love of his Heavenly Father; then every earthly gift acquires for him
a new and higher significancy, as the pledge of an eternal love, im-
parting blessings to men of far higher worth than these.
All nature,
which before had been desecrated by hin, in his servitude to sm, m
his condition of estrangement from God, was now sanctified and re-
1 Cyprian, de oratione dominica: Sacer-
dos ante orationem prefatione premissa
parat fratrum mentes dicendo: sursum corda,
ut dum respondet plebs: habemus ad Domi-
num, admoneatur, nihil alind se quam Dom-
inum cogitare debere. And Commodian,
c. 76, in rebuking the female practice of
talking in the church, says:
Sacerdos Domini cum sursum corda precepit ;
In prece fienda ut fiant silentia vestra,
Limpide respondes nec temperas quoque promissis.
Thus we find already the first traces of the
liturgy, which we become acquainted with
in the fourth century.
2 The term “ eiyapiotia” is used meto-
nymically, resembling in all respects the
phrase, “ ποτήριον εὐλογίας, ὃ evAoyouper,”
in St. Paul = “6 εὐχαριστηϑεὶς ἄρτος καὶ
οἶνος," in Justin Martyr, — the bread and
wine over which the prayer of thanksgiving
has been pronounced. The latter says ex-
28"
pressly, that immediately after the presiding
officer of the church has pronounced this
prayer of thanksgiving over the bread and
wine, and the church joined in it with their
Amen, the sacramental elements were dis-
tributed. He mentions no other consecra-
tion. He says: Ἡ δι᾽ εὐχῆς λόγου τοῦ Tap’
αὐτοῦ (του Χριστοῦ) εὐχαριστηϑεῖσα τρο-
φή. This cannot be a prayer which came
verbally from Christ, for they had no such
prayer; but it is rather the prayer of thanks
generally, instituted by him, which, after
his example, was to be offered at this cele-
bration. It may be that the words of the
institution were introduced into this prayer.
In the language used by Firmilian, Cyprian,
ep. 75: “invocatione non contemtibili sanc-
tificare panem et eucharistiam facere,” lies
probably the idea of a consecration, where-
by the ordinary bread became the sacrament
of the supper.
330 THE LORD’S SUPPER.
stored back to him as a redeemed creature ; and in the Lord’s supper,
the earthly, the natural was to become transfigured into a symbol or
vehicle of the heavenly, the divine. With the bodily food, thus sancti-
fied by the prayer of thanksgiving, was now to be connected, by the
power of the same God who had caused this earthly means of suste-
nance to grow for the use of men, a higher, heavenly food for the life
of the mward man. (We shall say nothing at present of the different
notions concerning the relations of the signs to the thing represented.)
This connection of ideas was quite familiar to the early Christians ;
they often made use of it in their polemics against the contempt for na-
ture affected by the Gnostics. Attached to this, moreover, was the
allusion to a peculiar custom of the church at this period; the members
of the community themselves offered the wine and the bread as a free
gift, and from these were taken the elements for the celebration of the
Lord’s supper. These gifts were regarded as the spiritual thank-offer-
ing of the Christians. The presiding officer of the church, in taking
from these gifts the elements of the supper and consecrating them to
God with praise and thanksgiving, represented the whole community
as one priestly race, as one in the Lord, and as ready to consecrate
again to the service of God all that they had received from Him. This
thank-offering of the Christians, considered as a spiritual offering of the
heart, as a free expression of childlike love and gratitude, was opposed
to the sacrificial worship of the pagans and Jews. In part, these gifts
of the Christians ; in part, the prayer of thanks of the presiding church
officer, with which they were consecrated ‘to God; in part, finally, the
entire celebration of the Lord’s supper, was called, at first only in thes
sense, an offering or sacrifice, προσφορά, ϑυσία.2 In allusion to this, Justin
Martyr says :3 “‘ The prayers and thanksgivings offered by worthy men
are the only true sacrifices, well-pleasing to God; these alone have the
Christians learned to offer, and particularly in remembrance of their
bodily nourishment, which consists of the dry and the moist, by which
they are reminded also of the sufferings which Christ endured on their
account.”” He regards this as a proof of the high-priestly lineage of
the Christians ; since God receives offerings from none but his priests.
In this sense [renzeus, contrasting those spiritual offerings with every
species of ceremonial connected with a sacrificial worship, observes: ‘ It
is not the offering that sanctifies the man, but it is the conscience of
the offerer that sanctifies this offering, if it be pure, and induces God
to receive it as from a friend. Accordingly, the idea of a sacrifice in
‘the supper of the Lord was at first barely symbolical; and originally
this idea did not even have reference to the sacrifice of Christ. The
1 This usage, which is already plainly
presupposed by the allusions of Justin Mar-
tyr, of Irenzeus, is mentioned in express
terms by Cyprian, de opere et eleemosynis,
where he rebukes the rich woman, who
came to the communion without bringing
with her a gift of charity for the necessities
of the church. Locuples et dives es, et
dominicum sine sacrificio venis, que partem
de sacrificio, quod pauper obtulit, sumis 1
2 Hence the expression which occurs so
frequently in Cyprian: oblationem alicujus
accipere, offerre. To receive such gifts from
any one for the church, to take from them
the elements of the supper, and consecrate
them, was evidence that he was considered
to be a regular member of the church.
8 Dial. c. Tryph. Jud. f. 345
4 Tren. 1. IV. ¢. 18.
ITS ELEMENTS. 991
only thing originally had im view was the spiritual thank-offering of the
Christians, of which the presentation of the bread and wine, the first
fruits of nature’s gifts, served as asymbol; while no doubt the conscious-
ness of the new relation to God, in which the redeemed were placed by
the sufferings of Christ, lay at the basis of the whole transaction.” + ΔῈ
terwards, the reference to the death of Christ was made more promi-
nent, yet so that it continued still to be no more than the idea of a
commemorative or symbolical representation of this sacrifice. But as
one error begets another, it was quite natural that the false notion of
a particular priesthood in the Christian church, corresponding to that
in the Old Testament, should give birth to the erroneous notion of a
sacrificial worship which should stand in the same relation of correspond-
ence to that of the Old Testament; and so it came about that the
whole idea of sacrifice in the Lord’s supper, which in the first instance
was simply symbolical, took a direction altogether wide of its true im-
port, and bearing towards the magical ; the earliest indications of which
we find in Cyprian. |
The ordinary bread presented by the church was used for the Lord’s
supper. Justin Martyr calls it expressly common bread, (κοινὸς ἄρτος 3).
those who went on the supposition that Christ kept the passover a day
earlier than it was usually observed, had no occasion to take other than
common bread for the celebration of the ordinance ; but even those who
entertained the contrary opmion did not consider the use of unleavened
bread as an essential thing im the institation of the supper. We πιθοῦ"
with but one exception, in a class of Judaizing Christians,?—*an excep-
tion, however, which in this case explains itself. These Christians
celebrated the Lord’s supper, in remembrance of that last supper of
Christ, but once in the year, at the feast of the passover; hence they
were bound, as Christians who still contimued to observe the Jewish cer-
emonial law, to use unleavened bread.? As among the ancients, and
particularly in the East, it was not customary to drink at their meals
pure wine unmingled with water, it was taken for granted that Christ
also, at the institution of the supper, made use of mingled wine. The
taste for higher mystical interpretations could not be satisfied, however,
with this simple, but, as it seemed, too trivial explanation of the prevail-
1A single passage in Irenzus, 1. IV. ὁ.
18, § 4, seems to speak a different language:
“verbum quod offertur Deo;” therefore the
Logos himself, Christ, is offered up in the
sacrament of the supper.. But even if there
were no other reading, yet ¢/as could not be
the right one; for such a form of expres-
sion would not only stand in manifest con-
tradiction to the whole chain and connec-
tion of ideas elsewhere so luminously exhib-
ited in Irenzus, but also be unsuited to
what immediately precedes. He had in
fact just before said, “ offertur Deo ex crea-
tura ejus,” (thus the offering is referred to
the bread and wine,) and in the preceding
chapter, § 6, it is said: “ per Christum offert
ecclesia.” Beyond.question, therefore, the
reading of other manuscripts at this place —
“per quod offertur,” must be recognized as
the correct one. It is precisely the refer
ence to Christ, the high priest, which gives
as well to this spiritual thank-offering, as to
the entire Christian life, the right consecra-
tion. This is the meaning of Irenzeus.
2 Epiphanius says respecting the Ebionites
of his time, that they annually celebrated
the communion with unleavened bread and
with water, (the latter, because their ascetic
principles allowed not the use of wine.)
8 See what is to be said hereafter of the
Ebionites.
392 PRIVATE COMMUNION.
ing custom. The mingling of water with the wine was said to denote
the union of the church with Christ.
As we have already remarked, the celebration of the Lord’s supper
was still held to constitute an essential part of divine worship on every
Sunday, as appears from Justin Martyr; and the whole church partook
of the communion, after they had joined in the Amen of the preceding
prayer. The deacons carried the bread and wine to every one present,
in order. It was held to be necessary, that all the Christians in the
place should, by participating in this communion, maintain their union
with the Lord and with his church; hence the deacons carried a por-
tion of the consecrated bread and wine to strangers, to the sick, to
i and all who were prevented from being present at the as-
sembly.”
In some of the churches, however, as for example in the church of
North Africa, the daily enjoyment of the communion continued to be -
held necessary; since it was considered the daily bond of union be-
twixt the Lord and the church, the daily means of strength, life and
salvation to Christians. Hence Tertullian and Cyprian give a spiritual
explication of the petition for our daily bread, as a petition for an unin-
terrupted, sanctifying union with the body of Christ through the Lord’s
supper. But when the daily service and celebration of the Lord’s sup-
per ceased, the only means left was, to take home a portion of the con-
secrated bread, which, in this case of necessity, was to be substituted
for the whole communion — the first trace of the practice, introduced
through error and abuse, of receiving the Lord’s supper under one
kind. Thus every Christian, with his family, after the morning devotions,
and before engaging in his daily business, partook of the communion at
home, that the life of the whole ensuing day might be sanctified by
fellowship with the Lord. We recognize here the ideas at bottom, ly-
ing in the depth of the Christian consciousness ; but also the same
spirit of externality, disturbing the Christian consciousness, which we
have met with in so many different forms, and which was ever prone to
ascribe a magic power of making holy to the sensible elements.?
But other countries, perhaps, even as early as this, acted upon the
1 Quando in calice vino aqua miscetur,
Christo populus adunatur. Cyprian, ep. 63.
2 In the description of the rite by Justin
and by Irenzeus cited in Eusebius, 1. V. ce.
24: Ἰϊέμπειν εὐχαριστίαν τοῖς ἀπὸ τῶν
παροικιῶν παροῦσιν, where the author is
speaking of the Roman bishops. ‘Thus
arose first the custom of communicating
with elements previously consecrated, (the
προηγιασμένα, as they were afterwards call-
ed.) The idea at bottom was, that a com-
munion could properly have its right sig-
nificance only in the midst of a church;
the communion of persons absent, of indi-
viduals, was to be considered therefore as
only a continuation of that communion of
the whole body of the church. But when
in Cyprian mention is made of presbyteris
apud confessores offerentibus, the meaning
probably is, that the elements were first con-
sem ated by the presbyters on the spot.
8 'To this custom the following passages
refer. Tertullian, speaking of the suspicion
of the pagan husband towards his Christian
wife, Ad uxorem, 1. II. c. 5: Non sciet
maritus, quid secreto ante omnem cibum
gustes ? Et si sciverit panem, non illum
credit esse, qui dicitur.— De orat. c. 19,
(in the piece discovered by Muratori,) Ac-
cepto corpore Domini et reservato, (respect-
ing a Christian mistress of a family, ,) arca
sua, in qua Domini sanctum fuit. Cyprian,
de lapsis, p. 189, ed. Baluz.—In the work
ascribed to Cyprian, de spectaculis, respect-
ing one who runs from the church to the
theatre: Festinans ad spectaculum, dismis-
sus e dominico et adhuc gerens secum, ut
assolet, eucharistiam.
INFANT COMMUNION. THE DEAD. 3993
principle that men ought never to partake of the holy thing except
after a very especial preparation of the heart, and therefore only at
stated seasons chosen according to each one’s necessities. The learned
Hippolytus, who lived in the first half of the third century, wrote thus
early a discussion on the question, ‘‘ whether the communion should be
received daily or only at stated seasons.”’ ὦ )
As the church of North Africa was the first to bring prominently
into notice the necessity of infant baptism, so in connection with this
they introduced also the communion of infants; for as they neglected
to distinguish with sufficient clearness between the sign and the divine
thing which it signified, and as they understood all that is said in the
sixth chapter of John’s gospel concerning the eating of the flesh and
drinking the blood of Christ to refer to the outward participation of the
Lord’s supper, they concluded that this, from the very first, was abso-
lutely necessary to the attainment of salvation.”
The celebration of the Lord’s supper became the seal of all religious
consecration ; it was thus used at the conclusion of a marriage,® thus at
the solemnities in commemoration of the dead. Of the latter, we will,
here take occasion to speak somewhat more at large.
As Christianity in its general influence did not tend to suppress but
only to ennoble the natural feelings of man; as it opposed itself gener-
ally, as well to the perverted education which would crush these natu-
ral feelings, as to the unrestrained expression of them in the rude state
of nature; the same was its influence also in relation to mourning for
the dead. From the first, Christianity condemned the wild, and at the
same time hypocritical expressions of grief with which the funeral pro-
cession was accompanied, those wailings of women who had been hired
for the occasion, (mulieres preeficze ;) yet it required no stoic resigna-
tion and apathy, but mitigated and refined the anguish of sorrow by
the spirit of faith and hope, and of childlike resignation to that eternal
love, which takes, in order to restore what it has taken under a more
glorious form; which separates for the moment, in order to re-unite the
separated in a glorified state through eternity. When multitudes at
Carthage were swept away by a desolating pestilence, Cyprian said to
his church : —‘‘ We ought not to mourn for those who are delivered
from the world by the call of the Lord, since we know they are not
lost, but sent before us; that they have taken their leave of us m order
to precede us. We may long after them as we do for those who have
sailed on a distant voyage, but not lament them. We may not here
below put on dark robes of mourning, when they above have already put
on the white robes of glory; we may not give the heathens any just
occasion to accuse us of weeping for those as lost and extinct, of whom
we say that they live with God, and of failing to prove by the witness
of our hearts the faith we confess with our lips. We, who live in hope,
1 See Hieronym. ep. 71, ad Lucin. contrary to the institution, led to a separa-
2 And so it came about, that to children tion of the elements of the supper.
who were not yet able to eat bread, they 8 Oblatio pro matrimonio. As to what
gave wine. Ctr. Cyprian. de lapsis. Once ἴβ to be understood by this, see above.
more an example, how a superstitious abuse,
394 COMMUNION IN MEMORY
}
who believe in God, and trust that Christ has suffered for us and risen
again; we, who abide in Christ, who through him and in him rise
again, — why do we not ourselves wish to depart out of this world ;. or
why do we lament for the friends who have been separated from us, as
if they were lost, when Christ, our Lord and God, exhorts us, saying,
“1 am the resurrection and the life; he that believeth in me, though he
were dead, yet shall he live; and whosoever liveth and believeth in
me shall never die?’ Why are we not in haste to see our country and
home, to greet our elders? There await us a multitude of those whom
we love, fathers, brothers and children, who are secure already of their
own salvation and concerned only for ours. What mutual joy to them
and to us, when we come into their presence and into their embrace !’”!
Out of this direction of the feelings arose the Christian custom which
required that the memory of departed friends should be celebrated
by their relations, husbands, or wives, on the anniversary of their death,
in a manner suited to the spirit of the Christian faith and of the Chris-
tian hope. It was usual on this day to partake of the communion
under a sense of the inseparable fellowship with those who had died in
the Lord; a gift was laid on the altar in their name, as if they were
still living members of the church; and in return for this, the petition
for peace “to the souls of the departed was introduced into the prayer
of the church which preceded the communion.?
But when the ideas of the priesthood and sacrifice took another
shape, this circumstance also would necessarily react on those Christian
relations connected with the holy rite. We meet with the first indica-
tions of this false tendency as early as the times of Cyprian.
While mdividual Christians and Christian families celebrated in this
manner the memory of those departed ones who were especially near
to them by the ties of kindred, ehole communities celebrated the mem-
ory of those who, without belonging to their own particular community,
had died as witnesses for the Lord. The anniversary of the death of
such individeals was looked upon as their birth-day to a nobler exist-
ence. (Great care was bestowed in providing for their funeral obse-
quies, and the repose of their bodies, as the sanctified organs of holy
souls, which were one day to be awakened from the dead and restored
to their use under a more glorious form. On every returning anniver-
sary of their birth-day, (in the sense which has been explained,) the
people gathered round their graves, where the story was rehearsed of
their confession and sufferings, and the communion was celebrated in
the consciousness of a continued fellowship. with them, now that they
were united with him for whom, by their sufferings, they had witnessed
a good confession.t The simple Christian character of these celebra-
1 Cyprian, de mortalitate.
2 Oblationes pro defunctis annua die fa-
ciemus. Tertullian, de corona milit. c. 3,
as an ancient tradition. The same writer
says to a widower, in reference to his de-
ceased wife: Pro cujus spiritu postulas, pro
qua oblationes annuas reddis. Commen-
dabis per sacerdotem etc. De exhortatione
castitat. c. 11.
8 The dies natales, natalitia martyrum,
γενέϑλια τῶν μαρτύρων.
1 The oblationes, sacrificia pro martyri-
bus, presupposed originally that the martyrs
were like other sinful men, who might well
stand in need of the intercessions of Chris-
tians. This usage was, in its original sense,
in collision with the extravagant veneration
of the martyrs; and this circumstance ac-
OF THE MARTYRS. 335
tions is evinced by the manner in which the church at Smyrna, in their
report of the martyrdom of Polycarp, their bishop, answered the re-
proach of the heathens, who refused to give up the remains of the
martyr, lest the Christians should abandon the eruczfied, and begin to
worship him.1 “They are not aware,’ writes the church, “that we
can neither forsake that Christ who has suffered for the salvation of the
whole world of the redeemed, nor worship another. Him we adore, as
the Son of God; but the martyrs we love, as they deserved for their
unconquerable love to their King and Master, and because we also wish
to become their companions and fellow disciples.”’* The church then
proceeds to say,—‘‘ We gathered up his bones, which are more
precious than gold or jewels, and deposited them in a suitable place ;
and God will grant us to assemble there in joy and festivity, and cele.
brate the birth-day of his martyrdom, m remembrance of the departed
champion, and for the purpose of exercismg and arming those whom
the conflict is still awaiting.” ® Yet it cannot be denied that as early
as the time of Cyprian, or even earlier, (for Tertullian, when a Monta-
nist, combatted this error,) the germ began to show itself of an exces-
sive veneration for the martyrs. So uniformly is man inclined to place
an undue value on the human agent, to deify the instrument, which
should simply point to Him who employs it; and the false element once
existing in the germ, it soon unfolds and spreads, unless repressed by a
mightier reaction of the sense of truth.
cordingly must have afterwards led to a τὰς τοῦ κυρίου καὶ μιμητὰς ἀγαπῶμεν, ἀξίων
different interpretation of the ancient cus- ἕνεκα εὐνοίας dv ὑπερβλήτου τῆς εἰς τὸν
tom. ἴδιον βασιλέα καὶ διδάσκαλον. ᾿
1 Euseb. 1. TV. ο. 15. See above, p. 109. ὃ τς τε τῶν προηϑληκότων μνήμην, καὶ
2 Τοῦτον μὲν γὰρ, υἱὸν ὄντα τοῦ ϑεοῦ, τῶν μελλόντων ἄσκησιν τε καὶ ἑτοιμασίε
προςκυνοῦμεν" τοὺς δὲ μάρτυρας, ὡς μαϑη-
SECTION FOURTH.
HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY, APPREHENDED AND DEVELOPED AS A
SYSTEM OF DOCTRINES.
The same law according to which, as we have seen in the preceding
sections, Christianity proceeded to unfold and shape itself in the out-
ward life from within, will again offer itself to’ our notice in the present
section, where it is our purpose to trace the progressive development
of Christian doctrine. It is the law expressed in the words we have
prefixed as the motto to this volume — words employed by our ‘Lord
himself to describe the manner in which his kingdom should be devel-
oped here on the earth. As the fragment of leaven cast into the large
mass of meal brings on a process of fermentation, and by its own inhe-
rent virtue, working through the mass, assimilates the whole to itself;
so Christianity — the heavenly leaven — by the power of a divine life,
created a ferment in human nature, which, from the hidden depths, the
inmost recesses of that nature, extended its mfluence as well to the
faculties of thought as to the outward life, striving to assimilate, to
transform and fashion the whole to its own likeness ; — an effect which
could only be brought about by a gradual process of development, and
which presupposed manifold conflicts with the alien forces it was neces:
sary to overcome. ‘To exhibit the workings of Christianity, now that
they have been contemplated in the phenomena of lzfe, as they are
-seen in the development of thought and of knowledge, is the problem
before us. )
As it is one essential characteristic of Christianity, that it did not
deliver a new law in a distinct set of formal precepts, nor found a new
society, organized from without in certain fixed and invariable external
forms; so it is another, that it did not communicate a rigid system
of doctrines, settled and determined once for all in certain ready made
conceptions. In both these respects, the word of the quickening Spirit
was to find its way outward from within —just as in the external shap-
ing of the life, so also in the coining of its doctrines into distinct con-
ceptions for the understanding. The divine revelation was so delivered
and so calculated, that its substantial contents might be elaborated and
evolved, through the divinely enlightened reason of man, actuated by
the new divine life, in the same proportion as he became more fully
penetrated by it, and with the free activity befitting its own proper es-
sence. It was not something engrafted on the different individualities
of human character and still remaining foreign to them; but the divine
matter, suited to all the individualities of human character, and in
which these individualities were to find, not their destruction, but their
completion, was designed for the very end of being appropriated by
DEVELOPMENT OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINES. 387
each in its own way, and of being developed by each in the form
most nearly corresponding to its own stamp. As Christ, the second
man, the prototype of the new regenerated humanity, is exalted
above all antagonisms of human individuality, comprising in himself
the original elements of them all harmoniously combined ; so what
in him is ome, must in the ennobled human nature proceeding from
him, become individualized. The various peculiarities of character,
destined, when animated by his life, to present different phases of
himself, were to codperate, each supplying what the others might lack,
to give a perfect exhibition of the fullness of Christ in the course of
history. And this law was verified at the very outset, im the case of
those who formed the necessary connecting links between himself and
the next succeeding evolution of the church ; — those organs and vehi-
cles of his Spirit to all subsequent ages. Hence the mode of appre-
hending and presenting that divine truth, which is one in essence, must,
at this point, be immediately separated into four grand particular direc-
tions, constituting all together the fullness of Christ; as will be evident
by comparing the different characters of James and Peter, Paul and
John. The spirit of Christ exercised too mighty an influence over
these individualities of character, attracted and animated as they were
by one and the same power, to leave it possible for them to unfold
themselves in such opposite ways as to exclude one another. Hence
whatever was diverse in them still remained subordinate to a higher
unity, in which they were one. And so on in the future ; — it rested
on the natural diversities of human character to decide, by which of
these grand tendencies in the original presentation of Christianity each
man should be chiefly attracted ; and on which side, in what form of it,
each could appropriate it to himself. =~
But when, in the after course of development, the power of Christ’s
spirit, which thus subordinated the human element to itself, no longer
predominated, but the human individuality asserted its own importance,
then partial systems arose, running counter to each other, which, in one
way and another, did great injury to the cause of divine truth; and it
only remained that the progressive movement and purification of the
church should cause that unity to be once more clearly apprehended
and restored out of these conflicting elements.
In the sections which have gone before, we saw Christianity pressing
into the conflict with the religious principles of the earlier world — with
those of paganism and Judaism ; and the strife was not barely one of
open war, but those principles entered into the mode of apprehending
Christianity itself, threatening its
ΤῚ cannot deny myself the pleasure of
referring hete to those beautiful words of
Schleiermacher, which express so profound
an understanding as well of the historical
development of Christianity as of the es-
sential character of Christ. “If we con-
template Christendom in its full and com-
plete sense, if we can but for a moment so
fill the mind’s eye with light and so kindle
the fire of love in the heart, that the differ-
VOL. I. 29
corruption by lowering it down to
ences shall no longer shock and repel us,
we shall not only find in them all, taken to-
gether, the fullness of Christ, as well as the
fullness of the undivided Spirit of God, but
we shall also see therein the Father who
has revealed himself in his Son, and take
in at a glance all these different broken
rays of divine light as they proceed from
one central point.” Schleiermacher’s Pre
digten, neue Ausgabe, B. IL. p. 590
338 DEVELOPMENT OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINES.
their own standard and becoming themselves blended with it. The
same thing we shall have to observe in the process of the development
of doctrines. Just as in the progressive evolution of Christian life, we
saw Jewish and pagan elements entering in with a corrupting influence,
while yet the Christian principle preserved itself pure in the conflict
with both ; so we must observe the same thing again in the history of
doctrines, and perceive the intimate connection between the develop-
ment of the Christian principle in doctrme and in life, in dogmatics
and in ethics, both having sprung from a common root. Now wherever
the religious tendencies of the old world, which at first presented them-
selves in outward hostility to Christianity, became so mixed in with its
inner development as to lame the foundation of the Christian faith itself,
by appropriating to themselves only a part of the whole, those appear-
ances arose which were designated by the name of heresies ;! though
in later times this name was often applied in a very different manner,
bemg employed by some one dominant sect, — that refused to recog-
nize the manifold phases necessarily presenting themselves in the healthy
development of Christian truth, and would substitute in place of the
unity, exhibiting itself in these manifold forms, a uniformity that sup-
pressed the healthy process of development, — to brand as a morbid
appearance every deviation from a mode of apprehending Christianity
which claimed to be the only valid one.
The multiform and grand phenomena of the heresies which arose in
this period, where we may observe Jewish and Oriental-Greek elements
of culture in various combination, exhibit to us, on one side, the chaotic
heavings of a dismembered world, on the point of either plunging into
dissolution or rising in some new creation called forth out of the chaos;
while on another, they bear witness to the mighty attractive power
which the appearance of Christ exerted on the elements of this chaos,
the powerful impression which it produced, both attractive and repul-
sive. Suppose the case that nothing had come down to us save the
knowledge of these phenomena; that we knew nothing about the causes
by which they were produced; yet any mind, of more than ordinary
reflection, would feel constrained to recognize, in these mighty after-
workings, some still greater phenomenon that had preceded them ;
and doubtless it would be possible, from studying the one, to arrive at
some probable conclusion with regard to the character of the other.
1 The word aépeoce, in its original signifi-
cation, grounded on its etymology, has, as
is well known, no: bad meaning attached to
it; but in the philosophical usus loquendi,
denotes the choice of certain principles for
the whole regulation of life, —some par-
ticular conviction determining the character
of the life. Hence it was used to desig-
nate the different schools of philosophy,
which were divided each from the other by
their difference in respect to such convic-
tions. Thus Sextus Empiricus gives as
the most general definition of the word:
λόγῳ τινὶ κατὰ τὸ φαινόμενον ἀκολουϑοῦσα
ἀγωγὴ. But where the question turns not
on the different opinions of men with re-
gard te important subjects, but on truth
communicated by divine revelation, where-
by the foundation is to be laid of a fellow-
ship and unity of religious conviction, of
an all-embracing church, the word αἵρεσις,
as opposed to this postulate, as denoting the
preponderance of the subjective side, where-
by that higher fellowship and unity are vio-
lated, takes in the associated idea of arbi-
trary human opinion, through which divine
truth becomes corrupted ; and with such an
associated bad meaning the term seems to
be employed even in the usus loquendi of
the New Testament.
HERETICAL ‘TENDENCIES. 339
Since we must perceive in these heresies the reaction of different
fundamental principles, prevailing in the ancient world, which had
found their way into Christianity itself and strove to maintain themselves
along with it; it is evident that they must have subserved this import-
ant end; namely, that the Christian mind, while engaged in repelling
such a reaction, must, in this opposition, still more clearly develope
and express itself, than it could have done if these fundamental princi-
ples had merely been brought to assail Christianity from without. These
conflicts could not fail to result in a conscious knowledge, more clearly
developed and more sharply defined, of the distinguishing essence
of Christianity generally, and of the substantial contents of its several
doctrines.
In contemplating the oppositions most distinctly marked in the here-
sies of this period and the process of development whereby the Chris-
tian consciousness, which was thus more clearly unfolded, came forth
triumphant from these conflicts, we see those words of the Christian
philosopher, which we selected as a motto for the first volume of this
history, remarkably verified, that all oppositions find themselves resolved
and reconciled in Christ.
Since, then, the process of the development of Christian doctrine
can be rightly understood only by taking into view its conflict with the
heresies, we must first turn our attention to the consideration of these
phenomena.
Heretical Tendencies.
What the two most important tendencies of the heretical spirit were,
will appear as soon as we consider the relation of Christianity to the
previous religious development of mankind. Christianity was the new
creation, that pushed its way out of the envelope of Judaism. In com-
mon with Judaism, it possessed the character of a revealed religion, as
opposed to the nature-religion of heathenism ; — it possessed the ground-
work of the theocracy, and yet was something entirely new—a princi-
ple which aimed at the transformation of everything already extant.
The least among those who shared in thé new creation was to be greater
than the greatest among the prophets. It was the dissolution and the
fulfilment of Judaism. Hence it was important to a right apprehension
of Christianity, that both these relations should be rightly seized; that
it should be seen how Judaism was to meet with its fulfilment in Chris-
tianity, but how, at the same time, united with this fulfilment, was the
dissolution of the distinct religious ground which Judaism had, till now,
maintained. It behooved that Christianity should be rightly under-
stood, both in its connection with the preparatory elements in Judaism,
and also in its opposition to Judaism itself. Hence there could arise
contrary tendencies of error, according as either the opposition was lost
sight of in the intimate connection, or the intimate connection was over-
looked in the opposition. And in these main directions of the hereti-
cal spirit, we shall easily be able to trace the influence of two elements
of culture directly opposed to each other, which were attracted by
Christianity — the opposition of the Jewish and of the Hellenic mind.
940 HERETICAL ΤΕΝΘΕΝΟΙΕΒ --- ΠΕ ΤΙΞῊ AND GRECIAN.
As the new spirit which Christ introduced into humanity was at first
covered up and hidden under the old forms of Judaism, from which it
was afterwards to burst free by virtue of its own inherent power; as
the Jews, from their previous religious pomt of view, could come to the
knowledge of Jesus as the Messiah promised in the Old Testament, it
came about, that the doctrine of Christ was wholly blended by them
with their previous Judaism, that they were for holding fast, as of per-
petual validity, what was to be only a transient moment, — that stage
of the development of Christianity m which it first appeared clothed
under the forms of Judaism. The free Grecian spirit, on the other
hand, which struggled hardest against the yoke of the law, being most
strongly attracted by that particular phase in the appearance of Christ
and in Christianity which was most directly opposed to the restraimts
of Judaism, would most naturally apprehend Christianity simply as a
religion opposed to Judaism; would be disposed to deny the fact of
their common divine foundation; to explain the connection between
them as a thing merely accidental, and to overlook the more profound
and necessary inner connection, the higher unity which existed be-
tween the two religions. Indeed we may perceive the germ of the
opposition just described as early as the time of Paul — the opposition,
that 1s, between those who held to the exclusive authority of the apos-
tles of Palestine, and those who attached themselves exclusively to the
Apostle Paul, — between those who remained in bondage to the Jew-
ish law, and those who gloried in their Christian freedom and higher
knowledge. The same opposition appeared still more strongly devel-
oped im the age of John;? and hence arose afterwards the opposition
between the Jewish and the Gnostic understanding of Christianity.
Where this opposition reaches its full and complete development, it 18
the one which of all others affects most deeply the entire apprehension
of Christianity, extending alike to all its ethical and all its dogmatic
elements. The first of these spiritual tendencies cleaves to the tem-
poral, earthly form of manifestation alone, without divining the higher
spirit which it embodies and conceals; the other disdains that temporal
form of manifestation, which is the necessary medium for the appropri-
ation of the spirit, and would have the spirit without this medium.
The one sticks fast by the letter, beyond which it cannot penetrate to
the revelation of the spirit ; the other believes itself competent to grasp
the spirit without the letter. The one perceives nothing in Christ but
the Son of man; the other, nothing but the Son of God ;—and so the
one would have only the human element in Christianity, without the
divine ; the other, only the divine, without the human. ‘The last anti-
thesis is of the utmost importance, on account of its bearing on the
essence of Christian morality. or as this presupposes the onen-ss of
the Son of God and the Son of man in Christ, so the refinement of the
entire man, as a form for the manifestation of the divine life, is its prin-
ciple, flowing directly from this presupposition.
Of these two main tendencies, we shall now proceed to consider, first,
the one which exhibited itself in the Judaizing sects.
1 See my Apostol. Zeitalter, Bd. I. S. 314, ff. 214. Bd. II. 5. 532. ff.
THE JUDAIZING SECTS. 341
1. The Judaizing Sects.
This main heretical tendency, as may be gathered from what has been
said, is the oldest which entered as a disturbing influence into the de-
veloping process of Christianity. It fixed itself on Christianity at the
very spot of its birth; for it had a slow and gradual growth, — exhib-
iting itself first, when that which, in its crudeness and imperfection, con-
stituted the first necessary link in the chain of development, set itself
in hostile opposition to the progressive movement which Christ aimed at
and promised ; next, when that which was in its right place at the be-
ginning, gave itself forth as the end, and asserted its own validity
against the free development of the spirit bursting from the covering
in which it had been previously confined; finally, when the same fleshly
and contracted Jewish sense which showed its hostility to Christianity
at first in decided unbelief, received Christianity, but received it after
its own fashion, that is, the shell instead of the kernel; when the same
fleshly sense to which our Saviour’s exalted language had so often been
a stone of stumbling, believed his words in part, it is true, but again:
betrayed itself by misconstruing their meaning,— taking them accord-
ing to the sensuous letter, and not according to their spirit. But still
we must carefully distinguish the different gradations in this tendency,
which varied from a merely imperfect and subordinate ‘stage of Chris-
tian knowledge, to that which may properly be called heresy.
Let us recollect that the faith in Jesus as the promised Messiah
was the fundamental doctrine, on which the whole structure of the
church arose. Accordingly, the first Christian community was formed
of very heterogeneous materials. It was composed of such as differed
from other Jews only by the acknowledging of Jesus as the Messiah —
of such as still continued bound to the same contracted Jewish notions
which they had entertained before ; and of such as, by coming to know
Jesus more and more as the Messiah in the higher spiritual sense, by
surrendering themselves with docility to the spirit of Christ, would, by
the inworking of that spirit, be ever growing in their Christian knowl-
edge, and becoming more completely freed from their besetting errors.
The heterogeneous elements, which, in the first communities formed
among the Jews, were thus outwardly rather than inwardly combined,
must now, in the course of the progressive development, be thrown
apart from each other. ‘The sifting process of history must effect a
separation between those who had really been brought in contact with
the spirit of Christianity and those who still belonged more truly to
Judaism. ΤῸ this necessary separation in the course of history, the
words of Paul, 1 Corinth. 11: 19, and of 1 John, 2: 19, properly
appl .
As Christ himself had faithfully observed the Mosaic law, so the
faithful observance of it was adhered to at first by all believers, and
was held to be a necessary condition of participating in the Messiah’s
kingdom. After the preparatory labors of Stephen, the martyr, and
other men of Hellenistic origin and education, and of Peter, — that which
Christ intended, when he said that he was not come to destroy the law but
29*
942 JUDAIZING SECTS — "
to fulfil it, and when he called himself the Lord of the Sabbath; that
which he meant by the worship of God, confined no longer to particu
lar times or places, but in spirit and in truth, the essence of the new
spiritual creation, which is grounded in the resurrection of Christ,?
was clearly conceived and expressed by the Apostle Paul, and a self-
subsisting Christian church, wholly independent of Judaism, formed
among the pagans. Already a schism threatened to break out between
the two elements of which the Christian church was composed, — the
prevailing notion of Christianity in Palestine, which was characterized
by a decided leaning to the Old Testament, and which suffered the
new spirit to remain enveloped in the old forins of Judaism; and the
independent Pauline development of Christianity-among the pagans.
By the compromise entered into between the two parties at Jerusalem,?
this opposition was harmoniously reconciled ; and it was the triumph of
the idea of a catholic church, whose unity, grounded on the faith in
Jesus as the one Saviour and Lord of all, was to outweigh all subordi-
nate differences of Jewish and Hellenic forms of culture. But the
more deep seated opposition could not be overcome and set aside by
this reconciliation, brought about by outward concessions. The power
of the Apostle Paul in establishing the principles of the more expanded
view of Christianity, and his successful and rapidly extending labors
among the pagans, which excited the jealousy of the pharisaic party
among the Jewish Christians, soon caused it to break forth anew. In
opposition to Paul, whom they refused to acknowledge as an apostle,
whom they accused of corrupting the doctrines of Christ, arose that
party of Jewish Christians, — zealots according to the pharisaic spirit,
—which was not until afterwards distinguished by a common name.
At the time when this opposition had become most violent, Paul was
removed from his earthly field of labor. Then followed the conciliating
element of the Apostle John’s labors in Asia Minor, by which many of
the points of difficulty were removed ; — but still the opposition, in those
respects in which it had been most strongly marked, could not be wholly
suppressed. |
About the middle of the second century we still find, among the
Christians of Jewish descent, the two parties which existed in the apos-
tolic age. This is evident froma passage in the dialogue of Justin
Martyr with Trypho.® Two classes are here mentioned, —they who in
their own practice united with the faith in Christ the observance of the
Mosaic law, but without requirmg the same observance of believing
pagans, whom they acknowledged rather as genuine Christian brethren
and accounted worthy of all brotherly fellowship, notwithstanding that
they maintained their original Christian freedom,s— and they who
1 Following the Pauline train of thought.
As Christ the risen possesses a life exempt-
ed from the dominion of nature, from the
στοιχεῖα τοῦ κοσμοῦ, so too the spiritual
life of those who are spiritually risen with
him is exempted from the dominion of na-
ture, their religion is a religion emancipated
from the elements of the world, altogether
free, and thenceforth bound to no outward
circumstances whatever.
2 See on this subject, my Apostol. Zeital-
ter, Bd. I. S. 169, ff.
3 Ed. Colon. f. 266, to which, in many
respects, important passage, we shall have
occasion to advert again hereafter.
4 As Justin reports of them in the pas
APOSTOLICAL AND HERETICAL. 943
were not content with observing the Mosaic law themselves, but were
for forcing the pagan believers universally to the same observance, and _
who refused otherwise to have fellowship with them; thus proceeding
on the assumption, that the believing pagans, like all others, were un-
clean, and that without the observance of the Mosaic law no man could
be just before God.t The former were the genuinely apostolic, Jewish
Christians, who had remained true to the pledge of agreement made at
Jerusalem ; the latter belonged to that party with whose influence the
Apostle Paul had so often to struggle among the communities of the
pagan Christians.
As the destruction of Jerusalem and the abolition of the Temple-
worship could not shake the faith of the Jews at large in the perpetual
validity of their religious laws, so neither can it be said that the at-
tachment of those Jews to the Mosaic law, who embraced Christianity,
was thereby diminished. They regarded these events, doubtless, as a
divine punishment, sent upon the mass of the people, who were hostile
to Christ, and whose wicked disposition had caused his death; and
many among them were expecting a glorious restoration of the city and
of the temple to the faithful of the nation. Those that were not finally
drawn by their Jewish way of thmking, on which had been merely
grafted a superficial faith in Jesus as the Messiah, to fall wholly back
again into Judaism,? — the more genuine class of Jewish Christians,
who were at Jerusalem at the breaking out of the Roman war, could
have no sympathy with the fanaticism which this war brought along
with it; and when reminded of the admonitory, warning and threaten-
ing words of Christ, could hardly fail to foresee, in the issue of this war,
the divine punishment of their perverse nation which he had predicted.
It may have been the case, perhaps, that as the prophetic voice was
still occasionally heard in the Christian assemblies, some pious men felt
constrained to warn the assembled communities of the approaching
destruction, and to call upon them to remove from the midst of the ru-
ined people, and repair to one of the ten cities in Perea, on the east-
ern bank of the Jordan, known under the collective name of Decapo-
lis.3 At a later period this community is said to have returned to
Jerusalem. Until the time of the emperor Hadrian, it was wholly
composed of Christians of Jewish descent, who were distinguished from
pagan Christians by their strict observance of the Mosaic law; though
sage above referred to: Αἱροῦνται συζῆν
τοῖς Χριστιανοῖς καὶ πιστοῖς, μὴ πείϑοντες
αὐτοὺς μῆτε περιτέμνεσϑαι ὁμοίως αὐτοῖς,
μῆτε σαββατίζειν, μῆτε ἄλλα. ὅσα τοιαῦτά
ἐστι τηρεῖν.
1 Justin’s words: ᾿Εὰν δὲ οἱ ἀπὸ τοῦ γέ-
νοὺς τοῦ ὑμετέρου (the race of the Jews)
πιστεύειν λέγοντες ἐπὶ τοῦτον τὸν Χριστὸν,
ἐκ παντός κατὰ τὸν διὰ Μωσέως διαταχϑέντα
νόμον ἀναγκάζωσι ζῆν τοὺς ἐξ ἐϑνῶν πισ-
τεύοντας ἢ μὴ κοινωνεῖν αὐτοῖς τῆς τοιαύ-
της συνδιαγωγῆς αἱρῶνται.
5.Α change very easily accounted for, and
one which Justin notices in the passage
above referred to: Τοὺς ὀμολογῆσαντας καὶ
ἐπιγνόντας τοῦτον εἶναι τὸν Χριστὸν Kar
ἡτινιοῦν αἱτίᾳ μεταβώντας ἐπὶ τὴν ἔννομον
πολιτείαν, ἀρνησαμένους ὅτι οὗτός ἐστιν ὁ
Χριστός.
8 Eusebius, 1. HII. ο. 5; Κατά τινα χρησ-
μὸν τοῖς αὐτόϑι δοκίμοις δι’ ἀποκαλύψεως
ἐκδοϑέντα. In Epiphanius, (de mensur. et
pond. c. 15,) an exaggerating tradition has
already converted this prophetic utterance
into a revelation delivered by an angel.
Without doubt, this whole account springs
from some earlier source; perhaps a state-
ment of Hegesippus. We have no suth-
cient reason for calling in question its truth
344 THE EBIONITES.
we have no reason to infer from this, that there existed among them no
other diversities of religious tendency and of religious opinion. Under
Hadrian a change was for the first time produced by outward causes,
which led to the substitution of another community of an altered shape
in place of that origmal Christian church. That emperor was induced
by the insurrection of the Jews under Barkochba, to exclude them en-
tirely from the city of Jerusalem and its cireumjacent territory. This
prohibition must have extended to all native Jews, who had not, by
their whole manner of life, utterly renounced their nation. The com-
munity could no longer subsist, then, in its ancient form, in this place.
Thus there was formed at first in the pagan colonial city, Alia Capito-
lina, which had been founded in the place of the ancient Jerusalem,
a church in which no further trace was to be found of the observance
of the Mosaic law; im which Christians of pagan descent, and _liberal-
minded Jewish Christians who did not hesitate to put the pagans on an
equal footing with themselves in respect to all matters of outward lie,
were mingled together. This community had for their presiding elder
a Christian of pagan descent, whose name was Marcus.t But this
change had no influence on the other Jewish Christians ; and those who
perseveringly distinguished themselves, by a strict observance of the
law, from the Christians of pagan origin, and avoided all intercourse
with them, would thus naturally become more widely known, as a dis-
tinct sect by themselves. If the story, already alluded to, concerning
the return of the original community from Pella to Jerusalem, 15 a cor-
rect one, or if a great majority of them, at least, did not remain behind
at Pella, the event just mentioned would naturally lead those who held
tenaciously to the Mosaic law, to separate themselves from the mixed
community and repair once more to Pella, where a strictly Jewish .
Christian church maintained its existence down to the fifth century.
Now it might easily happen that, from a superficial knowledge or con-
sideration of the facts, some might be led to place together in the
same class all these Jewish Christians who agreed in observing the
Mosaic law, without any regard to the differences existing among them.
Accordingly, from the time of Irenzeus, who first mentions the name,
they all came to be designated by the common appellation of Hbzonites.
In respect, first, to the origin and the meaning of this appellation, the
opinion certainly must be rejected that it is a proper name, derived
from the founder of the sect. This hypothesis appears first in the
writings of the maccurate Tertullian, who, in his ignorance of the He-
brew, and of the signification of the word in that language, took it for
a proper name; and as other sects were named after their founders,
supposed the same must be true of this sect also. Hpiphanius, whe
possessed the advantage over Tertullian, it is true, of being acquainted
1 Eusebius, 1. TV. c. 6. See also the re- sub legis observatione credebant. Nimirum
markable words of Sulpicius Severus, who, id, Domino ordinante, dispositum, ut legis
after citing the prohibition of the Emperor servitus a libertate fidei atque ecclesiz tol-
Hadrian, goes on to say, (hist. saer. 1. II. 6. leretur; where this writer has perhaps δῖ:
31:) Quod quidem christian fidei profici- tributed too much importance to the event.
ebat, quia tum pene omnes Christum Deum
NAME OF THE EBIONITES. 345
with the Hebrew language, but was however no less inaccurate, fol-
lowed the same opinion without further inquiry; although he himself
proposes another derivation of the word, quite inconsistent with this
hypothesis, taken from its etymological Hebrew signification, with which
he was doubtless acquainted. Since the character of the party desig-
nated by this name was of so general a nature, and the party itself
embraced in it so many different shades of the Jewish Christian princi-
- ple which they held in common; since, as appears from what has been
said, such a general ground-tendency as the one denoted by this name
could hardly fail, in the historical course of development, to pass over
from Judaism into Christianity, — the origin of this parvy from any
single individual should seem to be a thing quite improbable. We
might suppose, indeed, that this name was applied first to a distinct
sect belonging to this general class, and founded by a man who had
some peculiar views of his own; and that, at some later period, it re-
ceived a more general application. But we have no warrant whatever
for any such supposition. No tradition respecting the founder of a sect
by the name of Ebion is supported on grounds of authentic history.
The more accurately informed authorities, such as Irenzeus and Origen,
nowhere mention such a person; and all that we find anywhere said
respecting the pretended Ebion, is of that vague and indefinite char-
acter which sounds suspicious. Origen was the first to give the correct
derivation of this name, from the Hebrew word 113) poor. These
Jewish Christians, then, were called the poor; but the question now
arises, 72 what sense was this appellation originally applied to them ?
And with this is connected another, — by whom first was this appellation
given them? Upon the resolution of these questions it must depend,
whether the appellation is to be understood as a term of reproach or of
praise. Now it appears evident, it is true, from an explanation which
Epiphanius cites from the mouths of the very people in question,’ that,
in his time, the Ebionites regarded it as an epithet which they had
bestowed on themselves. But: although the Ebionites did actually ap
propriate and sanction the name, it “might nevertheless be true and
wholly consistent with this fact, that the epithet was originally bestowed
on them by their adversaries ; while they might afterwards apply it to
themselves, either in the same or a different sense ; since what was
considered by their opponents a term of reproach, might be regarded,
from their own point of view, as an honorable title.
Origen, who, as we have said, first presented the correct explanation
of the word, applies the designation, ‘ poor,” to the meagre religious
system, the poverty of faith, that characterized this party.2 In this
sense, the term may have been applied to them by pagan Christians ;
but it cannot be supposed that pagan Christians would have chosen a
Hebrew word to express this character. It is far more natural to sup-
1 Heres. 30. nation; he merely alludes, after his usual
2 Orig. in Matth. T. XVI. ce. 12: Τῷ ἐβι- way, to the meaning of the name. Yet,
ὠνείῳ καὶ πτωχεύοντι περὶ τὴν εἰς Ἰησοῦν (c. Cels.1. II. c.1,) he ts fs expressly: ’Ezro-
πίστιν. It was hardly Origen’s intention νυμοι τῆς κατὰ τὴν ἐκδοχὴν πτωχείας τοῦ
in this place, to give an etymological expla- νόμου.
346 THE EBIONITES.
pose that the imventors of this name were Jews; and at the particular
position of these Jews, it might be used and understood to denote a
poor, meagre way of thinking, especially if this notion be defined ac-
cording to the acute and ingenious suggestion of a distinguished mod-
ern inquirer in this department of learning ;! namely, that in the mouth
of those Jews who were expecting a Messiah im wesible glory, it would
designate such as could believe in a poor, abject, crucified Messiah,
like Jesus. Yet even this explanation, taken by itself, seems not the
most simple and natural; and, mdeed, the author of it himself joins it
with the other, about to be mentioned. What objection is there to under-
stand this word in the literal and obvious sense, as a designation of the
poorer class among the people of the nation? We know, in fact, what
reproach was cast upon the Christian faith by the hierarchical party
among the Jews, because none but those belonging to the ignorant and
poorer class of the people would openly profess it, (John 7: 49;) and
the like objection was made to Christianity by the pagans.2 Thus it
may be explained, how the Christians among the Jews came to be de-
signated as the poor; and this name, which was employed by them to
designate the Christians generally, would afterwards naturally be em-
ployed by the pagan Christians, without any knowledge of the meaning
of the name, to designate that portion of believers who were distin-
guished from the rest by their observance of the Mosaic law. When
we observe that the same thing happened in the case of another name
which was originally a common appellation for all Christians among the
Jews, the name ‘ Nazarenes,”’ it may serve to confirm the above sup-
position.
When Ebionitism was looked at as it appeared in its extreme form,
and as it may have been exhibited among the great mass of believing
Jews, it might be said of it, perhaps with justice, as Origen expresses
himself,’ that there was little to distinguish its adherents from the com-
mon Jews, who were fettered to the mere letter. We see in them the
natural descendants of those fierce antagonists of the Apostle Paul,
who never ceased to calumniate him as an apostate from the law.
They disseminated false and malicious reports respecting the life of this
apostle, in order to attribute his abandonment of Judaism to unworthy
motives. Later Ebionites at least do not scruple to assert, that he was
a proselyte of heathenish descent.® In Christianity, they saw at best
but a perfecting of Judaism by the addition of a few isolated precepts ;
and it was in this sense, probably, they explained to themselves, what
is to be rightly understood only in its connection with the whole of
1 Dr. Gieseler in the Archiv fiir alte und 5 Vid. Epiphan. heeres. 80, § 25. Perhaps
neue Kirchengeschichte von Staudlin und
Tzschirner, Bd. IV., 2tes Stiick, S. 307.
2 See the first section.
8 In Matth. T. XI. § 12: Of σωματικοὶ
Ἰουδαῖοι καὶ οἱ ὀλίγῳ διαφέροντες αὐτῶν
"EBiwvaior.
* Origen, (Hom. XVIII. in Jerem. § 12,)
says: Kai μέχρι viv ᾿Ββιωναῖοι τύπτουσι
τὸν ἀπόστολον Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ λόγοις δυσ-
φήμοις.
these Ebionites followed, in this respect also,
the example of their predecessors, with
whom Paul had to contend; perhaps it is
to some such malicious perversion of facts
this apostle has reference, when, in speaking
of various events in his earlier life, he pro-
tests to the truth of what he utters, and
when he places so much emphasis on the
fact of his Jewish origin, and his education
in the Pharisaic schools.
Pa
DOCTRINES OF THE EBIONITES. 347
Christianity, the sermon on the Mount. Their views respecting the
work and character of Christ, the essence of Christianity, and the per-
son of its author, are closely connected with each other.
In both respects, the Ebionites seem to have remained within the
contracted range of the ordinary Jewish point of view. As they could
not understand the specific difference between Judaism and Christian-
ity, so neither could they understand what it was, that distinguished
the author of Christianity from Moses and the Prophets, and from the
founders of other religions. Looking upon him not as the Redeemer
of all mankind, by whom every other means of justification and expia-
tion had been rendered null and superfluous, not as the author of a new
creation of the divine life, but only as the supreme Law-giver, Teacher
and King, they did not feel themselves constrained to admit any higher
views of Christ’s person. They were precluded, therefore, on this side,
from the possibility of understanding his discourses. They held firmly
to the chasm, not to be filled up, betwixt God and his cr eation, which
the stern monotheistic system of legal Judaism taught m opp osition to
the polytheistic and pantheistic principles of nature-religion. To Jesus
they simply transferred the notion of the Messiah which most widely
prevailed among the Jews, and most perfectly agreed with this common
principle of the Jewish system,—that he was a man distinguished
above all others for legal piety, — who, for this very reason, was deemed
worthy of being chosen as the Messiah, — who knew nothing at all of any
᾿ special call to the Messiahship, as others, too, were far from divining any
such thing of him, until Ehas re-appeared, and revealed to him and to
others his election to the high office, when he was filled with divine
power for the exercise of his mission as the Messiah, and thus enabled
to work miracles.1 What was generally believed of the Elias, these
Ebionites transferred to John the Baptist. It was first when Jesus
came, with all the others, to John, to receive baptism from him, that
the miraculous phenomenon occurred, by which the fact of his election
to the Messiahship was revealed, and along with which, the divine
power which he required in order to fulfil his mission, descended on
him. An abrupt antithesis was thus formed between two portions of the
life of Jesus, — the period before and that after his consecration to the
Messiahship ; so that while the mere human nature, to the entire exclu-
sion of everything supernatural, was placed in the first portion, the
sudden entrance of the supernatural and sensuously objective element
was made prominent in the event which tooke place at the very begin-
ning of the second portion. The fact of Christ’s supernatural birth
was particularly opposed to this view of the matter; and indeed this
fact was directly at variance with that Jewish ground of doctrine gen-
erally, wearing to the Jews a certain pagan aspect, and being placed
by them in the same class with the heathen myths concerning ‘the sons
1The Jew Trypho in Justin, —Dial..c. κατηξιῶσϑαι τοῦ ἐκλεγῆναι εἰς Χριστόν.
Tryph. f. 291, ed. Colon. —expresses this Respecting the appearance of Elias, where-
common Jewish point of view, where he by the Messiah was first to be made known
requires of the Christians to prove concern- as such to himself and to others, see f. 268
ing Jesus: “Ore αὐτός ἐστιν ὁ Χριστὸς, διὰ compared with 336,
τὸ ἐννόμως καὶ τελείως πολιτεύεσϑαι αὐτὸν
948 DIFFERENT KINDS OF EBIONITES.
of the gods.1_ Even in the well known passage of the 7th chapter of
Isaiah, the Ebionites could not find announced the birth from a virgm.
In the Ebionitic revision of the gospel history, which sprang from one
of the main branches to be traced back to the Apostle Matthew, the
appearance at Christ’s baptism is represented as an altogether outward,
sensible event, connected with the descent of the Holy Ghost upon
Christ ; and the appearance is supposed to be designed as well to lead
himself to the consciousness of his call to the Messiahship, as to reveal
this fact to the Baptist. This phenomenon is decked out with miracu-
lous events; light shone over the place, fire burst forth from the river
Jordan.? Jerusalem, in the estimation of the Ebionites, was still the
city of God, the central point of the Theocracy.* They lived in expect-
ation of Christ’s speedy return, to restore this city of God, and to re-
establish the Theocracy there in surpassing splendor. All the Jewish
notions respecting the millenial kingdom of the Messiah they transferred
to this event.°
We have remarked already, that among the Ebionites, if we consider
this name as a general appellation for Jewish Christians, there must
have existed different forms and shades of opinion, arising out of the
various combination of Jewish and Christian pomts of view. Irenzeus
was not aware of the existence of any such differences. But Origen,
who was more skilled in the accurate investigation of relationships and
differences, and who had himself been a longer time resident in Pales-
tine, distinguishes two classes of Hbionites, a class which denied the
supernatural birth of Jesus, and another which admitted it.6 If we
duly consider how obstinately the ordinary Jewish spirit. must have
struggled against the acknowledgment of such a fact, we must conclude
from Origen’s statement, that connected with this deviation from the
common bent of the Jewish mind, there were also other differences ;
that those who could be induced to admit the fact above mentioned,
must have been more deeply affected by the spirit of the new creation.
It seems implied that they did not, like the others, in accordance with
the common Jewish views, separate the divine from the human nature
1 See what the Jew Tryphon, (in Justin
M. f. 291,) says against this doctrine: M7
τερατολογεῖν τολμᾶτε, ὅπως μῆτε ὁμοίως
τοῖς "EAAnot μωραίνειν ἐλέγχησϑε.
2 The position assumed by the Ebionites
led to a dispute about the interpretation of
this and several other prophetic passages.
Where men were usually satisfied by alle-
gorical interpretation, the Ebionites, follow-
ing the Jewish doctrines, may have entered
more deeply into the use of language, into
the connection, and the historical allusions,
and may have sought to show how many
things which were referred by Christian
teachers to the history of Christ, had been
already accomplished in the facts and ap-
pearances of earlier history. We may hence
explain, perhaps, what Irenzus objects to
them, (lib. 1. 6. 26:) Quze autem sunt pro-
phetica, curiosius (περιεργοτέρως) exponere
nituntur.
8 See the fragment of the gospel of the
Hebrews. in Epiphan. Heres 30, § 13, and
Justin. Dial. 6. Tryph. f. 315, ed. Colon.
4. Hierosolymam adorant, quasi domus sit
Dei. Iren. 1. I. Ὁ. 26, § 2.
5 See, in the Jewish-Christian work, the
Testament of the twelve patriarchs, (‘Tes-
tament IV. of Judah, § 23,) the return of
the scattered Jews from their captivity; and
in Testament VII. of Dan. § 5: “Jerusa-
lem shall then suffer desolation no more,
and Israel no more be carried into captivi-
ty; for the Lord shall dwell in the midst of
Jerusalem, and walk with men.”
6 Orig. 6. Cels. 1. V. c. 61, where he em-
ploys the name Ebionites to designate gen-
erally all Jewish Christians observing the
Mosaic law: Οἱ διττοὶ ᾿Εβιωναῖοι, ἤτοι ἐκ
παρϑένου ὁμολογοῦντες, ὁμοίως ἡμῖν, τὸν
Ἰησοῦν, ἢ οὐχ’ οὕτω γεγεννῆσϑαι, ἀλλ᾽ ὡς
τοὺς λοιποὺς ἀνϑρώπους.
THE NAZARENES. 349
m Christ, and suppose merely a sudden commencement of the actuat-
ing power of the Holy Spirit upon him, but that they conceived of a
certain codperation of the divine and human elements m Christ, where-
by he differed in kind from other prophets, — a certain original actua-
tion of the divine Spirit; under whose influences the human nature in
Christ began as well as continued to develope itself. Being less fettered
in this respect by the Jewish spirit, they may have been so much the
more free also in their judgment respecting the continued obligation of
the Mosaic law, insomuch as to make a distinction between the position
of the native Jews and that of believers from among the Gentiles.
Thus we perceive that they must have been the same Jewish Christians,
followers of the apostolic principles, whom we saw described by Justin
Martyr, as a class of these latter that still remained. To the same class
belonged also the people about whom Jerome took pains to obtain more
accurate information, during his residence in those countries, near the
close of the fourth century. They then dwelt at Bercea, in Syria,!
and passed by the name of Nazarenes. ‘This name, like that of the
Ebionites, was in the first place, perhaps, a common appellation for all
Christians among the Jews, so called as sects that sprang out of Naza-
reth, and still more common than the former one, as appears from Acis
24: 5, and from the fact that in still later times all Christians were
condemned under this name in the Jewish synagogues.”
The distinctive trait tf these Nazarenes was their decided anti-
pharisaic tendency. They denounced the maxims of the scribes and
Pharisees, who caused the people,to err by their traditions, and who
had hindered them from believing in Jesus.? In explaining Isaiah 8:
23, (9: 1,) they held, that by the preaching of Christ in Galilee, the
Jews had been first delivered from the errors of the Scribes and Phar-
isees, and from the burthensome yoke of the Jewish traditions ; and
they interpreted chaper 9: 1, (9: 2,) as referring to the preaching
of the gospel, by the Apostle Paul, to all pagan nations.* Thus it is
clear, that they differed entirely from those Ebionites who were hostile
to this apostle ; that they acknowledged his call to be an apostle to the
Gentiles, and so were not disposed to enforce on these latter the ob-
servance of the Mosaic law. Accordingly we find that Jerome actu-
ally makes a distinction between the Ebionites and the Ebionitarum
socii, who considered all this to be permanently obligatory only on such
as had descended from a Jewish stock. They lamented the condition
of their unbelieving people, and earnestly longed for the time when
these also should turn to believe in the Lord and in his apostles. Then
they would put aside all their idols, which had led them into the devi-
ous ways of sin. Then every obstacle which Satan had set up to hin-
der the progress of God’s kingdom, would be removed, not by human
might, but by the power of God; and all who had been hitherto trust-
1 Vid. Hieronym. de viris illustrib. ο. 3. IX. ο. 29, v. 18, ed. Vallarsi. Τὶ IV. p. 398.
2 Ejusd. commentar. in Isai. 1, 11. ¢. 5 to 4See Jerome’s remarks on those pas-
5, 18. sages, l. c. p. 130, ed. Vallarsi.
ὃ Vid. Hieronym. commentar. in Isai. 1. Lc. LL. end, p< 21.
¥Ou. I. 30
300 THE NAZARENES.
ing to their own wisdom, would become converted to the Lord. They
believed that they found this promised in Isaiah 21: 7, 8.1
The view of Christ which, as we were led to suppose, prevailed
among those whom Origen refers to the second class of Ebionites, we
should, perhaps, be warranted to ascribe also to these Nazarenes ; for that
they did not suppose the divine element in Christ had its first begin-
ning with his inauguration into the Messiahship, seems evident from
the fact, that the recension of the Hebrew gospel which Jerome received
from them and translated into Latin, did not, like the gospel of the
other party, commence with the inauguration of Christ into his office as
Messiah, by John the Baptist, but had adopted besides the first chap-
ters, which treat of the birth of Christ.2 He is described by them as
the one towards whom the progressive movement of the Theocracy
tended from the beginning ;—as the end and aim of all the earlier
divine revelations. In him, the Holy Spirit, from whom, down to this
time, only isolated revelations and excitations had proceeded, first found
an abiding place of rest, a permanent abode. Inasmuch as the Holy
Spirit was the productive principle of his entire nature, and it was first
from him that the efficiency of the Spirit, in shaping the entire life of
humanity and forming other organs of action, could proceed, he 18
called the First born of the Holy Spirit; — as the Holy Spirit is also
denominated his Mother. Where this gospel describes how the whole
fountain of the Holy Spirit descended on Christ at his baptism and
abode permanently with him, the following words of salutation are as-
cribed to the former: ‘ My Son, in all the prophets I expected thee,
that thou shouldest come, and I might find m thee a place of rest; for
thou art my resting place, thou art my first born Son, who reignest for-
ever.’’ * Assuredly, i in this representation, we perceive a more pro-
found Christian consciousness, rising above the limited views of the
common EKbionitism. And the appellation, given to the Holy Spinit, of
Mother of Christ, may perhaps, in some way, stand connected with the
idea of his supernatural generation.
It appears evident, from what has beén said, that aewagh sternly
pronounced Ebionitism excluded all speculations concerning ‘the divine
1 See Jerome’s remarks on this passage,
l.c. p. 425. In the edition of Martianay,
T. II. —the places p. 79, 83, 250 and 261.
2 As appears evident from Jerome’s com-
mentary on the gospel of Matthew, chapter
2d, at the beginning ; where by the ipsum
hebraicum is doubtless to be understood,
according to the connection, the Hebrew
gospel of the Nazarenes ; — also from the
words which he cites from this gospel in his
work de viris illustrib. ¢. 3.
3 See the passages cited by Jerome, in
Micham 1. Il. ¢. 7, T. VI. p. 520; and by
Origen, T. II. Joh. § 6, in which Christ Says:
Αρτι ἔλαβέ με 4 μήτηρ μου, τὸ ἅγιον πνεῦ-
μα, ἐν μιᾷ τῶν τριχῶν μου, καὶ ἀπένεγκέ [LE
εἰς τὸ ὄρος τὸ μέγα Θαβώρ; where it may be
a question, whether the thought is merely
expressed in a poetic form, that Christ re-
paired thither by the impulse of the Holy
Spirit, which animated him in all things, or
whether a supernatural conveyance is meant.
That the passage is to be understood in the
former way, and not literally, appears prob-
able when we compare it with the similar
figurative modes of expression in an orien-
tal writer. In Taberistanensis annales re-
gum atque legatorum Dei, Vol. 11. Pars I.
Gryph., 1835, page 103, it is said by those
whom God had converted from being ene-
mies of Mahomet into zealous advocates of
his cause, (in Kosegarten’s Latin transla-
tion from the Arabic original :) “ Denique
Deus cordibus cincinnisque nostris prehen-
sis, per eum in viam rectam ita nos direxit,
ut eum sequeremur.”
4 Vid. Hieronym. in Isai.1. IV. ο. 11. T
IV. p. 156.
RELATIONS OF EBIONITISM. 351
nature in Christ, yet still, where it assumed a milder and more liberal
form, as it did in the case we have just described, such speculations
might perhaps also be united with it. Again, we must not forget, —
what we have more carefully considered in the general introduc-
tion, — that, at this period, Judaism had become decomposed into
manifold and even conflicting elements;— and these had become
blended with many tendencies foreign from origimal Judaism. These,
now, might easily be attracted also by Christianity, and might seek to
appropriate it to themselves, after their own way. If, at first, phari-
saic views became mixed with the apprehension of Christianity, they
were afterwards followed by such as were more nearly related to Esse-
nism, or to the system of the Alexandrian Jews. The Apostle Paul
having been suddenly removed from the circle of labors, in which his
commanding influence opposed an invincible bulwark to all corruptions
of Christian truth, there began to be formed, first in Asia Minor, such
mixtures of doctrine, the earliest example of which we find wm the
church of Colosse, in Phrygia. Similar appearances we recognize once
more ina great deal which Epiphanius embraces under the general
name of Ebionitism ;— appearances which are wholly distinct from the
Ebionitism that sprang out of the common Pharisaic elements, and the
origin of which would assuredly carry us back to an earlier period than
that im which Epiphanius wrote. Among the Ebionites described by
Epiphanius, there were those who started from that common Ebionitic
view of Jesus as a man, first raised to the dignity of Messiah on ac-
count of his legal piety ---- but then, whilst others affirmed, that the
whole power of the Holy Spirit descended on him at his consecration
to the Messiahship by the baptism of John, they substituted, in place of
the Holy Spirit, the highest of the spirits created by God, — a spirit
exalted above all the angels,!— and the latter was then considered the
true revealer of God, the Messiah in the highest sense. By means of
such a separation of the divine and human natures in Christ, the Ebio-
nitic element might pass over to the Gnostic. Others placed in con-
nection with Christianity, that idea which exhibits itself to us under so
many different forms, on which sometimes the Oriental, sometimes the
Hellenic stamp predominates, the idea of a heavenly man, Adam Kad-
mon, the primal man. ‘The Spirit, which is the pure efilux of the di-
vine Spirit, which appeared first in Adam and afterwards returned
under manifold shapes, to reveal God to his fallen children, — this
same Spirit reappeared in Christ, to deliver the last revelation to hu-
manity.
We should not be warranted to suppose, in the case of all the ten-
dencies which were designated under the common name of Ebionitism,
the same degree of adhesion to the law of Moses. ‘There had, in truth,
been evolved among the Jews themselves, out of the opposition to the
traditional element of Pharisaism, as we saw in the example of Saddu-
1 So says Epiphanius: Οὐ φάσκουσιν ἐκ πεποιημένων. So Philo describes the Lo-
ϑεοῦ πατρὸς αὐτὸν γεγενῆσϑαι, ἀλλά ἐκτίσ- gos as an ἀρχάγγελος. Cons. the Jewish
ϑαι, ὡς ἕνα τῶν ἀρχαγγέλων, μείζονα δὲ apocryphal work, ᾿Ιωσὴφ προσευχή : Upwro
αὐτῶν ὄντα, αὐτὸν δὲ κυριεύειν τῶν ἀγγέ- γονος παντὸς ζώου ζωοὐμένου ὑπὸ ϑεοῦ
Awy καὶ πάντων ὑπὸ τοῦ παντοκράτορος
902 RELATIONS OF EBIONITISM.
ceism, tendencies whose aim was to distinguish the original religion of
Moses from later additions. This distinction, however, might assume
different forms, as it happened to proceed from different tendencies of
mind. An entirely different character from that which it presented among
the Sadducees, it must have assumed in those cases where it started
from some mystico-ascetic bias, which, alien from the original Hebraism,
had formed’ itself out of that which was the essential element of Juda-
ism as opposed to Pharisaism and Sadduceism, and under the influence
of an Oriental spirit. Out of this sprung next the idea of a more spirit-
ual, primitive religion, which had been corrupted at some later period
by the importation of foreign elements; and among these corruptions
was reckoned everything that was at variance with this mystico-ascetic
tendency. There was an Ebionite sect, as we learn from Epiphanius,}
which, rejecting as well the eating of flesh as the offermgs of animals,
explained the entire sacrificial worship as a thing foreign from primitive
Judaism, and as a corruption. Christianity, contemplated from this
point of view, must have been considered as a restoration of the origi-
nal Judaism. From this sect proceeds a book under the name of Jacob,
ἀναβαϑμοὶ ᾿Ιακώβου, Steps of Jacob, (probably intended to denote the steps
of initiation, with reference to the true Gnosis,) in which the patriarch
is introduced discoursing against the sacrificial and Temple worship.
With this ascetic tendency stood connected the rule which required a
total renunciation of earthly ‘goods, complete poverty, as an essential
part of religious perfection ;—— whether such a tendency had already,
before the appearance of Christianity, sprung up among the Jews, in
opposition to the worldly spirit in Judaism, —just as the societies of
spiritual paupers (the apostolici, the pauperes de Lugduno) sprung up,
during the middle age, from an opposition of this sort, — or whether
this tendency was first called forth by a partial and imperfect appre-
hension of the Christian principle.2,_ The Jewish spirit — although this
was foreign from the original Hebraism — yet nevertheless manifested
itself in the whole outward character which it gave to the opposition
betwixt the kingdom of the Messiah and the kingdom of Satan, as if
the two were outwardly divided in the world, and the present earthly
world belonged wholly to Satan, whilst the future had been committed
to Christ. Hence those who would participate in the future kingdom
of the Messiah, must look upon all the goods of this world as alien
from them, and renounce every earthly possession. ‘The members of
this sect were willing to call themselves Hbionites, as the poor in spirit,
and they traced back this inherited name to the circumstance, that their
fathers, who formed the first church at Jerusalem, renounced all rights
of private property, and lived in an unconditional community of goods.’
1 Whether, as Epiphanius alleges, a per-
son otherwise unknown, by the name of
Elxai, had so great influence in bringing
about this modification of Ebionitism, we
must leave undetermined. In the forma-
tion of a religious tendency of this kind,
very little depends, in any case, on the per-
sonality of an individual.
2 See above, page 276.
8 This laudatory sense of the epithet
1)", is referred to also in the words of
Testamentum VII. in the Testaments of
the twelve patriarchs, (c. 5,) where it is said
respecting the form of government in the
perfected kingdom of the Messiah: “Ayco¢
Ἰσραὴλ βασιλεύων ἐπ’ αὐτοὺς ἐν TaT ELV ὦ-
σει καὶ ἐν πτωχείᾳ.
THE CLEMENTINES. 353
The question, whether this is the correct explanation of the name, de-
pends on another, whether the name was employed originally to desig-
nate only a smaller portion of the Ebionites, and afterwards obtained a
more general application, or whether that more general application, of
which we have spoken, was the earlier one, and this interpretation of it
first introduced at the stage of the above described peculiar modifica-
tion of the Kbionite spirit.
But with this ascetic tendency, however, we see a reaction of the
original Hebraism manifesting itself in the fact, that this sect combat-
ted the over-valuation of celibacy; that they were inclined to prefer
early marriage, according to the prevalent custom of the Jews, as being
ἃ preservative against unchastity. This party must therefore have been
polemically opposed to those ascetic tendencies in the Christian church
which favored the life of celibacy.?
The peculiar Ebionitic tendency here described,? appears in a very
remarkable apocryphal book, called the Clementines, or the eighteen
Homilies, in which, as it is pretended, Clement, descended from a noble
family in Rome, and afterwards bishop of the church in that city, gives
an account of his conversion and of the discourses and disputes of the
Apostle Peter.t It is somewhat difficult, indeed, to separate here what
belongs to the general tendency of that particular sect of the Ebionites
which we last described, and that which must be reckoned to the pecu-
harities of the author, as they developed themselves amid the conflict-
ing opinions of the second century. At all events, it may be easily
seen, how a religious tendency and a work of this description might be
called forth in some connection with these conflicting opmions. When
the Jews, Judaizing Christians and Christians of pagan descent were
standing in stern opposition to each other, when Judaism, attacked in
various ways by the Gnostics, was placed in the most unfavorable hght,
the thought occurred to some individual of this particular Ebionitic ten-
dency, to compose a work that might serve to reconcile those opposite
views, — a work of an apologetic and conciliatory tendency, —a notice-
able phenomenon in the ferment of that chaotic period, to which a new
breath of life, setting everything in motion, had been communicated by
Christianity, and in which the most heterogeneous elements could be
fused together, what was really profound meeting and mingling with
what was altogether fantastic. The fundamental idea of the apologetic
and conciliatory aims of this work, is the idea of a simple and original
1 So we may remark a similar opposition,
proceeding from the same spiritual bent,
among the Zabians, or disciples of John.
2 Epiphanius speaks of these Ebionites
as a party still existing in his own time.
It is certain that he had derived the inform-
ation he gives us concerning them, partly
from his own personal intercourse with the
sect, and partly from other works of theirs
besides the Clementines. The Clementines
presuppose the existence of such a sect, —
not that the writer of that work should be ἢ
recarded as the author of such a system.
3 'Ouria.
90"
41 cannot deny myself the pleasure of
directing the attention of the theological
publie to a work which we are soon to ex-
pect from one of the most distinguished
of our young theologians, the candidate
Adolph Schliemann of Rostock, — contain-
ing a thorough investigation into the ori-
gin, the end, the peculiar religious bent of
mind, and the composition of this remarka-
ble book; and intended also to embrace a
complete critical examination of all that
has been said till now on this subject, which
of late has been so much discussed.
-
854 THE CLEMENTINES.
religion, proceeding from divine revelation, as the common foundation
of Judaism and Christianity. The supranaturalist element of Judaism
is here presented in peculiar strength. In contemplating so many
restless spirits, ever on the search for truth and tortured with doubts,
so many conflicting systems of the philosophers, the author is con-
vinced of the necessity of a divine revelation ; without which, man is
certain of nothing but the most general principles of morality, — the
consciousness that, as no one is willing to suffer wrong from others, so no
one should do wrong to others.2, Whoever seeks the truth, evinces by
this very fact, that he is in need of some higher source, from which to
derive the knowledge of it. He needs a criterion to enable him to dis-
tinguish the truth; he holds that to be true which flatters his inclina-
tions: — hence so many opposite systems. ‘‘ He only who is under no
necessity of seeking the truth, he who has no doubts, he who knows the
truth by means of a higher spirit dwelling within himself, which is su-
perior to all uncertainty and all doubt, obtains the knowledge of the
truth, and can reveal it to others.”” Thus the author arrives at the
conception of the true prophet, from whose revelations all religious truth
is to be derived.? ‘* Looking away from all others, men should entrust
themselves to the prophet of truth alone, whom all, however ignorant
they may be, can know as a prophet. . God, who provides for the neces-
sities of all, has made it easy for all, among both Greeks and _barbari-
ans, to recognize the person of such a revealer.”” ‘‘ The first prophet
was Adam, in whom, if in any one, formed as he was immediately by
the creative hand of God, that which is the immediate efflux of the di-
vine Spirit, dwelt.”” The doctrine of the fall of the first man, is one
which the author of the Clementines felt constrained to combat,‘ as
blasphemy against God.® ‘ On the man created after his own image,
God, the alone good, bestowed everything. Full of the divinity of his
Creator, and as a true prophet knowing all things, he revealed to his
children an eternal law, which has neither been destroyed by wars, nor
corrupted by godless power, nor hidden in any particular place, but
may be read of all men.”® In reference to this general revelation of
God, it was consistent with the system, in the Clementines to affirm,
‘“‘that the appearance neither of Jesus, nor of Moses, would have been
necessary, if men had been willing, of themselves, to come to the
1 See Vol. I. p. 8.
2 Hom. Il. c. 6: ᾿Αληϑείας κρατεῖν οὐ
δυνατὸς ἔσται, πλὴν πολιτείας μόνης, Kal
ταῦτα ἐκείνης τῆς διὰ τὸ εὔλογον γνωρισϑῆ-
vat δυναμένης, ἥτις ἑκάστῳ ἐκ τοῦ μὴ ϑέ-
λειν ἀδικεῖσϑαι, τοῦ μὴ δεῖν ἄλλον ἀδικεῖν
τὴν γνῶσιν παρίστησιν.
3 Hom. II. c. 9.
4 Hom. III. c. 20 and 42.
5 We should have better means of judg-
ing in what sort of connection this view
stood with earlier Jewish doctrines, if a
Jewish work were made known, which has
been cited. by Eisenmenger, (Theil. I. Kap. *
8, S. 336:) Das 531, the purity, unnocence
of Adam. in which it was likewise asserted,
that Adam never sinned.
ὁ Hom. VIII. ο. 10: Νόμον αἰώνιον ὥρι-
σεν, ὅλοις, (pernans we should read ὅλως,)
μῆτε ὑπὸ πολέμων ἐμπρησϑῆναι δυνάμενον,
μηδ᾽ ὑπὸ ἀσεβοῦς τινὸς ὑπονοϑευόμενον,
μῆτε ἑνὲ τόπῳ ἀποκεκρυμμένον, ἀλλὰ πᾶσιν
ἀναγνωσϑῆναι δυνώμενον. Without doubt
it was the author’s design to oppose this
original, universal, eternal law, springing
from the revelation of God’s Spirit in the
first man, to the Mosaic law recorded in
the letter of scripture, which, as he endeav-
ors to show in this work, must be liable to
all those defects from which that higher
law was exempt.
THE CLEMENTINES. 355
knowledge of what is right, (of what they must do, in order to obtain
God’s favor; for everything depends on works.'!) ‘ But since this
original revelation, which should have been transmitted, by the living
word, from generation to generation, was corrupted over and over by
impure additions, proceeding from an evil principle, (a notion which in
this book stands closely connected with its pervading doctrine, concern-
ing the antithesis of the good and the evil principle in the whole history
of the world,) new revelations were requisite to counteract these cor-
ruptions, and restore the matter of that original revelation ; and it was
always that primal Spirit of humanity, the Spirit of God in Adam,
which, in manifold forms, and under various names, re-appeared ; 2 —
where we have presented that view of the matter, — falling in with the
eclectic bent of the, period, but in the East ever recurring from the
oldest time, — which regarded all religions as different forms of the
manifestation of one divine principle, or of one fundamental truth.
Thus, Moses constitutes one of these forms of manifestation; and the
religious law proceeding from him is one of the new revelations, intend-
ed to restore the primitive truth. The author of the Clementines jomed
himself to that party of the Jews who exalted the Pentateuch above
all the other books of the Old Testament. The Pentateuch alone passed
with him as a book coming from divine revelation ; yet he was far from
acknowleding it as such in its whole extent. We see in him the first
who disputed the genuimeness of the Pentateuch,— being in this, as in
many other respects, a forerunner of far later appearances; being the
first, mdeed, who availed himself of many of the arguments, which
were afterwards again brought forward, independently of him, by later
disputers of the genuineness of this work. He maintained, for instance,
that the Mosaic doctrine, which was to be transmitted only by the hvying
word, was re-written many times over; and that, until the Pentateuch
reached its latest form, various foreign elements, conflicting with the
truth revealed by Moses, were introduced, through the influence of the
principle which ever seeks to corrupt the revelation of the godlike.
Thus he could explain away as interpolations everything which contra-
dicted his own ascétic tendency, and which was made use of against it
by the opponents of Judaism among the pagans and the Gnostics. In
those cases where the Jewish theologians of the Alexandrian school
sought to relieve a difficulty by explaining that the letter was the mere
envelope of an idea allegorically represented, the author of the Clem-
entines would remove such a stone of stumbling entirely away, by the
application of his expurgatory criticism. Thus he was forced to do by
his chosen position ; for he was opposed to all allegorical shifts. He
required of the prophet, that he should express everything clearly ;
without ambiguity ; simply and comprehensively. Such, as it appeared
to him, was the character of the discourses of Christ,? — though for
1 Hom. VIII. c.5: Oire yap ἂν Μωῦσέ- ἅμα τοῖς ὀνόμασιν μορφὰς ἀλλάσσων, τὸν
ὡς, οὔτε τῆς τοῦ ᾿Ιησοῦ παρουσίας χρεία ἣν, αἰῶνα τρέχει.
εἴπερ ἀφ᾽ ἑαυτῶν τὸ εὔλογον νοεῖν ἐβού- 8 Hom. III. c. 26: Ῥητὰ προφητεύει, σα:
λοντο. φῆ λέγει.
2 Hom. III. ο. 20: Ὃς ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς αἰῶνος,
306 "HE CLEMENTINES.
the rest, he indulges himself in extremely violent and tortuous inter-
pretations, with a view to favor his own peculiar opinions.
Since the-author of the Clementines required of the prophet, that he
should announce the truth in calmness of spirit, and in simple, clear, and
unambiguous language, with this requisition must correspond also the
notion he formed to himself of inspiration, and of the prophet’s mental
state. He rejected the Platonic notion of an ἐνθουσιασμός corresponding
to the μανία, ---- of an ecstatic state of the prophet, such as occurs in the
Jewish theology of the Alexandrian school, and lies at bottom of the
legend respecting the origin of the Alexandrian version. In the case
of the true prophet, he would not allow that there was any such state
of ecstasy, in which, borne onward by the might of a higher actuating
spirit, the prophet announced greater things than he could himself com-
prehend. Such a state, he supposed, did not agree with the nature of
the divine Spirit, — for this is a Spirit of quiet and of order, — but
corresponded to the character of the demoniacal spirit, which is a spirit
of confusion. Such states as might occur im pagan divination, and at
the pagan oracles, ought not to be transferred to the true prophet. If
a person is impelled, sometimes by this and at other times by that spirit,
announces sometimes what the divme Spirit, and at other times what
his own spirit suggests to him, then the criterion is wanting, by which
to separate, in his discourse, the true from the false. The prophet,
who appeared for the restoration of the true religion, and from whom
men were to learn to distinguish the genuine from the spurious, in
the earlier records of religion, would himself make it necessary to re-
peat the same separation over again. The author of the Clementines
had a true perception of the fact, that nothing analogous to the ecstasy
is to be observed in the case of Christ; that the whole style in which
he expresses himself, testifies of a calm consciousness, always clear as
to its own meaning, always self-possessed. But as it was the peculiar
bent of many, in this period, to be looking for the full and complete
everywhere alike, to allow of no gradual transitions and intermediate
steps, so the author of the Clementines requires im all manifestations
of the prophetic gift, what corresponds to this complete conception of
prophecy, as it was fulfilled im Christ; and all else he sets down as be-
longing to false prophecy. The true prophet must be ever, like Christ,
one with himself; must have with him the divine Spirit at all times
alike.t Now, as he could not apply this notion of prophecy to the
prophets of the Old Testament; as he found in them a great deal that
was obscure, a great deal expressed respecting the Messiah and his
kingdom, which, literally understood, — as everything announced by
divine revelation should be understood, — did by no means agree with
the appearance and conduct of Jesus as the Messiah; so he looked
upon all this as a mark of the spurious prophetic spirit, which was cal-
culated to deceive. And so the Jews did, in fact, suffer themselves to
be led astray, by this ambiguous or false matter in the prophets, when
they were looking for a worldly Messiah,” and a worldly kingdom of
1 Hom. VUI. c. 11 and 12. 2L. c. ce. 22 and 23. δ
Ofte
THE CLEMENTINES. 357
the Messiah; when they expected in the Messiah, the son of David,
not the Son of God,! and hence did not acknowledge Jesus as the
Messiah.
We may well presume that, when men of the peculiar spiritual bent
which characterized the Essenes, became possessed of the idea of the
Messiah, they would show themselves to be opposed, on this side also,
to the common Pharisaic notions, and would shape the idea in accord-
ance with their own mystico-ascetic spirit. Such a peculiar shaping
forms the ground-work of the Clementines. That Ebionite idea of
spiritual poverty, of which we have spoken above ; that striving after
emancipation from the world, which was opposed to the secular direc-
tion of the religious sentiment among the great body of the Jews, and
the traces of which we perceive also in the Clementines as the product
of such a shaping of the Ebionite spirit, would lead to a corresponding
mode of apprehending the idea of the Messiah and of his kingdom.
Opposition to the secular and political element entering into the no-
tion of the Messiah — to the views of the Chiliasts, would necessarily
spring out of it; and so we find the case to be in the Clementines.
Now as the author was incapable of understanding the organic histori-
cal connection, following the law of constant progress, in the successive
steps of revelation — the gradual emerging of the idea, unfolding itself,
under the actuation of God’s Holy Spirit, out of its temporal envelope
—as he was incapable of understanding this, he sees of course in every-
thing that borders on that secular form of the idea respecting the Mes-
siah, and on which the false expectation of the Jews had fastened, the
pseudo-prophetic element.”
From these two opposite shapings of Ebionitism, which may be suc-
einctly denominated the Pharisaic and the Essenian,* there would arise,
in the next place, two opposite ways of contemplating the gospel his-
tory, — of which the one would seek to get rid of all incipient appear-
ances of the supernatural in the history of Christ’s childhood, and of
everything that would lead to the recognition of a higher nature and
dignity there; the other would endeavor to expunge everything which
represented him as the son of David, — the potentiated David.* While
1 Thus in Hom. XVIII. c. 13, the passage
Matth. 11: 27, is explained as spoken in
opposition to the Jews, who in the Messiah
saw the son of David, and not the son of
God.
2 Hom. III. c. 22, 23, etc., where the con-
trast between true and false prophets is
seized with reference to this point.
3 By employing which term, however, we
would not be understood to maintain, that
this particular shaping of Ebionitism pro-
ceeded directly from the sect of the Essenes ;
but we regard Essenism as being only one
particular manifestation of a religious bent
of mind which extended still farther. See
Vol. I. p. 43, f.
* The author of the Clementines proba-
bly belonged to that class of the Ebionites
who acknowledged the supernatural birth of
Christ: for in opposing those who acknowl-
edged the prophets of the Old Testament,
but did not reckon Adam among the proph-
ets, he says, (Hom. III. c. 20:) “If one
cannot discern the holy spirit of the Mes-
siah in the man produced immediately by
God’s creative hand, (τῷ ὑπὸ χειρῶν ϑεοῦ
κυοφορηϑέντι ἀνϑρώπῳ,) πῶς ἑτέρῳ τινὶ ἐκ
μυσαρας σταγόνος γεγενημένῳ διδοὺς ἔχειν,
οὐ τὰ μέγιστα ἀσεβεῖ 1 It seems implied
here, that in the last form of manifestation
of the Adam-spirit, there must have been
something analogous to the immediate ex-
ercise of God’s creative power, as contra-
distinguished from ordinary birth, ἐκ μυσα-
ρας σταγόνος, (the way in which the false
prophets came into existence.) It is true,
the question arises then, how he represent-
ed to himself the origin of others, whom he
regarded no less as forms of manifestation
of the primal spirit.
358 THE CLEMENTINES.
the great mass of worldly minded Jews were unwilling to acknowledge ~
Jesus as the Messiah, because they did not find realized in him ever
feature of the Messiah’s image presented to them in the prophets ;
while the Christian church teachers, without distinguishing the peculiar
positions held by the prophets in the development of the Theocracy
from the more advanced position of Christianity, contrived by allegori-
cal shifts to introduce the fully developed Christian scheme into the
prophets; while the opponents of Judaism among the Gnostics laid hold
of the discrepancy between the appearance of Christ and the idea of
the Messiah contained in the letter of the prophetic writings, to prove
that an absolute opposition existed betwixt Judaism and Christianity ; —
the author of the Clementines opposed to all this another view of the
idea of inspiration and of the prophetic gift, by which, while the divine
character of the Mosaic religion was upheld, the writings of the proph-
ets were represented not as constituting any part which belonged to the
progressive completion of that religion, but as something wholly alien
from it. He may have attached himself toa sect among the Jews
which exalted Moses far above the prophets, and which placed the
writings of the prophets, to say the least, far below the Pentateuch.!
This view of the corruption of the original truth by becoming inter-
mixed with foreign elements in the records of revelation, stands con-
nected with a remarkable idea concerning the process of the develop-
ment of religious faith, and the law observed by the revelations of God
to mankind. That intermixture was designed, for instance, for the
special purpose of trying the godlike temper in man. The conscious-
ness of God, love to God, should be so strongly developed in the man
of piety, as to reject at once as spurious all those declarations at vari-
ance with it, which have become incorporated into the records of relig-
ion. ‘The criterion, accordingly, in this case, was in the disposition ; —
every thing was to depend on the cherishing of ἃ disposition in which
genuine faith had become rooted.2 “‘ The Holy Scriptures do not lead
men into error, but only cause the hidden disposition of every one to
be made manifest. ‘Thus each man finds a God in the Holy Scriptures
such as he would have him to be.”? In another recension of this
work, the Recognitions of Clement, which are known to us only in the
shape given to them by the version of Rufinus, this idea is also applied
to God’s mode of revealing himself in the works of nature and in the
entire life of humanity; ‘‘ that which may create doubt every where ac-
1 Epiphanius knew of an Ebionite party, νήσεως τοὺς προφήτας Δλελαληκέναι. In
who received the Pentateuch alone as the
divine book of the Old Testament, yet did
not admit the authority even of this in its
whole extent, and who acknowledged Christ
alone as a true prophet, and represented
the prophets of the Old Testament as
prophets endowed merely with human in-
sight, συνέσεως προφήτας, Kai οὐκ ἀληϑείας.
Heeres. 80. 6. 15 et 18. A depreciation of
the prophets springing out of some such
Ebionite principle, we find described also in
the words of Methodius, who wrote in the
beginning of the 4th century: ’ES ἐδίας κι-
Combefis. bibliotheez greecor. patr. auctari-
um novissimum Pars I. f. 113. Paris, 1672.
2 As to the end which the introduction of
those false declarations, (τῶν βλασφήῆμων
περικοπῶν) were to subserve, the Homilies
say: Τούτο γέγονεν λόγῳ καὶ κρίσει, ὅπως
ἐλεγχϑῶσιν, τίνες τολμῶσιν τὰ κατὰ τὸν
ϑεὸν γραφέντα φιληκόως ἔχειν, τίνες τε
στοργῇ τῇ πρὸς αὐτὸν τὰ κατ’ αὐτοῦ λεγό-
μενα μὴ μόνον ἀπιστεῖν, ἀλλὰ μηδὲ τὴν
ἀρχὴν ἀκούειν ἀνέχεσϑαι. Hom. II. c. 38
3 Hom. XVI. c. 10.
THE CLEMENTINES. 359
companying that which leads to faith in a divine providence.” ! It is
interesting to observe, how the author of the Clementines was led by his
peculiar cosmological and theological system to express, for the first time,
that great and fruitful idea which the profound Pascal, from an entire-
ly different point of view, has so beautifully unfolded in his apologetic
“¢ Thoughts ;’? —the idea in which various difficulties, standing in the
way of religious faith, first meet their solution, and which points to the
true connection between believing piety and liberal science.
Strongly prominent as the conception of outward revelation, of the
authority of a true prophet, is made in the Clementines, no less care-
fully notwithstanding is the author of this work on his guard, as is evi-
dent from what has been said, against giving a one-sided outwardness
to the supranaturalist prmciple. The universal revelation proceeding
from Adam becomes — as we see —at the same time, an inward one in
the conscience. Every new revelation, by which the matter of the first
was to be restored to its original purity, 1s calculated with reference to
the inward state of recipiency, the inner consciousness of God and of
truth. The good man dares to believe nothing, on whatever authority
it may be presented, which stands in contradiction with God (the gen-
eral idea of God) and with God’s creation. The nature related to
God is the spot where the inner revelation of God takes place. In the
truth, implanted by God in the depths of the human mind, all other
truth is contained ;— the revelation of the Divine Spirit does but bring
this up to consciousness.? This revelation of God, coming forth from
within, is something higher and more trust-worthy than any revelation
by visions and dreams, which, after all, is something without the man,
and pre-supposes in him an estrangement from the God, who stands to
him in so outward a relation.®
According to the doctrme of this work, then, the first father of the
human race was moved by the love of his children, scattered through-
out the world, to appear once more on the earth in the person of Jesus
himself, for the purpose of purifying the original religion from the addi-
tions which distorted it. This purpose of his appearance is intimated
by him, when he says, Matth. 5: 17, ““ Think not I am come to destroy
the law,* but to [16]. What he has destroyed, then, cannot possibly
belong to what he calls the law, to,that primitive religion.® He appeared
particularly for the purpose of extending his blessings to his other chil-
dren, to the Gentiles, and of delivering to them also that pure, primi-
tive religion, which had been constantly handed down by a consecrated
few among the Jewish people.® Hence the doctrine of Christ is alto-
gether one with the pure and original doctrine of Moses. The Jewish
mystic, the Essenian or any person of that class, who embraced Chris-
1 Nihil omnino est, quod fidem providen-
tiv faciat, et non habeat e contrario aliud
ad infidelitatem paratum. Recognition. 1.
VIIL. c. 53.
2 Ἔν τῇ ἐν ἡμῖν ἐκ Seod τεϑείσῃ σπερμα-
τικῶς πᾶσα ἔνεστιν ἡ ἀλήϑεια, ϑεοῦ δὲ
χειρὶ σκέπεται καὶ ἀποκαλύπτεται.
δ Hom. XVII. § 18: Τὰ τῆς ὀργῆς δι᾽
ὁραμάτων καὶ ἐνυπνίων, τὰ δὲ πρὸς φίλον
στόμα κατὰ στόμα.
4 The words “ τοὺς προφήτας" are arbi-
trarily omitted here, because the prophets
were not recognized by the author.
5 Hom. III. § 51.
6 Τὰ ἀπ’ αἰῶνος ἔν κρυπτῷ ἀξίοις παρα-
διδόμενα κηρύσσων
360 THE CLEMENTINES.
tianity, was not obliged to adopt a new doctrine; the doctrine of Christ
was for him but a confirmation of this earlier religious belief; he only
rejoiced to behold that secret doctrme now made the common property
of mankind, —a thing which before seemed to him impracticable. In
Jesus he witnessed a new appearance of that Adam, whom he had con-
stantly reverenced as the source of all that is true and godlike in hu-
manity. ‘None but the father could so love his own children, as
Jesus loved men. His greatest sorrow was, that he must be striven
against by those in their ignorance, for whom he strove as his children ;
and yet he loved them that hated him, yet he wept over the disobe-
dient, yet he blessed them that blasphemed him, yet he prayed for his
enemies; and these things he not only did himself, as a father, but also
taught his disciples to pursue the same course of conduct towards men
as their brethren.” }
Hence, then, the conclusion —“ that the same primitive religion is
to be found in the pure doctrine of Moses, and in Christianity ; — he
who possesses the former, may dispense with the latter; and he who
possesses the latter, with the former:— provided the Jew does not
blaspheme Christ, whom he knows not, nor the Christian, Moses, whom
he knows not. But he who is counted worthy of attaiming to the
knowledge of both, to find in the doctrine announced by both but one —
and the same truth, is to be esteemed as a man rich in God, — one
who has found in the old that which has become new, and in the new,
that which is old ; —an allusion, doubtless, to the passage in Matth. 13:
52.2 The Jew and the Christian owe it entirely to the grace of God,
that they have been led by these revelations of the primal man, — re-
peated under different forms, one by Moses, another by Christ, — to
the knowledge of the Divine will. After they have obtained this, then,
without any help from themselves, that which now does depend on
themselves is, to carry out in their conduct all that is prescribed by
Moses or by Christ. Itisin this way, too,they entitle themselves to a
reward.”
Now if we must recognize, in the author of the Clementines, after
this exposition of his system, the representative of some Jewish princi-
ple of doctrine, peculiarly modified by a way of thinking closely allied —
to Essenism, a principle according to which the work of Christ is not
prominently set forth as the main point, but Christ is considered simply
in the light of a teacher and lawgiver, the revealer of the truth which
had been previously taught and transmitted as a secret doctrine ;—
then it becomes evident in what sort of relation, or rather opposition, he
must have stood to the teachings of the Apostle Paul. The Jewish
principle, apprehended in this exclusive and one-sided manner, was wont
to express a peculiar hostility to this Apostle ; we may expect, therefore,
to find the same hostile relation existing in the case before us. It 18
true, Paul is nowhere mentioned by name; but the author may have
1 Hom. IIT. § 19. ἀνὴρ ἐν ϑεῷ πλούσιος κατηρίϑμηται, τά TE
2 Hom. VIII. § 7; Πλὴν 7 τις καταξιω- ἀρχαῖα νέα τῷ χρόνω καὶ τὰ καινὰ παλαιὰ
Vein τοὺς ἀμφοτέρους ἐπιγνῶναι, ὡς μιᾶς νενοηκώς.
διδασκαλίας ὑπ’ αὐτῶν κεκηρυγμένης, οὗτος
THE CLEMENTINES. 361
had his reasons for preferring to attack the principles of the Apostle,
without introducing his name ; and this is the course actually taken in
the epistle of Peter to James, prefixed to the Clementines ;! where, by
the unknown enemy, who corrupted the doctrine harmonizing with the
Mosaic law, which was preached by Peter, no other person can be un-
derstood than Paul.” If it was of any consequence to the author of the
Clementines to carry out the idea of his work in a consistent manner,
without playing his part falsely, he could allow nothing to be seen in
the present but the germ of the future; and was obliged to represent
those tendencies of his own time, which he really meant to combat, as
though they had been already attacked in their principle by the Apos-
tle Peter. Accordingly he assails several of the tendencies which first
began to appear in the bud during the second century, such as Gnosti-
cism, perhaps also Montanism; but he transfers them all to the contem-
porary of the Apostle Peter, Simon Magus, who, on account of the
opinion entertained of him in the first centuries, was very generally re-
garded as the representative and forerunner of all the heretical tenden-
cies of later times. As Peter is the representative of the pure doctrine
of revelation; so in his view every thing conspired in the person of
Simon Magus to denote the blending together of all erroneous tenden-
cles in one image, wherein the analogies to individual appearances in
later times cannot be distinguished with certainty. In the sense of the
author, the Pauline doctrine concerning the relation of the gospel to
the law belonged, without any doubt, among the number of these. And
the remark is, in all probability, aimed against the Apostle Paul, when
Peter says to Simon Magus, ‘“‘ Why should Christ have remained with
his disciples and instructed them.an entire year,® if one might be formed
1 This perhaps did not proceed from the
same author as the Clementines. So we
might conclude from the fact, that he dif-
fers from the Clementines in his view of the
Old Testament prophets, inasmuch as their
divine authority is presupposed, and only
the necessity of having a key to the right
understanding of them argued from the
ambiguity of their language.
2 It is very evident that Peter alludes to
what is related in the epistle of Paul to the
Galatians, when he says: “I see already
the beginning of the evil; for some of the
Gentiles have rejected the doctrines taught
by me, which are in harmony with the law,
having adopted an anti-legal and fabulous
doctrine from the man who is my enemy,
(τοῦ ἐχϑροῦ ἀνϑρώπου ἄνομόν τινα καὶ
φλυαρώδη προσηκάμενοι διδασκαλίαν.) And
this is what some have undertaken to do
even during my life-time, wresting my
words by various false interpretations, to
the subversion of the law, as if I also were
really, though I did not openly express it,
of the same opinion.”
8 A supposition, of which we find many
traces even in writers belonging to the first
century, and which might have easily orig-
VOL. I. 31
inated in the defective chronological ar-
rangement of events in the gospel history,
as we find it the synoptical writers. Had
the author known, however, from the gos-
pel of John, that the ministry of Christ lasted
several years, he assuredly had special good
reason for putting down several years instead
of one. We shall find it probable, there-
fore, that he made no use of John’s gospel.
Yet there are to be found in the Clemen-
tines declarations of Christ, which bear a
close resemblance to the altogether peculiar
type of Christ’s discourses as exhibited in
this gospel, and which appear so nearly the
same with particular sayings of Christ,
which are nowhere to be met with but in
this gospel, that we cannot avoid perceiving
them to be essentially identical. We must
either suppose, then, that these sayings
came to the knowledge of the author
through some other collection or narrative
drawn from the gospel of John, or that he
found in his εὐαγγέλιον ka¥ ‘EGpaiove such
words of Christ taken from tradition, which
John has communicated in the original
connection in which they were spoken. The
latter will appear to have been the true state
of the case, if we compare the form of these
362 RELATIONS OF PAGAN CHRISTIANS
into a teacher by a vision? If, however, thou hast been made an apos-
tle after having been instructed by him in a momentary appearance,
then preach his words, love his apostles, and fight not against me, who
have lived in his society.’ ‘There appears also to be some allusion to
the reaction of the Jewish Christian scheme against the Pauline type
of doctrine, which took place at the close of the age of St. Paul, when
Peter lays it down as a law, that, as the appearance of falsehood must
uniformly precede the revelation of the truth, — Simon Magus having
preceded Peter, — so the false gospel must first be spread by a teacher
of error, (Paul,) and then, after the destruction of the temple, the true
gospel must be secretly disseminated, for the rectification of the subse-
quent heresies, (an accordance with that taste for mystery which char-
acterized a tendency so closely allied to Essenism ;)? and so likewise at
the end of all, the Antichrist would precede the appearance of Christ.
It must have proved difficult, it is true, for that rigid Ebionitism
which maintained the perpetual validity of the Mosaic law, when the
Christian church had once established itself on an independent footing
among the pagans, to nike proselytes from among the members of that
body ; but it seems to follow, notwithstanding, from the words of Justin
Martyr, which have been cited above, that such attempts still continued
to be made in his time, and not always without success; for he speaks
of Pagan Christians, who had been mduced to unite the observance of
the Mosaic law with the Christian faith.®
_ As it would appear, then, from the exposition which has been given,
that there were various grades of difference amongst those who were
inclined to the Ebionite way of thinking, so there were also such grades
of difference amongst the Pagan Christians in their relation to the Ehbi-
onites ; from a mild and tolerant, intermediate tendency, to downright
opposition. In these diversities, too, we meet once more with those
various shades which had already begun to appear in the apostolic age.
On both sides, error could find some point of union. ‘That tendency
which strove to reconcile the differences between Jewish and Pagan
Christians, might be led wrong by the habit of surrendering itself too
much to the influence of the Jewish spirit; the more repulsive tenden-
sayings, as they occur in the Clementines,
with the form in which we find them in the
gospel according to John.
1 Hom. XVII. § 19.
2 Hom. 11. 6. 17: Πρῶτον ψευδὲς δεῖ
ἐλϑεῖν εὐαγγέλιον bro πλάνου τινὸς, καὶ EY
οὕτως, μετὰ καϑαίρεσιν τοῦ ἁγίου τόπου, εὐ-
αγγέλιον ἀληϑὲς κρύφα διαπεμφϑῆναι.
3 Justin’s words are, (]. ο. f. 266:) Τοὺς
δὲ πειϑομένους αὐτοῖς ἐπὶ τὴν ἔννομον πο-
λιτείαν μετὰ τοῦ φυλάσσειν τὴν εἰς τὸν
Χριστὸν τοῦ ϑεοῦ ὁμολογίαν καὶ σωϑῆσεσ-
Yat ἴσως ὑπολαμβάνω. We take it for
granted, in the view of the matter which
we have given in the text, that the author
is here speaking not of Jews but of pagans.
On the other hand, the Diaconus C. Semisch
in his Monograph on Justin Martyr, (Theil
11. 5. 236, Anm. 1,) a work distinguished
for profound, extensive and candid inquiry,
understands the author as alluding in this
case also to Jews. But since, in the preced-
ing passage, those Jewish Christians have
been described who were for constraining
the pagans to observe the Mosaic law, I do
πόΐ see how we can suppose that Jews are
meant again by “those who followed them,
and passed over to the observance of the
law.” The latter must necessarily be a
different class from the former, and there-
fore pagan Christians only can be meant.
It is evident, moreover, that Justin does not
express himself with the same mildness in
speaking of the latter, as in speaking of the
former; for with regard to one class he
simply testifies his disapprobation, but with
regard to the others he says doubtfully, “ he
believes they would perhaps be saved”
TO JEWISH. JUSTIN MARTYR. 563
ey might in this way be pushed onward to an ultra Paulinism, breaking
loose from the connection of all the other types of apostolic doctrine,
and gradually passing over into the province of Gnosticism. These
more rigid Pagan Christians, who by no means adhered to the genuine
principles of St. Paul, we find represented by that class of whom Justin
says, that they pronounced the like sentence of condemnation on all
who still observed the Mosaic law, even those who were not wishing to
obtrude it on the Gentile Christians; maintamed that such could not
be saved ; and renounced all Christian fellowship and all manner of
intercourse with them.! The mlder tendency of the Pagan Christian
party is presented to us, on the other hand, in the person of Justin
Martyr himself. He is ready to extend the right hand of fellowship to
those Jewish Christians, who, although they observed the Mosaic law
for themselves, yet were not for obligmg the Gentiles to do the same.
He knew how to overlook the weakness of a subordinate position,?
which must present itselfin the interval between Judaism and Gentilism ;
to distinguish an inferior and still defective stage of Christian knowl-
edge, from the heretical element. But even on those Jewish Chris-
tians who, while they maimtained the adsolute validity of the Mosaic
law, yet united with it faith in Christ, he pronounced no anathema, ex-
cluding them from salvation, but simply witnessed that he could not
agree with them. And, what is still more, even from the less excusa-
ble Gentile Christians, who had allowed themselves to be drawn away,
by the deceptive representations of Judaizing proselyte makers, to adopt
the Mosaic law, even from these he ventures not to exclude all hope of
salvation ; he says, they may perhaps be saved by their faith in Jesus as
their Saviour. He is ever true to the principle of the apostolic church, that
faith in Jesus as the Messiah is the sole ground of salvation; and this
faith he still acknowledges to exist, even where it 1s accompanied with
all defective Christian knowledge. So mildly did he judge respecting
those who were still entangled in that error; although he must have
known, without doubt, that they were far removed, not only im their views
of the Mosaic law, but also in their opinion concerning the person of
Christ, from what he considered to be Christian truth. He speaks ex-
pressly, also, of those who recognized Christ barely as a man born of
men,° and without adding any harsher word, he simply says, he does
not agree with them,* because he held only to the doctrine of Christ
and of the prophets. He was under the necessity of speaking with
1 Μηδὲ κοινωνεῖν ὁμιλίας ἢ ἑστίας τοῖς
τοιούτοις τολμῶντες.
2 Διὰ τοῦ ἀσϑενὲς τῆς γνώγης, as he ex-
presses it.
8 Ed. Colon. f. 267. It is the Ebionites,
without doubt, whom he has particularly in
view here; although other Christians of
similar views may be meant at the same
time, if we may assume that the reading
of the manuscript is correct: “ Τινὲς ἀπὸ
τοῦ ἡμετέρου γένους." Yet taking into
consideration, that the phrase “ ὑμέτερον
γένος" is a designation of the Jews, and that
it was observed just before, that the doctrine
of a preéxisting divine nature of the Messiah
was one peculiarly foreign to those of their
race, viz. the Jewish, we might be led to
conjecture, that Justin expressed himself
thus: “ Hence there are many of your rave,
(of Jewish descent,) who do indeed ac-
knowledge Jesus as the Messiah, but hold
him to be a mere man.” We do not ven-
ture, however, fo pronounce the reading
“ἡμετέρου to be the one necessarily re-
quired by the context.
4 Οἷς οὐ συντίϑεμαι.
364 CORRUPTIONS OF EBIONITISM.
more sharpness against the Gnostics, since by these, as will hereafter
be shown, the fundamental doctrine itself of the historical Christ was
attacked.
This mild tone of judgment with regard to the Ebionites by no means
warrants us, then, to suppose that Justin himself was inclined to Ebio-
nitism.! The very manner in which he expresses himself with regard
to the Judaizing Christians, as parties with whom he had no sympathy,
is sufficient evidence to the contrary, — as well as the Pauline element
of his Theology, respecting which there can be no mistake. Indeed,
how could that man be possibly inclined to Ebionitism, who could assert
that Christians of a more genuine stamp sprang from the, midst of the
pagans, than from the midst of the Jews,?— who gave it to be under-
stood that the genuine and full understanding of Christianity must first
proceed from the pagans.
Such mildness in passing judgment on the different stages of devel-
opment in Christianity did not, indeed, last for any length of time. It
is only among the Alexandrian church teachers that the traces of such
mildness once more make their appearance ; and indeed this was a pe-
culiarity which stood connected with their whole tendency of mind,
hereafter to be described. Thus Origen* again recognizes in these Ebio-
nites weak brethren, whom Christ notwithstanding did not reject; for
he was even to them the Messiah, from whom they expected all their
help, although they acknowledged in him only the Son of David, not
the Son of God. In his fine allegorical exposition of the story of Bar-
timeus, Mark 10: 46, he represents the blind man who accosted Jesus
as the Ebionite, and the many who bid him to be silent, as the be-
lievers from among the heathen, who for the most part have higher
views of the person of Jesus. “ But,’ he continues, “although the
many bid him be silent, he cries still the more,esince he believes on
Jesus, although he believes on him rather after the human manner,®
and says, Son of David, have mercy on me.”’ ©
From Ebionitism, however, we must distinguish’ certain elements,
possessing some affinity with Hbionitism, but mvolving a grossly mate-
rial view of Christianity, since they adhered to the sensuous envelope
of the letter, and failed of penetrating to its spirit; that materialist ele-
ment of the religious spirit, in affinity with the Jewish position, which
betrayed itself, for example, m the
1 As is maintained by many in modern
times. For the history 4nd also a thorough
refutation of this opinion, consult the above
cited work of Semisch, (Th. 11. p. 233.)
2 That he never quotes St. Paul by name,
can be no evidence to the contrary; although
we should not be inclined, with Semisch, to
account for this silence on the ground that
the Dialogue cum Tryphone was written
expressly with reference to the Jews. We
find elements derived from the apostle John
also in the same work, although John is
nowhere named; and in general, with the
exception of the scriptures of the Old Tes-
tament, no writing is cited by name but the
Commentaries of the Apostles.
anthropo-morphism and anthropo-pa-
8 See above, Vol. I. p. 63.
- © Matth. T. XVI c. 12.
5 Tliorevwv μὲν ἐπὶ τὸν ᾿Ιησοῦν, ἀνϑρω-
πικώτερον δὲ πιστεύων.
8 οἵτινες παρ᾽ ὀλίγους ἅπαντες πεπιστεύ-
κασιν αὐτὸν ἐκ παρϑένου γεγενῆσθϑαι.
This theory, in the germ, is to be found
in Clement of Alexandria: Oi μὲν πολλοὶ
υἱὲ Δαβὶδ ἐλέησόν με ἔλεγον, ὀλίγοι δὲ υἱὸν
ἐγίγνωσκον τοῦ ϑεοῦ. Strom, |. VI. τ. 680.
7 The neglect of this distinction, and the
too indiscriminate application of the term
Ebionitism, have, in recent times, given
occasion to many arbitrary historical com-
binations and hypotheses.
CONTACT OF EASTERN AND WESTERN MIND. 365
thism of the doctrine concerning God; in the low, worldly views of the
kingdom to be founded by Christ on earth; in Chiliasm. <A tendency
of this kind might easily take its rise also in paganism, since it found a
ready point of union in the sensuous element of spiritual culture gener-
ally ; and this would, of itself, stand forth prominently as the first stage
of evolution, until the influence of Christianity, like the leaven, had
more fully penetrated the entire mode of thinking. Although we find
among Jewish tendencies the first traces of an intermixture of the theo-
eratic principles of the Old and New Testaments, and hence the trans-
ference of the Old Testament priesthood mto the Christian church,! yet
it by no means follows, that this corruption of the great Christian prin-
ciple, concerning which we have spoken in the history of the church
constitution, is to be traced ultimately and every where to such a
source. We see the opposite case to this in the Roman church, where
the development of the Christian life, which proceeded in the first place
from a Pauline, Gentile Christian principle,” could afterwards, through
that outward and formal notion of the church which found its point of
attachment in the political element of the Roman spirit, make open
room for the reaction of the Jewish element that had been vanquished
by Paul. Ξ
This new intermixture of Jewish and Christian principles contributed
to call forth the reaction of that opposite tendency of mind, already de-
scribed as to its great features in the introductory remarks to the pres-
ent section,— we mean the Gnostic tendency, — which at length must
bring about a total separation of Christianity from its organic connec-
tion with Judaism. But Gnosticism is one link of a greater series of
phenomena peculiar to this period, originating in the vast mterchange
-among nations which this age witnessed, the contact of the East with
the West, and the intermingling of the Eastern and Western spirit, —
such a series of events as occurs in history only at rare intervals.
We see how Christianity announces itself to the Hast and the West
as a new power in the history of the world; how oriental and occidental
minds are attracted by it, and peculiar combinations of both are formed
under the influence of Christianity; a proof of the great energy with
which it begins to operate on the spiritual life of the Eastern and West-
ern nations. A transient, though stupendous phenomenon indeed, but
premonitory of the enduring influence which Christianity was to pro-
duce in more distant future times. This series of phenomena we now
propose more distinctly to consider.
Sects which originated in the blending of Christianity with ancient Oriental Views.
The list of these commences with the great family of the Gnostic
sects, in which this intermingling of the old oriental spirit with Chris-
tianity made its earliest appearance. We shall speak first therefore
of the
1 On this ground, we find asserted alrea- 2 See the evidence in favor of this origin
dy, (in Testament. IV. of Judas, c. 21,) of the Roman church, in my Apostol.
Hildebrand’s principle of the subordination Zeitalter, Bd. I. S. 384 ff. We shall return
of the kingdom to the priesthood : ‘Q¢ izep- ἴο the subject once more in another connec-
ἔχει οὐρανὸς τῆς γῆς, οὕτως ὑπερέχει Veod tion.
ἱερατεία τῆς ἐπὶ γῆς βασιλείας.
91"
366 GNOSTICISM.
Gnostic Sects.
"
General Remarks on the Origin and Character of these Sects, on their Common Characteristics,
and the Specific Differences, constituting the Grounds of their Subdivision.
To appreciate rightly the historical importance of this great phe-
nomenon, we must contemplate it from several different points of view.
We perceive in it, in the first place, the reaction of the aristocratic
spirit, ruling supreme in the life and making itself felt in the religion
and philosophy of the old world, against the Christian principle by
which it was overthrown, against the recognition of one religious faith
whereby all the distinctions hitherto subsisting among men in relation to
the higher life were to be abolished, and all united together in one
higher fellowship of life. As the aristocracy of knowledge and culture
had at first spurned this faith with contempt, and set itself in hostile
opposition to it, so afterwards, when Christianity had found its way among
the educated men and seekers after wisdom, the same principle was at-
tracted itself on many sides by Christianity, and sought to incorporate
itself with it. ΤῸ such a tendency the very name employed to desig-
nate this phenomenon, the Gnosis, refers, which denotes the religion of
knowledge and of one who knows, as opposed to the faith of the multi-
tude (πίστις τῶν πολλῶν.) We have seen! how already among the Alex-
andrian Jews such a philosophic system of religion had been formed
under the influence of Platonism, which would exalt itself above, or set
itself up in opposition to, the common religious faith. Such a tendency
now found its way into Christianity. But in the present case, Orien-
talism was added to Hellenism, — the Oriental Z’heosophy to the Pla-
tonic philosophy. As on the practical side, in church life, the old.
distinction between priesthood and laity had insinuated itself into the
development of Christianity, so here we perceive a similar reaction of
the ante-christian principle on the theoretic side. As we find there the
antithesis between priesthood and laity, so here we find the antithesis
between knowers and believers, —a hierarchy of another kind. Beside »
that practical distinction between the spiritual and the secular class, the
other distinction established itself, which had grown up in the theoretical
domain, — the distinction between the privileged natures, the men of
intellect, whose vocation it was to know, the πνευματικοῖ, and the rude
mass of the ψυχικοί, who could not rise above blind and implicit faith.
We may observe uniformly, that all reactions against the Christian
principle are first called forth by occasion of some defective or dis-
colored view of that principle, and are directed against this: and we
cannot fail to see, that it was so in the present instance. If greater
prominence had been given in the church to the genuine Pauline concep-
tion of faith, this reaction, originating in an over valuation of knowledge,
(that which Paul himself designated by the phrase σοφίαν ζητεῖν,) might
have arisen indeed; yet the elevation of mind which is grounded in
1 See the account of the Alexandrian theology in the general Introduction.
GNOSTICISM. 367
the essence of faith as thus understood, would not have been so easily
overlooked. But this conception had now become generally very much
obscured; and instead of it there was to be found only the notion of
faith, in the sense of trust on outward authority, which by itself alone
could not obtain the reward of eternal life, but must have added to it
besides, good works actuated by love. Such a faith might with good
reason be characterized as a subordinate position of the Christian life,
something which was more truly Jewish than Christian; and ‘this fur-
nished Gnosticism with a plausible reason for its depreciation of faith."
Again, it cannot be denied that faith, taken according to that outward
view of it, often placed itself in direct opposition to the strivmg after
knowledge ;- holding fast on every thing as positive, as given from
without, as an aggregate of separate, positive doctrines and precepts.
But in Christianity, while faith was the starting point, imasmuch as it is
the principle of completion for all that is purely human ; so the craving
after knowledge in religion was, without overstepping the limits of a
strict conformity to nature, also to find its satisfaction. It was neces-
sary, when Christianity entered into the spiritual life, that out of it
should grow the craving to arrive at some clear consciousness of the
connection between the truths communicated by revelation and the al-
ready existing mental possessions of mankind, — as also of the internal
harmony existing within the sphere of Christian truth itself as an or-
ganic whole. But wherever such a craving, instead of being met and
satisfied, must be violently suppressed, the one-sided tendency of the
Gnosis found in this some ground of justification. An exclusively the-
oretical tendency opposed itself to an exclusively practical one, and the
deficiency of the latter tended to introduce the former.”
The nature of Gnosticism, as a reaction of the antique principle in
religion against the Christian, stands closely connected with another
point. The opposition both between an esoteric sacerdotal doctrine
and an exoteric religion of the people, and between a philosophic relig-
1 The late Dr. Mohler made Gnosticism
a precursor of Protestantism, and in en-
deavoring to carry out his position, made
use of many arguments partially grounded
in truth. Among these half truths belongs
the following: that Gnosticism, so far as its
polemical attitude to the dominant church
is concerned, did undoubtedly agree with
Protestantism. But there was this differ-
ence; that the opposition in the two ten-
dencies sprang out of an altogether differ-
ent positive principle. In Gnosticism it
originated in a purely theoretical: principle,
a conception of the Gnosis which was for-
eign from the ground-position of Christi-
anity;—in Protestantism, on the other
hand, it sprang out of the Pauline concep-
tion of faith, once more restored and rein-
stated in its rights. Marcion alone consti-
tutes an exception, and he may with more
propriety be styled a precursor of Protestant-
ism. Thus at the basis of this whole theo-
ry of Mohler lies the truth, that Gnosticism,
in so far as it was a reaction against the
Jewish element that had become mixed in
with Christianity, was a precursor of Pro-
testantism ; to which, however, it must be
added, that as this reaction in Gnosticism
proceeded from a different principle, so it
was carried to an extreme which led to error
of another kind. Marcion constitutes an
exception in the first respect, not in the last.
But as a Jewish element mixed in with
Christianity is perceived in Catholicism,
when considered from the Protestant point
of view, so on the other hand, Gnostic ele-
ments might be naturally expected to mani-
fest themselves in Protestantism, as viewed
from the Catholic position.
2 Thus Origen told his friend Ambrosius
he had been conducted to a false Gnosis:
᾿Απορίᾳ τῶν πρεσβευόντων τὰ κρείττονα,
μὴ φέρων τὴν ἄλογον καὶ ἰδιωτικὴν πίστιν.
Orig. T. V. in Joann. § 4. T. 1. p. 172, ed
Lommatzsch.
368 GNOSTICISM.
ion and a mythical, popular faith, has its necessary ground in the fact,
that antiquity was destitute of any independent means, adapted alike to
all the stages of human culture, for satisfying the religious want. Such
a means was supplied for all in the faith in great historical facts, on
which the religious consciousness of all men alike was to depend. The
emancipation of religion, as well from all dependence on the elements
of the world, of which emancipation we have spoken in the history of
worship, as from dependence on the wisdom of the world, which knew
not God in his wisdom, was thereby secured. Now, as in the history
of worship we observed a reaction of the earlier principle, which would
force back religion once more under the yoke of the elements of the
world; so in the Gnosis we observe a reaction of this kind, whereby
religion was to forfeit on another side the freedom achieved for it by
Christ, and to be made again dependent on human speculation. Chris-
tianity gave a simple, universally comprehensible word for the solution
of all the enigmas which had occupied all thinking minds ; — a practi-
cal answer to all the questions, with the answering of which speculation
had busied itself in vain. It disposed the heart to a tone of feeling, by
virtue of which, doubts which could not be resolved or got rid of by the
efforts of speculative reason, were to be practically vanquished. But
Gnosticism would make the system of religion depend once more on a
speculative solution.of all these questions; would in this manner first
lay for it a firm foundation and provide for the correct understanding
of it, so that men were in this way first to learn to comprehend Chris-
tianity, first to attain that true firmness οἵ conviction, which no longer
depended on any external fact.
Now, with regard to the speculative element in these systems, we may
remark that itis not the product of reason divorced from history, and -
resolving to draw the whole out of its own depths. As we noticed in
the general Introduction, men had turned back again from the rational-
ist principle, with which the bloom and vigor of the ancient history
ended, into which Greek and Roman culture finally resolved itself, and
had begun to search after the vestiges of the revelation of divine thmgs
in lastory. The empty void into which a mere negative philosophy
merges, had taught the human spirit, craving after the real by virtue
of an instinctive necessity, to seek again after a more positive philoso-
phy. We have seen how, in this way, the efforts of a revived Platon-
ism to explore and compare together the theologumena of ancient peo-
ples, had arisen. The example of a Plutarch has shown us how this
tendency, proceeding out of Platonism itself, led to the fountains of the
ancient Kast. Platonism aimed to incorporate itself, it is true, with
every thing else; as this indeed resulted from the peculiar character
of the Grecian mind; but itself procured an entrance thereby for the
Oriental spirit, and the latter now revolted against all dominion of the
Grecian spirit. [Ὁ was for subjecting the Grecian element to its own
sway, and in its lofty flights soared far beyond the limits within which
the Platonic philosophy had caused reason, confined wholly within it-
self, to remain contented. The profound Plotinus felt himself called
upon afterwards to restore the original Platonism, as he believed it
GNOSTICISM. 369
should be systematically understood, to its purity and independence.
He must seek to release the Grecian spirit from the dominion of the
Oriental ; must stand forth as the defender of the old Hellenic philoso-
phy against the hanghtiness and pride of the Oriental spirit, as he saw
it exhibited in the Gnostics.1
Accordingly we may trace, in the Gnostic systems, different ele-
ments, although not blended together after the same manner in all, —
elements of Platonic philosophy, of Jewish theology, and of old Oriental
theosophy ; and a more enlarged acquaintance with the different re-
ligious systems of interior Asia might perhaps furnish many new par-
ticulars, throwing light on the connection of these systems; but at the
same time, great caution should doubtless be employed, lest, from an
agreement which might spring from an imner ground, from the same
essential tendencies of hyman nature, which result in like phenomena
under like circumstances, the conclusion should be directly drawn that
there had been some inter-communication from without. This Gnosis
arrayed itself against Judaism, as a religion too material, too earthly,
too confined, too little theosophic ; —for how devoid of spirituality, how
bald, how diminutive and empty must Judaism have appeared indeed,
to men of this intellectual. bent, compared with the old, colossal reli-
gious systems of Asia; although, to him who understands the great pur-
pose which religion is designed to answer in behalf of mankind, this
same comparison which led them to despise Judaism, first discloses its
full worth in relation to the religious development of humanity. Those
ancient religions seemed, in their enigmatical shapes, where man is
inclined to look for lofty wisdom much more than in what is simple, to
promise them far greater insight into the questions which excited their
inquiries.
Among the old Oriental systems of religion, Parsism, or the doc-
trines of Zoroaster, had particularly, by means of the intercourse of
nations through many ages, and the power of the Dualistic element,
which found a point of sympathy and union in the prevailing tone of |
the minds of this period, acquired great credit and influence, — of
which the Gnostic systems are themselves an evidence. Yet this doc-
trine appears here not to have been seized in a way suited to the origi-
nal spirit of Parsism; for this was a practical spirit. According to
Parsism, the creation of the good principle uniformly comes first ; pow-
ers of the kingdom of light are everywhere at work in the world ; —
Ahriman is but the disturbing and destructive principle. While the
votary of this system exercises an active and formative influence on
nature, governs and directs its wild energies and sets limits to destruc-
tion, he acts as a warrior in the service of Ormuzd for the overthrow
of Ahriman. But in the Gnostic systems, though not in all alike, this
_ practical element, this love of nature, retreats farther imto the back-
ground. Another spirit has here pervaded and remodeled this scheme.
The power of the ungodly principle in the world appears greater ; and
hence arises the tendency to represent the spirit in affinity with God as
1 See Ennead. II. 1. IX.
370 GNOSTICISM.
abstaining from nature, which is alien from it, rather than as exerting
upon it a shaping and formative influence. We recognize in the Gnos-
tic systems, considered on this side, rather the spirit of Brahmanism,
and especially of Buddhaism, — that longing of the soul for: release
from the bonds of matter, (the world of Sansara,) of nature ; — for
reunion with the primal spirit, from whom all life has flowed; that
striving after entire estrangement from human passions, and from all
sublunary things, which strove to pass beyond the limits of finite exist-
ence. ‘Though there is no need of looking after causes in the shape
of external influences, to account for such a direction of minds, which
might easily take this peculiar tone from inward causes, without any
impulse whatever from without; and although even such external influ-
ences themselves could not well be comprehended in their significancy,
without that point of union in the inner development of the spiritual
world, which has just been referred to, yet we have reason, notwith-
standing, to suppose an influence also of tendencies and ideas originat-
ing in those remote countries of the East. New investigations and
discoveries have pointed out the way through which Buddhaism might
spread its influence, even to, districts within the compass of the Roman
empire.
Although the Gnostic systems contain elements which had been de-
rived from various ancient systems of religion, yet they will never
admit of bemg explained as resulting simply from the mixture or com-
bination of such elements ;—it is a living principle peculiar to them-
selves, which animates most of these combinations. In the first place,
the age in which they were produced, stamped them with an altogether
peculiar character; for we may often observe that, in times of great
excitement, certain tendencies are imparted to a whole series of intel-
lectual phenomena resulting from such times, even where they stand in
no outward contact or connection with one another. There are certain
tendencies and ideas which exercise a wonderful power over everything
belonging to such periods. At the present time, it was the power of
the Dualistic principle, which harmonized with the prevailing temper
of the age, and in which the latter saw itself reflected.1 The ground-
tone in many of the more serious minds of this period, was a conscious:
ness of the power of evil, a feeling of dissatisfaction with the existing
state of things, aspiration after something beyond the limits of this
earth, the felt necessity of some new and higher order of things. This
fundamental tone also pervades the Gnostic systems ; but upon this
feeling Christianity exerted an altogether peculiar. influence, without
which the greater part of the Gnostic systems would have come to an
entirely different result. It was the idea constituting the peculiar
essence of Christianity, the idea of redemption, which modified this
fundamental tone of those systems ; although they were capable of seiz-
ing this idea only on a single side, and not in its whole compass and
with all the consequences resulting from it. When, in the Gnostic sys-
1 Just as the progressive movement in acquired, so the progressive movement in
our own time enables us to explain the the period of which we are speaking, ex-
power which the Pantheistic principle has plains the power of the Dualistic principle.
GNOSTICISM. 371
tems, the amazing impression is described, which the appearance of
Christ produced in the kingdom of the Demiurge, as revealing a new
and mighty principle which had entered the precincts of this lower
world, this was but a reflex image of the powerful impression which the
contemplation of the life of Christ, and of his deeply working influence
on humanity, had left on the minds of the founders of these systems.
It is evident how all earlier institutions seemed to them, in comparison
with Christianity, as nothing ; how the latter appeared to them as the
commencement of a great revolution in the life of the race. The ideas
of the restoration of a disturbed harmony of the universe ; of the con-
ducting of a fallen creation back to its original source ; of the reunion
of the earth with heaven; of the revelation of a higher, godlike life
im humanity, a life transcending the limits of mere human nature ; of
a new process of development which had entered into the whole earth-
ly system of the world —these and such were the ideas which, from
this time onward, formed the central pomt of these systems. The pecu-
liar and distinguishing aim of these Gnostics is, to grasp the appearance
of Christ, and the creation proceeding from him, in their connection
with the whole evolution of the universe. In that theogonie and cosmo-
gonic process of theirs, in which they go back to the original ground
of all existence, everything is referred backwards and forwards to the
fact of Christ’s appearance. What the Aposile Paul says respecting
the connection of the redemption with the creation, they made the
central pomt of a speculative system, and endeavored to understand
speculatively.
As it respects the particular class to which their speculations belong,
these Gnostics are Oriental Theosophists ; — men. with whom, for the
most part at least, the Oriental element had far the preponderance over
the Grecian. They differed radically from the thinkers of the West.
They moved rather amidst intuitions and symbols than conceptions.
Where the Western thinker would have framed to himself an abstract
conception, there stood before the-soul of the Gnostic a living appear-
ance, a living personality in vivid intuition. The conception seemed
to ‘him to be a thing without life. In the eye of the Gnostic every-
thing became hypostatized, which to the Western thinker existed only
as a conception. The image, and what the image represented, were, in
the Gnostic’s mode of representation, often confounded together ; so
that the one could not be divided from the other. Hurried along, in
spite of himself, from intuition to intuition, from image to image, by
the ideas floating before or filling his mind, he was in no condition to
evolve these ideas and place them in the clear light of consciousness.
But if we take pains to sift out the fundamental thoughts lying unde-
veloped in their symbols, and to unfold them clearly to our conscious-
ness, we shall see, gleaming through the surface, many ideas, which,
though not understood by their contemporaries, were destined, in far
later ages, to be seized upon once more, and to be more fully earried
out by a science regenerated through the influence of faith. Intuition,
1 We mean, 6. g., the ideas lying at the attached themselves to Judaism, respecting
root of the systems of those Gnostics who the connection of the Old with the New
372 GNOSTICISM.
anticipating the lapse of ages, here grasped m an immediate way, what
the process s of logical analysis was to master only after long and various
wanderings beyond and short of the truth.
The questions about which they especially busied themselves were
these: how to explain the transition from the. infinite to the finite ? —
how to conceive the beginning of the creation ? — how to conceive of
God as the author of a material world, so alien from his own essence ?
— whence, if God is perfect, the imperfections of this world ? —
whence the destructive powers in nature ? — whence is moral evil, if a
Holy God is man’s creator ?— whence the great diversity of natures
existing among men themselves, varying from minds which may prop-
erly be called. godlike, to those which appear to be utterly abandoned
to blind passions and without the vestige of a rational and moral
nature ?
Here Christianity separated entirely what belongs to the province of
religion, from what belongs to speculation and to a merely speculative
interest. And just by so doing, Christianity preserved religion from
Θ
the danger of confounding things divine with the things of this world, —
the intuition of God with that of nature. It directed the eye of the
mind beyond that whole series of the phenomena of the world, where,
in the chain of causes and effects, one thing ever evolves itself out of
another, to that almighty creative Word of God, by which the worlds
were framed; so that things | which are seen were not made of things
which do appear. Hebr. 11: 8. The creation was here apprehended,
as an incomprehensible fact, by the upward gaze of faith, which rose
above the position of the understanding, the faculty which would derive
all things from one another, which would explain everything, and hence
denies all immediate truth. ‘This one practically important truth, the
church was for holding fast in the doctrine of the creation from noth-
ing ;—- taking her stand in opposition to the ancient view, which would
condition God’s act of creation by a previously existing matter; and
which, in an anthropopathie manner, conceived of Him, not as the free,
self-sufficient Author of all existence, but as the fashioner of a material
already extant. The Gnosis would not acknowledge any such himits to
speculation. It would explain—clear up to the mental vision, how God
is the source and ground of all existence. It was thus obliged to place
in the essence of God himself a process of development, through which
God is the ground and source of all existence. From overlooking the
negative sense of the doctrine concerning the creation from nothing,
it was led to oppose against it the old principle, ‘‘ Nothing can come
out of nothing.” It substituted in place of this doctrine, the intuitive
idea of an eflux of all existence out of the supreme being of the Deity.
This idea of an emanation admits of being presented under a great
variety of images; under the symbol of an evolution of numbers out
of an original unity; of an eradiation of light from an original light ;
of a development of spiritual powers or ideas, acquiring self: subsistence ; ;
Testament; respecting the relation of the Christianity ; respecting inspiration, and the
prophetic element in the Old Testament to organic connection in history generally
GNOSTICISM. 373
of an expression in a series of syllables and tones, dying away gradu-
ally to an echo.
The idea of such an emanation answers to an obscure presentiment,
— deeply seated in the human soul, — of the positive element lying at
the root of the negative definition of the creation from nothing ; and in
this presentiment it found a foot-hold ; but at the same time it gave oc-
casion for a host of speculations, by which men would easily be led fur-
ther astray from, and in effect, would entirely lose sight of, the practi-
cally important ends of religious faith.
According to this view, God was represented as the self-included,
incomprehensible and origimal source of all perfection.1 From this
incomprehensible essence of God to finite things, it is impossible to con-
ceive of an immediate transition. Self-limitation is the starting point,
whence a communication of life on the part of God — the first passing
mto manifestation of the hidden Deity —begins; and from this pro-
ceeds all further selfdeveloping manifestation of the divine essence.”
Now, from this first link in the chain of life are, in the first’ place,
evolved the manifold powers or attributes, dwelling in the divine
essence, which, until that first self-affirmation, were all hidden in the
abyss of that essence; each of which attributes presents, on one par-
ticular side, the whole divine essence, and to each of which, in this
view, are applied the appropriate titles of God.? These divine powers,
evolving themselves to self-subsistent being, are hence the eee and
principles of all further evolution of life. The life contamed in them
developes and individualizes itself more and more; and in such a way,
that the successive grades of this evolution of life are ever sinking
lower, the spirits ever becoming feebler, the further they are removed
from the first Kink in the series. Here, we must admit, the Gnosis,
in attempting to explain the incomprehensible, falls continually into an-
thropopathism, and, without bemg aware of it, transfers to the eternal
the relations of time.
But supposing the origin of a purely spiritual world in affinity with
God might thus admit of being explained, that the evolution of different
grades of perfection in the spiritual world might thus be made clear to
the imagination ;—— yet how explain, by an emanation from God, the
starting into existence of the sensible world ; how account for the ori-
gin of evil? Even with regard to this last mentioned problem, the
rock on which speculation has so often split, mjuring in no slight
measure the attribute of God’s holiness and the freedom of rational,
accountable beings, the Gnosis was for giving speculation an unbounded
range. If God has bestowed on man a free will, and if this free will is
1 The Unfathomable Abyss, (βύϑος.) ac-
cording to Valentine, exalted above all pos-
sibility of designation, — of whom, properly
speaking, nothing can be predicated ;— the
ἀκατονόμαστος of Basilides, the ὧν of Philo.
2A πρώτη κατάληψις ἑαυτοῦ, the πρῶτον
καταληπτὸν τοῦ ϑεοῦ, hypostatically repre-
sented in ἃ νοῦς or λόγος.
8 Hence the different meanings given by
- the Gnostics to the word αἰών, which, be-
VOL. I.
sides its primitive signification, eternity, is
used by them to denote sometimes the
Eternal, as a distinguishing attribute of the
Supreme Essence, sometimes those original
divine powers above described, sometimes
the whole emanation-world = πλήρωμα, as
contradistinguished from the temporal world.
In the last mentioned sense it is employed
by Heracleon. Orig. T. XII. in Joann.
c. 11.
/
914 GNOSTICISM.
the cause of evil—said the Gnostics —its cause reverts back to God
himself. They would not allow of any distinction between permission
and causality on the part of God.! We see, in fact, how it is, that if
speculation is not content to acknowledge evil as a fact, as the act of
the creaturely will forsaking its natural dependence on God, and to be
explained from no other cause or quarter ; if speculation must explain
evil or its origin; then it must be driven either to violate God’s holi-
ness and deprive the opposition between good and evil of its objective
significancy, thus undermining the ideas of moral good and evil as to
their essence, by tracing back the causality of the latter to God, which
doctrine does indeed lie involved in Pantheism ;— or else it will limit
God’s almighty power, by supposing an absolute evil, an independent
ground of it beyond the divine control; which is done by Dualism.
Yet Dualism is driven, notwithstanding, to the very thing which it chief-
ly labors to avoid. The idea of evil, which it would firmly maintain, it
must really sap at the root, inasmuch as it imputes it to an outward
cause, and makes of it a self. subsistent nature, working with necessity ;
and thus it must, at the same time, involve itself in the contradiction
of supposing an independent existence out of God; therefore, since ab-
solute independence (aseity) can be predicated only of God, a God
who is not God, not good. In avoiding the first of these rocks, the
Gnostics foundered on the last.
They deemed it necessary to unite with the doctrine of emanation
that of Dualism, and sought to explain by the commixture of two hos-
tile kmgdoms, by the products of two opposite principles, the origin of
a world not answering to the divine idea, with all the defects cleaving
to it, all the evils it contains. And this hypothesis opened a wide field
for their speculations and their fanciful images. At this pomt were
evolved two different modes of contemplation, which still, however, in
these times of religious and philosophical eclecticism, do not stand so
directly opposed to each other, but often come in contact and. com-
mingle at various intermediate points ; — and in the end they are found
to be based on the same fundamental idea, though conceived on the one
side under a more speculative, on the other, under a more mythical
form. In one of these general schemes, the element of Grecian specu-
lation, in the other that of Oriental intuition, chiefly predominates ; and
hence these different modes give rise to the distinction of an Aleran-
drian and of a Syrian Gnosis (which latter was particularly modified
by the influence of Parsism) —in so far as these two forms of Gnosis
may be opposed to each other in abstracto, without any reference to the
cases where, in the varied phenomena of these times, they are found to
intermingle. In the former, the Platonic notion of the ὕλη predomi-
nates. ‘This is the dead, the unsubstantial— the boundary that limits -
from without the evolution of life, in that step-wise progression whereby
the perfect is ever evolving itself into the less perfect. This ὕλη, again,
is represented under various images — as the darkness that exists along
with the light; as the void (κένωμα, κενόν) in opposition to the fulness
1 Τὸ μὴ κωλυον, αἴτιόν ἐστιν, their usual motto in opposing the doctrine of the church
a...
ALEXANDRIAN AND SYRIAN GNOSIS. 3875
of the divine life; as the shadow that accompanies the light; as the
chaos, the stagnant, dark water. ‘This matter, dead in itself, possesses
by its own nature no active power, no nsus. ΑΒ life of every sort is
foreign to it, itself makes no encroachment on the divine. But since
the divine evolutions of life (the essences developing themselves out of
the progressive emanation) become feebler the further they are removed
from the first link in the series; since their connection with the first
becomes more loose at each successive step, hence, out of the last step
of the evolution proceeds an imperfect, defective product, which cannot
retain its connection with the divine chain of life, and sinks from the
world of Atons down into the chaos ;— or— which is the same notion
somewhat differently expressed — a drop from the fulness of the divine
life spills over into the bordering void.! Now first, the dead matter, by
commixture with the living, which it wanted, receives animation. But
at the same time also, the divine living particle becomes corrupted by
mingling with the chaotic mass. Existence becomes multiform ; there
springs up a subordinate, defective life. The foundation is laid for a
new world; a creation starts into being beyond the confines of the world
of emanation. But since now, on the other hand, the chaotic principle
of matter has acquired a sort of life, hence there arises a pure active
opposition to the godlike—a barely negative, blind, ungodly nature-
power, which obstinately resists all plastic imfluence of the divine ele-
ment: hence, as products of the spirit of the ὕλη, (of the πνεῦμα ὑλικόν,
Satan, malignant spirits, wicked men, in all of whom no reasonable,
no moral principle, no principle of a rational will, but blind passions
only have the ascendancy. ‘There is the same conflict: here as in the
scheme of Platonism, between the soul under the guidance of divine
reason, the νοῦς, and the soul blindly resisting reason,?— between the
rpovoia and the ἀνάγκη, the divine principle and the natural.
As Monoism contradicts what every man should know immediately —
the laws and facts of his moral consciousness ; so Dualism contradicts
the essence of reason which demands unity. Monoism, shrinking from
itself, leads to Dualism; and Dualism, sprmging from the desire to
comprehend everything, is forced by its very striving after this, through
the constraint of reason, which demands unity, to refer back the duality
to a prior unity, and resolve it into this latter. Thus was the Gnosis
forced out of its Dualism, and obliged to affirm the same which the
Cabbala and the New Platonism taught; namely, that matter is nothing
else than the necessary bounds® between being and not-being, which can
be conceived as having a subsistence for itself only by abstractiont — as
the opposite to existence, which, in case of an evolution of life from God,
must erise as its necessary limitation. In some such way, this Dual-
ism could resolve itself into an absolute Monoism, and so into Pantheism.
1 According to the schemes of the Ophites 4 By a λόγος νόϑος, according to the New
and of Bardesanes. Platonists.
' 2 See Plato leg. lib. X. p. 87-91, v. IX.; 5 Thus the Gnosties in Ireneus, Lib. II.
ed. Bipont. Plutarch. Quest. Platonic, c.4, are careful to defend themselves against
qu. IV. the charge of Dualism: Continere omnia
8 As it were the outer shell of existence, patrem omnium, et extra Pleroma esse nihil ;
ΓΞ. et id, quod extra et quod intus, dicere eos
Φ9
76 GNOSTICISM.
The other scheme accommodated itself more to the Parsic doctrine
concerning Ahriman and his kingdom ; —a doctrine which it would be
natural, especially for those Gnostic sects which originated in Syria, to
appropriate to themselves. ‘This theory assumed the existence of an
active, turbulent kingdom of evil, or of darkness, which, by its encroach-
ments on the kingdom of light, brought about a commixture of the light
with the darkness, of the godlike with the ungodlike. Different as these
two modes of contemplation may appear in description, yet we may recog-
nize in them both the same fundamental idea. In all cases where the lat-
ter mode of contemplation becomes somewhat more speculative, it passes
into the former; as will be seen in Manicheism, which, more than any
other Gnostic system, wears the stamp of the Parsic religion; and in all
cases where the former mode of conception assumes a more poetic dress,
strives to present itself more vividly to the imagination, it passes im-
perceptibly into the latter;+ and this it might do sometimes with the
distinct consciousness, that the whole was but a symbolical dress, where-
by abstract conceptions were to be rendered more vivid to the imagina-
tion. We have an example of this kind in the profound thinker, Ploti-
nus, who was very far from being inclined to substitute a conflict of
principles beginning at a certain point, in the place of a development
going on with immanent necessity, from first to last, even to the ex-
treme bounds of all existence.
Even among the Platonists there were those who supposed, that along
with an unorganized, inert matter, the substance of the corporeal world,
there existed from the beginning a blind, lawless motive power, an un-
godlike soul, as its origmal moving and active principle. As the
inorganic substance was organized into a corporeal world by the plastic
power of the Deity, so by the same power, law and reason were com-
municated to that turbulent, irrational soul. Thus the chaos of the
ὕλη was transformed. into an organized world, and that blind soul into
a rational principle —a mundane soul, animating the universe. As
from the latter of these proceeds all rational, spiritual life in humanity ;
so from the former proceeds all that is irrational, all that is under the —
blind sway of passion and appetite — all malignant spirits are its proge-
ny. It is easy to see how the idea of this ψυχὴ ἄλογος, brooding over
chaos, would coincide with the idea of a Satan originally presiding over
the kingdom of darkness.”
In the system of the Sabzeans, or disciples of John,* which was allied,
secundum agnitionem et ignorantiam, sed
non secundum localem distantiam. The
lower creation was comprehended in the
Pleroma, velut in tunica maculam.
1 As, for example, when Plotinus repre-
sents matter as being seized with a longing
after light or the soul, and describes how it
darkens the light in attempting to embrace
it. Plotin in Enneas. I. lib. VIII. c. 14:
Ὕλη παροῦσα προσαιτεῖ, καὶ οἷον ἐνοχλεῖ,
καὶ εἰς τὸ εἴτω παρελϑεῖν ἐθέλει, τὴν δὲ
ἄλλαμψιν καὶ τὸ ἔκειϑεν φῶς ἔσκότωσε τῇ
μίξει.
2See Plutarch. de anime Broctiati e
Timzo, particularly c.9. Opera ed. Hutten.
T. XIII. page 296.
3 This sect of the Sabzeans, (βαπτισταί,
from y2¥,) Nazareans, Mandeans, (accord-
ing to Norberg, from yp}, μαϑηταί or γνω-
στικοῖΐ.) evidently took its origin from those
disciples of John the Baptist, who, contrary
to the spirit and intention of their master,
adopted, after his martyrdom, a course hos-
tile to Christianity. We find traces of them,
mixed up with fabulous matter, in the
Clementines and in the Recognitiones Cle-
mentis, perhaps also in the ἡμεροβαπτισταῖς
ALEXANDRIAN AND SYRIAN GNOSIS. 3TT
beyond doubt, by derivation, with the Syrian Gnosis, there does appear,
indeed, to have been an independent kingdom of darkness, with its own
powers ; but this has no influence on the hgher kingdom of hight. The
thought conceived by one of the geni belonging to the world of light, of
separating himself from the great primal Fountain, for whose glory all
creatures should exist, and of establishing a separate and independent
world in chaos— was the original cause of the intermingling of the two
kingdoms — the beginning of the visible world, which is founded on
territory won from the kingdom of darkness, from chaos ; and which
now the powers of darkness, impatient of any encroachment on their
province, seek either to wrest away and brig into their own possession,
or else to destroy. When the genius who belongs to the third grade in
the evolution of life, when Adatur reflects himself on the dark water of
chaos, there springs up from his image an imperfect genius, formed out
of the mixture of this light-nature with the substance of darkness, and
destined to a gradual transfiguration. This is etahil, the world-builder,
from whose awkwardness results all the imperfections of this world.!
Also in the system of the Syrian Bardesanes, matter is represented as
being the genitor of Satan.
Thus it is evident enough here, how the modes of conception pecu-
har to the Syrian and to “the Alexandrian Gnosis pass, on this side,
over into each other. It might also admit of a question, perhaps,
whether we can properly speak of a Gnosis originally Alexandrian ;
whether Syria is not the common home of everything that goes under
this name,— whence it was merely transplanted to Alexandria, in
which latter place it received a peculiar stamp from the Hellenic, Pla-
tonizing tendency which there prevailed. At Alexandria, such a
Gnosis could easily find many points on which to attach itself, in a cer-
tain Jewish, ideal philosophy of religion already existing there ; but in
this, however, the Platonic and Western element, which confined itself
more strictly to the pure ideal position, and did not directly hyposta-
tize the idea into intuitions, too strongly predominated to admit the pos-
sibility of its resulting, without the mfluence of the pure Onientalism
from Syria, in the peculiar character of the Gnosis.
It might be thought, that this two-fold theory would have resulted in
a corresponding difference of practical spirit. As the Syrian theory
supposed an active kingdom of evil, which was one and the same with
the kingdom of matter, we might conclude from this, that it made the
renunciation of this hated matter and its hostile productions, the great
point in its system of morals.
and γαλιλαίοις of Hegisippus: see F. Walch.
de Sabeis comment. Soc. Reg. Gott. T.
IV. Part. philol. From this sprung up af-
terwards a sect, whose system, formed out
of the elements of an older eastern theoso-
phy, has an important connection with the
history of the Gnosis. A critical examina-
tion of their most important religious book,
published by Norberg, the Liber Adami,
may furnish much additional information
on this subject. See a review of this work
82"
Since, on the other hand, the Alezan-
by Gesenius, in the Jenaischen Literatur-
Zeitung, J. 1817, No. 48-51, and (Kleu-
ker’s 2) review in the Géttingschen Anzeigen.
1 The idea here may be compared wholly
with the Ophitic idea of the Ophiomorphus,
(see below,) although the latter, in the Ophi-
tic system, appears possessed of a malig-
nant nature; and yet the Ophitic system,
so far as it concerns its speculative ideas, is
in very many respects nearly related to the
Alexandrian system of Valentinus.
378 GNOSTICISM.
drian Gnosis considered matter in the light of an unorganized sub-
stance, and the divine as the forming principle of matter,we might
suppose that it would adopt no such negative theory of morals, but be
inclined rather to make the active melioration of the world, by the
power of the divine element, the principle of its moral system. This
conjecture would be rendered still more probable, by comparing several
of the Alexandrian with the Syrian systems.
But we must see, as we enter more deeply ito the matter, that the
difference of practical tendencies is not so much grounded in the differ-
ence of these principles, as it 1s true that a different shaping and ap-
plication is given to the principles themselves, by virtue of the diversity
of intellectual bents; and that all the principles derived from other
quarters receive, through the general, intellectual bent which appropri
ates them to itself and the peculiar spiritual temperament of this period,
an application which needed not necessarily to flow from them, by them-
selves considered. We have seen,! indeed, how Dualism, in its primi-
tive form among the Persians, by no means carried along with it the
tendency to an ascetic, mactive renunciation of the world; but how an
active life, and the exercise of a plastic influence on the outward world,
in the conflict for the kingdom of light, developed itself therefrom.
And yet the same principle received, through the influence of the pre-
vailing tone of mind in this period, another application. But in Plato-
nism, two points of view were proposed, and its practical imfluence was
conditioned by the predominance of the one or the other. On the one
side, Platonism represented the soul as the plastic power in the world ;
— it made the ideas actualize themselves in becoming, stamp them-
selves in the ὕλη. The selfmanifestation of these ideas, striving to
overpower the ὕλη, should press forward to meet their kindred spirit,
in its contemplation of the world in all its aspects, — in all appearances
of the beautiful and good. Through the symbols — though madequate
to the original type — of the ideal harmony of the universe in the sen-
sible world, the recollection of the original Former himself was to be
called up in the spirit that belonged to the higher world, and the crav-
ing after this awakened within it ; — by means of this contemplation,
the soul was to become gradually winged. But on the other side, Pla-
tonism taught that there was a resistance of the ὕλη against these ideas,
which was not to be entirely vanquished ; it presented to consciousness
that opposition between the idea and the manifestation, which could
never be overcome. According to this view, evil is, in this world, a
necessary antithesis to good. ‘This is inseparable from the relation of
the idea to the #47; and hence it is only by contemplation, rising to
the spiritual world of ideas, that one can soar above this opposition,
which must always necessarily continue to exist in this lower region.
At all events, it was from this position that the aristocratic principle
of the ancient world, of which we have before spoken, took that direc-
tion, by virtue of which the contemplative life was exalted far above
the practical; as in like manner, this defect — though more or less
1 See above, p. 376.
THE DEMIURGE. O19
tempered, in proportion to the greater or less reaction of the Christian
principle — cleaves to the Gnostic systems generally. Now in pro-
portion as the one or the other of these sides of the Platonic theory
predominated, there came to be united with Platonism, either a more
practical, esthetico-artistic, or an ascetic, contemplative tendency.
Platonism contains within it, considered on that first side, the genuine
principle for the construction of the system of ethics; but in order to
the actualization of what lies within it, it is requisite, that the other
side should retreat into the back-ground. This Dualism must be prac-
tically annulled; a means must be given of reconciling the opposition
between the idea and the manifestation, and this could be mediated
only by the fact of a redemption of mankind. ‘hus Platonism points
away to Christianity, through which alone the ethical problems grounded
in the Platonic ideas could be actually realized.
Now the spiritual tone of this period, which hes at the root of all
those Gnostic systems, out of which sprung hatred and contempt of the
world, the predominant Oriental principle of utter estrangement from
the world and from all human affections, tended to give prominence to
one of those sides and to repress the other; and the same thing, in-
deed, is manifested im the ethics peculiar to the later Platonism gener-
ally, if we except Plotinus. One of these Gnostics, Marcion, united,
in fact, as we shall see, with the doctrine of the ὕλη, a tendency in
other respects altogether foreign from Platonism.
The most essential difference between the Gnostic systems, and the
one which is best suited also to be made the basis of their distribution,
is that which arises from their different degrees of divergence, in re-
spect to what constitutes the peculiarity of the Gnostic view of the uni-
verse, from the purely Christian view. It is the Dualistic element car-
ried out ; — by virtue of which those oppositions, — which Christianity
exhibits as conflicting with the original unity in creation, as having first
originated in the fall of the creature, and only to be rel by the
redemption, — these oppositions are considered as original, grounded in
the very principles of existence ;— hence, also, as being of such a
kind that they could not be overcome by the redemption itself ; — the
oppositions between a temporal, earthly, and a higher, invisible order
of things; between the natural, the purely human, and the divine.
This opposition, so apprehended, must be extended moreover to the re-
lation of Christianity to the creation, to nature and history. Where
this opposition generally was seized in its most sharp and decided
form, nothing less could be supposed than an absolute opposition also
between Christianity and the creation — between nature and history.
Christianity must make its appearance as an altogether sudden thing,
as a fragment disconnected from everything else, as something coming
in wholly without expectation. According to this view, no gradual
development of the Theocracy, as an organically connected whole,
could be admitted. The connection, also, must be broken between
Christianity and Judaism. And all this becomes concentrated in the
form of relation in which the Demiurge was conceived to stand to the
Supreme, perfect God, and the world of AZons. Everything depends,
580 GNOSTICISM. THE DEMIURGE.
then, on the circumstance, whether an absolute opposition was made to
exist here, or room was still left for some sort of mediation. It is man-
ifest, how deeply this difference must affect everything that pertains to
the province of morals and religion.
In the following respect, al/ these Gnostics agree ; they all held, as
we remarked above, to a world consisting of the pure emanation of life
from God, a creation evolved directly out of the divine essence,! far
exalted above.the outward creation produced by God’s plastic power,
and conditioned by a preéxisting matter. They agree moreover in
this, that they did not admit the Father of that higher world of ema-
nation, to be the immediate author of this lower world, but maintained
that the lower creation proceeded from the World-former, (δημιουργός,
a being of kindred nature with the universe formed and governed by
him, and far inferior to that higher system and the Father of it. But
here arose a difference among them; for while they all maintaied the
fact of such a subordination, they did not agree in their conceptions as
to the particular mode of its existence. Some, taking their departure
from ideas which had long prevailed among certain Jews of Alexan-
dria, (as appears from comparing the Alexandrian version of the Old
Testament, and from Philo,) supposed that the Supreme God created
and governed the world by ministering spirits, by the angels. At the
head of these angels stood one, who had the direction and control of
all; hence called the opificer and governor of the world. This Demi-
urge they compared with the plastic, animating, mundane spirit of
Plato and the Platonicians,? which, too, according to the Timzus of
Plato, strives to represent the ideas of the Divine Reason, in that
which 15 becoming and temporal. This angel is a representative of the
Supreme God on this lower stage of existence. He acts, not indepen-
dently, but merely according to the ideas inspired in him by the Su-
preme God ; just as the plastic, mundane soul of the Platonists creates
all things after the pattern of the ideas communicated by the Supreme
Reason, (voic.2) But these ideas transcend the powers of his own lim-
ited nature; he cannot understand them; he is merely their uncon-
cious organ; andjhence is unable himself to comprehend the whole
scope and meaning of the work which he performs. As an organ under
the guidance of a higher inspiration, he reveals what exceeds his own
power of conception. And here also they fall in with the current
ideas of the Jews, in supposing that the Supreme God had revealed
himself to their Fathers through the angels, who served as ministers
of his will. From them proceeded the giving of the law by Moses. In
the following respect, also, they considered the Demiurge to be a rep-
resentative of the Supreme God ;— as the other nations of the earth
are portioned out under the guidance of the other angels, so the Jew-
ish people, considered as the peculiar people of God, are committed to
the especial care of the Demiurge, as his representative.* He revealed
1 ΓΟ ΎΝ ὈΝῚ Ρ. παράδειγμα of the Divine Reason hyposta-
2 The δεύτερος ϑεός, the Sede γενητός. tized.
8 The ὃ ἔστι Tile ate hone! ple to the * According to the Alexandrine version
γενητόν, the Bede γενητός of Plato,—the οὗ Denteron. 32: 8, 9: Ὅτε διεμέριζεν ὁ
CLASSIFICATION OF GNOSTIC SYSTEMS. 381
also among them, in their religious polity, as in the creation of the
world, those higher ideas, which himself could not understand in their
true significancy. The Old Testament, like the whole creation, was
the veiled symbol of a higher mundane system, the veiled type of Chris-
tianity.
τ δὴν the Jewish people themselves, however, they carefully dis-
tinguished, after the example of the Alexandrians, between the great
mass, who are barely a representative type of the people of God, (the
Israelites according to the flesh, the Ἰσραὴλ αἰσϑητός, κατὰ capxa,) and the
smaller number, who became really conscious of their destination as the
people of God, (the soul of this mass, the spiritual men of Philo; the
Ἰσραὴλ πνευματικός, νοητός ; the truly consecrated race, livmg in the con-
templation of God; the ἀνὴρ ὁρῶν τὸν ϑεόν; the πνευματικοΐ, γνωστικοΐί, as
contradistinguished from the ψυχικοΐῖ, πιστικοί.ὺ The latter, with their
sensual minds, adhered to the outward form, perceived not that this was
barely a symbol, and therefore entered not into the meaning of the
symbol.t_ Thus those sensual-minded Jews knew not the angel by
whom God revealed himself in all the Theophanies of the Old Testa-
ment; knew not the Demiurge in his true relation to the hidden, Su-
preme God, who never reveals himself in the sensible world. Here,
too, they confounded type and archetype, symbol and idea. They rose
no higher than to this Demiurge ; they held him for the Supreme God
himself. Those spiritual men, on the contrary, clearly perceived, or at
least divined, the ideas veiled under Judaism ; they rose above the De-
miurge, to the knowledge of the Supreme God; they are, therefore,
properly his trwe worshippers, (Separcira.) The religion of the former
was grounded barely on a faith of authority; the latter live in the con-
templation of divine things. The former needed to be schooled and
disciplmed by the Demiurge — by rewards, punishments, and threats ;
the latter need no such means of discipline; they rise by the buoyancy
of their own minds to the Supreme God, who is only a fountain of
blessedness to those that are fitted for communion with him; they love
him for his own sake.”
When now these Jewish theosophists of Alexandria had come over to
Christianity, and with this new religion had united their previous ideas,
they saw the spirit of the Old Testament completely unveiled by Chris-
tianity, and the highest idea of the whole creation brought clearly to
light. The scope and end of the whole creation, and of all human
development, now for the first time became clear. As far as the Su-
preme on,? who appeared in the person of Christ, is exalted above
the angels and the Demiurge, so far does Christianity transcend Juda-
ὕψιστος ἔϑνη, ἐστησεν ὅρια ἐϑνῶν κατὰ
ἀριϑμὸν ἀγγέλων ϑεοῦ, καὶ ἐγενήϑη
μερὶς κυρίου λαὸς αὐτοῦ ᾿Ιακώβ.
1 Thus in the epistle ascribed to Barnabas,
it is asserted by a moderate Gnostic, who
had as yet by no means attained to that
higher Gnosis which resulted from the mix-
ture of the Alexandrian idealism with Sy-
rian theosophy, that the Jews had altogeth-
er misunderstood the ceremonial law, in
observing it outwardly, instead of seeing in
it an allegorical representation of universal
religion and moral truths. The Gnosis
furnished the key which first unlocked this
its true meaning.
2 See above, Part I. p. 56, ete., respecting
the two religious positions according to
Philo.
ὃ Νοῦς or λόγος.
382 GNOSTICISM.
ism and the whole earthly creation. The Demiurge himself now per-
ceives entering into his province a revelation of a higher system of
things, and serves henceforth as its self-conscious organ.
If the law was called by Jewish theologians a law dispensed by angels,
with a view to mark, in this way, its divine, as opposed to a merely
human, origin — this designation is, on the other hand, employed in the
apostolic letters, for the purpose of clearly setting forth the superiority
of Christianity to Judaism, — of exhibiting the former as the absolute
religion, for which all the earlier fragmentary revelations of the divine
councils only served to prepare the way. The all-embracing revelation
of God in the Son, through whom God himself enters immediately into
fellowship with the creature, is opposed to the revelation mediated by the
instrumentality of individual angels — individual godlike powers. By
the manifestation of the comprehending whole, everything partial is
rendered superfluous.!. The inventions of the Gnostics, in which the
whole matter is spun out into a mythical form, turn on this profound
idea.
In what the Gnostics who adopt this pomt of view say about the rela-
tion of the Demiurge, of his creation, of his previous dominion, to the
appearance of Christ and of Christianity, we have a glimpse of ideas,
in themselves profound. ‘They endeavor to express how the whole was,
at least in idea, in the germ, implanted in the original creation, which
was to be actually realized and fulfilled only by Christianity ; — how
reason, attainmg first through Christianity to the full and clear con-
sciousness of the ideas incorporated in and stamped upon creation, was
to express these in an actual manifestation; —a great and fruitful
thought, which, obscurely divined by the Gnosis, waited to receive its
clear and discreet exposition from a future science, striking root in
Christianity. . The Gnosis bore within it the germ, first presented as a
poetic intuition, of a true philosophy of history.
The other party of the Gnostics consisted mainly of such as, before
their coming over to Christianity, had not been followers of the Mosaze
religion, but had already, at an earlier period, framed to themselves an
Oriental Gnosis, opposed as well to Judaism as to all popular relignons,
like that of which we find the remains in the books of the Sabzans,
and of which examples may still be found in the East, among the Per-
sians and the Hindoos. ‘They regarded the Demiurge with his angels,
not simply, like the former class, as a subordinate, limited being, but as
one absolutely hostile to the Supreme God. The Demiurge and his angels
are for establishing their imdependence within their limited sphere.
They would tolerate no foreign dominion within their province. What-
ever higher existence has descended into their kingdom, they seek to
hold imprisoned there, so that it may not ascend again above their nar-
row precincts. Probably, in this system, the kingdom of the world-
forming angels coincided, for the most part, with the kingdom of the
deceitful star-spirits, who seek to rob man of his freedom, to beguile
him by various arts of deception, — and who exercise a tyrannical sway
1 See Heb. 2. Ephes. 3: 10, and the words of Christ to Nathanael.
CLASSIFICATION OF GNOSTIC SYSTEMS. 3835
over the things of this world. The Demiurge is a limited and limit-
ing being; proud, jealous, revengeful ; and this his character expresses
itself in the Old Testament, which proceeded from him.
Believing that they found in the Old Testament so many qualities
attributed to God which were anthropopathic— so much which was at
variance with the Christian idea of God and with moral perfection, it
would indeed have been natural for these Gnostics, had they lived in a
different spiritual atmosphere, to consider all this as the result of hu-
man error, whereby the true idea of God had become vitiated. But to
refer this to a subjective cause, and explain it psychologically, lay alto-
gether remote from their habit of contemplation. To them Judaism no
less than paganism appeared, as opposed to Christianity, something too
positively real to admit of being satisfactorily explaimed in any such
way as this. They fancied in the life of nations they could trace the
influence of self-subsistent spiritual powers, who controlled the general
consciousness. ‘What St. Paul says of the principalities and powers,
(ἀρχαῖς and ἐξουσίαις, they referred to these agents. As in paganism
they saw the kingdom of the demons, so in Judaism they saw the king-
dom of the Demiurge. Arid so while they acknowledged the history of
the Old Testament to be true, they were led to transfer whatever ap-
peared to them defective in the idea of God in the Old Testament, to
the Demiurge himself. The reflected image of this being, they saw
in the character and in the conceptions of the people devoted to his
service. Even in nature, where they beheld the dominion of an iron
necessity, governing by invariable laws and sparing nothing, they be
lieved the God of holy love, revealed through Christ, was not to be
found. They saw, manifesting itself there, a plastic power indeed, but
inadequate to master its material, to subdue the destructive agencies
which resisted its efforts. They beheld the old chaos once more break-
ing loose ; the wild energy of the #47, revolting without control against
the dominion which the formative Power would exercise over it, — cast-
ing off the yoke imposed on it, and destroying the work he had begun.
Thus they recognized here a powerful, indeed, but not all-powerful
Demiurge, against whose supremacy the ὕλη, which he sought to sub-
ject to his will, was ever rebelling. The same jealous being, limited in
his power, ruling with despotic sway, whom they found in the Old Tes-
tament, they imagined they saw in nature. At the bottom of these
peculiar views lay the truth, that even on the foundation of the Old
Testament, religion could not as yet be wholly emancipated from the
principle which ruled in the ancient world ; although a higher, theistic
element was here revealed in opposition to that principle. ‘I'his could
be brought about only by the redeeming power of the gospel. ‘These
Gnostics judged thus: —the supreme God, the God of holiness and
love, who has no connection whatever with the sensible world, has re-
1 Accordingly, in the system of these Sa- important part in everything that is bad.
beeans, the seven star-spirits and the twelve ΤῸ their deceptive arts, the Sabzeans traced
star-spirits of the zodiac, who sprung from the origin of those detested religions, Juda
an irregular connection between the cheated ism and Christianity.
Fetahil and the spirit of darknegs, play an
$84. GNOSTICISM.
vealed himself in this earthly creation only by certain divine seeds of
life, scattered among men, the germination of which the Demiurge
strives to check and suppress. ‘The perfect God is, at most, known
and worshipped in mysteries: alone by a few spiritual men. Now this
God, through his highest Aton, let himself down at once, without any
forgoing preparation, to this inferior system, for the purpose of drawing
upward to himself those higher and kindred spiritual natures which are
here held in bondage. Christianity finds nowhere in the whole creation
a point of entrance, except in those theosophic schools where a higher
wisdom, in the form of secret doctrines, has been handed down from age
to age.
This difference between the Gnostic systems was one of great impor-
tance, both in a theoretical and a practical point of view. The Gnostics
of the first class, who looked upon the Demiurge as an organ of the
supreme God, and his representative, the fashioner of nature according
to his ideas, the guiding spring of the historical evolution of God’s king-
dom, might, consistently with their peculiar principles, expect to find
the manifestation of the divine element in nature and in history. They
were not necessarily driven to an unchristian hatred of the world.
They could admit that the divine element might be revealed even in
earthly relations; that everything of the earth was capable of being
refined and ennobled by its influence. They could therefore be quite
moderate in their ascetic notions, as we find the case actually to have
been with regard to many of this class; although their notion of the
ὕλη continually tended to the practically mischievous result of tracing
evil exclusively to the world of sense ; and although their over valua-
tion of a contemplative Gnosis might easily prove unfavorable to the
spirit of active charity. On the contrary, the other kind of Gnosis,
which represented the Creator of the world as a nature directly op-
posed to the supreme God and his higher system, would necessarily
lead to a wildly fanatical and morose hatred of the world, wholly at
war with the spirit of Christianity. This expressed itself in two ways ;
among the nobler and more sensible class, by an excessively rigid asce-
ticism, by an anxious concern to shun all contact with the world —
though to fashion and mould that world constitutes a part of the Chris-
tian vocation. The morality, in this case, to make the best of it, could
be only negative, only a preparatory step of purification in order to the
contemplative state. But the same eccentric hatred of the world,
coupled with pride and arrogance, might also lead to wild enthusiasm
and a bold contempt for all moral obligations. The principle once
started upon, that the whole of this world is the work of a finite, un-
godlike spirit; that it is not susceptible of any revelation of divine
things ; that the loftier natures who belong to a far higher world, are
here held in bondage; these Gnostics easily came to the conclusion,
that everything external is a matter of perfect indifference to the inner
man, — nothing of a loftier nature can there be expressed ; the outward
man may indulge in every lust, provided only that the tranquillity of
the inner man is not thereby disturbed in its meditation. The most
direct way of showing contempt and defiance of this wretched, hostile
Tee
ae in Se ng POR
Ng
=
᾿ CLASSIFICATION OF GNOSTIC SYSTEMS. 385
world was, not to allow the mind to be affected by it in any situation.
Men should mortify sense by braving every lust, and still preserving
the tranquillity of the mind unruffled. ‘‘ We must conquer lust by in-
dulgence, — said these bold spirits — for it is no great thing for a man
to abstain from lust who knows nothing about it by experience. ‘The
greatness lies in not being overcome by it, when clasped in its embrace.””!
Though the reports of enemies ought not be used without great caution
and distrust, and we should never forget that such witnesses were hable,
by unfriendly inferences or the misconstruction of terms, to impute to
such sects a great deal that was false; yet the characteristic maxims
quoted from their own lips, and the comcident testimony of such men
as Irenzeus and Epiphanius, and of those still more unprejudiced and
careful inquirers, the Alexandrians, places it beyond all reasonable
doubt, that they not merely expressed, but even practised, such princi-
ples of conduct. Besides, that enemy of Christianity, the Neo-Platonic
philosopher Porphyry, corroborates this testimony by citing from the
mouth of these persons maxims of a similar import.? “A little stand-
ing pool,’’ said they, “may be defiled, when some impure substance
drops into it; not so the ocean, which, conscious of its own immensity,
admits everything. So little men are overcome by eating ; but he who
is an ocean of strength (ἐξουσία, probably a cant term of theirs, founded
on a misinterpretation of St. Paul’s language, 1 Corinth. 8: 9; 6: 12)
takes everything and is not defiled.” Not only in the history of Chris-
tian sects of earlier and more recent times, but also among the sects of
the Hindoos, and even among the rude islanders of Australia, instances
may be found of such tendencies which defied all moral obligations —
tendencies that have arisen from speculative or mystical elements, or it
may be from some subjective caprice setting itself in opposition to all
positive law. In the connection of the present period, the false striving
of the subjective spirit after emancipation, after breaking loose from all
the bonds, holy or unholy, whereby the world had been hitherto kept to-
gether, is quite apparent. And this aim and tendency might seem to
have found a point of union in that unshackling of the spirit, so radical-
ly different in its character, which Christianity brought along with it.
This difference shows itself, again, in the views entertamed of partic-
ular moral relations The Gnostics of the last-mentioned class either
enjoined the life of celibacy, or expressed their abhorrence of marriage
as being an impure and profane connection, or else — on the principle
that whatever pertained to sense was indifferent, and that men needed
but to defy the Demiurge by despising his stringent laws — they justi
fied the gratifying of every lust. Those of the first class, on the con-
trary, honored marriage, as a holy estate; and on this subject also,
found in Christianity the complete fulfilment of a revelation introduced
into the Demiurge’s world, as the type of a higher order of things ; and
the Valentinian Gnosis, which invariably regarded the lower world as a
symbol and mirror of the higher, which sought to trace the manifes-
tation ef the same supreme law in various gradations, at different
2 Clemens Stromat. lib. 11. f. 411. 2 De abstinentia carn. lib. I. § 40, et 566.
VOL. I. 33
386 GNOSTICISM. DOCETISM.
stages of existence, saw in the relation of marriage, as elsewhere, the
type of a higher relation pervading every stage and degree of existence,
from the highest link of the chain downwards. We may here observe
in the Valentinian Gnosis, the first attempt, originating in the influence
of Christianity, to understand in a scientific way the true significance
of marriage, in its connection with the laws of the universe —a point
which the mind of Plato was striving to reach in the Symposium; but
which could not be truly reached and adequately presented until Chris-
tianity had led men to recognize the unity of God’s image in both the
sexes, and their relation to each other, and to the common type of hu-
manity residing in that unity. ἡ
The difference between these two tendencies of the Gnostic principle
was strongly manifested, again, in the different ways of contemplating
Christ’s person. All Gnosties, it is true, were in a sense agreed in this
respect; that as they distinguished the God of heaven from the God of
nature, and hence, too, separated beyond necessity the invisible from the
visible world, the divine from the human, — so they could not acknowl-
edge the unity of the human and divine natures in the person of Christ.
Yet as in the first of these cases we remarked an important difference
between the two predominant tendencies of the Gnostic systems, so we
may observe an important difference, too, in the case last mentioned.
We find here an essential gradation in the views entertained of the
relation of the divine and human natures m Christ. Some regarded
the humanity of Christ as real, and as possessed of a certain dignity of
its own ; yet, as they made two Gods of the one God of heaven and of
nature, and represented the creator of the latter to be nothing more
than the organ of the former ; so they divided the one Christ, into two
Christs — a higher and a lower, a heavenly and an earthly Christ —
the latter serving merely as the organ of the former ; and this, not by
an original and inseparable union with him, but in such sense that the
former first united himself with the latter at his baptism in the Jordan.
But the other species of Gnosis, denying, as it did, all connection of
Christianity with Judaism, and all progressive development of the king-
dom of God among men; representing, as it did, the God of Christ
and of the gospel as a different bemg from the God of nature and of
history, must necessarily do away the connection of Christ’s appearance
with nature and with history. The notion, so pleasing to the fantastic
taste of the East,! and which had long obtained currency among the
Jews, that a higher spirit has the faculty of representing himself to the
outward eye in various forms, deceiving the senses, though in them-
selves without substance, was applied to Christ. One entire and im-
portant part of his earthly existence and of his personal being was criti-
cized away ; his whole hwmanity was denied, and whatever appertained
to Christ’s human appearance represented as a mere deceptive show, ὦ
mere vision.2, Yet we can in nowise agree with those who hold that
Docetism was only one form in which a decided tendency to idealism
1 We have only to think of the Hindoo tained by one Jewish sect respecting the
Maia, and the host of Indian myths. angelophanies, noticed in Justin M. Dial.
2 Just as Philo’s idea of the Old Testa- c.Tryph. See vol. 1. p. 42.
ment theophanies led to the views enter-
DIFFERENT VIEWS OF CHRIST’S PERSON. 387
and rationalism manifested itself—a form peculiarly modified by the
prevailing notions of the age ; so that the Docete, had they lived at
some other period, would have substituted in place of the historical
Christ a mere ideal one. We should be careful to distinguish the
proper essence of the heretical tendency from the symptoms through
which it expressed itself. Docetism may be the result of very different
tendencies of mind—a tendency to supranaturalism, or a tendency to
rationalism. There might be united with it, an interest at bottom to
give all possible prominence to this supernatural and real element in
Christ’s appearance. Docetism, at this point, supposed a real, though
not sensible Christ; and a real impartation of Christ to humanity.
Christ gave himself, according to this view, to humanity, as a source of
divine life. He presented himself sensibly to the eyes of men, not in
his true, divine nature, but only so as to be perceived by them, yet
without coming himself into any contact with matter, in an unreal veil
of sense. His appearance was something truly objective ; but the sen-
sible form in which this was apparent to men was merely subjective.
This was the only possible way in which men, under the dominion of
sense, could come into any contact with a nature so divme. A mode
_ of apprehension turned exclusively in the direction of supranaturalism,
might lead in this case to a total denial of the reality of the natural
element in Christ. But under this form of Docetism might be lurking,
also, a tendency which would have resulted in an entire evaporation of
Christianity, in turning the life of Christ into a mere symbol of a spir-
itual communication from God, in substituting the idea of God’s re-
deeming power in place of the historical Redeemer; in a word, there
micht eventually spring out of a tendency of this sort, an opposition to
historical Christianity — and that this did actually come about, will be
shown hereafter by specific examples.
When these Gnostics, with their system ready made, looked into the
scriptures of the New Testament, they had no difficulty in finding it all
there, since they were only on the search for points of coincidence.
Trusting to the inner light of their higher spiritual nature, which was
to make all things clear to them, they g gave themselves but little con-
cern about the letter of the religious records. In all cases, they were
for explaining outward things from within — that is, from their imtui-
tions, which were above all doubt. They disdained the helps necessary
to unfold the spirit contained under the cover of the word; they
despised the laws of thought and of language,! and were thus exposed,
in interpreting the records of religion, to all manner of delusion ; while
they had power also to charm others, as ignorant of those laws as they
_were themselves, within the circle of their intuitions and symbolical
representations. Understandmg, for instance, the term ‘ world,”
wherever it occurs in the New Testament, in one and the same sense,
neither distinguishing nor separating the objective from the subjective
world, they could easily demonstrate the position, that the whole earthly
1 Origin, in Philocal. c. 14, shows how _ their errors in biblical interpretation by the
much the Gnostics were strengthened in ἀγνοία τῶν λογικῶν.
388 GNOSTICISM — GNOSTIC INTERPRETATIONS
creation betrays defects, and could not have proceeded from the Su-
preme and perfect God. ‘The parables, for whose simplicity and pro-
found practical meanmg they seem to have been endowed with no
sense, were specially welcomed by them, because in these, when the
point of comparison was once dropped, an arbitrary interpretation had
the fullest scope. The controversy excited, however, by this arbitrary
biblical interpretation of the Gnostics, had one good effect, in turning
the attention of their opponents to the necessity of a sober, grammatical
method of scriptural interpretation, and leading them to establish the-
first hermeneutical canons ; as may be seen from numerous examples in
Irenzus, Tertullian, Clement, and Origen.
As the opinion that falsehood was allowable and might even be neces-
sary to guide the multitude, was a principle inbred into the aristocratic
spirit of the old world; and as the justification of falsehood, therefore,
could not be wholly cut off, and the unconditional obligation of truth-
fulness, arising from the fact that all are alike rational, all created alike
in the image of God, could not be brought home to the general con-
sciousness of mankind except by means of Christianity ; so 1t was ever
found to be a consequence of the reaction of that old aristocratic spirit
with which Gnosticism was connected, that the principle, Falsehood is
lawful for a good purpose, once more slipped in. By means of the
opposition which the Gnostics set up between psychical and spiritual
nien, they could defend the practice of descending from one of these
positions to the other, and of saying what was false to men of the lower
stage, because they were not prepared to receive the pure truth. This
principle influenced their interpretation of the New Testament; and
they were the mventors of the exegetical theory of accommodation.
Many among them asserted that Christ and the apostles expressed them-
selves differently, according to the different standing of those whom
they addressed. They accommodated themselves to these different
positions ; — to the natural men, (the pvyxo,) those who stood on the
ground of blind, unconscious faith — faith on outward authority and on
miracles, (those who were tied down to Jewish prejudices,) they spoke
only of a Demiurge, for in truth the limited capacities of these men
were unfitted for anything higher. The higher truths from the world
of AZons, and relating to that world, they had communicated to none
but a small circle of the initiated, who by virtue of their higher, spirit-
ual nature, (πνευματικοί, } were capable of understanding such truths.
But in all other éases, they had simply hinted at these truths in isolated
figures and symbols, intelligible to such natures alone. That higher
wisdom they had spoken, as Paul declared, 1 Corimth. 2: 6, only m
the living word, among such as were perfect; and it was only by the
living word, within the circle of the initiated, that it was to be contin-
ually handed down. The knowledge of this secret tradition, therefore,
was the only true key to the more profound exposition of scripture,
Though other church teachers, whom the spirit of Platonism had too
strongly influenced, were not wholly exempt from that aristocratic ele-
ment, yet the clear and earnest Christian spirit of Irenzeus took a
AND SECRET DOCTRINES. 389
bold and decided stand against it. ‘ The apostles,” he said,! “ who
were sent forth to reclaim the erring, to restore sight to the blind, to
heal ‘the sick, assuredly did not accommodate themselves to the exist-
mg opinions of their hearers; but spoke to them according to the rev-
elation of truth. What physician who desires to heal the sick, will
yield to the whims of his patient, instead of prescribing to him so as to
effect his cure? The apostles, those disciples of truth, are strangers
to all deception, because deception has nothing in common with truth,
any more than darkness has with light. Our Lord, who is himself the
truth, for that very reason could not deceive.”
Other s, relying on the principles of their Gnosis, ventured to subject
the whole New Testament to the boldest criticism, affirming it to be im-
possible, from the instructions of the apostles alone, to get at the pure
doctrines of Christ; for, said they, the apostles themselves were still
somewhat fettered, with the rest, by psychical or Jewish opinions. The
spiritual man (the Pneumaticus) must sift the “ natural’? from the
‘spiritual’ in their writmgs. Or they even went so far as to distin-
guish in Christ’s discourses, what had been spoken by the natural
Christ, under the inspiration of the Demiurge ; what had been expressed
through him by the divine “* Wisdom,” wha had not yet reached its
full development, but still fluctuated between the province of the Demi-
urge and the ““ Pleroma;”’? and what had been spoken through him by
the- supreme Nus out of the Pleroma.®
It is easy to see, that under this theosophic style of intuition and ex-
pression 18 veiled a completely rationalistic mode of thinking, which
strives to soar above the Christ and the Christianity of history. The
view of a certain opposition betwixt the idea and its manifestation in
primitive Christianity itself — of a perfectibility of Christianity, by rea-
son of which it was to purify itself from that which, in its first form of
manifestation, checked and vitiated the pure evolution of the idea — is
here lying at bottom. In the person of Christ himself, a distinction is
made between what belongs to the idea, and what belongs to the vitiat-
ing element of the temporal appearance ; between the truth which he
uttered by immediate inspiration, and what he spoke from the inferior
standing ground of reflection disturbed by temporal ideas.
These Gnostics, or at least a portion of them, were not at all dis-
posed to separate themselves from the rest of the church, and establish
distinct communities of their own. They were satisfied that the psy-
chical natures were unable, from their lower station, to understand
Christianity otherwise than in the form which had been given to it by
the church; that they could reach nothing higher than the blind faith
on authority ; that they were utterly destitute of a faculty for the higher
spiritual intuition; — they were not for disturbing, therefore, these
common followers of the church in their quiet faith;* they were for
uniting with the ordinary congregations, and establishing, ἢ im connection
with them, certain theosophic schools, certain Christian mysteries, into
1 Lib. III. c. 5. 8 Vid. Iren. lib. III. e. 2.
2 The Sophia, Achamoth; see below. 4 Tovc κοινοὺς ἐκκλησιαστικούς.
33"
390 GNOSTICISM — PLOTINUS
which all those persons should be admitted, in whom they discovered
that higher faculty which was not bestowed on all. They complained,
that they were refused admission to the fellowship of the church, and
that they were called heretics, though they concurred in everything
which the church taught.?
But what would have become of the church, had they succeeded in
their design of introducing within it such a distinction of two different
positions in religion ? The essence of the church, which admits no
such opposition, which rests on the fact of a common faith uniting all
hearts in the same fellowship of a higher life, the peculiar character of
Christianity itself, would have been thereby destroyed. Christianity,
as we have seen, could let itself down again to a more Jewish position
of the mind, it could wrap itself in a Jewish dress, and could be thus
propagated in the consciousness of men who must be trained to Chris-
tian freedom by a gradual process. The essentials of the church would
still be retained, though in a form madequate and coming from the re-
action of an earlier stage of religious development. But had the church
allowed room for the troduction within its bosom of such an opposition,
it must have forfeited its very essence and existence. Hence the
spirit, which throws off what it finds no way of digesting and assimilat-
ing to its own nature, united together men of the most opposite theo-
logical tendencies in a common resistance against this reaction, which
threatened directly the very life of the church itself.
Gnosticism had a two-fold conflict to sustain; a conflict with the
Christian principle asserting its own independence, and another with
Platonism. Plotinus, who in no part of his works openly attacks
Christianity, felt himself under the necessity of standing forth as an
opponent of the Gnostics, since in their speculations they pretended to
outstrip Plato and the old Greek philosophy.? He evidently does them
injustice when he asserts, that what they taught :consisted partly in
ideas borrowed from Plato, and partly in new inventions, hatched up
for the purpose of forming a system of their own, but destitute of
truth. Their opposition to Platonism was in no sense, assuredly, a
capricious, far-sought thing, a mere striving to out-do antiquity; but it
was one necessarily grounded in the religious and philosophical princi-
ples from which they started, — as indeed Plotinus himself evinces by
his mode of combating them. On those principles, whether regarded
on the side of the Christian or of the Oriental theosophic element en-
tering into them, the Gnostics were compelled to believe that they
found in Plato intimations of the truth indeed, but not the true light
1 Queruntur de nobis, quod, eum similia
nobiscum sentiant, sine causa abstineamus
nos acommunicatione eorum, et, cum eadem
dicant et eandem habeant doctrinam, voce-
mus illos hereticos. Iren. lib. III. ο. 15.
2 He accuses them of perverting Plato’s
doctrines, and of seeking to place them in
an unfavorable light : Ὧν αὐτοὶ μὲν τὴν
νοητὴν φύσιν κατανενοηκότες, ἐκείνου δὲ
καὶ τῶν ἄλλων τῶν μακαρίων ἀνδρῶν "μή.
They should not ἐν τῷ τοὺς “Ἕλληνας δια-
σύρειν καὶ ὑβρίζειν τὰ αὑτῶν ἐν συστάσει
παρὰ τοῖς ἀκούουσι ποιεῖν. Ennead. II. L
IX. See also Porphyry life of Plotinus,
c. 16.
3 “Ὅλως yap αὐτοῖς τὰ μὲν παρὰ τοῦνΠλά-
τωνος εἴληπται, τὰ δὲ ὅσα καινοτομούσιν,
ἵνα ἰδίαν φιλοσοφίαν ϑῶνται, ταῦτα ἔξω τῆς
ἀληϑείας εὕρηται.
AGAINST THE GNOSTICS. 391
which could explain the history of the universe. ΤῸ Plotinus, beyond
question, this new tendency, regarded from his own point of view as a
Greek philosopher, must have seemed, both in respect to what was
true and what was false in it, a declension from the old healthy culture,
a doctrine wholly at variance with the sober disciplme of the Greeks.
He looked upon it as a contagious, fanatical turn of thinkmg, which
had taken possession of men’s minds and rendered them incapable of
appreciating arguments from reason.t On one side, the opposition of
the Platonic principle to the Gnosis, in Plotinus, is directed against
Christianity itself, against the Christian element admitted by the Gnos-
tics ; on the other hand, it is coincident with the opposition which would
arise out of the Christian principle itself against the Gnosis; and it 1s
interesting to compare what Plotinus says, from this point of view, with
the similar strictures made by Christian antagonists,of the Gnostic
heresy.
In respect tog the former of these cases, it is necessary to notice,
first of all, his opposition to the teleological point of view. Though
this might have found its place in the original Platonism, which was not
rigidly pursued out to all its consequences, yet by the more severe and
systematic deduction of the Neo-Platonic Monoism,? it is wholly ex-
cluded. Nothing is admitted here but the immanent necessity of the
conception, in its evolution from the Absolute to the extreme limit of
all being. The teleological element. in the action of spiritual powers,
which the Gnosis introduced, as well as the substitution of this transi-
tive action in place of the immanent necessity of a process of devel-
opment, could not but appear to Plotinus an anthropopathic vitiation
of the νοητά, inasmuch as it.transferred the notion of the end and the
thereby determined beginning of an action, taken from human and
temporal relations, to an order of things placed above and beyond.
these categories.2 Accordingly, it seemed ridiculous to him that they
should transfer to the Demiurge the relation of the human artist to his
work, and say he created the world for his own glory.* But those
Gnostics whom we described as belonging to the first class, would by
no means spurn such a comparison and analogy. They understood how
by Creuzer in his review of the edition of
Heigl, in the Studien und Kritiken, 1834,
~ 1 When Plotinus says, — that the ancients
have advanced many better things on spirit-
ual matters, will be readily seen by such as
have not been carried away by the delusion
now spreading among men, (τοῖς μὴ ἐξαπα-
τωμένοις τὴν ἐπιϑέουσαν εἰς ἀνϑρώπους
ἀπάτην.) the question comes up, whether
by this ἀπάτη is to be understood the spread-
ing Gnosis, or the still more widely spread-
ing Christianity. If the latter, then this
would be the only passage in which he at-
tacks Christianity; and it is singular that
he should do so but once, and then in a
manner so vague and indefinite. We should
have to ascribe it to his indulgence towards
a religious conviction which may have
had its followers among his immediate
friends. Polemical allusions, bearing against
Christianity generally, have been found also
iT and by Baur, in his investigations of
this book’ of Plotinus, in his work on the
Gnosis, p. 418, etc. Yet I cannot agree
with the latter, in believing that all the pas-
sages contain such allusions in which he
would trace them.
2 So I think I may call the system of
Plotinus, notwithstanding his doctrine of
the ὕλη, which, however, has no positive
‘existence, but only forms the boundary of
cat being. 3
8 Τὸ δὲ διὰ τί ἐποίησε κόσμον, ταὐτὸν Tm
διὰ τί ἐστι ψυχῆ; Καὶ διὰ τί ὁ δημιουργός
ἐποίησεν; Ὃ πρῶτον μὲν ἀρχὴν λαμβα-
νόντων ἐστὶ τοῦ ἀεί.
4 Τελοῖον τὸ ἵνα τιμῷτο, καὶ μεταφερόν-
των ἀπο τῶν ἀγαλματοποιῶν τῶν ἐνταῦϑα
992 . GNOSTICISM — PLOTINUS
to make a very good use of them on the principles of their own . ᾿ς
scheme, by which they sought to show how the highest stage of being
symbolized itself in all the succeeding steps. ᾿ Ἷ
Again, to Plotinus, who had assumed the immanent necessity of
the process of cosmical evolution, in which every thing occupied the.
precise place which belonged to it as a part, the great question on
which the Gnostics bestowed so much labor, — how to account for
what is defective, how to account for evil—appeared quite as ab-
surd as the answers which they gave to that question. The Christian _
doctrine of the fall must have appeared to him in the same light, on
the principles of his own monoistie scheme of the universe. .
He says of the Gnostics, that they strove to rise above reason, and
on that very account fell into wn-reason ; !— a proposition, however,
which, understood according to the fundamental principle of Plotimus,
strikes not barely agaist the fantastic speculation of the Gnostics, but
also against the Christian notion of revelation, and agast the Christian.
idea of divine grace. | os
In the following case, too, Plotinus’ objection to the Gnostic princi-
ple would bear also against the Christian doctrme. He represents it
as a very absurd ‘thing in the Gnosties, that they presumed to exalt
themselves above the great heavenly bodies, — that they called ther
own souls and those of the worst men immortal and divine; — while
in the stars, whose regular courses manifested, the actecaitts a soul
acting without disturbance according to invariable laws, they could
see nothing but perishable matter.2 To Plotinus the soul of man ap-
peared vastly inferior to the soul, always like itself and exalted above’
‘all change and all passion,- which resided in those great heavenly
bodies. © |
Though the charge of pride, which Plotinus brought against the
Gnostics, was, in one view of it, the same which was urged on the
side of paganism generally against the entire Christian scheme, yet in
another view, where he complained of the arrogance and supercilious-
ness of the Gnostics, and found in them nothing like humility, he
might coincide with the Christian principle itself. ‘¢ Men without un- _
derstanding,” says-he, ‘ follow after such discourses, in which they are
᾿
.
told all at once, You shall be not only better than all men, but even® *
than all gods; for pride is a mighty principle in men, and he who be- |
fore thought meanly of himself, and took’ his place with ordinary mor-
tals? begins to be elated, when he hears it said, You.are ἃ βοὴ of God,
. but the others, whom you admire, are not such. “What they have re-
ceived from the fathers, what they reverence, is not the right doctrine. ,
But you are higher than the very heavens, and that although you have
. oe : ¥ “- ς ¥ ? bs ΓΕ ς φ ,, . .
1: πὸ δὲ ὑπὲρ νοῦν ἤδη ἐστὶν ἔξω vod πε- ἰδιώτης avnp. In virtue of this combina-
σεῖν. ν tion of homogeneous predicates, it seems to
© 20008 τὴν piv αὐτῶν ψυχὴν ἀϑάνατον me that the ταπεινός refers here to me@an- ὁ
καὶ ϑείαν λέγειν καὶ τὴν τῶν φαυλοτάτων ness of condition, and that this passage
ἀνϑρώπων, Tov δὲ οὐρανὸν πάντα καὶ τὰ cannot be reckoned with those in which a
ἐκεῖ ἄστρα μὴ τῆς ἀϑανάτου κεκοινωνηκέναι. hit is intended against the Christian notio
oo πρότερον ταπεινὸς καὶ μέτριος καὶ of humility. . °
a
n
8
- -done nothing at all. Si
AGAINST THE GNOSTICS. . 893 °
In this charge of arrogance against the Gnos-
tics, in boasting of their loftier prewnatie origin and nature , Ireneeus
_ also agreed, Ai Bie he says of them,” “ oad, gives himself Ame their
"hands, is puffed up at once ; thinks himself neither in heaven nor on »
earth, but to belong already to the Pleroma, and struts ‘about full “
pride.” We see here the wnspeculatiye church father and the paga
philosopher perfectly agreed in attacking the ‘spiritual pride of the
Gnostics. Yet it.may be asked, whether Plotinus would not be obliged,
on his own position, to judge precisely in the same way of the Chris-
tians, who gloried in having become, through grace, the children of
God, and despised the religion and culture handed down to them from
- the fathers ; — whether, in writing that passage, he was not thinking at
- 411: 2 Lib. Το. 15°
the same time, of the Christians as a body.
Plotinus, who does not distinguish the several parties of the Gnos-
tics,? thinkingyof those among ‘them that held . to the doctrine of ‘an.
absolute opposition between the Demiurge and the Supreme God, and_
between the two orders of world, says their doctrine led to the same _
practical result as did the principles of the Epicurean school, which
denied everything divine, and made pleasure the highest good. For
were it.truethat ‘this world is utterly estranged from everything god-
like, so that the latter cannot’ reveal or realize itself in it, men might
safely conglude that they had nothing else to do but to make the best
they could out of pleasure and profit ;* and.so they would, did not their
own moral nature teach them better than such a, system. δος To, these
fundamental principles, too, he very justly traces the great defect in.
all their systems, that they had nothing to say on the subject of moral-
ity,>—and he sums up with these remarks: ‘To say, ‘ Look away to +
God,’ is nothing to.the purpose, unless you are taught how you may be
able to look away to him; for what hinders one, you might say, from
looking to God, though one should neither abstain. from pleasure, nor
moderate one’s anger; since surely men may think of God’s name, at
the same time that they abandon themselves to their passions. Virtue.
which goes right forward to its end and dwells in the soul with wisdom,
᾿
- ε *
over without any notice the strictly moral
spirit which pervaded the sect. The pre-
eminently practical tendency of Marcion
1 erent καὶ. τοῦ οὐρανοῦ, οὐδὲν πο-
᾿ from animal food.”
8 Baur has fcemaiiodoel this. See his
_ work, just mentioned, p. 446. In respect tor
the theoretical part, the speculative view of
the universe, the majority of the allusions
in this book are doubtless to the great Val-
,entinian branch of the Gnostic system. In
“this I agree with Baur. In respect to the
ractical part/thé attack seems to be direct-
ἃ for the most part against the sheer Dual-
istic and antinomian views? In fact, Por-
phyry, the disciple of Plotinusy combats
this tendency in his work on “ Abstinence,
I can find nothing ‘in
the book which may not be sufficiently well
δ ps on this hypothesis, -- nothing
hich, as Baur-supposes, could refer direct-
v to the sect of Marcion. In reference to
the latter, Plotinus would not have passed |
was in no sense calculated to bring on’any
collision between this school and “the New
Platonists.
phyry names no one of the Gnostics who is
known to us, but others who are quite un-
known. Of the works, too, which are said
to have been the fruit of immense labor om
the part of the Gnostics méntioned by him,
we know not ing. Perhaps we might ob-
tain more ‘accurate information about an
ante Christian G@osis, if these works were
in our hands.
4 Ἵνα μηδὲν καλὸν ἐνταῦϑα δὴ ὀφϑείη
ὑπάρχον.
5 Ki μήτις τῃ φύσει τῇ αὐτοῦ κρείττων
εἴη τῶν λόγων τούτων.
θ- Μηδένα λόγον περὶ ἀρετῆς π πεπριῆσϑαι
᾿ Ὁ
ν ᾿
But it is noticeable that ῬΟΥ-
394 GNOSTICISM — CLASSIFICATION
this enables one to see God. But when, without true virtue, God is
named, it is only an empty name.”
The most convenient basis which can be adopted for a classification
of the Gnostic sects, is suggested by what has been said respecting the
more important differences which obtained among them; that is, they
may be referred to different classes, according as they were given to
a sterner or a milder form of Dualism; according as they represented
the Demiurge as a being altogether alien from and opposed to the Su-
preme God, or only as subordinate to him and acting even in the ante-
christian period as his unconscious organ; according as they acknowl-
edged the connection subsisting between the visible and invisible
worlds, between God’s revelation in nature, in history and Christianity,
—the union of the Old and New Testaments as belonging to the same
whole of the theocratic deyelopment, or denied all this, and admitted
of nothing but an opposition in these several respects. In short, we
may <livide the Gnostic sects into two classes; one attached, the other
opposed to Judaism. If we may not always find the antithesis so
sharply defined in fact as it is presented in our conception of it, but
shall observe many shades of transition from the stiff and rigid to the
more pliable and flowing forms of doctrine, yet we must remember that
‘this is precisely what might be expected in such a time of ferment and
confusion — the same thing, in fact, which occurs in other well-founded
instances of opposition. It furnishes no ground of objection, there-
fore, against the correctness of our division.
As the first oppositions in the mode of apprehending Christianity
arose from its birth-place in Judaism, the same was true also of the
Gnosis ; though subsequently the latter developed itself into a tendency
directly opposed to Judaism. We observed, m fact, among the Juda-
izing sects themselves, Gnostic elements which were to be traced to
mystical, theosophic and speculative tendencies existing among the
Jews. Hence many phenomena may present themselves, which would
leave us at a loss whether we ought to reckon them to Judaizing or to
Gnostic sects; and as they are phenomena belonging to the boundaries
of both, and constituting transition points between them, we may be in
one sense right, whether we consider them as belonging to the end of
the development of the Judaizing sects, or to the beginnmg of the de-
velopment of the Gnostic sects. But wherever a phenomenon pre-
sents itself, which in spirit and character belongs to a fundamentally
Jewish mode of thinking, though it may be seen to contain imdividual
elements of Gnosticism, yet we shall be obliged, notwithstanding, to
refer it to the former system. Wherever certain tendencies or ideas
predominate in the spiritual atmosphere of a period, they without fail
become mixed up with everything which in any way presents a possible
point of union for them, even though in other respects of a quite oppo-
site tendency. ‘This holds good of the religious tendency which shows
itself in the Clementines.! Although it must be conceded, that indi-
vt P
11 must explain myself on this point, Gnostic sects, is connected, indeed, with the
where I differ from Dr. Baur. The way difference existing between us in the mode
in which we differ in our distribution of the of apprehending the entire system of Gnosti
Φ
OF GNOSTIC SECTS. 395
vidual ideas, closely related to Gnosticism, are to be found in this
work, yet the striving after a simplification of the doctrine of. faith ;
the doctrine of a primitive religion, simply restored by Moses and
Christ; the purely Jewish conception of πίστις ; the prominence given
to outward works, the assertion of their meritoriousness, and the pre-
dominant tendency to the outward and practical life, — all which the
Gnostic himself would ascribe to a psychical temperament, incapable
of receiving the Gnosis, — all this is too characteristically distinctive
of the Jewish fundamental position as opposed to the Gnosis, to leave
it a moment doubtful, in which category we have to place this phenom-
enon, while at the same time the work itself assumes a polemical atti-
tude against Gnosticism, of which Simon Magus appears in this work
as the representative. We must place the tendency of the Clemen-
tines, as not belonging itself to Gnosticism, but as representing the ex-
treme Jewish position, over against the system of Marcion. The
extreme point of Judaism, most directly opposed to the Marcionitic
heresy, we consider to be this: the Clementines recognize in Christian-
ity nothing that is new ; Christianity is only a restoration of the pure
religion of Moses. So far as the main question in the Clementines
relates to the restoration of a simple, monotheistic, primitive religion,
and Judaism is stript entirely of its prophetic element, we see in it
rather a precursor of Mohammedanism, than a form of the manifesta-
tion of Gnosticism.
But while we are constrained to adopt this division of the Gnostics
into two main classes, we may at the same time conceive of a two-fold
modification of the second anti-Judaistic terlency. Hither, e. g.
Christianity was presented in direct opposition to Judaism; but, in
compensation, brought into so much the closer connection with Pagan-
ism, though not with the mythological, but speculative element of Hel-
lenism ; or else Christianity was severed from all connection whatever
with earlier systems, so that it might appear in its complete elevation,
its eclipsing glory, above all that went before it, — so that it might be
free from all lability to corruption by elements from a preceding stage
of culture. ‘The first mentioned modification of Gnosticism, inasmuch
as it brings Christianity into union with Paganism much more than with
Judaism, must lose sight of the theistic principle itself as opposed to
that of nature-religion, and hence must prove most injurious to the
character of the Christian element. The second modification, on the
other hand, comes into collision with the spirit of Gnosticism itself, by
which it is on one side attracted, through the purely Christian interest,
although misapprehended, which animates it.?
After these general remarks, we now proceed to consider the several
Gnostic sects in detail ; and following the classification which appeared
cism; and this difference, again, with the 1 J readily acknowledge, with thanks, that
fundamental difference in our theological I should, perhaps, not have come to this
principles. I have not thought it proper to new modification of the division offered in
enter any farther into the polemics of the my genetic development, and in tle first
question, inasmuch as the grounds for my _ edition of my Church History, without the
own development of the subject lie in that impulse given me by the strictures on my
development itself. classification by Dr. Baur.
396 CERINTHUS.
to us the most proper one, we shall speak first of those Gnostic sects,
which, attaching themselves to Judaism, held to a. gradual development
of the Theocracy among mankind from an original foundation of it
in the race.
Particular Sects.
1. Gnostic Sects attaching themselves to Judaism.
CrerInTHUS. —Cerinthus is best entitled to be considered as the inter-
mediate link between the Judaizing and the Gnostic sects. ΤῸ him the
remark just made applies im all its force, that it may be disputed, whether '
he ought to be placed in the former or latter class of these sects ; since in
him, as has been shown already, elements of Ebionitism and of Gnosti-
cism are both found united. Hence even among the ancients, opposite
reports from opposite points of view could arise respecting his doctrine,
according as men gave prominence only to the Gnostic or only to the
Judaizing element ;+ and hence the dispute on this point could be kept
up even to modern times. In point of chronology, too, Cerinthus 15
the one who may be regarded as representing the principle in its transi-
tion from Judaism to Gnosticism; for he made his appearance in Asia
Minor, near the extreme close of the apostolic age, when the tendencies
allied to Essenism were now following out the Pharisaic Judaism which
first mixed itself in with Christianity. As in the epistles which St.
Paul wrote during his first imprisonment, we already find indications
of the first appearance of such a phenomenon, we have no reason what-
ever to call in question the tradition, which can be traced back to disci-
ples of the Apostle Joh himself, on the credit of which Irenzeus certifies
that Cerinth was a contemporary of this apostle, and was combated by
him. ‘There is nothing improbable in what Theodoretus reports,” that
he began in Alexandria, received his first impulse from the theology
of the Alexandrian Jews, drew from thence the germs of his doctrine,
and made his appearance in Asia Minor only at a somewhat later time.
We detect the Jewish principle in Cerinth, when he places a bound-
less chasm between God and the world; and here comes in the hypoth-
esis of numberless intermediate beings, or angels, — lower and higher
orders of spirits —to fill up this chasm. In truth, the doctrine about
the different classes of angels assumed in the later Jewish theology, a
very important place. By the instrumentality of such angels, he
taught, God created this world ;—for it seemed to him beneath the
dignity of the Supreme God that he should come into any immediate
contact with a world so foreign from his essence.? At the head of these
1 To the Gnostic, by Irenzus, in whose
account, however, the Judaizing element
occasionally shines through ; — to the Juda-
izing element, by the presbyter Caius, at
Rome, and Dionysius, bishop of. Alexan-
dria, in their reports preserved to us by
Eusebius.
2 Heret. fab. 11. 3.
8 Philo, too, thought it necessary to dis-
tinguish, in the nature of man, the higher
element, proceeding immediately from God,
and the lower, which was formed by infe-
rior spirits, — vid. de mundi opificio, ὁ 24;
and this notion finds something to fix itself
on in Plato, (Timeus. T. IX. p. 326, ed
Bipont.,) where he says the eternal, the
godlike in man proceeds from the Supreme
God himself, the mortal from the subordin
ate gods, — to them was to be ascribed the
avavatw ϑνητὸν προσυφαίνειν. The doe-
trine, too, afterwards further prosecuted and
matured by the Gnostics, as we shall seo
Ν
CERINTHUS. 397
angels he placed one, who, in his whole activity at this stage of existence,
in his relation to this lower world, was to represent the Supreme God,
and without knowing hin, serve as an instrument of his will! Cerimth
held to the representation that the Mosaic law was given by the minis-
try of angels ; and this representation he employed in the way already
noticed, to explain, consistently with the divine origin of Judaism, its
subordinate character. ‘The angel who stood at the head of the rest,
he may have regarded, perhaps, distinctively, as the ruler of the Jewish
people, and the being through whom the Supreme God revealed himself
to them. Above him, the Jewish people, at least as a body, never
could rise ; although a small number of enlightened persons, the spir-
itual nucleus of the Israelitish people, formed an exception. Men be-
lieved they possessed and worshipped in him, the Supreme God himself.
A like distinction, indeed, had been also made by Philo. From the great
mass of the Jews, who were destined to represent objectively the type of
God’s people, but who possessed only an indirect knowledge of God
as he presented himself in outward revelation and in his works gener-
ally, or in his Logos; or who considered the Logos to be the Supreme
God himself, and whose God was the Logos, — from this common mass
of the Jews, he distinguished those who had soared beyond all that is
indirect and positive, to the region where the spirit comes into 1mmedi-
ate contact with the Absolute, the 4» or the ὄν itself,— in other words,
those whose God is the Supreme God himself.2 In those passages of
the Old Testament where, after an angel had spoken, God is introduced
as speaking himself, Gen. 81: 18, Philo supposed he found presented
that subordinate position or stage of religious development, at which the
angel, through whom God reveals himself, is considered to be God him-
self; or to which, rather, God, revealing ‘himself in the form of an angel,
lets himself down;— since in becoming all things to all, he becomes a
man to men, exhibits himself in the likeness of man in condescending to
meet them at their own position. These are the ones who confound God
as he manifests himself in his works, with God as he is in himself, in
his essence ; like persons who imagine that in the reflected image of the
sun, they have its essential nature itself.2 Such representations the
Gnostic theories may have originated ; although, by holding fast to the
respecting the different elements in human
nature, which sprang in part from the Su-
preme God, and partly from the Demiurge,
might lean on the same basis.
1 Thus we understand the doctrine of
Cerinth, as exhibited by Irenzus, lib. I. ec.
26: “Nona primo Deo factum esse mun-
dum docuit, sed a virtute quadam valde
separata et distante ab ea principalitate
qu est super universa, et ignorante eum,
qui est super omnia, Deum.” [0 is possi-
ble, indeed. that Irenzus transferred to the
doctrines of Cerinth, the character of the
later Gnosis, with which he was more fa-
miliar, and thus attributed to Cerinth what
really did not belong to him. But it is at
least in perfect keeping with the whole con-
nection of his system, and finds confirma-
VOL. I. 34
tion when we compare it with other Gnostic
systems, to suppose that he conceived one
of the angels to be ruler over this stage of
existence, and therefore designated him
particularly as the former of the world.
2 Οὗτος (ὁ λόγος) ἡμῶν τῶν ἀτελῶν ἂν
εἴη ϑεὺὸς, τῶν δὲ σοφῶν καὶ τελείων ὁ πρῶ-
toc. Legis allegor. 1. III. § 73. See above.
vol. I. p. 57.
8 Gen. 31: 13. Ὅτι τὸν ἀγγέλου τόπον
ἐπέσχε, ὅσα τῷ δοκεῖν, ov μεταβαλὼν,
πρὸς τὴν τοῦ μήπω δυναμένου τὸν ἀληϑῆ
ϑεὸν ἰδεῖν ὠφέλειαν. Καϑάπερ γὰρ τὴν
ἀνϑήλιον αὐχὴν ὡς ἥλιον οἱ μὴ δυνάμενοι
τὸν ἥλιον αὐτὸν ἰδεῖν ὁρῶσι, οὕτως καὶ τὴν
τοῦ ϑεοῦ εἰκόνα τὸν ἄγγελον αὐτοῦ λόγον
ὡς αὐτὸν κατανοοῦσιν. De somniis, l. 1.
§ 41.
398 CERINTHUS.
side of fact and reality, they differ from the common Alexandrian the-
ology, in which the Platonic and ideal elements much more predominate.
The Christology of Cerinth is based on the common Ebionite way of
thinkmg. His notions respecting Jesus up to the time of his inaugura-
tion to the office of Messiah, appear to have been the same as we found
among that class of Ebionites who denied the supernatural conception
of Christ. In common with these, he traced back all divine attributes
in Christ to that descent of the Holy Spirit upon him, which accompa-
nied his baptism. The Holy Spirit, he regarded as the Spirit of
the Messiah, (the πνεῦμα Χριστοῦ,) as the true heavenly Christ himself
(ὁ ἄνω Xpioréc.) By this Spirit, Christ was led to the knowledge of
the Supreme God, who was before unknown to him. It was the same
who through Christ revealed this unknown God, and who bestowed
on Christ the supernatural power of working miracles. The lower,
earthly Messiah, (ὁ κάτω Χριστός, the man Jesus, was only the vehicle
and organ of that heavenly Christ, who wrought in him. If Christ, the
crucified, proved a stone of stumbling to those Jews who conceived the
idea of the Messiah in accordance with the common political spirit ; the
same Jewish spirit presents itself in Cermth, only under another form,
corresponding to the theosophical, Magian turn of his mind. Cerinth
had no conception of the divinity appearmg in the form of a servant, in
the extreme of self-humiliation. He was for no other Messiah than one
who should manifest himself m splendor; for no other than a glorified
Christ. The heavenly Christ, according to the doctrine of Cerinth, is
superior to all suffermg;—he withdrew from the man Jesus when he
was given up to the pains of death. The very fact of his suffermg
proves that Jesus had been forsaken by that higher spirit, superior to
all pain; for had he remained united with that spirit, he could not pos-
sibly have been overcome by force, nor subjected to suffermg or death.
Accordingly it is probable that Cerinth attached no importance to this
suffering, as connected with the work of redemption; yet possibly he
may have regarded it as a proof of that piety and devotion to God, by
which Jesus entitled himself to the highest reward. In consistency
with his whole mode of thinking, he must now have supposed that
the higher Christ united himself again with Jesus, who had shown his
perfect obedience to the Supreme God under all sufferings, that by
him he was awakened from death, and exalted to heaven. But we
have no information as to the farther development of his ideas. Ac-
cording to a report of Epiphanius, he denied the resurrection of Jesus.
Supposing this to have been so, the connection of his doctrines would
have to be conceived, perhaps, somewhat after the following way: The
higher Christ was not again to unite himself with the man Jesus, until
he should establish him a victorious sovereign over the Messiah’s king-
dom, and with him awaken all the faithful to share in his triumph. The
report of Epiphanius, however, is not to be trusted ;——for as he went
on the hypothesis, that the Apostle Paul had everywhere to encounter
the followers of Cerinth, it is possible he may have been led, by some
passages in the 15th chapter of the first epistles to the Corinthians, to
impute to the latter an opinion which did not belong to him.
CERINTHUS. 3899
Cerinthus agreed with the Ebionites, again, in maintaining that the
Mosaic law continued, in a certain sense, to be binding on Christians.
He may have held, perhaps, that by the heavenly Christ, Judaism in
its highest sense, which was not yet clear even to the angels who gave
the law, the Ἰουδαϊσμὸς πνευματικός (heavenly things typified by the
earthly) had been revealed first;— that the earthly shadow, how-
ever, would still continue, until the triumphant ushering in of the Mes-
siah’s kingdom, or the beginning of the new and heavenly order of
things. But since Epiphanius says of him, that he adhered in part to
Judaism, and it is not probable that Epiphanius would have invented
anything precisely of that sort ;1 we may conclude that Cerinth did not
look upon everything in J udaism as alike divine; but that, m some
sort, like the author of the Clementines, and many ‘of the J ewish, mys-
tic sects, he distinguished an original Judaism from its later corrup-
tions, and that he insisted on the continued obligation of only that
part of the ceremonial law which he reckoned as belonged to the former.
As an intermediate link and point of transition between the earthly
and the new, heavenly and eternal order of the world, Cerinth, in com-
mon with many of the Jewish theologians, placed a happy period of a
thousand years, when Jesus, having triumphed, through the power of
the heavenly Christ united with’ him, over every enemy, would reign in
the glorified Jerusalem, the central point of the glorified earth. It was
inferred from Ps. 90: 4, too literally understood, that as a thousand
vears 15 with God as one ‘day, the world would continue in its then con-
dition for six thousand years ; and at the end of this earthly period of
the world, would follow a thousand years of sabbaths (of. uninterrupted
blessedness) on the earth, when the righteous should be delivered from
all their conflicts. It may be a question, indeed, whether he enter-
tained such gross and sensual notions of this millenial sabbath, as
Caius and Dionysius imputed to him. Such views would hardly be in
keeping with his system as a whole. He spoke of a wedding feast —
an image then commonly employed to signify the blessed union of the
Messiah with his people ;2 but any one who was not familiar with the
figurative language of the East, and who interpreted his language un-
der the bias of unfriendly feelings, might put a wrong construction on
such images. Dionysius says, that in speaking of festivals and offer-
ings, he was only seeking to palliate his gross, sensual notions.? But
what was his warrant for such a supposition? If Cerinth really taught
such a grossly sensual Chiliasm, we should in this see something SO
wholly repugnant to the spirit of Gnosticism, so strongly preponderating
1 ἸΤροσέχειν τῷ Ἰουδαϊσμῷ ἀπὸ μέρους. 2 The Gnostics also described the blessed-
It may be affirmed with certainty, that
Epiphanius meant to denote in this way a
partial observance of the Mosaic rites. As
it was his object here to distinguish Cerinth
from Carpocrates, who rejected Judaism,
the phrase might be understood of a par-
tial recognition of Judaism as a divine in-
stitution, — partial, so far at least as he
made angels only its authors.
ness of the πνευματικοί, when received into
the Pleroma, under the image of a wedding
feast, of a marriage between the σωτήρ and
the σοφία, the spiritual natures and the an-
gels, (see below.) T hus in Heracleon, “ dve-
ΗΝ ἡ ἐν γάμῳ," cited by Orig. in ‘Joann.
T. X. § 14.
8 Euseb. hist. eccles. lib. III. ¢. 28
400 BASILIDES.
on the side of the Jewish point of view, as to make it necessary for.us
to rank him with the Judaists rather than with the Gnostics.
BastuipEs. — From Cerinth we pass to Basilides, who lived in the
first half of the second century. .It is in the highest degree probable,
that Alexandria was the principal seat of his activity ; — the stamp of
the Jewish-Alexandrian culture both in him, and in his son Isidorus,! —
whose name denotes his Egyptian origm,—1is too strongly marked to
be mistaken. But the account given by Epiphanius, that Syria, the
common birth-place of the Gnostic systems, was also the native land of
Basilides, is not in itself improbable, though not absolutely certain.
The doctrines of emanation and Dualism formed the ground-work of his
system. At the head of the world of emanation he placed that unre-
vealed God, who is infinitely exalted above all representations and
names.2 The medium of transition between this incomprehensible first
ground, and all the followmg evolution of life, was the unfolding of the
same into its several selfindividualizing powers, which are so many
names of the Ineffable. Man can conceive God only after the analogy
of his own mind; and this analogy is bottomed on an objective truth,
since the mind of man is God’s image. On this rests the truth lying
at the root of the intellectual process through which we arrive at the
formation of our conceptions of the divine attributes, and the truth lymg
at the bottom of these individual attributes themselves. But the
Gnostic, incapable of distinguishing the objective and subjective, trans-
ferred this to the evolution of objective existence from the divine, pri-
mal essence. In order to the production of life—he conceived —it
was necessary that the being who includes all perfection in himself,
should unfold himself into the several attributes which express the idea
of absolute perfection; and in place of abstract, notional attributes, un-
suited to the Oriental taste, he substitued living, self-subsistent, ever
active, hypostatised powers: first, the intellectual powers, the spirit
(voic,) the reason (Aé6yoc,) the thinking power (φρόνησις, wisdom (cogia;)
next, might (δύναμις) whereby God executes the purposes of his wisdom ;
and lastly the moral attributes, independently of which God’s almighty
power is never exerted: namely, holiness or moral perfection (δικαιοσύνη, )
where the term is to be understood according to its Hellenistic and He-
brew meaning, —not in the more restricted sense of our word right-
eousness.> Next to moral perfection follows inward tranquillity, peace
(sipivn,) which, as Basilides rightly judged, can exist only in connec-
tion with holiness: —and this peace, which is the characteristic of the
divine life, concludes the evolution of life within God himself. The
number seven was regarded ie Basilides, as it was by many theosoph-
ists of this period, as a sacred number; and accordingly those seven
powers (δύναμεις ) together with the primal ground out of which they
1 The name, however, is a singular one cially those of the second class, used this
for the son of a person of Jewish descent. word to denote a moral quality only in
2 Ὁ ἀκατονόμαστος, ἄῤῥητος. which there was more or less of defect, —
8 Tt is remarkable that Basilides employed the notion of justice or righteousness in its
the word δικαιοσύνη, according to the Hel- more restricted sense. (See below.)
lenistic and Hebrew usage, to denote moral 4 Tren. lib. 1. Ὁ. 24; lib. IIc. 16. Clem.
perfection: while the other Gnostics, espe- Strom. lib. IV. ἢ. 539.
BASILIDES. 401
were evolved, constituted in his scheme the πρώτη éydoac, the first octave,
or root of all existence. From this point, the spiritual life proceeded
to evolve itself farther and farther, into numberless gradations of exist-
ence, each lower one being ever the i impression, the antitype (ἀντίτυπος)
of the higher.
We perceive here, for the first time, that grand idea of Gnosticism,
that one law, in different degrees and forms of application, pervades all
the stages and kinds of existence, so that everything from highest
to lowest is produced by a uniform law ; ;——those general laws οὗ the
universe, after the knowledge of which science in its more profound in-
vestigations feels itself impelled to struggle, although the attainment of
the end, the complete resolution of the problem, must be reserved for the
intuition of a higher state of existence. It is the striving to find the unity
again in the endless multeity ; to gain a knowledge of the πολυποίκιλος
σοφία in its ἁπλότης, from the mirror of its self-manifestation.
Might we safely judge from the opinions of later Basilideans, as they
are presented by Ivenzeus, and from the Basilidean gems and amulets,
respecting the doctrines of the original school, it would appear that
Basilides, holding to seven homogeneous natures in each gradation of
the spiritual world, supposed that there were three hundred and sixty-
five such regions or gradations of the spiritual world, answering to the
days of the year. “This was expressed by the mystical watch-word
ἀβράξας, formed after the Greek mode of reckoning numbers by the
alphabet.?
Within this emanation-world, each was precisely what it ought to be
at its own proper stage; but from the mixture of the godlike and the
ἀπβ άπ ΚΘ arose disharmony, which must be reduced again to harmony.
t is to be regretted, that at this point, a hiatus exists in the accounts
we aes of the system of Basilides. The question here arises, whether
he followed the theory which attributed this mixture to a falling down of
the divine germ of life into the bordering chaos, or the one which sup-
posed a selfactive kingdom of evil, and traced the mixture to an
encroachment of this kingdom on the realm of light.
After what has been said, however, in our introductory remarks, no
very great importance can be attributed to this difference, so far as it
would be likely to affect the particular shaping of the system. In an
ancient writing of the fourth century,? some expressions are quoted
from a work of Basilides,’ in which the subject of discourse relates to
1 It may be, that this term, which denotes
the whole emanation-world, as an evolution
of the Supreme Essence, had some other
meaning besides; but every attempt to ex-
plain it would be arbitrary, since there are
no certain data extant on which to proceed.
2 The disputation of Archelaus and Mani,
preserved to us in the Latin translation, c.
55. In Fabricius’ edition of the works of
Hippolytus, f. 193.
® Gieseler, it is trne, in a review of his,
(Stadien und Kritiken, J. 1830, 8. 397.) has
denied that Basilides the Gnostic is here in-
84"
tended. But I must agree with Baur, who,
in his work on the religious system of the
Manicheans, p. 85, pronounces the argu-
ments of Gieseler not satisfactory. The qual-
ification, “ Basilides antiquior,” can hardly
be understood to mean, that a different per-
son from that Basilides who had some time
before been mentioned (c. 38. f. 175) in con-
nection with Marcion and Valentine, was
intended ; for the allusion to a person who
had been named so far back, is too remote;
it must necessarily have been more strong-
ly marked. The “antiquior” may be very
402 BASILIDES.
a poor and a rich principle; the nature of the poor being represented
as one which has supervened, obtruded itself upon things, as without
root and without place.!. These very obscure and enigmatical words
are, indeed, only a fragment. But if we take into consideration, that
in this whole work of Basilides, or at least in the portion to which this
sentence forms the introduction, the subject relates to the antagonism
of a good and eyil principle, and that afterwards the manifestly Zoro-
astrian doctrine concerning the kingdoms of Ormuzd and of Ahriman is
alluded to,? it will appear probable that those obscure, introductory
words are only a symbolical designation of these two principles. The
good principle is the rich, the evil primciple the poor element. ᾿ The
being ‘ without root and place,” characterizes the absoluteness of the
principle, that emerges all at once, and mixes itself in the evolution of
existence. Probably the poor was attracted, by a craving of need,
toward the riches which were presented to view, and which excited in
it an irresistible longing to abstract something for itself. Probably
Basilides would next proceed to cite the Persian doctrine as corrobora-
tive of his own dualistic theory. It comports with this view of the matter,
if, as is stated by Clement of Alexandria, it be true, that he deduced the
foreign element which united itself with the godlike nature of man,
from a mixture of these principles.?
well understood as referring to the age of
Basilides as compared with that of Mani;
and the “ guidam,” used with regard to a
person who had been already named with
others, does not strike me as so very singu-
lar, especially in such a style of writing.
But how can such slight reasons warrant us,
when everything else perfectly agrees with
the Basilides known tous, to suppose another
living at the same period, who also must
have taught dualistic doctrines? The trac-
tatus of Basilides here cited i is probably the
same work with the ἐξηγητικά, to which
Clement of Alexandria refers.
1 Per parvulam (here there is probably a
false translation or a false reading) divitis
et pauperis naturam, sine radice et sine loco
rebus supervenientem, unde pullulaverit in-
dicat.
2 Que de bonis et malis etiam barbari in-
quisiverunt. Here the barbari are the Per-
sians, for the doctrine immediately cited is
evidently the pure Parsie doctrine. The
same form of presentation may perhaps be
recognized also in the manner in which Isi-
dorus, the son of Basilides, refers certain
enigmatical expressions of Pherecides Sy-
rius, to a cope stretched out in the starry
heavens over the realm of light, a bulwark
opposed to the kingdom of darkness. Vid.
Clemens Strom. |. VI. f. 621; Orig. ο. Cels.
1. VI. c. 42; Pherecydis fragmenta, pag. 46,
ed. Sturz.
3 Tapayoc καὶ σύγχυσις ἀργικῇ Clemens
Strom. 1. 11. f. 408. Gieseler, in the review
mentioned in a former note, p. 396, has pre-
ferred the signification of the word ἀρχικός,
«.
If the charges which Clement of
“original,” — which signification, indeed,
etymologically, it unquestionably admits
of, — and he refers what is here said to the
fall and its consequences. He supposes
“that Basilides, according to his rigid theo-
ry of God’s justice, could not allow that
human souls were thrown into these bonds
of matter without previous guilt.” But
neither indeed would deriving the distur-
bance of the divine in individuals from the
fall agree with the theory of justice, appre-
hended in this rigid sense. According to this
theory, on the contrary, each must atone for
his own sin. And eyen if Basilides taught,
as Gieseler assumes. that the divine germ
of life became mixed with a dead matter,
(ὕλη); yet nothing is gained in this way,
which could avail any thing in carrying out
the rigid theory of justice. The souls would
still continue to suffer in consequence of an
inevitable mischance; unless we may sup-
pose that the first mixture of the spirit with
matter was connected with guilt, and refer
this mixture itself to a primitive fall in the
world of- spirits. But even in that case,
what was at first connected with guilt,
would, in its consequences, be to the souls
afterwards produced, only an inherited mis-
fortune. A theory of justice so rigid and
narrow must generally, if it supposes a
cosmical and historically cohering process
of evolution, become involved in many dif-
ficulties and contradictions. It may be
conceived, perhaps, that Basilides supposed,
in the first place, an original mixture of
principles as the cause of all other distur-
bances, and then still held fast to the prin
403
Alexandria brings against Basilides, that he deified the devil, might
have reference to his Dualism, this would furnish a certain proof, that
he adopted the doctrine about Ahriman ;} but this accusation is not to
be so understood. It is to be considered as merely hypothetical; the
arbitrary deduction of an inference from an assertion of Basilides,
which does not belong here, but of which we shall have occasion to speak
hereafter.”
But whatever might have been the origin of this mixture of light and
darkness, of the godlike and the ungodlike, it was obliged, according
to this system, to subserve the purpose of the godlike, to accomplish
the ideas of the divine wisdom, — of the law which regulates the en-
tire evolution of life ; since the kingdom of evil is, in itself, nothing —
the godlike is the real; the element destined to triumph by its own
nature.
Light, life, soul, goodness, on the one ee — darkness, death, mat-
ter, evil, on the other, — these were the corresponding members of the
antithesis, which, according to Basilides’ system, extends through the
whole progressive course of the world. Everywhere, as rust deposits
itself on the surface of iron, darkness and death cleave to the fallen
seeds of light and life; the evil to the good; the ungodlike to the
godlike ; — while at the same time it is impossible that the original es-
sence should, in this way, ever be destroyed. It must only purify
itself by degrees from the foreign dross, in order to gain once more its
original splendor ; ; --- just as the iron needs to be cleansed from its rust,
in order to recover its higher lustre. Such a process of purification
BASILIDES.
formed for this end, namely, to separate the godlike from all foreign
mixture, and conduct it back to its kindred element, to a reunion with its
original source.
ciple that all suffering is in some way or
other a correlative of subjective sin.
Now though the word ἀρχικός may un-
doubtedly signify the original, yet the man-
ner in which the words ἀρχῇ, λόγος apxLKoc,
μοναρχία, are employed in the Alexandrian
use of the language, is more favorable to
my own view of the sense, and the connec-
tion of the words seems to me to favor it
likewise; for σύγχυσις signifies a confused
mixture, and this requires some determina-
tion. Now what it is that is mixed together,
the word apyx7 shows, —it is a mixing to-
gether of principles. Doubtless I must ad-
mit, that the words need not necessarily
designate a confusion or intermingling of
the potencies of light with a self-active king-
dom of Abriman, bat that they may also
denote the mixture of the fallen, divine
germ of life with a dead ὕλη. But we can-
not allow there is any force in the argument
of Gieseler, that if Basilides had entertain-
eda theory closely related to the Zoroastrian
Dualism, Docetism would have been the
necessary result. We have already assert-
ed, and must again repeat, that by such
reasonings greater importance is ascribed
to this difference than really belongs to it.
Just as in the original Parsism, such a mix-
ture of the kingdom of Ahriman with the
kingdom of light might be supposed, and
this world derived therefrom, without yet
making the evil principle in the world of
sense so radical a one as it is presupposed
to be by Docetism; while, on the other
hand, it would be possible to start from the
notion of the #2 n, and yet be led to Doce
tism. as the example of Marcion teaches.
1 Clem. Strom. 1. 1V.f. 507: Θειάζων τὸν
διάβολον.
2 Here I must allow Gieseler to be right,
and retract my former view of the matter.
8 Basilides says this of all suffering of
the fallen light-nature generally. “ Pain
and anxiety ‘deposit themselves outwardly
on things, like the rust on iron,’ ᾿(ὁ πόνος
καὶ ὁ φόβος ἐπισυμβαίνει τοῖς πράγμασιν
ὡς ὁ ἰὸς τῷ σιδήρῳ.) Strom. 1. IV. f. 509, ἃ.
In all this we see the spirit of the original
Zoroastrian doctrine far more clearly ex-
pressed than in the gloomy Dualism of ‘other
Gnostics, where the Zoroastrian doctrines
appear as if modified by a tone of mind
which did not spring from that system
404 BASILIDES.
In the system of Basilides, we find contradictory elements. On the
one hand, there prevails in it, by virtue of the Dualism and the mixture
of the two principles, the idea of a natural necessity determing the
fate of souls; but, on the other hand, he takes great pains to give dis-
tinct prominence to the notion of justice, — a justice which accurately
weighs the amount of merit and demerit; and to the notion of a free
will, which conditions the whole development and destiny of man. As
in man’s life on earth, each moment stands connected with the one
which preceded it, and is thereby determined, according to the differ-
ent application he may give to it by his free will, so in Basilides’
scheme, the life of each individual man on earth stands connected, in
the great refining. process of the universe, with the preceding series of,
existences. Hach one. brings evil with him out of some earlier state of
existence; and has to atone for it and purify himself from it in the
present life. Upon his moral conduct, again, in this earthly life, de-
pends his condition in a subsequent state of existence. In this sense
Basilides explains the words of Moses, respecting retribution until the
third and fourth generation.4 Thus it is certain that the transmigra-
tion of souls, within the sphere of humanity, occupies an important
place in the system of Basilides.
But here the question arises, whether he did not extend his doctrine
about the transmigration of souls still further; whether he did not sup-
pose that the soul 1 migrated also into the brute animal kingdom. ‘This
might seem, indeed, “to jar with the Z'heodicee above noticed, which
sprang out of the strict notion of justice ; but the words of Basilides
himself? express such a doctrine, when, in explainmg Rom. 7: 9, he
says: “I lived once without the ‘law; that i is, before I came into this
human body, I lived in a bodily shape which is not subject to the law;
in a brute body.”? There is evidently pre-supposed here a transposition
of the soul from the organism of the brute body, which still holds the
consciousness of reason enthralled, into the organism of the human
body, in which it attains to free development, and hence to the con-
sciousness of the moral law. Such a doctrine is closely connected,
too, with the fundamental ideas of Basilides. From the kingdom of
evil, of darkness, nothing positive can proceed —it is only like the rust,
which deposits itself on iron. All that issues from the realm of light
is life and soul. From the kingdom of darkness, which has mixed itself
in with the products of the kingdom of light, that only springs which
holds enthralled the light and the germs of life, — the souls every-
where scattered, — which does not suffer them to come to themselves.
It is the bond of matter. Thus he was obliged to recognize also in the
1 The proof of this is to be found in the and principles of their master. But the
words of the Didascal. Anatol. in Clement
of Alexandria, ed. Paris, 1641, f. 794: Τὸ"
ϑεὸς ἀποδιδοὺς ἐπὶ τρίτην Kal τετάρτην γε-
νεὼν τοῖς ἀπειϑοῦσι, φασὶν οἱ ἀπὸ Βασιλεί-
δου κατὰ τὰς ἐνσωματώσεις. It is true, the
writer is here speaking only of the follow-
ers of Basilides, and among these there
were some who departed far from the spirit
connection in which this doctrine stands.
with his principles, evinces that it must be
actually considered as having originated
with him.
2 Preserved by Origin in the fifth bock
of his Commentary on Romans, T. LV.
opp. f. 549.
BASILIDES. 405
brute kingdom a soul oppressed and confined by elements belonging to
the kmgdom of darkness. And this we should, have to reconcile with
his principle, already stated, respecting justice and divine retribution,
in the following manner. As long as the soul is kept confined in that
lower kingdom of nature, it lies prostrated under the destiny of that
mixture, under the power of the nature which fetters it; but when it
once attains to a free development of the rational principle, or of its
light-nature, or when it has once passed over into the human organism,
the law of rigid justice begins to apply in deciding the destiny of the
free rational beings thus produced.
According to Basilides, then, there is no such thing as a dead na-
ture. What is dead, has no existence for itself; it is only that which
oppresses actual life, till the reaction of the latter becomes strong
enough to burst the enveloping rmd. Thus, throughout all nature, he
perceives a life striving after release from the bonds of matter, in a
progressive movement towards freedom, from the mineral kingdom, up-
ward through the different stages of nature to man. Accordingly the
ethics of Basilides was based on his cosmogonic doctrine, when proceed-
ing on this principle of the identity of life and soul in all thimgs,! he
announced the law: “‘ Love must embrace all, because all things stand
in a certain relation to all, —all things are closely akin to all.””? And
so, in the purifying and evolving process of the universe, theré pre-
vails a two-fold law;— the law of natural necessity in the evolution
from below upward to man; and the progressive education, determined
by the laws of the moral order of the universe, from man onward ; from
this point, progress and regress, bliss and wretchedness, are conditioned
on free self-determination.
What we remarked concerning the place which the Demiurge occu-
pied in the systems of the first class of Gnostic sects, applies to that
angel, who, Basilides supposed, was set over the entire earthly course
of the world, over the whole purifying process of nature and history.
This bemg he denominates the ruler, (6 ἄρχων.) This Archon does
not, according to his doctrine, act in his government of the world inde-
pendently and arbitrarily ; but the whole proceeds ultimately from the
overruling providence of the Supreme God.
Three factors meet together in the remarkable doctrine of Basilides
concerning providence ; — but the factor from which everything even-
tually springs and on which everything depends, though through num-
berless termediate agents, is the Supreme God himself. From him
comes the law implanted in the nature of all beings, according to which
they develope themselves, and which conditions all influences by which
they are capable of being affected — the law containing in itself the
whole process of the development of the universe. ‘The Archon does
nothing more than give the impulse to the execution of that which
is already grounded, so far as it concerns the inherent law and the im-
planted power, in the individual beings themselves. He works on all
1 As in Buddhaism. Τὸ ἠγαπεκέναι ἅπαντα, ὅτι λόγον ἀποσώ-
2 The words of Basilides, as they are ζουσι πρὸς τὸ πᾶν ἅπαντα.
found in Clement, Strom. 1. VI. f. 508:
406 BASILIDES.
in obedience to this law of nature derived from the Supreme God, and
calls forth what is deposited and prepared m these laws of nature
into action;— and in this guiding activity of his, he acts simply,
though unconscious of it, as an instrument of the Supreme God. “ Al-
though that which we call providence,” says Basilides, ‘‘ begins to be
put in motion by the Archon, yet it had been implanted in the nature
of things at the same time with the origin of that nature, by the God
of the universe.” }
We see how Basilides endeavored to take a middle course between
two opposite ways of conceiving the divine government of the world : —
that which represented God as operating only in a transitive manner
upon things without himself; and the other, the Neo-Platonic, which
used the word providence to denote simply an eternal, immanent neces-
sity in the universe, developing itself according to: invariable laws.
Although, in his language, he approaches to the Neo-Platonie view,”
yet he adopts nothing but what can be reconciled with the theistic view
of the world; and in him we find fresh confirmation of what we have be-
fore said respecting the relation of Gnosticism to the Neo-Platonic
philosophy. The recognition of a personal God, whose agency is con-
tinually and everywhere concerned in the evolution of the universe,
and the teleological moment, closely connected therewith, distinguish
his fundamental position from that of Neo-Platonism. Hence, too, the
communication of something higher, of somethmg above nature and
above reason, finds place in his system; while to Plotinus, on the other
hand, that which is above reason must appear contrary to reason.
Closely connected with Basilides’ doctrine respecting the angels, the
different grades of the spiritual world, respecting the process of puri-
fication, and the training of incorporated souls, is that of his son Isido-
rus, which, perhaps, we may properly refer back to the father, — that
every soul, on becoming incorporated in a body, is attended by an
angel, possessmg some affinity with its peculiar nature, to whom is com-
mitted the guidance of its particular process of purification, and of its
particular traming; and who, probably, after its separation from the
body,. was supposed to accompany it to the place of its destination con-
ditioned by its conduct on earth— in this sense, a guardian spirit,
which everywhere accompanies its kindred soul. Such a spirit, ac-
cording to Isodorus, was the demon of Socrates.3
1 Clemens. Strom. 1. IV. f. 509: Ἡ πρό- beginning: ‘Eze? δὲ τὸ ἀεὶ καὶ τό οὔποτε
vola δὲ, εἰ καὶ ἀπὸ (not ὑπὸ, because this
impulse proceeds, indeed, from him, but is
to be derived from another as the first
cause.) Tod ἄρχοντος, ὡς φώναι, κινεῖσϑαι
ἄρχεται, ἀλλ᾽ ἐγκατεσπώρη ταῖς οὐσίαις σὺν
καὶ τῇ τῶν οὐσιῶν γενέσει πρὸς τοῦ τῶν
ὅλων ϑεοῦ. It is true, Clement does not
cite these words directly as the language of
Basilides. But as he is treating of him in
this whole passage, and as the expression
ἄρχων is peculiar to Basilides, it scarcely
admits of doubt, that Clement. who is bent
on refuting Basilides on his own principles,
makes use of his own words.
2 Vid. Plotin. Ennead. 111. 1. 11. at the
μὴ TO κόσμῳ τῷδε φαμὲν παρεῖναι, τῆν πρό-
VOLav ὀρϑῶς ἂν καὶ: ἀκόλουϑος λέγοιμεν τῷ
παντὶ εἶναι, τό κατὰ νοῦν αὐτὸ εἷναι.
8 Tsidorus cites, in the first book of his
exposition of the prophet Parchor, so call-
ed, a doctrine of this sort taught by the an-
cients, as one of the loftier truths received
by them: Φασὶ δὲ of ᾿Αττικοὶ μεμηνύσϑαι.
τινὰ Σωκρώτει παρεπομένου δαίμονος αὐτῷ.
Καὶ ᾿Αριστοτέλης δαίμοσι κεχρῆσϑαι πάν-
τας ἀνϑρώπους λέγει συνομαρτοῦσιν αὐτοῖς
παρὰ τόν χρόνον τῆς ἐνσωματώσεως. With-
out doubt, from some writing falsely attrib-
uted to Aristotle. Strom. 1. VI. f. 641.
BASILIDES. 407
It appears evident from what has been said, how far Basilides was
from adopting an absolute Dualism ; how far he was from countenanc-
ing an unchristian contempt or morose hatred of the world; how his
system, perhaps, led those who studied it to recognize the revelation
of one God in the creation, to observe the connection subsisting between
divine things and natural, between grace and nature. His aim was, to
make men conscious of the unity of God’s revelation in nature and in
history, — to lead them “to consider the whole universe as one temple
of God.” The Theodicee was with him a point of the greatest impor-
tance. Faith in the goodness, holiness, and justice of Providence stood
more firmly fixed in his mind, than all things else. Whenever, in con-
templating the course of the world, difficulties presented themselves to
his mind, leading to perplexity and doubt, his last word ever was, “1
will assert anything, sooner than I will allow a complaint or a slur to be
cast on Providence.”’? |
From Basilides’ theory of the Archon in his relation to the Supreme
God, we may easily infer what his opinion was of Judaism, and of its rela-
tion to Christianity. The Jews are, it is true, in idea, and in the ideal sig-
nificancy of their religion and of their national destination, that conse-
crated people of the Supreme God, from whom the true knowledge and
worship of the Most High was one day to proceed ; but in actual mani-
festation, they appear only as a people devoted and consecrated to the
Archon, who for a while constitutes the highest potence im the history
of the world. The great mass of this people regarded fim as the Su-
preme and only God. It was the spiritual men alone among the Jews,
they who constituted the spiritual Israel, that became actually con-
scious of that ideal significancy, and. in whom it attained to its realiza-
tion. These alone soared beyond the Archon himself to the presentiment
of the Supreme God, revealing himself through the other, as his uncon-
scious instrument. They only could rise to the intuition of the ideas
inspired by the Supreme God in the Archon, which the latter reveals
under the cover of Judaism, without comprehending them himself.
These ideas, not fathomed by the Archon himself, to whom they were
exhibited under a sensuous covering and drapery answering to the in-
ferior grade of his limited nature, form the connecting link betwixt this
mediated and veiled revelation of the Supreme God in the Old Testa-
ment and his immediate and unveiled self-manifestation in Christianity.
Accordingly Basilides says, “ Moses erected but one temple of God,
and thus proclaimed one universe of God.’’? By this was hinted, as we
find it somewhat similarly expressed in Philo, the universality of the
reference, lying at the very foundation of Judaism. Basilides, how-
ever, did not confine himself to the canonical writings of the Old Testa-
ment alone. He made use of apocryphal scriptures besides, which are
1 Πᾶν ἐρῶ, μᾶλλον ἢ κακὸν τό προνοῦν Philo and Josephus, also, both consider the
ἐρῶ Strom. |. IV. f. 506. temple as a symbol of the world, and carry
3 Ἕνα & οὗν νέων ἰδρυσάμενος τοῦ ϑεοῦ, the image into further details. Philo Tepe
μονογενῆ τε κόσμον κατήγγειλε. Strom. μοναρχίας |. 11.: Τὸ μὲν ἀνωτάτῳ καὶ πρὸς
1. V. f.583,D. We perceive here, both in ἀλήϑειαν ἱερὸν ϑεοῦ νομίζειν τον σύμπαντα
the thought and the expression, the ele- xpi κοσμὸν εἶναι, τὸ δὲ χειρότμητον.
ments of an Alexandrian-Jewish education.
408 BASILIDES.
unknown to us — predictious of a certain prophet Parchor, and revela
tions passing under the name of the Patriarch Ham. We can hardly
suppose such writings were forged by him or his school. Probably
they were works handed down from more ancient times; works which
he used in good faith ;— monuments of some older ante-Christian
source of the ideas lying at the root of the Gnosis. Perhaps he be-
heved that in these documents he found a still clearer exposition of the
loftier truth transmitted in the form of secret doctrines, than he could
find in the canonical scriptures of the Old Testament. He might easily
explain it to his own satisfaction, how a people who had no recipiency
for such ideas, would naturally have nothing to do with the books con-
taining this higher truth, and so rejected them.
We perceive here such an element of universality ; — and with this
agrees the fact, that he did not confine the tradition of the higher
truth in the ante-Christian period exclusively to the Jewish people, but
supposed that he found indications of the same truth beyond the limits
of that nation. We have seen, indeed, that he cites the doctrine of Zo-
roaster as a testimony of the truth. The fact that he derived the tradi-
tion of the higher wisdom from Ham, not from Shem, indicates perhaps
that he acknowledged the authority of a tradition which was not He-
brew. It is not improbable, that he valued the wisdom of those who
by the Greeks were called barbarians, above the Greek philosophy it-
self! Yet it is certain, as appears from a remark of Isidorus, already
cited, that he sought also in the Greek philosophers, Plato and Aristo-
tle, whether it was in their genuine works or in spurious writings at-
tributed to them, the vestiges of that higher wisdom. In the passage
from Isidore’s exposition of the prophet Parchor, which has come down
to us, these vestiges of truth, to be found m the Greek philosophers,
were not derived however from a common inward source, a reaction of
the spiritual principle against paganism in the more eminent men, but
from a source without themselves, a tradition received from another
quarter. Yet the calm and considerate spirit of this school, and its
more favorable judgment of the Greek philosophy, are evinced by the
fact, that Isidorus does not fasten in this case on the Jewish fables re-
specting the fallen spirits, who had intercourse with the daughters of
men, and diffused the higher kinds of knowledge in the pagan world;
but upon the less fantastic, although not historical hypothesis of the
Alexandrian-Jewish theology, according to which the Greek philoso-
phers.had borrowed such doctrines from the scriptures of the Old Tes-
tament, through the medium of Egypt. ‘‘ And let no one believe,” says
Isidore, *‘ that what we consider to be the peculiar property of the elect:
had been declared before by some philosophers; for it is no discovery
of theirs, but they have taken it from the prophets and appropriated it
to themselves, and united it with their own pretended wisdom.”? It
1 Giving this turn to Plato’s expression, εὕρημα τῶν de προφητῶν σφετερισαμξνοι
Ἕλληνες ἀεὶ παῖδες. προσέϑηκαν τῷ μὴ ὑπάρχοντι κατ’ αὐτοὺς
2 Καὶ μῆ τις οἰέσϑω, ὅ φαμὲν ἴδιον εἶναι σοφῷ. Strom. |. VI. f. 641. I now believe
τῶν ἐκλεκτῶν. τοῦτο προειρημένον ὑπάρχειν the latter expression should be understood
ὑπό τινων φιλοσόφων, οὐ yup ἐστιν αὐτῶν as neuter, “ the wisdom which does not ex-
BASILIDES. 409
is clear from this, what a low estimate was placed by this school on the
Uellenic philosophy as compared with the Old Testament, and even
with the ancient wisdom of the Hast. Isidore describes the Greek
philosophers as men who merely give themselves the appearance of
philosophizing.t1 He acknowledged in the Greek philosophy no original,
but only derivative truth, and that alloyed by foreign corruptions.
But the doctrine, above noticed, concerning a guardian angel, com-
missioned to attend on ev ery soul, may, perhaps, be considered as a
proof that he did not by any means consider the pagan nations to be
deserted and left destitute of all divine influences and providential care.
As-he made a guardian angel attend on each individual soul, he would,
perhaps, following the analogy of this theory, have angels placed as
rulers over the several nations. In this doctrine the Basilideans of the
West, with whom Irenzeus became acquainted, may have nightly appre-
hended the opinions of their master; though they superadded some-
thing else, which did not come from him. ‘These angels, the Elohim of
other nations, he considered, probably, as national gods, just as he sup-
posed the Archon, who stood at their head, to be the particular god of
the Jewish people. It is evident that in entertaining such a theory of
the Elohim, he might lean for support on several passages in the Alex-
andrian version of the Bible, — that he appropriated to himself an idea
that had long been extant.”
Thus there ruled over mankind those subordinate powers, to whom
men’s consciousness was subjected ; no one could release himself whol-
ly from their spell, from the spell of the cosmic principle. There ex-
isted, for the most part, only an unconscious union with the Supreme
God and the order of world which stood in relationship with him. The
natures which bore within them the germ of a life akin to him, remained
fettered and confined within the province of the Archon.
Without question, Basilides possessed a profound knowledge of the
spiritual condition of mankind in the ante-Christian period, and especial-
ly the time immediately preceding the appearance of Christ; without
question, he had a profound sense of that oppressive weight lying on the
consciousness of mankind, and especially on the noblest natures, of that
unconscious craving after a release of the spirit; and from this vantage
ground, he might come to know the nature of the redemption and to
perceive its necessity. Ifhe apprehended it only on a single side, yet
it had a necessary place in his system. Without it, the separation be-
twixt the world of the Archon and the proper divine ‘order of the world
must ever continue to exist. The spirits destined for the highest stage
ist with them,” i. e. their pretended wisdom. pared with v. 8. All the Elohim that pre-
The verb προστιϑέναι seems to me best
suited to this rendering of σοφῷ.
1 Τοὺς προσποιουμένους φιλοσοφεῖν. ----
Strom. 1. VI. f. 641.
2 Besides the passage already cited on p.
380,— in the same song of Moses, Deut.
32: 43, are the words, not found in the He-
brew, which the translator has added on the
ground of some such theory : καὶ προσκυ-
νησώτωσαν αὐτῷ πώντες ἄγγ ελοι ϑεοῦ, com-
VOL. I. 30
sided over the other nations, are called upon
to do homage to God’s people. What the
nations were to do, and what the powers
ruling over them do, is, according to this
scheme, one and the same thing. ‘The for-
mer is derived from the latter. Comp. Ps.
97: 7, where the Alexandrians translate
ὩΣ oN by ἄγγελοι, and beyond questiam
had in mind such powers as the national
gods were supposed to be
410 BASILIDES.
of being must ever remain confined in their depressing thraldom. They
might, indeed, through the progressive movement of the metempsycho-
sis, rise from one higher step to another in the kingdom of the Archon;
but they could not, in conformity with the longing implanted withm
them, attain, over and beyond this kingdom and the Archon himself, to
fellowship with the highest order of the world, and to the clear con-
sciousness as well as to the full and free exercise of their higher nature,
unless the Supreme God himself brought his divine life near to their
kindred germ of life, and thereby first set the latter into activity. And
whilst, by the act of redemption, the spiritual natures were exalted to the
highest position, its influence is made to extend also to the subordinate
stages of existence; harmony is everywhere restored, each order of
being attains to its natural destination.
But if, on the one hand, Basilides, in his mode of apprehending the
doctrine of redemption, departed essentially from the Jewish position,
yet on the other, like Cerinthus, he agreed entirely with the Hbionites,
in supposing a sudden entrance of the Divme nature into the life, of
Jesus, and admitting of no such thing as a God-man, in whom frem the
first the divine and the human elements were inseparably united. He
supposed at bottom, it is true, a redeeming God, but no redeeming
God-man. The man Jesus was not in his view the Redeemer ; he dif-
fered from other men only in degree. SBasilides does not seem to have
allowed even that he possessed absolute impeccability. Jesus, in his
view, was merely the instrument, whom the redeeming God selected,
for the purpose of revealing himself in humanity and of entering into it
with an influential agency. The Redeemer, in the proper and highest
sense of the term, was, as he supposed, the highest A¥von,! sent down
by the Supreme God to execute the work of redemption. ‘This being
united himself with the man Jesus at his baptism in the Jordan.
Now, although Basilides did not acknowledge Jesus of Nazareth to be
the Redeemer, but held that Jesus himself stood in the need of redemp-
tion, yet he cannot be accused of holding that the redemption was sim-
ply an ideal thing, and of denying it as a great historical fact. Far in-
deed was it from him, as may be gathered from what has been said, to
suppose that any being enthralled within the kingdom of the Archon,
could release himself. There was required for this an objective fact,
the actual entrance of that might from a higher world, the νοῦς, into
the world of earthly manifestation, which was accomplished through
the medium of the man Jesus. This, according to Basilides, was the
greatest fact in the history of the created universe, from which every-
thing that succeeded, to the final end of the perfectly restored harmony
of the universe, must proceed. ‘The manner in which he speaks of the
baptism of Jesus, testifies of the impression which this fact, and the
public ministry of Christ following thereupon, had left by tradition on
the minds of Christians. Clement cites on this point the following words
coming from the Basilidean school.? ‘* When the Archon himself heard
1 Or νοῦς, who, inasmuch as he ministers for the salvation of mankind, is called dianovoc.
2 Clemens Stromat. lib. II. f. 375.
BASILIDES. 411
the word of the communicated Spirit,! (the Spirit sent from abdve,) he
was amazed at what he heard and at what he beheld,? the joyful an-
nunciation® being wholly unexpected to him; and his amazement was
called fear,* the beginning of wisdom,— of a wisdom which discrimi-
nated the different classes of men, perfected all, and restored the origi-
nal harmony ; for he distinguished and separated from one another not
only the natures belonging to the world, (to his own kingdom,) but also
the elect (the pneumatic natures superior to the Archon’s kingdom)
from them, and released them from his bann (or conducted them) to
the God who is over all.’’®
Thus a new light dawns on the Archon himself. He comes to the
knowledge of a higher God and a higher world, above himself. He
is redeemed from his confinement. He attains to the consciousness
of a superior power, which rules over all, and which he himself, with-
out being aware of it, has always been serving. He sees himself
released from the mighty task of governing the world, which until now
he supposed that he supported alone, and for which his powers had not
proved adequate. If it had thus far cost him so much pains, and he
still could not succeed in reducing the conflicting elements in the
course of the world to order, he now beholds a power adequate to over-
come every obstacle, and reduce all opposites to unity. Basilides, part-
ly from a more profound insight into the essential character of Christi-
anity and of history, partly from those effects of Christianity which
were before his own eyes and which contained the germ of the future,
foresees what stuff to excite fermentation, and what separation of ele-
ments, would be introduced by it into humanity. He perceives how
the recipient minds among every people, freed from the might which
held their consciousness in 1 fetters, redeemed from all creaturely depen-
dence, and raised to communion with their origmal source, would be-
come united with one another in a higher unity. All these effects pre-
1 We may presume the word is meant
which, according to the Nazarene gospel,
(see above, p. 350,) the Holy Ghost is said
to have spoken to Christ at the moment of
his descent upon him.
2 The glorified appearance in which
Christ, when united with this exalted being,
presented himself to the Archon: or the
sight of the miraculous dove, which was a
symbol of the Spirit, which had come down
from on high; or the miraculous appear-
ances accompanying the baptism of Christ,
according to the gospel of the Ebionites.
ὃ The annunciation of the Spirit being
called a εὐαγγέλιον for the ἄρχων, it is evi-
dent that he did not yield to the higher
power merely from constraint; but his first
amazement was converted into reverential
joy. The prospect of being one day re-
leased from the embarrasing government
of the world, when the elect natures should
have attained to their destined glory, and
of entering into rest with his own, — to
which expectation of the Demiurge the
Gnostics referred such passages as Kom. 8:
20, 21 — Vid. Orig. T. I. in Joann. ὁ 24, —
could be no otherwise than joyful to him.
Comp. Didascal. Anatol. opp. Clem. f. 796,
D., where the blessing which the Demiurge
pronounces on the Sabbath is adduced, to
show how difficult the work was for him.
* Thus Ps. 111: 10,“ The fear of the Lord
is the beginning of wisdom,” was interpreted.
5 Αὐτὸν τὸν ἄρχοντα ἐπακού σαντα τὴν
φάσιν τοῦ διακονουμένου πνεΐ ματος, ἐκπλα-
γῆναι τῷ ϑεάματι παρ᾽ ἐλπίδας εὐαγγελι-
σμένον, καὶ τὴν ἐκπλῆξιν αὐτοῦ φόβον κλη-
ϑῆναι, ἀρχὴν γενόμενον σοφίας φυλοκρινη-
τικῆς τε καὶ διακριτικῆς καὶ τελεωτικῆς καὶ
ἀποκαταστατικῆς, οὐ γὰρ μόνον τὸν “κόσμον,
ἀλλὰ καὶ τὴν ἐκλογὴν διακρίνας, ὁ ἐπὶ πᾶσι
προπέμπει, (this then would be the ἄρχων")
Assuming τῷ to be the correct reading, I
have rendered as in the text: in this case,
the Supreme God must be understood to be
denoted.
412, BASILIDES.
sented themselves to his imagination as an impression made on the Ar-
chon at the baptism of Christ.
The whole work of redemption, then, Basilides, like Cerinth, attrib-
uted to the redeeming heavenly Genius. Most probably he agreed also
with the latter, in supposing that this Genius, at the time of the passion,
left the man to himself, whom he before used as his instrument. The
sufferings of Christ could not, according to the system of Basilides,
have the least connection with the work of redemption; for according
to his narrow conception of justice, the divine justice does not allow
that one being should innocently suffer for another ; it requires that the
sin of each individual should be expiated by suffering. He regarded
not only suffering in general, but also the particular suffermgs of each
individual, in the light of a pumshment for sm. He embraced the the-
ory which Christ (John 9:3; Luke 13: 2) condemned. “ Each in-
dividual suffers, either for actual sins, or for that evil in his nature,
which he brought with him from an earlier state of existence, and which
may not as yet have come into actual manifestation.” + Thus it was
by pointing to this latter, that he vindicated Providence m respect to
the suffering of children. When pressed with an objection drawn from
the suffering of men of acknowledged goodness, he might undoubtedly
appeal, and with good reason, to the general fact of the sinfulness of
human nature, and reply: ““ Whatever man you can name to me, he is
still a man. God alone is holy. Who can bring a clean thing out of an
unclean? Not one.” Job 14: 4.
But the case was different when this proposition came to be applied
to the Redeemer, who; as certainly as he zs the Redeemer, must be
pure from sin. Clement of Alexandria directly accuses Basilides of
carrying the proposition even to this extent. In those words, which
Clement cites, this surely is not necessarily implied. He merely says,
“Tf, however, you let this whole investigation go, and endeavor to brmg
me into difficulty by adducing the case of certain persons ; if you say,
Then he has sinned, for he has suffered, &c.”’ It might be held, that
Basilides is simply speaking here of certain men who were regarded
with peculiar veneration, who stood in high repute for holiness; and
Clement took the liberty to draw his own conclusion. But tn the first
place, the objection which Basilides supposes to be made against his
position, would lose all its force and meaning, if it were not designed
to be understood precisely in the sense above given; and nezt, this
wide extension of the proposition stands intimately connected with his
theory concerning the relation of suffering to sin, and with his theory
of the divine justice and of the process of purification to which every
nature belonging to the kingdom of the Archon is subjected. The
Jesus who belonged to this kingdom certainly needed redemption him-
self, and could only be made partaker of it by his union with that heav-
enly redeeming spirit. ΤῸ render him worthy of being redeemed be-
fore all others that needed redemption, and of being employed as the
1 Sufferings, — expiatory and purgative of sin, (ἁμαρτία or the ἁμαρτητικόν.) Strom.
1 IV. f. 506.
BASILIDES. 413
instrument for diffusing abroad the influences of the redeeming Genius
to others, it was sufficient, if, as the most excellent and the purest of
men, who had advanced the furthest in the work of purification, he
possessed the menimum of sinfulness. Here indeed the objection might
be urged against the Basilidean system, which certainly must have
supposed that some proportion existed betwixt the degree of sin and
the degree of punishment — how then reconcile so great suffering with
the smallest degree of sinfulness? But here, probably, as we may in-
fer from his remarks on martyrdom, he could be at no loss for an
answer: ‘‘'The consciousness of serving as an instrument for the high-
est and holiest cause of humanity, and of suffering in this mission,
(perhaps, too, the prospect of the glory into which he was to enter
through suffering,) so sweetened the pain, as entirely to remove the
sense of suffering.”
In accordance with the same principle, he denied the doctrine of jus-
tification in the sense of Paul. He admitted no such thing as objec-
tive justification in the sight of God, as forgiveness of sin, in the sense
of deliverance from the guilt and punishment of sin. Every sin,
whether committed before or after faith in the Redeemer, or baptism,
must, according to his scheme, be in like manner expiated by suffering.
This was a necessary law of the government of the universe, which
could in no wise be dispensed with. The only exception he makes is in
the case of sins of ignorance, or unintentional sins ;/ but unfortunately
his explanation of expressions so vague and undefined, has not come down
to us. Perhaps he intended only sins of ignorance not involving guilt,
which had been committed in a state of consciousness obstructed by
some involuntary confinement — analogous to the state of the rational
principle held restramed in the bodies of brutes. But if, on the other
hand, by justification (δικαίωσις, δικαιοσύνη.) is meant an inward, sub-
jective condition of being made just, sanctification by the communi-
cating of a divine life ; such a doctrine had a very important and neces-
sary place in the system of Basilides.
Among the religious and moral ideas of the Basilidean school, there
are several other remarkable points which deserve to be particularly
noticed.
What distinguishes Basilides from other Gnostics is this, — that he
did not oppose the Gnosis as the highest stage in religion, to the πίστις,
— to faith; but valued faith itself as the highest quality. Yet he dis-
tinguished in the latter a series of higher and lower degrees, corres-
ponding to the different grades of perfection which different souls are
destined to occupy in that higher spiritual world from whence they
sprang. He supposed, in fact, as we have remarked, a series of grades
in the higher world of spirits, of which one continually symbolized the
other. Divine germs of life from all these grades had become mixed
with the kingdom of darkness. Christianity is the sifting principle,
whereby the spiritual natures belonging to the different grades of the
spiritual world are separated, are brought to the consciousness of their
1 Μόνας τὰς ἀκουσίους καὶ Kat’ ἀγνοίσ»" ἀφίεσϑαι. Strom. 1. IV. f. 536.
90"
414 BASILIDES.
own proper essence, and acquire the power of bringing it into action,
and of rising to that region of the spiritual world, to which they belong
by virtue of this their proper and essential being, which before had re-
mained undeveloped. By means of Christianity, men arrive, in this man-
ner, at the different positions for which they are fitted by their peculiar
natures, each reaching the stage of perfection of which he is capable.
At the entrance of the redeeming spirit into the world, the Archon,
in a word, received the σοφία εὐθβδκρβρημεθδι Now that by which this
process of separation actually takes place in the different natures,
and by which each individual is enabled to reach that grade of the
higher world which corresponds to his spiritual essence, is faith. In
this way we must understand the Basilidean school, when they taught
that ““ faith and election, both taken together, constitute one thing, an-
swering to each of the several grades of the spiritual world; and the.
faith of each mdividual nature in this world exactly corresponds to
its supramundane election.”’ ἢ
Such being the scheme of Basilides, we may perhaps conclude, that
the ordiary standard of Christian truth, as he found it existing with
the majority in the church, met with more favor and experienced
greater justice from him, than it usually did from other Gnostics. These
ordinary believers he recognized as Christians, members of one Chris-
tian community; and he distinguished in this regard only different
stages of Christian knowledge. Faith he considered the common foun-
dation of Christian fellowship, and supposed only that besides this,
which was common to all, there were different degrees of Christian con-
sciousness. It is evident then, that he was far from ascribmg the
πίστις, considered as faith grounded on outward authority and cleav-
ing altogether to things sensible, exclusively to the psychical class. He _
understood faith to be in its essence an inward principle. Faith,
according to his apprehension, is a conviction that springs from the
contact of the spirit with the godlike, from the attractive power exer-
cised by the higher world over its kindred spirit. The spirit has. re-
vealed to it that higher region of existence, whence it came and to which
it belongs ; and it feels “itself drawn towards its kindred element.
Faith is an immediate fact, which renders all evidence superfluous.
The spirit, in this case, grasps the truths corresponding to its own
essence by an immediate intuition.2 The. soul assents to that which
does not come to it through the senses, which is not presented to it
under any form of sense. Although the elect live on, as strangers in
the world, yet, through the buoyancy of faith, they perceive the reality
of the things of that higher world which beam on them from afar. But
to the peculiar standing ground οἵ" each individual’s faith must corres-
pond also the peculiar standing ground of his hope — the conviction
that he shall actually enter mto ‘that higher world to which he had been —
1 Πίστιν ἅμα καὶ ἐκλογὴν οἰκείαν εἷναι 2 Τὰ μαϑήματα ἀναποδείκτως εὑρίσκουσα
καϑ’ ἕκαστον διάστημα, Kar’ ἐπακολούϑημα καταλήψει νοητικῇ. Strom. 1. IL f. 363.
δ᾽ av τῆς ἐκλογῆς τῆς ὑπερκοσμίου τὴν κοσ- 8 Faith is a ψυχῆς συγκατάϑεσις πρός τι
μικὴν ἁπάσης φύσεως συνέπεσϑαι πίστιν. τῶν μὴ κινούντων αἴσϑησιν διὰ τὸ μὴ πα-
Strom. 1. 11. f. 363. peivat. Lc. f. 371.
BASILIDES. 415
already united by faith; shall attain to the full possession of those bless-
ings which faith has laid hold on.!
Now if we perceive something of the Pauline spirit in the peculiar
prominence which Basilides gives to the idea of faith, yet presently we
see him again departing widely from the Apostle Paul, masmuch as he
places the essence of faith rather in an intuitive than in a practical and
ethical element; making it proceed rather from an imtuition of the
spirit, than from a determination of the will conditioning the direction
of the heart; and it is easy to see how this difference is grounded in
the very nature of his fundamental principle.
The objection which Plotinus brought against the Gnostics generally,
that they neglecled ethics, cannot be justly applied to the school of Ba-
silides ; for Jstdorus composed a system of ethics, from which unfortu-
nately but a very few words have been preserved to us by Clement of
Alexandria.
The moral “system of Basilides is to be gathered from his Cosmog-
ony. Assuming a mixture of opposite principles, and considering the
development of the human race as a process of purification, which was
to be carried onward to its end by Christianity, he must necessarily
have made the fundamental principle of his moral system to be this —
namely, that the godlike nature of man should be purified from the
foreign elements adhering to it, and approach continually nearer to its
free development and activity. Man, according to this system, is a
microcosm, — carrying within himself opposite elements from two oppo-
site kingdoms. In the elements foreign to his higher nature,” are
reflected the different properties of the animal, vegetable and mineral
kingdoms ; — hence the temperaments, desires and passions which cor-
respond to these different properties, (for example, the mimic, sportive
nature of the ape, the murderous disposition of the wolf, the hardness
of the diamond, ἕο. ;) —the collective sum of all these effluxes from
the animal, vegetable and mineral worlds forms the blind, irrational
soul,® which constantly threatens to check and disturbs the activity of
man’s godlike nature. The Isidorus above mentioned thought it of
great importance to secure this doctrine against the objection or the
misapprehension, that its tendency was to destroy moral freedom, and
to furnish an excuse for all wickedness, as if it resulted from the irre-
sistible influence of these foreign mixtures. He appeals, on the other
hand, to the superior power of the godlike element. ‘‘ Having, by the
rational principle within us, so much the advantage, we ought to appear
as conquerors over the lower creation within us.” * ‘Let one but have
the will,” says he, ‘‘ to do nothing but what is right, and one will ac-
quire the power.” > But this earnest will, this true love for goodness,
is for the most part the only thing wanting. ‘We say indeed with
1 Κατάλληλον εἷναι τῇ ἑκάστον ἐλπίδι 8 The ψυχὴ προσφυὴς ἄλογος.
καὶ τῆς πίστεως τὴν δωρεάν. L.c. f. 363. 4 Δεῖ δὲ τῷ λογιστικῷ κρείττονας γενο-
There is a remarkable coincidence between μένους, τῆς ἐλάττονος ἐν ἡμῖν κτίσεως φανῆ-
the definitions of faith by Basilides and ναι κρατοῦντας.
Hugo a St. Victore. 5 Strom. 1. III. f. 427: Θελησάτω μόνον
2 Appendages of matter. ποοσαοτήματα. ἀπαοτῆσαι τὸ καλὸν καὶ ἐπιτεύξεται
416 BASILIDES.
the mouth, we will not sin. But our soul has the inclination tosin. A
person in this condition is restrained only by the fear of punishment; he ~
is destitute of love.”
It might easily be inferred from the whole connection of the Basili-
dean system, that, in giving so high a place to the faculty of will, [sido-
rus would by no means ascribe to it an independent self- ‘sufficiency, nor
deny the necessity of a higher assistance of grace. By his theory of
redemption, he acknowledged it; in effect, to be necessary, that the
godlike in human nature should receive its true freedom and power of
right action by means of its union with the higher source of divine life.
How earnestly bent he was on reminding men of their need of help, is
shown by the advice. which he gives to a person suffermg under severe
trials, — words which prove at the same time how far he was from
cherishing.a speculative pride, that despised the ordinary means of
grace enjoyed by the Christian communities. He exhorts the individ-
ual not to retire into solitude, but to ask the Christian brethren for
their intercessions, to seek in theer society the strengthening of his di-
vine life, in order that, so strengthened, he might find confidence in fel-
lowship with the invisible saints. He says of one in this condition,
‘‘ Let him not separate himself from his brother. Let him say, I have
entered into the sanctuary ; I can suffer no evil.”’+ If a person thus
afflicted felt himself too much oppressed by the power of temptation, he
should say to his Christian brother, ° Lay thy hand on my head, (give
me thy blessing) and he would receive spiritual and sensible assistance ”
(feel himself relieved in spirit and body.)?. What importance he as-
eribed to prayer, is shown by the fact that he distinguishes the different
moral states of the soul by the different character “which prayer must
assume according to those states — that 15, according as one feels con-
strained to thank God for the victory achieved, or to pray for new assist-
ance for the impending conflict.®
The Basilideans were far from being given to extravagant ascetic no-
tions. We have already observed how this mode of apprehending the
dualistic element, which came so very near to the pure doctrine of Zoro-
aster, would by no means lead necessarily to a decided and morose
asceticism. They allowed a value, it is true, to the unmarried life, as
a means which would enable one to occupy himself undisturbed by
earthly cares, solely with the affairs of the kingdom of God. But they
regarded this as a thing of which all were not capable, and which was
not advisable for all. They recommended marriage, as a means of
subduing the sensuous impulses, to those who would otherwise have to
suffer many temptations. At the ground of this view of marriage, there
lies, it is true, a very low, a mere negative and sensuous notion of the
institution ; and hence indeed the exaggerated worth ascribed to celib-
acy. We ‘do not perceive here the more profound and positive view of
1 Οὗτος τοῦ ἀδελφοῦ μὴ χωριζέσϑω, λεγέ- 2 Καὶ λήψεται βοήϑειαν καὶ νοητὴν καὶ
τω, ὅτι εἰσελήλυϑα ἐγὼ εἰς τὰ ἅγια: οὐδὲν αἰσϑητῆν.
δύναμαι παϑεῖν. Strom. 1. III. f. 427. ® This is clear from Isidore’s words:
Ὅταν δὲ ἡ εὐχαριστία σου εἰς rae ὑπο-
πέζη.
VALENTINE. 417
the marriage estate, as a realization of the moral idea, or of the king-
dom of God in a good of humanity: a loftier conception, which, as we
have already observed, becomes faintly visible in the Valentinian
Gnosis.
We must notice finally, one other remarkable phenomenon. In the
Basilidean doctrine, there are, as we have seen, marks of a relationship
with certain Ebionite elements: accordingly it agreed, in prefer-
ence forthe Apostle Peter, with the Christians of that party. And yet,}
inconsistent as it may seem, Basilides acknowledges the authority also
of the Apostle Paul, as is evident from the fact of his attributing so
much authority to the words of this Apostle, recorded in his epistle to
the Romans ;? as well as from the influence of the Pauline ideas, so ap-
parent in his doctrine concerning the essence of faith and concerning
marriage. We hence perceive then, that these opposite elements stood
by no means in such a relation to each other, as never to admit of being
united in the phenomena of these times.
VALENTINE AND HIS ScHooLt.— Next after Basilides we place Val-
entine, who appeared nearly at the same period; though somewhat
later. To judge from his Hellenistic style of expression and the
Aramzan words that occur in his system, he was of Jewish descent.
It is said, he was by birth an Egyptian ;? and it may be safely pre-
sumed that he received his education likewise at Alexandria. Thence
he travelled to Rome, where he seems to have spent the last years of
his life; which gave him opportunity to expound and promulgate his
doctrines in that part of the world. In his fundamental ideas he
agrees with Basilides; but differs from him in his mode of carrying
them out, and in the imaginative dress in which he clothes them.
But as the doctrines of the founders of Gnostic schools, and of their
later followers, from whom these doctrines received some peculiar mod-
ification, were never carefully distinguished; and as moreover many
cognate doctrines, which sprang from a common source, became inter-
mixed with the Valentinian system ; it is scarcely possible to separate
with certainty, from the accounts which have come down to us, those
doctrines which belong properly to Valentine himself, the author of the
school.
Like Basilides, Valentine placed at the summit of the chain of being
the primal Essence, which he denominated the Bythos (the abyss, where
the spirit is lost in contemplation.) This term, by itself, makes it evident,
that he conceived under it something different from the Absolute of the
Neo-Platonic philosophy, the absolutely simple. The word leads, with-
out doubt, to the pre-supposition of an infinite fulness of life ; and this
same infinite, transcendent exuberance of being necessitates, m the first
place, a self-conception (ἃ: καταλαμβάνειν ἑαυτόν,) ἃ self-limitation, in
case anything was to come into existence. The Neo-Platonic ὃν
withdraws itself from all possibility of comprehension, on account of its
absolutely simple unity ; but the primal Essence of Valentine, on account
1 The Basilideans traced back their Gno- 2 See above, p. 404.
sis to Glaucias, a pretended interpreter in 8 According to the report of Epiphanius.
the service of Peter. Strom |. VII. f. 764.
7}
418 VALENTINE.
of its transcendent fulness of life. The Bythos is, in a certain sense,
something directly opposed to the Absolute of the Neo-Platonic philoso-
phy. It may doubtless have happened, that with many, the former
idea passed over into the latter; and deed Valentinians are cited,
who made out of the Bythos something exalted above all opposition, of
which even existence could not be predicated ; the Absolute, identical
with Nothing.!
What Basilides denominates the δυνάμεις, Cpowers,) are in the
system of Valentine the Adons.? The idea is peculiar to him, that as
in the primal source of all existence, (the Bythos,) the fulness of all life
is still undeveloped, so with the development of life from him, members
were formed, standing as complements one to the other, predominantly
creative and predominantly receptive Aions,? masculine and feminine,
by whose mutual inworking the chain of unfolding life progressively ad-
vances. ‘The feminine goes to integrate the masculine, and both con-
stitute the Pleroma, (τὸ Ajpoua);* and so also the complete se-
ries of Adons, as one whole, as the fulness of the divine life flowing
out from the Bythos, — which whole again constantly requires fructifica-
tion, so to express it, from the same source, stands to it in the feminine
relation, —was called the Pleroma. The hidden essence of God, no
being can comprehend; it is the absolute ἀγνωστόν. He can be known
only so far as he has revealed himself in the unfolding of his powers or
Adons. The several Afons are various forms of manifestation, phases,
names of him who in his hidden being is incomprehensible, ineffable, ex-
alted above all possibility of conception or representation,’ even as that
first self-manifestation of the Hidden, the Monogenes, is called distinc-
tively the tnvisible name of the Bythos (that wherein the Bythés has
conceived himself, the πρῶτον κατάληπτον, the κατάληψις τοῦ ἀγενήτου.) It
is a profound idea of the Valentinian system, that as all existence
has its ground in the self-limitation of the Bythos, so the existence of
all created beings depends on limitation. While each remains within
the limits of its own individuality, and is that which it should be at its
own proper place in the evolution of life, all things can be fitly adjusted
to one another, and the true harmony be preserved in the chain of un-
folding life. But as soon as any being would overstep these limits, as
soon as any being, instead of striving to know God in that manitfesta-
1 Trenzeus, who states the different opin-
ions of the Valentinians respecting the
Bythos, observes: Οἱ μὲν yap αὐτὸν ἀζυγον
λέγουσιν, μῆτε ἄῤῥενα, μήτε ϑήλειαν, μῆτε
ὅλως ὄντα τι. Iren.I.1, at the end. The
disciples of such Gnostics would soar, in
their speculations, above their master, —
would ascend to a primal ground still more
simple. Irenzus cites one of this descrip-
tion, whom he not unaptly describes as
ὑψηλότερον καὶ" γνωστικώτερον ἐπεκτεινό-
μενος, who knew how to distinguish between
the μονότης, the ἑνότης and the ἕν, and was
in the habit of saying of every principle, so
I name it. In this Irenzeus finds good mat-
ter of ridicule: ὡμολόγηκε ὅτι αὐτὸς ὀνόμα-
τα τέϑεικε τῷ πλάσματι, ὑπὸ μηδενὸς πρό-
τερον ἄλλου τεϑειμένα.
2 For the explanation of this word, see
above.
3 As in all the rest of creation, which pre-
sents a symbol of that highest order of the
universe, this two-fold series of factors may
be traced.
4 Which word these Theosophers, who
assuredly never thought of adhering strict-
ly to the grammatical signification of their
terms, understood perhaps at one and the
same time, in an active and passive sense:
TO πληροῦν and Td πληρούμενον.
5 The ASons are μορφαὶ τοῦ ϑεοῦ. ὀνό-
ματα τοῦ ἀνωνομάστου.
VALENTINE. : 419
tion of himself which God makes to him at his own proper position,
boldly attempts to penetrate into his hidden essence, such a being runs
the hazard of plunging into nothing. Instead of apprehending the
Real, he loses himself in the Unsubstantial. Horus, (épo¢,) the genius
of limitation, of the finite, the power that fixes and guards the bounds
of individual existence, restoring them wherever they have been dis-
turbed, occupies therefore an important place in the system of Valen-
tine; and the Gnosis here, so to speak, bears witness against itself.
The ideas of Horus and of the Ledeemer must of necessity be closely
related in the Valentinian system ; as the forming and redeeming of
existence are kindred conceptions, and the principle.of limitation in
respect to both occupies an important place in this system. In fact,
Horus was also called by many λυτρώτης and σωτήρ, Redeemer and
Saviour. There are occasional intimations of a scheme, according to
which the Horus was regarded as only a particular mode of the opera-
tion of one redeeming spirit; just as the Valentinian system gave diifer-
ent names to this power, according to the different points of his activ-
ity and his different modes of operation, extending through all the
grades of existence. Others, indeed, transformed these different modes
of operation into so many different hypostases.
In the Valentinian doctrines concernmg this Horus, there are, lying
at bottom, profound ideas on the process of development of the divine life
in general and in detail ; important in their bearing on Christian ethics,
and the mode of contemplating the great facts of history. Valentine’s
school perceived that, in the process of development of the divine life, two
moments must concur, a negative and a positive, both standing necessarily
connected with each other, —the purification of the spiritual individuality
from the foreign elements by which it had become vitiated, into which it
threatened to become dissolved — and the establishment of the purified
individuality in itself, its firm and steadfast shaping, its assumption of
its own nature. ‘Two operations were ascribed to the Horus; the nega-
tive, by virtue of which he defines every existence within itself, sepa-
rates and keeps away from it every foreign element :1 and the positive,
by virtue of which he fixes, moulds, and establishes,in their own peculiar
essence, those that have been purified from the foreign elements by
which that essence was disturbed.? The first operation was to be desig-
nated preeminently by the name ὅρος, the second by the term σταυρός.
In this latter appellation there is evidently an allusion to the significa-
tions cross, stake, palisade. ‘Those two appellations, however, may
perhaps not always have been so sharply discriminated; since σταυρός
with the signification cross might in fact also be a symbol of the sepa-
rating, destroying energy of the Horus.? Where Christ says, “I am
not come to bring peace on the earth, but the sword,” they found the
description of that negative energy of the Horus, which separates from
1 The évepyeia μεριστικὴ καὶ διοριστικῆ. ments of the world, from sensuous lusts.
2 The évepyeia ἑδραστικὴ καὶ στηριστικῆ. ᾿Απολῦσαι καὶ ἀποστῆσαι καὶ ἀφορίσαι ὁ
8 Clement of Alexandria also employs σταυρὸς σημαίνει, and on this is founded
the cross as a symbol of the divine power, the ἀνώπαυσις. Strom. lib. 11. f. 407.
whereby the soul is made five from the ele-
420 VALENTINE.
one another the godlike and the ungodlike. And where John the Bap-
tist announces the appearance of Christ, with the fan, and with the fire
by which the chaff should be consumed, it was considered by the Val-
entinians as a description of this activity of the Horus as connected
with the history of the world, representing how he would destroy all the
ὕλη, and purify the redeemed. In the passage where Christ says, ‘“‘ No
man can be my disciple, unless he takes up his cross and follows me,”
they saw a description of that divine power, symbolized by the cross,
whereby each individual, becoming purified from what is foreign to him,
and attaining to a self-subsistent shaping of the higher life in his own
individuality and to a well-defined impression of this individuality re-
fined by a godlike life, first becomes a true disciple of Christ.?
While Basilides ascribed the mixture of the divine element with mat-
ter to an encroachment of the kingdom of Darkness on the kingdom of:
Light, Valentine, on the other hand, attributed it to a disturbance
originating in the Pleroma, and a consequent sinking down of the di-
vine germ of life from the Pleroma into matter. Like Basilides, he ac-
knowledged the manifestation of a divine wisdom in the world; but here
also the lower is only a symbol of the higher. It is not the divine wis-
dom itself which is the soul of this world; not the Aion σοφία, but its
immature birth, which, before it can reach its maturity, needs to pass
through a gradual development. The idea which hes at bottom here is,
that in the world we are presented with a revelation of divine wisdom
going on to unfold itself; that through the appearance of Christ and
through the redemption, this manifestation first attains to its end ; that,
contemplated in this connection, the world presents the image of the
divine wisdom in its process of development. Accordingly that Aion,
the Heavenly Wisdom, rejoices, — when everything has been made
clear by the appearance of Christ, — to find that 1t has recovered its
lost idea (év8tunow") —since now the manifestation corresponds to
the idea, and the latter presents itself in the former to immediate
vision. A symbol of this was, in his opmion, the woman who lighted
a candle to seek after the lost piece of silver, and finally after the house
had been swept, rejoices to find it. Luke 15: 8.
Accordingly he distinguishes an ἄνω and a κάτω σοφία, ---- the Acha-
moth.2 This latter is the mundane soul, from whose mixture with the
ὕλη springs all living existence, in numberless gradations; higher in
proportion to its freedom from contact with the ὕλη, lower in proportion
as it is drawn downward and affectea by matter. Hence arise the three
ranks or orders of existence. 1. The divine germs of life, superior by
their nature to matter, and akin to the σοφία, to the mundane soul, and
to the Pleroma,—the spiritual natures, φύσεις πνευματικαί, 2. The
natures originating in the life that has been divided by the mixture of
the ὕλη, the psychical natures, φύσεις puyeai; with which begins ap
altogether new order of existence, an image of that higher mundane
system, in a subordinate grade; and finally, 8. The ungodlike nature,
which resists all amelioration, and whose tendency is only to destroy —
1 Tren. lib. I. ο. 3, § 5. 2 ΤΥ DN.
VALENTINE. 421
the nature of blind appetency and passion. Betwixt all those natures
sprung from the evolution of the divine life, (which flows out from the
Bythos through the mediation of the AZons,)—from the Pleroma
down to the germs of life which have fallen into humanity, the scat-
tered seed that is to attain to its maturity m this earthly world — there
are only differences of degree; but betwixt those three orders of exis-
tence, there is an essential difference of kind. Hence each of these
orders must have its own independent, governing principle; though
every process of culture and development ultimately leads back to the
Bythos, who, through the mediation of these manifold organs, corres-
ponding to the numberless gradations of existence, influences all, and
whose law alone is supreme. He can never himself, however, come
into immediate contact with what is alien from his essence. Ac-
cordingly there must appear at that subordinate stage of existence
which intervenes between the perfect, the godlike, and the ungodlike,
the material, a being! — as the type of the highest — who, while beliey-
ing that he acts independently, must yet subserve those general laws,
from which nothing can be exempted, in realizing the highest ideas to
the bounds of matter. This being is to the physical world what the
Bythos is to the higher ; — with this difference only, that he mvolunta-
rily acts as the instrument only of the latter. This is the Demiurge
of Valentine. Moreover, the Ayle has its representative principle,
through which its activity is exerted; but a principle which, by its
nature, is not formative and creative, but only destructive ; namely,
Satan.2, 1. The nature of the πνευματικόν, the spiritual order, is to be
essentially in relationship with God (the ὁμοούσιον τῷ ϑεῷ :) hence the
life of unity, the undivided, absolutely simple (οὐσία ἑνικῆ, μονοειδής..)
2. The essence of the ψυχικοί is separation, division into multiplicity,
manifoldness ; but which subordinates itself to a higher unity, whence
it admits of bemg derived, first unconsciously, then consciously. 9.
The essence of Satan and of his whole kmgdom is the direct opposite
to all unity ; separation and disunion in itself, without the least recipi-
ency, without any point of coalescence whatever, for a unity ; with the
striving to dissipate all unity, to extend its own inherent disunion to
everything, and to rend everything asunder.? This principle has no
power to fix, to assert anything, but only the power to deny; it is un-
able to create, to produce, to form, but only to destroy, to decompose.*
The first of these grades constitutes, by its nature, imperishable life,
the essential ἀφϑαρσία ; the ψυχικόν, on the other hand, stands mid-
way betwixt the imperishable and the perishable, — the soul of nature
being mortal, and capable of being made immortal only through a
higher informing power. The ψυχικοί attain to immortality, or they
fall a natural prey to death, according as they yield themselves by the
1 The μεσότης. . Thus defined by Heracleon, who says:
2 As Heracleon defines him: μέρος ἕν Οὐ γεννᾷ τοιαῦτά τινα τῇ ἑαυτῶν φύσει,
ὅλης τῆς ὕλης. Vid. Orig. in Joann. T. φϑοροποιὰ γὰρ καὶ ἀναλίσκοντα τοὺς ἐμβλη-
XIII. § 16. ϑέντας εἰς αὐτά. Orig. in Joann. T. XX
8 The οὐσία πολυσχιδῆς, that seeks to as- ὁ 20.
similate every thing to itself.
VOL. I. 36
422 VALENTINE.
bent of their will to the godlike or to the ungodlike. The essential
being of Satan, as of the ὕλη, is death itself, annihilation, the negation
of all existence, which m the end, when every existence that has
been rent by it shall have developed itself to a mature individuality and
become sufficiently established in itself, will be vanquished by the
force of the Positive, and having attracted within its sphere all kin-
dred ungodlike natures, resolve itself into its own nothingness. 1. The
essential being of the first is the evolution of pure life from within out-
ward; an activity, not’ of one thing outwardly on another, but one
which has no obstacles to overcome; a life and agency exalted above the
antithesis of ‘rest and motion. 2. The essential being of the ὕλη 1s, in
itself considered, the rest of death; but a spark of life having fallen
into it, and communicated to it a certain analogon of life, it became a
wild, self-contradictory impulse, as it is exhibited in Satan, its represen-
tative, to whom was attributed, and as well to all men akin to him by
their nature, no rational consciousness, no self-determining will, but
only a blind, wild impulsive nature, only desire and passion. When
he looked at the crimes committed among men, which filled him with
abhorrence, this was the only explanation which could present itself to
a man like Valentine.2. 8. Peculiar to the Demiurge and his subjects
the Psychici, is the propensity to create, to produce without them-
selves — a busy activity. ‘They would always be doing, without really
understanding, as is common with such busy natures, ‘what they are
about,? without being really conscious to themselves of the ideas that
govern them.*
The doctrme of redemption occupied a place no less important in the
Valentinian than in the Basilidean system, forming properly its central
point; as might be gathered from what has already been said concern-
ing the relation of the notions of creation and of redemption in this
scheme. It was yet more the aim and effort of this system to com-
prehend the doctrine of redemption in the connection of the universal
process of development ;— as to go back to the first germ of dishar-
mony in the universe, so also to poimt out the necessity of a redemp
tion in its primal ground. It must be allowed, this was so done, that
the speculative interest was continually flymg more and more beyond
the practical. As a process of unfolding life pervades every region of
existence, and as the disharmony, which, in its germ, began in the Ple-
roma itself, extended itself from thence still more widely ; ; so the whole
mundane course can only then attain to its end, when harmony has been
restored, as in the Pleroma, so through all the grades of existence.
What takes place in the Pleroma, must “be imaged forth in all the other
gradations of being. Inasmuch, then, as the work of redemntion
takes place in different gradations of existence, and the same law is
1 Heracleon says: Τὸν διάβολον μὴ ἔχειν
ϑέλημα, ἀλλ᾽ ἐπιϑυμίαν. Orig. in Joann.
T. XX. § 20.
f. 762. Consult, however, on this tract, the
investigations in my “ Genetic development
of the Gnostic systems,” p. 205.
2 Notice the remarkable manner in which
a Valentinian expresses himself on this
point in the dialogue on Free Will, ascribed
to Methodius. Galland. Bibl. patr. Τ᾿. III.
8 Φύσις πολύεργος, πολυπράγμων.
4 For evidence, see Heracleon, Orig. in
Joanne ΧΙ ΠΟ, ον 30,51; Sen 22
XX. c. 20.
VALENTINE. 423
here carried out in different forms at different positions, so accordingly
it is the same agent of the manifestation of the hidden God, the same
agent through whom the life that flowed out from God is again reunited
with him, who, working progressively onward to the consummation of
all things, presents himself under different hypostases, according as he
accomplishes his work at different stages of existence. Thus it is the
same idea, which is represented in a Monogenes, a Logos, a Christ, a
Soter. The Soter is the Redeemer of the entire world without the
Pleroma ; and hence also its former; where we must take into view
what has been said already respecting the two-fold activity of the
Horus. By the process of forming, the higher element is, in the first
place, freed from its adherent matter, evolved from an unorganized,
formless existence to a determinate one, with its proper organic form.
By the redemption, the higher individuality first attains to mature, full
development, and to clear, self-consciousness. Redemption completes
the process of formation. All the divine life of the Pleroma concen-
trates and reflects itself in the Soter, and through him works farther
onward to individual shaping, to the sowing of the spiritual natures,
affining to the Pleroma, in the world, and their maturation to perfected
existence. The Christ of the Pleroma! is the working, the Soter with-
out the Pleroma, the recipient, forming, perfecting principle.?
The Soter first proves his redeeming, formative power on that yet
immature mundane soul, origmating in the Pleroma ; — the same power
which was afterwards to be extended to the kindred, spiritual natures
that sprang out from her, the common mother of the spiritual life in
the lower world, (see above.) The Soter is properly the former and
ruler of the world, as he is its redeemer; for the formation of the
world is in truth the first beginning of the process of development,
which can be brought to its full completion only through the redemp-
tion. The Soter, as the inward, actuating principle, inspires in the
mundane soul, destined to reunion (syzygia) with him,? the plastic
ideas ; and she communicates them to the Demiurge, who conceives
that he acts independently. The latter is, without knowing it, actuated
and impelled by the might of these ideas in forming the world. ‘Thus
the world is a picture of the divine glory, designed by the Sophia or
the Soter, as the artists, but in the execution of which the Demiurge
is employed only as an instrument. Since every picture, however, is,
from its nature, but an imperfect representation of the prototype, and
can be really understood only by him who has the intuition of the lat-
ter, so the Demiurge with his creation is but an imperfect representa-
1 Jn the τόπος μεσότητος.
2 So says Heracleon of the Soter in his
relation to Christ. The former, he observes,
receives the divine seed, yet undeveloped,
out of the Pleroma from the latter; and
gives it the first shaping towards determin-
ate, individual existence, τὴν πρώτην pop-
φωσιν, τὴν κατὰ γένεσιν, εἰς μορφὴν καὶ
φωτισμὸν καὶ περιγραφὴν ἀγαγὼν καὶ ἀνα-
δείξας. Orig. in Joann. T. 11. ο. 15. To
bring to light, to shape, to individualize,
are, with the Gnostics, equivalent notions.
The undetermined, unorganized, answers
in the spiritual province to the ὕλη. <Ac-
cordingly, in the Valentinian fragments, in
Trenzus, lib. I. 6, 8, ὁ 4,—to the προβάλ-
Aew σπερματικῶς τὴν ὅλην οὐσίαν is op-
posed the μορφοῦν, φωτίζειν, φανεροῦν.
Christ scatters the seed, the Soter gathers
the harvest. Orig. in Joann. T. XIIL. p. 48,
8 Κάτω σοφία, Achamoth.
424 VALENTINE.
tion of the divine glory; and he only, who has caught a glimpse of the
revelation of the invisible divine essence within himself, can rightly
understand the world as a symbol or picture, and the Demiurge as a
prophet of the Supreme God. The imer revelation of God, which is
the portion of the πνευματικοί, is a confirmation of the outward, a cre-
dential for the Demiurge, as God’s representative. Valentine himself
expresses the matter thus:1 ‘As the picture falls below the living coun-
tenance, so does the world fall below the living God. Now what is the
cause of the picture? The majesty of the countenance, which fur-
nished the painter with his type, in order that it might be glorified by
the revelation of its name; for no picture has been invented as a self-
subsistent thing, (every picture necessarily refers back to an original
type.) But as the name of that which is represented supplies the defi-
ciencies of the picture, so the imwvzsible idea of God (his invisible
essence as it reveals itself in the spirit which 1s related to God) con-
tributes to the verification of the copy.”
Man is the being through whom the name of God was to be revealed
in this world; the being who, through the invisible revelation of God in
himself, was to mediate the connection betwixt the copy and the proto-
type; accordingly, to supply what was lacking to the world i itself
towards a complete revelation of the Divine Being. That man occu-
pies this important position in creation, belongs among the fundamental
ideas of the Valentinian system. Humanity and the revelation of God
are conceptions which here stand in intimate connection with each
other. Hence the primal man makes his appearance as one of the
fons; and in another Valentinian representation it is expressed
thus: ‘‘ When God willed to reveal himself, this was called man.” 2
But in respect to this point also, we must distinguish what the Demi-
urge intended, and what he was necessitated. to do, in an unconscious
manner, as the instrument of the higher order of the world. He com-
bined with his angels in a higher ethereal region, paradise, the third or
fourth heaven,’ to create man as their common image. This bemg, as
lord of the world, was to represent the Demiurge in it. But here also
the latter acted as the instrument of a higher order of the world,
according to the ideas inspired in him by the Soter and the Sophia.
1 Strom. 1. IV. f. 509: Ὁπόσον ἐλάττων 7
εἰκὼν τοῦ ζῶντος προσώπου, τοσοῦτον ἥσσων
ὁ κόσμος τοῦ ζῶντος αἰῶνος, (which name,
according to what we have already observed,
is a distinctive appellation of the Supreme
God himself.) Τίς οὖν αἰτία τῆς εἰκόνος;
Μεγαλωσύνη τοῦ προσώπου, παρεσχημένου
τῷ ζωγράφῳ τὸν τῦπον, ἵνα τιμηϑῇ δὲ᾽ ὀνό-
ματος αὐτοῦ, (I understand this as referring
to his own name, which was to be revealed
by the creation,) οὐ γὰρ αὐϑεντικῶς εὐρέϑη
μορφῆ: ἀλλὰ τὸ ὄνομα, (the name as it re-
veals itself immediately in the higher self-
consciousness, or in the spiritual natures)
ἐπλήρωσε τὸ ὑστέρημα ἐν πλάσει" συνέργει
δὲ καὶ τὸ τοῦ ϑεοῦ ἀόρατον εἰς πίστιν τοῦ
πεπλασμένουι (This is without doubt the
neuter = πλάσμα). It may be, that Valen-
tine here conceived the Demiurge and the
world formed by him, as constituting one
image of the Supreme God, analogous to
the ϑεὸς γενητός of Plato, in the same way
as Philo, in many places, unites together
the Logos and the world animated by him.
Yet this does not necessarily appear from
his language in this instance.
2 Ὅτε ἠϑέλησεν ἐπιδεῖξαι αὑτὸν, τοῦτο
ἄνϑρωπος ἐλέχϑε. Iren. lib. I. ce. 12, § 3.
8 See those Gnostic excerpta of the Di-
daseal. Anatol. or Θεοδότου ἐπιτομαΐ, opp.
Clement. f. 797, B.: “Av ww70¢ ἐν τῷ πα-
ραδείσῳ TO τετάρτῳ οὐρανῳ μιουργεῖταιν
and Iren. lib. I. 6. 5, ὁ 2.
VALENTINE. 495
Unknown to himself, some of the seed of the divine life was communi-
cated to him from the Pleroma, and this passed over from him into
man.? ‘Thus was revealed in the appearance of man, that prototype of
the heavenly man from the Pleroma ; and the being who was to repre-
sent only the crowning point of the cosmical principle, exhibited in his
appearance tokens of something far higher. The Demiurge and his
angels were seized with amazement, when they beheld a strange and
higher power enter their kingdom ; for they had not as yet attained to
the conscious recognition of that higher order of the world, and to a
free obedience of it. ‘This could be brought about only by the redemp-
tion. Thus they were astounded at their own work, which threatened
to exalt itself above themselves. As Valentine beheld the same law
pervading every grade of existence, so he supposed he found this fact
recurring in every case, where men, animated by the imspiration of
lofty ideas, while endeavoring to represent them in their works, pro-
duce effects not anticipated by themselves and are astonished at their
own productions; like the artist, who, having formed the image of a
god, afterwards falls down and worships it. Valentine thus expresses
himself on this point: “ Just as fear seized the angels m the presence
of that form, when it expressed something greater than was to be ex-
pected from such a creation, because a seed of the higher essence had
been invisibly imparted to it, so also among the generations of men in
this world, their works became objects of fear to their very authors ; as
statues, pictures and everything wrought by human hands with any sort
of reference to the name of God; for Adam, who had been formed to
represent the name of man, excited the fear of the primal man, as if
the latter existed in him.’’?
The cosmical principle must, then, endeavor to assert itself, in its
self-subsistence and dominion, against the danger with which man,
bearing witness of the supramundane essence, threatened it. The Demi-
urge and his powers combine to hold man in subjection, to suppress in
him the consciousness of his higher nature. They plunge him from the
psychical region of the third heaven into the world won from the Hyle
and built on its verge, and they environ his psychical nature with a
body formed out of matter.2 But that this should so happen, did not
proceed from the arbitrary will of the Demiurge. In this also he must
act as the instrument of that higher wisdom; in carrying out his own
1"Eoyev ὁ ᾿Αδὰμ, ἀδήλως αὐτῷ, ὑπὸ τῆς ᾿Αδὰμ φήβον παρέσχεν προόντος ἀνϑρώπου,
Strom.
σοφίας ἐνσπαρὲν, TO σπέρμα TO πνευματικόν.
Didascal. Anatol. f. 797.
2 Καὶ ὥσπερ φόβος ἐπὶ ἐκείνου τοῦ πλάσ-
ματος ὑπῆρξε τοῖς ἀγγέλοις, ὅτε μείζονα
ἐφϑέγξατο τῆς πλάσεως, διὰ τὸν ἀόρατον ἐν
αὐτῷ σπέρμα δεδωκότα, τὴν ἄνωϑεν οὐσίαν
καὶ παῤῥησιαζόμενον, οὕτω, (here the apo-
dosis begins,) καὶ ἐν ταῖς γενεαῖς τῶν κοσ-
μικῶν ἀνϑρώπων φόβοι τὰ ἔργα τῶν ἀνϑρώ-
πων τοῖς ποιοῦσιν ἐγένετο, οἷον ἀνδριάντες
καὶ εἰκόνες καὶ πάντων, (here δὴ ἅ has
doubtless slipped out, or πανϑ᾽ ἅ may be
the reading.) ai χεῖρες ἀνύουσιν εἰς ὄνομα
ϑεοῦ: εἰς γὰο ὄνομα ἀνϑρώπου πλασϑεὶς
90"
ὡς δὴ αὐτοῦ ἐν αὐτῷ καϑεστῶτος.
lib. II. f. 375.
8 The coats of skin, the χιτῶνες δερμά-
tivat of Genesis, which were commonly so
understood by the ‘Theosophists of this pe-
riod. Thus we must supply the hiatus
which has come down to us in Valentine’s
system, when it is said at the conclusion of
the above-cited passage, “ The angels would
have speedily destroyed their work ;” —or
we must suppose that sentence was hypo-
thetical, i. e. they would have destroyed,
unless they had been prevented in an invis:
ible manner by a higher power.
426 VALENTINE.
will, he must subserve the end of a higher will; the principle of divine
life was to penetrate through all the grades of existence, extend itself
even to the bounds of the Hyle, enter into the realms of death itself, in
order to bring about its destruction. But this was the only way in
which it could be done.
That which is to represent humanity at large, becomes actually real-
ized, then, by those only who bear within them that higher germ of
divine life springing from what had been invisibly communicated. to
the Demiurge (the higher spiritual natures.) They are the salt and
light of the earth, the leaven for entire humanity. The soul (ψυχῆ)
is but the vehicle of the πνευματικόν, to enable the latter to enter
into the temporal world, in which it must unfold itself to maturity.
When this end is attained, the spirit, which is destined only for the life
of intuition, will leave behind this vehicle in the lower sphere; and
every spiritual nature, as the recipient, feminine element in relation to
the higher spiritual world, will be exalted to intimate union (Syzygia)
with its correlative angelic nature in the Pleroma. Only the higher
faculty of immediate intuition —this is Valentine’s meaning — will then
be active ; all those powers and modes of operation of the soul which
had been directed to the temporal and the finite, as the faculty of re-
flection, of which the ψυχή is according to Valentine’s notions the com-
prehending sum, will then, in the Pleroma, entirely fall away.?
The attractive power exerted by the godlike on everything, even
while those that are affected by it are unable to understand it or explain
it to themselves —is a favorite idea of Valentine’s. The Demiurge’
is attracted by the spiritual natures scattered among the Jewish people,
without knowing the reason of it. Hence he made of such, prophets,
priests and kings. Hence it was, that the prophets particularly were
able to pot forward to that higher order of things, which was first to
enter into humanity through the Soter. According to the Valentinian
theory, there was a four-fold principle at work in the prophets: 1.
The psychical principle, the humanly limited, the soul left to itself; 2.
The inspiration of this ψυχῆ, which proceeded from the Demiurge’ β
influence upon it; 3. The πνευματικόν, or spiritual element, left to it-
self; 4, The pneumatic inspiration, which proceeded from the informing
Sop hia2 By this theory, and the application of ‘these four principles,
τα αμτὴν could distinguish in the writings of the prophets different ut-
terances of higher and lower kind and ‘import, and a different higher
and lower sense of the same passages. 1. The purely human. 2. The
isolated prophecies of events, which the Demiurge, who, though not omnis-
cient, yet glanced through an enlarged circle of the future, could com-
municate, — the prediction of a Messiah, likewise proceeding from him,
but still enveloped i in the temporal, J ewish form ; the prediction of the
Messiah, as the Demiurge meant to send him,—a psychical Messiah
for the psychical natures, the ruler over a kingdom of this world. 9.
The ideas touching on the Christian economy, and pointing to that, —
the transfigured Messianic element, set forth with more or less of purity,
1 Comp. Aristot. de anima, lib. III. ο. 5. 2 Vid. Iren. lib. I. c. 7, § 3 et 4.
VALENTINE. 427
according as it had proceeded barely from the higher spiritual nature,
or from the immediate influence of the Sophia. ‘This view might lead
to remarkable investigations respecting the mixture of the Divime and
the Human in the prophets, and to fruitful results connected with the
exposition of their writings. We here observe, emerging for the first
time, a more profound apprehension of the idea of mspiration — a striv-
ing to bring the religious and scientific interests to harmonize with each
other in the exposition of the Old Testament.
The question now arises, whether Valentine acknowledged the rays
of higher truth to exist barely among the Jews, whether he confined
the spiritual natures to the Jews alone, or whether he admitted that
they were diffused also among the heathens. ‘True, he held, according
to Heracleon,! the Jews to belong to the kingdom of the Demiurge, the
pagans, to the kingdom of matter, or of Satan, and the Christians, to
the people of the Supreme God; but this does not prove, that he
meant to exclude everything of a higher nature from the pagans; for
he supposed there existed in Judaism — although he assigned it preémi-
nently to the Demiurge — scattered examples of the higher pneumatic
element; and although he assigned Christendom to the Supreme God,
yet he saw even among Christians a large class of psychical natures.
He is speaking, then, of the predominant and prevailing character
only; and so might recognize even among the pagans, notwithstanding
the predominantly Hylic element in paganism, a sprinkling of the Pneu-
matic. He was indeed compelled to do so. by his own principles ; since
the higher, spiritual life (the πνευματικόν,) was to pass through eve-
ry grade of existence to the bounds of matter, in order to prepare the
way for the total destruction of the kingdom of the ὕλη. What Valen-
tine says, in the passage above cited, respecting the power of art em-
ployed in representing the images of the gods, allows us to infer, that
he judged the polytheistic system with more lenity than the ordinary
Jews, who looked upon the Gentile gods only as evil spirits; that, rest-
ing on Acts 13: 23, he believed it possible to trace even in this system
indications, — corrupted though they might be through the predomi-
nance of the material principle, — of an unknown God, extending his
uncomprehended influence over all. Accordingly, Valentine actually
alludes, in the preserved fragment of a Homily,” to the vestiges of truth
dispersed also in the writings of the pagans, wherein the inward nature
of God’s spiritual people, of the πνευματικοί, scattered through the
human race, reveals itself: ‘‘ Much of that which is written in the
books of pagans, is found written in the church of God; this common
truth is the word out of the heart, the law written in the heart ; —it is
the people of the beloved (i. e. this common higher consciousness is the
sign of the Soter’s scattered community, of the πνευματικοί) who are
loved by him and love him in return.”
The Soter, who from the beginning has directed the whole process of
development of the spiritual life-germs that fell from the Pleroma to
form a new world, the invisible former and ruler of this new world, —
1 Orig. in Joann. T, XIII. ¢. 16. 2 Clem. Strom. |. VI. f. 641.
428 VALENTINE.
he must now enter at last himself ¢mmediately into the mundane sphere,
for the purpose of extending the act of redemption, — which he had
originally accomplished on the mother of all spiritual life, the world-soul,
the Sophia, — to all the spiritual life that has flowed from her, and thus
carry the entire work to its completion. Everything, down to the Hyhie
element, struggling against all existence, was, each after its own degree,
capable of being ennobled. The Soter must, therefore, in order to
place everything —as well the psychical as the spiritual natures — in
training for that stage of the higher life of which each is capable, enter
into union with all these gradations of existence. Besides, in following
the course which is in harmony with nature, he could only enter into
union with the spiritual nature, and into that only in connection with a
soul (ψυχῆ,} in this world of time. |
The doctrine concerning Christ must always be conditioned by the
peculiar mode of apprehending the relation of the world to God, and
the doctrine concerning man. In both these respects, this system sets
clearly forth the necessity of a redemption, and that too im its true im-
port, as @ grand historical fact, the purpose of which is to restore har-
mony between the different gradations of existence, to fill up the chasm
which separated the world and heaven from each other, and to raise
the Pneumatic natures, who never could have attamed by themselves
alone to the full consciousness and the full exercise of their higher na-
ture, to fellowship with the higher world intimately related to their own
essence. But still it was a‘consequence grounded in the separation
here supposed between the kingdom of the Demiurge and that of the
Supreme God, that all in this world could not be equally adapted for the
benefits of redemption and equally penetrated by its prmciple. Certain
antitheses were here assumed to exist in human nature itself, which ex-
cluded the possibility of a uniform appropriation of this nature in its com-
pleteness by the Redeemer and the redemption. In this system, the
purely Human (the psychical nature) was too far separated from the
properly Divine (the pneumatic nature,) the oneness of God’s image
in man too feebly recognized, to allow of the full and adequate appre-
hension of the historical Christ finding admission into the realization
of the original type of Humanity. The antitheses which made their
appearance in the cosmology and the anthropology, as originally given
in the constitution of the world and of man, must also betray their
presence once more in the Christology. We cannot allow, that the
tendency of the Valentinian system bore towards the hypothesis of a
merely proto-typic or ideal Christ, and towards making the Christ of
history a barely accidental poimt of attachment for this idea; but in
this respect we can say nothing more, than that his principles admitted
only of a one-sided, mutilated apprehension, as well of the proto-typic,
as of the historical Christ. The fundamental defect is to be traced, in
one word, to the reaction of the great principle of the ancient world in
conceiving of the godlike, as being the super-human. Though Valentine
could attribute to the human element in Christ a greater significancy
than Basilides, still he could never, according to those principles, recog-
nize in him the full significancy of the human element in connection
VALENTINE. 429
with the divine, never understand their true union in him, nor even al-
low the Human itself to be altogether human, for there was still some-
what in the human that belonged only to the kingdom of the ὕλη.
The Demiurge had promised his people a Redeemer, a Messiah, who
should release them from the dominion of the Hylic power, bring about
the destruction of all that opposed itself to his own kingdom, rule in his
name over all, and bless those that were obedient with all manner of
earthly felicity. He sent this Messiah, who was the express image of
the Demiurge, down from his heaven; but this exalted bemg could
enter into no union with matter. Destined to bring about the annihila-
tion of the material element, how could he indeed assume any part of
it to himself? With the material body, he had been under the neces-
sity of assuming also its kindred material spirit of life,}— that fountain
of all corrupt appetites and desires ;'and how could he be the Re-
deemer, if the principle of evil were present in his own nature? The
Demiurge formed, then, for the psychical Messiah, a body composed of
the finest ethereal elements of the heaven from which he was sent down
into this world. This body was so wonderfully constituted,? that it
could be visible to outward sense, and submit to all sensible actions and
affections, and yet in a way altogether different from that of ordinary,
earthly bodies.2 But the miraculous birth of Jesus consisted in this —
that the psychical nature, descended from the heaven of the Demiurge,
together with the ethereal body which it brought with it from the same
region, was ushered into the light of this world through Mary, only as a
channel of conveyance.* Yet this psychical Messiah would have been
inadequate to the task of accomplishing even the work assigned him by
the Demiurge. It required a higher power to vanquish the kingdom of
the ὕλη. The Demiurge acted here, as in everything else, simply in
unconscious subordination to the Soter. The latter had decreed on the
time when he would unite himself with this psychical Messiah as his
instrument, with a view to accomplish the work ordained and promised
by the Demiurge, in a far higher sense than the Demiurge himself had
divined ; to found a kingdom of the Messiah, of a far loftier description,
the true character of which had been only intimated in the sublimest
descriptions of the prophets, which the Demiurge himself had been un-
able to understand.
The psychical Messiah, who had no presentiment of the destination
that awaited him when united with the Soter, meanwhile displayed
from the beginning the ideal of ascetic holiness. By virtue of the
peculiar constitution of his body, he could exercise an extraordinary
control over matter. He ate and drank, it is true, like others; letting
himself down, in this respect, to human infirmity. But yet he did so
without being subject to like affections as other men. He did every-
thing after a godlike manner.
At his baptism in the Jordan, where he was to receive from John the
Baptist, the Demiurge’s representative, his solemn consecration to the
1 The ψυχὴ ἄλογος. 2 Ἔξ οἰκονομίας. 4 Ὥς διὰ σωλῆνος.
8 Σῶμα ἐκ τῆς ἀφανοῦς ψυχικῆς οὐσίας. 5 Clem. Strom. lib. IIL f. 451
Theodot. Didascal. Anatol.
430 VALENTINE.
office of Messiah, the Soter, under whose invisible guidance everything
had been so directed, entered into union with him, descending in the
form of a dove. As to the question, whether the psychical Messiah
possessed with his soul also a pneumatic element, so that the πνεῦμα
descended at the same time with the soul as its vehicle, for the purpose
of unfolding itself in this world, and then serving as an instrument of
the descended Soter, or whether the Soter, on his first entrance into
this world, took from the Sophia a spiritual nature as his vehicle, so that
he might be capable of uniting himself with a human nature, and thus
the higher pneumatic principle was first communicated to the Messiah
of the Demiurge at his baptism ; —as to this point— there might be a
difference of opinion among the Valentinian schools themselves.! ὶ
According to Valentine’s doctrine, as well as that of Basilides, the
appearance of the redeeming spirit in humanity and his union with the
psychical Messiah must constitute the principal thing in the work of
redemption. He agreed with Basilides also in supposing that the Soter,
at the passion, left the psychical Messiah to himself; and this passion,
as it did not light on a material body, capable of suffering, but on a
psychical one, could not possibly be regarded by him according to its
full import. Yet it is certain, that, so far as it respects the mode of
contemplating Christ’s passion, the Jewish element, in the case of the
‘Valentinian Gnosis, exercised no such important influence as in the
case of the Gnosis of Basilides; and that the Valentinians were far
better prepared to understand the significancy of this passion for the
Christian consciousness. A power for the overcoming of evil and for
the purification of the nature beset with it, was ascribed to the sufferings
of the psychical Christ. We have, in fact, already become acquainted
with the idea of the Valentinian system, that the same law must be
1 The latter seems to be the view ex-
pressed in a passage of Heracleon, Orig.
T. VL.§ 23.. Grabe Spiceleg. T. II. p. 89,
in which passage I once supposed, (see my
Genetische Entwickelung, p. 149,) though
erroneously, I had found the doctrine of a
proper incarnation of the Soter, and of his
union with the human nature from its first
development. Heracleon—on John 1: 27
— correctly explains the sense of the pas-
sage in the first place, after his usual man-
ner; namely, that “John acknowledged
himself unworthy to perform even the
meanest service for the Redeemer,’ — and
then proceeds arbitrarily to imply, in these
simple words, a higher sense, in accordance
with his own theosophie ideas: Οὐκ ἐγώ
εἰμι ἱκανὸς, iva δὶ ἐμὲ κατέλϑῃ ἀπὸ μεγέ-
ϑους καὶ σάρκα λάβῃ, ὡς ὑπόδημα, περὶ ἧς
ἐγὼ λόγον ἀποδοῦναι οὐ δύναμαι, οὐδὲ διη-
γήσασϑαι ἢ ἐπιλῦσαι τὴν περὶ αὐτῆς οἰκο-
νομίαν. We can hardly understand by “the
flesh” here, which the Soter took on him
when he descended from the higher region
bordering on the πλήρωμα and the τύπος
μεσότητος. the body of the psychical Mes-
siah, formed by a special οἰκονομία ; for the
subject of discourse here is undoubtedly
the Soter, who revealed himself to John at
the baptism; and this Soter, at all events,
united himself, according to the Valentinian
theory, not with the body, but with the psy-
chical Messiah, who was clothed with this
body. Consequently John, here represent-
ing the person of the Demiurge, could not
have thus expressed his wonder at this
wonderful body, which had been formed by ~
the Demiurge himself. But the Valentini-
ans were used to denominate every outward
envelop, every vehicle of a superior being that
descended to a lower region of existence,
a σάρξ. The Sophia gave the Soter a
σπέρμα πνευματικόν, that so with this ve-
hicle he might descend to the earth, and,
through its medium, enter into union with
the ψυχῆ. We have the evidence of this
in the commencing words of the Didascal.
Anatol., which are as follows: Ὃ προέβα-
λὲν σαρκίον τῷ λόγῳ, (equivalent to the
Soter,) 7 σοφία τὸ πνευματικὸν σπέρμα,
τοῦτο στολισώμενος κατῆλϑεν ὁ σωτήρ. It
was of this wonderful economy, then, that
Heracleon was speaking.
VALENTINE. 451
earried into effect at the different stages of existence, im order to the
restoration of the harmony of the universe. The cross, as we have
already observed, was considered in this system a symbol of the might
that purifies a nature from foreign elements, and leads it as well to self
confinement within the limits of its own proper nature, as to fixedness
and constancy there. Now the crucifixion of Christ represented the
activity of this power im this lower world. The manner in which the
psychical Messiah was stretched on the cross, and with this, over the
lower creation — exhibited himself sharing in the suffermgs of humanity
— is asymbol of that-first redeeming act, where the Soter received the
suffering Sophia, stretched over her the Stauros, purified her from
every foreign element, and conducted back her dissipating existence
within its proper confines. A similar operation is now imaged forth by
this act of the psychical Christ, where that which had been already ac-
complished in the highest region, is brought about in the psychical
world. Even considered by itself alone, this representation cannot be
an idle, fruitless, barely symbolical thing, but there must be connected
with it the like influence, only after a manner corresponding to this
particular stage of existence. Hence Heracleon could say, that by the
cross of Christ all evil was consumed,! and that his passion was neces-
sary in order that the church, cleansed from the influence of the mate-
rial spirits, may be converted into a house of God.? Accordingly he
spoke of a spiritual appropriation of Christ’s suffermgs, through which
the participation in the kingdom of the Divine life, in the marriage sup-
per of the church, is mediated. By the words, ‘‘ Father, into thy
hands I commit my spirit,’”’ the psychical Christ commended to the care
of the Heavenly Father the πνευματικὸν σπέρμα, which was now for-
saking him, that it might not be kept back in the kingdom of the Dem
urge, but rise free to the upper region; commending to him also by
the same act all spiritual natures, who were represented by the one
united with himself. The psychical Messiah rises to the Demiurge,
who transfers to him the sovereign power and government, to be admin-
istered in his name; and the pneumatic Messiah to the Soter, whither
all the redeemed spiritual natures will follow him.
The point of chief importance, the main thing in the redemptive
work, so far as it concerns spiritual natures, is the redemption of which
man’s nature was made to participate by its union with the Soter at
the baptism in Jordan. This must be repeated in the case of each in-
dividual. Of the sanctifying effects flowing from inward communion
with the Redeemer, Valentine speaks as follows: ‘ There is one good
Being, whose free manifestation is his revelation by the Son; and
through Aim alone could the heart be made pure, after every malign
1᾿Ανηλῶσϑαι καὶ ἠφανίσϑαι τοὺς κυβευ-
τὰς, ἐμπόρους, (allusion to the narrative of
Christ’s expelling the changers from the
temple, and without doubt meaning here the
demons, or efiluxes from matter, whereby
God’s temple in humanity became defiled,)
καὶ πᾶσαν τὴν κακίαν. Orig. in Joann. T.
X. c. 19
2 Ἴνα τὴν ἐκκλησίαν κατασκευάσῃ, οὐκέτι
ληστῶν καὶ ἐμπόρων σπήλαιον, ἀλλὰ oikov
τοῦ πατρὸς αὑτοῦ. L.c. .
8 From the typical meaning of the pas-
chal supper. Avouevov μὲν τὸ πάϑος τοῦ
Σωτῆρος τὸ ἐν κόσμῳ ἐσήμαινεν, ἐσϑιόμε-
vov δὲ τὴν ἀνάπαυσιν τὴν ἔν γάμῳ. Lic
ὁ 14.
432 VALENTINE.
spirit had been ejected; for many are the spirits that take up their
abode in the heart, and allow it not to be pure. Hach of these is busily
employed in his own work, while they, all in various ways, shamefully
defile it. And it seems to me to fare with such a heart much as with
an inn; for the inn is worn and trodden to pieces, often filled with dirt,
being the haunt of riotous, licentious men, who have no interest in the
place, since it is none of their own. So is it with the heart ; — until it
receives the heavenly grace, it remains unclean, being the abode of
many evil spirits. But when he who only is good, when the Father
adopts it as his, it becomes holy and resplendent with hght; and ace-
cordingly he who possesses such a heart is pronounced blessed, for he
shall see God.” 1
The Valentinians were penetrated with the consciousness that Chris-
tianity even here on the earth imparts a divine life, and in this life, the
fellowship with heaven. This consciousness is thus expressed in the
Valentinian form of intuition: “ Every pneumatic soul having its other
half in the upper world of spirits (namely, its attendant angel,) with
which it is destined to be united, it receives power through the Soter
to enter into this union (Syzygy) spiritually even in the present life.”’ ?
But it is quite evident of itself, that the Valentinians must have dis-
tinguished the effects of baptism and of the redemption, in their rela-
tion to the two positions of the Pneumatici and the Psychici. The
psychical man obtains forgiveness of his sins, is released from the do-
minion of the hylic principle, and receives power to withstand it. The
pneumatical man is, through communion with the Soter, incorporated
into the Pleroma, attains to a full consciousness of his nature affining to
the latter and exalted above the kingdom of the Demiurge, and is em-
powered to develope it free from the restraints by which it was before
shackled. He is released from the cramping power of the Demiurge.
The two classes differ from one another, in their way not only of ar-
riving at Christianity, but also of appropriating and apprehending it.
The psychical men must be led to the faith by causes out of themselves,
by facts of the sensible world, by miracles ;? —so the stage of progress
which they never go beyond, is that of faith on grounds of historical
authority. They are not capable of the intuction of the truth itself.
It is to such Christ speaks in John 4: 48. In the case of spiritual
men, on the other hand, faith does not arise out of the things of sense ;
they are seized immediately, in virtue of their godlike nature, by the
intrinsic might of the truth itself, feel themselves immediately drawn
away to that which is in affinity with their essential being;* and m
virtue of this spiritual contact with the truth, their faith is superior to
all doubt.6 Their worship, grounded in the knowledge of the truth, is
the true, ““ reasonable service of God.”
1 Strom. lib. IT. f. 409.
2 Heracleon, in Origin, T. XIII. § 11:
Κομίζεσϑαι παρ᾽ αὐτοῦ τὴν δύναμιν Kal τὴν
ἕνωσιν καὶ τὴν ἀνώκρασιν πρὸς τὸ πλή-
ρωμα αὐτῆς.
8 Δὲ ἔργων φύσιν ἔχοντες καὶ δὲ αἰσϑήῆ-
σεως πείϑεσϑαι, καὶ οὐχὶ λόγῳ πιστεύειν.
Orig. in Joann. T. XIII. § 59.
4 Heracleon, in Orig. 1. c. c. 20, the dexti-
KH ζωῆς διάϑεσις. -
ὅ Ἡ ἀδιάκριτος καὶ κατάλληλος τῇ φύσει
αὐτῆς πίστις. Lic. ὃ 10.
id
VALENTINE. 438
The origin of the Christian life being thus different, the position in
that life is different also. Here arises the distinction of a psychical and
a pneumatical Christianity. By those of the one class, only the psychi-
eal Christ is recognized ; those of the other rise to the divine Soter in
him. In the one position, men rest satisfied with historical Christian-
ity; in the other, they grasp it in its connection and coherence with
the whole theogonic and cosmogonic process. While Christ is acknowl-
edged by those that belong to the first class, only in consideration of
the ext aordinary works by which he was accredited as a divine
teacher, and what he revealed is received on his authority; by those
of the second, on the other hand, the necessity of the facts of Chris-
tianity,—the necessity grounded in that process, — is understood ;
and on that very basis reposes a conviction raised above all doubt. To
the psychical class, Paul says that for them he knew nothing, and could
preach nothing, save Christ crucified : 1 that he could not announce
to them that wisdom of the perfect, which is hidden even from the De
miurge and his angels. In accordance with these different positions,
Christ is presented in different ways to the Christian consciousness ; —
as indeed the angels themselves, on account of their different natures,
do not all behold alike the countenance of the Father. The recogni-
tion of a necessary difference in the mode of contemplating Christ’s
person and work, grounded in these different stages of religious devel-
opment, is a truth lying at the root of these Valentinian doctrines.
Those spiritual men are the salt, the soul of the outward church —
those by whom Christianity is propagated as the forming principle of
humanity.? By them is the way prepared for the transfiguration of
the entire earthly world, and for the final destruction of everything
material and evil ;— an event that shall énsue, when matter shall have
been deprived of all those germs of life it had seized on, and these,
purified of their dross, shall have attained to the development corres-
ponding to their essential being. So was it necessary that the divine
life should be merged in the world of death, in order that that world
might be overcome. Valentine addresses these spiritual men as fol-
lows: “ Ye are, from the beginning, immortal and children of eternal
life ; and ye were willing to apportion death among you, that you might
swallow up and destroy it, and that in you and through you death might
die. For if ye dissolve the world (prepare the way for the dissolution
of the material world,) but are not yourselves dissolved, ye are masters
and lords over the creation, and over all that is perishable.”’ 4
Though the Christian principle appears, in this Valentinian tendency,
vitiated by a certain theosophic pride, and an element of Oriental
1 Didascal. Anatol. concerning a two-fold
mode of preaching by the apostle Paul. In
reference to the psychical men: ᾿Εκήρυξε
TOV σωτῆρα γενητὸν καὶ παϑητόν.
21, ο.: Ἰδίως ἕκαστος γνωρίζει τὸν κύρι-
ον, καὶ οὐχ’ ὁμοίως πάντες τὸ πρόσωπον τοῦ
πατρὸς ὁρῶσιν οἱ Gyyedot.
8. See the proof directly, where we speak
of Heracleon.
37
VOL. I.
4°An’ ἀρχῆς ἀϑώνατοί ἐστε καὶ τέκνα
ζωῆς αἰωνίας: καὶ τὸν ϑάνατον ἠϑέλετε
μερίσασϑαι εἰς ἑαυτοὺς, ἵνα δαπανήσητε
αὐτὸν καὶ ἀναλώσητε, καὶ ἀποϑανῇ ὁ ϑάνα-
τος ἐν ὑμῖν καὶ δὶ ὑμῶν. Ὅταν γὰρ τὸν
μὲν κόσμον λύητε, ὑμεῖς δὲ μὴ καταλύησϑε,
κυριεύετε τῆς κτίσεως καὶ τῆς φϑορᾶς ἁπά
onc. Strom. ]. LV. f. 509, Β.
»
434 THE VALENTINIAN SCHOOL.
austerity, yet there gleams through these words a consciousness of
what Christ intended, when he called the bearers of his word and spirit
the salt of the earth,—of the high calling and place in the world of
those who truly displayed the image of Christ, and in whom the idea -
of Christianity was realized ; who were to be scattered abroad in the
midst of an impure world, and connected with it by numberless grada-
tions, in order to prepare the way for its gradual purification.
When now the end for which these spiritual men prepared the way
should be attained, the Soter, after the dissolution of the whole material
world, should be united in one “ syzygia”’ with the Sophia, the ma-
tured spiritual natures, paired with their respective angels, should un-
der him enter into the Pleroma, and the psychical minds occupy under
the Demiurge the last grade of the spiritual world ;1—for they too
should receive the measure of felicity answering to their peculiar na-
ture. ‘I'he Demiurge rejoices at the appearance of the Soter, through
whom a higher world, to which he was before a stranger, has been re-
vealed to him; and through whom also, relieved from his toilsome
labors, he is enabled to enter into rest and enjoy an echo of the glory
of the Pleroma. He is the friend of the bridegroom (the Soter,) who
standeth and heareth him, and rejoiceth greatly because of the bride-
groom’s voice —rejoiceth at the consummation of the espousals.?
John the Baptist spake these words (John 3: 29,) as a representative
of the Demiurge.
DISTINGUISHED MEN BELONGING TO THE SCHOOL OF VALENTINE. —
Among the men of Valentine’s school, Heracleon was distinguished
for his cool, scientific, reflective bent of mind. He wrote a commen-
tary on the Gospel of St. John, considerable fragments of which have
been preserved by Origen ;? perhaps also, a commentary on the Gospel
according to Luke. Of the latter, a smgle fragment only, the exposi-
tion of Luke 12: 8, has been preserved by Clement of Alexandria.*
It may easily be conceived, that the spiritual depth and fulness of John
must have been preéminently attractive to the Gnostics. ‘T'o the expo-
sition of this gospel Heracleon brought a profound, religious sense,
which penetrated to the inward meaning, together with an understand-
ing invariably clear when not led astray by theosophic speculation.
But what he chiefly lacked was a faculty to appreciate the simplicity
of John, and earnest application to those necessary means for evolving
the spirit out of the letter, the deficiency in which among the Gnostics
generally has been already made a subject of remark. Heracleon hon-
estly intended, indeed, so far as we can see, to derive his theology from
John. But he was entirely warped by his system; and with all his
habits of thought and contemplation, so entangled in its mesh-work,
that he could not move out of it with freedom, but spite of himself,
implied its views and its ideas in the Scriptures, which he regarded as
the fountain of divine wisdom.
1 The τόπος μεσότητος. 3 In his Tomis on John, in which he fre-
2 The union of the Soter with the So- quently has reference to the expositions of
phia, of the angels with the spiritual na- Heracleon.
tures in the Pleroma. * Strom. 1. IV. f. 503.
΄
HERACLEON. 435
In proof of what has been said, we will consider Heracleon’s inter-
pretation of that noble passage containing our Saviour’s conversation
with the woman of Samaria. With the simple facts of the history,
Heracleon could not rest content ; nor was he satisfied with a calm psy-
chological contemplation of the Samaritan woman in her relation to the
Saviour. His imagination immediately traced in the woman who was
so attracted by the words and appearance of Christ, the type of all
spiritual natures, that are attracted by the godlike; and hence this
history must represent the entire relation of the πνευματικοί to the
Soter, and to the higher, spiritual world. Hence the words of the
Samaritan woman must have a double sense, —that of which she
was herself conscious, and that which she expressed unconsciously,
as representing the whole class of the πνευματικοί ; and hence also the
words of the Saviour must be taken in a two-fold sense, a higher and a
lower. ‘True, he did not fail to understand the fundamental idea con-
tained in the Saviour’s language; but he allowed himself to be drawa
away from the principal point, by looking after too much in the several
accompanying circumstances. ‘‘'The water which our Saviour gives,”
says he, ‘is from his Spirit and his power. His grace and his gifts
are something that never can be taken away, never can be exhausted,
never can pass from those who have any portion in them. They that
have received what is richly bestowed on them from above, communicate
of the overflowing fulness which they enjoy, to the everlasting life of
others also.” But then he wrongly concludes, that because Christ in-
tended the water which he would give to be understood in a symboli-
cal sense, so too the water of Jacob’s well must be understood in the
same symbolical sense. It was a symbol of Judaism, inadequate to the
wants of the spiritual nature—an image of its perishable, earthly
glory. The words of the woman, — “‘ Give me this water, that I thirst
not, neither come hither to draw,’’ — express the burthensome charac-
ter of Judaism, the difficulty of finding in it anything wherewith to
nourish the spiritual life, and the inadequacy of that nourishment
when found.!. When our Lord afterwards bade the woman call her
husband, he meant by this her other half in the spiritual world, the
angel belonging to her ; — that with him coming to the Saviour, she
might from the latter receive power to become united and blended with
this her destined companion. And the reason for this arbitrary inter-
pretation is, that ‘ Christ could not have spoken of her earthly husband,
since he was aware, that she had no lawful one. In the spzritual sense,’
the woman knew not her husband #—she knew nothing of the angel
belonging to her; in the literal sense, she was ashamed to confess that
she was living in an unlawful connection.”” ‘The water being the sym-
bol of the divine life communicated by the Saviour, Heracleon went on
to infer that the water-pot was the symbol of a recipient sperit for this
divine life on the part of the woman. She left her water-pot behind
with him ; that is, having now a vessel of this kind with the Saviour,
1 Τὸ ἐπίμοχϑον καὶ δυσπόρυστον καὶ ἄτρο- 8 Κατὰ τὸ νοούμενον.
φον ἐκείνου τοῦ ὕδατος. 4 Κατὰ τὸ ἁπλοῦν
2 Τὸ πλήρωμα αὐτῆς. See above
436 HERACLEON.
in which to receive the living water she came for, she returned into
the world to announce that Christ was come to the psychical natures.
In many of his interpretations, in which he distinguishes himself by
his healthy feeling for the simple and for the depth m the simplicity,
he is too simple for the artificial taste of Origen, who finds fault with
him for adhering to the letter, and not penetrating more deeply into the:
spiritual sense. Explaining the words of Christ in John 4: 54, he
says: ‘The Lord here calls it his meat to do the will of his Father ; for
this was to him his nourishment, his rest and his power. But by his
Father’s will he meant, that men should come to the knowledge of his
Father and be blessed. And accordingly, this discourse with the Samar-
itan woman belonged to the meat of the Son.” ® On John 4: 35, he
says: ““ Christ speaks here of the sensible harvest, which was yet four
months distant; while on the other hand, the har vest of which he dis-
courses was already present in reference ‘to the souls of the faithful.” 4
As the Gnostics took ground against the Jewish element in the doc-
trines of faith and morals, they ‘uniformly set up the principle that
everything spiritual must proceed from the inner life and temper, in
opposition to the tendency which severed good works from this connec-
tion, and attributed value to them separately. It was such a reaction
of the Christian spirit among the Gnostics that declared itself against
the exaggerated estimate placed on the opus operatum of martyrdom,
whereby, as we have seen, the deifying of man was promoted among
the multitude, and spiritual pride and false security among the wit-
nesses of the faith themselves. We have earlier remarked, that Basi-
lides resisted this excessive'veneration of the martyrs; and on the other
hand endeavored to depreciate martyrdom, though in connection,
indeed, with false premises from his system. But the way in which
Heracleon attacked the wrong notions of martyrdom had no connection
whatever with such errors. His only concern was to show that the wit-
ness of Christ should not be zsolated, as a mere outward thing, but be
found in connection and in unity with the entire whole of the Christian
life. ‘The multitude,” says he,® “regard confession before the civil
authority as the only one; but without reason. ‘This confession, hypo-
crites also may lay down. ‘This is one particular form of confession ;
— it is not that wniversal confession, to be laid down by all Christians,
and of which Christ is here (Luke 12: 8) speaking ; — the confession
by works and actions that correspond to the faith in him. This univer-
sal confession will be followed also
1 We must allow Heracleon the justice
to acknowledge, that Origen wrongly ac-
cuses him here, as in many places, of con-
tradicting himself, — for how, says Origen,
could the Samaritan woman announce
Christ to others, when she had left behind,
with him from whom she had parted, the
recipient organ of divine life? But He-
racleon was perfectly consistent here :— in
applying the allegory, the notion of “leav-
ing behind,” so far as space was concerned,
did not, in fact, enter his mind.
by that particular one, in the hour
2. Ἐπὶ τῆς λέξεως ἔμεινε, μὴ οἰόμενος
αὐτὴν ἀνάγεσϑαι. Orig. in Joann. T. XITI.
§ 41.
3 ΤΆ is deserving of notice, how Origen
censures Heracleon on account of this
sound exposition : Ὅπερ. νομίζω σαφῶς παν-
Tl ὁρᾶσϑαι καὶ ταπεινῶς ἐξειλῆφϑαι καὶ
βεβιασμένως. L.c. § 38.
*L. c. § 41.
5In the fragment above cited, of his
commentary on Luke.
PTOLEM AUS. 437
of trial and when reason requires it. It is possible for those who so
confess him in words, to deny him by their works. They only confess
him in truth, who live in his confession; im whom he himself also con-
fesses, — having received them to himself as they have received him
to themselves. For this reason, he can never deny himself.” ?
We may mention further, Ptolemeus, who, if we may judge from the
work of Irenzeus, (which was aimed chiefly against his party,) contrib-
uted much to the ‘spread of Valentine’s principles. It may be questioned
whether Tertullian is correct in saying that Ptolemeeus differed from
Valentine principally in representing the A‘ons, whom the latter
regarded as powers residing in the divine essence,? more under the
form of hypostases ; — at least it may be doubted whether this was a
distinction of so much importance, — since, in every case, the represen-
tations which the Gnostics framed to themselves of the Adons were at a
far remove from abstract, notional attributes, and must have bordered
closely on hypostases.
A very important production of Ptolemzeus, which has come down
to our times, — his letter to Flora, a lady whom he endeavored to win
over to the Valentinian principles, — shows that he was well qualified
to present his views to others in the least exceptionable form. As the
individual to whom he wrote belonged in all probability to the catholic
church, it was particularly necessary for him to remove the offence she
could not fail to take at the opposition between his views and the doc-
trine of the church, and at the position, that neither the Old Testament
nor the creation of the world proceeded from the Supreme God. To
meet the first difficulty, he appeals to an apostolic tradition, which
through a succession of witnesses had come down to himself, and to
the words of the Saviour, by which all doctrine should be settled. By
the tradition he meant probably an esoteric one, which, being himself
deceived, he traced to some reputed disciple of the apostles; and as it
regards the words of Christ, he could easily adapt them to his system
by. the Gnostic mode of interpretation. As to the second point, we
may well suppose he would exhibit his principles in their mildest possi-
ble form, to gain admittance for them with one who was not yet among
the initiated. But still we find nothmg in what he advances, which is
at variance with the Valentinian principles. He combats two opposite
errors —the error of those who held the creation of the world and
the Old Testament to be the works of an evil being,— and the error
of those who held them to be the works of the Supreme God. One
of these parties erred, in his opinion, because they knew the Demiurge
alone, and not the Father of All, whom Christ, who alone knew him,
first revealed ; — the other, because they knew nothing of such an in-
termediate being as the Demiurge. Ptolemzeus probably would say,
1 Ἐνειλημμένος αὐτοὺς καὶ ἐχόμενος ὑπό tis in personales substantias, quas Valenti-
τούτων. nus in ipsa summa divinitatis, ut sensus et
2 Which must take place, if such as stand adfectus et motus incluserat. Ady. Valen-
in this connection with him, could be _ tinian, c. 4.
brought to deny him. + Epiphan. heres. 33, § 3.
8 Nominibus et numeris xonum distine-
ar.
438 PTOLEMAUS.
then, that the first error was entertained by those who in Christianity
continued still to be Jews; the second, by those who had passed at
once, without any medium of transition, from the service of matter and
Satan in paganism, to the knowledge of the Supreme God in the gospel;
and from having made this immense leap in their knowledge and reli-
gion at once, supposed there was also a like chasm in the nature of
things. ‘‘ How can a law that forbids sin, proceed from the evil
being who is at war with all moral good?” he asks ; ;—and says he,
“the man must be blind, not in the mental eye alone, but also in that
of the body, who camot discern in the world the providence of its
maker.”
Immovably persuaded that the world could not have sprung from
an evil being, he was also firmly convinced that its author could not be
the perfect God, whom the Saviour was first enabled to reveal. Ms
essence is only goodness ; — Christ, indeed, called nm the bemg who
alone is good. As it seems, Ptolemzeus considered punitive justice to
be something irreconcileable with this perfect goodness. On the other
hand, he represented justice, in the more limited sense, to be the pecu-
liar attribute of the Demiurge, as marking a stage, lying in the middle
between evil and perfect goodness. He distinguished justice in this
sense from justice in the highest sense, which coincides with perfect
goodness.! That which is intermediate,” he considered as belonging to
the essence of the Demiurge and his kingdom. He professes adhe-
rence to the doctrine of one primal Essence, the One Father who is with-
out beginning, from whom all existence springs, and on whom it depends
—a being who would show himself to be greater and mightier than
the evil principle. He writes Flora, to give herself no uneasiness, if it
should appear strange to her, that from a perfect primal essence should
proceed two alien natures, that of the perishable essence,* and that of
the Demiurge, occupying the intermediate position, inasmuch as the
good, from its very essence, must produce only what is like itself;
“6 for,” he adds, ‘* you shall come to know the beginning and origin of
this also in its proper time.”’ If Ptolemzeus was not here accommo-
datmg himself, for the occasion, to the principles of the church, or rep-
resenting his own in a milder form, with a view gradually to lead on his
pupil still farther, we should have to reckon him also among the Gnos-
tics before described, who reduced Dualism back to an original Mono-
ism; for according to this view, he must have been anxious to point
out, how not only the kingdom of the Demiurge, as a subordinate stage
of existence in the general process of unfolding life, but also how at
length the ὕλη must exist as the extreme limit of all, or as an antithesis
necessary to appear once and to be overcome.*
1 The proof is in what Ptolemzus says
concerning the Demiurge: ᾿Ιδίως λεχϑείη
av δίκαιος, τῆς κατ᾽ αὐτὸν δικαιοσύνης Ov
ϑραβευτὴς, καὶ ἔσται μὲν καταδεέστερος τοῦ
τελείου ϑεοῦ καὶ τῆς ἐκείνου δικαιοσύνης
ἐλάττων οὗτος ὁ ϑεός.
2 The μέσον, answering to the τόπος με-
σότητος in Valentine’s system.
8 The φϑορά. the ὕλῃ.
* Perhaps Secundus also belonged to the
party who supposed evil to be a necessary
momentum in the process of development,
if he distinguished in the first Ogdoad a
τέτρας δεξιά and a τέτρας ἀριστερά, calling
the first light, and the second darkness.
Vid. Iren. lib. 1. c. 11, § 2.
PTOLEM AUS. 439
Agreeing entirely with the Valentinian notion of inspiration, accord
ing to which all was not regarded as alike divine, but a codperation of
different factors was supposed in the origination of the Old Testament,
Ptolemzeus distinguished several elements in the writings of the Old
Testament. He divided the religious polity of Moses mto three parts.
1. That which proceeded from the Demiurge. 2. That which Moses
ordained under the impulse of his own reason left to itself. 38. The
additions made to the Mosaic law by the elders.t. The Saviour, as he
maintained, plainly distinguished the law of Moses from the law of God
(of the Demiurge,) Matth. 19: 6, &c. Yet again he excuses Moses,
and endeavors to show that the contradiction between him and the De-
miurge is only in appearance ; —he merely yielded through constramt
to the weakness of the people, in order to avoid a still greater evil.
What came from the Demiurge, he divides again into three parts. 1.
The purely moral portion of the law, unmixt with anything evil, which
was called distinctively the law, in reference to which our Saviour says
he came not to destroy the law but to fulfil ; for as it contained nothing
foreion from Christ’s nature, it only required completion. For exam-
ple, the precepts Thou shalt not kill, Thou shalt not commit adultery,
were completed in the precepts which forbid anger, and impure desires.
2. The law, corrupted by the intermixture of evil, as for example, that
which permitted retaliation; Levit. 24: 20; 20: 9. ‘Even he who
retaliates wrong for wrong, is none the less guilty of injustice, since he
repeats the same action, the order only being reversed.” Yet he recog-
nized here, as in the case of Moses just stated, a psedagogical element.
‘¢ This command,” says he, ‘was and perhaps still continues to be a
just one, given in consideration of the weakness of those, who received
the law, not without overstepping the pure law. It is alien, however,
from the essence and from the goodness of the Universal Father ; —
perhaps agreeable to the nature of the Demiurge ;? but more probably
extorted from him. For he who forbids to kill in one place, and com-
mands it in another, has allowed himself unawares to be surprized by a
sort of necessity.’ The Demiurge, he would say, was not wanting in
the will, but in the power to vanquish evil. This part of the law, as
contradicting the essential character of the Supreme God, is now
wholly abolished by the Saviour. It is plain, that Ptolemeeus must
have looked upon the capital punishment of the murderer as only a
second murder. ‘The state generally, according to his doctrine, which
represents retributive justice as altogether foreign from the Supreme
God, can belong only to the kingdom of the Demiurge. And it fol-
lows, that those who had separated from the kingdom of the Demiurge,
the genuine, Gnostic Christians, must decline all offices of civil trust.
We here see betrayed again, a defect in the ethical system of these
Gnostics, which defect had its ground in their speculative theology ;
1 Ptolemzus assumes that the Pentateuch 21 have translated according to a correc-
did not come from Moses. He supposed, tion of the text, (1. c.¢.3,) which seemed
probably, with the Clementines, that when to me necessary. ἔσως τούτῳ KaTGAAnAov.
the law was written down from orak tradi- The o need only be altered to ὦ
tion, many foreign additions of the elders
came to be mixed in with it.
440 MARCUS.
since the former could never, according to the latter, become the ani-
mating principle of a state —the possibility was never given to it of
becoming a form of manifestation for the kingdom of God. We grant
there was this of truth also lying at the bottom, that no civil laws and
civil constitutions can be derived immediately out of the essence of
Christianity. 8. The typical, ceremonial law, which (see above) con-
tained the figure of higher, spiritual things, —the laws concerning
sacrifices, concerning circumcision, concerning the sabbath, the pass-
over, and fasts. “Ἅ All that was merely type and symbol, became
altered after the truth appeared. The visible and outward observance
was abolished. It passed, however, into a spiritual service, in which
the names are the same, but the things are altered. For it is the
Saviour’s command, that we also should present our offerings ; not offer-
ings, however, of beasts or burning incense, but the spiritual sacrifice
of praise to God, and giving thanks to his name —of domg good and
communicating to our neighbors. It is his will also, that we be circum-
cised --- ποῦ however with the outward, bodily rite, but with the spir-
itual circumcision of the heart. He wills, moreover, that we should
keep the sabbath, for he would have us rest from domg evil; also
that we should fast, not however with bodily abstinence, but with
spiritual, which consists in abstaining from all sm. Yet the practice
of outward fasting also is observed by our people; for it may be some-
what profitable to the soul, when performed rationally, — not from imi-
tation of any one, not from custom, not from regard to the day, as if
one day were specially designed for it— but to remind us of the true
fast, that those who are as yet unable to keep the latter, may still
be led to keep it in view by the outward fasting.” Ptolemeeus was
thoroughly penetrated with a sense of the elevation of the Christian posi-
tion, superior to all constraints of time and place. In the order of set
fasts, and doubtless also feast days, he saw something Jewish.
Among the so called disciples of Valentine, Marcus and Bardesanes
held distinguished rank. We say so called; for it would be more cor-
rect perhaps to express it thus, that these two drew from the same
common fountain with Valentine, in Syria, the native country of the
Gnosis. Mareus came from Palestine, probably in the latter half of
the second century. ‘That Palestine was his native land, we may gather
from his frequent use of the Aramean liturgical formula. If in the
theosophy of Heracleon and Ptolemzeus the scientifie tendency of the
Alexandrian school predominated ; in that of Marcus, on the other
hand, the tendency was to the poetic and symbolical. He set forth
his system in a poem, in which he introduced the divine Adons discours-
ing, in liturgical forms, and with gorgeous symbols of worship, of which
we shall cite some examples hereafter. In the manner of the Jewish
Cabbala, he hunted after special mysteries in the numbers and position
of letters. The idea of a λόγος τοῦ ὄντος, of a word manifesting the hid-
den divine essence in the creation, was spun out by him into the most
subtle details;——the entire creation being, in his view, a continuous
utterance, or becoming expressed, of the ineffable.1 The manner in which
1 Τὸ ἀῤῥητὸν ῥητὸν γενηϑῆναι.
BARDESANES. 441
the germs of divine life,’ lying shut up in the Alons, go on progressively
to unfold and individualize themselves, is represented by supposing that
these names of the Ineffable became analyzed into their separate sounds.
An echo of the Pleroma falls down into the ὕλη, and becomes the form-
ing principle of a new, lower creation.”
The second of these two, Bardesanes, who can with still less propriety
be considered a disciple of Valentine, lived in Edessa of Mesopotamia.
This is indicated by his name Bar Desanes, son of Daisan, from a river
so called near the city of Edessa. He made himself known by his ex-
tensive learning. Many of the older writers speak of alterations in the
systems of Bardesanes. According to Eusebius’s account, he was at
first a follower of Valentine’s doctrines ; but having convinced himself
by more careful examination that many of them were untenable, he
came over to the orthodox church. Yet he retained many of his ear-
lier doctrines: and hence became the founder of a particular sect. Ac-
cording to Epiphanius, he passed over from the orthodox church to the
Valentinians. But of all these changes, the learned Syrian author in
the fourth century, Ephraim the Syrian,— who lived in the country of
Bardesanes, wrote in his language and had read his works,—says not
a word; and it admits of being easily explained, how these false reports
arose. Bardesanes, like other Gnostics, was in the habit of accommo-
dating himself, when he spoke publicly in the church, to the prevailing
opinions ; he let himself down, in this way, to the level of the psychical
natures. He did, in many points, really agree, more than other Gnos-
tics, with that system of doctrine. He could even write, from honest
conviction, against many other Gnostic sects then spreading themselves
in Syria; as for instance, against those that denied any connection be-
tween the Old and New Testaments; that derived the visible world
from an evil being; that taught a doctrine of fatality destructive of
moral freedom. In truth, the Gnostic Ptolemzeus had also written
against such sectarians, without prejudice to his Gnosticism.
In perfect conformity with the Valentinian system, Bardesanes recog-
nized, in man’s nature, something altogether superior to the whole world
in which man’s temporal consciousness is unfolded — something above
its own comprehension — the human soul—a germinal principle sown
1 The σπέρματα πνευματικά.
2 Jn general it is an idea peculiar to the
Gnostics, that the hidden godlike expresses
itself to an echo, and finally a cessation of
all sound; and that again the echo increas-
es to a clear tone, to a distinct word, for the
revelation of the divine, &c.— ideas which
they could turn into a great variety of
shapes. Thus Heracleon says: The Sav-
iour is the word, as the revealer of the god-
like; all prophecy, which foretold his com-
ing, without being distinctly conscious of
the idea of the Messiah in its spiritual
sense, was only an isolated tone that pre-
ceded the revealing word; John the Bap-
tist, standing mid-way between the Old and
New Testament economy, is the voice, which
is already closely related ἰο the word that
expresses the thought with consciousness.
The voice becomes word, by John’s becom-
ing a disciple of Christ ;— the tone becomes
voice when the prophets of the Demiurge,
together with himself, attain to the con-
scious recognition of the higher order of
the world which the Messiah revealed, and
thenceforth serve this higher system with
self-conscious freedom. Orig. T. VI. in
Joann. § 12. Ὁ λόγος μὲν ὁ σωτῆρ ἐστιν,
φωνὴ δὲ ἡ ἐν τῇ ἐρήμῳ πᾶσα προφητικὴ
τάξις, τὴν φωνὴν οἰκειοτέραν οὖσαν τῷ λόγῳ
λόγον γενέσϑαι. TO ἤχῳ φησὶν ἔσεσϑαι
τὴν εἰς φωνὴν μεταβολὴν, μαϑητοῦ μὲν
χώραν διδοὺς τῇ μεταβαλλούσῃ εἰς λόγον
φωνῇ ἢ, (it should perhaps read τὴν,) δού-
λου δὲ τῇ ἀπὸ ἤχου εἰς φωνήν.
442 BARDESANES. THE OPHITES.
forth from the Pleroma— whose essence and powers, having sprung
from this loftier region, hence remain hidden to itself, until 10 shall at-
tain to the full consciousness and to the full exercise of them in the
Pleroma.! According to the Gnostie system, this could properly be
true, however, only in respect to the spirztwal natures; but he must
attribute also, according to that system, to the psychical natures a
moral freedom, superior to the constraint of natural influences, or to
the constraint of the Hyle. Hence, though, like many of this Gnostic
tendency, he busied himself with astrolozy, he yet combated the theory
which held to any such influence of te stars (eiuapuévy,) as deter-
mined with necessity the life and actions of men. LKusebius has pre-
served in that great store-house of literature, the προπαρασκευὴ εὐαγγελικῆ,
a considerable fragment of this remarkable production. Bardesanes
here adduces, among other proofs that the stars had no such irresistible
influence on the character of nations, the multitude of Christians scat-
tered through so many different countries.” “ Wherever they are,” says
he of the Christi tians, ‘‘ they are neither conquered by bad laws and
customs, nor constrained b y the dominant constellations that presided
over their birth, to practise the sin which their master has forbidden.
To sickness, however, to poverty, to suffering, to that which is ac-
counted shameful among men, they are subjected. For as our free
man does not allow himself to be forced into servitude, but if forced,
resists; so on the other hand our phenomenal man, as a man for ser-
vice, cannot easily escape subjection. or if we had all power, we
should be the All, — and so if we had no power, we should be the tools
of others and not our own. But if God helps, all things are possible,
and nothing can be a hindrance, for nothing can resist his will. And
though it may seem to be resisted, yet this is so, because God is good,
and lets every nature retain its own individuality and its own free will.”
In conformity with his system, he sought to trace the vestiges of truth
among people of every nation. In India he noticed a class of sages
who lived in habits of rigid asceticism, (the Brahmins, Saniahs,) and al-
though in the midst of idolaters, kept themselves pure from idolatry and
worshipped only one God.
We now pass over to the Gnostics who manifested opposition to Juda-
ism; and in the first place, to those who, in aiming to sever Christian-
ity from its connection with Judaism, were still more inclined to bring
Christianity into union with paganism.
The Gnostic Sects in conflict with Judaism.
The Sects which, in opposing Judaism, inclined to the side of the Pagan Element.
THe Opuites. — The Ophites will form the most natural transition
to this class of the Gnostics; for we are here shown how the same ideas,
by receiving a somewhat different turn, were capable of leading to en-
tirely different results.
1 Vid. Ephrem. Syr. opp. Syr. lat. T. 11. 2See Vol. I. p. 80.—Prepar. evangel
f. 553 et 555. 1. VI. c. 10, near the end.
THE OPHITES. 443
In the system of these sects, as in that of the Valentinians, the pre-
dominant idea was that of a mundane soul, sprung from a feeble ray of
light out of the Pleroma, which, plunged into matter, communicated life
to the inert mass, being itself, however, affected by it. This mundane
soul, the source of all spiritual life, which re-absorbs to itself whatever
has flowed out from it— the pantheistic principle, whose germ existed
already in the Valentinian system, becomes only more salient in the
system of the Ophites, just as the properly Christian element retreats
into the back-ground. Different modifications in this respect seem to
have existed also in different branches of the Ophitie sect. The same
Fundamental principles might be seized and applied in different ways
in the same period, — according as the Christian, the purely Oriental
and theosophic, or the Jewish element, happened most to predominate.
The Ophitic system represented the origin of the Demiurge, who is here
named Jaldabaoth, in altogether the same way as the Valentinian ;
moreover, in the doctrine of his relation to the higher system of the
world, it is easy to mark the transition-point between the two systems.
The Valentinian Demiurge is a limited being, who in his limitation imag-
ines he acts with independence. The higher system of the world is at
first unknown to him; he serves as its unconscious instrument. In the
phenomena, or appearances coming from that higher world, he is at first
bewildered and thrown into amazement ; — not, however, on account of
his malignity, but his ignorance. F mally he is attracted, however, by
the godlike, rises from his unconsciousness and ignorance to conscious-
ness, and thereafter serves the higher order of the world with joy. Ac-7
cording to the Ophitic system, on the other hand, he is not only a lim-
ited being, but altogether hostile to the higher order of world, and so
remains. The higher light he is possessed of in virtue of his derivation
from the Sophia, he only turns to the bad purpose of strengthening his
position against the higher order of the universe, and rendermg himself
an independent sovereign. Hence the purpose of ““ Wisdom” is to
deprive him of the spiritual natures that have flowed over into his king-
dom, and to draw them back into itself, that so Ialdabaoth with his en-
tire creation, stripped of every rational nature, may be given up to de-
struction. According to the Valentinian system, on the contrary, the
Demiurge constitutes through eternity a grade of rational, moral exist-
ence, of subordinate rank indeed, but still belonging to the harmonious
evolution of the great whole. Yet here again we can trace a relation-
ship of ideas in the two systems; inasmuch as the Ophites represent
the Demiurge as unconsciously and involuntarily subservient to Wis-
dom, working towards the accomplishment of its plans, and ultimately
bringing about his own downfall and annihilation. But if Ialdabaoth is,
without willing or knowing it, an instrument to the purposes of divine
wisdom, yet this gives him no distinction, as in the Valentinian system,
but in this he is even put on a level with absolute evil: —it does not
proceed from the excellence of his nature, but from the almighty power
of the higher order of world. Even the evil spirit— the serpent form
( ὀφιόμορφος,) that sprang into existence when Jaldabaoth, full of hatred
and jealousy towards man, looked down into the ὕλη and imaged himself
444 THE OPHITES.
on its surface, must against his will serve only as an instrument to bring
about the purposes of wisdom. Moreover, the doctrine concerning the
origin and Cestination of man in this system has a great deal which is
closely allied to the Valentinian theory; but a great deal also which
belongs to another branch of the Gnostic system.
The empire of Ialdabaoth 1s the starry world. The stars are the
representatives and organs of the cosmical principle, which seeks to
hold man’s spirit in bondage and servitude, and to environ it with all
manner of delusions. Jaldabaoth and the six angels begotten by him
are the spirits of the seven planets, the Sun, the Moon, Mars, Venus,
Jupiter, Mercury, and Saturn. It is the endeavor of Ialdabaoth to
assert himself as self-subsistent Lord and Creator, to keep his six angels
from deserting their subjection, and, lest they should look up and
observe the higher world of hght, to fix their attention upon some ob-
ject in another quarter. ΤῸ this end, he calls upon the six angels to
create man, after their own common image, as the crowning seal of
their independent, creative power. Man is created; and being in
their own image, is a huge corporeal mass, but without a soul. He
creeps on the earth, and has not power to lift himself erect. They
therefore bring the helpless creature to their Father, that he may ani-
mate it with a soul. Taldabaoth breathed into it a living spirit,? and
thus, unperceived by himself, the spiritual seed passed from his own
being into the nature of man, whereby he was deprived himself of this
higher principle of life. Thus had the Sophia ordained it. In man
(.. e. those men who had received some portion of this spiritual seed)
was concentrated the light, the soul, the reason of the whole creation.
Taldabaoth is now seized with amazement and wrath, when he beholds
a being created by himself, and within the bounds of his own kingdom,
rising both above himself and his kingdom. He strives therefore to
prevent man from becoming conscious of his higher nature, and of that
higher order of world to which he is now become related —to keep
him in a state of blind unconsciousness, and thus of slavish submission.
It was the jealousy of the contracted Ialdabaoth which issued that com-
mand to the first man; but the mundane soul employed the serpent
(the ὀφιόμορφος,) as an instrument to defeat the purpose of [aldabaoth,
by tempting the first man to disobedience. According to another
view, the serpent was itself a symbol or disguised appearance of the
mundane soul;*—and in the strict sense, it is that part of the sect
only that adopted thes view, which rightly received the name of Ophites,
for they actually worshipped the serpent as a holy symbol ; — to which
they may have been led by an analogous idea in the Egyptian religion,
the serpent in the latter beimg looked upon as a symbol of Kneph οἱ
1 The religious books of the Sabians also
have much to say about the manner in
which these star-spirits deceive men.
2 Thus they explained Gen. 1: 26.
8 "They supposed they found this in Gen-
esis 2: 7.
* The serpent, a type of the ζωόγονος σο-
gia:—the winding shape of the entrails
presents the form of a serpent, —a symbo?
of that wisdom of nature, that soul of the
world, which winds in concealment through
all the different grades and orders of natu
ral life. Theodoret. heret. fab. vol. I. 14
We perceive how the Pantheistic principle
shines here more clearly through the sur
face.
THE OPHITES. 445
the ἀγαϑοδαίμων, who resembled the σοφία of the Ophites.1 At all
events, it was through the mundane soul, directly or indirectly, that the
eyes of the first man were opened. The fall of man, — and this pre-
sents a characteristic feature of the Ophitic system, though even in
this respect it was perhaps not altogether independent of the prior
Valentinian theory, — the fall of man was the transition point from a
state of unconscious limitation to one of conscious freedom. Man now
became wise, and renounced his allegiance to Ialdabaoth. The latter,
angry at this disobedience, thrusts him from the upper region of the
air, where until now he had dwelt in an ethereal body, down to the
dark earth, and banished him into a dark body. Man finds himself
now placed in a situation, where, on the one hand, the seven planetary
spirits seek to hold him under their thrall, and to suppress the higher
consciousness in his soul; while on the other hand, the wicked and
purely material spirits try to tempt him into sin and idolatry, which
would expose him to the vengeance of the severe Ialdabaoth. Yet
“ Wisdom”’ never ceases to impart new strength to man’s kindred na-
ture, by fresh supplies of the higher spiritual influence ; and from Seth,
whom the Gnostics generally regarded as a representative of the
πνευματικοΐ, ---- the contemplative natures, —she is able to preserve,
through every age, a race peculiarly her own, in which the seeds of the
spiritual nature are saved from destruction.
In respect to the relation of the psychical Christ, or Jesus, to the
Christ of the A2on world, which latter united himself to the former at
the baptism, the doctrine of the Ophites was like that of Basilides and
the Valentinians. The only thing peculiar to them was, that the higher
Christ, in descending through the seven heavens of the seven angels,
or in wandering through the seven stars on his way to the earth,
appeared in each of these heavens under a kindred form, as an angel
of the same kind, thus concealing his own higher nature from those
angels, while he absorbed whatever of the spiritual seed they still pos-
sessed, and crippled their power. The way in which these Gnostics
endeavored to prove that the heavenly Christ first became united with
Jesus at the baptism, and forsook him again at the passion, makes it
clear how this entire theory may have arisen. They appealed, for
instance, to the circumstance that Jesus wrought no miracle, either be-
fore his baptism or after his resurrection. This fact they imagined
could be no otherwise explained than by supposing that higher being
was only united with him from the time of his baptism to his death. A
remarkable fact, beyond all doubt, and worthy.of special notice, that
Christ wrought’ miracles only from a certain point of time to another
certain point of time ;— only they gave it a false explanation.
Jaldabaoth, the God of the Jews, must see himself deceived in
respect to that which he had expected from his Messiah—since the
latter did not advance his kingdom, but as an instrument of the higher
Christ, proclaimed the unknown Father, and threatened rather to sub-
vert the law of Ialdabaoth, that 15, Judaism. Hence he determined to
1 Comp. Creutzer’s Symbolik. Th. I. S. 312, u. 504. 2te Aufl.
VOL. I 32
446 THE OPHITES.
get rid of him, and brought about his crucifixion. After his resurrec-
tion, Jesus remained eighteen months on the earth. He received by
inspiration of the Sophia a clearer knowledge of the higher truth, which
he communicated only to a few of his chosen disciples, whom he knew
to be recipient of such high mysteries. Upon this he is raised by the
celestial Christ to heaven, and sits at the right hand of Ialdabaoth,
unobserved by him, for the purpose of drawing and receiving to him-
self every spiritual being that has been emancipated and purified by
the redemption, when released from its sensible veil. In proportion as
Jesus becomes enriched in his own spirit by this attraction to himself
of his kindred natures, [aldabaoth is deprived of all his higher virtues.
The end is, to procure the enlargement of the spiritual life confined in
nature, and bring it back to its original fountain, the mundane soul,
from which all has flowed. Jesus is the channel through which this is
accomplished. Thus the planets are at length to be deprived of all
the rational existence which is to be found in them. ‘There were some
among this kind of Gnostics who carried the Pantheism through with
still more consistency ;—-who held that the same soul is diffused
through all living and inanimate nature; and that consequently all
life, wherever it is dispersed and confined by the bonds of matter with-
in the limits of individual existence, should be at length retracted
through that channel and re-absorbed by the mundane soul, or the So-
phia — the original source from whence it had flowed. Such Gnosties
said, ‘* When we take things of nature for food, we absorb the souls
scattered and dispersed in them into our own being, and with ourselves
carry them upward to the original fountain.””? Thus eating and drink-
ing was for them a sort of worship. In an apocryphal gospel of this
sect, the mundane soul or Supreme Being says therefore to the imiti-
ated: “Thou art myself, and I am thou; where thou art, Iam; and
I am diffused through all. Where thou pleasest thou canst gather me,
but in gathering me thou gatherest thyself.” 2
Pantheism, and the confounding of the natural and the divine which
results from it, can never by their very nature have any favorable influ-
ence on morals ;——and where the reaction of a moral element does not
oppose itself to that of the subjective temper, immorality will ever be
naturally promoted by it. Pantheism, and the wildly fanatic spirit of
defiance against [aldabaoth, and his pretended, cramping ordinances,
seem in truth to have led these Ophites into the most unnatural extray-
agances.
~ A statement of Origen deserves special notice, who reports that the
Ophites were not Christians ; ; and that they admitted none to their
assemblies who did not curse Christ. The important inference might
be drawn, that this sect sprang from a religions party which existed
before the appearance of Christianity; and of which one portion after-
wards appropriated to themselves some of the elements of Christianity,
while another, holding fast to the traditional principles of their sect,
opposed Christianity altogether. We should thus be led to the ἀγροῦ
1 Epiphan. heres. 26, c. 9. 2 Chap. 3.
THE PSEUDO-BASILIDEANS. 447
esis of an ante-Christian Gnosis, which afterwards in part received
Christian elements into itself, and partly appeared in bitter hostility to
them. In fact, Origen names, as the founder of this sect, a certain
Eucrates, who may have lived before the birth of Christ.1_ Moreover,
the striking relationship between the Ophitic system and the systems
of the Sabzeans and Manicheeans, might be considered as poimting to
some older common fountain of an ante-Christian Gnosis. But on the
other side it cannot be denied that the Ophitic formulas of exorcism,
which Origen cites immediately after he has made this statement,
plainly contain allusions to Christian ideas. And it might be, that the
opposition of the Ophites to the Christ of the church, the psychical
Messiah, was to be traced to a certain peculiar turn that had been
given to their principles ; — that the distinction they made between the
pneumatic and the psychical Christ— the lhght estimation in which
they held the latter, may have become converted, among a portion of
their sect, into a position of downright hostility to the latter, and hence
to the Christ whom the majority of believers acknowledged,? — so that
to curse the limited Messiah of the psychical natures, was finally made
a mark of true discipleship to the higher Christ. We meet with some-
thing like this in the sect of the Sabzeans, who transferred many things
from the history of Christ to a heavenly Genius, the messenger of life,
Mando di Chaia, whom they worshipped as the proper Christ, from
whom the true baptism proceeded —and the rest to Jesus the anti-
Christ, sent by the star-spirits to betray mankind. This Jesus cor-
‘rupted the baptism of John. And we shall discover something simi-
lar to this in one variety of the Basilidean sect soon to be mentioned.
PsEeupo-BASILIDEANS.— These stand related to the original Basili-
deans in the same way as the Ophites to the genuine school of Valentine.
The prudent and moderate spirit of the Basilidean system,? was here
quite extinguished; the distinction between the Supreme God and the
Demiurge pushed onward to an absolute Dualism, out of which had de-
veloped itself a wild defiance against the God of the world and his laws,
—a bold antinomianism. According to their théory, the redeeming
spirit * could enter into no union with the detested kingdom of the De-
miurge ; he only assumed an apparently sensible form. When the Jews
were for crucifying him, having the power, as an exalted spirit, of cloth-
ing himself in every species of sensible form, and of presenting whatever
shape he chose before the eyes of the sensuous multitude, he caused Si-
mon of Cyrene (Mark 15) to appear to the Jews under his own shape ; —
while he himself took the form of Simon, and rose without hindrance
1 Orig. ο. Cels. lib. VI. c. 28, ff. The ob-
scure and inaccurate Philaster, who places
the Ophites at the head of the ante-Chris-
tian sects, cannot be considered any good
authority.
21 am indebted for this last remark to
the profound critique of my work on the
Gnostics, by Dr. Gieseler.
® Unless Clement of Alexandria had
spoken of precisely similar practical errors
in false followers of Basilides, to those we
meet with in this sect, we might be led to
suspect that the so called Basilideans of
Trenzeus had no connection whatever with
Basilides.
4 The νοῦς.
Basilides.
See above, the system of
448 THE CAINITES.
to his invisible kingdom, mocking the expectations of the deluded Jews.
To these people the doctrine of Christ crucified was foolishness. They
ridiculed all who confessed him, as confessors of a phantom, dupes to
an illusion of the senses. Such men, they allowed, were no longer
Jews, but neither were they Christians. They ridiculed the martyrs,
as men who sacrificed their lives in the confession of a phantom. Those
who were initiated into the true mysteries were well aware, that none
but a few, only one in a thousand could comprehend them. Their Wus
(νοῦς) possessed the faculty of making himself invisible to all; and
they also possessed the same.! There was no form of sense they could
not assume, no visible appearance to which they could not accommodate
themselves in such a manner as to deceive the gross multitude, and
escape persecution.”
CaINnITES.—Closely related on the side of their practical bent to
these Pseudo-Basilideans, were the Cainites; though, in respect to the
fundamental principles of their system, they belonged to the great stock
of the Ophites. Among them as well as among the Sethians, who were
of the same stock, we meet with this fundamental idea—that the
Sophia found means to preserve, through every age, in the midst of the
Demiurge’s world, a race bearing within them the spiritual seed which
was related to her own nature. But while the Sethians, whom we must
reckon with the first class of Gnostics, regarded Cain as a representa-
tive of the Hylic; Abel, of the Psychical; and Seth, who was finally
to reappear in the person of the Messiah,’ of the Pneumatic principle ;
the Cainites, on the other hand, singularly distinguished themselves by
assigning the highest place to Cain. To such an extreme did these ex-
travagant Antinomians carry their fanatical hatred of the Demiurge
and of the Old Testament, that they made the worst characters of the
Old Testament, as rebels against the laws of the Demiurge, their own
Corypheuses. They regarded them as the sons of the Sophia, and the
instruments she employed in combating the Demiurge’s kmgdom. To
these people, the apostles, without exception, appeared too narrow and
restricted in their views. Judas Iscariot alone possessed, in their opin-
ion, the true Gnosis. They held, that he procured the death of Christ
from good motives; for he knew that this was the only possible way of
bringing about the destruction of the Demiurge’s kingdom. Their
principle, destruction to the works and ordinances of the Demiurge,
served as a pretext to cover every species of immorality. We ought
not to wonder if such a sect, so audaciously perverse, so partial to the
traitor Judas, should finally become hostile to Christ himself. But the
language of Epiphanius, which might lead us to conjecture that such
1 This faculty of becoming invisible, was described in his instructive History of Sects
claimed also in the Cabalistic school. We among the Jews, (Briinn, 1822.)
have a remarkable example of this folly in 2 Tren. lib. I. c. 24. 4
S. Maimon’s life of himself, published by 8 An idea nearly related to the doctrine
Moritz ;— and it may be observed in gene- of the Clementines.
ral, that a great many interesting points of 4 Vid. Iren. lib. 1. 6. 31. Epiphan. heres
resemblance to Gnosticism may be traced 38.
in the later Jewish sects, which Beer has
——- —_-----
CARPOCRATES AND EPIPHANES. 449
was actually the case with regard to a portion of the sect, is too vague
and indefinite to deserve being relied upon as a safe authority on this
oint.
é CARPOCRATES AND EprIpHANES; Propicrans, ANTITACTES, NIcoLa-
ITANS, Srmonrans.—'T’o the class of Gnostics we have just described,
whose licentious tendencies, so opposite to Christianity, could only find
an accilental point of union in the ferment which it excited, belonged
Carpocrates. He resided probably, during the reign of Hadrian, in
Alexandria, — where a certain religious eclecticism or syncretism was
then prevailing, which attracted the notice of that emperor himself."
He drew up a system of doctrines, which passed over into the hands
of his son, Epiphanes. The latter, who died at the early age of seven-
teen, abused and expended great natural talents in the defence of a
perverse tendency, most pernicious in its influence on the moral feel-
ings. According to Clement of Alexandria, Carpocrates had busied
himself with the Platonic philosophy, and taught it to his son. The
Platonic ideas of the soul’s preéxistence, and of that higher species
of knowledge, which under the form of a reminiscence came from
some earlier, heavenly state of being, gleam through the surface of
this system, whose authors seem to have borrowed a great deal from
Plato, particularly: from the Phedrus. Their Gnosis consisted in
the knowledge of one supreme original Bemg,? the highest unity,
from whom all existence has flowed, and back to whom it strives to
return. ‘The finite spirits, ruling over the several portions of the
earth, seek to counteract this universal striving after unity; and
from their influence, their laws and arrangements, proceeds all that
checks, disturbs, or limits the original communion lying at the root of
nature, which is the outward manifestation of that highest unity. These
spirits seek to retain under their dominion the souls which, emanating
from the highest unity, and still partaking of its nature, have sunk
down into the corporeal world, and-there became imprisoned in bodies ;
so that after death they must migrate’ into other bodies, unless they are
capable of rising with freedom to their original source. From these
finite spirits the different popular religions had derived their origin.
But the souls which, led on by the reminiscences of their former condi-
tion, soar upward to the contemplation of that higher unity, reach a state
of perfect freedom and repose, which nothing afterwards is able to dis-
turb. As examples of this sort, they named Pythagoras, Plato, Aris-
totle among the heathens, and Jesus among the Jews. ‘To the latter
they attributed only great strength and purity of soul, which enabled
him, through the reminiscences of his earlier existence, to attain the
highest flight of contemplation, break free from the narrow laws of the
God of the Jews, and overturn the religion which had proceeded from
him, although educated in it himself. By virtue of his union with the
Monad, (μόνας,) he was armed with a divine power, which enabled him
1 See his letter, cited p. 102. 2 Hence called, in Clement of Alexan-
dria, γνῶσις μοναδικῆ.
38*
450 CARPOCRATES AND EPIPHANES.
to overcome the spirits of this world, and the laws by which they govern
the operations of nature, to work miracles, and to preserve the utmost
composure under sufferigs. By the same divine power, he was after-
wards enabled to ascend in freedom, above all the powers of these
spirits of the world, to the highest unity — the ascension from the world
of appearance to Nirwana, according to the system of Buddha. This
sect accordingly made no distinction between Christ and the wise and
good men among every people. They taught that any other soul which
could soar to the same height of contemplation, might be regarded as
standing on an equality with Christ. In the controversy against con-
verting the religious life into a mere outward matter, they took sides
with St. Paul, but on a direetly opposite principle ; not on the principle of
faith, in the apostle’s sense, but on that of an antinomian Pantheism,
which looked down upon morality of life with a sort of contempt. Hence
they foisted a meaning wholly alien from their true import, upon those
fundamental positions of St. Paul respecting the vanity of the merit of
good works, and respecting justification, not by works, but by faith
alone. What they understood by faith was a mystical brooding of the
mind absorbed in the original Unity. — “‘ Faith and love,” said they,
** constitute the essential thing; externals are of no importance. He
who ascribes moral worth to these, makes himself their slave ; subjects
himself to those spirits of the world, from whom all religious and politi-
cal ordinances have proceeded. He cannot advance, after death, be-
yond the circle of the Metempsychosis. But he who can abandon him-
self to every lust, without being affected by any, who can thus bid defi-
ance to the laws of those mundane spirits, will after death rise to the
unity of that original Monad, by union with which he was enabled, here
in the present life, to break loose from every fetter that had cramped
his being.” 1 Epiphanes wrote a work on justification, in which he en-
deavored to carry out the position, that all nature manifests a striving
after unity and fellowship, and that human laws which contradicted
these laws of nature, and yet could not subdue the appetites implanted
in human nature by the Creator himself, had first introduced sin. Ac-
cordingly he so wrested the language of the Apostle Paul respecting
the inadequacy of the law to make men holy, and its design to evoke
the consciousness of guilt, as to treat the Decalogue with bold con-
tempt. This sect busied itself a good deal with the art of magic.
Whoever, by union with the original Monad, was enabled to rise above
the subordinate gods, who, like all things else, were subject to change,
— above the finite spirits of the world, could show this superiority by
his works, by producing effects transcending the laws of nature, which
proceeded from those inferior spirits. Thus they explained the miracles
of Christ ; holding that any other person who rose to this union with the
Monad, could perform similar wonders. These Carpocratian doctrines
embody a great deal which bears a close relation to the Hindoo spirit,”
1 Tren. lib. I. c. 25. ar G. Pauthier. Paris, 1833. Pag. 32.
2 See Colebrooke’s Dissertation on the Although by this I do not mean to assert,
school of Sankhya. Essais sur la philoso- that these doctrines — which, however,
phie des Hindous par Colebrooke, traduits might well be possible in the state of imter-
—_—_—:
ANTITACTES AND PRODICIANS. 451
and particularly to Buddhaism.! The Carpocratians paid divine hon-
ors to an image of Christ, which, as they maintained, came original-
ly from Pilate. The same honors they paid also to the images of
pagan philosophers, who had taken their stand, lke Christ, above the
popular religion. In so doing, they made use of heathen ceremonies —
a practice not to be reconciled, we must allow, with the system of Car-
pocrates and Epiphanes — and to be imputed rather to the superstition
of their followers. At Same, the principal city of the island Cephalene
in the Ionian Sea, whence sprung the family of Epiphanes on his
mother’s side, so great is said to have been the impression made by
this young man on the minds of the multitude, that a temple, a museum
and altars were erected to him, and divine honors paid to his name.
As we have this account from the learned Clement of Alexandria,? a
man not given to credulity in such matters, we have no reason to ques-
tion the fact, which indeed fully accords with the spirit and temper of
those times. Perhaps, however, it was only from the members of his
own sect, who would probably meet with a cordial reception on this
island, that he enjoyed these honors, as the greatest of wise men.?
To the same class of licentious Antinomians belonged the sect of
Antitactes. Their doctrine is denoted by their name. The good and
gracious God, said they, created all things good. But one of his own
offspring rebelled against him. ‘This was the Demiurge, the God of
the Jews. He it was that sowed the tares, engendered that principle
of evil wherewith he has encompassed every one of us; by which, we
must suppose, is meant the material body, constituting at once the
prison-house and the fountain of all sin to the souls banished from above.
Thus he has placed us at enmity with the Father, and we in turn set
ourselves at enmity with him.* ΤῸ avenge the Father on him, we do
directly the reverse of what he wills and commands. As a proof that
the Old Testament bore witness against itself, they appealed to Mal. &-
15, quoting the language of the godless as words of truth.®
To the same class belonged the Prodicians, who were followers of a
certain Prodicus. ‘They maintained they were sons of the Supreme
God, a royal race; and therefore bound to no law, since kings were
under none. ‘hey were the lords of the sabbath, the lords over all
ordinances. ‘They made the whole worship of God to consist, probably,
in the inner contemplation of divine things. They rejected prayer, and
perhaps all external worship, as suited to those limited minds only
which were still held in bondage under the Demiurge ; and they were
course between the nations at that time —
were derived indirectly from such a source ;
since the tendency of mystic Pantheism
exhibits itself in similar phenomena, even
independently of all such influences; and
in cases of this sort, instead of communi-
cation from without, it is sufficient to sup-
pose an inner relationship of spirit; as in
the instance of the Beghards of the middle
age.
1 See the remarks which follow, on Mani-
cheism.
2 Clement. Strom. 1. III. f. 428.
8 We make no mention here of the Cy-
renian inscriptions, of which so much has
been said in modern times; for, although
conceived exactly according to the spirit of
this sect, they have been proved to be not
genuine.
4 ᾿Αντιτασσόμεϑα τούτῳ.
δ᾽ Αντέστησαν τῷ ϑεῷ, καὶ ἐσώϑησαν ;
where, moreover, they interpolated the word
ἀναιδεῖ. By resisting the unabashed God,
men are delivered from his bondage. Clem
Strom. 1. ILI. f. 440.
452. NICOLAITANS.
in the habit of appealing to the authority of certain apocryphal books,
which were attributed to Zoroaster.?
With this class of Antinomians belonged also the Nicolaitans — if,
indeed, the actual existence of such a sect can be proved. Irenzeus
takes notice of a sect of this kind which existed in his time. He traced
its origin back to that Nicolaus, a deacon, whom we find mentioned in
the Acts of the Apostles; and he supposed the same sect was described
in the second chapter of the Revelation.2?. But it might be doubted,
whether Irenzeus was right in the interpretation which he has here
given of the passage in the Revelation— whether the word Nicolai-
tans, which occurs in this place, is in truth the proper name of a sect,
and more particularly of a Gnostic sect. The passage relates simply
to a class of people who were in the practice of seducing Christians to
participate in the sacrificial feasts of the heathens, and in the excesses
which attended them, —just as the Jews of old were led astray by the
Moabites, Numb. 25. It is quite possible, too, that the name Nicolai-
tans is employed purely in a symbolical sense, according to the general
style of the Apocalypse, and signifies corrupters, seducers of the people,
like Balaam ; —in this sense, Balaamites.? It was a favorite idea with .
Irenzeus, that the Apostle John, even at this early period, had come
into conflict with Gnostics of various descriptions ;— and he was wont
to search in the writings of John for allusions bearing directly upon the
Gnostic heresy. Having found, then, many of the errors reproved in
this passage of the Revelation to be the same that prevailed among the
Gnostics of his time, he concluded that the practical errors denounced
by the apostle might have sprung out of a theoretical Gnosticism ; and
the name suggested to him the Nicolas, mentioned in the Acts, as its
probable author. The remarks relating to this sect in Irenzeus are,
however, really so obscure, that we have no just reason for supposing
that he knew anything about it from his own personal observation.
Had we no other account, therefore, than that of Irenzeus, we should
be obliged to allow it to be possible, at least, that the tradition about
this sect had grown out of some misconstruction of the passage in the
Revelation; though it might seem strange that Irenzeus, without any
assignable motive, should represent a man who had been chosen by
the apostles themselves to a public office, as the founder of a heretical
sect. But no such mistake can be supposed to have existed in the case
of the learned and unprejudiced Clement of Alexandria, who in the first
place was better versed in historical criticism, and next appeals to facts
which could not have been fabricated. ‘There were those who main-
tained the pernicious principle, already mentioned, that the lower pas-
sions were to be subdued by indulgence, without allowing the spirit to
be affected by them. So should men mortify the flesh, destroy it by
1 Strom. 1.1. f. 304; 1. ΤΠ. f. 438; 1. VII. he does not so distinguish them from other
Ε 722. Gnostics, as to make their peculiar charac-
2 Tren. 1. I. c. 26. Speaking of their prac- teristics clearly prominent.
tical errors, he says: qui indiserete, («dca- 3 Balaam = vixdAaoc,—according to the
φόρως,) vivunt. L. 6.1. III. «. 11: he speaks etymology from ypoa and Ὁ}.
of their speculative errors; where, however, ἡ 5 t
—— τοτο. ,Ἅ ὄτ;,.,0..
NICOLAITANS. SITMONIANS. 458
means of itself, show contempt for it. Their motto consisted of certain
words to this purport which they ascribed to Nicolas the deacon.! In
a passage which follows,? the same Clement speaks of another incident
in the life of this Nicolas, often appealed to by the sect in justification
of their extravagances. Accused by the apostles of jealousy towards his
wife, to prove the groundlessness of the charge, he led her forth and
said, Let him that chooses marry her. Yet Clement himself was very
far from believing that the Nicolas of the Acts was the founder of this
sect, although they claimed him as such. He defends the character
of the man, as a member of the apostolic church; and refers to a tradi-
tion which testified that this Nicolas lived m honorable wedlock to the
last, and left behind him children who led decent and pious lives. We
see, then, that Irenzeus was not mistaken m assuming the existence of
such a sect, but only careless in examining into the truth of their pre-
tended origin. It was the custom with such sects, as we have often
observed, to attach themselves to some celebrated name or other of an-
tiquity, in the choice of which they were not seldom influenced by cir-
cumstances quite accidental. Thus the Nicolaitans claimed Nicolas
the deacon as their master, though he had done nothing to entitle him
to that bad distinction. Clement supposes his words and actions had
been misinterpreted, and endeavors to explain them in a milder sense ;
but it may be doubted whether Clement, in this case, carried his criti-
cism far enough. Everything imputed to Nicolas by the tradition
wears an apocryphal aspect. Perhaps the sect possessed a life of him
drawn up by themselves or others from fabulous accounts and unau-
thentic traditions, in which the whole of this was embodied. If this
sect was really derived from those Antinomians who were called Nico-
laitans in the age of the Apostle John —a point which cannot be abso-
lutely decided ?—then possibly this very name in the Apocalypse ---
the Nicolaitans — may have led the more recent sect to derive their
appellation from Nicolas. Belonging, as they probably did, to the anti-
Judaistic party, and consequently acknowledging no other apostle than
Paul, they may have seized upon what they found asserted in the
Apocalypse as affording evidence of the antiquity of their sect, since it
had been attacked already by the Judaizing teacher John; and the re
semblance of names would naturally invite them to refer its origin back
to the Nicolas mentioned in the Acts. We have noticed examples
already of Gnostics choosing for their leaders persons whose characters
appear in an unfavorable light in the Old or the New Testament.
We have still to mention the Simonians — an eclectic sect, who can _
scarcely be brought, however, under any one specific class; since they
seem to have accommodated themselves, sometimes to paganism, at
1 Τό δεῖν παραχρῆσϑαι τῇ σαρκί. Clem.
Strom. 1. IT. f. 411. :
2L. ¢. 1. III. f. 436.
8 Even though the name Nicolaitans in
the Revelation were really the proper name
of a party which owed its rise to some per-
son by the name of Nicolas, and it was
only the name, which existed before, that
gaye occasion to this allusion to Balaam,
yet it could not be inferred thence notwith-
standing, that the party then existing was
a Gnostic one. See respecting this sect
my Apostol. History, vol. IL. p. 533
454 SIMONIANS.
others to Judaism or to the religious opinions of the Samaritans, and
at others again to Christianity — sometimes to have been rigid ascetics,
at others wild scoffers at all moral law, (the Entychites.) Simon Ma-
gus was their Christ, or at least a form of manifestation of the redeem-
ing Christ, who had manifested himself also in Jesus ; — whether it was
that they actually derived their origin from a party founded by the
sorcerer of that name mentioned in the Acts, or whether, having sprung
up at some later period, they chose, of their own fancy, Simon Magus,
a name so odious to the Christians, for their Coryphzeus, and forged
writings in his name which made pretensions to a higher wisdom. ‘The
opinion of some learned writers, that another Simon, distinct from the
older Simon Magus, was the founder of the sect, and afterwards be-
came confounded with this latter, is an arbitrary conjecture, by no
means called for to explain the historical fact.!
Anti-Jewish Gnostics, who strove to apprehend Christianity, however, in its Purity and absolute
Independence.
Strongly contrasted with these Gnostics, whom we have just been con-
sidering, and who were directed away from the ethical spirit of Christian-
ity by their own prevailing bent, were another class, who were led to op-
pose Judaism through the influence οἵ mistaken Christian interest, and
“τοὶ
were betrayed into Gnosticism by their one-sided mode of apprehending
1 This Simon Magus, who cannot prop-
erly claim a place even among the found-
ers of Christian sects, acquired unmerited
importance in the Christian church, by
being held up as the great father of the
Gnostic heresy. As the representative of the
whole theosophico-goetic tendency, in oppo-
sition to the simple faith in revelation, he
became, so to speak, a mythical personage,
and gave occasion for many fictitious le-
gends, such, for example, as his dispute
with the Apostle Peter, and his unsuccess-
ful experiment in the art of flying. The
most ingenious version of this story is to
be found in the Clementines. It is a sin-
gular fact, however, that Justin Martyr, in
his second apology to the Roman Emperor,
mentions a pillar erected at Rome to this
Simon, on an island in the Tiber, (ἐν τῷ
Tipepe ποταμῷ, μεταξὺ τῶν δύο γεφυρῶν,)
with the inscription, Simoni deo sancto.
Although sorcerers of this stamp could
often find their way even to persons of the
highest rank, yet it is incredible, that the
folly should ever be carried to such an ex-
treme as to the erection of a statue and the
passing of a decree of the senate, enrolling
Simon Magus among the deos Romanos.
The correctness of Justin’s statement might
therefore:be called in question, even though
it were impossible to show the reason of
his mistake. But the occasion of his mis-
take may now, as it would seem, be ex-
plained. In the year 1574, a stone was dug
up at the spot*described by Justin, which
appears to have served as the pedestal of a
statue, and on it was the inscription, Semo-
ni Sango Deo Fidio sacrum. ‘True, this
stone was not erected by the Roman sen-
ate, nor by the emperor, but by a certain
Sextus Pompeius. But Justin, with his
head full of the legends,about Simon Ma-
gus, overlooked all this, and confounded
the Semo Sancus, (a Sabino-Roman deity,
probably unknown to Justin, who was bet-
ter versed in the Greek than in the Roman
mythology,) with the words Simo sanctus ;
for it is to be observed that the cognomen
of that deity was sometimes written sanc- .
tus instead of sancus. Tertullian, who had
amore familiar knowledge of Roman an-
tiquities, might be expected, it is true, to
know better; but even he was too preju-
diced in such eases, and too ignorant of
criticism, to institute any further examina-
tion with regard to the correctness of a
statement which was in accordance with his
taste, and which besides came to him on so
respectable authority. The more critical
Alexandrians take no notice of the matter.
Origen’s remark, (lib. I. 6. Cels. ¢. 57,) that
this Simon was not known beyond Pales-
tine by any but Christians, who became ac-
quainted with him from the Acts of the
Apostles, would seem to imply, that he
looked upon the story of the pillar erected
to him in Rome, as a fiction. The Sama-
ritan Goetze and Heresiarchs, Dositheus and
Menander, (the latter of whom is represent-
ed to have been a disciple of Simon Magus,)
deserve still less to be particularly noticed
in the history of Christian sects.
Pd
SATURNIN. 455
the ethical element in Christianity. We have observed already, in that
section of the present history which relates to the Christian life, how
possible it was, that there should spring up in the course of its progres-
sive movement, a one-sided ascetic tendency, leading to a wrongly con-
ceived opposition to the world and to nature. Now a tendency of this
sort might be united with the absolute Dualism of the Gnostics, and in
the latter doctrine find a speculative ground of support. Thus arose
those peculiar phenomena of the Gnosis, in which the practical, ascetic
element especially predominated, and which were distinguished for a
certain earnestness of moral spirit, running however into the extreme
of rigid asceticism.
a. SATURNIN.—The first whom we shall mention here is Saturnin,
who lived at Antioch, in the time of the Emperor Hadrian. His doc-
trines, so far as they can be ascertained from our imperfect sources of
information,! were as follows: At the lowest stage of the emanation
world, on the boundaries between the kmgdom of light and the kingdom
of darkness, or of the ὕλη, stand the seven lowest angels, spirits of the
stars. hese combine together to win away from the kingdom of dark-
ness, a territory on which to erect an independent empire of their own.
Thus sprang into being this earthly world, and through its different re-
gions these spirits of the stars dispersed themselves. At their head stands
the God of the Jews. They are engaged in an incessant war with the
kingdom of darkness, and with Satan its prince, who will not suffer
their kingdom to grow at the expense of his own, and constantly seeks
to destroy what they strive to build up. A feeble ray only gleams down
to them from the higher kingdom of light. The appearance of this
light from above fills them with a longing for it. They would seize it
for themselves, but cannot. Whenever they would grasp it, it retires
from them. Hence they enter into a combination to charm this ray of
the higher light, and to fix it in their own kingdom, by means of an
image fashioned after the shape of light floating above them. But the
form made by the angels cannot raise itself towards heaven, cannot
stand erect.? It is a bodily mass without a soul. At length the Su-
preme Father looks down with pity from the kingdom of light on the
feeble bemg man, who has been created, however, in his own image.
He infuses into him a spark of his own divine life. Man now, for the
first time, becomes possessed of a soul, and can raise himself erect
towards heaven. The godlike germ is destined to unfold itself, in those
human natures where it has been implanted, to distinct personality, and
to return after a determinate period to its original source. The men
who, carrying within them these divine seeds, are appointed to reveal
the Supreme God on earth, stand opposed to those who, possessing
nothing but the hylic principle, are instruments of the kingdom of dark-
ness. Now to destroy this empire of the planetary spirits, of the God
of the Jews, which would set up itself as an independent kingdom, as
well as to destroy the empire of darkness, and save those men who,
through the divine seed of life, have become partakers of his own na-
1 Treneeus and Epiphanius. 2 See above, concerning the Ophites
=
456 TATIAN AND THE ENCRATITES.
ture, the Supreme God sent down his Adon Nus, (voic.) But since
the latter could not enter into any union with the planetary empire, or
the material world, he appeared under the disguise and semblance
merely of a sensible form.
It is evident of itself, how spontaneously the ascetic bent above men-
tioned, the excessive valuation of celibacy, would spring up out of such
a system.
ὁ. 'TATIAN AND THE ENcRATITES. — Tatian of Assyria lived at Rome
as a rhetorician, where he was converted to Christianity by the
instrumentality of Justin Martyr, who was on terms of greater
intimacy with him on account of their having received the same
philosophical education in the Platonic school. Durmg the life-
time of Justin he adhered to the doctrine of the church. He com-
posed, while still entertainmg the same views, after Justin’s death,
an apologetic discourse,! which contams a good deal, however, which
might be accommodated to the doctrines of Gnosticism. In this
discourse, Tatian, like his teacher Justin, following the example of
Philo, received into his system the entire Platonic doctrine concerning
matter, inconsistent as it was with a theory in which the doctrine of the
creation from nothing was still maintained. It was this Platonic doc-
trine which led him to adopt also the hypothesis of an ungodlike spirit
of life wedded to its kindred matter, whence he derived the evil spirits,
whom he describes as πνεύματα ὑλίκά, ---- inconsistent as this hypothesis
also was with the Christian doctrine concernmg the nature of evil
spirits, and concerning the origin of sin. In this discourse already, he
advanced a theory, which, we may remark, had found its way out of
some Jewish system of theology into the speculations of several of the
early church teachers,—that the human soul, like everything else
formed and partaking of matter,? is by its own nature mortal; that the
first man, living im communion with God, had within him a principle
of divine life, exalted above the nature of this soul which had been
derived from matter, and that this is properly the image of God,* by
virtue of which man became immortal. Having lost this image by sin,
he fell a prey to matter and to mortality.
It is easy to see how these opinions, loosely strung together as they
were in Tatian’s system, would furnish a convenient foothold for the
Gnostic idea of the ὕλη, and of the distinction between the ψυχικόν and
the πνευματικόν, and how they would naturally result in an asceticism,
striving after an absolute estrangement from the things of sense.* Ac-
cording to the report of Irenzeus,’ Tatian conceived a doctrine of Atons
similar to that of the Valentinians; yet this would not suffice of itself
to warrant us in concluding that Ais system bore any affinity to the
Valentinian. According to Clement of Alexandria,® he belonged to the
1 His λόγος πρὸς “Ἕλληνας. with the above-mentioned distinction be-
2A πνεῦμα ὑλικόν. tween the ψυχικόν and the πνευματικόν in
8 Θεοῦ εἰκὼν καὶ ὁμοίωσις. the nature of the first man, he having lost
* According to Irenzus, Tatian was the the latter by sin. Lib. I. c. 28.
Jirst to assert the condemnatory sentence 5 Comp. Clem. Strom. lib. III. f. 465, τ
of the first man; which indeed would agree 61), ο. f. 460, D.
TATIAN. 451
class of anti-Jewish Gnostics, and transferred St. Paul’s statement of
the contrariety between the old and the new man, to the relation οἵ the
Old and New Testament ;— yet he might perhaps have expressed him-
self in this way, even according to the Valentinian Gnosis, which by
no means supposed an absolute contrariety between the two economies.
A remark of Tatian, which has come down to us, would seem to imply,
that he was far from separating the Demiurge, the God of the Old
Testament, so entirely from all connection with the higher world. He
looked upon the expression in Genesis, ‘‘ Let there be light,’ — and this
may serve to illustrate his arbitrary mode of interpreting ‘scripture, —
not as the commanding, creative word, but as the language of prayer.
The Demiurge, seated on the dark chaos, prays that light may shine
down from above.! ‘Tatian’s strong leaning towards a fanatical asceti-
cism might perhaps warrant the gonclusion, however, that he drew a
sharper line of distinction between the creation of the Demiurge and
the higher world, and consequently between the Old Testament and the
New, “than could be admitted by the principles of. the Valentinian
school; for this practical repugnance to the creation of the Demiurge
was usually connected with an opposition to it in theory.
Tatian was aware that the system of, Christian morals must be de-
rived from the contemplation of the life of Christ, and take its laws
from thence. Assuming this, he wrote a work in which he endeavored
to show how true perfection might be attained by the imitation of
Christ.2 He failed only im one respect; that he did not seize the life
of Christ in ifs completeness, and in its relation to his mission as the
redeemer of mankind, and the author of the new creation of divine
life, which was designed to embrace and pervade all. human relations
only in the further course of its development from him. Paying no
regard to this, he held the life of celibacy and the renunciation of all
worldly possessions, after the pattern of Christ, to be the distinctive
mark of Christian perfection. But to such as appealed to the life of
Christ considered in this light, Clement of Alexandria replied, ‘‘ The
specific nature of Christ’s being, as distinguished from all other men,
left no room for the marriage relation. ‘That necessity of something to
complete the human nature, which is grounded in the mutual relation
of the sexes, found no place in him. ‘The only analogon to the mavr-
riage estate was, in his case, the relation he bears to the church, which
is bound to him, as his bride. Nothing could issue from him, as the
Son of God, but a spiritual posterity.” 8. The strong bias of Tatian in
this particular direction led him to understand the Apostle Paul, in 1
Corinth. 7: 5, as teaching that marriage and unchastity were one and
the same thing — both equally the
1 Theodot. Didascal. Anatol. f. 806.—
Origenes de orat. c. 24.
- Περὶ τοῦ κατὰ τὸν σωτῆρα καταρτισμοῦ.
ὃ Οὐκ ἴσασι τὴν. αἰτίαν τοῦ μὴ γῆμαι τὸν
κύριον, πρῶτον μὲν γὰρ τὴν ἰδίαν νύμφην
εἶχε τὴν ἐκκλησίαν, ἔπειτα δὲ οὐδὲ ἄνϑρω-
πος ἣν κοινὸς, ἵνα καὶ βοηϑοῦ τινος κατὰ
σάρκα δεηϑῇ, οὐδὲ τεκνοποιῆσασϑαι ἣν αὐτῶ
VOL. I. 39
service of Satan.t It may be too,
ἄναγκαῖον, ἀϊδίως μένοντι kai μόνῳ υἱῷ ϑεοῦ
γεγονότι. Clem. Strom. lib. IIL. f. 446.
4 Paul, he affirms, gives permission in
this place but ostensibly, — and immediate-
ly shrinks back from what he permits, when
he says that those who followed his permis-
sion would serve two masters; by mutual
continence and prayer they would serve
458 MARCION.
that besides the canonical gospels, he made use of apocryphal histories,
in which the image of Christ had already become modified under the
influence of theosophico-ascetic habits of contemplation.! As the ten-
dency to a theosophical asceticism of this kind, which sprung up in the
Kast, had now become widely spread, it can be no wonder that there
were different kinds of these abstinents,? who had no special connection
with Tatian, and who belonged in pt to the Jewish and partly to the
anti-J ewish party.2
c. MARCION AND HIS SCHOOL. sa ἢ the case of the Gnostics last
considered, we observe already the dualistie element asserting it-
self chiefly on the practical side, on the side of ethics, while the
speculative retreats proportionally out of view. ‘This is still more
clearly apparent in the case of Marcion. He is the terminating
point at which this whole development naturally ends; since he
belongs with the Gmnostics only in a single respect. He stands on
the dividing line between Gnosticism, the prevailing tendency of
which is to speculation, and a predominant practical direction of mind,
diametrically opposed to speculative Gnosticism ; so that, considered in
this pomt of view, the Alexandrian theology recognized by the great
God, by incontinence they would serve un-
chastity and Satan. Strom. 1. IIL. f. 460.
According to Eusebius, —1. IV. c. 29, — he
was accused of undertaking to garble and
alter many expressions in the writings of
St. Paul; but from the words of Eusebius,
τινὰς αὐτὸν μεταφρώσαι φωνὰς, ὡς ἐπιδιορ-
ϑούμενον αὐτῶν τὴν τῆς φράσεως σύνταξιν,
it is impossible to determine, whether the
alterations were made to favor his own dog-
matic and ethical principles, or whether
they were changes from the Hebraistic into
a purer Greek; and then the question arises,
whether Tatian actually allowed himself in
the practice of such an arbitrary sort of
criticism, which certainly is quite possible ;
or whether he only had in his possession
certain readings varying from the received
text, which it was assumed, as a matter of
course, might be regarded as intentional
falsifications.
1 We should know something more on
this point, if Tatian’s “ εὐαγγέλιον διὰ τεσ-
capwv”’ were still extant. The old writers
seem to have looked upon this work as a
compendious harmony of the four gospels,
Euseb. |. TV. c. 29; but it may be doubted
whether Tatian really confined himself to
our four canonical gospels, — whether he
did not at least make some use of several
apocryphal gospels; since according to
Epiphanius’ account, — which we must al-
low is extremely vague,—this collection
possessed some resemblance to the evayyé-
λιον ca? ἑβραίους. Theodoretus found
more than two hundred copies of this work
in use within his Syrian diocese, and thought
it his duty to withdraw them, probably be-
cause he found them to contain a good deal
of heretical matter. Theodoret. heeret. fab.
1.20. Tatian might find occasion also, on
‘the ground of his peculiar Gnostic views
concerning Christ, to leave out those parts
of the gospels which contain the genealo-
gies, and perhaps all that related to Christ’s
nativity.
2 Ἐγκρατῖται, ἀποτακτικοΐ, ὑδροπαραστά-
ται, (because they made use of water only
at the communion.)
3 Among these belonged Julius Cassia-
nus, iu whose doctrines we may recognize,
perhaps, the lingering influence of the
Alexandrian-Jewish theology ; the εὐαγγέ-
λιον kat’ Αἰγυπτίους being the source, in-
deed, whence he derived his knowledge of
the gospel history. Regarding Adam as a
symbol of the soul degraded from a heav-
enly condition to the “corporeal world, he
made it the chief duty of man to gain the
mastery over matter by means of ascetic
austerities, and for this reason would not
admit that Christ had appeared in the cor-
poreal world. He was considered one of
the leading men of the Docetz. In his
ἐξηγητικώ, he endeavored to introduce his
doctrines into the Old Testament by means
of the allegorical method of interpretation.
See Clem. Strom. lib. 1. f. 320; lib. IIL. f.
465. Furthermore, the Severians belong to
a class which passes generally under the
name of Encratites. They are said to have
sprung from a certain Severus, and to have
rejected the epistles of Paul, and the Acts
of the Apostles. Theodoret. heret. fab. I.
21. Their hostility to Paul might be con-
sidered, perhaps, as an indication of their
origin from the Jewish Christian party.
The inference, however, is the less sure, be-
cause the peculiar spirit of their doctrine
may have led them to that hostility.
MARCION. 459
body of the church contains more that is in affinity with Gnosticism,
than the theology of Marcion. The Christian interest is more directly
addressed by him than it is by the other Gnostics, because his whole
being is far more thoroughly penetrated by Christianity ; because the
Christian element properly constituted the ground-tone of his whole
inner life, his whole mode of thinking in religion and theology; while,
in the ease of the other Gnostics, this was only one spiritual tendency
belonging to them along with several others of a foreign character, —
although it was sometimes the predominant one. It is mstructive to
observe. how a tendency proceeding from the very heart of Christianity
may be impelled, by taking a settled direction on one particular side,
to allow the admission of unchristian elements. It must leave us with
asad impression of human weakness, to see, in the example of this
remarkable man, in what a strange relation or want of relation the
speculative system may stand to that which moves and animates the
inmost life of the man — to see how, by his own misunderstanding of
himself, he could lead others, who ought to have been bound to him by
the fellowship of the same higher life, to misunderstand, be deceived
in, and condemn him; and those very persons too who came nearest to
him in what constituted the fundamental and essential character of
their spiritual bent. This world, in which we come to our knowledge
neither of God, nor of ourselves, nor of each other, directly, but only
through a glass in broken and refracted rays, is full of misunderstand-
ings. What Marcion had in common with the Gnostics, and particu-
larly with the Gnostics belonging to the last-mentioned class, consisted
partly in his attempt to sunder the God of nature and of the Old Tes-
tament from the God of the gospel, — to separate generally the purely
human from the divine, and partly in various speculative elements
which he wrought into his religious system. At the same time, it is quite
evident that he had arrived at what he had in common with them, by
a method wholly different from theirs. His God he had first found in
Christ, and that glory of God which was revealed to him m Christ, he
could nowhere find again in nature or in history. The speculative ele-
ments which he borrowed from other Gnostics, were to him but expedi-
ents which he resorted to for the purpose of filling up the chasm neces-
sarily left in his system, which had been formed out of a bent of mind
radically different and purely practical. It clearly was not his object,
as it was the object of other Gnostics, to supply the imagmed defects
of Christianity by a speculative solution of difficulties taken from other
systems of doctrine; but the design he started with was simply to re-
store Christianity in its purity, which, in his opmion, had been corrupted
by foreiyn additions. The one-sided position from which he started
with this object in view was the occasion of most of his errors.
He did not make a secret traditional doctrine the main source of this
genuine Christianity. But neither was he willing to be confined to the
general tradition of the church; for im this, according to his opinion,
foreign elements had already become mingled with the pure apostolical
Christianity. Taking his stand, in the spirit of true protestantism, on
the ground of positive Christianity, he would admit that nothing but
460 MARCION.
the words of Christ and of his genuine disciples ought to be considered
as the fountain-head of the true gospel. We must confess, that instead
of recognizing the many different phases of Christianity presented in
the manifoldness of the organs chosen for its promulgation, he allowed
himself to indulge an arbitrary partiality in distinguishing and separat-
ing them one from the other. His efforts in looking up the earliest
records of the pure, original Christianity, led him into historical and
critical investigations, lying remote from the contemplative direction of
mind peculiar to other Gnostics. But here also he presents to us a
warning example — showing how such investigations, when guided and
controlled by preconceived dogmatic opinions in which the understand-
ing has entangled itself, must necessarily lead to disastrous results, —
showing how easily an arbitrary hyper-criticism may slide into the oppo-
site extreme, in opposing a careless facility of belief, and how readily,
in combating one class of doctrinal prejudices, one may fall into others
differmg only in kind.
The other Gnostics united with their theosophic idealism, a mystical,
allegorizing interpretation of the scriptures. The simple-hearted Mar-
cion was decidedly opposed to this artificial method of interpretation. +
He was a zealous advocate, on the other hand, of the literal interpre-
tation which prevailed among the antagonists of Gnosticism ; and it is
evident from his example, how even this method of interpretation, when
not united with other hermeneutical principles, and when pushed to an
extreme, must lead to many arbitrary procedures.
The opposition between πίστις and γνῶσις, between an exoteric and
an esoteric Christianity, was among the marked peculiarities of the other
Gnostic systems; but in Marcion’s case, on the contrary, who adhered
so closely to the practical Apostle Paul, no such opposition could possi-
bly be allowed to exist. ‘To the merely outward, and more truly Jew-
ish than Christian notion of πίστις, which had found admission mto
the Christian church, he opposed — not a self-conceited Gnosis, but the
conception of πίστις itself, apprehended according to the genume sense
of St. Paul. In his view, πίστις was the common fountain of the
divine life for all Christians. He knew of nothing higher than the
illumination which every Christian ought to possess. What he recog-
nized as genuine Christianity, ought to be recognized as such by all
capable of receiving Christianity in any sense. _He could make no
other distinction than that between the riper Christians and those
that needed still to be instructed in Christian principles, (the cate-
chumens. )
In a two-fold respect, Marcion’s appearance is a fact of great signi-
ficance in the history of the world. In the first place, he stands a
living witness of the impression which Christianity, as something wholly
new and supernaturally divine, produced on men of strong and lively
feelings. We see how Christianity appeared to such a person, looking
at it from the point of view which had been reached by his age, and
in its relation to all that had proceeded forth out of the previous devel-
opment of mankind. It is a fact, which here speaks to us. Next the
great significance of Marcion’s appearance consists in this: that we
_ MARCION. 461
perceive in him the first symptoms of a reaction necessary in the course
of the historical evolution, — ἃ reaction of the Pauline type of doctrine,
reclaiming its rightful authority, against the strong leaning of the
church to the side of James and Peter —a reaction of the Christian
consciousness, re-asserting the independence acquired for it by the
labors of Paul, against a new combination of Jewish and Christian ele-
ments — a reaction of the protestant spirit against the catholic element
now swelling in the bud. At its first appearance, this reaction might
easily be led wrong, and tend too exclusively again, to the other side
of the truth. It was needful that various momenta should be evolved,
before the reaction could be a pure one, clear in itself, and therefore
certain of the victory. As Marcion gives us the picture of Paul, not
in all the harmonious many-sidedness of his great spirit, but only in a
single aspect of it, we consequently find in Marcion himself the impet-
uous ardor, but not the calm reflective prudence, — the practical, but
not the dialectic spirit of Paul— we find in him the acuteness and per-
spicacity of the apostle in discerning and setting forth opposites, but
not the conciliating wisdom for which the apostle was no less distin-
guished. We shall now endeavor to seize the character of Marcion in
its connection with that stage of development the church had arrived
at in his time — though in doing this we must be made to feel the great
want under which we labor, of satisfactory information with regard to
his early habits of life and education. This deficiency we must endeavor
to supply by the aid of historical combination.
Marcion was born at Sinope, in Pontus, near the beginnmg of the
second century. According to one report,! which is not placed, how-
ever, beyond all doubt, his father was bishop of the church in Sinope.
In this country, there were beyond question families, even thus early, mn
which Christianity had been handed down from parents to children ; so
that Marcion might have been led to the Christian faith through the
influence of his early education ; — yet even supposing his father to
have been a bishop, it would not be necessary to conclude that the fact
was so. He speaks of the “ardor of his first faith,’’* where he seems
to refer to the glow of feeling experienced by a new convert.®? Per-
haps he belonged to the number of those’ who were first brought to the
faith, not by the tradition of the church, but by their own study of the
written word. And as he appropriated Christianity in a way somewhat
independent of tradition, so in the after development of his Christian
views he ever pursued this independent direction, and was unwilling to
Τὴ Epiphanius, and in the later addi-
tions to ‘Tertullian’s Preescriptiones. It
may excite some doubt to find that Tertul-
lian has made no use of this fact against
trasts the heresy of the son with the ortho-
doxy and piety of his father. Yet it does
not oblige us to reject the account.
2 Primus calor fidei.
Marcion, that he had abandoned the Catho-
lic church in which his father was a bishop.
The silence of Tertullian, who had been at
great pains to obtain information with re-
gard to all the particulars of Marcion’s life,
on a point which he had so much occasion
to speak of, must lead us to suspect the
foundation of Epiphanius’ report, who con-
¥
e
8 Although we grant that this might also
be said, in the first ardor of pious feeling,
by a person who had been educated in
Christianity, especially in this period, when
the baptism of infants was not practised ;
yet the other is the most obvious construc-
tion.
462 MARCION.
subject himself to any human tradition. Perhaps itwas the majesty of
Christ beaming upon him from the survey of his life and the contem-
plation of his words, whereby he was drawn to Christianity. And the
Pauline type of doctrine, which most completely harmonized with his
tone of mind, may have been the form in which he first learned to
understand Christianity, and which chained his spirit once for all. In
this manner, the peculiar shape which the Christian faith assumed in his
case, may have been determined from the beginning.
Like many others, he felt constrained by the ardor of his first Chris-
tian love, to renounce every earthly possession. He presented to the
church a considerable sum of money, and began, in a course of rigid
abstinence, the life of a ““ continent person” or an ἀσκήτης. His con-
tempt of nature, which was at first simply practical and ascetic, pro-
ceeding from a false notion of the contrariety between the natural and
the divine, would lead a man of his ardent temperament, so eager to
grasp what he approved, and so bold in rejecting what he disliked, to
institute a theoretic distinction and separation between the God of na-
ture and the God of the gospel. ‘The contemplation of this period
brings to our notice minds of the most opposite stamp — those that were
for reconciling all antitheses, — for blending together elements the most
heterogeneous, and those as well who would see everywhere nothing
else but opposites, and know of no means to reconcile them. ‘To this
latter class belonged Marcion. The consciousness of redemption
formed the ground-tone of his religious life, —the fact of redemption
he regarded as the central point of Christianity. But as it is only
through numberless stages of transition and intermediate points that
everything can ultimately be referred to this as the central point, — as
the whole development of the world in history and nature were in this
to be brought into a comprehending unity, — the impatient Marcion,
who was averse to all gradual measures and intermediate steps, who
was for having everything alike complete and at once, could not so un-
derstand it. Tertullian has aptly characterized him, when he says,
‘‘ While in the Creator’s universe all things occur in the order of a
gradual development, each in its proper place, with Marcion, on the
other hand, everything is sudden.”’? To his heart, filled and glowing
as it was with the image of the God of mercy and compassion, who ap-
peared in Christ, Nature appeared as something entirely alien from
the manner in which this God revealed himself to him in his soul. In
history too, Marcion, who was so full of the glory of the gospel,
believed he could find no trace of the God that had revealed himself
to him there; and into the demon world of paganism he looked back,
like so many other zealous Christians, only with shuddering aversion —~
1 See above. Pecuniam in primo calore
: μονάζων as equivalent to the ἀσκῆτης.
fidei ecclesie contulit. Tertullian. adv.
Ephraem Syrus accuses Marcion of acquir-
Marcion, 1. 1V.c.c. It amounted to two
hundied sestertia. See Tertullian. preescript.
6. 30. Epiphanius, in calling Marcion a
μονάζων, (recluse.) only confounds the re-
lations of his own time with those of an
earlier period. We must consider the
ing by his asceticism a deceptive show of
sanctity. Opp. Eph. Syr. lat. Sermo I. f.
438, seq.
2 Sic (subito) sunt omnia apud Marcio
nem, quz suum et plenum habent ordinem
apud creatorem. Lib. IV.c 11
MARCION. 463
he saw nothing there but Satan’s kingdom. The same tendency of
spirit which made it impossible for him to find again in nature the God
of the gospel, allowed him to see nothing but contrariety, no unity at
bottom, in the relation of the Old Testament to the New. The jeal-
ous God of the Old Testament, in his judgment so inexorably severe,
and the God of the gospel, whose essential being is only love; the
Messiah of the world with his worldly kmgdom, and Christ who de-
clined all earthly power and glory, and would not found a kingdom of
this world, seemed to him utterly opposed to one another. We must
here consider between what opposite tendencies, none of which could
satisfy his mind, Marcion found himself placed. On the one side were
those uneducated-Christians who were led, by their grossly literal method
of interpreting the Old Testament, to frame to themselves the most
unworthy notions of God ;! on the other side were those who contrived,
by artificial and allegorizing expositions, to lay into the Old Testament
the whole system of Christian truth. But it belonged to the character
of the simple Marcion, to be an enemy of that allegorical interpreta-
tion of the Bible, and to oppose to it a method which uniformly adhered
to the literal sense.
A man so constituted in mind and spirit as was Marcion would be
easily impelled, wherever he had to combat an erroneous extreme, to
go to the opposite one. Thus it fared with him in the contest with that
Chiliastic, material tendency of mind, confounding the Jewish with the
Christian element, which he found generally diffused in Asia Minor.
Here he believed it impossible to recognize genuine Christianity, as it
had been preached by the Apostle Paul in the churches of Asia
Mmor; and hence the striving might have arisen in him to purify
Christianity from the foreign Jewish elements with which it had been
mixed, and to restore it once more to its primitive form. It may have
been from this opposition, as the occasional cause, that he conceived a
prejudice against the conciliating direction which had originated in the
labors of the Apostle John in Asia Minor. Perhaps he found a foot-
hold in some ultra-Pauline element which may already have made its
appearance in opposition to the Apostle John himself.2 Accordingly,
step by step, he was driven to place the Old and the New Testament
in a continually sharper opposition to each other.
This peculiar dogmatic tendency of Marcion was probably the occa-
sion of his being excommunicated from the church at Sinope. He
1As Origen says: Oi ἀκεραιότεροι τῶν invention of anti-heretical hatred. Had
ἀπὸ τῆς ἐκκλησίας αὐχούντων τυγχάνειν,
τοῦ μὲν δημιουργοῦ μείζονα οὐδένα ὑπειλή-
φασι, τοιαῦτα δὲ ὑπολαμβάνουσι περὶ αὐτοῦ,
ὁποῖα οὐδὲ περὶ τοῦ ὠμοτάτου καὶ ἀδικωτά-
του aviporov. De prince. ]. IV. § 8.
2'See my Age of the Apostles, vol. 11.
p- 558.
3 The statement in the spurious additions
to Tertullian’s Prescriptions, in Epiphanius
and Esnig, that Marcion was excommuni-
eated from the fellowship of the church on
account of unchastity, is undoubtedly an
anything of the kind got abroad, even in
the form of a rumor, in Tertullian’s day,
he certainly, according to his usual practice,
would not have allowed it to pass without
notice. But on the contrary,— what may
be considered the most decided testimony
against the truth of this statement, —he
contrasts Marcion’s disciple, Apelles, on
the score of his unchastity, with his rigid
master. Tertull. Prescript. c. 30. Although
the Armenian Bishop Esnig, of the fifth
century, whose account of Marcion has
464 MARCION.
now hoped to find in the Roman church, to which he betook himself, a
better reception, both on account of its origin, which it derived from
Paul, and its original Pauline character, and on account of a preyail-
ing anti-Judaizing tendency,! which still existed m it on many poimts.
If the report of Epiphanius is well founded, he proposed the question to
the Roman clergy, how they would explain the passage in Matthew 9:
17, with a view to draw from their own lips the confession, that men
could not pour the new wine of Christianity into the old bottle of Juda-
ism, without spoiling it. But at Rome, too, his Dualism on the doc-
trine of divine revelation could only meet with contradiction, since the
acknowledgment of one God, and of one divine revelation in the Old
and New Testaments, belonged to the doctrines universally received by
the church. Repulsed here also by the church, he was driven to the
measure of shaping his anti-church tendency into an established 561
consistent system, and of founding an independent church by itself.
Until now, his system had only a practical basis ; — the conviction that
Christianity had made its appearance among mankind as something
entirely new, unexpected, and undreamt of; that it had imparted to
‘ humanity a divine life, to which nothing in human nature, up to that
time, was in affinity; that the God who appeared in Christ had earher
revealed himself neither in nature, nor in reason, nor in the Old Testa-
ment; that nothing witnessed of him; nothing was his work save Chris-
tianity alone; — this conviction was the groundwork on which Marcion
proceeded to build. The God who had revealed himself in Christ was
in his view one altogether diverse from the Spirit which had hitherto
ruled in the world ; and the latter was in all cases displaced from his
throne, wherever Christianity found admittance, to make room for a
higher Spirit. Accordingly Marcion was compelled to distinguish from
that God hitherto unknown to the world, the God of the world and of
the Old Testament, with his angels. In profoundly studying, with this
direction of ideas, the epistles of his favorite Apostle, Paul, he might
easily be led to believe that he found these ideas confirmed, when he read
of a God of this world, of the princes of this world (ἄρχοντες τοῦ αἰῶνος τούτου,
who would not have surrendered up the Lord of glory to the death of
the cross, if they had known him;—of the ἀρχαῖς and ἐξουσίαις, whom
Christ vanquished by his crucifixion. And it may be explained, how these
ideas exercised a power over his mind, by reason of the truth lying at
their root. In the Demiurge, the ruling spirit of the ante-Christian
world, so far as that world was not wholly given to evil, became to Mar-
cion’s imagination objectized and personified. This being could not un-
derstand the new divine principle, which through Christ entered into
the world. he hidden glory in Christ’s appearance was something
alien from him. He must bring death to the being who had come to
destroy his kingdom; but through this very death must be brought
been made known by Prof. Neumann, in 8 latter’s own writings, yet in the outline of
German translation, in Ilgen’s Zeitschrift Marcion’s life, he follows the less authentic
fiir historische Theologie, Bd. IV. J. 1834, narratives of the writers belonging to his
1 St., is a more credible authority, so far as own age. we
it relates to his account of Marcion’s doc- 1 See above, in the history of divine wor-
trines, which he may have drawn from the ship.
MARCION. 465
about the dethronement of this spirit of the world himself. The idea
of matter, as the spring of all desires and passions, belonged too to the
current notions of the period. ‘Thus it would in fact admit of being
explained, how Marcion might have been led to form and gradually
mature his system out of his own peculiar Christian consciousness, in
the spiritual atmosphere of this period, without any connection whatever
with the Gnostic sects. Yet although, for the reasons thus hinted at,
we cannot consider the influence of those sects on his mode of thinking
to have been so important as it has sometimes been represented, we are
not disposed to deny, what the ancients are unanimous in stating, that
at Rome he attached himself to a teacher from Antioch by the name of
Cerdo, who held to the purely Dualistic Gnosis, and from him borrowed
a good deal to fill up the chasms of his dogmatic system.
It lay in the essential character of Marcion’s mode of thinking, that
he must have labored more earnestly and assiduously than other Gnos-
tics for the extension of his principles, — for while others believed it
impossible to communicate their higher knowledge to any save a small
number of Christians, the spzritwal men, Marcion, on the other hand,
was convinced that his doctrine was no other than the primitive Chris-
tian, which should come to all men. He must have felt constrained to
communicate to all Christians, the light of truth which had fallen to his
own share. Hence he made frequent journeys, and spent his life im an
uninterrupted series of conflicts with pagans and with Christians. ΤῸ
be hated, and to suffer, he accounted the destination of every Chris-
tian. ‘‘ Fellow-hated, and fellow-sufferers”’ (συμμισούμενοι καὶ συνταλαί-
mwpot, ) Was his common form of salutation to his brethren in the faith.1
He was, perhaps, residing in Rome, when the aged bishop Polycarp of
Smyrna came ona visit to the Roman bishop Anicetus.2 Marcion,
who probably in his youth had enjoyed the friendship of Polycarp, and
now saw him again after many years, went to him and addressed him
in these words: “ Dost thou remember me, Polycarp?”’ But the old
man — otherwise so amiable—could embrace within his love all but
the enemies of the gospel; among whom he reckoned Marcion, unable
as he was to discern the Christian element lying at the root of his very
errors.’ He ig said to have replied to him: “‘ Yes, I remember the
first-born of Satan.” ‘Tertullian relates,* that Marcion testified at last
his repentance for the schism which he had occasioned, and sought to
be restored to the fellowship of the church; that this request was
granted on the condition that he would bring back into the church those
whom he had led astray; but that his premature death prevented the
fulfilment of this condition. But the testimony of Tertullian, in mat-
“ters of this sort, is not of sufficient weight to establish the truth of this
report. It might easily happen with him, that he took up the story on
the credit of some rumor not sufficiently well founded. It was in fact
a thing too obvious not to be suggested by somebody, that the heretic
should repent in the end of his defection from the church, and yearn
1 Tertull. c. M.1. IV. c. 36; 1. IV. c. 9. 8 Tren. 1. III. ο. 3, § 4.
2 See vol. I. Ὁ. 299 4 Prescript. c. 30.
466 MARCION.
after re-admission to its bosom. But if the continuance of the breach
of which he was the author was a fact testifying against this supposition,
it was necessary that some legend should arise, to reconcile the discrep-
ancy. Marcion was too clearly conscious to himself of an opposition in
principles between him and the then church, to leave it possible for any
one to believe this story, without any better guaranty for its truth.
Meanwhile, there must have been some good and sufficient reason, why
such things were said of Marcion in particular, and not of the other
Gnostics. Ifsome conciliatory word or other of Marcion’s was not the
occasion of it, the remote ground must at any rate be sought for in the
consciousness penetrating through the blinding influence of polemical
passions, that after all this man stood in quite a different relation to
Christianity and to the Christian church, from that in which other
Gnostics stood; that he was connected with both by a tie not to be
sundered by the force of intellectual error.
It now remains, that we should enter into a detailed examination of
Marcion’s system, in its later and complete development. This system
coincided in its fundamental principles with other Gnostic systems of the
last-mentioned class, with this single difference; that in his theory it 18
ever gleaming through the surface, how everything had been seized by
him on the practical rather than on the speculative side, and that the
speculative element was to him a matter of inferior terest. He as-
sumed three fundamental principles: 1. An ὕλη existing from eternity.
2. The infinitely perfect, almighty and holy God,—the God who is
eternal love ; the Good, ὁ ἀγαϑός, who alone is to be denominated God in
the proper sense ; who, by virtue of his holy nature, is incapable of enter-
ing into any contact whatever with matter; creating, only by communi-
cation of himself, a life in affinity with himself, but forming nothmg
from without. 38. The Demiurge, a subordinate being of limited power,
holding a middle place between good and evil, who is named God only
in an improper sense, (as the divine title is also transferred to other
beings in Ps. 02,1) who is in a constant conflict with matter, seeking to
subject and to fashion it according to his own ideas, but never able
wholly to overcome its resistance. Matter, with regard to which he
appropriated to himself the common ideas, he regarded as the stuff fur-
nished for the creative might of the Demiurge; the passive potence
in relation to the latter. He described it also as the power or the
essence of the earth. But out of that in it which resisted the formative
might and the dominion of the Demiurge, proceeds evil, a wild, ungod-
like impulse. All this became concentrated in Satan. The distinction
between true moral perfection, which consists in love or BON ae
whose essence it is only to communicate itself, only to bless, to make
happy, to redeem — and mere justice, which metes out everything by
desert, rewards and punishes, requites good with good and evil with
evil, which gives birth to mere outward discipline, can communicate no
power of moral enthusiasm, — this was the great practical and funda-
1Clem. Strom. lib. III. ἢ. 431. Tertull. 2 Ephr. Syr. Orat. XIV. f. 468, Ὁ.
c. M. lib. I. ΟΕ 7-15. 3 See Esnig, l. c. p. 72.
MARCION. 467
mental idea of Marcion, which formed the nucleus of all the rest. But
between love and a justice which revealed itself in punishment, he
could find no means of reconciliation. While he gave to the love of
God, the revelation of which in the gospel had penetrated through his
whole-soul, a strong and exclusive prominence, he allowed all other no-
tions of the divine attributes to retire out of view. Seeking to make
that alone valid which belonged peculiarly to Christianity, but rending
it from its connection with the Old Testament groundwork, determined
to know nothing at all of a vindictive justice grounded in the holiness
of God, of a holy anger of God against sin ; he evaded what essentially
pertains to this, in order to distinguish the theistic position of Christian-
ity from that of the old Nature-religion. And inasmuch as he com-
prised in the notion of justice severed from its connection with the other
divine attributes, all those marks which he believed might be derived
from the Old Testament, as belonging to the character of the Demiurge,
that notion itself became to him an inconsistent and self-contradictory
one. ‘The inner coherence and consistency was ever in his case more
in the heart than in the head.
Vague and indefinite also, appears to us, in the accounts that are
extant, the mode in which Marcion conceived the relation of the Demi-
urge to the perfect God,! in respect to his origm. As we find else-
. where among the Gnostics Dualistic systems only,— none in which
three principles, wholly independent in their origin, had been assumed,
it seems most natural to conclude that Marcion also would be for deriv-
ing the imperfect Demiurge through a series of evolutions from the per-
fect God, — a course which, as a consistent thinker, he must have felt
himself constrained to adopt by his own fundamental principle. Yet it
is singular, that not one of Marcion’s opponents attempts to explain by
what mediation it was, he connected one with the other, although this
is a point which they never fail to notice in speaking of the systems of
other Gnostics. We must infer, that in his writings he did not express
any opinion on this subject himself. In fact, there was wanting in his
system — which is another circumstance whereby he was distinguished
from other Gnostics— the doctrine of emanation, necessarily pre-sup-
posed in order to such a mediation and derivation.” It is from the pre~
dominating practical interest, the unspeculative and unsystematic spirit”
of Marcion, that we shall perhaps have to account for these lacune. ~~
The great point of practical moment with Marcion was, next, to assert,
the absolute newness of the creation by Christianity ; to sever every
thread of connection between it and the world as it had subsisted before.
But hence it was impossible for him to apprehend in its true significancy
this new creation itself; since it can be understood only as a restoration
and fulfilment of the original one. And in this lies the deficiency of
his moral system. °
The Demiurge of Marcion does not work after the pattern of higher
1 The church teacher, Rhodon, (Euseb. 1. 2 That nothing akin to the emanation-
Υ. ς. 13,) says that Marcion supposed only system of other Gnostics is to be found in
two principles, δύο ἀρχάς. Esnig, howev- Marcion, seems to follow from the remarks
ever, ascribes to him a Triarchy. of Tertullian, c. Marcion, lib. 1. ο. 5
468 MARCION.
ideas, of which, though unconsciously, or even against his will, he is the
organ; but he is the absolutely independent, selfsubsistent creator of
an imperfect world, answermg to his own limited essence. ‘To this
world Marcion reckoned also the nature of man, in which he did not
acknowledge, like other Gnostics, the existence of another element be-
sides. ‘The Demiurge — so he taught — created man, his highest work,
after his own image, to represent and reveal himself. Man’s body he
formed of matter, — hence evil desires; to this body he gave a soul in
affinity with himself and derived from his own essence. He gave him
a law, to try his obedience, with a view either to reward or to punish
him, according to his desert. But the limited Demiurge had it not in
his power to give man a godlike principle of life, capable of overcoming
evil. Man yielded to the seductions of sinful lust, and thus became
subject, with his whole race, to the dominion of matter, and of the evil
spirits which sprang out of it. From the entire race of fallen humanity,
the Demiurge selected only one people, for his special guidance ; to this
people, the Jews, he made a special revelation of himself, and gave a
religious polity, answering to dis own essence and character, — consist-
ing, on the one hand, of a ceremonial confined to externals; on the
other, of an imperative, deficient system of morals, without any mner
godlike life, without power to sanctify the heart, without the spirit of
love. Those who faithfully observed this religious law, he rewarded by
conveying them at death to a state of happiness suited to their limited
natures, in the society of their pious forefathers.!_ But all who suffered
themselves to be seduced by the enticements of the ὕλη to disobey the
Demiurge, and all who abandoned themselves to idolatry — a system to
be traced to the influence of this ὕλη, he hurled down to perdition.?
Not powerful enough to give his people the supremacy, and to extend
his kingdom over the whole earth, the Demiurge promised them a Re-
deemer, a Messiah, by whose means he would finally accomplish this
end in the conflict with the hostile powers of the ὕλη; by whose means
he would gather in all the Jews from their dispersion, bring heathens
and sinners to a rigid judgment, and conduct his own people to the
peaceful enjoyment of all earthly felicity in a kingdom erected over the
whole world. But the perfect God, whose essence is mercy and love,
could not suffer this severe sentence to be executed on men whose fall
was owing to nothing but their mherent weakness. It is consonant
with his character, not to wait, like the Demiurge, for merit, but out of
his own free love to receive to himself those who are alienated from
him, and lost; not to begin with giving a law, and making man’s des-
tiny depend on his observance or disobedience of that; but to reveal
and communicate himself to those who are willing to enter into fellow-
ship with him, as the fountain of divine life and blessedness. ‘The ap-
pearance of Christ was the self-manifestation® of the Supreme God, till
then altogether hidden to this lower creation.
According to the earlier known accounts of Marcion’s doctrine, we
1 Apud inferos, in sinu Abrahami. Ter- 2 See Esnig, |. 6. p. 74.
tull. c. M. lib. III. c. 24. Clem. Strom. lib. 8 Tertull. c. M lib. I ¢. 11.
Υ. f. 546. ‘
a ττττοέὁΠυέἔπ «ἐρΔ’ρὌρᾳΕοὲἉἁ2Ὡρ«Ὥ““οἑρ““ὡἑτπτ΄οο͵ηοτοοπρρ“ΦΣτ“ἉΔώρφΞΞο οτος
MARCION. 469
might suppose, that he represented the Supreme God himself as appear-
ing without any mediation in the kingdom of the Demiurge, or upon
the earth ; and thus he might have attached himself to the theory —
so widely diffused in Asia Minor— of the Patripassionists,! in which
form he had, perhaps, from the first, become acquainted with the doc-
trine of Christ. This theory was exactly suited to his predominant
practical tendency, to the element of Christian feeling which in his case
prevailed over every other. Penetrated by the consciousness, that
Christianity was nothing other than the communication of the Supreme
God himself, that men have God himself immediately in Christ, the
theory of subordination in the church doctrine of the Logos might be
offensive to him. In this peculiar tendency of his doctrine concerning
Christ, then, to simplification, he would once more agree with the other
Gnostics, whose speculation tended to multiply the hypostases. The
inadmissible form of representation, that God the Father appeared him-
self, immediately, in a human body, might then easily pass over to the
other notion, that this manifestation was nierely in appearance. Yet
however much this supposition must have in its favor,” according to the
accounts thus far known to us, we notwithstanding venture no longer to
hold on to it, since Esnig’s account has been communicated ; for accord-
ing to this, Marcion expressly distinguished Jesus, as the Son sent down
from the heaven of the Supreme God, from the latter as his Father.
And to this distinction he must, in truth, have been led also by the
authority of him who passed, in Marcion’s estimation, for the only
apostle.
Marcion’s Docetism was not grounded solely in the view he enter-
tained of matter, but was closely connected also with the whole essence
and spirit of his dogmatic system. According to this, Christianity must
make its appearance of a sudden, as an unprepared-for fragment, havy-
ing no connection whatever with anything else. Everything, in fact,
was with him swdden and unexpected. His gospel began when the
Son of God, in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius, descended
into the city of Capernaum, and appeared at once as a public teacher.’
Jesus, therefore, according to the scheme of Marcion, was not the
Messiah, promised through the prophets by the Demiurge, sce, indeed,
he wanted many of those marks of the Messiah contained in the proph-
ets; while, on the other hand, what was peculiar in his character and
conduct was in no wise to be found among the characteristic traits of
the Messiah announced by the prophets. Marcion attempted to carry
out in detail the contrast between Christ as he is represented in the
gospel history, and the Christ of the Old Testament, — and here too
it is evident, how deeply Christ’s image had imprinted itself on his
warm heart; but he was wrong in his very principle of requiring that
the foretype presented to the prophetic vision under a temporal drapery
1 Concerning whom we shall speak far- Jesus: Descendit de ccelo spiritus salutaris,
ther in the section relating to the formation a distinction is implied between the redeem
of church doctrine. ing Spirit and.the Supreme God.
2Even when Tertullian (lib. I. ec. 19) ὃ Tertull. c. M. lib. LV. e¢ 17.
says in the sense of Marcion, concerning
Mil I. 40
479 MARCION.
should correspond exactly to the reality of the manifestation. Hence
‘when Jesus called himself the Messiah, it was only in accommodation
to the Jews. He wished to find some possible point of union with their
views, to gain their confidence by some well-known form, to which he
could afterwards give a higher meaning.!
To bestow the greatest favors in vain on men who were wholly alien
from him, was the great characteristic of his life. How far the Docetism
of Marcion was from denying the reality of the works accomplished by
Christ, is evident, when we consider what importance he attached to the
miracles of Christ, as acts of succoring love, and of power over the
kingdom of the Demiurge. He represents the Supreme God saying to
his Son, when he sent him down to men: ‘“‘ Heal their wounds, bring
their dead back to life, make their blind to see, accomplish among them
the greatest cures without reward.” 2 The characteristic mark which
distinguished the miracles of Christ from those of the prophets, consisted
according to Marcion in this, that no intermediate second causes, bor-
rowed from the kingdom of the Demiurge, were needed to compass such
effects, but he was able to do all by his word and his will alone — thus
evincing his superiority over the kingdom of the Demiurge.? Christ
required no prophecies to confirm his divine mission ;_his self-manifesta-
tion by godlike actions above the kingdom of the Demiurge, was an
evidence which rendered all other superfluous.*
But as all that he required was a humble reception of the higher ele-
ment which he came to bestow on men, he would meet with a readier
reception among pagans, abandoned to the sense of their wretchedness,
than among the men who were satisfied with their confinement in the
kingdom of the Demiurge. As to the Demiurge himself, who saw in
Jesus only the Messiah promised by himself, who like the Jews held
him to be a man the same with other men; he had looked upon him as
his instrument. Hence he must be the more exasperated, when he
found himself, deceived in his expectations, when he saw him perform-
ing works which so far exceeded his own power, and must perceive how
men would be led away by this Jesus to defection from his own law;
how he threatened to destroy that very kingdom, whose interests he
should have subserved. He caused him to be crucified by those whom
he employed to execute his purposes.
The heart of Marcion would assuredly be touched by the idea of a
love that suffered, and conquered through suffermg—so great impor-
tance did he find attached, in the writings of his own Apostle Paul, to
the redemptive sufferings of Christ ;— and yet this did not harmonize
1Ut per sollenne apud eos et familiare
nomen irreperet in Judeorum fidem. L. c.
lib. IIT. ¢. 15.
2 See Esnig. l. ¢. p. 74.
nem statim representasse. Tertull. ο. M.
lib. 1V. 6.9. As Christ healed the ten lep-
ers, sine tactu et sine verbo, tacita potestate
et sola voluntate. LL. c¢. ο. 35.
3 In the work where Marcion treated of
the opposition between the Old and New
Testaments, his Antitheses, this remark oc-
cured: Heliseum materia eguisse, aquam
adhibuisse, et eam septies; Christum vero
verbo solo et hoc semel functum curatio-
4 Non fuit ordo ejusmodi, (preparation by
means of prophecy,) necessarius, quia sta-
tim se et filium et missum et Dei Christum
rebus ipsis esset probaturus per documenta
virtutum. L.c. lib. III. ¢. 3.
MARCION. 471
well with his Docetism. Now although he was not allowed by that the-
ory to attribute any real suffering to Christ, yet he was prepared to
show how this very delusion, designed with reference to the Demiurge,
must conduce to the accomplishment of the saving purposes of the Su-
preme God.
While it was taught in the church, that Satan deceived himself, and
saw his own power destroyed, 1m supposing Jesus to be subject to death,
like other men, Marcion simply substituted the Demiurge in the place
of Satan; and we have already remarked how he might be led to sup-
pose that he found some confirmation of this view in the words of the
Apostle Paul. Moreover, he received from universal tradition the doc-
trine of the descensus Christi ad inferos, and to this perhaps he
referred the words in Paul’s epistle to the Laodiceans (Ephesians) 4: 9.
But his aversion to the Jews and preference of the pagans led him to give
to this doctrine also another turn, so as to bring it into harmony with
his own system.
It was the will of the Demiurge to condemn him whom he placed in
the same class with all the others that had revolted from his empire, to
hell; but here also he found himself deceived. Christ descended there
for the purpose of taking to himself the poor heathens, whom the Demi-
urge had condemned to everlasting punishment ; he released them, be-
cause he found them possessed of the faith which he had not been able
to find among the self-righteous Jews, from the power under which till
then they had been subjected ; and raised them along with himself to
the Father of love in the third heaven.t Thus the wrath of the Demi-
urge was excited afresh, ‘he eclipsed his sun, and veiled his world in
darkness,’’ — an allusion perhaps to the phenomenon which took place
at the death of Jesus.
Then Christ revealed himself to the Demiurge in his true form, in
his divine essence; he compelled him to acknowledge a higher God
over himself, brought him to a consciousness of guilt according to his
own laws, since he had shed the blood of an mnocent person, who had
shown to his creatures nothing but benevolence. Thus he must bow be-
fore a higher power.
It seems, although it cannot be determined with certainty, that Mar-
cion taught, that the Messianic predictions of the Old Testament would
still be actually accomplished in behalf of the believers in the Demi-
urge. The Messiah promised by the Demiurge would appear, and
bring to a rigid judgment those who had not been freed from his power
by faith in the higher Christ ; awaken the just dead of the Old Testa-
ment, and unite them all together in a millenial reign of earthly felicity.
The eternal heavenly kingdom to which the Christians belonged, would
then form the direct antithesis to this perishable, earthly kmgdom.
The souls of Christians would lay aside their gross bodies, as the bird
rises out of the egg, as the kernel casts off the shell or leaves behind its
husk in the earth, and lifts itself in freedom to the day-hght, as the ripe
fruit drops from ‘the stem.2 The God of love does not punish ; but
1 Vid. Iren. lib. I. c. 27, § 2; efr. lib. I. 2 Tert. c. M. 1. ITIL. c. 3, 4 et 24; LIV.
c. 24. Esnig, l.c. p. 74. c.29. Ephr. Syr. Orat. CII. 6, f. 551 et 552
472 MARCION.
those who were unwilling to receive the proffered fellowship with him,
fall under the power of the Demiurge and his avenging justice.! But
whoever, on the other hand, enters into fellowship with the Father
through faith in the Son of God, becomes partaker even here on the
earth of a divine life above the power of the Demiurge and of the Hyle ;
and for him there is no longer any judgment. Delivered from the
might of the Demiurge, he stands under the special guidance of the
God of love. Plotinus, in his work against the Gnostics, among others,
censures those who maintained a zpovoia of the Supreme God which ex-
tended to themselves and not to the whole world. We are not of the
opinion,” that he had the Marcionites particularly in view here; but we
must at least pre-suppose such a doctrme in Marcion. From Marcion’s
connection of ideas resulted the antithesis between those who were left
subject to the Demiurge’s government, and those who, released from his
power, become objects of the providential care of the Supreme God,
those whom God trains for his kingdom, those in whose behalf all things
shall work together for good, serving to conduct them onward to the
mark for which eternal love has destined them. Providence general
and special Marcion must have attributed to the Demiurge ; that provi-
dence alone which has been designated by the term providentia special-
issima, could be accounted by him as the work of the Supreme God in
reference to his chosen ones.
A dogmatical system like Marcion’s, in which the antithesis between
law and gospel was expressed in such a way, could not fail to be fol-
lowed by a system of morals full of meaning; for the distinction which
he made between the two amounted in fact to this; that the former, by
its precepts, could not confer on man any true, inward sanctification,
᾿ any power to obtain the victory over sin; while the latter, by faith,
brought man into union with a fountain of divine life, a union which
must necessarily manifest itself by the conquest over sin and by holi-
ness of living. HKven Marcion’s warmest opponents, who sought
eagerly to sum up every bad quality which could be imputed to him,
and who refused to acknowledge the essential difference between his
system and all other forms of Gnosticism, still could not deny, that
the Marcionites differed entirely in their moral conduct from those
Gnostic Antinomians ;— that they came fully up, for example, to the
standard of the most rigid Christians, in their abhorrence of the pagan
games and pastimes.? While many Gnostics, who held to the doctrine
of an allowable accommodation to prevailing errors, or to the principle ὦ
that no importance was to be attached to externals, found no difficulty
in evading the obligation to become martyrs; the Marcionites, on the
other hand, felt certainly constrained to bear witness of Christianity,
which was a cause enlisting the affections of their heart.4 We have,
in the previous remarks, alluded already to the necessary defect in Mar-
cion’s system of morals, grounded in his peculiar doctrine concerning
the creation and the origin of man. The ascetic bent of life, which he
1 Abjecti, ab igne creatoris deprehenden- 3 Tertull. c. Μ. 1. I. c. 28.
tur. Tertull.c. M.1. Le. 28. 4 See, e.g. Euseb. 1. IV. ο. 15; 1. VIL.
2 See above, p. 390, ete. c.12. De Martyr. Palestin. ec. 10.
MARCIONITES. 473
had adopted already as a member of the catholic church, and in which,
as we observed above, his system found a natural pomt of union, was
now again still further promoted by the matured and perfected doc-
trines of his system. He reckoned that mode of life, which, in the
catholic church, was led only by a particular class of ascetics, as belong-
ing to the essential being of genuine Christianity ;— Christians should
lead, even here on the earth, a heavenly life, above all contaminating
influence of matter. He who was not as yet capable of leading such
a life, must remain in the class of catechumens, could not yet be admit-
ted to baptism.!
Marcion assuredly regarded Paul as the only genuime apostle who
remained true to his calling. He taught, that after Christ revealed
himself in his divine character to the Demiurge, and compelled him to
acknowledge a higher power, he manifested himself to Paul, (referring
doubtless to that revelation of Christ to the apostle of which the latter
himself testifies,) and commissioned him to preach the gospel.2 The
other scriptures of the New Testament, save Paul’s epistles, he
rejected ; not because he supposed them interpolated at a later period,
but because he did not recognize the authors of them as genuine teach-
ers of Christianity. Besides the epistles of Paul, he made use of a
pretended original gospel, which he held to be the record of the gospel
history cited and used by Paul himself.? All the other gospels he
traced to those corrupters of the evangelical truth, against whom Paul
himself had warned men. But we must ever keep it in mind, that
Marcion regarded the older apostles themselves as such corrupters. As
he presupposed everywhere in the church a corruption of the primitive
truth, and the image of those Judaizing corrupters haunted him like a
ghost, he thought it necessary, that even those religious records, whose
authority he acknowledged in common with the church, should first be
restored to their primitive condition, by a critical process of his own,
designed to purge them of every element of Judaism. His pretended
original gospel, used by the Apostle Paul, seems to have been a mutt-
lated copy of the gospel according to Luke.® His critical expurgation
was not consistently carried through, many things being allowed to re-
main, which could be brought into harmony with Marcion’s system
only by resorting to a tortuous exegesis, made possible by ignorance of
the right principles of interpretation.
Marcron’s Sects. —Marcion differed from other Gnostics in this
respect also, that while the latter, as Clement of Alexandria said of
1 Tertull. c. M. lib. 1. ¢. 34: Quomodo
nuptias dirimis? nec conjungens marem et
feminam, nec alibi conjunctos ad sacramen-
tum baptismatis et eucharistiz admittens,
nisi inter se conjuraverint adversus fructum
nuptiarum.
“ See Esnig, |. c. p. 75.
® Perhaps there had been preserved in
the apostolic churches of Asia Minor the
remembrance of such an evangelical collec-
tion, which St. Paul had brought with him.
*See Tertull. c. M. lib. 1V. c. 2 et 3.
40*
Origines in Joann. T. V.§ 4. V. Dialog.
de recta in Deum fide in Orig. opp. ed. de
la Rue. T. I. f. 807.
5 Detailed investigations into Marcion’s
canon of the New Testament would be out
of place here. See more on this subject in
the learned and ingenious inquiries of my
friends Hahn and Olshausen, and in my
Genetic development of the Gnostic sys-
tems. On Marcion’s gospel, consult Thi-
lo’s edition of the Apoeryphal writings of
the New Testament, T. 1.
474 MARCUS. LUCAS. APELLES.
them, endeavored to found schools only,! he, on the other hand, was
for establishing a church, a community. ‘To restore the primitive
church, designed by Christ, founded by the Apostle Paul, was the aim
of his life. And being everywhere excluded from the catholic church,
he was compelled, in preaching the pure doctrine of Christ as he un-
derstood it, to found communities of his own.? The universally intel-
ligible and practical character of Marcion’s doctrines, the enthusiasm
with which these principles were announced, might give this sect a
wider spread than any other could reach. Very soon, however, differ-
ences of opinion must begin to manifest themselves within it.
While among the other Gnostics, the arbitrary character and great
variety of the speculations they indulged in, furnished occasion for the
later disciples to depart in many respects from the doctrines of the |
earlier masters ; so, on the other hand, the predominant practical ten-
dency and the poverty of speculation in the system of Marcion com-
pared with the other Gnostic systems, laid the foundation of changes,
which his followers, not so exclusively governed as he was himself by
the practical interest, undertook to introduce. Many of them endeav-
ored to supply the defects which they thought they detected in the sys-
tem, by appropriating to themselves elements from other Gnostic systems,
not suited to Marcion’s theory. Many, like the Marcionite Marcus,?
espoused the doctrine of the Syrian Gnosis respecting the formation of
man ;* which was, that the Supreme God communicated to man a por-
tion of his own divine life, (the zvedua,) which man lost however by
sin, —a doctrme at variance with the whole character of the Marci-
onite system. While Marcion probably gave himself no farther thought
concerning the final destiny of the Demiurge and of the “ psychical
natures,” the Marcionite Lucas, on the other hand, thought himself
compelled to believe that everything “ psychical’? was perishable; that
the πνευματικόν only, which participated of the divine life, was im-
mortal.®
In the case of Apelles, who had for a while turned aside from the
predominant practical tendency of Marcion, and indulged in various
speculations foreign to the primitive Marcionite system, the original
practical tendency finally gained once more the ascendency in a very
remarkable manner. Tertullian gives an unfavorable account of the
moral character of this man;® but Rhodon, a catholic church teacher
in the beginning of the third century, whose testimony, being that of
an opponent, is beyond suspicion, sufficiently exonerates him of this
charge ; for he describes him as a person’ whose moral character com-
manded the respect of all. Probably, it was the altogether blameless
intimacy subsisting between Apelles and Philumene, a certain female
theosophist, which furnished occasion for this charge——men being ever
1 Avarpi Bai. 4 See above, in the case of the Ophites
2 Concerning the ecclesie, which were and of Saturninns.
founded by Marcion or his disciples, cons. 5 See Tertull. de resurrect. carn. Ὁ. 2.
Tertull. c. M. lib. IV. ¢. 5. Orig..c Cels. 1. I1I..c.,27.
3 In the Dialogue de recta fide. Vid. opp. 6 Prescript. beret. c. 30.
Origen, T. I. 7 Euseb. lib. V. ο. 13.
APELLES. ( 475
inclined to put a false construction on the actions of one stigmatized as
a heretic. The only reproach that can be brought agamst Philumene
is, that she forgot her mission as a woman, and hence was betrayed into
fanaticism ; — against Apelles, that he confirmed her in this line of con-
duct, and looked upon the fanatic discourses that proceeded from her
distempered mind, as revelations, which he gave himself the trouble of
expounding.t We may make some use, however, of the report fur-
nished. by Tertullian, that the protracted residence of Apelles in Alex-
andria effected a change in his Marecionite views; since all we can
gather from the scattered accounts in Tertullian, Origen, Epiphanius,
and in the work of Ambrosius “‘ De Paradiso,” intimates a modifica-
tion of his system through the influence of the Alexandrian Gnosis.
Hence it was, that he brought the visible and the invisible orders of the
world, the Demiurge and the Supreme God, the Old and the New Tes-
taments, into closer connection with each other, than was admissible
according to the spirit and system of Marcion. Starting with the prin-
ciple, that the Old Testament came from different authors, partly from
the inspirations of the Soter, partly from those of the Demiurge, and
in part from those of the evil spirit, who corrupted the revelations of
the divine things,? he was for everywhere holding fast the good. “TI
use all the scriptures of the Old Testament,” said he, “ gathering from
them what is profitable.”? He appealed to a saying, often cited by
the ancients, which was attributed to our Saviour, perhaps in the
εὐαγγέλιον ka® Ἑβραίους : ** Be skilful money-changers, ever ready to dis-
tinguish the genuine from the counterfeit, the true from the false ;”’
(γίνεσϑε δοκιμοὶ tparegirar.) While Marcion, who was inclined to objectize
everything, received all in the Old Testament as true to the letter, but
ascribed it not to the Supreme God, but to the Demiurge; Apelles, on
the other hand, found in the Old Testament fables wholly destitute of
truth. We see exemplified in this man the force of a tendency which
ruled the minds of a particular age — the great difficulty which indi
viduals, who would gladly withdraw themselves from it, must still expe-
rience in asserting their freedom. ‘Thus Apelles felt the might of the
dualistic principle, the incompatibility of which with Christianity he
acknowledged, and to which, notwithstanding, he saw himself ever forced
back again by the power that governed his thoughts. Accordingly he
concluded his inquiries, at an advanced age, with the confession, that
he could not do otherwise, but felt himself absolutely compelled to be-
lieve in One eternal God, the author of all existence ; but scientifically
to demonstrate how all existence could be traced back to one original
principle, transcended his ability. The church teacher Rhodon, a
stranger to such conflicts of the spirit, could not understand the confes-
sion, and bantered him for professing to be a teacher, while at the
same time he avowed that he only believed, but was unable to prove,
1 His work of φανερώσεις, which has not 8 Χρῶ ἀπὸ πάσης γραφῆς, ἀναλέγων τὰ
reached our times. χρήσιμα. Epiphan. heres. 44, § 2.
2 He endeavored, in a work which he en- 4 MiVoc τὰ 'lovdaiwy γράμματα. Orig.
titled “ Conclusions,” συλλογισμοῖ, to point ec. Cels. lib. V. ο. 54.
out the contradictions in the Old Testa-
ment.
476 FORM OF WORSHIP
what he taught. Apelles seemed now to have lost all interest im dis-
putes on these matters. ‘‘ Let every man,” said he, ‘stand fast by
his faith ; for all that put their trust in Christ crucified, shall attain sal-
vation, if they only prove their faith by their works.”
APPENDIX.
Concerning the Worship or Cultus of the Gnosis.
The different tendencies of Gnosticism, which we have thus far con-
templated, had great influence also on the views which they entertained
of divine worship. ‘The reaction that sprang out of Gnosticism against
the confounding together of the Jewish and Christian positions, and
against the conversion of religion into an outward thing, could not fail
to manifest itself strongly on this particular side. Indeed we have
observed this already, in the declarations of Ptolemzeus respecting fes-
tivals and fasts. But that tendency, growing out of the Dualism of
the Gnosties, to abstraction from the world and estrangement from all
human affections, which stood opposed to the Christian principle insist-
ing on the transfiguration of the natural and the human, must, when
consistently carried out and pushed to the extreme, have led in the
case of worship also to the rending asunder of what Christ, for man’s
benefit, had put together. And the exaggerated value placed on
knowledge in religion, — the twilight knowledge which set up itself as
the supreme good,—might end in a proud contempt for all those means
of grace which had been furnished in aid to the Christian life: a
similar tendency having in fact, at a still earlier period, grown out of
the Jewish Gnosis at Alexandria. Accordingly we find those among
the Christian Gnostics who said that salvation consisted in knowledge ;
in knowledge, man ‘had all that he wanted. As the world of sense had
sprung out of an alienation from the divine being, it was letting down
the dignity of the transcendent things of God, to attempt representing
them by sensuous, defective, perishable things. But the same theo-
sophic tendency might bring with it too a symbolic cultus, full of mys-
terious pomp and ceremony ;—as we see illustrated in the case of that
sect of the Marcosians,” from whom Irenzeus derives the Idealists, men-
tioned farther back, who discarded all external rites of religion. By
virtue of the distinction between a psychical and a pneumatic Christi-
anity, they were led to distinguish also two kinds of baptism — a bap-
tism in the name of Jesus, the Messiah of the psychical natures, where-
by believers obtained forgiveness of sin and the hope of eternal life in
1 Their words are to be found in Jrenzus,
lib. 1. 6. 21, ὁ 4: Μὴ δεῖν τὸ τῆς ἀῤῥήτου
καὶ ἀοράτου δυνάμεως μυστήριον δὶ ὁρατῶν
καὶ φϑαρτῶν ἐπιτελεῖσϑαι κτισμάτων, καὶ
τῶν ὠγεννήτων καὶ ἀσωμώτων δὶ αἰσϑητῶν
καὶ σωματικῶν. Eivat δὲ τελείαν ἀπολύ-
τρωσιν αὐτὴν τὴν ἐπίγνωσιν τοὺ ἀῤῥήτου
μεγέϑους. Theodoret. heret. fab. I. c. 10.
If the Caianians, attacked by Tertullian in
his work, “de Baptismo,” were identical
with the Gnostic Cainites, with whom they
are sometimes confounded, these last must
also be placed in the same class, which
would agree with their general tendency.
But the reasons alleged by those Cafanians
against the necessity of outward baptism,
have no resemblance whatever to the wild,
fanatical spirit of the Cainites; and the
sect generally exhibits none of the “most c
peculiarities.
2 Adherents of Mark
Ν᾿ AMONG THE GNOSTICS. ATT
the kingdom of the Demiurge ; and pneumatic baptism, in the name of
the Christ from heaven united with Jesus, whereby the spiritual nature
attained to self-consciousness and to perfection, and entered into fellow-
ship with the Pleroma. The ceremony of baptism and the baptismal
formula probably differed with them, accordmg as the candidate
received the first or the second baptism, was received into the class of
psychical or into that of pneumatical Christians. The latter was prob-
ably accompanied with more pomp and parade than the former. Ac-
cording to the Gnostic idea, (see above,)—that the baptized and
redeemed pneumatic nature entered into a spiritual marriage (syzygy)
with its other half in the spiritual world, with the angel which with it
constituted one whole, —they celebrated baptism as a wedding, and
decorated the room where the ceremony took place, lke a bridal cham-
ber. One baptismal formula for the Pneumatics ran thus: ‘ In the
name which is hidden from all the divinities and powers, (of the De-
miurge,) the name of truth, which Jesus of Nazareth has put on in
the liight-zones of Christ, the living Christ, through the Holy Ghost, for
the redemption of the Angels,?— the name by which all things attain
to perfection.”’ The candidate then said; ‘‘ I am established and re-
deemed,?— I am redeemed in my soul from this world, and from all
that comes from it, by the name of Jehovah, who has redeemed the
soul of Jesus+ by the living Christ.”” The whole assembly then said,
‘** Peace (or salvation) to all on whom this name rests.” Next they
bestowed on the person baptized the sign of consecration to the priestly
office, by anointing with oil, customary also in the church, (see above ;)
but the oil in this case was a costly balsam; for the precious, far-
spreading fragrance was intended to be a symbol of that transcendent
bliss of the Pleroma which had been appointed for the redeemed. It is
among these Marcosians we first meet with the ceremony of extreme
unction. The dead were anointed with this balsam, mingled with water,
and a form of prayer was pronounced over them, to the end that the:
souls of the departed might be able to rise, free from the Demiurge
and all his powers, to their mother, the Sophia.® The Ophites also had
similar forms of adjuration for the departed. Τὸ the same sect belonged
too the well-known mystical table, (the διαγράμμα, which contained a
symbolic representation of their system.
The protestant, reforming tendency of Marcion shows itself also in
reference to the forms of worship. His simple, practical bent kept
1 The ἀλήϑεια, self-manifestation of the 5 Tren. lib. 1. c. 21. The practice of ex-
Bythos.
2 Eic λύτρωσιν ἀγγελικῆν. To the same
redemption, of which this spiritual nature,
as well as the angel belonging to it, must
partake, in order that both might be capa-
ble of entering into the Pleroma, which
neither could do separately, but only in mu-
tual union.
3 ᾿Εστέριγμαι καὶ λελύτρωμαι. See above,
on Horus.
51 suppose that in the above formula
τοῦ ᾿Ιησοῦ should be read instead of αὐτοῦ.
orcism at baptism was in accordance also
with the theory of the Gnostics respecting
the indwelling of the various πρεύματα
ὑλικά until redemption. Lxorcism (ὕδωρ
ἐξορκιζόμενον) occurs for the first time,
still earlier than in the North African
church, (see above,) in the Didascal. Ana-
tol. f. 800, col. I. D. It may have been
cited here, however, not as a peculiarly
Gnostic custom, but as belonging to the
Alexandrian church generally.
478 MANICHEANS.
him remote from that mysticism which delights in outward pomp and
show; but at the same time also from a proud, contemplative idealism.
His efforts, in this matter too, were aimed to restore the worship of
God to the primitive Christian form, and he attacked many of the new
regulations, as corruptions of that original simplicity. Thus he resisted
the practice, which was now for the first time becoming common, of
dividing the service into the two portions of the missa catechumenorum
and the missa fidelium; since he required that the catechumens should
share in all the privileges of their teachers,? and not be dismissed at
the beginning of the prayer introductory to the celebration of the
supper. He supposed the holy rite could not be profaned by their
presence.
It would indeed stand in contradiction with what has just been said,
if it is true, that Marcion was the author of the superstitious custom,
— founded on a mistaken interpretation of 1 Corinth. 15: 29, — of a
representative baptism of the living for catechumens who had died ;
but it is without any reason whatever, that the introduction of such
vicarious baptism is imputed to Marcion, to whose simple, evangelical
spirit such a superstition was altogether unsuited. If the practice had
become dominant among the Marcionites who in the fifth century had
spread themselves among the country population of Syria, yet we
should by no means be warranted to fer from the customs of such
ignorant and uncultivated men, who were-:hardly capable of com-
prehending the spirit of Marcion, that the practice was authorized by
himself.?
Il. Mani and the Manicheans.
Christianity had come forth victorious out of the conflict with that re-
action of the fundamental principle of the qld world, which we have
contemplated in the Gnostic sects. Christian Theism had vanquished
Oriental Dualism. Gnosticism had accomplished its destined work. It
had aroused men’s minds to a self-active appropriation and digestion of
Christian truth, brought to clearer consciousness the peculiar essence
of Christianity, and the subject-matter of its principal doctrines. After
Gnosticism had entered thus deeply into the progressive movement of
Christian doctrine and theology, it retired into the back-ground; it
endured only in its subsequent influences ; but it was not till a later
period that these received their greater significancy as reactions against
the catholic, or Jewish-Christian element still further developed.
When, however, the period of Gnosticism had already passed, a new
1Jn all probability Tertullian had in
view particularly the Marcionites, when he
says of the heretics, (Preescript. ὁ. 41 :)
Simplicitatem volunt esse prostrationem dis-
ciplin, cujus penes nos curam lenocinium
vocant.
2 To this point, Marcion, by his forced
interpretation, applied the passage in Gal.
6: 6. See vol. I. p. 328.
3 Tertullian (de res. carnis c. 48, and adv.
Marcion, 1. V.c. 10) by no means so ex-
presses himself, as if such a substitutive
baptism was anywhere practised in his own
time, but he only supposes the possibility
that such a custom existed in the time of
the apostle, and that the latter spoke in
reference to it; and in the latter place, he
considers in fact another explanation of
1 Cor. 15: 29, as the more probable one
As to Chrysostom’s remarks on this pas-
sage, they can apply only to many of the
ignorant Marcionites of his own time, but in
no wise to Marcion himself, and the older
Marcionites.
MANICHEANS. 479
attempt was made by the Persian Mani or Manes, towards the close of
the third century, to blend together Christianity and the religions of
ancient Asia. Such attempts were called forth by the imner relation
of Christianity to those ancient religions; for the facts of which the
gospel witnesses — redemption, the union of God with humanity —-
answer to a fundamental want of the religious nature, which powerfully
revealed itself in those old religions, and anticipated, in fantastic
caprice, that which was destined to be given, in the fulness of the
times, in the form of historical reality.!’ Superficial contemplation, or
contemplation too much chained down to the position of the ancient
world, might therefore, in comparing Christianity with those old reli-
gions, imagine that it had found again the same divine element, only
in a more multiform shape. But all becomes a different matter,
through the different notion, lying at bottom, of the Divine Being. of
his relation to the world, of the creation ;— since in those nature-reli-
gions, instead of the idea of the personal, living God, such as he de-
clares himself to be in revelation, the Pantheistic view predominates.
Hence the seeming resemblance must transform itself into an essential
difference ; and if those old religions, in consideration of such a sup-
posed relationship, were to be transported into Christianity, it could be
no otherwise effected, than by severing Christianity itself from its nat-
ural connection with the preparatory revelation of religion in Judaism,
and by fusing it with a Pantheistic nature-religion, transforming it into
an entirely different thing.
Manicheism differs from Gnosticism mainly in this respect, that in the
former, the element of old Oriental theosophy introduces itself to a far
greater extent into Christianity, appropriating it as a symbol for ideas
foreign to itself, so that the Christian terms often appear here only as
mere accidents. Moreover, in this system, which grew up in countries
whither no influence of Platonic philosophy and of Jewish theology had
penetrated, the Oriental theosophy could not become mixed up with
ideas which were derived from such sources. More especially we find
gleaming through the Manichean system, the Zoroastrian doctrines on
the conflict of Ormuzd and Ahriman, which we have already observed
in the Gnostic systems. It is not to be mistaken, that Mani made the
centre of the Parsic view of religion his point of departure; that he
-was for reconciling with one another, for fusing together in one, the
Zoroastrian and the Christian religions. But the remarks which have
been already made respecting the opposition in the whole spiritual ten-
dency between Gnosticism and the original Parsism,? is to be applied
to Manicheism also, and indeed is here still more strongly marked.
That leaning to a morose estrangement from the world, which 1s alto-
gether alien from the original Parsism, constitutes a characteristic dif-
ference between the latter and Manicheism. In Manichcism, we find
the aim to be perfection, the utmost possible estrangement from all that
pertains to the world; in Parsism, plastic influence on the world ; —
1 Tt is in such resemblances of the Chris- tullian thought he discovered the ingenia
tian element in the old religion, that Ter- diaboli quedam de divinis affectantis
2 See aboye, p. 376.
|
|
480 MANICHEANS.
and this practical opposition stands connected with the radical differ-
ence in the whole mode of looking at things. According to the origi--
nal Parsism, it is a pure creation, which proceeds from Ormuzd, into
which Ahriman introduces a disturbing, destroymg imfluence. Hence
the genuine champion in the service of Ormuzd has to combat this influ-
ence. According to the Manichean theory, an evil principle is at work
in the whole creation, which holds in bondage the elements springing
out of the kingdom of light. Deliverance from this bondage, so that
the liberated spirit may become once more united with its original foun-
tain, is therefore the highest end to be attained. Now it is true, that
to account for this radical difference, it might be deemed sufficient to
suppose that by a mixture of Parsism with Christianity, and especially
with Christianity apprehended after a one-sided, ascetic manner, the
character of Parsism itself must have undergone great alterations. It
may be conceived, that the commixture of two systems might have
given birth to a third, wearing in its general aspect, and in its details,
a type different from either. Yet there is a great deal im Manicheism,
—as, for example, the doctrine of metempsychosis, of a fettered soul
throughout the whole of nature; that reverence shown by the perfect
Manichean for all life in nature, which sprang out of his belief that
-he saw the same spirit of heavenly origin, more or less imprisoned and
confined, in all natural objects; the cautious fear, thence resulting, of
injuring even the leaf of a tree, — which witnesses of a striking affinity
of Manicheism with that religion, the most widely extended of all in
Asia, which, through its institutions akin to the monasticism of the mid-
dle ages, and through the feelings of gentleness and of self-sacrificing
benevolence which it excited, became to many tribes of people a means
of transition from the wildest barbarism to semi-civilization, — we mean
the Buddhaist religion.1 Add to this, that we are not merely led to
such a result by comparing the inner character of the two systems, but
that moreover there are quite distinct outward and historical indica-
tions, going to show that Mani attached himself to Buddhaism, and
visited countries where the Buddhaist missionaries and pilgrims had
already spread themselves.
Among the predecessors of Mani, if we may so consider one from
whose writings Mani is supposed to have largely drawn, Western tradi-
tion, which grew out of many misapprehended facts, names Buddas ;
and of him it is related, that he pretended to be born miraculously of a
virgin. Something similar occurs also in the tales relative to the birth
of Buddha who appeared in humanity. Later Manicheans taught ex-
pressly, that Mani, Buddas, Zoroaster, Christ, and the Sun are the
same ;*—— and this view agrees entirely with the Buddhaist doctrine,
1 In the first edition of my Church His- folded this relationship, and thus opened ἃ.
tory, I had alluded only in a cursory way new path for the genetic exposition of Man-
to the relationship of Manicheism and_icheism.
Buddhaism; it is the great merit of Dr. 2 Τὸν Ζαράδαν καὶ Βουδᾶν καὶ τὸν Xpio-
Baur, constituting an epoch in this depart- τὸν καὶ τὸν Μανιχαῖον καὶ τὸν ἥλιον ἕνα
ment of history, that in his work on the καὶ τὸν αὐτὸν εἶναι. See Jacob. Tollii
Manichean system of religion, (Ziibingen, insignia itinerarii Italici. Traject. 1696.
1831,) he has more fully exhibited and un- Pag. 134.
MANICHEANS. 481
that Buddha presented himself on earth at different times, under dif-
ferent forms of human existence, true or apparent shapes, and in all
these different forms of manifestation, announced the same religion.
Mani is said, moreover, to have retired to a cave in the province of
Turkistan, from whence he came forth with the pretension of having
received special revelations. Now sacred grottos occupied an import-
ant place among the holy things of the Buddha religion; and in mod-
ern times such monuments of Buddhaism have been discovered in the
districts bordering on Persia and Bactria.}
It is in the highest degree probable, that in the public appearances
of Mani, two epochs are to be distinguished, — and this view of the
matter is also confirmed by indications in the historical notices, — the
first, when his aim was simply to reconcile and blend together Parsism
and Christianity ; the second, after he had become acquainted in his
travels with Buddhaism, from which a new light arose within him, and
he supposed that he first attained, from this new position, to a better
understanding of the truth in all the three religions. Dualism, with
him, must now gradually pass over more completely into pantheistic
Monoism. For we cannot help considering Buddhaism, although the
fact has been denied by many in modern times, as one phase of the
appearance of Pantheism ; since indeed we must consider as such every
doctrine which does not recognize God as a self-conscious, free causal-
ity of existence, acting with a view to certain purposes or ends. The
Dualism of the Buddha system is of altogether another kind from that
of-the Parsic. It is not a positive kingdom of evil that stands opposed
to the kingdom of good, and with a corrupting influence mixes into its
creation ; but by Dualism here nothing else is expressed, than that the
Divine Being is under the necessity of passing out of itself, and over
into manifestation ; — and the problem then is, how to return back from
this manifestation into pure bemg, The same may be said of this form
of Dualism, in its connection with the pantheistic element, as was said
of the apparent Neo-Platonic Dualism, described in a former part of
this work. There are two factors, the Spirit-God, and nature, or mat-
ter. When the Spirit passes out from itself into nature, then springs
into existence the phenomenal world, the world of appearance, of San-
sara—the Maia. The Spirit becomes ever more coagulated in nature,
more completely estranged from itself, even to entire unconsciousness.
In man, it returns back through various stages of development and
purification once more to itself; till, wholly released from the bonds of
natural force, after being stripped of all limited, individual existence,
it becomes conscious of its oneness with the primal Spirit, from which
all life has flowed, and passes over into the same. ‘This is becoming
Nirwana. ‘The antithesis is obvious — the Spirit, in its estrangement
from itself, the world of manifestation or of appearance, (Sansara,
Maia;) and the pure being of the Spirit, (the Nirwana.) It is a
1 See the work of C. Ritter. Die Stu- Kolosse von Bamivan. Berlin, 1838. 8
pa’s, oder die architektonischen Denkmale 80, u. ἃ. f.
der indo-baktrischen K6nigsstrasse und die
VOL. I. 41
482 MANICHEANS.
characteristic mark of the Buddhaist mode of contemplation, and an
evidence of the Monoism lying at the root of this Dualism, when we
find it described as the highest stage of perfection, that the Sansara
and the Nirwana become one for consciousness ; the Spirit is no longer
affected at all by the appearance, can energize freely in connection with
it, and amidst the world of appearance, recognizing this as appearance
and in its necessity, holds fast only the pure being—the entire oneness
of the world on this side, and the world beyond time.!. Thus Buddha
lets himself down to the world of Sansara for the redemption of the
souls therein confined, and both are one to him.
Mani adopted the Zoroastrian Dualism, in all cases where he repre-
sented his ideas in images of sense; but he introduced into these sym-
bols Buddhaist notions. Now we meet with diverse forms of represen-
tation of the Manichean system — those in which the Parsic drapery
appears the more prominent, — where an active kingdom of evil is ex-
hibited in its attacks on the kmgdom of light; and those which seem to
have more of a Grecian coloring, and in which the great point of dis-
cussion is the opposition between God and matter.2 We might indeed
suppose, that the latter mode of representation sprung from a transfer
of Mani’s doctrines into the Hellenic form of culture ; but if we bear in
,mind the Buddhaistie principles into which Mani fused the Zoroastrian
ideas, we shall rather perceive. here the original form of apprehension,
answering to the Buddha system; and Mani himself may perhaps have
expressed himself differently, according as he preferred to employ con-
ceptions and forms of the understanding, after the manner of Buddhaism,
or chose the Parsic mode of representation by means of symbols.
If we consider the two systems of religion which Mani placed in
combination with Christianity, in their relation to the latter, the whole
matter will shape itself as follows. The religion of Zoroaster presents,
in the doctrine concerning the conflict between the kingdoms of good
and of evil, concerning the mission of the servants of Ormuzd to exert
a plastic influence on the world, and thus to counteract the destructive
influence of Ahriman—zin the doctrine concernmg the final victory
awaiting the kingdom of light, and the regeneration of the world, which
is to purify it from all disorders, and concerning the resurrection, a
point of coalescence and union with Christianity. Moreover, the cen-
1 This difference of Sansara and Nir-
wana is a main position of Buddhaistic
wisdom; see Schmidt’s Essays on the fun-
damental doctrines of Buddhaism, in the
Memoirs of the Petersburg Academy of
Sciences, vol. I. 1832, p. 223 and 235, —
also, the History of the Eastern Moguls,
written from the Buddhaistic point of view,
with a German translation by Schmidt,
published at Petersburg in 1829, where on
page 271 it is said of a wise man, that “he
followed the doctrine of the nothingness of
all things, and attained to the knowledge
that there is nothing terrible either in San-
sara or Nirwana.” We may here compare
the language of Jacob Behman, which, it
must be allowed, admits of being under-
stood also in another sense than that of the
pantheistic Buddhaism:—“ He to whom
eternity is as time, and time as eternity, is
delivered from all strife.” I have taken for
the basis of my exhibition of Buddhaist
doctrines, particularly the essays of Schmidt
just referred to, and those which are found
in the same collection. of Memoirs for the
year 1834, vol. II.
2 So says Alexander of Lycopolis, in his
work against the Manicheans, in Combefis.
Greecorum patrum auctarium novissimum.
Paris, 1672, P. II. f.4, where he says of
Mani: ἀρχὰς ἐτίϑετο Gedy καὶ ὕλην.
MANICHEANS. 483
tral idea of Christianity, the idea of redemption generally, might per-
haps lend itself to the here pre-supposed need of purification ; but the
more determinate apprehension of the notion of redemption, the doc-
trine of a personal, historical Redeemer, was something foreign to this
system. On the other hand, Buddhaism testifies most distinctly to the
consciousness of the need of a redemption, and that too of a redemption
brought about through a true entrance of the divine essence into the
forms of human nature — the incarnation of the Buddha. But this re-
semblance between Christian and Buddhaistic ideas is still only an ap-
parent one ; since the Christian notion of the redemption and of the
Redeemer is conditioned by the Christian notion of that from which
man is to be redeemed, the notion of sin, and of Him who is the su-
preme causality of the redemption, of God. But the Christian notion
of sin, which is grounded on the freedom of the creature, is foreign to
Buddhaism. ‘The world of appearance, the Sansara, is, in so far as it
holds the spirit in oppression and confinement, the cause of all evil.
Hence the tempter, in the sense of Buddhaism, who answers to Satan
in the Christian representation, is not an intelligence fallen from his al-
legiance to God, nor even, as in the Parsic system, an originally evil
principle ; but he is the king of the Shimnus, (Demons,) standing at
the head of the third world, which is the world of sensual pleasures and
of changeable forms, who, for the purpose of keeping the souls confined
in the Sansara, of preventing them from rising to the Nirwana, charms
and deceives them with many a delusive show ;— nature personified,
which seeks to retain everything within her enchanted circle, whose en-
ticements the spirit must resist in order to attain to freedom. Redemp-
tion is therefore the release of the soul from the bonds of Sansara, from
the circle through which the spirits fettered in the bonds of nature
must wander, — the metempsychosis, the spirit’s return to itself. The
final end is the becoming Nirwana. That whereby this end is reached,
is coming to the knowledge of the essence of the spirit, and of the
world of appearance. And as Buddhaism knows no personal God, but
substitutes in place of him the general notion of spirit; it follows that
it could have nothing to say on the subject of God becorhing man in a
determinate person, — of a redemption accomplished by this person once
for all; but a multitude of Buddha manifestations are supposed, which
found the beginnings of the different periods in the history of the world ;
and every man, by freeing himself from the bonds of the Sansara, is
capable of raising himself finally to the dignity of a Buddha; for in all
there existed in fact one and the same spirit. In Mani’s doctrine con-
cerning Christ, and concerning the electis, we shall find much which is
in aifinity with these views, only mixed up with Parsic and Christian
ideas.
In its determination of the ultimate end to which the conflict of the
kingdom of light with the kingdom of darkness is to lead, Parsism ap-
proaches nearer to Christianity than Buddhaism ; for what the latter
considers as the ultimate end of the redemptive manifestations of
Buddha is, to deprive nature of spirit, and after the spirit shall have
gathered to itself every kindred element held bound under the fetters
484 MANI’S LIFE
of Sansara, its return to the original unity of the universal spirit. We
shall see how Mani’s doctrine agrees in this respect more with Buddha-
ism than with Parsism. Taking the whole together, we cannot deny,
that although Buddhaism comprises in itself, besides the notion of re-
demption, insulated practical elements, such as the doctrine of self-sac-
rificing love, self-denial, which might properly be received into a Chris-
tian connection, yet im the main Parsism has more that is in affinity
with Christianity than Buddhaism, and that the predominant spirit of
speculative Buddhaism might easily exert an imfluence on the Christian
doctrines brought in connection with it of such sort, as to deprive them |
of their true Christian substantiality ;—-a remark which we shall find
corroborated by a closer examination of Manicheism.
When we have convinced ourselves of the fact, that an outward and
inner connection exists between Manicheism and Buddhaism, the result
we have arrived at may also have some tendency to modify our views
respecting the relation of several Gnostic systems to Buddhaism. It
requires, no doubt, especial caution to avoid falling into the error of
tracmg to such outward influences, what may be satisfactorily and suffi-
ciently explained from inward similarity of spirit.! Analogies of this
sort, having their origin in the mind, independent of outward influences,
will be found often recurring in the historical development of Christian-
ity, wherever corruptions of purely Christian truth have sprung up ; —
these will betray themselves precisely in this, that the earlier stages of
religious development became once more dispersedly (sporadically) in-
termingled and confounded; and to this category will belong also the
pantheistic element of Buddhaism.? But now if we find in Manicheism
so much that is in affinity with the earlier Gnostic systems, and the
derivation of the former from the influence of Buddhaism is a point set-
tled on historical grounds, the question may arise, perhaps, whether we
have not to suppose a common source, from which those earlier systems
drew as well as this last ?®
Let us now first cast a glance at the early education of Mani. Re-
lating to his history, we possess two distinct sources of information, which
agree in only a few particulars, while in all other respects they are in
direct contradiction to each other, the Geek and the Oriental sources.
The account of Cyril of Jerusalem, of Epiphanius, of the ecclesiastical
historians in the fourth and fifth centuries, all point to one common
1 Thus Schmidt, in his Essay on the af- story occurring in the life of St. Francis,
finity of gnostico-theosophie doctrines with
the religious systems of the East, especial-
ly Buddhaism, (Leipsic, 1828,) has evident-
ly gone too far in this.
2 When, in the legends of Buddhaism, it
is related of a Buddha, that he addressed
himself to fishes and birds, and that these
devoutly listened to him, and thus the way
was prepared for the emancipation of the
Spirit imprisoned in these creatures from
the bonds of Sansara, the story is entirely
consistent with the position held by this
pantheistic, religious consciousness. But,
ou the other hand, when we find a similar
we see in this latter case, how nearly the
aberration of an eccentric religious feeling
may graze on a foreign position, which re-
fuses to enter into the connection of Chris-
tian consciousness.
8 For example, the gradual de-spiritual-
wzing of the world in the Ophitic system ;
the completely Buddhaist idea, that he who
has attained to the Nirwana in the midst of
the Sansara, is lord over the Sansara, can
perform all miracles; that he is even supe~
rior to the mundane deities, who are beings
still subject to change, in Carpocratianism
———r ee ee, ee
᾿
δὲ εἰ ee ee
ςΔτἃ΄' “αἰ
AND EDUCATION. 485
source ;!— the Acts of a disputation, said to have been held with
Mani, by Archelaus, bishop of Cascar.* But those Acts have come
down to us, to say the Jeast, in a very questionable shape. With the
exception of some few fragments, which have been, preserved in the
Greek, they appear only in a Latin translation from the Greek document,
and this Greek work is perhaps nothing more than an unfaithful version
from the Syriac. These Acts manifestly contain a disconnected story,
savoring in no small degree of the romantic. Although there is some
truth lying at bottom —as we must allow there is much in the represen-
tation of the doctrines which wears the appearance of truth, and 1s
confirmed also by its agreement with other representations, — yet the
Greek author seems, from ignorance of Eastern languages and cus-
toms, to have introduced a great deal that is untrue, by bringing i
and confounding together discordant stories, to the neglect of all criti-
cism, and with an unsparing indulgence of exaggeration.* How difficult
it was for a Greek to transport himself out of his own world, and to
form any just conception of national peculiarities wholly foreign to his
own, is what every one knows.
In some few pomts, we may, even with such scanty means as we
possess for deciphering this historical enigma, come upon the trace of
the misapprehended facts lying at the bottom of these stories. The
first orig of the Manichean doctrines is to be derived from a Saracen
merchant, Scythianus by name, who, it is said, by many journeys to Asia,
Egypt and Greece, accumulated a large fortune, and at the same time
acquired an intimate knowledge of the Oriental and of the Greek phi-
losophies. This Scythianus lived not far from the times of the apostles
—a statement indeed which the story itself proves is an anachronism ;
for otherwise Mani would have lived but a few generations after the
same period. ‘The heir and disciple of Scythianus is said to have been
a certain Terebinth, who afterwards called himself Buddas. We have
already stated what, without any question, is to be understood here by
the name Buddas.° Now if it is clear, that by Buddas we are not to un-
1 Eusebius, who wrote before this source
of information became known, could say
nothing relative to Mani’s personal history.
2 If there is no mistake here in the name,
— if it was not rather Carrhe, ( 137,) in
Mesopotamia, — according to what we must
allow to be a. very uncertain conjecture.
3 Jerome reports, (de vit. illustr. 72,) that
these Acts were written originally in Syriac ;
but the first oriental author who shows any Ὁ
acquaintance with these Acts was a church-
teacher, who wrote about the vear 978, Sev-
erus, bishop of Asmonina in Egypt. See
Renaud ‘ist. Patriarch. Alex. p. 40. His
account duters, however, in many respects,
from the revision of the Acts which has
come down to us. It is indeed much more
simple; a fact which seems to show that
his copy of the Acts was not the same with
ours, but another of the same kind; and
perhaps the original from which ours was
derived. Heraclian, bishop of Chalcedon,
41*
says, (Photius, cod. 95.) that a certain He-
gemonius was the compiler of those Gre-
cian Acts.
4 Beausobre properly rejected the West-
er narratives, whose want of authenticity
he satisfactorily proved, and confined him-
self wholly to the Oriental. The objections
urged by Mosheim against this course, pos-
sess but little force.
5Tt has been justly observed, that the
Greek name Τερεβίνϑος is perhaps only a
translation of the Chaldee ἐς 13, by which
in the Targums the Hebrew word TON is
rendered, which the Alexandrians translate
Τερεβίνϑος. Another hypothesis has been
started by Ritter, in the work above referred
to, p. 29, viz. that the Grecized name Tere-
binthos is based on a predicate of Buddha,
originating in those countries where Mani
became acquainted with Buddhaism, —
Tere-Hintu, lord of the Hindoos. It is a
point on which nothing certain can be 88.
486 MANI’S LIFE
derstand any historical person, the name Scythian also, as the designa-
tion of a historical individual, becomes thereby suspicious. It is very
natural to take it as simply a geographical name, having reference to
those populations among which Buddhaism first extended itself. Mean-
while we venture not, however, to express a decided opinion on the
point, as letters of Mani, addressed to a person of this name, are cited.
The Oriental accounts possess a great deal more internal coherence
and consistency. They are found, it is true, in historians of much
more recent date than the Grecian sources; but the Oriental writers
have undoubtedly made use of older records, in availing themselves of
which, they were not liable to fall into the same errors with the Greeks.?
To understand the appearance of such a man as Mani, we must fig-
ure to ourselves the circumstances and relations under which he was
educated. By birth he was a Persian; but it may be a question,
whether the name of the country should be understood here in the
stricter sense, or whether it refers only to some province belonging to
the great Persian empire. In favor of the latter, might be adduced
the fact that Mani composed his works in the Syriac language ; whence
we might infer that he was a native of one of those provinces of the Per-
sian empire, where Syriac was the vernacular tongue. This fact, how-
ever, byitself, proves nothing ; for even without this supposition, it would
easily admit of being explained, that as the Syriac, through the inti-
mate connection of the Persian Christians with the Syrian church,
might even thus early have become the language of books among the Per-
sian theologians, — so Mani may have been induced to employ this lan-
guage, (although it was not his native tongue,) hoping by this means to
promote the more general introduction of his doctrines into other coun-
tries. It is said, that he sprang from a family of the Magians, (the
Persian sacerdotal caste ;) that at the age of manhood he passed over
to Christianity, and became presbyter of a church in Ehvaz or Ahvaz,
principal city of the Persian province Huzitis ;—-whatever may be the
accuracy of these statements. At anyrate, it 1s quite probable that
Mani was educated in the religion of Zoroaster, and embraced Christi-
anity at some later period of life. τ
We are not sufficiently informed with regard to his early history to
be able to determine whether, in the outset, he abandoned the religion
of his fathers and embraced Christianity from honest conviction, and
afterwards, repelled by the form in’which the latter was presented in
the church doctrine, was led to revive in his soul the fundamental ideas
of his earlier religious mode of thinking, and now became satisfied that
by combining it with these, he first placed Christianity in the true and
proper light; or whether he had been attracted from the first only by
the affinity of Christianity with many Persian ideas, without noting the
certained. Possibly Terebinth may have
been a historical person, to whom many
things ascribed to Buddha had been trans-
ferred.
1 Vid. Fabricii bibl. Greece. vol. VII. ἢ
316.
2 The oriental narratives in Herbelot’s
Bibliotheque Orientale, sub v. Mani, —in
the Persian historian Mirkhond’s History
of the Sassanides, cited in Silvestre de Sacy
Mémoires sur diverses antiquités de la Perse.
Paris, 1793. In Abulpharag. and Pococke
Specimen hist. Arab.
AND EDUCATION. 487
essential difference between resembling ideas, according to their pecu-
liar mode of apprehension and position in Christianity and in the Per-
sian religion ; so that from the beginning he had only been constructing
for himself a religious system of his own, by the fusion together of Per-
sian and Christian elements.
By the reéstablishment of the ancient Persian empire, after the ex-
pulsion of the Parthians, the effort had been called forth among the
Persians, to restore the ancient religion of their fathers, purified from
foreign elements, to its original splendor. The consequence was, that
disputes arose on the question, what was to be considered the pure doc-
trine of Zoroaster; and particularly on several points which had been
left undecided by the previous religious tradition, as for example,
whether a primal essence was to be supposed, exalted above the two
conflicting principles. Councils were held for the purpose of imvesti-
gating the questions in dispute; and pretended prophets arose, who
were for settling every difficulty by divine inspiration! The religion
of Zoroaster, which now acquired fresh power, and set itself to oppose
all the foreign religions that had. before been tolerated, was brought
into collision also with Christianity, which had been suffered to make
progress without disturbance under the Parthian government. Under
such circumstances, the thought might shape itself, in a man of a lively
and profound mind, like Mani, that he was called to be the author of
such a reformation of Christianity, now corrupted by the intermixture
of Judaism, as should sever it from its connection with the latter, and
-bring it into more intimate union with ideas of the Zoroastrian religion.
Mani — as was afterwards done by Mohammed — declared himself to
be the Paraclete, promised by Christ.2 By this he in nowise under-
stood the Holy Ghost, but a human person, an enlightened teacher
promised by Christ, who was to bring out still more distinctly the reli-
gion revealed by him, in his own spirit, purify it from the corruptions
of Ahriman, especially from those which had sprung from the inter-
mingling of Judaism, and lead the faithful to the consciousness of those
truths which men in the earlier times were not yet in a condition to
understand. By him that perfect knowledge should be given, of which
Paul had also spoken as a knowledge reserved for some future period,
1 Cor. 13: 10.3 Accordingly Mani could denominate himself at one
and the same time the promised Paraclete and the apostle of Christ ;
as indeed he began the letter in which he designed to unfold the fun-
damental doctrines of his religious system (the epistola fundamenti,
which was so famous among the Manicheans) with the following words:
** Mani, called to be an apostle of Jesus Christ, through the election of
God the Father. These are the words of salvation from the eternal
and living fountain.” 4
He first made his appearance, with these pretensions, near the close
1See Hyde hist. relig. vet. Pers. p. 276. antiq. ed. Basnage and Galland. bibl. patr.
Mémoires sur diverses antiquités dela Perse T. V. f. 326.
par S. de Sacy, p. 42. 8 See Acta cum Felice Manicheo, lib. 1,
2 See Mirkhond in Sacy, p. 204.— Tit. ¢.9. Opp. Augustini, T. VIII.
Bostr. c. Manich. lib. 111. in Canisii lect. 4 Augustin. c. epist. fundamenti, c. 5
488 MANICHEAN SYSTEM.
of the reign of the Persian king Shapur I., (Sapor,) about 270. To.
an ardent, profound mind, and lively imagination, he united various
knowledge, and practical skill in the arts, of which he availed himself
for the purpose of diffusing his doctrmes. As a mathematician and
astronomer, he is said to have been distinguished among his country-
men;! the fame of his talents as a painter lasted for a long time in
Persia. In the outset, he succeeded in conciliating the favor of that
prince ; but when his heretical doctrines, as they were regarded by
the Magians, came to be known, he was obliged, —if any confidence
can be placed in the later legends, and the hypothesis was not invented
simply to account for the different portions of which his doctrine is con-
stituted, — to seek safety from persecution by flight. He now made
distant journeys to India, and even to China; and tarried for a con-
siderable time in the province of Turkistan. At all events, an impor-
tant effect in the shapimg of his system is to be ascribed to his longer
residence in the last-mentioned province, where he became acquainted
with Buddhaism; and this acquired so great an influence on his mind,
that a peculiar stamp was thereby given to his whole mode of thinking
and a wider range to his aims, which now embraced in their scope the
blending together of all the three religions into one. From one of the
grottos consecrated to Buddhaism, he issued forth, with those symbolic
pictures which were designed to represent, for immediate intuition, the
doctrines made known to him, as he pretended, in his retirement, by
divine revelations. These emblems were long preserved in lively re-
membrance among the Persians, woe the name of Ertenki-Mani.
After the death of Sapor, in 27 2, Mani returned to Persia, where
he was well received, together w ΤῊ his pictures, by Hormuz, (Hormis-
das,) Sapor’s successor. The latter assigned to him, as a safe place
of residence, the castle of Deskereh at Chusistan in Susiana. But
this prince, after a reign of less than two complete years, was suc-
ceeded by Behram, (Varanes.) He also appeared at first favorably
disposed ‘towards Mani; but perhaps only in semblance, and with a
view to lull him and his followers into security. He caused a disputa-
tion to be held betwixt Mani and the Magians, of which the result was,
that Mani was pronounced a heretic. Refusing to recant, he was flayed
alive,” and his skin stuffed and hung before the gates of the city Djon-
dishapur in 277,° to terrify his followers.
Let us now proceed to unfold the Buddhaist-Zoroastrian-Christian sys-
tem of doctrines taught by Mani.
It is still a disputed question, whether, in the doctrine of Zoroaster,
absolute Dualism is the starting-point, and the hypothesis of a common
principle of derivation lying at the ground of both Ormuzd and Abhri-
man — time without end and without beginning, the Zervan Acarene,
1 Who, however, possessed no great know- 2A cruel mode of punishment, which
ledge, doubtless, in these sciences. Yet it is was doubtless resorted to in the East.
highiy probable that a good deal in his sys- 3 The chronology in this case is, it must
tem stood closely connected, even when di- be admitted, quite uncertain.
vested of its mythical dress, with a partial
and defective knowledge of these sciences.
MANICHEAN SYSTEM. 489
answering to the Gnostic αἰὼν, βῦϑος, to the Neo-Platonic 6» — sprang
first out of a speculative need of reducing the duality to a higher unity ;
or whether the recognition of such an original unity was the original
principle, and this had only become suppressed in conscious thought
through the predominant dualistic form of the religion as a practical
system of living. From the proclamation, still extant,! of the Persian
general and Grand-vizier Mihr Nerseh, after his invasion of Armenia,
in 450, it is clear, that the acknowledgment of a primal essence, which
existed before the antithesis pronounced in the creation, was reckoned
to the Persian orthodoxy. We find here a view of the matter which is
akin to that Gnostic scheme that reduced the Dualism to a Monoism,?
and supposed the antithesis of good and evil as something necessary in
the evolution of life from God. The first germ of evil is here derived
from the supreme essence, from the great god Zervan himself. This is
the Perhaps, which God spake, the principle of doubt, of uncertainty,
which must some time make its appearance, before everything could
form itself out into a certain and stable existence.2 The opposite doc-
trine of an absolute Dualism, was maintained by the Maguszeian sect,*
and the latter was the scheme followed by Mani. Thus he was able
to transfer the Persian Dualism into the Buddhaist opposition of spirit
and matter.
He supposed accordingly two principles, absolutely opposed to each
other, with their opposite creations; on the one side God, the original
good, from whom nothing but good can proceed, from whom all destruc-
tion, punishment, corruption is alien,—the primal light, from whom
pure light radiates ; — on the other side, original evil, which can work
only by destroying, decomposing, — whose essence is wild, self-conflict-
ing uproar ; matter, darkness, out of which flow powers of an altogether
corresponding nature, — a world full of smoke and vapor, and at the
same time full of fire that burns only without shining. These two king-
doms subsisted at first wholly separate from one another. The Su-
preme God was the king of the empire of light, as the original source
of an emanation-world in affinity with himself; and most nearly con-
nected with him were these Aons, the channels for the diffusion of
light from that primal light, to whom, as representatives of the Supreme
God, was transferred his own name ; who therefore might be styled dei-
ties, without infraction of the honor due to the primal essence alone.?
In the letter in which Mani exhibited the fundamental doctrines of his
1 First communicated by St. Martin in
his Mémoires historiques et géographiques
sur ?Arménie. Paris, 1819. T. II. p. 472,
——but more fully, after another recension,
in the history of the religious wars between
Armenia and Persia, composed by the Ar-
menian bishop, Eliszeus, and translated from
the Armenian into English by Prof. New-
man. London, 1830. P. 11, ff.
2 See above, p. 375.
8 This remarkable view is expressed in
the following language. “Before heaven
or earth existed, the great god Zervan
prayed a thousand years, and spake: ‘ Was
I perhaps to obtain a son, Vormist, (Or-
muzd,) who will create heaven and earth ?’
and he begat two in his body, one by vir-
tue of his prayer, the other, because he
said perhaps.” The first was Ahriman,
the son of doubt, the principle, which
makes everything a question. We here
perceive the fountain-head of later Chris-
tian sects, in which Satan was designated
as the first-born.
4 See Shahristani, in Hyde, 1. c. p. 295.
5 Like the Amshaspands, Ized of the
Parsian religion.
490 MANICHEAN SYSTEM.
religion,! he thus describes this Supreme God enthroned in his kngdom
of light:? “ Over the kingdom of light, ruled God the Father, eternal
in his sacred race, glorious in his might, the truth by his very essence,
ever blessed in his own eternal being, who bears within him wisdom
and the consciousness of his life, with which he embraces the twelve
members of his light, that is, the transcendent riches of his own king-
dom. In each of his members are hid countless, immeasurable riches.
But the Father himself, glorious in his majesty, incomprehensible in his
greatness, has united with himself blessed and glorious A4dons, in num-
bers and greatness surpassing estimation, with whom this holy and most
glorious Father lives, — for in his exalted kingdom, no needy or feeble
being dwells. But his resplendent realms are so deeply grounded in
the blessed earth of light, that no power exists by which they could
ever be destroyed or shaken.”’? The powers of darkness were engaged
in wild conflict with one another, till in their blind struggle they ap-
proached so near the realms of light, that a glimmer penetrated to
them for the first time from that before unknown kmgdom. They now
forgot their mutual strifes, and attracted in spite of themselves by the
splendor of the light, combined with one another to penetrate ito the
kingdom of light, with a view to appropriate some of this light to them-
selves. There now seems to be something like inconsistency ἴῃ Mani,
when, after having ascribed to the empire of light an unshaken stabil-
ity, he proceeds to speak of a danger threatening it, which rendered
precautionary measures necessary, and could thus express himself: —
ἐς Πρ the Father of the most blessed light beholds a vast desolation
rising up from the darkness, and threatening his holy Adons, unless he
opposed to it an extraordinary dive power,’ at once to conquer and
destroy the race of darkness — so that, after its destruction, the inhab-
itants of the light might enjoy tranquillity.”"® Simplicius and Evodius
have in fact here accused him of self-contradiction ; — but this charge
applies rather to the mythical or symbolic form of representation, than
to the train of thought which is therein embodied. _The fundamental
thought with Mani, as with the Gnostics, is this, — that the blind force
of nature, which resists the godlike element, tamed and subdued by
intermingling with it, should finally be rendered altogether powerless.
And accordingly Mani conveys the Zoroastrian theory over mto the
Buddhaist, — that nature, in degrading, disintegrating and fettermg
the spirit, was to brmg about its own dissolution, and the final result
1 The epistola fundamenti. direct contradiction with the dualistic theo-
2 Augustin. contra epist. fundamenti,
ec. 13.
8 This earth of light, Mani did not con-
ceive to be any thing distinct from the su-
preme, primal essence, but all to be simply
a shaping of the one divine light-essence.
* It is easy to perceive the idea lying at
bottom, —that the evil principle is in con-
flict with itself, and becomes one only in
struggling against the good; such is the
attractive power which the good exerts on
evil itself; — an idea, it must be allowed, in
ry of an absolute evil.
5 Aliquod nimium ac preeclarum et vir-
tute potens nomen. In the Zoroastrian
system, also, the Amshaspands are repre-
sented as armed champions for the king-
dom of light.
6 The epistola fundamenti, in the work
de fide contra Manichzos, ec. 11, of which
Evodius, bishop of Uzala in Numidia, was
perhaps the author,—to be found in the ,
Appendix to the 8th vol. of the Benedictine
edition of St. Augustin.
MANICHEAN SYSTEM. 491
would be that of the unspiritualized nature, nothing would be left be-
hind but the dead residuum, and this would fall a prey to utter annihi-
lation.! To this last result of all, according to the Buddhaistic view of
the world, Mani indeed, in his doctrine of final causes, did not proceed,
as we shall see.
The ruler over the kingdom of light, in order to guard its boundaries,
caused to emanate from himself the Aon, Mother of life The name
of this Genius denotes that it stands for the highest mundane soul, —
that the divine life was now to separate itself from the unity of the light-
kingdom, and in the conflict with the ungodlike element, resolve itself
into individual existences. The mother of life, like the ἄνω σοφία of the
Valentinian system, could not as yet be affected by the kingdom of
darkness. Here too we find the distinction between the higher mun-
dane soul belonging to the kingdom of light, and a reflection of it,
which mixes itself with the kingdom of darkness.? This mother of life
generates the primutive man, with a view to oppose him to the powers
of darkness — the same idea of the dignity of man’s nature, which we
observed before among the Gnostics.£ The primitive man, in conjunc-
tion with the five pure elements, fire, light, air, water and earth, enters
into the conflict. Here we recognize again the forms of intuition bor-
rowed from Parsism— reverence towards an originally pure nature,
which had only been corrupted by the interference of Ahriman. More-
over, according to the Parsian doctrine, a life which had flowed out
from the kingdom of light is acknowledged to exist im the original ele-
ments. ‘They were summoned to act as fellow-combatants against Ahri-
man’s destroying influences, by means of their fructifymg, life-giving
power. But this would be an element at variance with the Buddhaistic
view of nature; and we cannot fail to perceive in it the preponderant
influence of the Zoroastrian spirit. Yet this is modified in Mani by the
circumstance that matter does not mean the elements of actual nature,
but the elements of a higher world, that which is itself but one radia-
tion and form of the manifestation of the divine essence.? When Mani
opposes to the five pure elements of the kingdom of light the five ele-
ments of the kingdom of darkness, the only question is, whether the
idea, that evil is ever the distorted image and counterfeit of the good,
or the idea that from the kingdom of light forms must go forth to the
conflict with the kingdom of darkness, which seem like those of the
latter, —is the fundamental one.
At all events, it was necessary to
explain, how visible nature arose out of the event that matter, or the
1See Schmidt’s Essay on the thousand
Buddhas. See the Memoirs of the St. Pe-
tersburg Academy. 1834. Vol. II. p. 66.
2 Μήτηρ τῆς ζωῆς.
ὃ Simplicius (in Epictet. f. 187, ed. Sal-
mas.) aptly describes the Manichean doc-
trine in this respect: Οὔτε τὸ πρῶτον dya-
ϑὸν κακώνεσϑαι λέγουσιν, οὔτε τὰ ἄλλα
ἀγαϑὰ τὰ προσεχῶς αὐτῷ συνόντα, τὴν μη-
τέρα τῆς ζωῆς καὶ τὸν δημιουργὸν (the ζῶν
πνεῦμα) καὶ τοὺς ἐκεῖ αἰῶνας.
* The πρῶτος ἄνϑρωπος of Mani may be
compared with the προὼν ἄνϑρωπος of the
Valentinians, the Adam Kadmon, and es-
pecially the Kajomorts of the Zendavista,
respecting whom many similar things are
there said. It is quite probable that Mani
adopted this Parsian idea into his system ;
and we shall see hereafter, how he might
find something of a kindred nature even on
this side in Buddhaism.
5 Quinque elementa nihil. alind quam
substantia Dei. Augustin. contra Faus-
tum, |. XI. ¢. 3.
492 MANICHEAN SYSTEM.
kingdom of darkness, had seized upon certain divine essences or ele-
ments of the spiritual substances ; and this corresponds entirely with the
Buddhaistic scheme.
But the primitive man is worsted in the conflict ; he is in danger of
falling into the kingdom of darkness ; in this strait, he prays to the
ruler of the light-kingdom ; and the latter, to assist him, causes the living
spirit to emanate.! This Spirit raises him up once more to the king-
dom of light; but meanwhile the powers of darkness had succeeded in
swallowing a part of the armor of the first man, and part of his light
essence ; which is the mundane soul, now mixed with matter. Here
again we perceive the affinity of Mani’s ideas with those of the Gnos-
tics; for according to the latter, too, the κάτω σοφία was delivered, it is
true, by means of the Soter sent to her assistance, from the kingdom
of the Hyle ; but still a seed of the divine life had fallen down into
matter, and this must now go through a process of purification and de-
velopment. It must so come about, that by the magical power of the
divine life, of the light of the soul, or of the spirit, the wildly tumultuous
kingdom of darkness shall be tamed im spite of itself, and finally ren-
dered powerless.? The subjugation of that tumultuous and blind Na-
ture-power is in fact the end aimed at in the creation of the world.
Mani, it is said, endeavored to illustrate his doctrine by the following
parable. A good shepherd sees a lion plunge into the midst of his
flock. He digs a pit, and casts into it a ram; the lion springs rave-
nously to the spot to devour his prey, but in so doing falls into the pit,
from which he cannot extricate himself. The shepherd, however, finds
means of delivering the ram, and keeps the lion confined in the pit,
thus rendering him harmless to his flock. In like manner is the king-
dom of darkness rendered harmless; the souls it has devoured are
finally delivered, and restored back to their native element.
After the living spirit had raised man once more to the kingdom of
light, he made preparations for the process of purifying the souls mixed
in with the kingdom of darkness; which is the final cause of the entire
creation, and the end aimed at in the whole course of the world ὃ
That class of souls which had net been affected by mixing with matter
or the nature of darkness, he raised above this earth, and placed in the
sun and the moon, that from thence they might send forth their influ-
ence to release and draw back again to themselves, by means of the
refining processes in the evolution of vegetable and animal life, their
kindred souls, which were scattered through all nature, and held in
bondage by the kingdom of darkness.
1 The ζῶν πνεῦμα occurs also in the Gnos-
tic systems, which contain a good deal that
is analogous to Manicheism. Actis Thome,
ed. Thilo, p. 17.
2 The ψυχὴ ἀπώντων.
8 Titus of Bostra (c. Manich. lib. I. c.
12,) well describes the Manichean doctrine
in the following words: Ὁ ἀγαϑὸς δύναμιν
ἀποστέλλει τινὰ, φυλάξουσαν μὲν δηϑὲν
τοὺς ὅρονς, τὸ 0 ἀληϑὲς δέλεαρ ἐσομ έ-
νην εἰς ἀκούσιον τῇ ὕλῃ σωφρονισ-
μόν, ἐδέϑη τρόπον τινὰ ὥσπερ ϑη-
ρίον.
4 Disputat. c. Archelao, c. 25. This par-
able wears every mark of genuineness; it
is at least wholly in the spirit of Maniche-
ism.
5 As in the Valentinian system, the Soter
begins to put forth his influence, after he
has been first raised to the Sophia.
MANICHEAN SYSTEM. 493
Conformably with his Buddhaistico-Zoroastrian view of the world,
Mani saw the same conflict of Ormuzd and Ahriman, of spirit and of
matter, the same process of purification, going on in the physical as in —
the moral world. But in his manner of carrying this process through,
he confounded together the physical and ethical elements, in contradic-
tion to the essence of Christianity, which, by freeing religion entirely
from the system of nature, separated these two elements from one
another. As the religious system of the Persians assigned an impor-
tant place to the sun and moon, in the conflict in the physical and spirit-
ual world between Ormuzd and Ahriman, and in carrying forward the
universal process of development and purification ; so was it also in the
. system of Mani. Very nearly the same that the system of Zoroaster
taught concerning Mithras, as the Genius (Ized) of the Sun, Mani
transferred to his Christ, — the pure soul, sending forth its influence from
the sun and from the moon. Representing the soul as having sprung
fromthe primitive man, he interpreted in this sense the biblical name,
“Son of man” (vide ἀνϑρώπου,) and distinguishing between the pure
and free soul, enthroned in the sun, and its kindred soul diffused
throughout nature, and corrupted by its mixture with matter. So too he
distinguished a son of man superior to all contact with matter and in-
capable of sufferig, from a son of man crucified, so to speak, and suf-
fering in matter.!_ Wherever the scattered seed pushed upward out of
the dark bosom of the earth and unfolded itself in a plant, in its blos-
som and its fruit, Mani beheld the triumphant evolution of the principle
of light, gradually working its way onward .to freedom from the bond-
age of matter; he beheld how the living soul, which had been impris-
oned in the members of the Prince of Darkness, loosens itself from the
confinement, rises in freedom, and mingles with its congenial element
the pure air, where the souls completely purified ascend to those ships
of light (the sun and moon) which are ready to transport them to their
native country. But whatever still bears upon it various blemishes and
stains, is attracted to them gradually, and in portions, by the force of
heat, and incorporates itself with all trees, with whatever is planted and
sown.
This may serve as an example of his mystical philosophy of nature,
which is presented sometimes in strange myths, occasionally bordering
on immodesty, but containing nothing which would appear singular to
the Oriental imagination, — sometimes under the disguise of Christian
expressions. ‘Thus the Manicheans could speak of a suffering son of
man, hanging on every tree —of a Christ crucified in every soul; and
in the entire world. They could give their own interpretation to the
symbols of the suffering Son of Man in the Lord’s supper. With the
same, and even with still greater propriety, — for this confounding of
religion with the theory of nature savored more of paganism than of
Christianity — the Manicheans could employ the pagan fables as a dra
pery for their ideas. Thus the boy Dionysius torn in pieces by the
Titans, according to the mysteries of Bacchus, was considered by them
1 The υἱὸς ἀνϑρώπου ἐμπαϑῆς and the υἱὸς ἀνθρώπου ἀπαϑῆής.
VOL. I. 42
494 MANICHEAN SYSTEM.
nothing else than the soul swallowed up by the powers of darkness, the
divine life rent into fragments by matter.1
The powers of darkness were now in danger of being gradually de-
prived, through the influence of the spirit of the’sun on the refining
process of nature, of all the light and life which they held imprisoned
in their members. ‘The soul on which they had seized, striving after
freedom, and attracted by its kindred Sun-spirit, gradually liberates it-
self and evaporates ; so that at length, deprived of all its stolen light,
the kingdom of darkness must soon be abandoned to its own intrinsic
hatefulness and death. What was tobe done? A being must be cre-
ated, in whom the soul of nature, which was striving to liberate itself,
might be securely charm-bound—in whom all the scattered light and
life of nature, all that the powers of darkness had held imprisoned in
their members, and of which they were gradually deprived by the pow-
ers of the Sun, might converge. ‘This is man, the image of that prim-
itive man, — hence destined by his very form for dominion over nature.?
The fact was as follows. That majestic shape of light, the primitive
man (which probably also belonged to the Son of Man enthroned in the
Sun)? shines down from the sun into the kingdom of darkness, or mate-
rial nature. ‘The powers of darkness are seized with longing after the
shape of light, but at the same time with dismay. Their prince now
addresses them: “ What seems to you to be the great light that yon-
der breaks forth? Behold how it shakes the pole, how it strikes down
multitudes of our powers! It behooves you, therefore, to give up to
me whatever light you may have in your power; thus will I make an
image of that lofty one, who appeared so glorious, through which we
shall be able to rule, and one day liberate ourselves from our abode in
darkness.”’ ‘Thus human nature is the image, in this world of dark-
ness, of a higher existence; by which image the higher existence itself
1 See Alex. Lycopol. c. 5.— We may in-
sert here some peculiarly characteristic
passages from Manichean writings, in proof
of the exposition given above. From Ma-
nis work entitled Thesaurus: “ Viva ani-
ma, que earundem (adversarum potesta-
tum) membris tenebatur, hac occasione
laxata evadit, et suo purissimo aéri misce-
tur: ubi penitus ablute anime adscendunt
ad lucidas naves, que,sibi ad evectionem
atque ad suz patriz transfretationem sunt
preeparate. Id vero, quod adhuc adversi
generis maculas portat, per sestum atque
calores particulatim descendit, atque arbo-
ribus cxterisque plantationibus ac satis om-
nibus miscetur.” Euodius de fide, c. 10.
From Manji’s letter to the Virgin Menoch:
“ Agnoscendo ex quo genere animarum em-
anaveris, quod est confusum omnibus cor-
poribus et saporibus et speciebus variis
coheret.” Augustini opus imperfectum con-
tra Julian. lib. III. § 172. A passage from
the Manichean Faustus, who lived in the
first half of the fifth century, in which the
Holy Spirit is represented as the quicken-
ing and fructifying power of God, exerting
its influence through the air on the refining
process of nature, and the doctrine of
Christ’s birth from the virgin, (a doctrine
which the Manicheans, being Doceti, could
not admit in the proper sense,) as a symbol
of the birth of that Jesus patibilis from the
virgin womb of the earth, through the in-
forming power of the Holy Spirit: “ Spiri-
tus sancti, qui est majestas tertia, aéris hune
omnem ambitum’ sedem fatemur ac diver-
sorium, cujus ex viribus ac spiritali profu-
sione terram quoque concipientem gignere
patibilem Jesum, qui est vita ac salus hom-
inum, Omni suspensus ex ligno. Quaprop-
ter et nobis circa universum, (all the pro-
ducts of nature, as forms of the manifesta-
tion of the same divine principle suffering
in the bondage of nature, of the same Jesus
patibilis,) et vobis similiter erga panem et
calicem par religio est.” Augustin. c. Faust.
lib. XX.
2 Compare the kindred doctrine of the
Ophites.
° Alexand. Lycopolit. ο. 4: Εἰκόνα δὲ ἐν
ἡλίῳ ἑωρᾶσϑαι τοιαύτην, οἷόν ἐστι τὸ τοῦ
ἀνϑρώπου εἶδος.
MANICHEAN SYSTEM. 495
is to be attracted hither, and held fast in its domain. When they
heard this, after long deliberation among themselves, they deemed it
best to comply with the proposal, for they had no confidence that they
should be able long to retain this light among themselves.!_ They thought
it expedient, therefore, to entrust it to their prince, since they had no
doubt that in this way they should be able to gaim the supremacy.
The powers of darkness proceed now to intermarry and produce chil-
dren, in whom their common powers and natures are once more repre-
sented; and all they themselves possess, of the essence of darkness and
of light, is reproduced. All these, their children, the prince of darkness
devours ;—he thus concentrates in himself all the substance of light
that had been dispersed among the several powers of darkness, — and
now generates man, in whom therefore all the powers of the kingdom
of darkness and of light which had here been mixed together, are
united. Man is therefore a microcosm,—a copy of the entire world
of light and darkness, a mirror of all the powers of heaven and of the
earth.2. What is here narrated, continually recurs as a fact in the
course and movement of nature ;— at the birth of each man, the wild
Forces of matter, the powers of darkness, internungle to produce hu-
man nature, in which they mix together whatever they possess of the
higher and of the lower life, in which they endeavor to bind fast the
soul of nature, which is held captive by them, and which is striving to
get free.
We must here distinguish, in the Manichean doctrine, the symbolic
and mythical forms of representation, running into the imagery of
Parsism, from the ideas lying at bottom, which were clearly appre-
hended by Mani, and correspond to the doctrines of Buddhaism. Mani
says himself, that what then transpired, still continues to take place at
the generation of each man, where the evil nature which forms the
human body, matter, absorbs the powers of lght, in order, by this inter-
mingling of the powers of light and darkness, to form man.® From
these words it is quite apparent, that in the action of the prince of
darkness, as it is represented im that fiction, the operation by which
man is formed in the laboratory of spirit-absorbmg nature, is meant to
be exhibited under certain forms of sense. It is doubtless only another
mythical mode of representiny the same idea, when it is said, that the
powers of darkness, to escape that threatened lot of despiritualization,
which would be their utter destruction, and to hold fast the spimt m
their own region, combine to create
1 That is the main point.
2 Mani, in the seventh book of the work
bearing the title of Thesaurus, (cited in Au-
gustin. de natura boni, c. 46,) says: “ Con-
struehantur et contexebantur omnium im-
agines, ccelestium ac terrenarum virtutnm ;
ut pleni videlicet orbis id, quod formabatur,
similitudinem obtineret.” We have follow-
ed the method of construing the Manichean
system, disputed by Mosheim, according to
which, man was formed at a later period
than the rest of nature, for the very pur-
pose of holding the fleeting soul in nature
man, probably after the image of
fast. In favor of this view, speak, for the
most part, all the passages in our fragmen-
tary sources of information, and the whole
analogy of the Manichean system confirms
it. Comp. Baur’s work on the Manichean
system of religion, p. 120, ff. One passage
from Alexander of Lycopolis, which for-
merly seemed to me against this view, has
been more correctly explained by Baur.
8 Augustin. de natura boni, c. 46: Sicuti
etiam nunc fieri videmus, corporum forma-
tricem naturam mali inde vires sumentem
figurare, ita etiam antedictus princeps ete.
496 MANICHEAN SYSTEM.
the heavenly, primitive man, that this form might exercise an entranc-
ing power over the soul, that strove to return to its original fountain,
and the latter be thus bound to the earth ; 1 just as, according to the
Buddhaistic doctrine, the prince of the Shimnus seeks, by various
attractive and enticimg objects, to hold fast the souls within his own
kingdom, and to prevent them from elevating themselves to Nirwana.
In all these forms of representation, we.find the same fundamental idea,
marking the destiny by which the spirit is held bound to nature, but is
yet, through the transition-point of the human organism, conducted on-
ward to its freedom.
While the souls dispersed and scattered in the other kingdoms of
nature, or the light-essence, is prevented by the predominance of mat-
ter from becoming conscious of itself, the lightnature, on the other
hand, which is concentrated in man, attains to a conscious and free evo-
lution. The spirit, fettered by matter m the rest of nature, becomes
first released from these fetters in man, comes first, in him, to itself.
Here first begins the realm of consciousness and of freedom, the spirit
emancipated from the bonds of natural necessity. Man, therefore, in
the Manichean, as in the Buddhaistic system, occupies the loftiest posi-
tion ;— he forms the transition-point, conditioned by the act of freedom,
to the complete disenthralment of the spirit that rises wholly above the
cycle of metempsychosis to a reunion with the kingdom of light. <Ac-
cording to the Buddhaistic system, he is the necessary transition-point
to the becoming Nirwana.?
As the universal mundane soul seeks to subject to itself matter in
the mass, in the great mundane bodies, so the human soul, that is of
the same derivation, should govern this corporeal world m its details.
‘** The first soul,’’ said Mani, ‘‘ which flowed from the God of light, re-
ceived this structure of the body for the purpose of subduing it to its
own bit.””? The soul of the first man, as standing yet nearer: to the
1See Titus of Bostra, in the preface to
the third book of his work against the Man-
icheans, (in Canisii lect. antiqu. ed. Bas-
nage, Antverp. 1725, T. I. f. 137:) ‘Exao-
τος τῶν τῆς ὕλης ἀρχόντων éuophwoev ἑαυ-
τὸν εἰς ϑήραμα τῆς ψυχῆς, ---- πα of Adam,
as their production, ὄργανον ἐπιϑυμίας καὶ
δέλαρ τῶν ἄνωϑεν ψυχῶν. And that some-
thing is here represented as once beginning,
which continually perpetuates itself in the
generation of men, appears from what
Mani says in his letter to the virgin Menoch,
cited in Augustin. opus imperfect. contra
Julian. ]. IIL c. 174: Sicut auctor anima-
rum Deus est, ita corporum auctor per con-
cupiscentiam diabolus est, ut in viscatorio,
(analogous to that former bait whereby the
souls were bound to bodies.) per concupi-
scentiam mulieris, unde diabolus aucupa-
tur, etc.
2 According ‘to the Buddha doctrine, man
is in this respect superior even to the gods,
who enjoy a life of serene blessedness, en-
during through many periods of the world;
for, like all individual existence, so too the
. Says, above cited, vol. 11. p. 37.
life of the gods must some time or other
come to an end, while only in the Nirwana
is to be found an eternal rest beyond all
possible change. By the brief duration of
his existence, and the multiform trials and
sufferings which fall to his lot, man is ad-
monished to strive after that higher end.
But the gods, through default of such ad-
monition, may easily be drawn away from
that highest end, and become so fettered to
their individual existence, which, however,
is one of the changeable forms of the spirit, |
as to forget to aspire to anything beyond it.
To man, in this world of trials and con-
flicts, various means are given of rendering
himself, — by a series of meritorious works,
actions conditioning destiny, — worthy of
the, Nirwana; but ‘these opportunities are
wanting to the gods.. See Schmidt’s Es-
1834.
8 Operee pretium est, advertere, quia pri-
ma anima, que a Deo luminis manavit,
accepit fabricam - istam corporis, ut eam
freno suo regeret. Mani’s words, in his
letter to the virgin Medoch, in August.
MANICHEAN SYSTEM. 497
ovrigmal fountain of the kingdom of light, was therefore endowed with
preeminent faculties.
But the first man consisted, like each of his descendants, of two oppo-
site elements, a soul still living in the full possession of its original pow-
er, springing from and akin to the kingdom of light,! and a body derived
from the kingdom of darkness, with a soul in affinity to it, and the
blind, material faculty of desire originating in the same principle — the
wild power of nature that resists the godlike, (the ψυχὴ ἄλογος.) This
element, affining to the kingdom of darkness, supplied a channel for
the introduction of its influences. The powers of darkness must now
come to see how the lightnature, concentrating itself in man, became
thereby more powerful; and they must resort still to the same artifices
by which they sought at first to hold fast in their kingdom the element
of light which had fallen down into it, in order to retain under the ban
of their kingdom, this spirit concentrated in the human nature, which
threatened to free itself from the bonds of matter, and to mount up-
ward to its original fountain. Hence they must seek to draw him down,
by every possible enticement, to the world. They invited man, as it is
symbolically expressed, to partake of all the fruits of the trees of Par-
adise. Only they would hinder him from eating of the tree of the
knowledge of good and evil; that is, would suppress in him the con-
sciousness of that which is in harmony with his true nature, and of that
which is in contradiction to it, — would make him worldly. Yet an
angel of light, or Christ himself, (the Spirit of the sun,) counteracted
their artifices. This was the truth which was found in the narrative
in Genesis concerning Paradise and the forbidden fruit, considered
from the Manichean point of view. They believed that in the represen-
tation of that earliest record, they saw only the influence of the evil
principle, when the parts were reversed, and what should have been
ascribed to the powers of darkness, was transferred to God, and what
belonged to the Genius of light, applied to the serpent, the symbol of
Ahriman.?
3 This view of the matter we must as-
opus imperfect. c. Julian. lib. ΠῚ. § 186.
cribe to Mani, if we may venture to consid-
T. X. opp. ed. Benedictin. P. 11. f. 1122.
Paris, 1690.
1 Quasi de primze facta flore substantia,
(namely, lucis Dianz,) says Mani, in his
letter to a certain Patricius. L. c.
2 Baur has endeavored to show, that the
hypothesis of two souls in man, which can-
not be demonstrated from the words of
Mani himself to be a Manichean doctrine,
does not belong to the system. It may be,
perhaps, that the expression “two souls”
is something foreign to Manicheism; since,
according to Mani’s doctrine, soul, spirit,
light, godlike, are identical notions. But
the thing itself, which the opponents of
Manicheism, from their own point of view,
have designated with this name, the hy-
pothesis of such a motive principle in affin-
ity with matter, the fountain of sinful de-
sires, agrees perfectly with the Manichean
system.
VOL. I. 42
er what is cited as spoken from the Mani-
chean point of view, in the preface to the
third book of Titus of Bostra against the
Manicheans, towards the end, as containing
the thoughts of Mani himself. At least, |
can find nothing therein, as Baur professes
to do, which is incongruous with the other
ideas of Mani; but as I have unfolded it,
with a constant reference to Baur’s objec-
tions, it seems to me to agree perfectly well
with this man’s spirit and train of thought ;
although I allow, that it forms no necessa-
ry member of the Manichean system, and
that possibly some later person may have
thus expounded the record in Genesis, con-
templated from the Manichean point of
view. Moreover, Augustin favors the sup-
position that this was the Manichean doc-
trine, (de, Genesi contra Manicheos, lib. II.
§ 39): Sic isti credunt, quod serpens ille
498 MANICHEAN SYSTEM.
When the powers of darkness saw their plots against the hght-spirit
concentrated in human nature, which they would hold captive by every
possible charm within the bonds of nature, thus defeated, they made
trial of another expedient. They seduced the first man, through his
associate Eva, to abandon himself to the impulses of carnal desires,
that by so doing he might prove faithless to his light-essence, and make
himself a slave to nature. The consequence was, that the soul, which
in its original powers should have risen to the kingdom of light, became
divided by propagation, and was bound once more to a material body ;
so that the powers of darkness were enabled continually to repeat over
what they had done in producing the first man.
Since every thing depended on man’s learning how to distinguish
from one another the two opposite elements of his nature, and since,
according to the Manichean system, jt is the doctrine of man’s origin,
(anthropogony,) taken im connection with that of the origin of the
world, (cosmogony,) which clears up this pomt, Mani taught that it
was of the utmost importance to obtain a right understanding of these
doctrines. Accordingly, in his ‘ epistle of the foundation,” he says:
“ Had it been given man to perceive clearly how the matter stood in
relation to the origin of Adam and Eve, they would not have been sub-
jected to a transitory existence and to death.’’ And hence he writes
to the virgin Menoch:! ‘‘ May our God himself enlighten thy soul, and
reveal to thee his justice, that thou art the fruit of a divine stock.?
Even thou art become light, since thou hast known what thou wert
before — from what race of souls thou art sprung; which race, inter-
mixed with all bodies, is connected with numberless forms ; for as souls
are begotten of souls, so the bodily structure is composed of the corpo-
real nature. What is born of the flesh, then, is flesh, and what is born
of the spirit is spirit. But know, that the spirit is the soul — soul from
soul, flesh from flesh.””? He appealed to the practice of infant bap-
tism — a practice, therefore, which must have already become general
in the Persian church —as a proof that Christians themselves pre-
supposed by their practical conduct the existence of such a stam in
human nature. ‘I ask them,’’ says he in the letter above cited,* “is
all sin actual sin? Why then does any individual receive the cleansing
by water, before he has done a sinful act; since in himself considered
he has contracted no guilt? But if he has contracted no guilt, and yet
must be cleansed, then by this action they do of themselves bear wit-
ness to the derivation from an evil stock ; — yes, those very persons do
so, whose fatuity keeps them from understanding what they say or what
they imply in their own acts.”
Christus fuerit, et Deum, nescio quem, gen-
tis tenebrarum, illud przceptum dedisse
confingunt, tanquam invideret hominibus
scientiam boni et mali.
1 Augustin. opus imperfect. c. Julian. lib.
III. § 172.
2 The revelation consists precisely in
this, that man is brought to a consciousness
of his light-nature.
8 According to his system of light-eman-
ation, Mani could make no distinction be-
tween the Spirit of God and the spirit of
man, — between spirit and soul. This again
coincided entirely with the Buddhaist doc-
trine.
4 Augustin. opus imperfect. ο. Julian. lib.
ITI. § 187.
MANICHEAN SYSTEM. 499
The light-nature concentrated in Adam is the fountain-head, from
which all human souls are derived; but on account of its continual
division and contamination by matter, the spirit has lost much of the
original power which it had when it gushed fresh from the kingdom of
light. That original power of the free ight-nature is what the law pre-
supposes, in order to its being fulfilled. ‘ The law is holy,” said Mani,
“but it is a holy law for the holy soul; the commandment is just and
good, — but it is so for the gust and good soul.’’! In another place,” he
says, “‘If we do good, it is not a work of the flesh, for the works of
the flesh are manifest, Galat. 5:19; or if we do evil, it is not the
work of the soul, for the fruit of the spirit is peace, joy. And the
apostle to the Romans exclaims, ‘ The good that 1 would, that do I not ;
but the evil that I would not, that do 1. There you hear the voice of
the struggling soul, defending her freedom against the slavery of lust ;
for she is pained that sin, that is, Satan, should work in her all manner
of concupiscence. The authority of the law discovers to her its turpi-
tude ; by the authority of the law she is brought to the consciousness
of evil — since it condemns the works of lust, which the flesh admires
and prizes; for all the bitterness which is felt in renouncing lust, is
sweet to the soul — it is that by which she is nurtured and grows vig-
orous. In fine, the soul of that man who abstains from all the pleas-
ures of lust, is wakeful, becomes mature and progressive; but by the
gratifications of lust, the soul is wont to be enfeebled.”?? Now, to pro-
cure the final deliverance of his kindred nature, the soul, from the
power of darkness, to quicken it anew, to give it the complete victory
over the evil principle, and raise it upward to himself, it was necessary
that the same Spirit of the Sun, which had thus far conducted the whole
fining-process of nature, and of the spiritual world, — both of which,
according to the principles of Mani’s system above explained, consti-
tuted one whole, — should reveal himself in humanity.#
But there can be no communion between light and darkness. ‘The
light shines in the darkness,”’ said Mani, explaining in accordance with
his own views the words of St. John, “but the darkness comprehends
it not. The Son of primeval light, the Spirit of the Sun, was incapa-
ble of entering into any union with a material body; he only clothed
himself in a shadowy, sensible form, in order that he might be per-
ceived by sensual men.” ‘The Supreme Light,”’ says he, in another
fragment,° ‘‘ when it placed itself on a level with its own, being among
material things, assigned to itself a body, although it is all of it but
one nature.’’ In defence of his Docetism he cited the fact, explained
after his own arbitrary manner, that Christ, on a certain occasion when
11, ¢. § 186.
2L. c. § 177.
8 Augustin. opus imperfect. c. Julian. lib.
Bi am op Wy &
1 Concerning the incarnations of the sun
in the old oriental systems of religion, cons.
Creutzer’s Symbolik, last ed., vol. 11. p. 53,
207. It was wholly in accordance with the
Manichean system, that the Manicheans,
cited in Alexander of Lycopolis, (c. 24,)
said, Christ as the νοῦς is τὰ ὄντα πάντα.
So too, in the Actis Thome, p. 10: Κύριε,
ὁ ἐν πᾶσιν Ov, καὶ διερχόμενος διὰ πάν-
των, καὶ ἐγκείμενος πᾶσι τοῖς ἔργοις σου,
καὶ διὰ τῆς πάντων ἐνεργείας φανερούμενος.
5 In the letter to a certain Adas or Addas.
Fabricii Biblioth. grec. ed. nov. Vol. VIL
f. 316.
500 MANICHEAN SYSTEM.
the Jews would have stoned him, passed on untouched through the mul-
titude ; also, that Christ, at his transfiguration, appeared to the disci-
ples in his true form of light.) Jesus assumed the title of Christ or
Messiah only by a catachresis, in accommodation to the notions of the
Jews.?_ The prince of darkness sought to bring about the crucifixion
of Jesus, not being aware that he was superior to all suffering; the
erucifixion was, of course, a mere semblance. This seeming transac-
tion symbolized the crucifixion of the soul, sunk in matter, which the
Spirit of the Sun would raise up to itself. As the crucifixion of that
soul which was dispersed through all matter, served but to accomplish
the destruction of the kingdom of darkness, so much more was this the
effect of the seeming crucifixion of the Supreme Soul. Hence Mani
said, ‘* The adversary, who was hoping to crucify the Saviour, the
Father of the righteous, was crucified himself. What seemed to be
done in this case is one thing; what was really done, another.” ? The
Manichean theory, which represented the doctrine of Christ as a mere
symbol, is clearly set forth in an apocryphal account of the travels of the
apostles. During the agony on the cross, Christ appears to the
afflicted John, and tells him that all this is done but for the sake of the
lower populace® in Jerusalem. The human person of Christ now
vanishes, ‘and instead of it appears a cross of pure light, surrounded by
a countless multitude of other forms, still representing, however, but
one shape and one image, (a symbol of the various forms under which
the soul manifests itself, although it is in truth but one and the same.)
A divine voice, full of sweetness, issues from the cross, saying to him,
“The cross of light is, for your sakes, called sometimes the Word,
sometimes Christ; sometimes the Door, sometimes the Way; some-
times the Bread, sometimes the Sun; sometimes the Resurrection,
sometimes Jesus ; sometimes the Father, sometimes the Spirit; some-
times the Life, sometimes the Truth; sometimes Faith, and sometimes
Grace.”
Siding with the advocates of an absolute Dualism among the Per-
sians, Mani held the aim and purpose of the whole course of the world
to be, not a reconciliation of the good and the evil prmciples — a sup-
position which would have ‘been at war with his whole theory — but a
total separation of the light from the darkness, and the reduction of the
latter to utter impotence. ‘This was in accordance also with his Budd-
haistic doctrine. Matter, after having been deprived of all its foreign
light and life, was to be converted by fire into an inert mass.® All
souls were capable, by means of their light-nature, of participating in
the redemption; but if they voluntarily surrendered themselves to the
1 See the fragments from Mani’s letters. Augustin. The words of the Manichean
Tat : Faustus, Augustin. c. Faustum, lib. 32:
2 Ἡ τοῦ Χριστοῦ προσηγορία ὄνομά ἐστι
καταχρηστικόν. Τ,. α.
3 From the epistola fundamenti, Euod. de
fide, c. 28: Τὴν δύναμιν τὴν ϑείαν ἐνηρμό-
σϑαι, ἐνεσταυρῶσϑαι τῇ ὕλῃ. lex. Ly-
copolit. c. 4: Christus in omni mundo et
omni anima crucifixus. Secundin. ep. ad
Crucis ejus mystica fixio, qua nostre ani-
me passionis monstrantur yulnera.
4 ἸΙερίοδοι ἀποστόλων. Concil. Nic. IL
Actio V. ed. Mansi. T. XIII. f. 167.
5 TO κάτω ὄχλῳ.
6 Tit. Bostr. I. c. 80. Alex. Lycopolit
c. 5.
MANICHEAN SYSTEM. 501
service of sin or darkness, they would, in punishment, be banished, at
the general separation of the two kingdoms, to the dead mass of matter,
and stationed there as a watch over it. On this pomt Mani, in his
epistola furdamenti, expressed himself as follows: ‘‘ ‘The souls that have
allowed themselves to be drawn, by the love of the world, away from
their original nature of light; that have become enemies to the holy
light, openly taken up arms for the destruction of the holy elements ;
that have entered into the service of the fiery spirit, and by their
deadly persecution of the holy church,! and of the elect who are found
therein,” have oppressed the observers of the heavenly commandments,
— these souls shall be precluded from the blessedness and glory of the
holy earth. And since they have allowed themselves to be overcome
by evil, they shall continue to abide with this race of evil; so that the
peaceful earth and those realms of immortality are shut against them.
This shall be their portion, because they have so devoted themselves to
evil works as to become estranged from the life and freedom of the
holy light. They will not be able, then, to find admittance into that
kingdom of peace, but shall be chained to that frightful mass (of mat-
ter or darkness left to itself,) over which too there must needs be a
watch. Thus these souls shall continue cleaving to the things they
have loved, since they did not separate themselves from them when it
was time.”’? It is clear, that Mani did not entirely agree, in his doc-
trine of the last things, either with Buddhaism, or with the Zoroastrian
or the Christian system, but, by the fusion of the three, formed a pe-
culiar theory of his own.
In respect to the views of the Manicheans with regard to the sources
of religious knowledge, they considered the revelations of the Paraclete,
or Mani, as the highest and only infallible authority, whereby every
thing else was to be judged. They went on the principle, that Mani’s
doctrine embraced the absolute truths which enlighten the reason ; —
whatever did not accord with them was contrary to reason, wherever it
might be found. They received in part, it is true, the scriptures of
the New Testament. But judging them by that standard principle
which we have mentioned, they indulged in the most arbitrary criticism
in applying them to points of doctrine or ethics. Sometimes they as-
serted that the original records of the religion had been falsified by
various corruptions of the prince of darkness (tares among the wheat;)’
sometimes, that Jesus and his apostles had accommodated themselves to
existing Jewish opinions, with a view to prepare men gradually for the
reception of the pure truth; sometimes, that the apostles themselves,
when they first appeared in the character of teachers, were entangled
in various Jewish errors. Hence they concluded, that it was first by
the teachings of the Paraclete, men were enabled to distinguish the true
from the false matter in the New Testament. The Manichean Faustus
1 That is, the Manichean sect. 4 This was said of them already by Titus
2 Persecution of the Bramins of the Man- of Bostra, in the beginning of his third
icheans, the Electi, was a crime of peculiar book.
die, — wholly in accordance with the orien- 5 See, above, the similar principles of the
tal ideas of the priests. Clementines respecting the Old Testament.
8 De fide, c. 4
502 MANICHEAN CHURCH
lays down the principles of Manicheism on this point, as follows :1 “ Of
the New Testament we take only what is said to the honor of the Son
of glory, either by himself or by his apostles ; and by the latter only
after they had become perfect and settled m their faith. Of the rest,
which was either said by the apostles in their simplicity and ignorance,
while they were yet inexperienced in the truth; or inserted, with mali-
cious design, by the enemy ; or incautiously asserted by authors? and
transmitted to posterity, — of all this we desire to know nothing. I
mean, namely, such assertions as these, that he was born shamefully of
a woman; that he was circumcised as a Jew; that he offered sacrifices
like a heathen; that he was meanly baptized, led into the wilderness
and miserably tempted of the devil.”? These same Manicheans, who
slavishly submitted their reason to all that Mani had uttered, as if it
was a divine revelation, were zealous for the rights of reason, and would
have themselves regarded as the only rational class, masmuch as they
only knew how to separate what was consistent with, from what was re-
pugnant to reason in the New Testament. The Manichean Faustus
says, to him that believes without inquiry whatever is contained in the
New Testament: ‘ Zhou blind believer of everything, who banishest
reason, that gift of nature, from humanity; who makest it a matter
of conscience to decline judging between the true and the false; thou
art as afraid of separating the good from its opposite, as children are
of a ghost! ®
The Manichean sect had a church constitution of their own, suited
to the distinction of the esoteric and the exoteric in the old religions of
Asia ; — the two-fold mode of representation already described being,
in truth, based on such a distinction existing within the sect itself.
From what has been said, it is evident that Mani differed entirely from
the majority of the founders of Gnostic sects. The latter wished to
alter nothing in the existing Christian church; they were desirous only
of introducing, in addition to the confession of faith for the ψυχικοί, a
secret doctrine for the πνευματικοί. Mani, on the other hand, would
have himself regarded as a man of God, endowed with divine authority
for the reformation of the entire church. He was for giving the whole
church, which had become wholly degenerated,‘ in his view, by the cor-
rupt intermixture of Judaism with Christianity, a new shape. There
was to be but one true Christian church, formed after the doctrines and
principles of Mani. Within this church, there were to be. two distinct
grades. The great mass, consisting of the exoterics, were to constitute
the Auditors. To them the writings of Mani might indeed be read,
and his doctrines presented in their symbolical and mythical form ; —
but they were to receive no explanation of their inner meaning. — It
may be imagined, to what pitch of expectation the minds of these Audi-
tors would be raised when these enigmatical, mysterious sounding things
1 Apud Augustin. lib. XXXII. * Hence he called other Christians, not
2 Namely, the authors of the gospels, who Christians, but Galileans. Fabric. Bibl
were not apostles. greec. vol. VIL. f. 316
3 Augustin. c. Faust. lib. XVIIL. also lib.
ΧΙ.
AND WORSHIP. 5038
were set before them, and, as usually happens, they were hoping to find
lofty wisdom im what was so obscure and unintelligible. The Esote-
rics were the Elect or Perfect, 1— the sacerdotal caste, the Brahmins
of the Manicheans.? They held a very important place, according to
the Manichean doctrine, in the great refining process ; they formed the
link of transition between the earthly world, the circle of the metemp-
sychosis, and the kingdom of light (between the world of Sansara and
the Nirwana ;) — they constituted the last stadium of the purification
of the spirit in redeeming itself from the bondage of nature. ‘Their
mode of life must answer to the position which they thus held — utter
estrangement from the world, in the Buddhaist sense, which was ap-
plied to Christian asceticism. They were to possess no worldly prop-
erty, but were bound to lead a strictly ascetic and contemplative life ;
to abstain from marriage, from all strong drinks, and from all animal
food. ‘They were to be distinguished for a holy imnocence that shrunk
from injuring any living thing, and religious reverence for the divine
life which was diffused through all nature. They were not only to re-
fram, therefore, from destroying or harming any animal, but even from
pulling up an herb, or plucking a fruit or a flower. The whole round
of their austere life was marked by three particulars, the signaculum
oris, the signaculum manuum, and the signacultm sinus.? The Audi-
tors were to see that they should be provided with all that was neces-
sary for their subsistence, and to reverence them as bemgs of a superior
order. ‘They should look upon them as their mediators, in direct com-
munication with the kmgdom of light. By their kindness to the Elect,
the Auditors should enter mto the companionship of their perfection ;
and the defects adhering to them in consequence of their less rigid life,
would be made up by the merits of their superiors ; — and among these
defects were reckoned the neglecting to spare the life of animal or veg-
etable, and the eating of flesh. The harm thus done was to be repaired
by their sharing their own means of subsistence with the Elect. The
importance attached by Buddhaism to the kind offices of the pious,
shown towards the Buddhas who made their appearance in humanity,
was transferred by the Manicheans to the kind offices shown by the
Auditors to the Elect. And it was also according to the Buddhaist
doctrine, that by repeated kind offices of this sort, shown in the differ-
ent modes of human existence passed through by metempsychosis, one
might gradually accumulate such a store of good works, as to arise at
length to the dignity of a Buddha.°
From this sacerdotal class were chosen the presiding officers of the
1 TéAevov, according to Theodoretus, —a
4 To this Ephrem Syrus refers, when he
term which recurs once more among the
accuses the Manicheans of bestowing abso-
Gnostic Manichean sects of the middle age.
2 Faustus, quoted by Augustin, calls them
the sacerdotale genus.
8 See, 6. g., Augustinus de moribus Man-
icheorum, c. 10, et seq. The word signac-
ulum seems to me to denote here, not a
sign, but a seal, a means of safe keeping, as
a translation of the Greek σφράγις, applied,
for instance, to the rite of confirmation.
lution in return for the bread given to them.
See the extracts published by A. F. W von
Weener, in his work de Manichzxorum in-
dulgentiis, Lips. 1827, p. 69, et seq.
5 Comp. Schmidt’s Dissertation on the
thousand Buddhas, in the Memoirs of the
Academy of St. Petersburg. VI. series,
T. IL. A. D. 1834, p. 88, etc.
504 | MANICHEAN SACRAMENTS
entire religious society. As Mani wished to have himself regarded as
the Paraclete promised by Christ, so after Christ’s example, he chose
twelve apostles. his institution continued to exist; and twelve such
persons, with the title of Magistri, had the government of the whole
sect. At the head of these, was placed a thirteenth, who, as the leader
of the sect, represented Mani. Subordinate to these, there were sixty-
two bishops, answering to the sixty or sixty-two disciples of Jesus ;!
and under these last were presbyters, deacons, and finally travelling
preachers.”
As to the mode of celebrating the sacrament of the supper among
the Manicheans, it is a matter involved in much obscurity, owing to the
fact that no credible account was known to exist about a transaction
which was confined to the very secret assemblies of the Elect; for as
the Auditors answered to the catechumens, and the Elect to the Fide-
les in the dominant church, it is plain that the sacraments could be ad-
ministered only among the Elect. The argument already alluded to,
which Mani drew from the existing practice of infant baptism, has led
some to suppose — though wrongly, as Mosheim has shown — they
might infer the existence of the same practice among the Manicheans ;
but m that place, Mani is simply refuting his opponents by adducing
their own practice in favor of a principle which that practice necessa-
rily presupposed; yet without expressing any approbation of the prac-
tice. And it may be a question whether Mani would not object to this
sign, as a Jewish rite derived from John the Baptist. Perhaps from
the first, no other form of initiation prevailed among the Manicheans,
than the one which we afterwards meet with, in the middle age, among
the kindred sect of the Catharists. But the celebration of the Lord’s
supper was an ordmance that could be easily explained in accordance
1 According to the well-known various the baptized and the unbaptized among the
reading. Elect themselves, who should come over to
2 Augustin. de heres. ¢. 32. ~ “ the Catholic church, that baptism was re-
3 From the words of the Manichean Fe- ceived by such of the Elect as chose it of
lix, lib. I. c. 19, ut quid baptizati sumus? their own free will; for here too the refer-
it cannot be proved, that the Manicheans ence may have been to such persons as, be-
Jooked upon baptism as a necessary cere- fore they joined the Manicheans, had been
mony of initiation ; for in this case too, the baptized in the Catholic church. Neither
Manichean is employing rather the argu- does it in any wise follow from the passage
mentum ad hominem; and very possibly in Augustin, de moribus ecclesix, ¢. 35,
he may have received baptism before he where he represents the Manicheans as ob-
went over to the Manichean sect. Nor jecting to the Catholic Christians, that the
again can it in any wise be certainly inferred fideles et jam baptizati lived in the state of
from the passage in the commonitorium, marriage, and in the family relation, pos-
quomodo sit agendum cum Manichzeis, sessing and managing worldly property,
(found in the Appendix to the 8th vol. of that there were among the Elect a certain
the Benedictine edition of Augustine,) class of persons voluntarily baptized, who
where a distinction is made between those were alone bound under an inviolable vow,
Manicheans who, on coming over to the to a strictly ascetic life; for the fideles and
Catholic church, were received among the baptizati— both terms being exactly sy-
catechumens, and those who, having been nonymous—answer generally here to the
already baptized, were received among the LElecti among the Manicheans. Mosheim’s
Peenitentes, that baptism was a customary distinction, therefore, between baptized and
rite among the Manicheans; and still less unbaptized Electis, which in itself is not a
can it be inferred from the fact, that a dis- very natural one, appears to be altogether
tinction of the same kind is made between arbitrary.
΄
AND CHARACTER. 505
with the principles of their mystical philosophy of nature.! Augustin,
while he was a Manichean Auditor, had learned that the Elect cele-
brated the Lord’s supper ; but about the particular mode in which it
was observed, he knew nothing.? It is only certain, that the Elect
drank no wine. Whether, like the Encratites, the so called ὑδροπαρα-
orarat, they used water instead of wine, or if not, what else they did, it
is impossible to say. As a token of recognition, the Manicheans were
used to give each other the right hand whenever they met, thus show-
ing their common deliverance from the kingdom of darkness by the
right hand of the redeeming Spirit of the Sun — the same act having
been repeated in their own case as in that of their heavenly father,
the original man, when, on the point of simking into the kingdom of
darkness, he was rescued by the right hand of the living spirit.?
As festivals, the Manicheans celebrated the Sunday of every week,
not on account of its reference to the resurrection of Christ, which
would have been inconsistent with their Docetism, but as a day conse-
crated to the Sun, which was in fact their Christ.4 On this day they
fasted, — contrary to the practice of the dominant church. The Christ-
mas festival of the church was, of course, not in harmony with the
Manichean Docetism. If occasionally, as Augustin reports, they
conformed to the practice of the dominant church in celebrating the
Festival of Easter ; yet we may easily suppose, that this festival would
be of but little interest to them, as they were unaffected by those feel-
ings which rendered the day so sacred to other Christians. So much
the greater respect did they pay to the festival in honor of the martyr-
dom of their master, Mani, which fell in the month of March. It was
called βῆμα, (suggestus, cathedra,) the feast of the tribune or pulpit, —
the feast in remembrance of the divinely enlightened teacher. A gor-
geous pulpit, ascended by means of five steps, symbolizing perhaps the
five elements, and decorated with costly drapery, was on this occasion
placed in the hall, where they assembled. ‘To this all the Manicheans
paid obeisance, prostrating themselves on the ground after the custom
of the East.°
As it concerns the moral character of the Manichean sect, it is im-
possible, with the scanty information we possess respecting its early fol-
lowers, to give any just account of a matter in which the different peri-
ods in the history of a sect should be so carefully distinguished. It
can only be said, that Mani aimed ata strict system of morals; but
without doubt the mystical language of the sect, which occasionally
verges to inimodesty, might, in the case of the uneducated, tend to
introduce a sensuous fanaticism dangerous to good morals.
Already, when the Manicheans began first to make progress in the
Roman empire, a violent persecution broke out against them. As a
sect which had sprung up in the Persian empire, then at war with the
1 Τὴ accordance with the idea, that the 4 Besides many other places, comp. Au-
fruits of the earth represented the Son of gustin. c. Faustum, lib. XVIII. ο. δ: Vos
man crucified in nature. See above. in die, quem dicunt solis, solem colitis.
2 Augustin. contra Fortunatum lib. I. 5 Augustin. contra ep. fundamenti, c. 8:
Appendix. c. Faustum lib. XVIII. ¢. 5.
8 Disputat. Archelai. c. 7.
VOL. I. 43
506 THE THEOLOGY
Romans, and in some sense allied to the Parsic religion, they were an
object of peculiar hatred to the Roman government. The Emperor
Dioclesian, A. D. 296, issued a law against the sect (cited already in
the first section of this history) condemning its leaders to the stake,
and punishing its adherents, if they belonged to the common order,
with decapitation and the confiscation of their property.
III. Doctrine of the Catholic Church, as it proceeded to form itself in
opposition to the Sects.
A. Genetic Development of the Church Theology generally. Character of the several individ-
ual tendencies of the religious and dogmatic spirit, which had special influence on it.
Having thus far considered the different tendencies of the heretical
element as it grew up out of the reaction of ante-Christian principles,
we now proceed to quire how the movement of the church theolegy
generally, and in its several particular modifications, was affected by
these various forms of opposition. If it was the case in the heresies,
that the unity of Christianity came to be split up into too many oppo-
site theories, each excluding the other; the movement of the church
theology was, on the other hand, distinguished, it is true, by the circum-
stance, that ‘the unity of the Christian consciousness here asserted
itself much more strongly, and hence men were less exposed to run
into such direct oppositions of doctrine; but even here, owing to the
strong propensity in man’s nature to fall into one extreme or the
other, the higher, comprehending unity had to resolve itself into oppo-
sitions of a subordinate kind — oppositions which remained grounded,
indeed, in the essence of Christianity, but which might approach, how-
ever, on one side or the other, either to the position of Judaism, or of
its opposite, Gnosticism.
on an independent footing,
1 The edict contains, in its style of thought
and language, every internal mark of au-
thenticity. It is scarcely possible to ima-
gine by whom and for what purpose such an
edict could have been forged in this partic-
ular form. Had it been the intention of
some Christian to fabricate an edict of this
sort, with a view to excite following empe-
rors to persecute the Manicheans, he would
not have chosen Dioclesian certainly ; and
still less would he have put such language
into his mouth. Though the later Chris-
tians had much that was analogous to the
older pagan way of thinking about a domi-
nant religion handed down from the fathers,
yeta Christian would never have expressed
himself after this peculiar fashion.
What is there to forbid supposing that
the Manicheans had extended themselves,
even thus early, to proconsular Africa, since
the Gnostics had already paved the way for
them, and it is certain that the Manicheans
early spread themselves in these countries,
and since the chronological dates connected
with the early history of this sect are so
uncertain? If the law reads: “si qui sane
When the church had once established itself
the less 1t was obliged to defend its princi-
etiam honorati aut cujuslibet dignitatis vel
majoris persone ad hance sectam se transtu-
lerunt,” —it does not necessarily follow from
this, that the Emperor had certain informa-
tion of the spread of the doctrines of this
sect among persons of the highest rank ; and
in the next place, it would be no singular>
matter, considering the prevalent rage at
that time among people of rank,—a class
ever prone to seize on any thing which
would distinguish their religion from that
of other people,— for theurgical specula-
tions, and for searching after higher expla-
nations respecting the world of spirits, that
a mysterious and high-pretending scheme
of faith like this, should meet among them
with a welcome reception. The argumen-
tum e silentio is, for the rest, very unsafe
in historical criticism, unless supported by
other considerations ; and the fact that the
older fathers make no mention of a law by
Dioclesian directed adap ΕΓ τ δε against the
Manicheans, may be very easily accounted
for. Yet this law is referred to by the Hila-
ry who wrote a commentary on St. Paul’s
epistles. In ep. Il. Timoth. III. 7
OF THE CHURCH. 507
ples in the struggle with Judaism, and the more it had to assert them
in the conflict with Gnosticism, the more easily might it happen that a
Jewish element would be imperceptibly introduced into the theological
spirit; and that too, without being communicated from without, but by
spontaneously springing up within, as we observed it to do in the his-
tory of the church constitution and of Christian worship. Gnosticism,
again, might be attacked in two different ways; either in a way of un-
compromising hostility, which refused to recognize in it a single ele-
ment of truth, and which hence would be liable itself to run into some
opposite extreme of error; or in such a way as to leave room for admit-
ting, that along with the error there was also a fundamental truth, —
that there was at bottom a true spiritual need, which was only seeking
its proper satisfaction, and must find it in Christianity. And, in truth,
Gnosticism could be effectually vanquished only in this latter way ; only
by separating in it the true from the false, and presenting something
whereby the spiritual need, the failure to recognize and satisfy which
had called Gnosticism into existence or promoted its spread, might find
itself met and answered. Yet there was at the same time great
danger that, in the very effort to seize and appropriate whatever of
truth there was in Gnosticism, some of its errors might also be uninten-
tionally included.
The two main tendencies of the theological spirit here denoted, cor-
respond to the two tendencies which necessarily belong together in the
Christian process of transformmg the world — but of which either one
or the other is ever wont to predominate ; — the world-resisting and the
world-appropriating tendency of the Christian mind. The undue pre-
dominance of either one of these is, in truth, attended with its own pe-
culiar dangers. In connection with this stands another antithesis.
Christianity is based upon a supernatural revelation; but this revela-
tion would be appropriated and understood by the organ of a reason
which submits to it; since it is not destined to remain a barely outward
thing to the human spirit. The supernatural element must be owned
in its organic connection with the natural, which in this finds its full
measure and complement. ‘The fact of redemption has for its very
aim, indeed, to do away the schism between the supernatural and the
natural ; — the fact of God’s becoming man is in order to the humani-
zation of the divine, and the deification of the human. Hence there
will ever be springing up two tendencies of the theological spirit, cor-
responding, as must be evident, to the two just now described, aud of
which the one will feel itself impelled to understand and represent the
supernatural element of Christianity in its opposition to, the other, the
same element in its connection with,the natural: the one will seek to
apprehend the supernatural and supra-rational element as such; the
other will strive to apprehend the same in its harmony with reason and
nature, — to present the supernatural and supra-rational to conscious-
ness, as that which is still conformed to nature and to reason. Thus
there comes to be formed a predominance of the swpernaturalist or
of the rationalist element, both of which should meet together in
order to a sound and healthy development of Christian doctrine ; while
508 MONTANISM.
from the predominance of the one or the other of these elements, oppo-
site dangers arise.
It is very easy to see, that although Christian science must have its
root in faith, and grow up out of the terest of faith, and although faith,
which ought to receive into itself and animate all the powers of the
human spirit, must seek to create a scientific understanding out of it-
self, yet according to the proportion in which one or the other of these
interests predominates, one or the other of these tendencies will be
formed ; and hence we must proceed in the first place to inquire, how
the matter stood in this respect under the given circumstances and con-
ditions of the national life and intellectual culture prevailing in the
eriod which is the subject of our consideration.
The first thing that presents itself to our notice here will be, the differ-
ence between the two great individualities of national character, out of
which proceeded the civilization of those times, — the Greek and the
Roman. In the Greek predominated the activity of the intellect, —
the scientific, speculative element. Greece was, in fact, the birth-place
of philosophy. The Roman character, on the other hand, was less mo-
bile. It was more fixed and inclined to be tenacious of old usages ; —
its tendency was to the practical. Both these mental characteristics
will mark the peculiar shaping of Christian doctrine and theology, —
will in different circumstances operate favorably or unfavorably on the
process of their development; sce both these individualities of char-
acter correspond to the peculiar main tendencies above described ; and
it was most desirable, that they should so act as mutually to balance
and check each other. Alexandria, the principal seat of philosophical
culture, where a philosophy most nearly akin to the religious element,
viz. the Platonic, then held the supremacy; where, at a still earlier
period, we saw growing up a Jewish philosophy of religion, gave birth
also in these centuries, by the blending of Grecian elements of culture
with Christianity, to a tendency which sought) to present the new mat-
ter given by revelation in harmony with the previous development of
reason. But from the school of John, in Asia Minor, there had gone
forth a tendency, which was opposed to the speculative caprice of the
Gnostics, and which sought faithfully to preserve and hold fast the pe-
culiar, fundamental doctrines of Christianity, so as to secure them
against all corruptions. And this tendency it was, which Irenzeus, —
who had been educated in Asia Minor, in the school of those venera-
ble presbyters, the disciples of the Apostle John, — transplanted to
the West. This Father, distinguished for the sobriety of his practical,
Christian spirit, possessed of a peculiarly sound and discriminating
tact in determining what was of practical moment in all doctrines, pro-
foundly penetrated with a sense of the grandeur of God’s works and
of the limited compass of the human understanding, perseveringly
opposes the humility of knowledge to the arrogant pretensions of Gnos-
tic speculation, and forms the link of connection betwixt the church of
Asia Minor and that of Rome, — representing im himself what was
common to them both. But as in the Roman spirit, the practical
church interest was so absorbing as to leave no room for the scientific,
MONTANISM. 509
the West was in want of an organ whereby the spirit which prevailed
there could scientifically express itself. Such an organ was supplied
by the church of North Africa, in a man who united in himself the ele-
ments of the Roman and of the Carthaginian character —in Tertullian.
Wanting the chaste sobriety of mind for which Irenzeus was distin-
guished, Tertullian, though a foe to speculation, yet could not resist the
impulses of a profound speculative intellect ; and to the devout practi-
cally Christian element he united a speculative one, — destitute, how-
ever, of the regular logical form, — which continued for a long time to
operate through various intermediate agencies in the Western church,
until it finally impregnated the mind of that great teacher of centu-
ries, Augustin, in whom Tertullian once more appears under a transfig-
ured form. A great impression was made on the peculiar temperament
of Tertullian by the remarkable phenomenon which sprung out of the
very midst of that spiritual tendency of Asia Minor we have already
described, and which we may designate as the extreme of the anti-Gnostic
position. We mean Montanism. As this forms one of the essential
elements in his peculiar cast of mind, so it was by him that the princ-
ples which he at the basis of this system were systematically deter-
mined, and thereby made to have an influence on the history of West-
ern theology. ΤῸ this important phenomenon we must now direct our
attention. |
We should but poorly understand this product growing out of the
developing-process of the church in the second century, if we consid-
ered the personal character of the founder, by whom the first impulse
was given, as the main cause of all the succeeding effects. Montanus
was hardly a man of sufficient importance, to entitle him to be placed
at the head of any new and grand movement. If an uneducated indi-
vidual, who displays the characteristic spirit of the Phrygian race,
under the impulse of a fanatical excitement, produced by his appear-
ance great effects, yet these effects beyond question far exceeded the
measure of this individual. A Tertullian, as being the person by whom
such a spiritual tendency was systematically defined, would assume
here ἃ more important place. Nor were there any new spiritual ele-
ments, which were here freshly called to life; but only a nucleus was
furnished for elements long before existing, — a point of attachment,
around which these elements would gather. ‘Tendencies of mind,
which were scattered about through the whole church, would here con-
verge together. Thus Montanism points out to us kindred elements
existing everywhere already ; and for this very reason it was that the
impulse, once given, could produce such great and general movements;
since the way had already been prepared for them in the course of the
inner development of the church itself. Yet while we are careful not
to overrate the importance of Montanus, we should also guard against
the error of allowing him none at all.t Without the impulse given by
Montanus, this whole movement, which produced such a stir and excite-
1 As is done with a fantastic sort of ex- extremely deficient, is sufficiently accredited
aggeration, when persons, whose real exist- by history, are represented as mythical per-
ence, though our knowledge of them ἰδ sonifications of general tendencies
43*
510 MONTANISM.
ment in the minds of men, and which we may admit cannot be
explained from his imfluence alone, would by no means have arisen.
Let us in the first place, then, cast a glance at the process of church
development to which Montanism attached itself, and at the general
tendencies of mind which were grounded in and which are represented
by it; and then we may proceed to a nearer examination of the person
of the author, and of the effects which proceeded from him.
Christianity forced its way among mankind, in the first place, as a
supernatural power; and as such a power it originally presents itself
also in the character of its effects. The immediateness of inspiration
was then more strongly marked than in the later times ; — those gifts
of supernatural healing ; those gifts of speaking with tongues, of proph-
ecy; those effects which suddenly displayed themselves after baptism —
such were the signs of the new creation which had seized on human
nature. But this opposition between the supernatural and the natu-
ral was not to last always, but to be overcome by the progressive devel-
opment of Christianity. To bring about the harmonious union of the
supernatual and the natural was its ultimate aim; as to remove the
discordance which has its ground in sin, was to be the end of the re-
demption in its further unfolded effects. The new, divine power, which
in its outward manifestations had just shown itself as an immediate one,
was to enter into the circle of human instrumentality, and gradually
appropriate to itself those natural organs and means which were not as
yet given to it on its first appearance. The Apostle Paul had indeed
alluded to such an aim, when he admonished Christians to estimate the
charismata, not by the extraordinary and supernatural appearanees
which more prominently marked their effects, but, on the contrary, by
the degree in which the natural in them was permeated by the super-
natural, and in which the form of working of the supernatural was one
that grew out of the natural course of development; and he distin-
guished above all others the charismata of Gnosis and of Didascalia, as
those which were most required for the edification of the church. Ac-
cordingly, — as we remarked in the first section, — those extraordi-
nary effects of the divine power, which was to be the dominant element
of culture for human nature, continally diminished; and the existing
natural culture began to be turned more and more in the direction of
Christianity and to be attracted by it. Now, on the boundary between
these two periods of development, sprang up a reaction, which opposed
this natural change required by Christianity, and which would hold
fast the form which was the first to appear in the working of Christian-
ity, as the perfect and the abiding one. That which opposed itself to
the healthy and natural course of development, must necessarily be a
morbid action. ‘The enthusiasm which surrendered itself to such a
tendency, must degenerate into fanaticism.
It may be gathered from what has been said, that smcee Montanism
opposed itself to that union and conciliation of the supernatural with
the natural, which Christianity in its progressive development required
and prepared the way for, it would partially hold fast to the supernat-
ural as contradistinguished from the natural. The supernatural, the
MONTANISM. δι.
divine, presented itself here to the religious consciousness as an irre-
sistible agency, which left no room for the human individuality of char-
acter to thrive in free, independent development. Hence, from this
point of view, the ecstatic element was reckoned as belonging to the
essence of genuine prophecy ;—— the human consciousness must retire
wholly out of the way, where the voice of the divine Spirit caused
itself to be heard. ‘The human soul was to stand to this informing
Spirit only in the relation of an altogether passive organ; as Montanus
characteristically remarked, God alone is awake, the man sleeps. The
soul stands in the same passive relation to the divine, informing
agency, as the lyre to the instrument (the plectrum) with which it is
played.1 Here, too, in what Montanism introduced, there was nothing ©
new. ‘This notion of inspiration had long been familiar to the Jews ;
as we may see in the case of the Alexandrian legend about the verbal
agreement of the seventy interpreters, in their independent transla-
tions of the Old Testament. But such a form of inspiration is much
better suited to the legal position of the Old Testament, which assumes
this separation between the divine and the human, than to that of the
New Testament, which aims ata union between the two, grounded in the
redemption. But when this, however, was now prominently set forth as
something belonging to the perfection of the Christian system, as some-
thing requisite for the guidance and growth of the church, a foreign
element was introduced, and the natural process of development,
grounded in the church itself, and the spirit which quickens it, could
not thereby be promoted, but must on the contrary be disturbed and
hindered. Through such workings of the Paraclete promised by Christ,
such revelations of the prophets and prophetesses, uttering themselves
in those states of ecstacy, the church was to be ever conducted onward
in its development, till it attained to its final consummation. We
should not fail to remark, that Montanism was driven to this one-sided
supranaturalism, by a polemical opposition which had its ground in a
genuinely Christian interest against two aberrations of the Christian
spirit. Opposing itself, on the one hand, to. the introduction of foreign
speculations in the Gnosis, it would secure the pure Christian doctrine
from this source of corruption; while, on the other hand, it resisted a
petrified, traditional element, which allowed no room for any progres-
sive development of the church life, but was for confining down every-
thing in fixed and unalterable forms.
As it regards, however, the first designated opposition, it passed
over into a tendency hostile to all culture, to all art and science.
And, in virtue of this opposition to all the mediating activity of reason,
the resistance also to the stiff and rigid church tendency must take a
wrong direction. Montanism would tolerate no pause, no still-stand ;
it required a progressive development, from the foundation of that un-
changeable Christianity contained in the common tradition of all the
churches, to the mature age of manhood. But as it had no confidence
1 Thus Tertullian considered the amen- sarily connected with the divina virtute
tia, the excidere sensu, as something neces- obumbrari.
513 MONTANISM.
in the power of the spirit, regenerated and enlightened by Christianity,
to unfold the contents of Christian truth to ever clearer consciousness,
and to form the life more and more in accordance thereto; as it dis-
dained the instrumentality of reason, which was appoimted to admin-
ister, by its own peculiar activity, the treasure imparted to it from
above, nothing else remained but to assume, that Christianity must be
continually integrated and perfected by means of extraordimary reve-
lations continually accruing from without, in relation to which the’
human mind was to remain in a state altogether passive. ‘Thus, a one-
sided supranaturalism, which failed duly to acknowledge the effects of
the redemption in converting the mind, when restored to communion
with God, once more into an organ for divme things, must be driven to
deny the adequacy of the divine word bestowed on the church for its
guidance in knowledge and life, because it lacked the organ requisite
for understanding and for applying, for working over and digesting
the included truth there delivered. A perfectibility of Christianity
was maintained, after a way which disparaged the work of Christ.
Thus, one-sided supranaturalism led to the same result as one-sided
rationalism.
Now, that which was to be superadded from without, in order to the
perfecting of the Christian life, but did not proceed of itself from the
regular development of the Christian principle, could, under the name of
perfecting, really exert no other than a checking and corrupting influence.
The perfection had reference to the introduction of a more rigid asceti-
cism ; and in this respect too, we see in Montanism the one-sided appear-
ance of a tendency of the Christian life, which had long since existed,
pushed to its extreme. Multiform new positive precepts were to be im-
posed on the church by the new revelations of the Paraclete. But Chris-
tianity does, in fact, distinguish itself from Judaism by the very circum-
stance, that it substitutes the law of the Spirit in place of the imperative
letter, and has made an end of all positive commandments, through that
love which is the fulfilling of the law. A great deal in the new precepts
of Christ which the sermon on the mount contains, was, in the first
centuries, less perfectly understood, because men did not refer these
precepts to the one whole of the new law, grounded in love, and iden-
tical with the essence of the Christian life itself, but regarded them as
isolated, positive precepts. The free development of the Christian spirit
was destined continually to suppress everything positive, by the progres-
sive identifying of it with itself (Verimnerlichung). But Montanism, on
the contrary, was for holding fast the positive as something permanent,
and by adding to which the church was to be perfected. Accordingly,
the spirit of Montanism, by itself, without the aid of any outward in-
fluences, brought back the Jewish legal position. By this, however,
we are not in the least degree warranted to suppose that Hbionitism
had any influence on the development of Montanism ; since the latter
much rather made it a point to bring distinctly to view, and carry out,
whatever there was new and peculiar, whereby Christianity differed
from the Old-Testament position; and this end, the new epoch of de-
velopment, introduced by the revelations of the Paraclete, was to sub-
MONTANISM. 513
serve. Without meaning to do so, Montanism grazed upon a Jewish
element, which, with consciousness and design, it would directly com-
bat; and, in like manner, by suppressing the Christian clearness and
sobriety of understanding. through the ecstatic trance, it encouraged
the intermingling of excited and rapturous feelings with the develop-
ment of the divine life, and thereby grazed on the Pagan position, as
we shall afterwards have occasion more particularly to observe.
The movement of which we speak, took its beginnmg from a Phry-
gian by the name of Montanus, who lived im the village of Ardaban,
on the boundary-line between Phrygia and Mysia. ‘Lhe characteris-
tics of the old Phrygian race are displayed im his mode of conceiving
Christianity, and in the shape which the zeal of the new convert as-
sumed. In the nature-religion of the ancient Phrygians, we recognize
the character of this mountain race, inclined to fanaticism and su-
perstition, easily credulous about magic and ecstatic transports ; and
we cannot be surprised to find the Phrygian temperament which dis-
played itself in the ecstacies of the priests of Cybele and Bacchus,
exhibiting itself once more in the ecstacies and somnambulisms of the
Montanists.
Montanus belonged to the class of men in whom the first glow of
conversion begat an uncompromising opposition to the world. We
should remember that he lived in a country where the expectation that
the church should finally enjoy on the theatre of its sufferings, the
earth itself, previous to the end of all things, a millennium of victorious
dominion —the expectation of a final millennial reign of Christ on
earth, (the so-called Chiliasm,) particularly prevailed ; and where vari-
ous pictures of an enthusiastic imagination, representing the character
of this approaching kingdom, were floating among the people.’ The
time in which he appeared — either durmg those catastrophes of na-
ture which led to the tumultuary attacks of the populace on the Chris-
tians,? or during the bloody persecutions of the Emperor Marcus Au-
relius? — was altogether suited to promote such an excitement of
1Jn Phrygia, Papias of Hierapolis had
certainly lived and labored, and many pas-
sages in the Pseudo-Sibylline books contain
allusions to Phrygia. ‘There is no existing
reason whatever for supposing. with Lon-
guerue and Blondel, that Montanus or any
Montanists were themselves the authors of
such passages; for nothing at all is to be
found in those Pseudo-Sibylline writings
which belongs to the peculiar ideas of Mon-
tanism. We are led rather to recognize in
them the same peculiar Phrygian spirit, of
which Montanism is also the reflection.
When we find the mount Ararat transferred
in these writings to Phrygia, we perceive
here the same partiality of the Phrygians
for their own country, which they held to
be the oldest in the world, as is shown by
Montanus in fixing upon the village of
Pepuza, in Phrygia, as the destined seat of
the millennial kingdom.
2 See Vol. I. p. 104
3 There are no distinct and well-authenti-
eated facts from which it is possible to form
a certain conclusion as to the time of Mon-
tanus’ first appearance. From the nature of
the case, however, the first beginning of a
movement of this kind scarcely admits of
being distinctly fixed. Eusebius. in his
Chronicle, states the year 171 as the time
when Montanus first appeared. But, as-
suming that the Roman bishop who was
induced by Praxeas to excommunicate the
Montanists, was not Victor, but Anicetus, —
the reasons for which opinion I have given
in my work on Tertullian, p. 486,—it
would follow, that Montanus had already
made his appearance, in the life-time of the
Roman bishop Anicetus, who died A. D.
161. Apollonius, cited by Eusebius, (V.
18,) and Epiphanius, both speak in favor of
the earlier date. The latter fixes the ap-
pearance of Montanus in about the year
157.
514 MONTANISM.
feeling, and such a direction of the imagination. It was precisely at
this time, that the violent controversy arose between the speculative
Gnostics and the advocates of the ancient, simple doctrme. A great
deal was said about the corruptions with which Christianity was threat-
ened. All this would naturally work on the mind of the Phrygian
convert, inclined already by temperament to a high-wrought enthusi-
asm. And we should observe, moreover, that he lived in a period
which has already been more fully described as the boundary epoch
between two stadta in the development of the Christian church.
He fell into certain states of ecstatic transport, in which, no longer
master of his own consciousness, and made the blind organ, as he fan-
cied, of a higher spirit, he foretold, in oracular, mystical expressions,!
the approach of new persecutions ; exhorted the Christians to a life of
more rigid austerity, and to an undaunted confession of their faith ;
extolled the blessedness of the martyr’s crown, and charged the faith-
ful to stake everything in order to win it. He announced the judg-
ments impending over the persecutors of the church, the second com-
ing of Christ, and the approach of the millennial reign, the happiness
of which he set forth in the most attractive colors. Finally, he claimed
to be considered as a prophet sent of God im behalf of the whole
church, as an inspired reformer of the whole church life. The Chris-
tian church was to be elevated by him to a higher stage of practical
perfection. A loftier system of Christian morals, befitting its maturity,
was to be revealed through him ; he appealed to Christ’s promise, that
he would, by the Holy Ghost, make known things which the men of
those times were not yet in a condition to understand. He believed
himself to be called also to give new expositions of the doctrime of
faith, which were to serve for the clearing up of the disputed points
most agitated in those districts, and for the defence of those doctrines
against the objections of heretics.
It is probable that different epochs should be distmguished in the
history of Montanus. ‘The ready sympathy with which, in that ex-
cited period, what he delivered as revelations from above was received,
contributed, doubtless, to urge him continually onward, till he attrib-
uted to himself a higher mission than he may have thought of claiming
in the outset ; and moreover the pomtblank opposition which he after-
wards met with from other quarters, served to increase his enthusiasm.
But our information is too inadequate, to enable us to separate and
distinguish these several epochs with any degree of accuracy. In
connection with Montanus, there were two women, Prisca or Priscilla,
and Maximilla, who claimed also to be regarded as prophetesses.
We will now proceed to a more detailed account of Montanism, as a
tendency stamped and characterized by distinct principles and doc-
trines. We mean that tendency of spirit, as it began with Montanus,
developed itself still farther, down to the time of Tertullian, and became
reduced by him to the form of a system.
1 Zevodwviat. A contemporary writer γλῶσσαι. Plutarch on the ancient oracles
cited in Eusebius, 1. V. c. 16, uses the term de Pyth. orac. ὁ. 24.
15
Cr
MONTANISM.
We have seen that the fundamental principle of Montanism was a
one-sided supranaturalizing element, which placed the spirit in an alto-
gether passive relation to the divine influence. ‘This principle appeared
most strongly prominent in the first gusts of religious feeling in Mon-
tanus and his prophetesses; and the approximation to the Old-Testa-
ment position, introduced by this principle, is more clearly discernible
in the earliest Montanistic oracles, than in the later forms which Mon-
tanism assumed; for in the outset the whole discourse was of God the
Almighty, not of Christ or the Holy Spirit. As the Almighty ruled
alone in the prophet’s soul, and his own self-consciousness retired
back, God therefore spoke from the soul of the prophet, of which He
took entire possession, as if in His own name. Accordingly, it is as-
serted, in one of these oracular sayings of Montanus: ‘‘ Behold! the
man is as a lyre, and I sweep over him as a plectrum. The man
sleeps, and I wake. Behold! it is the Lord, who estranges the souls
of men from themselves, and gives men souls.”’?+ So, in another ora-
cle: “I am the Lord, the Almighty God, who take up my abode in
man:? J am neither an angel, nor a messenger; but I am come as the
Lord himself, God the Father.” Also, in a prophecy of Montanus’s
associate, Maximilla, there is as yet no distinct. mention of the Holy
Spirit or the Paraclete; but the Spirit, vindicating himself from the
objection that he set. men beside themselves, declares, *‘ I am chased
as a wolf from the midst of the flock. J am no wolf; I am word, and
spirit, and power.’’? This supranaturalizing principle, expressing itself
more after a form of the Old than of the New Testament, was, to all ap-
pearance, consistently adhered to by the Montanistic tendency, as it
first presented itself, in this respect also, that the new prophets did not
promise a progressive development of the church, in the sense of one
which was to proceed from the new revelations delivered to them ; but
announced that which should bring to a close the whole thread of
earthly development. They hint at the near approach of a new order
of things, the final separation which was to be brought about by Christ
himself, and the millennial kingdom to be set up by him on the earth.
Maximilla is said to have declared expressly, ‘“‘ After me no other
prophetess shall arise, but the end shall come.””* The God who had
determined to bring about the great judgment, called on the faithful
by his voice in the new prophets, to prepare themselves for it by a
stricter life, so that the Lord, at his second coming, which was
near at hand, might find them well provided and waiting. With
this expectation of the approaching end of the world, stood intimately
connected the contempt of life and of all earthly things, to which the
new spirit of the prophets called men.
But though many of the predictions of the new prophets were not
1 Ἰδοὺ, ἄνϑρωπος ὡσεὶ λύρα, κἀγὼ ἵπταμαι 8 Ῥῇμα εἰμὶ, καὶ πνεῦμα, καὶ δύναμις. See
ὡσεὶ πλῆκτρον. Ὃ ἄνϑρωπος κοιμᾶται, κἀγὼ Euseb. 1. V. ο. 16.
γρηγορῶ. ᾿Ιδοὺ, κύριός ἐστιν ὁ ἐκστάώνων 4'The words are cited in Epiphanius:
καρδίας ἀνθρώπων καὶ διδοὺς καρδίας av- Mer’ ἐμὲ προφῆτις οὐκέτι ἔσται, ἀλλὰ συν-
ϑρώποις. Epiphan. heres. 48. τέλεια.
2 Ἐγὼ κύριος, κύριος ὁ ϑεὸς, ὁ παντοκρά-
τωρ, καταγινόμενος ἐν ἀνϑρώπῳ.
516 MONTANISM.
fulfilled, yet the principle announced by them entered mightily into the
development of the Christian consciousness in this period. And as
these new revelations were brought into connection with the doctrine
of the Holy Spirit, which, in the church system of theology, was still
less completely unfolded, with the doctrine of spiritual gifts, and
with the promises of Christ respecting the Paraclete, the idea went
forth, that there were certain seasons or epochs of the outpouring of
the Holy Ghost, through which the progressive development of the
church was to be promoted ; a new momentum superadded to its ordi-
uary, regular course of development, and designed to complete what
was lacking in it.
In receiving this principle and looking round for arguments in sup-
port of it, ’ertullian endeavored to show the necessity of some such
progressive development of the church, by pointing to a law running
through all the works of God in the kmgdoms of nature and of grace.
‘In the works of grace,” said he, “‘as in the works of nature, which
proceed from the same Creator, everything unfolds itself by certain suc-
cessive steps. rom the seed-kernel shoots forth first the plant; then
comes the blossom, and finally this becomes the fruit, which itself ar-
rives at maturity only by degrees. So the kingdom of righteousness
unfolds itself by certain stages. In the first place, there was the fear
of God awakened by the voice of nature, without a revealed law (the
patriarchal religion ;) next followed the stage of childhood under the
Jaw and the prophets; then that of youth under the gospel; and at
length the unfolding of the spiritual life to the ripeness of manhood
through the new out-pouring of the Holy Ghost, connected with the ap-
pearance of Montanus — through the new instructions of the promised
Paraclete.t_ How should the work of God stand still and make no pro-
gressive movement, while the kingdom of evil is continually enlarging
itself and acquiring new strength?” On this ground, the Montanists
denounced those who were for setting arbitrary limits to the agency of
the Holy Spirit, as though his extraordinary operations had been
confined to the times of the apostles alone. ‘Thus, in a Montanistic
writing of North Africa, it was said: “ Faith ought not to be so weak
and despondent, as to suppose that God’s grace was powerful only among
the ancients; since God at all times carries into effect what he has
promised, as a witness to unbelievers and a blessing to the faithful.’’?
The later effusions of the Holy Spirit ought rather to exceed all that
had gone before.? The fact was appealed to, that Christ himself prom-
ised believers the revelations of the Paraclete, as the perfecter of his
church, through whom he would make known what the men of those
times would have been unable to comprehend. By this, it was by no
means intended to deny in general, that the promise above mentioned
had any reference to the apostles ;— but the opinion was simply this,
that the promise did not refer exclusively to the apostles — did not, in
its application to them, become entirely fulfilled, but on the contrary
1 Tertullian. de virgg. veland. c. 1. putanda noyitiora queque ut novissimiora,
2 Acta Perpetue et Felicitat. Preefat. secundum exuberationem gratis in ultima
8 Preefat. in Acta Perpetue: Majora re- saculi spatia decretam.
MONTANISM. 517
referred also to the new revelations by the prophets now awakened, —
that these last were a necessary complement and enlargement of that
original revelation. The truth springing from the latter and trans-
mitted by the general tradition of the church, was in the former always
presupposed as an unchangeable foundation. ‘The new prophets should
distinguish themselves from false teachers, and prove their divine mis-
sion, by their agreement with this original revelation. But proceeding
on such foundation, the Christian system of morals and the entire
church life should be carried still further onward by these new revela-
tions ; —for the men who were first weaned from paganism and sensual-
ity, were not as yet in a condition to understand the requisitions of Chris-
tian perfection. Moreover, by these revelations, the Christian doctrines,
attacked by the ever encroaching sects of the heretics, were to be de-
fended. As the heretics made use of arbitrary and false interpretations
to explain the holy scriptures, (from which, too, they might best be refu-
ted,) in accordance with their own notions ; so by these new revelations a
fixed and settled authority would be established against them. Finally,
they were to supply means for resolving disputed questions on matters
of faith and practice.? Hence the Montanist Tertullian, towards the
end of his treatise on the resurrection, addressing himself to those who
were willing to draw from the fountain of these new revelations, says
to them, “‘ You will thirst for no instruction ; — no questions will per-
plex you.”
Thus Montanism set over against the rigid, traditional element, one
of free, progressive movement. The occupiers of this new position
were better prepared to distinguish between what was changeable and
what was unchangeable in the church development, since they admitted
the immutability of the doctrinal tradition alone ;— they maintained
that the regulations of the church might be altered and improved by
the progressive instructions of the Paraclete, according to the exigen-
cies of the times. While, moreover, according to the view taken by
the church, the bishops were regarded as the sole organs for diffusmg
the influences of the Holy Spirit in the church, being the successors of
the apostles and the inheritors of their spiritual power ; —it was the
opinion of the Montanists, on the other hand, that besides the ordinary
organs of church guidance, there were still higher ones — those extra-
ordinary organs, the prophets awakened by the Paraclete. The latter
only, according to the view taken by the Montanists, were the succes-
sors of the apostles in the highest sense, the inheritors of their spiritual
power in full. Hence Tertullian sets over against the church consist-
ing of the number of bishops, the church of the Spirit, which manifests
itself through men enlightened by the Holy Spirit. While it was the
custom to derive the power conceded to the bishops from the power to
bind and to loose conferred on Peter, the Montanist Tertullian, on the
1 Tertullian. de pudicitia, c. 12. 8 Tertullian. de corona milit. c. 3.
2 Tertullian. de virgg. veland. represents 4 Tertullian. de pudicitia, c. 21: Ecclesia
as the administratio Paracleti, quod disci- spiritus per spiritalem hominem, non eccle-
plina dirigitur, quod scripture revelantur, sia numerus episcoporum.
quod intellectus reformatur.
MOL. 1, 44
518 MONTANISM.
other hand, maintained that these words referred only to Peter person-
ally, and to those who, like Peter, were filled with the Holy Ghost, in
directly. They who followed the voice of the Holy Ghost speaking
through the medium of the new prophets, being the spiritually minded,
genuine Christians, (Spiritales,) constituted the church in the proper
sense ; while, on the other hand, the opposers of the new revelations
were usually styled the carnally minded, the Psychical.
Thus Montanism set up a church of the Spirit, consisting of the spir-
itales homines, in opposition to the prevailing outward view of that in-
stitution. Tertullian says: ‘‘ The church, in the proper and preéminent
sense, 15 the Holy Spirit, in which the Three are One, — and next, the
whole community of those who are agreed in this faith (that God the
Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost are one) is called, after its founder
and consecrator, (the Holy Spirit,) the church.” 2 The Catholic point
of view expresses itself in this — viz. that the ¢dea of the church is put
first, and by this very position of it, made outward; next, the agency
of the Holy Spirit is represented as conditioned by, and hence derived
through, this mediation.? Montanism, on the other hand, like Protes-
tantism, places the Holy Spirit first, and considers the church as that
which is only derived. Assuming this position, the order would be re-
versed: Ubi Spiritus, ibi ecclesia; et ubi ecclesia, ibi Spiritus. But
the Montanistic conception does not coincide with the Protestant ;
for in the former it is not the general fact of the actuation of the Holy
Spirit, as it takes place in all believers, but the above described extra-
ordinary revelation, which is meant. Partly this latter, which is here
placed as the original thing, and partly the acknowledgment of the
same in its divine character, constitute, accordmg to the Montanistic
view, the essence of the true church. It is that church in which God
awakes the prophets, and by which the prophets are recognized as
such. |
Since again, according to the Montanistic theory, prophets could be
awakened from among Christians of every rank; since the Montanists
expressly regarded it as one of the characteristics of this last epoch in
the development of God’s kmgdom, that, according to the promises in
the prophet Joel,* which were now passing into fulfilment, the gifts of
the Spirit were to be dispensed to Christians of every condition and
sex without distinction ; and since requisitions in regard to the Christian
walk which before had been confined wholly to the spiritual order,
were extended by the new revelations to all Christians as such; they
were thus led to give prominence once more to that zdea of the dignity
of the universal Christian calling, of the priestly dignity of all Chris-
1 Secundum Petri personam, spiritalibus
potestas ista conveniet, aut apostolo aut pro-
phete. L.c.
2 Nam et ecclesia proprie et principaliter
ipse est Spiritus, in quo est trinitas unius
divinitatis. Illam ecclesiam congregat, quam
Dominus in tribus posuit, (where two or
three are gathered together in his name,)
atque ita exinde etiam numerus, qui in
hance fidem conspiraverint, ecclesia ab auc-
tore et consecratore censetur. L. 6.
3 As in the well-known words of Irenzeus:
Ubi ecclesia, ibi Spiritus ; et ubi Spiritus, ibi
ecclesia.
4 Preefat. in Act. Felicit.
MONTANISM. 519
tians, which had been, in a measure, suppressed by the confounding
together of the fundamental principles of Judaism and Christianity.!
But although the idea of the church and of its progressive develop-
ment was in one phase of it seized by Montanism after a freer and a
more spiritual manner, yet in another respect, by deriving this progres-
sive development from new, extraordinary revelations, from a newly
awakened prophetic order, it fell back upon the position of Judaism.
While, according to the ordinary church principles, the Old Testament
priesthood was transferred over to the Christian church; according to
the Montanistic view, the Old Testament order of prophets was thus
transferred. And it is noticeable, that the Catholic church, which
afterwards adopted many of the views which in the beginning she cen-
sured τὴ Montanism, seized particularly on many things asserted by the
Montanists concerning the relation of the new revelations by their
prophets to the ground-work of church tradition and scripture doctrine,
in order to explain the relation of the decisions of general councils to
both these matters. A new particular was superinduced on the church
notion of tradition ; — to holding fast on the original doctrine once de-
livered, was added the element of a progressive advancement in har-
mony with this doctrine, and derived from the Holy Spirit. But while
this actuation of the Holy Spirit was regarded, from the Montanistic
point of view, as one that proceeded from newly awakened, extraordi-
nary organs ; it was, by the principles of the church, transferred to the
regular organs of the church guidance, the bishops. We must here
bring in also what has already been said concerning the Montanistic
notion of inspiration.?
But this way of considering inspiration, which, derived from the Jews,
had, up to this time, chiefly prevailed also among the fathers of the
church, was now gradually suppressed by the opposition to Montanism.
Its violent opponents condemned the ecstatic state without reserve ;
considering it rather as the sign of a false prophet. Unfortunately, the
work against Montanism by the Christian rhetorician Miltiades, in which
this very point was set forth, that the ecstacy was a state of mind at
variance with the character of a true prophet,’ has not reached our
times ; —a work by which probably much light would be shed on the
then interesting discussions about the notion of inspiration. Men were
inclined to trace the ecstacy to an agency of the evil spirit, as a spirit
of confusion and of schism ; and contrasted it with the influences of the
Holy Spirit, as a spirit of sober and clear self-possession. Men were
for denouncing the Montanistic notion of the prophet and the prophetic
office in everything, without attempting to separate what was true in it
from what was false. But the more free and unbiassed spirit of the
Alexandrian school is to be seen also, in its judgment on these phenom-
1 As, for example, Tertullian de mono- Dei conspicit, vel cum per ipsum Deus loqut-
amia tur, necesse est excidat sensu, obumbratus
2 The definition of such an ecstatic state scilicet virtute divina.
of the Montanistic mind, is to be found in 8 Ilepi τοῦ μὴ δεῖν προφήτην ἐν ἐκστάσει
Tertuilian, c. Mare. 1. ΤΥ. 6. 22: In spiritu λαλεῖν.
homo constitutus, praesertim cum gloriam
520 MONTANISM.
ena. It is true, Clement of Alexandria, too, represents the ecstacy as
the sign of a false prophet, and of the actuation of the evil spirit, where-
by the soul becomes estranged from itself ;+ but yet he declared him-
self opposed to those who, as he expresses it, unreservedly condemned,
with a blind zeal of ignorance, everything that proceeded from these
false prophets, instead of inquiring into what was said, without respect
to the person, and ascertaining whether it contained any portion of
truth.2 In contradicting Montanism, men fell into the erroneous the-
ory at the opposite extreme. Unwilling to admit that there was anything
at all of an unconscious nature in the prophets of the Old Testament,
they attributed to them a clear, conscious knowledge of everything in-
cluded in the divine promises which they announced ; ?— a view of the
matter which could not fail to obscure the right understanding of the -
relation between the Old and New Testaments, and to prevent an un-
biassed exposition of the latter.
As we observed above, in giving the general characteristics of Mon-
tanism, it grazed closely, by vitiating the Christian principle, upon Ju-
daism on the one side and upon paganism on the other.
States somewhat akin to what occurred in pagan divination, phenom-
ena like the magnetic and somnambulist appearances occasionally pre-
sented in the pagan cultus, mixed in with the excitement of Christian
feelings. Those Christian females who were thrown into ecstatic
trances during the time of public worship, were not only consulted about
remedies for bodily diseases, but also plied with questions concerning
the invisible world. In Tertullian’s time, there was one at Carthage,
who, in her states of ecstacy, imagined herself to be in the society of
Christ, and of angels. The matter of her visions corresponded to what
she had just heard read from the holy scriptures, what was said im the
Psalms that had been sung, or in the prayers that had been offered.‘
At the conclusion of the service and after the dismission of the church,
she was made to relate her visions, from which men sought to gain in-
formation about things of the invisible world; as, for example, about
the nature of the soul.
The Jewish element discovered itself in the pretended completion
of the system of morals by new precepts which had particular refer-
ence to the ascetic life. Thus, fasting on the dies stationum, which
1 Strom. lib. I. f. 811, where he says of
the false prophets: Τῷ ὄντι οὗτοι ἐν ἐκστά-
σει προεφήτευον, ὡς ἂν ἀποστάτου διώκονοι,
where, without doubt, there is a play on
words in the use of the terms ἔκστασις and
ἀποστάτης.
2 His words are: Οὐ μὲν διὰ τὸν λέγοντα
καταγνωστέον ἀμαϑῶς καὶ τῶν λεγομένων,
ὅπερ καὶ ἐπὶ τῶν προφητεύειν νὺν On AEyo-
μένων παρατηρητέον: ἀλλὰ τὰ λεγόμενα
σκοπητέον εἰ τῆς ἀληϑείας ἔχεται. Strom.
1. VI. f. 647. As we might expect from
Clement a more unbiassed judgment than
was commonly entertained by others, we
have so much the more reason to regret the
loss of the work, in which he designed to
speak more fully of Montanism, — if, in-
deed, he ever executed that design, — viz.
his book περὲ προφητείας. Vid. Strom. L
Vit ela,
8. g. Orig. in Joann. T. VI. § 2: Προ-
πεέτῶς ἀποφήνασϑαι περὶ προφήτων, ὡς οὐ
σοφῶν, εἰ μὴ νενοήκασι τὰ ἀπὸ ἰδίου στό-
ματος.
4 Tertullian. de anima, c. 9, says of her:
Et videt et audit sacramenta, et quorundam
corda dignoscit et medicinas desiderantibus
submittit. Jam vero prout scripture legun-
tur, aut psalmi canuntur, aut allocutiones
proferuntur, aut petitiones delegantur, ita
inde materiz visionibus subministrantur
MONTANISM. 521
till now had been considered a voluntary thing {see above,) was pre-
scribed as a law for all Christians. It was also made a law, that this
fast should be extended to three o’clock in tLe afternoon. During
three weeks of the year, a meagre diet, like that adopted of free choice
by the continentes ΟΥ̓ἀσκήται, was enjoined as a law on all Christians.!
Azainst these Montanistic ordinances, the remaining spirit of evangeli-
cal freedom still nobly and emphatically declared itself: but afterwards
the spirit which here expressed itself in Montanism, also passed over
into the Catholic church.
From Montanism proceeded a tendency, which, instead of leading
men to value the blessings of humanity according to their true rela-
tion, in the view of Christianity, to the highest good — the kingdom
of God —led them only to place the one over against the other. And
the same tendency, by the undue prominence it | gave to the divine ele-
ment as a power to suppress every human motive, would lead also to a
quietism that crippled and discouraged human activity. On this princi-
ple, neither would the blessings of the earthly life be estimated according
to their real worth, nor the use of the requisite means for securing and
preserving them be acknowledged as a duty. Accordingly, Montanism
tended to foster a fanatic longing after martyrdom. It set up the prin-
ciple, that in submitting to the divine will, men should do nothing to
avoid those persecutions, 2 which it was God’s will to suspend over
Christians for the trial of their faith. This spirit of Montanism char-
acteristically expresses itself in the following oracle: “‘ Let it not be your
wish to die on your beds in the pains of child-birth, or in debilitating fever ;
but desire to die as martyrs, that He may be glorified, who suffered for
you.” ‘The same tendency of spirit pushed Montanism, in its anxiety-
to avoid an accommodating disposition, which might prove injurious to
faith, to the other extreme of sternly renouncmg all those usages of
eivil and social life which could in any way be traced to a Pagan ori-
gin; of despising all those prudential maxims by which it was possible
to avert the suspicion of the Pagan authorities. It seems, among
other things, to have been objected to the Montanists, that, by their
frequent meetings for fasting and prayer, they defied the established
laws against secret assemblies.®
This tendency of the moral spirit led to an undue estimation of ce-
livacy ; — and the unmarried life was already particularly recommend-
ed by the Montanistie prophetess Priscilla, to the clerical order, as if
it was in this way only they could be the worthy channels of holy
influences, could properly render themselves capable of receiving the
1 The so called Xerophagize. — Sunday
and the Sabbath were excepted from these
fasts. The Montanists were at difference
with the Roman church in respect also to
the not fasting on the Sabbath, (see above.)
At the time of Jerome, when, however, the
Montanists seem to have departed in many
respects, as, for example, in respect to the
church constitution, from their original in-
stitutions, they had three weeks of Xero-
phagie. These may be compared with
44*
Quadragesimal fasts in the later church ; —
and so indeed they are called by Jerome,
(ep. 27, ad Marcellum ) : “illi tres in anno
faciunt quadragesimas.”
2 See Tertullian. de fuga in persecut.
8 De jejuniis, ¢. 13: Quomodo in nobis
ipsam quoque unitatem jejunationum et
xerophagiarum et stationum denotaris ?
Nisi forte in senatusconsulta et in princi-
pum mandata coitionibus opposita delin-
quimus.
022 MONTANISM.
divine gifts of the spirit.1 Hence, we may observe another instance
in which Montanism passed over into the Catholic church.
Now an ascetic spirit of this sort is elsewhere usually coupled with
ignorance of the marriage state, as a form for the realization of the
highest good; and this ignorance is usually based on a sensuous and
barely outward conception of this relation. But Montanism united
with this ascetic tendency, a conception of the marriage institution di-
rectly opposed to the one just mentioned. We see the influence of
the peculiar Christian spirit manifested in Montanism, by the promi-
nence it gives to the idea of marriage, in that view of it which was
first clearly suggested by Christianity, — as a spiritual union, conse-
crated by Christ, of two individuals, separated by sex, in one common
life. The Montanists held, therefore, that the religious consecration
of such a union was a matter of the highest moment ; they reckoned
it as belonging to the essence of a truly Christian marriage, that it
should be concluded in the church, in the name of Christ. A marriage
otherwise contracted, was looked upon by them as an unlawful connec-
tion.2 Regarding the institution in this light, it followed again, that
Montanism would allow of no second marriage, after the death of the
first husband or the first wife; for marriage being an indissoluble
union in the spirit, not in the flesh alone, was destined to endure be-
yond the grave. ° In this instance, also, the Montanists, in their legal
spirit, only pushed to the extreme, a view to. which others doubtless
were inclined.* And it is clear, that in this matter too, the Montanis-
tic element passed over into a Catholic one; for the way was thus pre-
pared for the sacramental view of the marriage institution.
The severe legal spirit of Montanism displays itself in the zeal it
manifested for the more rigid principles of penance.® But the Monta-
nists, so far as they failed, like their opponents, rightly to distinguish
baptism and regener ation, and rightly to understand the relation of
faith and the forgiveness of sin to the entire Christian life, were in-
volved in the same error which lay at the foundation of this whole dis-
pute on the extension of absolution. The moral zeal against that false
confidence in the efficacy of absolution which tended to encourage the
feeling of security in sin, expresses itself in the following exposition of
Tertullian, aimed against a wrong application of the passage in 1 John
1 The words of Rigaltius, published in Ter-
tullian’s work de exhortatione castitatis, c. 11,
are: Quod sanctus minister sanctimoniam
noverit ministrare. Purificantia enim con-
cordat et visiones vident et ponentes faciem
dedrsum etiam voces audiunt manifestas,
tam salutares quam et occultas.
2 Tertullian. de pudicitia, c. 4: Penes nos
occultz quoque conjunctiones, id est, non
prius apud ecclesiam professz, juxta mce-
chiam et fornicationem judicari periclitan-
tur, nec inde consertz obtentu matrimonii
crimen eludunt. According to the princi-
ples of Montanism, the essence of a true
marriage in the Christian sense is, (de mo-
nogamia, c. 20): cum Deus jungit duos in
unam carnem, aut junctos deprehendens in
eadem, conjunctionem signavit. (Where to
the marriage contracted by two parties
while they were still pagans, the sanctifying
consecration of Christianity is superadded.)
3 See Tertullian. de monogamia and ex-
hortat. castitatis.
* Athenagoras (legat. pro Christian. f
37, ed. Colon) styles the “γάμος δεύτερος
εὐπρεπὴς μοιχεία. Origen (Tom. in Matth.
f. 363) says that Paul gave permission for
a second marriage after the death of the
first husband or the first wife: πρὸς τὴν
σκληροκαρδίαν ἢ ἀσϑενείαν.
; See on this controversy, vol. I. p. 217, ff
Lie:
MONTANISM. 523
1: 7. ‘John says, if we would walk in the light, as he is in the
light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus
Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin. Do we sin then, if we walk
in the light, and shall we be cleansed if we sin in the light? By no
means. For whosoever sins, is not in the light, but m darkness. He
is showing, then, how we shall be cleansed from sin, if we walk in the
light, in which no sin can be committed; for such ts the power of the
blood of Christ, that those whom it has cleansed from sim, it thence-
forth preserves pure, if they continue to walk in the light.”!
It is true, as we have remarked, that Montanism encouraged the
fanatic enthusiasm for martyrdom; for, according to the Montanistic
doctrine, the martyrs would be entitled to enter immediately after
death into a higher state of blessedness, to which other believers could
obtain no admittance ;” yet the struggle to maintain a rigid peniten-
tial disciple induced the Montanist. Tertullian to oppose the undue
homage which in another respect was paid to the martyrs. Since
many, for instance, to whom Montanism refused absolution, could ob-
tain it,in the Catholic church, through the mediation of the confessors,?
Tertullian was led to denounce this false confidence in the efficacy of
their mtercession, and to chastise the spiritual arrogance of these men.
“ὁ Let 1t satisfy the martyrs,” said he, ‘ to have purged themselves of
their own sms. It savors of ingratitude or arrogance, to pretend to
bestow on others what it must be considered a great favor to have ob-
tained for one’s self. Who, but the Son of God only, has paid the
debt of death for others by his own? For to this end he came, that,
free from sin and perfectly holy himself. he might die for sinners.
Thou, therefore, who wouldst emulate Him m procuring the forgiveness
of sins, suffer for me, when thou art free from sin thyself. But if thou
art a sinner, how can the oil of thy puny lamp suffice at once for me
and for thyself?” 4
Tn accordance with the one-sided, swpra-naturalistic element of the
scheme we have been considering, the expectations and attention of the
Montanists were so directed as to observe, not how Christianity was te
transform the life of humanity, by beginning from within and working
outwards, but how the kingdom of Christ was to gai the dominion of
the world by some outward miracle. Here full scope was given to
their extravagant coloring of Chiliasm; and in this respect also, they
only pushed to the furthest extreme, a way of thinking which very
generally prevailed in the church. .
If by pietism we understand that morbid direction of pious feelings
where some arbitrary figment, some excrescence from without, some-
thing cast over and over in the same mould, is substituted for the nat-
ural development of the Christian .life, —in other words, the reaction
of a legal principle within the bosom of Christianity, — then we shall
have good cause to consider Montanism as the earliest form of mani-
festation of what may properly be styled pietism.
1 De pndicitia, c. 19. Which work re- 2'The Paradise; see Tertullian, de ani-
fers generally to this dispute. ma. 6, 56.
5 See vol. I. p. 220. 4 De pudicitia, ο. 22.
524 MONTANISM.
What tended to further the spread of this party, was in part its re-
lation to Christian principles long before existing, and in part the con-
tagious influence of enthusiasm, and the manner in which spiritual
pride was here nourished ; since he who acknowledged the new proph-
ets, might directly consider himself to be a truly regenerate man, a
member of the select company of the spiritually minded, (Spiritales, )
and despise all other Christians as carnally mmded, (Psychici,) as not
yet truly regenerated.
The controversy on-Montanism was conducted with extreme violence,
first im Asia Minor. Synods were held for the purpose of mquiring
into the affair, at which many declared themselves opposed to it; the
proceedings of these synods were sent to the more distant churches,
and these were thus drawn into the dispute. It is to be regretted, that,
owing to the want of distinct accounts, the whole of these proceedings.
and hence the gradual formation of the Montanistic sects, and their
relation to the rest of the church, are matters involved in great obscu-
rity. Though the Montanists considered themselves to be the only
genuine Christians, and looked upon their opponents as bemg Christians
but in part, and as occupying an inferior position ; though they thought
themselves exalted above all the rest of the church, yet it does not ap-
pear that they were inclined to separate immediately from the latter,
and to renounce its fellowship; they wished only to be considered
the ecclesia spiritus, spiritalis, within the ecclesia made up of the
psychical multitude. They introduced a similar distinction into the
practical province, as the Gnostics had done into the theoretical. It
is true, by this practically aristocratic spirit, the essence of the Chris-
tian church was not exposed to so much danger, as it could not fail to
be by the theoretical; but yet the adherents of the new prophetic or-
der could not be tolerated in that relation to the rest of the church in
which they were continually seeking to extend themselves more widely,
without great injury to the church life; for they claimed only tolera-
tion at first, in order that they might gradually establish their own
supremacy. .
The community at Lyons had among them, at the time of the bloody
persecution which they experienced under the Emperor Marcus Aure-
lias, many members from Asia Minor; and they were led by their
close connection with the Asiatic church, to take a lively interest in
the proceedings relative to Montanism. ‘The community wrote to
Kleutherus, bishop of Rome, and the presbyter Irenzeus was the bearer
of their letter. Much light would be shed on the whole subject, had
we more distinct information respecting the contents of this letter ; but
Eusebius! barely remarks, that the judgment on the matter expressed
by the church was just and orthodox. Now, as Eusebius certainly
considered the Montanistic tendency as heretical, we might infer from
this remark of his, that the judgment expressed in the letter was one
unfavorable to the Montanists. But in this case, the letter could not
have had in view the end which Eusebius assigns to it, that of putting
1 Lib. V. c. 3.
MONTANISM. 525
an end to the disputes. It would harmonize most perfectly with this
end, to suppose that the letter was written in a spirit of Christian
moderation, which sought to lessen the importance of the points in dis-
pute, to refute the various exaggerated charges laid against the Mon-
tanistic churches, and, in the diversity of views respecting the worth
of the new prophetic order, to inculcate the importance of Christian
unanimity. On this supposition, we may explain why Origen should
express so favorable an opinion of the contents of the letter, which he
could not have done, had it breathed a decidedly Montanistic spirit.
This supposition accords best, moreover, with the known character of
Trenzeus, ἃ man of moderation and a lover of peace; as also with his
opinions, which, without bemg Montanistic, were yet not wholly unfa-
vorable to the Montanists. By this mission, Eleutherus was persuaded
probably to make peace with those churches; but, soon after, Praxeas
of Asia Minor, a violent opponent of Montanism, came to Rome; and
partly by presenting before the Roman bishop the opposite conduct of
his two predecessors, Anicetus and Soter,! partly by his unfavorable
representations relative to the condition of the Montanistic churches,
persuaded him to revoke all that he had hitherto done. The Monta-
nists now proceeded to form-and propagate themselves as a distinct
sect. They were styled Cataphrygians, from the name of their coun-
try; also Pepuzians, because Montanus, it was said, taught that a
place called Pepuza, in Phrygia, perhaps the first seat of the Monta-
nistic church, was the chosen spot from which the millennial reign of
Christ was destined to begin.
It might be gathered from the relation of Montanism to the siaksik
ing spiritual tendencies in the church, that there would be various gra-
dations and stages of transition between the latter and Montanism de-
cidedly expressed; as also many shades of difference amongst its oppo-
nents, from those that were not disposed to overlook the Christian ele-
_ Ment in this appearance, —as for example a Clement of Alexandria, —
down to those who, by their uncompromising opposition, were driven to
another extreme, and to a depravation of the Christian spirit of another
kind. As Montanism confounded together the Old and New Testa-
ment positions, its antagonists were led to draw with so much the
greater precision the line of demarcation between them. Their current
watch-word was borrowed from Matthew 11: 13, ‘The prophets and
the law prophesied until John the Baptist — then they were to cease.”
This maxim they opposed as well to the new ascetic ordinances and
to the new precepts curtailing Christian freedom, as to the new pro-
phetic order .by which the church must allow itself to be governed.*
Tertullian remarks, of those who so applied the above passage, that they
would have done better to banish the Holy Spirit entirely from the
church, since his agency was so wholly dispensed with.? But his accu
1 The truth of what is here asserted de- itis Deo, sicut de gratia, ita de disciplina
pends, however, on the question whether De jejuniis, c. 11.
the bishop before mentioned was Eleutherus 8 Superest, ut totum anferatis, quantum
or Victor. in vobis tam otiosum. De jejuniis, c. 11.
2 Tertullian replies: Palos terminales fig-
526 THE ALEXANDRIAN
sation is, in this case, unjust; for both parties were agreed in believing
that the church could not subsist without the continued actuation of the
Holy Spirit. The only point of dispute between the two parties was
the question about the form of that agency, whether it was one which
lay at the ground in the whole ordinary course of the development of
the church, or whether it was newly created by a divine, supernatural
interposition. And it was these very antagonists of Montanism, who
seem to have prominently set forth m contrast to the Old Testament
view, the conception of the Holy Spirit, as the new, animating princi-
ple, both of the individualities of character and also of their harmoni-
ous combination in the communities which it actuated ;— from which
specific difference itself they drew their conclusion, that the church
could not be made dependent on any new prophetic order. But the
most decided opponents of Montanism, such as the Alogi hereafter to
be mentioned, either denied the continuance of the miraculous gifts
which distinguished the Apostolic church, the charismata, which, in their
form, discovered something of a supernatural character; or were not
ready to acknowledge the prophetic gift as a thing that pertained to the
Christian economy, but considered it as belonging exclusively to the
Old Testament; and hence they could not admit any prophetic book
into the canon of the New Testament. It is to be regretted, that our
information is so scanty respecting the party of the Alogians, so called;
and that the work of Hippolytus on the charismata, which was propa-
bly written in opposition to those ultra anti-Montanists, has not reached
our times. We should otherwise have been enabled to speak with more
definiteness and certainty on this disputed poimt, and on the manner in
which it was handled.
There were antagonists of Montanism, who opposed.to a fanatical
tendency on the side of the feelings, a negative tendency on the side
of the understanding ; and who, from the dread of what was fanatical,
rejected much also that was genuinely Christian. It is true, as must
be evident from what has been said, that Montanism formed the ex-
treme point of the anti-Gnostic spirit; but that ultra anti-Montanistic
tendency of the understanding, however, must, in order to) maintain
itself in its dry sobriety, so hostile to everything of a transcendent
character, have been no less opposed to the speculative and mystical
element in Gnosticism. And the dread of the Gnostic tendency
might, precisely in the same way as the dread of the Montanistic, push
men to one-sided negations. It is easy to understand how persons with
‘some partial leaning of this sort must be struck with the peculiar ele-
ment of St. John as wholly foreign from their own views; and how
they would be inclined to bring up the differences between the gospel
according to John, and the others, which seemed more accordant with
their own opinions,! for the purpose of showing, that the gospel which
the Montanists were chiefly in the habit of quoting in defence of their
doctrine on the new revelations, was not a genuine one. Irenzeus, from
1 As, for example, according to the testi- John, that in the Synoptical evangelists
mony of Epiphanius, (heres 51.) that the mention is made of one passover, in John
history of the temptation is omitted in of two.
SCHOOL. 527
whom we have the first account of this party, certainly goes too far,
when he tells us, that they rejected the gospel of John on account of
the passage in it which speaks of the Paraclete.'| That passage alone
could not possibly have induced them to such a step; for in truth they
needed only to limit, as was actually done by others, the promise to the
apostles, in order to ‘deprive the Montanists of this support. As it was
their practice, however, when those words of Christ were adduced by
those who held the Montanistic views, to pronounce the whole book
which contained them a spurious one, it was a natural course, suggested
by the propensity so common in theological polemics, of drawing general
conclusions from partial facts, to infer “that they had rejected the gospel
on account of this single text alone.
Apart from the consideration that the antagonists of Montanism’
must reject the Apocalypse as a proplictic book, and favorable to Chili-
asm, the whole drift and style of this book must in itself have pos-
sessed something alien from the spirit of this party of the sober under-
standing. They made sport of the seven angels and the seven trum-
pets of the Revelation. Yet such a prosaic tendency of the under-
standing as the above described, was something too foreign from this
youthful age of the church, to allow of its meeting with any very gen-
eral reception.
As in Montanism a tendency repellant of the existing elements of
culture appeared in its most decided form; so, on the other hand, the
tendency which strove to reconcile the existing culture with Christian-
ity, and to cause it to be pervaded with the spirit of Christianity, pre-
sented itself especially in the Alexandrian school. But the question
arises, from what source is this tendency to be derived, and what was
its original aim, — whether perhaps it was, in the outset, merely a pro-
vision to communicate religious instruction to the pagans, or whether
there had existed in Alexandria, from the first, a school to educate
teachers for the Christian church, a sort of theological seminary for the
clerical order. ' The notices of Eusebius? and of Jerome® are too in-
definite to furnish any solution of this question ; and besides, neither of
these church Fathers was so situated as to be able duly to ‘distinguish
the form of this school as it existed in his own time from what it origi-
nally was. We must therefore content ourselves with what may be
1 Trenzus, lib. ITI. ¢.11,§ 9. His words
are: Ut donum spiritus frustrentur, quod
in novissimis temporibus secundum placi-
in the sense of this school, when its condi-
tion and character are once understood.
For its Gnosis was designed, without any
tum Patris effusum est in humanum genus,
illam speciem non admittunt, que est se-
cundum Joannis evangelium, in qua Para-
cletum se missurum Dominus promisit.
2 Lib. VI. c. 10, that a διδασκάλειον ἱερῶν
λόγων had existed there from ancient times,
which according to the church phraseology
may be most naturally interpreted as mean-
ing a school for the expounding of the
scriptures. But this does not suffice to
characterize the particular mode and form
under which the Alexandrian school ap-
neared ; though it is easy to bring into these
words all that belonged to theological study
doubt, to furnish a key for the right under-
standing of scripture, and was to be derived
from scripture by allegorical interpretation.
A distinct classification of different theo-
logical disciplines, as exegesis, dogmatics,
etc., is,in this age of the church, when every
thing was still in one chaotic mass, not to
be thought of,—as has been very clearly
pointed out by Hr. Director Hasselbach of
Stettin, where he explains this phrase in
his Dissertation de schola, que Alexandriz
floruit, catechetica, Part. I. p. 15.
8 De vir. illustr. 6, 36.
928 THE ALEXANDRIAN
gathered from our knowledge of the labors of the individual catechists
who presided over the school. Now we find in the outset at Alexandria
‘but one man appomted by the bishop to hold the office of catechist,
whose business it was to give religious instruction to the pagans, and
moreover doubtless to the children of the Christians in that place.!
The catechist Origen was the first to share the duties of this office with
another person, when they became too multiplied to allow him an oppor-
tunity of prosecuting at the same time his works on scientific theology.
The catechumens were then divided into two classes. But though the
office of catechist at Alexandria differed in no respect originally from
the same office in other cities, yet it could not fail to become gradually,
of itself, an entirely different affair.
Men were required for this office, who possessed a perfect and exact
knowledge of the Grecian religion ; especially, who had received a philo-
sophical education, and been trained in the society and amidst the dis-
cussions of those learned pagans, who, after having explored many sys-
tems, had turned their attention to Christianity. It was not enough
here, as in other churches, to present the main doctrines of Christian-
ity, according to the so-called παράδοσις: it was necessary, with the ed-
ucated catechumens, to go back to the primitive sources of the religion in
the scriptures themselves, and seek to initiate them into the under-
standing of these. They required a faith which would stand the test
of scientific examination. Clement, who was himself one of these cat-
echists, pomts to the need of a thorough method of administering the
catechetical office at Alexandria, when he says: ‘“*He who would
gather from every quarter what would be for the profit of the catechu-
mens, especially if they are Greeks,’ (for the earth is the Lord’s, and
the fulness thereof,) must not, like the irrational brutes, be shy of
much learning, but he must seek to collect around him every possible
means of helping his hearers ;”” — and directly after,* “‘ All culture is
profitable, and particularly necessary is the study of holy scripture,
to enable us to prove what we teach, and especially when our hearers
come tous from the discipline of the Greeks.”° The patience and
skill which must be exercised by these Alexandrian teachers, in answer-
ing the multifarious questions which would be proposed to them, is inti-
mated by Origen, when he requires of the Christian teachers, that they
should follow Christ’s example, and not show a fretful spirit, if they
should be pushed with questions proposed not for the sake of learning,
but for the purpose of putting them to the proof.®
Much care was therefore necessary m selecting these Alexandrian
catechists ; and the office was conferred in preference on those men of .
1 Eusebius (1. WI. c. 6) says, that Ori-
gen, when a boy, had been a pupil of Clem-
ent.
2 Strom. ]. VI. f. 659, B.
® To complete the thought ;— he ought
not to be timid in exploring the vestiges of
truth even in pagan literature, and to ap-
propriate the useful; for all comes from
God, and is, as such, pure.
4 Strom. 1. VI. ἢ 660, C.
5 With these remarks compare what
Clement says generally with regard to those
to whom the faith must be demonstrated
after the manner of the Greeks.
6 In Matth. T. XIV. ὁ 16: Πειραζομένου
τηλικούτου σωτῆρος ἡμῶν, τίς TOV μαϑητῶν
αὐτοῦ ἀγανακτοΐη τεταγμένος εἰς διδασκα-
λίαν, ἐπὶ τῷ πειράζεσϑαι ὑπό τινων καὶ
πυνϑανομένων οὐκ ἐκ φιλομαϑείας, ἀλλ᾽
ἀπὸ τοῦ πειράζειν ἐδϑέλειν,
SCHOOL. 529
learning and of a philosophical education, who had themselves been con-
ducted ‘to Christianity by the way of philosophical inquiry —such as
were Pantenus, the first Alexandrian catechist of whom we have any |
distinct knowledge, and his disciple, Clement.
The circle of studies taught by these men went on now of its own
accord gradually to extend itself, and to embrace a wider range ; for it
was the first attempt to satisfy, on the principles of the church faith, a
want deeply felt by numbers,—the want of a scientific exposition of
that faith, and of a Christian science. Their school was frequented’
partly by those educated pagans who, after having under their instruc-
tions been converted to Christianity, were seized with the: desire of de-
voting themselves, and all they possessed, to its service; and with this
in view chose the Alexandrian catechists for their guides; and partly
by young men who, standing already within the Christian pale, were
only thirsting after a more profound knowledge, and aiming to prepare
themselves for the office of church teachers. Thus there grew up here,
in a manner perfectly spontaneous, a theological school. It was the
birth-place of Christian theology in the proper sense, — theology as it
sprang partly from the inward impulse of the mind thirsting after scien-
tific knowledge, and partly from an outwardly directed apologetic inte-
rest to defend the doctrines of the church against philosophically edu-
cated Greeks, and against the Gnostics.
To form a right conception of this school in its early growth, we must
consider its relation to the three different parties, in connection with, or
in opposition to which, it shaped itself; and whose different tendencies
it conceived the possibility of uniting together by means of a higher
principle which should reconcile their antagonisms ; — its relation, 1. To
those seekers after wisdom, the Greeks, who despised Christianity as a
blind faith, that shunned the hght of reason; and who were only con-
firmed in their contempt of it by the gross, material views of those un-
educated and sternly repulsive Christians with whom they came in con-
tact ; 2. Its relation to the Gnostics, now a numerous class in Alexan-
dria, who likewise spoke with contempt of the blind faith of a grovel-
ing multitude, and by promising a higher, esoteric knowledge of reli-
gion, drew to them those pagans who sought after wisdom, and those
Christians who were not satisfied with the ordinary religious instruc-
tion; 3. Its relation to that primitive class of church teachers, who
occupied the ground of practical Realism, and more especially to those
zealots among them, whom the pride and arrogance of the Gnostics had
led to be suspicious of all speculation and philosophy, and whatever
seemed like the striving after a Gnosis — and who were in continual
fear of the corruption of Christianity by the mixing in of foreign phi-
losophical elements. By means of a Gnosis resulting from, and harmo-
niously combining with, faith,! the Alexandrians supposed they should
be able to avoid all that was partial and false in each of these tenden-
cies, and even find means of reconciling them together.
They differed from the Gnostics in their theory of the relation of the
1 Τνῶσις ἀληϑινῆ, opposed to the ψευδώνυμος
VOL. I. 45
530 THE ALEXANDRIAN
γνῶσις to the πίστις, in that they acknowledged faith as the foundation of
the higher life for αἱ Christians; as the common bond, whereby all,
however differmg from one another in mental cultivation, are still united
together in one divine community. They contrasted the unity of the
catholic church, founded on this basis of faith, with the strife of the
Gnostic schools, (é:arpyBai.) They held that the sources of knowledge
for the πίστις and for the γνῶσις were not different, but the same for
both; namely, the common tradition, handed down in all the churches,
concerning the fundamental doctrines of Christianity, and the holy |
scriptures. ‘They made it the business of the Gnosis, simply to place
in the clear light of consciousness, what had been first appropriated by
faith, and imcorporated with the inward life; to unfold this in its full
extent, and according to its internal connection ; to place it on the basis
and under the form of science; to prove that this was the genuine doc-
trine as it came from Christ; to give an account of its history, and to
defend it against the objections of its enemies among pagan philoso-
phers and heretics. Their watch-word, which seems to have been a cur-
rent motto already handed down from some earlier period, and which
subsequently continued to be the watch-word for marking the relation
of faith to knowledge, from the time of Augustin to the establishment
of the scholastic theology for which he prepared the way, was the pas-
sage. in Isaiah 7: 9—a passage, it must be allowed, which admits of
the sense they ascribed to it only in the Alexandrian version, and
there only when taken without any regard to the connection: 1 --
«Ἐὰν μὴ πιστεύσητε, οὐδὲ μὴ συνῆτε, if ye do not believe, neither shall ye »
understand. These words, which were first used in the sense, He who
believes not the gospel, can obtain no insight into the spirit and essence
of the Old Testament, were in the next place employed in the kindred
sense, that without faith in Christianity and its several doctrines, it is
impossible to penetrate into the more profound knowledge of Christianity
and its doctrines. According to the measure of faith will be the pro-
gress made in the understanding of the truth ---- the degree of knowl-
edge will correspond with the degree of faith.”
Clement of ‘Alexandria defends the worth of faith against those pagans
and Gnostics who confounded faith with opinion. “ It is plain,” says
he, “that faith is something godlike, which can be destroyed neither
by the power of any other worldly love, nor by present fear.”® He
represents faith as holding the same relation to the higher life, as the
breath to the life of the body.*- An important character, for him, in the
essence of faith, is that spontaneous seizure of the godlike, anticipating
1 Just as, in more recent times, many
κατὰ THY ἀναλογίαν τῆς πίστεως, τὸ συνιέ-
texts from Luther’s translation of the Bible
ναι.
became current proof passages for propo-
sitions relating to Christian faith or prac-
tice, although this application of them was
wholly inconsistent with the sense which
they had in the original.
2 Strom. lL. I.’ f. 278, A.; L IL f.362, A.;
1. IV. ἢ 528, B. and Orig. in Matth. ed.
Huet. T. XVI. § 9: Ἔκ τοῦ πεπιστευκέναι
ὃ Oeidv τι εἷναι, μῆτε ὑπὸ ἄλλης φιλίας
κοσμικῆς διασπωμένην, μῆτε ὑπὸ φόβου πα-
ρόντος διαλυομένην. Strom.}. 11. ἔ 87. .
4 Τὴν πίστιν οὕτως ἀναγκαίαν τῷ γνωστι-
κῷ ὑπάρχουσαν, ὡς τῷ κατὰ τὸν κόσμον
τόνδε βιοῦντι, πρὸς τὸ ζῆν τὸ ἀναπνεῖν. ---
L. δ f. 373.
SCHOOL. 531
conception, which proceeds from the recipient disposition of the heart.!
In this phase of it, so far as faith presupposes an attractive power of
the godlike on the human heart, and a spontaneous yielding to that
power on the part of the latter, he well understood its essential charac-
ter. He supposes, in human nature, a sense correlative to truth, which
is attracted by the same, and repelled by what is false.” Accordingly
he characterizes faith as something positive, —a positive union with
the godlike ; and, on the other hand, unbelief as a negative quality,
which, being such, presupposes the positive.’ With faith is already
given, according to this view, the highest thing of all—the divine life
itself. As he elsewhere remarks: 4 He that believes the Son, hath
eternal life. If they who believe, then, have life, how can there be
anything higher for them than life eternal? Faith wants nothing; it
is complete in itself — selfsufficing.”’ Clement here puts it down as the
characteristic of faith, carrying in it the pledge of the future, that it an-
tedates the future as if were present.? When this divine life, received by
faith, permeates and cleanses the soul, it is in possession of a new sense
for the discernment of divine things. So Clement remarks: ‘“ Behold I
will do a new thing — says the Logos, Is. 43: 19— which no eye hath
seen, nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man to
conceive, 1 Corinth. 2: 9; which can be seen, heard and conceived only
with a new eye, a new ear, a new heart, through faith and understanding ;
since the disciples of our Lord speak, conceive and act spiritually.” °
This intimate connection between knowing and living belongs to the
peculiar character of the Alexandrian Gnosis. The Gnosis was con-
ceived by this school, not as a mere form of speculation, but as a result
of the whole tendency of the new inward life growing out of faith and
manifesting itself in the conduct, —as a habitus practicus animi. This
is expressed in the following words of Clement: ‘ As is the doctrine, so
also must be the life; for the tree is known by its fruit, not by its blos-
soms or its leaves. The Gnosis comes, then, from the fruit and the life ;
not from the doctrine and the blossom. For we say that the Gnosis
is not merely doctrine, but a divine science ;— it 1s that hght, dawning
within the soul from obedience to God’s commands, which makes all
things clear; teaches man to know all that is contained in creation, and
in himself, and instructs him how to maintain fellowship with God;
for what the eye is to the body, such is the Gnosis to the mind.” ἢ
There can be no such thing as a knowledge of divine things without
that living them out, which is the fruit of faith. Anowing and living
here become one. This unity.of the theoretical and the practical ele-
1 Ὕπόληψις ἑκούσιος καὶ πδόληψις εὐ-
γνώμονος προκαταλήψεως. L. ¢. f. 371.
2 Τὸν ἄνϑρωπον, φύσει μὲν διαβεβλημέ-
νον πρὸς τὴν τοῦ ψεύδους συγκατάϑεσιν,
ἔχοντα δὲ ἀφορμὰς πρὸς πίστιν τ’ ἀληϑοῦς.
L. e. f. 384.
8 Ἢ ἀπιστία ἀποσύστασις οὖσα τῆς πίσ-
τεως “δυναμὴν δείκνυσι τὴν συγκατάϑεσίν
τε καὶ πίστιν, ἀνυπαρξία γὰρ στέρησις οὐκ
ἂν γέγοιτυ. Strom. 1. 11. f. 884.
* Pedagog ‘ib. I. c. 6.
5 ’Exeivo δὲ τὸ (τῷ) πιστεῦσαι ἤδη προει-
ληφότες ἐσόμενον, μετὰ τὴν ἀνάστασιν ἀπο-
λαμβάνομεν γενόμενον.
6 Strom. I. II. f. 365, B.
7 Φῶς ἐκεῖνο τὸ ἐν TH ψυχῇ ἐγγινόμενον
ἐκ τῆς κατὰ τὰς ἐντολὰς ὑπακοῆς, τὸ πάντα
κατάδηλα ποιοῦν, τά τε ἐν γενέσει αὐτόν τε
τὸν ἄνϑρωπον ἑαυτόν τε γινώσκειν παρα-
σκευάζον, καὶ ϑεοῦ ἐπίβολον καϑίστασϑαι
διδάσκον Strom. |. III. f. 444.
bao THE ALEXANDRIAN
ment, of objective truth and the subjective state of the dividual, pre-
sented itself to Clement just as it sprang out of the depths of his own
Christian consciousness, — although the Neo-Platonic philosophy lent
him a form for the expression of it, in what it taught concerning the
identity of subject and object — of the νοοῦν and the νοητόν, αὖ the
highest position of knowledge.
“This accordingly is, in the Alexandrian scheme, the γι δ Abbie con-
dition, and the subjective essence of the Gnosis. As it respects the ob-
jective source of knowledge, whence the Gnosticus should seek to de-
rive still deeper and clearer views of the truths he has received by faith
into his inner life, —this, accordmg to Clement, is Holy Scripture.
If it was the case with many, who were without the requisite training,
necessary to enable them to search the scriptures for themselves, that
they simply adhered to the essential and fundamental truths of faith,
which, in conformity with the Paradosis, had been communicated to
them in their earliest instruction, yet the Gnosticus must distinguish him-
self from these ordinary believers by his ability to prove those truths ;
to deduce them from a comparison of the different parts of holy scrip-
ture; and to draw from the same source the refutation of all opposite
errors. Instead of a faith grounded on the authority and tradition of
the church, he should possess a faith grounded on the knowledge of
the Bible. Accordingly Clement says:? ““ Faith is, so to speak, the
compendious knowledge of essentials; Gnosis, the incontrovertible
demonstration of the things received by faith, erected on the founda-
tion of faith, through the doctrine of our Lord, whereby faith is raised
to an irrefragable scientific knowledge.’ The same father, in meeting
the objection. of Pagans and Jews, that it was impossible, owing to the
multitude of sects among the Christians, to know where the truth was
to be found, points them to the infallible criterion of Holy Writ, and
observes: “ We rely not on men, who merely give us their opinions,
over against which we, in like manner, may set our own. But if it is
not enough merely to give our opinion, if it is necessary to prove what
we affirm, we do not wait for the testimony of men, but prove it by the
word of the Lord, which is the most certain of all arguments, or rather the
only one — the form of knowing whereby those who have barely tasted
of the scriptures, become believers, and those who have made greater
progress and become accurately acquainted δος the truth, are
Gnostics.”’ ὃ
Hence Clement denominates the Gnosis ἀνὰ results from compar-
ing different passages of scripture, and which deduces the conclusions
that flow from the acknowledged maxims of faith, a scientific faith.*
The Gnostic, according to him, i is one who has grown grey in the study
of the holy scriptures ; ; whose life is nothing else than a'series of works
1'Qe μηκέτι ἐπιστήμην. ἔχειν καὶ γνῶσιν
κεκτῆσθαι, (τὸν γνωστικὸν.) ἐπιστήμην δὲ
ἐν τς καὶ γνῶσιν. Lc. 1. IV. f. 490.
2‘H “μὲν οὗν πίστις σύντομός ἐστιν, ὡς
ἔπος εἰπεῖν, τῶν κατεπειγόντων γνῶσις, ἡ
γνῶσις δὲ ἀπόδειξις τῶν διὰ πίστεως παρ-
εἰλημμένων ἰσχυρὰ καὶ βέβαιος, διὰ τῆς
κυριακῆς διδασκαλίας ἐποικοδομουμένη τῇ
πίστει, εἰς τὸ ἀμετάπτωτον καὶ μετ’ ἐπιστή-
μῆς καταληπτὸν παραπέμπουσα. Strom. L
Vik tie,
8 Strom. VIL f. 757.
4 ᾿Επιστημονικὴ πίστις.
981.
Strom. 1. IL ἢ
SCHOOL. 533
and of words, corresponding with the transmitted doctrine of our Lord.!
But it is only for the Gnostic that the holy scriptures generate such a
knowledge of divine things, because it is he only who brings to them
the believing recipient sense. Where this is wanting, the scriptures
appear unfruitful.2 This inner sense, however, is not sufficient of itself
to deduce from the holy scriptures the truths they contain, to unfold
these truths in all their bearings and form them into an organic whole,
as well as to defend them against the objections of pagans and heretics,
and to apply them to everything hitherto presented to man’s faculty of
knowledge. There is required for this a previous scientific culture,
and such a culture could not be created new and at once by Christian-
ity ; but Christianity must here form a union with the scientific culture
which had resulted from the previous history of mankind, in order that,
as the leaven for all that pertains to humanity,? it may gradually Lying
vade it, and fashion it to 1ts owm likeness.
It was here the Alexandrian Gnosis drew upon itself numerous ob-
jections from the other party, who despised the culture of the Greeks
as altogether repugnant to Christianity. Against these, its advocates
must defend themselves and vindicate their peculiar method on what
grounds they could. Interesting is this conflict, which has so often
been repeated in history. It was argued against the Alexandrians, that
the prophets, and the apostles at any rate, had no concern with philosoph-
ical culture. Clement answered: “ The apostles and prophets, as disci-
ples of the Spirit, spake certainly what the Spirit communicated to
them ; but we can rely on no such guidance of the Holy Spirit super-
seding all human means of culture, to enable ws to unfold the hidden
sense of their words. He who would have his thoughts enlightened by
the power of God, must already have accustomed himself to philoso-
phize on spiritual things, must have already inured himself to that form
of thought, which is now to be animated by a new and higher spirit.
A logical cultivation of the mind is necessarily required, in order duly
to distinguish the doubtful and synonymous words of scripture.” 4
In answer to those who would have men satisfied with faith alone, and
who rejected all science which men might wish to employ in the service
of faith, he says: ‘It is as though they would look for the grapes at
once, without having bestowed any previous culture on the vine. Un-
der the figure of the vine our Lord is presented to us, from which we
must expect the fruit to come only in proportion to the ‘reasonable care
and art of the husbandman. It is necessary to prune, to dig, and to
bind up ; the hook, the hoe, and other implements used in the culture
of the vine, must be employed, that it may yield us the pleasant fruit.’
Strom. |. VII. f. 762, et 763.
2 2 ὅποι nm. L VIL. 756. Τοῖς γνωστικοῖς
ig ase ai γραφαΐ.
8 Which similitude of the leaven Clem-
ent understood how to explain in a very
beautiful manner. He calls it “ the power
bestowed on us by the Word, which by
small means effects much in a secret, invis-
ible manner, attracting to itself every one
who has received it, and reducing his whole
45*
nature to unity.” Ἡ ἰσχὺς τοῦ λόγου n
δοϑεῖσα ἡμῖν, σύντομος οὖσα καὶ δυνατὴ,
πώντα τὸν καταδεξάμενον καὶ ἐντὸς ἑαυτοῦ;
κτησάμενον αὐτὴν, ἐπικεκρυμμένως τε καὶ
ἀφάνως πρὸς ἑαυτὴν ἕλκει καὶ τὸ πᾶν αὐτοῦ
σύστημα εἰς ἑνότητα συνάγει. Strom. lib.
¥, (.:δ987.
4 Strom. lib. I. f. 292.
SL: ¢: £291:
534. THE ALEXANDRIAN
It appears, according to this, to have been considered as the proper
business of the Gnosis, to unfold the included sum of the faith, to di-
gest it, and preserve it from the intermixture of foreign elements.
Clement had to defend the Alexandrian Gnosis against the objection,
that divine revelation was not allowed to be in itself the sufficient source
of truth, but was represented as standing in need of additional aid and
support from without itself; that such as had not enjoyed the advan-
tage of scientific culture, were precluded from the possibility of under-
standing it. To this he answers:/ “ If it were necessary to draw a dis-
tinction for the sake of those who are always ready with their com-
plaints, we might call philosophy a co-operating help nm acquiring the
knowledge of truth; a seeking after truth; a preparatory discipline of
the Gnostic ; but that which simply codperates we make not the cause,
the principal thing. We do not represent it as though the latter could
not exist without philosophy; for in fact nearly every one among us,
without having gone through the circle of the sciences,? without the
Grecian philosophy, many of us without even knowing how to read or
write, carried captive by that divine philosophy which came from the
barbarians, have, by the power from on high, through faith, received the
doctrine of God. Complete and sufficient in itself, then, is the doctrine
of our Saviour, as the power and wisdom of God; and when to this
is added the Grecian philosophy, it does not indeed make the truth any
more powerful, but it renders futile the attacks of sophistry, ana, as it
wards off every fraudulent plot devised against the. truth, has been
properly denominated the wall and hedge of the vmeyard.? The truth
of faith is like the bread which is indispensable to life; the preparatory
discipline may be compared to that which is eaten with the bread, and
to the dessert.”
In general, we must allow, Clement was distinguished for the mild-
ness and moderation with which he met the opponents of the Alexan-
drian Gnosis. He was himself aware how their fears had been excited
by the corruptions to which simple Christianity was exposed among so
many sects who were inclined to mix up into the gospel what was most
foreign to its spirit; he was aware how natural it is for man to con-
found the abuse and the right use of the same thing; but yet the zeal
—often we must allow too ignorant zeal— of his opponents, and his
own conviction that that grossly material and one-sided tendency was
a serious hindrance to the spirit of Christianity which was striving to
ennoble the whole man, and that many were thereby prevented from
embracing it, seduced him into the error of expressing himself some-
what too roughly against these opponents, and of denying them the justice
due to their honest zeal; as when he says:+* ‘ It is not unknown to me
what many an ignorant brawler® has at his tongue’s end, that faith
should cling to the most necessary things, to the essential points, and
pass over those foreign and superfluous matters which detain us to no
1 Strom. lib. I. f. 318. the Alexandrians applied to the relation of
2"Avev τῆς ἐγκυκλίου παιδείας. philosophy itself to the Christian gnosis.
3 What the ancients said of logic in its re- 4 Strom. lib. I. f. 278.
lation to philosophy, that it was the ϑριγκός, 5’Auada¢ popadecc.
SCHOOL. | 5385
purpose on what has no concern with our great object;” and again :?
‘The multitude dread the Grecian philosophy,? as children do a mask,
fearing it will carry them off. But if their faith is of such a sort (for
knowledge I certainly could not call it) as that it may be subverted by
specious words, it is always liable to be so subverted ; for they confess
themselves that they have not the truth ; since truth is invincible, but
false opinions are overthrown at any moment.’’ We perceive here the
high-hearted confidence of Clement in the might of Christian truth,
which had nothing to fear from opposition, but would rather shine forth
by its means with still greater lustre—although it must be allowed,
this confidence leads him to bear too hard against a faith which, in the
consciousness of its own weakness, is too anxiously concerned about the
safety of its dearest possession. ‘The Gnostic, according to Clement, —
alluding to that saying ascribed in the apocryphal gospels to our Sa-
viour — “yiveoSe δοκιμοὶ τραπεζῖἴται,᾽" (be ye skilful money-changers ) —
should in all cases be able to distinguish truth from specious error, as
genuine from counterfeit coms, and therefore stand in no fear of error,
however specious. He needed to be familiar with the Grecian philoso-
phy, for the very purpose of pointing out to the philosophically educa-
ted pagans its errors and its insufficiency, of refuting them on their
own position, and of conducting them from this to the knowledge of
the truth. ‘Thus much,” observes Clement,? ‘I would say to those
who are so fond of complaining: if the philosophy is unprofitable, yet
the study of it is profitable, if there is profit to be derived from thor-
oughly demonstrating that it is an unprofitable thing. Then again, we
cannot condemn the heathens by merely pronouncing sentence on their
dogmas; we must enter with them into the development of each in de-
tail, until we compel them to acquiesce in our sentence ; for that sort
of refutation wins the most confidence, which is united with a thorough
knowledge of the matter in hand.” He says in another place :* “‘ We
must offer to the Greeks who seek after that which passes with them
for wisdom, things of a kindred nature, so that they may come, as it
may be expected they will, in the easiest way, through what is already
familiar to them, to the belief of the truth. For I become all things
to all men, says the apostle, that [may win all.”
The most violent opponents of this liberal tendency, in order to a
total condemnation of the study of the Greek philosophy, brought in the
Jewish legend related in the apocryphal book of Enoch, which repre-
sented all the higher kinds of knowledge as having come to the heathen
out of due course through the agency of fallen spirits; and they held
all heathen philosophers, without distinction, to be organs of the evil
spirit. They either considered the whole pagan world before Christ to
be in direct opposition to Christianity; confounded what was pagan
with the original and divine element, without which Paganism, which
1 L. c. lib. VI. f. 655. rantly stopping their ears; for they are con-
2 Clement, Stromat. VI. 659, wittily re- scious, if they once lend an ear to the Greek
marks, “ Most Christians treat the doctrine philosophy, they would be unable to make
in a boorish manner, like the companions good their escape.”
of Ulysses, who sought not to avoid the 8 Stromat. lib. I. f. 278.
Syrens, but their rhythm and song, igno- ‘4 L.c. lib. V. f. 554.
536 THE ALEXANDRIAN
only adulterated and obscured this, could not have existed at all; re-
fused to know any point of union betwixt Christianity and that part
of man’s nature which, through all his corruption, intimates his relation-
ship to God, and without which Christianity never could have been
planted in the soil of heathenism; or, like the stern and fiery Tertullian,
the friend of nature and all original manifestation of life, the foe of art
and false cultivation, they saw in philosophy nothing but the hand of
Satan, falsifying and mutilating the origmal form of nature. Clement
endeavored to confute this party also, on their own chosen position.
«ς Even were this view correct,”’ says he, ‘¢ yet even Satan could deceive
men, only by clothing himself as an angel of light; he must be obliged
to draw men by the appearance of truth, by mingling truth with false-
hood; and we must still search for, and acknowledge, the truth, from
whatever quarter it may come. And even this communication can
take place no otherwise than according to the will of God; must there-
fore be included with all the rest in God’s plan of education for the
human race.” !
Yet, speaking from his own position, he declares himself very strongly
against such a view. ‘“‘ How should it not seem strange,” says he,
‘when disorder and sin are the appropriate works of Satan, that he
should be represented as the bestower of a benefit, philosophy, —
for in this he would seem to have been more benevolent to the good
men amongst the Greeks, than Divine Providence itself.’’?
Clement, on the other hand, in the progressive steps of the Greek
philosophy traces the working of a divine system for the education of
mankind, —a sort of preparation for Christianity, suited to the pecu-
liar character of the Greeks. It was the favorite idea of Clement, that
the divine plan for the education of mankind constituted a great whole,
the end of which he considered to be Christianity, and within which he
included not merely the providential dealings of God with the Jewish
people, but also, though in a different way, the providential dealings of
God with the heathen world. In reference to that partieularizing
conception of history, which would confine the directing agency of God
in preparing the way for Christianity exclusively withm the narrow
compass of the Jewish nation, Clement remarks: “‘ Every movement
to that which is good, comes from God. He employs those men who
are peculiarly fitted to guide and instruct others,* as his organs to work
on the larger portions of mankind. Such were the better sort among the
Greek philosophers. That philosophy which forms men to virtue, can-
not be a work of evil; it remains, then, that it should be of God, whose
only work is to move to that which is good. And all gifts bestowed by
God are bestowed for right ends, and received for right ends. Philos-
ophy is not found in the possession of bad men, but was given to the
best men among the Greeks: it is evident, therefore, from what source
it was derived, and that it is the gift of that Providence which bestows
on each whatever, under his own peculiar circumstances, it is proper he
1 The sense of the passages in Strom. lib. 8 See the General Introduction, vol. I.
VI. 647, and lib. I. 310. 4 The ἡγεμονικοί and παιδευτικοΐ.
2 Strom. lib. VI. f. 693.
SCHOOL. 5387
should receive. Thus we see, that to the Jews was given the law, to
the Greeks philosophy, until the appearance of our Lord. From this
period the universal call has gone forth for a peculiar people, who are
to be made righteous through the doctrines of faith, now that the com-
mon God of both Greeks and barbarians, or rather of the entire human
race, has brought all together by one common Lord.’ Before the ap-
pearance of our Lord, philosophy was necessary to the Greeks as a
means of righteousness ; but now it is useful in the service of piety, as
a sort of preparation for exhibiting the evidence of faith: for thy foot
will not stumble when thou derivest aj] good from Providence, whether
it belong to the heathens or to ourselves ; since God is the Author of
all good — partly in a special sense, as in the gift of the Old and New
Testaments, partly in a more indirect sense, as.in the case of philoso-
phy. Perhaps the latter, however, was also given to the Greeks in a
special sense, before our Lord called the Gentiles, since it educated the
Gentiles, as the law did the Jews, for Christianity ; and philosophy was
a preparatory step for those who were to be conducted through Christ
to perfection.”»? When Clement speaks of a righteousness to be ob-
tained by philosophy, he does not mean that philosophy could lead men
to the end of their moral destination, and qualify them for attaining to
everlasting life: for this he held the redemption to be absolutely neces-
sary; nothing else could, in his opinion, be an adequate substitute for
this fact; it would all serve only as a preparation for the appropriating
of this as the ultimate end. The firmness of his conviction on this
point is evident indeed from the fact— which we shall consider more
minutely in another connection— that he held to the necessity of a par-
ticular arrangement, in order to bring even those heathens whom he so
mildly judged, to the conscious appropriation, after death, of the re-
demption. He distinguishes between a doctrine that makes man right-
eous, which in his view is the gospel only, and a doctrine which could
do no more than prepare the way for this.2 He distinguishes between
a certain stage in the awakening of the religious moral sense, a certain
stage of excitement to moral effort, of moral preconformation, and that
universal complete righteousness which is the end of man’s nature gen-
erally,* in contradistinction to that partial cultivation of human nature
which belongs to a distinct period of human development. He says®
of the Greek philosophy, that it is too weak to fulfil the precepts of our
Lord; that it only serves, by ennobling the manners and by encour-
aging the belief in a Providence, to prepare the minds of men for the
due reception of the royal doctrine.6 ‘As God showed his regard for
the well-being of the Jews,” says Clement, “‘ by giving them the proph-
ets, so too he separated from the mass of common men the most eminent
among the Greeks, making them appear as the prophets of that peo-
ple in their own language, according to the degree in which they were
1 Strom. lib. VI. f. 693 et 694. 4 Ἡ καϑόλου δικαιοσύνη. Strom. I. 319.
2 Strom. lib. I. f. 282. δῚ, c. I. f. 309. : ᾿ς
ὃ Διδασκαλία ἥ τε δικαίουσα, 7 τε εἰς 6 ᾿Αμηγέπη σωφρονίζουσα τὸ ἦϑος καὶ
τοῦτο χειραγωγοῦσα καὶ συλλαμβάνουσα. προτυποῦσα καὶ προστύφουσα εἰς παραδοχὴν
Strom. lib. VI. f. 644. τῆς ἀληϑείας τὸν πρόνοιαν δοξάζοντα
538 THE ALEXANDRIAN
capable of receiving his blessing. And as now, at the proper time,}
comes the proclamation of the gospel, so at the proper time were given
to the Jews the law and the prophets, and to the Greeks, philosophy,
that their ears might be practised for this proclamation.” ?
In fact Clement had observed with regard to many a man of philo-
sophical education, perhaps he had learned from his own experience,
that the previous cultivation of philosophy might prove a transition-
point to Christianity ; and hence he appeals, in evidence of what he had
said, to the fact, that those who received the faith were conducted alike
from the discipline of the Greeks, as well as of the law, to that one
family composed of the people of the redeemed.? “" As the Pharisees,
who mingled the divine law with human ordinances, came through the
medium of Christianity to a right knowledge of the law, so the philos-
ophers, who had obscured the revelation of divine truth in the mind of
man by human one-sidedness, came through Christianity to the true
philosophy.” 4 ‘To illustrate the transfiguration of philosophy by Chris-
tianity, Clement uses the comparison of the graft, a figure which had
already been employed by the apostle in an analogous sense, and
which happily sets forth the ennobling influence of Christianity on hu-
man nature. ‘The wild olive,” he observes, ‘is not wanting in sap,
but in the power of rightly digesting the sap which flows to it in abun-
dance. In like manner the philosopher, who may be compared to the
wild olive, is possessed of a great deal of crude and indigested matter,
being full of an active spirit of inquiry, and of longing after the noble
sap of truth; and when now he receives the divine power, through
faith, he digests the nutriment which had been conveyed to him and
becomes a noble olive-tree.” > This comparison is certainly well suited
to express the thought which Clement had in his mind, that as the
whole wealth of human culture cannot make up for the want of the
divine life, which it needs in order to be ennobled by it; so the new
divine principle of life imparted by Christianity needs the whole wealth
of human culture, in order to acquire shape, and to incorporate itself
therem. Clement employs another happily chosen similitude, when he
says, that the full, pure revelation of divine truth in Christianity stands
in the same relation to the fragmentary, partial, and turbid apprehen-
sion of it in human systems, as the pure, clear rays of light beaming
forth immediately from the sun, to those which are artificially col-
lected under a burning glass.6 Thus Clement secures the central posi-
tion for a more unbiassed contemplation of the developing process of
religious truth, as well in the period after, as before, Christ’s appear-
ance; as well m the Christian heresies, as in the systems of Greek
philosophy which were more or less connected with a religious interest.
Everywhere he finds alloyed, dissipated, and sundered from its natural
1 Κατὰ καιρόν, i.e. when, under the pre- 1, οἱ Ε 672.
vious guidance of Divine Providence, man- 6 Ἢ μὲν ἑλληνικὴ φιλοσοφία τῇ ἐκ τῆς
kind had become prepared for it. ϑράλλιδος ἔοικε λαμπῆδονι, ἣν ἀνάπτουσιν
2 Τὰς axodc ἐθίζουσα πρὸς τὸ κῆρυγμα. ἄνϑρωποι παρὰ ἡλίου, κλέπτοντες ἐντέχνως
L. ο. lib. VI. f. 636, seq. TO φῶς, κηρυχϑέντος δὲ τοῦ Adyov, πᾶν
3 Strom. lib. VL f. 636 et 637. ἐκεῖνο τὸ ἅγιον ἐξέλαμψε φῶς. Strom. 1. V
41, ς, Ε 644. f. 560; 1. VL f. 688.
SCHOOL. 539
and original unity, what in the primitive, pure Christianity 1s exhibited
as a whole, uniting together all the mdividual momenta in harmonious
agreement. ‘lhe error arises from giving undue prominence and indi-
viduality to the moments, which ΠῚ y byt their mutual union form the
whole. In this view, Clement says: 1 “As the truth, then, is one, for
falsehood only has a thousand bye-paths — a thousand fr acments, (ii ke
the Bacchantes who cut to pieces the limbs of Pentheus;) so the sects
that come from the barbarians (the Christian sects) and the sects of
the Greek philosophy boast of that portion of truth which they possess,
as if it were the whole truth; but by the msing of the hght, everything
is brought into day.” “As Eternal Being,” says he, “ brings to view
in a moment what in time is divided into past, pr esent, and future; ἕο
truth has the power of assembling together its kindred seeds, although
they may have fallen on an alien soil. The Greek and the barbarian
philosophies have in some sort rent eternal truth into fragments, not as
in that mythus of Bacchus, but in the divine revelation of the eternal
Word. But he who brings together again what they have rent asunder,
and reduces the Word to its completeness and unity, will discern the
truth without any danger of mistake.” 2
Thus it was Clement, from whom first proceeded the idea of a scien-
tific conception of history having its ground in Christianity, — the idea
of a true understanding of the history of doctrines, as a developing
process going forth from the Christian consciousness, exhibiting itself,
with more or less of purity, in all forms, within and w ithout the chur ch,
— δὴ idea which, after it had first taken start, and been propagated in
the Alexandrian school, compelled to yield to a one-sided dogmatic and
a narrow polemic spirit, was soon lost, to rise again, and find — only after
many great revolutions of the human mind in religion and science—a
more congenial soil in far later times. ‘Thus the Alexandrians knew
how to distinguish, even in the heresies, a Christian truth at bottom ;
and to discriminate the importance of controverted questions by their
different relations to the essence of Christianity.®
In one aspect of the case, it might seem, then, that Clement, so far
from acknowledging the distinction which the Gnostics made of an esoteric
and an exoteric Christianity, held to one life of faith in all Christians,
and understood by the Gnosis nothing more nor less than the scientific
knowledge and development of the included sum of doctrmes contained
in the faith ;: — and so conceived the difference between the γνῶσις and
the πίστις, not as a material, but only as a formal one. But although
such a view must have occurred to him, from the connection of the
Christian life with Christian thinking, yet it was something too novel to
be at once fully apprehended and consistently carried out. ‘The all-
1L. c. I. 298.
2 Ἥτε βάρβαρος ἥτε ἑλληνικὴ φιλοσοφία
τὴν ἀΐδιον ἀλήϑειαν σπαραγμόν τινα οὐ τῆς
Διονύσου μυϑολογίας, τῆς δὲ τοῦ λόγου τοῦ
ὄντος ἀεὶ ϑεολογίας πεποίηται. Ὁ δὲ τὰ
διηρημένα συνϑεὶς αὖϑις καὶ ἑνοποιῆσας
τέλειον τὸν λόγον, ἀκινδύνως εὖ ἴσϑ᾽ ὅτι
κατόψεται τὴν ἀλήϑειαν.
8 See, for example, in Strom. lib. VI. f.
675, the important distinction between Οἱ
περί τινα τῶν ἐν μέρει σφαλ λόμενοι and οἱ
εἰς τὰ κυριώτατα παραπίπτοντες. Compare
Clement’s judgment on Montanism, cited
above, p. 520
540 THE ALEXANDRIAN
pervading Christian principle, in contradistinction from the aristocratic
principle of education and scientific culture among the ancients, had
still to come into conflict, even in those minds to which it found access,
with various reactions of the earlier systems, until an mdependent
Christian theology and system of faith could proceed out of it; as we
shall see when we come to consider the genetic development of these
principles down to the revolution brought about in the Western the-
ology by Augustin. Accordingly, we see Clement still verging again
towards the Gnostic or the Platonic position. With that idea of faith,
derived from the essence of Christianity, was mixed up in his concep-
tion of it, the notion that still clung to,him, and which was derived from
the Platonic philosophy, of the opposition between a religion of the
more highly cultivated minds, to be arrived at through the medium of
science, and the religion, cleaving to sense and entangled in mere opin-
ion, ( δόξα,) of the many.
He seems, if we may judge from several of his explanations, to un-
derstand by πίστις only a very subordinate position of subjective Chris-
tianity —of the Christian life; a carnal, implicit faith, adhering to the
mere letter, which was still at a very far remove from the proper spirit
and essence of Christianity, answering rather to the standing ground
of the law, than to that of the gospel. The Gnosis, on the other hand,
is according to him an inward, living, spiritual Christianity, a divine
life, similar to what the mystic opposes, as true inward Christianity, to
mere historical faith. While the simple believer is impelled to that
which is good by the fear of punishment and the hope of future bless-
edness ; the Gnostic, on the other hand, is stimulated to all his efforts
by the inward and free impulses of love. He requires no outward evi- »
dence to convince him of the divine character of Christianity — he
lives in the consciousness, the immediate intuition, of divme truth, and
feels himself to be already blessed m this. While the mere believer
(πτιστικός ) acts from obscure feelings, and sometimes, therefore, fails of
what is right, or at least fails to do what is right in the ght way; the
Gnostic, on the other hand, acts uniformly with clear Christian con-
sciousness, under the guidance of an enlightened reason.! Clement
fixes as the distinguishing characteristic of the Gnosticus, what belongs
to the essence of the purely Christian position generally ;— namely,
that through love the future is already made present.2 What the
Stoics said of the wise man, he applied to the Gnosticus. The latter
alone does right for the sake of the right end, to which the whole life
should be referred, with clear consciousness. All his actions are there-
fore, as Clement terms them, according to the Stoic terminology,
κατορϑώματα. The good, on the other hand, which the πιστικός does, n
a more unconscious way, — instinctively, —is a μέσον, something inter-
mediate between good and evil.2 This resembles what the Gnostics
1 Strom. f. 518, 519, et 645. Strom. lib. VI. f. 669. With which may be
2 Ἔστιν αὐτῷ δι’ ἀγάπην ἐνεστὸς ἤδη τὸ compared, perhaps, what he says of the
μέλλον. 1ΤΘ,. α.1. VI f. 652. ὀρϑοδοξάσταις καλουμένοις. Ἔργοις προσ-
8 Τοῦ δὲ ἁπλῶς πιστοῦ μέση πρᾶξις λέ- φέρονται καλοῖς, οὐκ εἰδότες ἃ ποιοῦσι. L.
yor ἂν μηδεπω κατὰ λόγον ἐπιτελουμένη, 6. lib. I. f. 292.
μηδὲ τὴν κατ’ ἐπίστασιν κατορϑουμένη Ι
SCHOOL. 541
said of the good works of the psychical natures. Hence the γνῶσις is
its own end, and the highest — not a means to something else ; for it is
the life in the godlike itself. It would live only in the uninterrupted
contemplation of the godlike, and struggles only to come in possession
of itself. But the πίστις is a means, masmuch as it is impelled to the
avoidance of sin and to obedience by the fear of punishment and the
hope of reward.! We find in Clement a remarkable exposition of the
difference between intuition, knowledge, and faith, wherein he defines
their relation to each other. Faith receives the fundamental doctrines,
without intuition, only with a view to practical exercise ; the mtuition
of the spirit soars immediately to what is highest; the intermediate
steps of demonstration is what he calls γνῶσις and ἐπιστήμη.2
In speaking of the progressive steps in the divine education of man,
where he represents the Logos as the ϑεῖος παιδαγωγός, Clement says : ®
“¢ All men belong to him, some with consciousness of what he is to
them, others as yet, without it; some as friends, others as faithful
servants, others barely as servants. He is their Teacher, educating
the Gnostics by the revelation of mysteries, (the inward intuition of
truth,) the believer by good hopes, and the hardened by corrective dis-
cipline affecting the outward sense.’’ What Clement says, then, on the
relation of the γνωστικός to the πιστικός m respect to subjective Christian-
ity, would seem to agree entirely with what the Gnostics taught con-
cerning the relation of the πνευματικός to the ψυχικός in the same respect:
but still there is this important difference, in two particulars ; first, that
Clement did not derive these two several positions from an original dif
ference of human natures, but allowed that a capacity for attaming to
the highest existed equally in all; so that everything was made to de-
pend simply on the cultivation of that capacity, conditioned on each
one’s own activity. Next, Clement differs from the Gnostics, in that
he recognizes the same foundation of objective Christianity for both the
higher and lower position of Christian knowledge and life. It might
be said, that the two different positions of subjective Christianity, how-
ever, which Clement here distinguishes, actually existed at that time ;
and moreover, since they are grounded in human nature, are found
again in other times; so that the language employed to denote these
two several positions is not of so much importance ; — for it can make
no so great difference whether we suppose two several degrees in the
development of faith and of the life in faith, or whether, like Clement
᾿ ἴῃ many passages of his writings, we attribute the true spiritual life of
faith to the Gnosis only. Yet this distinction is by no means of such
inferior importance as it might seem to be at the first glance, but 1s
both more deeply grounded and followed by more important conse-
quences than would at first appear. ‘The reason why the Alexandri-
ans conceived the matter in this way, lay partly in their predominant
1L. ο. lib. VI. f. 663 γνῶσις τε καὶ ἐπιστήμη ὀνομάζεται: ἐν ve
2 The different meanings of φρόνησις, ac- τοῖς εὐλαβείαν συντείνουσι γενομένη, καὶ
cording to the different ways of employing ἄνευ ϑεωρίας παραδεξαμένη τὸν ἀρχικὸν
the conception: Ἐπειδὰν μὲν ἐπιβώλλῃ λόγον, κατὰ τὴν ἐν αὐτῇ ἐξεργασίας τήρησιν,
τοῖς πρώτοις αἰτίοις, νόησις καλεῖται. ὅταν πίστις λέγεται. Lc. lib. VI. f. 691
δὲ ταύτην ἀποδεικτικῷ λόγῳ βεβαιώσηται, 8 L.c. lib. VIL. f. 702.
VOL. I. 46
. 542, THE ALEXANDRIAN
intellectual tendency, and partly in the form under which faith was
presented to them in the case of many of the Christians of that
eriod.
ἡ As regards the first point, it is evident that, by their prevailing con-
templative and speculative tendency of mind, their entanglement in the
forms of the Platonic philosophy, the Alexandrians were hindered from
acknowledging, in its full extent, the independent practical power of
faith to transform the whole spiritual life from within; although, in order
to arrive at this truth, Clement needed only to unfold what was already
clearly involved in his own language on this subject, which we cited
above.
As to the second point, we should not forget the particular shape un-
der which faith, as many possessed it, was presented to the Alexandri-
ans — where it consisted of little else than a blind belief on authority,
accompanied, as it would seem, with a sort of sensuous Kudemonism.
They could not fail to observe, it is true, the meliorating influence of
faith on the life, even where it appeared to them under this form,
when they compared the condition of these men, as Christians, with
what they had previously been as Pagans; and indeed, as we have
already remarked, they were far from denying it: but still they
thought they could see nothing here of the ennobling influence of Chris-
tianity on the whole inner nature of the man——nothing of the divine
life of the spirit; and this sensuous Christianity was repugnant to their
own spiritualizing mode of thought. They might be led, too, it may be
supposed, by the repulsive impression which this sensuous form pro-
duced on their minds, to overlook the divine life which lay hidden un-
der this incrustation, without bemg able as yet to break, through the
indurated shell. And again we ought not to forget, that, when the new
spiritual world first began to be formed out of Christianity, there was
much still lymg confused in a chaotic mass that could be separated and
reduced to order only by slow degrees ; —as for example, the different
parts of theology, which afterwards mutually set bounds to each other,
and the departments of a theology which was to spring immediately out
of Christianity, and of a Christian philosophy, which was to receive
from Christianity its main impulse and direction. ‘Thus a great deal
that was vague and erroneous might be traced to the fact, that hetero-
geneous interests and wants were confounded with each other im the
souls of these men; although the immediate religious interest was with
them ever the predominant one. Hence, forgetting the immediate and
originally practical aim of holy writ, they sought in it for the solution
of questions which it was never designed to answer.
This mistake discovers itself in the answer which Clement gave to
those who opposed the humility of knowledge to the Alexandrian
Gnosis. ‘‘ The wise man is convinced,” said they, ‘‘ that there are
many things incomprehensible; and precisely in acknowledging the in-
comprehensibleness of these things consists his wisdom.’’ But Clement
replied: ‘* This wisdom belongs as well to those also who are capable
only of very narrow and limited views. The Gnosticus comprehends
what to others appears incomprehensible ; for he 1s convinced that to
SCHOOL. 543
the Son of God nothing is incomprehensible, and that there is nothing,
therefore, concerning which he may not be taught by him; for he who
suffered out of love to us , could withhold from us nothing which is neces-
sary for our instruction in the Gnosis.!”’
The fundamental ideas here unfolded, respecting different stages of
development in Christianity, we find pr esented once more by Origen,
the second great teacher of the Alexandrian school; but in such a way
as leads us to recognize in him a disciple gifted with creative powers of
his own ; — one who, although excited by ideas received from another,
or passing current in a certain circle, yet did not adopt them as a mat-
ter of tradition, but reproduced them in. an independent manner out of
his own Christian experience and reflection, — seized and digested them
in a form peculiar to himself, and full of his own life and spirit. And
here we must notice the fact, that he did not belong to that class who
had been conducted by the ‘Platonic element of philosophical culture
out of the midst of paganism to Christianity, but that he came to strive
after a Gnosis from the position of a well-assured faith and childlike
piety. This earnest and settled faith he had received from a Christian
education ; and to this he ever remained true, amidst all the changes of
his outward and inner life. As the fervor of his piety, when a child,
had led him to seek martyrdom; so in the evening of life, when his fun-
damental principle in theology-and dogmatics had undergone an entire
change, he still displayed the-same earnest zeal, which subjected him to
great sufferings inthe cause of his faith. Even after he had settled
the principles of his Gnosis, far was it from his thoughts ever to resolve
Christianity into a certain system of general ideas, and to consider the
historical element as nothing but their drapery. The acknowledgment
of the great facts of Christianity in their reality — this was the pre-
supposition which his Gnosis adopted from faith; and it was to be the
aim of the former, to understand the full significance of these very facts
in their connection with the whole developing process of the universe.
The Gnosis was to demonstrate, that without these facts the universe
could never have reached the ultimate goal of its completion. - With
the striving to penetrate beneath the surface into the interior of things
is not united here, as might possibly happen in such a tendency, an in-
clination to evaporate everything into the subjective ; but, on the con-
trary, an aim to understand the great phenomena of religion according
to their objective import, and in their connection with supernatural fac-
tors. We will illustrate this position by a remarkable example. ‘Thus,
Origen seeks for the cause of the sudden conversion of entire popula-
tions or cities, not in their previous course of development, but in the
impression which the appearance of Christ produced on the spiritual
powers presiding over these populations ; just as, in the case of the
Gnostics, the effect of Christ’s appearance on the spirit of humanity
and of history was objectized into an effect on the Demiurge.”
1 Strom. 1. VIL f. 649. δημίᾳ, ὥστε τινὰς ὅλας πόλεις ἢ Kal ἔϑνη
2 Origen, T. XIII. 58: Ἐγὼ δὲ νομίζω οἰκειότερον πολλῶν ἐσχηκέναι τὰ πρὸς τὸν
καὶ περὶ τοὺς ἄρχοντάς Te γίνεσϑαι, μετα- Χριστόν.
θαλόντας ἐπὶ τὸ βελτίον ἐν τῇ Χριστοῦ ἐπι ,
544 THE ALEXANDRIAN
In his controversies with the Pagans, who reproached the Christians
as followers of a blind faith, Origen often declares it to be the peculi-
arity of Christianity, as a revelation from God, who cares for the salva-
tion of all men, that it has the power of attracting even the great mas-
ses of mankind, those who are incapable of scientific inquiry, and of
operating, by virtue of bare faith,! with divine power for their sanctifi-
cation. He appeals to the experience of the many thousands who
could bear testimony to this power of Christianity, and also to the
analogy of all life, where every course of action, that contemplates
some end in the future, must proceed on the ground of faith and
trust.2. Those who had first attained to the faith only in this form, and
become renewed by it, might next be led of themselves to penetrate
by degrees more deeply into the sense of the holy scriptures. The
Pistis he considers to be the lowest position of Christianity,—a stage
of it which must exist, ‘‘in order that the simple also, who devote them-
selves so far as they can to a pious life, may obtain salvation.” Above
this he places the position of the Gnosis and of the Sophia. The latter
is a divine wisdom, communicated by divine grace to such souls as are
capable of receiving it, and as seek after it by the study of the scrip-
tures and prayer to God. Human wisdom, the wisdom of this world,
is only a preparatory discipline of the soul, designed to fit it, by culti-
vating the powers of thought, for the attainment of that higher wis-
dom, which is its true end. In refuting the Gnostics, who confined
the faith which is awakened by miracles exclusively to the psychical
natures, Origen adduced the example of the Apostle Paul, who was
led to the faith by a miraculous vision.® In relation to the fundamental
principle of the Montanists, he took the right ground; placing the
gifts connected with knowledge and teaching above the gift of miracles,
and appealing to the fact, that Paul assigns to them the highest place,
in that passage of the second epistle to the Corinthians which treats of
the relation of these gifts to each other.®
Like Clement, Origen, in many passages of his writings, expresses
himself emphatically with regard to the essence of faith, as being a fact
of the inner life, whereby man enters into a real communion with divine
things; and from this living faith, he distinguishes that which clings
only to outward authority. Thus in his exposition of John 8: 24,7 he
says: “Faith brings with it a spiritual communion with him in whom
one believes ;— hence a kindred disposition of mind,’ which will mani-
fest itself in works. The object of faith is taken up into the inner
life, and becomes to it an.informing principle. Where this is not the
case, it 1s only a dead faith, and deserves not the name. Now as Christ
1 ψιλὴ πίστις, πίστις ἄλογος.
2 Compare, 6. g. c. Cels. lib. I. ¢. 9, and
lib. VI. c. 12, seqq.
3 Μετὰ τὴν ἅπαξ γενομένην εἰσαγωγὴν,
φΦιλοτιμήσασϑαι πρὸς τὸ καὶ βαϑύτερα τῶν
κεκρυμμένων νοημάτων ἐν ταῖς γραφαῖς
καταλαβεῖν. Philocal. c. 15.
4 Τυμνάσιον μέν φαμεν εἷναι τῆς ψυχῆς
τὴν ἀνϑρωπίνην σοφίαν, τέλος δὲ τὴν ϑείαν.
Ὁ: Gels. 1) VE 6:18
5 Tn Joann. T. XIII. ὁ 59.
8 ’Exel tov λόγον προετίμα τῶν τεραστί-
ων ἐνεργειῶν, διὰ τοῦτο ἐνεργήματα δυνά-
μεων καὶ χαρίσματα ἰαμάτων ἐν τῇ κατωτέρω
τίϑησι χώρᾳ παρὰ τὰ λογικὰ χαρίσματα.
c. Cels. 1. IH. c. 46.
7In Joann. T. XTX. § 6.
ὃ Διακεῖσϑαι κατὰ τὸν λόγον καὶ συμπε-
φυκέναι αὐτῷ.
SCHOOL. 545
presents himself to the religious consciousness as the Logos who has
appeared in humanity under various relations,! so the faith will corre-
spond to these various relations; and as Christ is an object of faith in
these different relations, he is received as such into the inner life ; —
and this must be actually manifested — nothing can gain admittance
into the life which conflicts with what Christ is in these several rela-
tions. Thus with the faith im Christ as the justice, the wisdom, the
power of God, is given also the appropriation of that which is volved
in these conceptions, — and whatever contradicts them is banished.”
It might be said, it is true, ‘‘ that Origen is here speaking rather of an
ideal than of a historical Christ. Were the latter left wholly out of
the account, and those general attributes, of which Christ is here con-
sidered as the bearer, substituted in place of him, nothing would be
thereby changed.” But assuredly a meaning would thus be foisted
into the words of the great teacher which is wholly foreign from him ;
for it is difficult to conceive, how he whose higher life had sprung out
of faith in the Christ of history, and ever continued to be rooted in that
faith, could possibly, when this Christ had certainly become all that to
himself which he denoted by these conceptions, entertain the intention
of separating what was so closely united in the experience of his own
inner life. From the spiritual fellowship, springing out of faith, with
this real Christ, all these qualities should be developed in the case of
each individual — an order of connection which is grounded moreover
in his ideas, hereafter to be explained, on the relation of the ἐπιδημία
νοητὴ τοῦ λόγου to the ἐπιδημία aiodnt#. And he says expressly, with the
Apostle John, that whosoever denies the Son, the same hath not the
Father, in any form, “neither for the Pistis nor for the Gnosis.”?? It
is true, as we have just seen, that Origen acknowledged the importance
of miracles as a means of awakening religious faith, and he recognizes
a certain stage of faith, proceeding in the first place from the impres-
sion produced by miracles; but yet he requires that the faith should
rise higher than this stage, to the spzritual apprehension of the truth.
Accordingly he distinguishes? a sensuous faith in miracles from faith in
the truth. He says, comparing John 8: 43 and 40: ‘‘ Those sensuous
Jews had indeed been impressed by the miracle, and believed in Jesus
as a worker of miracles; but they had not the recipient temper for
divine truth, and did not believe in Jesus as a revealer of the more
profound truths of religion ;’4 and he adds: “" We see the same thing
exemplified at the present day by multitudes, who wonder at Jesus
when they contemplate his history, yet believe in him no longer, when
some more profound doctrine, exceeding their own power of compre-
hension, is unfolded; but suspect that it is false. Let us therefore
take heed, lest he say to us also, ‘ Ye believe me not, because 1 tell
you the truth.’ ”
Origen sometimes compares the relation of the Pistis to the Gnosis,
1 The different ἐπινοῖαι τοῦ Χριστοῦ. * Asif Christ would have said: Kaw ὃ
2%In Joann. T. XIX. § 1. Ed. Lom- μὲν τεράστια ποιῶ, πιστεύετέ μοι, καϑ' ὃ δὲ
matzsch, T. II. p. 143. τὴν ἀλήϑειαν λέγω, οὐ πιστεύετέ μοι.
8 Τῃ Joann. T. XX. ο. 25.
46*
546 THE ALEXANDRIAN
with the relation of the present world to the future, — of that which is
in part to that which is perfect, — of faith to intuition. So when he
says: ‘* They who have received the charisma of the Gnosis and of the
Sophia, live no longer in faith, but in open vision ;— they are the
spiritually-minded, who are no longer at home in the body, but even >
while here below are present with the Lord. But they are still at home
in the body, and not yet present with the Lord, who do not understand
the spiritual sense of scripture, but cleave wholly to its body, (its let-
ter, see below.) For if the Lord is the Spirit, how can he be other-
wise than still far from the Lord, who cannot as yet seize the spirit that
maketh alive and the spiritual sense of scripture? But such a person
lives in faith.’1 He takes great pains here to explain, in his own
sense, what Paul had said, so directly contradictory to this view, con-
cerning the relation, of faith to open vision, m the fifth chapter of the
second epistle to the Corinthians ; combating, not without sophistical
equivocation, the position correctly maintained by most of the church
fathers, that Paul spoke of himself as one who still lived im faith, and
had not yet attained to open vision. He assumes that the phrases, ‘to
be present in the body” and “in the flesh,” and ‘to live after the
flesh,’ are synonymous; and so arrives at the conclusion, that Paul
asserted this, not of himself and all spiritually-minded men, but only of
believers who were still carnally-minded.
Yet we ought not to infer too much from such a passage as the one
above cited. We should wholly misapprehend Origen, if for this rea-
son we supposed, that he placed the Gnosis of this present life on a
level with the intuition of the life eternal. Far was he from this. The
longing after a divine life beyond this world was too deeply seated in
his lofty spirit, to find its satisfaction so easily in the self-delusion of
over-strained speculations. He longed after a knowledge of divine
things no longer confined by the limitations of this earthly existence.
In such places as the one alluded to, he speaks only in the way of com-
parison, in conformity with the principles of a method of interpretation
which allowed the same biblical expression to be variously explained,
according to its several grades of application. ‘Thus he might employ,
in order to explain the relation of the Old Testament to the New, —
the relation of the Pistis to the Gnosis, — the same expression which, in
its highest and fullest sense, had reference to the relation of the pres-
ent world to the world to come.” In other passages, he expresses him-
self strongly on this point, namely, that not only the knowledge of this
life, as a knowledge only in part, shall vanish away, when the fulness
of the eternal life appears, but that the same shall be true also of all
the goods pertaining to the present life. He considers even the faith
of this earthly life only as in part, and describes a perfect faith, which
shall enter in at the same time with the perfect knowledge; of which
faith so denominated, in this higher sense, that of course could not be
1JIn Joann. T. XIII. § 52. τὰ πρὸ τῆς τηλικαύτης Kal τοσαύτης γνώ-
2 Τῷ ἐρχομένῳ τελείῳ καταργοῦντι τὸ ἐκ σεως οὐ σκύβαλα τῇ ἰδίᾳ φύσει τυγχάνοντα,
μέρους, ὅταν τὸ ὑπερέχον τῆς γνώσεως Χρισ- σκύβαλα ἀναφαίνεται. In Matth. T. X. § 9.
τοῦ χωρῆσαι τις δυνηϑῇ, οὐ συγκρίσει πάντα
SCHOOL. 547
predicated, which is affirmed of the faith belonging to the “many,” and
which is opposed to the Gnosis.!
The two different stages or positions of the Pistis and of the Guosis
stand, according to this \ view, in the same relation to each other, as the
aN A σωματικός to the χριστιανισμὸς πνευματικός, the σωματικῶς χριστιανίζειν
to the πνευματικῶς χριστιανίζεν. He who stands at the position of the fleshly
Christianity, continues to adhere only to the letter of scripture, to the
history of Christ ;—he cleaves to the outward form of the manifesta
tion of the codlike, without elevating himself in spirit to the inward
essence therein revealed. He stops short at the earthly, temporal, his-
torical appearance of the divine Logos ;—he does not mount upward
to the intuition of the Logos himself. He is tent upon that which is
the outer shell of the doctrines of Christianity, without reaching the
spiritual kernel within; he cleaves to the mere letter of scripture, in
which the spirit hes bound. The spiritual Christian, on the other hand,
sees in the temporal appearance and actions of Christ, a revelation and
representation of the eternal acting and working of the divine Logos.
The letter of scripture is for him but an envelope of the spirit; and he
knows how to disentangle the spirit from this covering. Everything
temporal in the form of the manifestation of divine things is for him
taken up into the inner intuition of the spirit ; — the sensuous gospel
of the letter? becomes spinitualized mto the revelation of the eternal,
spiritual gospel ;® and the highest problem for him is, to discern the
latter in the former; to translate the former into the latter ; to under-
stand the holy scriptures as a revelation of one coherent plan of the
divine Logos for the progressive education of humanity, — of his unin-
termitted activity exerted for the salvation of fallen beings — the cen-
tral point of which is his appearance in humanity, (the sensible repre-
sentation of his eternal, spiritual agency,*) and its end, the return of
every fallen being to God. Since he makes everything refer to this, it
follows, that by the gospel, as he views it, all scripture is transfigured
into gospel. It is by spiritual fellowship with the divine Logos — Ori-
gen supposes therefore — by receiving the spirit of Christ into the
inner life alone,® that each for himself attains to true, spiritual Christi-
anity, and to the right, spiritual understanding of all scripture. Now
as the prophets, even before Christ’s temporal appearance, shared in
the spiritual fellowship with the divine Logos, and by virtue of this fel-
lowship were enabled to announce before-hand the whole of Christian-
ity ; as they already possessed, therefore, the spiritual understand-
ing of the Old Testament, and were already, even before the appear-
1'Qe πρὸς τὸ τέλειον, ὅπερ ὅταν ἔλϑη, TO
ἐκ μέρους καταργηϑήσεται, πᾶσα ἣ ἐνταῦϑα
πίστις ἡμῶν ὀλιγοπιστία ἐστὶ καὶ ὡς πρὸς
ἐκεῖνο οὐδέπω νοοῦμεν οἱ ἐκ μέρους γινώσ-
κοντες. In Matth. T. XII.§ 6. Ὅπερ ἐπὶ
γνώσεως ᾿εἴρηται: ἄρτι γινώσκω ἐκ μέρους"
τόδε καὶ ἐπὶ παντὸς καλοῦ ἀκόλουϑον οἷμαι
λέγειν: ἕν δὲ τῶν ἄλλων ἡ πίστις. Διόπερ
ἄρτι πιστεύω ἐκ μέρους: ὅταν δὲ ἔλϑῃ τὸ
τέλειον τῆς πίστεως, τὸ ἐκ μέοους καταργη-
ϑήσεται, τῆς διὰ εἴδους πίστεως, πολλῷ
διαφερούσης τῆς, iv’ οὕτως εἴπω, δι’ ἐσόπ-
τρου καὶ ἐν αἰνίγματι, ὁμοίως τῇ νῦν γνώ-
σει, πίστεως. In Joann. T. X. § 27.
2 Τὸ εὐαγγέλιον αἰσϑητόν.
ὃ Tod εὐαγγελίου πνευματικοῦ, αἰωνίου.
4The ἐπιδημία αἰσϑητῆ, symbol of the
ἐπιδημία νοητὴ τοῦ λόγου.
5 The ἐπιδημία νοητὴ τοῦ Χριστοῦ
548 THE ALEXANDRIAN
ance of Christianity, in a certain sense Christians ; — so, on the other
and, there are still to be found among Christians, since the appearance
of Christ, men who have not as yet come to share in this spiritual fel-
lowship with the divine Word — men who, like the Jews of old, still
cling to the outer veil, and of whom the same may be asserted, — as
Paul said of the Jews who lived before the appearance of Christianity,
Gal. iv. — that they are children to whom “ the time appointed of the
Father” has not yet come; and that, as children, they are still under
tutors and governors, still possessed of those habits of thinking which
are pre-requisite m order to fit them for receiving the true spiritual
Christianity. ‘‘ Every soul,” says Origen, ‘‘ which enters on its child-
hood, and finds itself on the way to maturity, needs, till its appointed
time of maturity arrives, a task-master, tutor, or governor.” }
Accordingly, Origen compares the different stages of the develop-
ment of Christianity in the same period, with the different stages of
religious development in the succession of time. His theory is, that
as Judaism was a necessary stage preparatory to Christianity, so also
there is still, m the Christian church, a Jewish mode of thinking,
which forms a preparatory stage and a transition-point to the true,
spiritual apprehension of Christianity; that as, under the Old Testa-
ment, we must admit, there was a spiritual revelation of Christ pre-
ceding his temporal appearance, and an anticipation of the Christ-like,
so under the New again, there must be supposed to exist, in the case
of the great mass of believers in a historical Christ, a stage of religious
faith approaching much nearer to a Jewish than a Christian position.
“ς We must know,” says he,? * that Christ’s spiritual presence was re-
vealed, even before he appeared in the body, to those perfected ones
who had passed their season of childhood; to those who were no
longer under tutors and governors, but to whom the spiritual fulness
of time had appeared ; to the patriarchs, to Moses the servant of God,
and to the prophets who saw Christ’s glory. But as he appeared
himself, before his visible appearance in the flesh, to those perfected
ones ; so too —since his predicted assumption of human nature — there
have appeared, for the sake of such as are still children, being under
tutors and governors, and not yet come to the fulness of time, those
precursors of Christ, the ideas which are suited to the minds of child-
ren, and which may be said to be necessary for their education. But
the Son himself, the divine Word, has not as yet appeared to them in
his glory; smce he waits for that preparation of mind which must
open the way for him to those men of God who are destined to com-
prehend his divine dignity. And again, we should know, that as
there is a law, containing the shadow of those good things to come,
which are revealed by the promulgation of the true law, (in Christian-
ity,) so too it is only the shadow of the Christian mysteries which is
presented in that gospel which every common reader supposes he
understands. Zhat gospel, on the contrary, which John calls the
1 Commentar. in Matth. 213. Πᾶσα ψυ- αὐτῇ τὸ πλῆρωμα τοῦ χρόνου, παιδαγωγοῦ
xX), ἐρχομένη εἰς νηπιότητα καὶ ὁδεύουσα καὶ οἰκονόμων καὶ ἐπιτρόπων.
ἐπὶ τὴν τελειότητα, δεῖται μέχρις ἐνστῇ 2 Orig. in Joann. T. I. § 9
SCHOOL. 549
everlasting, which may be properly called the spiritual gospel, sets
clearly before the eyes of all who understand it, whatever pertains to
the Son of God himself, the mysteries typified under his discourses,
and the things of which his actions were the symbols. Accordingly,
we must believe, that as there is a Jew which is one outwardly, and a
circumcision which is outward in the flesh, so there is also an outward
Christian, and an outward baptism.”
This theory of two different positions in Christianity is, in Origen’s
case, closely connected with another theory of his, respecting the
different forms of the revelation of Christ with reference to these
different positions. While the Gnostics separated the revealing and
redeeming power of God into various hypostases,! according to the
different grades or positions which, owing to a radical difference of
natures, they supposed to exist im the spiritual world ; while they had
their Monogenes, Logos, and Soter, their ἄνω and their κάτω Χριστός, their
pneumatical and their psychical Christ; Origen, on the contrary,
acknowledged the unity of essence, and of the divine and human
elements in the appearance of Christ. There was for him but one
Christ, who is all ; but he appeared under different predicates, through
different ways of intuition, in different relations to those to whom he
revealed himself, according to their different capacities and wants, and
hence, either m his godlike majesty, or in his human condescension.
It is a thought often recurring in Origen, that, in a more divine sense
than Paul did, the Redeemer becomes all things to all men, in order
that he may win all.2 “The Redeemer,” says he, “ becomes many
thigs, perhaps even all things, according to the necessities of the
whole creation capable of being redeemed by him.” ? Those predi-
cates which belong essentially to the divine Word, as the eternal
revealer of God to the whole world of spiritual being, the fountain
of all truth and goodness, must be distinguished from those predicates
which he has only assumed, in behalf of those fallen beings who are
to be redeemed by him, and in condescension to the different positions
at which they stand. ‘‘ Happy are they,” says Origen,‘ “who have
advanced so far as to need the Son of God no longer as a healing
physician, no longer as a shepherd, no longer as the redemption; but
who need him only as the Truth, the Word, the Sanctification, and in
whatever other relation he stands to those whose maturity enables
them to comprehend what is most glorious in his character.”’ Histori-
eal, practical Christianity, the preaching of Christ crucified, was
regarded by Origen as nothing more than a subordinate position:
above this, he places a certain wisdom of the perfect, which knows
Christ no longer in the humble condition of a servant, but recognizes
him in his exaltation, as the divine Word; although he acknowledges
the former as a necessary preparation, to enable men to rise from the
temporal to the eternal revelation of God, and, cleansed by faith in
1 See part II. χρήζει αὐτοῦ ἡ ἐλευϑεροῦσϑαι δυναμένπ
2 In Joann. T. XX. § 28. πᾶσα κτίσις.
3 In Joann. T. I. § 22, where, as I suppose, 4 Τῇ Joann. T. 1. § 22.
instead of καϑαρίζει we should read ka ἃ
550 THE ALEXANDRIAN
the crucified, made holy by following the Son of God as he appeared
in human nature, to become fitted for the spiritual communications of
his divine essence. ‘‘ When thou canst understand the difference
between the divine Word,” says Origen,! “as it is either proclaimed
in the foolishness of preaching, or presented in the wisdom of the
perfect, thou shalt perceive how it is, that the divme Word has for the
beginners in Christianity the form of a servant; while he comes in the
majesty of the Father to the perfect, who can say, We behold his
glory, the glory of the only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and
truth ; for to the perfect, the glory of the Word appears as He is, the
only-begotten of the Father, and as He is, full of grace and truth;
which he cannot comprehend, whose faith stands in the foolishness of
preaching.” In another place,? he says: “" ΤῸ them that live in. the
flesh, he became flesh ; but to them who no longer walk after the flesh,
he appears as the divine Logos, who was in the beginning with God,
and who reveals to them the Father. ‘hat stage of faith where one
desires to know nothing save Christ crucified, he regarded as a subor-
dinate one; from which however, through the sanctification there
obtained, one might progressively advance to the higher, spiritual
Christianity. With regard to this preparatory faith, he remarks: “If
one belong to that class of the Corinthians, among whom Paul was
determined not to know anything save Jesus Christ and him crucified ;
if he have learned only of him who for our sakes became man; yet
even through the man Jesus he may be formed into the man of God,
die, in the imitation of his death, unto sin, and rise, m the imitation
of his resurrection, to a godlike life.” Thus the «tellectualizing
mysticism of Origen did not permit him rightly to understand the
meaning and force of St. Paul’s determination not to know anything
save Jesus the crucified. What the great apostle considered as the
highest attainment, Origen regards as making a subordinate position,
above which the Gnosticus is bound to rise. It is true, he stands m
no real contradiction with Paul, when he asserts, under the name of
the Gnosis, a wisdom of the perfect, which cannot be understood at
any lower position that remains still too carnal. Yet there is this
difference between what Origen has in view, and what is meant by St.
Paul. According to the doctrine of the latter, it is in a practical way,
by becoming more and more purified from that which resists the in-
fluences of the Divine Spirit, from the selfish nature, by becommg
ennobled through the spirit of love and humility, that one attains to
that higher wisdom; while Origen, still too much fettered by his
Platonic Intellectualism, makes the progress to that higher wisdom
depend especially on the stripping away of the sensuous and material
elements in life and in contemplation, —on a direction of life and an
effort after knowledge, aspiring to the superhuman. According to the
doctrine of Paul, the fact of Christ’s appearance as the Son of God
on earth, of his passion, and of his resurrection, is the central point
on which the whole of Christianity turns, and so, consequently, that
1In Matth. p. 290 2 In Matth. p. 268. 8 In Joann. T. I. ὁ 11.
SCHOOL. 551
¢
wisdom of the perfect which is grounded in the more profound under-
standing of Aestorical Christianity. According to Origen’s doctrine,
the Gnosis, while it acknowledges and presupposes the importance of
those facts in their bearing on the salvation of fallen beings, and
searches into their deeper grounds, yet strives ultimately at this, —
namely, to rise from the historical Christ to the spiritual essence of
the Logos, as he is in himself, and so above this to the absolute itself,
the 6v,— to attain to the understanding of the life and conduct of the
historical Christ, as a symbol of the ever-enduring, controlling agency
of the Divine Logos. From this spiritual revelation of the Logos, the
Gnosticus has still more to learn than he can derive from the holy
scriptures, however accurately understood ; for the latter contain, after
all, but a few comparatively insignificant elements of the whole of the
Gnosis, and a very brief introduction to the same.’”?! We should be
careful to note here, however, that Origen, like Clement, confounding
the provinces of a Christian system of faith and of Christian specu-
lation, was looking in the holy scriptures for the solution of many
problems which revelation generally was never intended to solve ; mat-
ters with which the wisdem of the perfect, in the Pauline sense, had
not the least concern.
Yet we cannot fail, at the same time, to perceive in what Origen
says, concerning the different stages of Christian development, accord-
ing as the Jewish principle either mixed in again or was vanquished
by the Christian spirit, a fundamental truth, fertile of results in its
relation to the study of history, which, suppressed at first by the do-
minion of a narrow spirit in dogmatics and church life, was destined to
make good its rightful claims, not till a long time after. And intimate-
ly connected with this mode of contemplation was the magnanimous
toleration which distinguished Origen as well as Clement; but which
in the former, as the author of a firmly established system of doctrines,
shines forth the more brightly, when we find him looking after and
acknowledging the Christian spirit which presented itself to him with
more or less of purity in all its various stages of development. He
showed himself an enemy to that pride of understanding which could
wantonly injure the Christian feelings of such as appeared to entertain
more narrow views, or which could treat their opinions with haughty
contempt. ‘‘ As Paul,” says he, ‘ could not profit those who were Jews
according to the flesh, unless — where there was good reason for so
doing — he caused Timothy to be circumcised, shaved his own head,
presented an offering, and, in a word, became a Jew to the Jews, in or-
der that he might wim the Jews; so he who would be profitable to many
persons, cannot, by means of spiritual Christianity alone, educate and
advance to a higher and better stage those who still remain in the
school of sensuous Christianity: hence, they must combine spiritual
Christianity with the Christianity of sense.2_ And whenever it becomes
1 Οἶμαι τῆς ὅλης γνώσεως στοιχεῖά τινα, ζειν. In like manner, Clement, where he
ἐλαχίστας καὶ βραχυτάτας εἶναι εἰσαγωγὰς speaks of the οἰκονομία of the Gnosticus,
ὅλας γραφὰς, κἄν πάνυ νοηϑῶσιν ἀκριβῶς. Strom. 1. VII. f. 730. Comp. the ideas of
In Joann. T. XIII. § 5. Philo, vol. 1. p. 52, and onward.
2 Πνευματικῶς καὶ σωματικῶς χριστιανί-
552 THE ALEXANDRIAN
necessary to preach the gospel of sense, by virtue of which one is
determined to know nothing among sensuous-minded men save Jesus
and him crucified, this must be done. But when they show them-
selves to be well-grounded Christians, brmging forth the fruits of the
Spirit, when they have imbibed a love for the heavenly wisdom, then
we should communicate to them the Word now once more exalted from
its appearance in humanity to that which it was in the beginning with
God.t”? So in expounding the words of Christ in Matthew 19: 14,?
after having drawn from them the general doctrine, that one should
become a child with children, in order to win over the children also to
the kingdom of God; just as Christ himself, although in the form of
God, yet became a child;—he proceeds in the following beautiful
strain: ‘“‘ This should be rightly understood, so that we may not, out
of a vain conceit of our own wisdom and superiority, as great ones in
the church, despise the little ones and the children; but, remembering
how it is said, that of such is the kmgdom of heaven, so demean our-
selves, that through our means the salvation of the children may be
promoted. It is not enough that we do not stand in the way to pre-
vent such little ones from being brought to the Saviour; we should
fulfil his will, by becoming children with the children; that so when
the children shall, through our means who become children, enter into
bliss, we, as they who have humbled themselves, may be exalted of
God.” Origen is here censuring those who, like the Gnostics, were
wont to despise the more ordinary teachers, such as, wanting the ad-
vantages of a high mental cultivation, presented the simple gospel in
a rude, unpretending form; as though they were doing something un-
worthy of so great a Saviour and Master.? ‘Even after we have
attained to the highest intuition of the word and of the truth, we’ shall
still assuredly not altogether forget the sufferings of Christ; for to
these were we indebted for our introduction to this higher life during
the period of our earthly existence.” + .
It is already evident, from what has been said, that, corresponding to
these two different ways of apprehending Christianity, there would
also be two different modes of interpreting the sacred writings; one
haying reference to the literal and historical, and the other to the
higher spiritual sense. The highest problem in the interpretation of
scripture, for Origen, was, to translate the gospel of sense into the
gospel of the spirit;® as it was the highest aim of Christianity, to rise
from the earthly appearance of the incarnate Word to spiritual fellow-
ship with him, and to the contemplation of his dive essence. ‘Thus
he looked upon all scripture as a letting-down of the infinitely exalted,
heavenly spirit to the human form which is so incompetent to grasp it ;
as a condescension of the divine teacher of humanity to man’s infirm
ties and wants; the whole of scripture being, as it were, a humaniza-
1Jn Joann. T. 1. § 9. καλίαν, προσφέροντα τὰ μωρὰ τοῦ κόσμου
2JIn Matth. 1. ο. 874, 375. Ed. Huet. or καὶ τὰ ἐξουδενωμένα καὶ τὰ ἀγενῆ.
T. XV. in Matth. § 7, ed. Lommatzsch, T. 4 In Joann. T. II. § 4.
III. p. 340. 5 Τὸ μεταλαβεῖν τὸ αἰσϑητὸν εὐαγγέλιον
ὃ Βλεπέτω οὖν τις τινὰ τῶν ἐπαγγελλο- εἰς τὸ πνευματικόν.
μένων κατήχησιν ἐκκλησιαστικὴν καὶ διδασ-
SCHOOL. 553
tion of the Logos. Profound and pregnant ideas are those which
Origen here expresses, — ideas which, seized and wrought over by
sober, logical thought, would be prolific of results in their application
to hermeneutics, exegesis, the defence of revealed religion, and doc-
trinal theology ; though Origen was hindered from carrying them out
in this manner by the cleaving defect in his fundamental principle
of theology. Thus, he says:1 ‘ All which is here called the word
of God is a revelation of the incarnate and— so far as it concerns
his divme essence — selfrenouncing divine Word. Hence we see
the Word of God on earth, since it became man under a human
form; for, in the scriptures, the Word continually becomes flesh,? in
order to dwell among us. But when we have leaned on the bosom of
the incarnate Word, and are able to follow him as he goes up into the
high mountain, (Matt. 17,) then we shall say, we have seen his glory, —
the transfiguration of scripture, for all who, in the living fellowship with
Christ, and rising above the world with him, thus learn to understand
its spirit.” He went upon the principle, that an analogy existed be-
tween holy scripture, as the work of God, and the whole creation, as
proceeding from the same almighty hand. Thus he says:? “* We ought
not to be surprised, if the superhuman character of the thought does
not, to the unlearned, immediately become obvious in every text of
scripture ; for even in the works of a providence which embraces the
whole world, some things reveal themselves as such works of provi-
dence in the clearest manner, whilst others are so obscure as to leave
room for the admission of unbelief nm a God who governs all with
mexpressible wisdom and power. But as we do not quarrel with prov-
idence on account of those things which we do not understand, if we
are but truly convinced that such a providence exists; so neither can
we doubt the divinity which pervades the whole body of the sacred
scriptures, because our weakness is Incompetent to trace, In each de-
claration, that hidden glory of the doctrines, which is veiled under the
simplicity of. the expression; for we have the treasure in earthen
vessels.” He says in another place:* ‘‘ Whoever has once assumed
the position, that these writings are the word of God, the Creator of
the world, must be convinced that the same kind of difficulties which
must be encountered by those who attempt to explain the creation, are
to be expected also in the case of the holy scriptures. There is a
great deal in the scriptures, as well as in creation, which human nature
discovers with difficulty, or not at all; and yet we are not warranted,
on this account, to accuse the Creator of the universe, and find fault,
for example, because we know not the reason why basilisks and other
venomous animals were created; for here it is becoming the modesty
of true piety, that, remembering the weakness of our race, and how
1 See Philocal. c. 15. γραφῶν, διότι καὶ 6 κύριος οὐκ ὧν κοσμικός,
2 Clement also remarks, that the charac- ὡς κοσμικός εἰς ἀνθρώπους ἤλϑεν. Strom
ter of the scriptures is parabolical, just as 1. VI. f. 677.
the whole appearance of Christ is paraboli- 8 Philocal. ο. IT, p. 10.
eal,—the divine under an earthly veil. 4. Το δ» δὲ δῷ; 61,
Παραβολικὸς γὰρ ὁ χαρακτὴρ ὑπάρχει τῶν
VOL. I. 47
554 THE ALEXANDRIAN
impossible it is fully to comprehend the creative wisdom of God, we
should leave the knowledge of such matters with God, who will here
after, when we shall be deemed worthy of it, reveal to us those things
about which we have now piously doubted.”” How full he was of the
faith that a divine spirit breathes through the entire scriptures; how
convinced that this truth can be received only in the exercise of an
humble, believing temper of mind, is beautifully expressed in the
following words of Origen : 1 ‘“ We are bound to believe, that not one
tittle of holy scripture is lacking in the wisdom of God; for he who
said to man, ‘Thou shalt not appear before me empty,’ Exod. 34, will
much less himself say anything that is empty; for the prophets re-
ceive what they say, out of his fulness; all therefore breathes of this
fulness; and there is nothing either in the prophets, in the law, or in
the gospel, which does not flow out of this fulness. That breath is to
be felt by those who have eyes to perceive the revelations of the
divine fulness, ears to hear them, and a sense to inhale the savour
which they diffuse. But whenever in reading the scriptures thou
comest upon a thought which is, so to speak, a stone of stumbling and
a rock of offence to thee, lay it to thy own account; for doubt not this
stone of stumbling contains mmportant meaning, and so that shall be
fulfilled which is written: ‘He that believeth shall not be brought to
shame.’ Believe first, and thou shalt find, beneath that which thou
accountest an offence, much that is profitable for holiness.”
But however correct were these principles of Origen, yet, im their
‘application, he was led wide astray from the spirit and aim of holy
scripture, and of all divine revelation through the Word, by a false
point of view; and this false point of view again was intimately con-
nected with the wrong conception he had formed of the relation of the
Gnosis to mor. In respect to both these particulars, he was led astray
by the too great predominance which he gave to the speculative view
of religion; by failing duly to distinguish between what belongs to a
Christian creed and what belongs to a Christian philosophy; by not
keeping sufficiently in view the essentially practical end of all divine
revelations, and of Christianity in particular. He did not refer every-
thing to the great end bearing upon the whole of human nature — to
redemption, regeneration, and the blessedness resulting therefrom ; but
the practical end of reformation was, in his view, a subordinate one,
designed especially for the great mass of believers, who were as yet
incapable of anything higher and nobler. ‘To his apprehension, the
speculative end was the highest; the aim above all others was, to com-
municate the higher truths to the spiritual men who were competent to
understand them,— to the Gnostici. These higher truths were suy
posed to relate chiefly to the following questions :?—“ First, concerning
God, what is the nature of his only-begotten Son, and in what sense
is he the Son of God; for what reason did he condescend to enter into
human nature ; what effect resulted from this act, and on what beings,
and when does it reach them ? Secondly, concerning the higher kinds
1 Philocal. ¢. 1, p. 51. 2 Philocal. ¢. 1, p. 28
SCHOOL. 555
of rational beings who have fallen from the state of bliss, and of the
causes of their fall; of the different kinds of souls, and whence these-
differences arise? Thirdly, concerning the world, what is it, and why
created; whence the existence of so much evil on the earth, and
whether it exists on the earth only, or is to be found also in other parts
of the creation?’’ Regarding, as he did, the solution of these ques-
tions to be the main thing, many parts of scripture, if he abode simply
by the natural sense, must necessarily appear to him barren as to the
most essential end. The whole history of earthly events, and all legis-
lation with regard to mere earthly relations, he therefore explained as*
being the symbolical veil of a higher history of the spiritual world, and
of higher laws relating to a spiritual kmgdom. ‘Thus the higher and
the subordinate ends of scripture were to be united; the revelation of
the higher truths was to be veiled under a letter suited to the imstruc-
tion of the multitude. ‘The mass of genuine and simple believers,”
says Origen, ‘ testify to the utility even of this inferior understanding
of the scriptures.” Intermediate between these two senses of scrip-
ture, Origen supposed there was also another allegorical sense, suited
to the capacity of those who had not yet attamed to that loftier con-
templation of the spirit; an application, not so elevated and profound,
to general purposes of moral instruction and edification, of those pas-
sages of scripture which relate to particular cases. Thus he reters to
this class the passage 1 Cor. 9: 9, and most of the allegorical exposi-
tions of scripture employed at that time for popular instruction. Thus
the three-fold sense of scripture corresponded to the three parts of hu-
man nature as it was contemplated by the theory of Origen; to the
properly godlike im man, the spit, which tends to the eternal, and finds
its appropriate life in the contemplation of things divine ; to the soul,
which moves within the sphere of the finite and temporal; and to the
body. As Origen agreed with Philo in the essential features of this
view, so too he labored generally to deliver objective truth from the his-
torical letter given as an envelope of the spirit! Yet he found passa-
ges where the letter seemed to him to be untenable; either because he
was destitute of correct principles of interpretation and of the neces-
sary helps thereto, or because he did not understand how to separate
in scripture the human element from the divine ;? or — which is con-
nected with what has just been said — because, starting from exaggera-
ted notions of inspiration, he could not suppose there were any contra-
dictions in scripture even in unimportant matters ; — and must believe
therefore that the only way of relieving the difficulty was by spiritual-
izing the meaning.2 And like Philo, he united to these views such
reverence for the holy scriptures, as led him to say, that these things,
so untenable according to the letter, — these mythical coverings of a
higher sense, — are interspersed, as stones of stumbling, for the pur-
pose of exciting men to deeper investigation.‘
1 Τὸ σωματικὸν τῶν γραφῶν, τὸ ἔνδυμα able; because in David he saw only the in
TOV πνευματικῶν. spired of God, and not the sinful man
2 For example, he considered the story 8 ’Avaywyn εἰς TO νοητόν.
of Uriah to be in its literal meaning unten- 4 Σκάνδαλα, προσκόμματα.
|
556 THE ALEXANDRIAN SCHOOL.
These principles Origen applied, not to the Old Testament alone, but
also and expressly to the New — expressly to the gospel history.}
Many a difficulty, as he imagined, could be solved by supposing, that
the apostles had represented what they had to say respecting a differ-
ent agency of the divine Logos,” under the figurative dress of various
sensible facts.2 The difficulties which he would thus remove, were
partly such as his own acute intellect, more acute than simple and
healthy, had created; and in part such as really existed, but which he
could have solved in a better way, and without prejudice to the historical
‘truth, by soberly comparing the different accounts, by distinguishing
the divine from the human element in the sacred scriptures, and by
separating the essential from the unessential. The application here of
his own profound idea respecting the humanization of the divine Logos
in the holy scriptures; respecting the Word assuming, in the letter,
the form of a servant; respecting the treasure contamed in earthly
vessels; would have led him, had he been free from the fetters of
his mystical zntellectualism, to another mode of reconciling discrep-
ancies.
These principles of interpretation, it must be allowed, surrendered
the historical facts im which Christianity is grounded, to all manner of
subjective caprice; and Origen must have been aware of the danger
arising from this source. He endeavored to guard against it, and never
failed to insist that, im most cases, the letter and the spirit must both be
adhered to, and that it was never right to give up the letter, but after
the most careful examination. But what safe limits could be fixed in
such a case ?
We cannot deny, however, that, in the case of Origen himself, the
lawless caprice growing out of these principles, which might have been
so pernicious to historical Christianity, was restrained by the sincerely
devout, believing temper of mind, fully penetrated with the historical
truth of Christianity, by which he was actuated. Nor should we for-
get that, in his case, truth and error were combined together in a man-
ner to be explained only from the personal character of the man, and
his relations to a period agitated by so many various and conflicting in-
fluences. He observed how earthly-minded Jews, clinging to the letter
of the Old Testament, could not attain to the faith in the gospel; how
earthly-minded Christians were, in the same way, led to form the
rudest notions of God and of divine things; he saw how anti-Jewish
Gnostics were, by this same way of regarding the Old Testament, be-
trayed into the contrary error, refusing to acknowledge as the God of
the gospel a being who appeared so material— which was the fact
lymg at the ground of their whole system of Dualism. Origen was
persuaded that all these conflicting errors could be radically removed
1 See the passages already cited from the ὅπου μῇ ἐνεδέχετο ἀμφοτέρως, προκρίνειν
Philocalia; — also c. 15, p. 139. TO πνευματικὸν τοῦ σωματικοῦ, σωζομένου
* From divers communications of the πολλάκις τοῦ ἀληϑοῦς πνευματικοῦ ἐν τῷ
ἐπιδημία νοητὴ τοῦ Χριστοῦ. σωματικῷ, ὡς ἂν εἴποι τις, ψεύδει. In Jo-
8 ἹΙροέκειτο αὐτοῖς, ὅπου μὲν ἐνεχώρει, ann. T. Χ. ὁ 4.
ἀληϑεύειν πνευματικῶς ἅμα καὶ σωματικῶς,
DEVELOPMENT OF DOCTRINES. 557
only by this spiritualizmg method of interpretation.’ It was by no
means his intention, in this way, to degrade the divine in the sacred
scriptures to the level of the human: on the contrary, he went too far
to the other extreme, of deifying the human.
Yet, beyond question, the Alexandrian tendency of mind, had it ex-
perienced no opposition, had it been allowed to take its own course,
unrestrained by that pious spirit which tempered it in the case of a
Clement and an Origen, would have led to an Idealism, subversive of
all the historical and objective truths in Christianity ; just as the mys-
tical interpretation, much as it differed from the mythical in respect. to
its starting-point, and in the religious-philosophical and doctrinal princi-
ples on which it proceeded, yet produced the same results with the
latter, and might run into the same mythical system. But here, as ap-
pears evident from the conflicts which the school of Origen had to
undergo near the end of the present period, this tendency had to meet
with a check and counterpoise in the /tealism of the Western church ;
while, in turn, the latter tendency felt the spiritualizing influence of the
Alexandrian school.
Having thus endeavored to present a general sketch of the different
main directions of the theological spirit in their relation to each other,
we shall now proceed to consider how far this original diversity went to
modify the treatment of the several doctrines in detail; which will pre-
sent a test of the correctness of our general view, at the same time that
it furnishes evidence of the fact, that both tendencies, notwithstanding
their antagonism, would still meet and blend together in the fundamen-
tal truths of Christianity.
B. Development of the several Main Doctrines of Christiantty.
We should never forget that Christianity did not deliver to men iso-
lated speculative cognitions of God and of divine things, nor furnish
them with a ready-made doctrinal system in a form which was to stand ;
but that it announced facts of a communication of God to mankind,
by which man was placed im an entirely new relation to his Creator,
from the recognition and appropriation of which must result an entirely
new direction and shaping of the religious consciousness, and whereby
all that had been previously contained in this consciousness must un-
dergo a modification. The fact of the redemption of sinful man through
Christ, constitutes the central point of Christianity. It was from the
influence which the reception of this fact could not fail to exert on the
iward life of man, that this new shaping of the religious consciousness
developed itself; and hence proceeded, in the next place, the gradual
regeneration in the habits of thinking, so far as they were connected,
directly or indirectly, with religion.
This influence extended itself also to the general sense of the divine
existence — the consciousness of the God in whom we live, move, and
1 After adducing all those errors, he says, εἶναι δοκεῖ ἢ ἡ γραφή κατὰ τὰ πνευματικὰ
Philocal. ὁ. 1, p. 17: Αἰτία δὲ πᾶσι τοῖς μὴ νενοημένη, ἀλλ᾽ ὡς πρὸς ψιλὸν ypauua
προειρημένοις ᾿ψευδοδοξιῶν καὶ ἀσεβειῶν ἢ ἐξειλημμενη.
ἰδιωτικῶν περὶ ϑεοῦ λόγων οὐκ ἄλλη τῷ
47*
558 DEVELOPMENT OF
have our being. This, too, became, in believers, a more living, a more
profound sentiment. ‘They felt more strongly and vividly the all-per-
vading presence of that God who made himself to be felt by them in
nature, and whose existence to the spirit is undeniable. [Ὁ was to this
undeniable fact of consciousness, indeed, they appealed, in endeavor-
ing to lead the Pagans away from the gods which they themselves, had
made, to the acknowledgment of the only true God. This appears to
us as the one common feature in the mode of expressing themselves, on
this subject, which prevailed among the church fathers, amid all the
differences of form between those whose education had led them
through the Platonic philosophy, and such men as Tertullian, who —a
stranger and an enemy to philosophical culture — witnessed, in an origi-
nal manner, of that which had penetrated deeply into the vigorous but
stern individuality of his character. Clement appeals to the principle,
that all scientific proof supposes something which cannot be proved,
which can only be seized by coming immediately in contact with the
mind. ΤῸ that which is highest, simple, superior to matter, he says,!
faith only is capable of rising. He contends, therefore, that there
can be no knowledge of God, except so far as he has revealed himself
toman. The knowledge of God cannot be arrived at by demonstra-
tive science ; for this starts from the more original and better known;
but nothing has priority to the Kternal. It only remains, therefore,
to arrive at the knowledge of the Unknown by divine grace, and by
the revelation of his eternal Word. He then cites the address of Paul
at Athens concerning the knowledge of the unknown God.? In another
place he says: “ The great first Cause is exalted above space, time,
name, and conception. Hence even Moses asks of God that he would
reveal himself to him,? — plainly evincing that what God is, no man
can teach or express, but that he only can make himself known by his
own power.” ‘The same father recognizes in all men an efflux from
God, a divine particle,* which constrains them, in despite of them-
selves, to acknowledge One Eternal God. What was taught im the
philosophical schools concerning the recognition of an unconditioned
first truth, presupposed by all demonstrative science, and grounded in
the immediate consciousness of the spirit, was by him transferred, it is
true, at once, and without supposing any middle step, to an immediate
consciousness of the living God, derived from another source than the
exercise of the thinking mind — from God, bearing witness of himself
by his own selfmanifestation. In place of the undeniable Absolute of
speculative reason, he substituted the God known in the universal con-
sciousness of mankind without any mediation.®
1 Strom. 1. II. f. 364.
2 Tete lV. £588.
OE CLL. ἘΚ Ο ΘΖ
Α'Απόῤῥοια ϑεϊκῆ. Protrept. p. 45.
5 Ei δέ τις λέγοι τὴν ἐπιστήμην ἀποδεικ-
τικὴν εἷναι μετὰ λόγου, ἀκουσάτω, ὅτι καὶ
αἱ ἀρχαὶ ἀναπόδεικτοι, and after remarking
that neither τέχνη nor φρόνησις can arrive
at these principles, he concludes: Πίστει
οὖν ἐφικέσϑαι μόνῃ οἷόντε τῆς τῶν ὅλων
ἀρχῆς. Strom. 1. II. f. 364, and 1. V. f. 588:
Λείπεται δὴ ϑείᾳ χάριτι Kal μόνῳ τῷ Tap’
αὐτοῦ λόγῳ τὸ ἀγνωστὸν νοεῖν. Compare
Aristot. Ethic. Magn. 1. p. 1197, ed. Bekker:
Ἢ μὲν γὰρ ἐπιστήμη τῶν μετ’ ἀποδείξεων
ὄντων ἐστίν, αἱ δ᾽ ἀρχαὶ ἀναπόδεικτοι, ὥστ᾽
οὐκ ἂν εἴη περὶ Tac ἀρχὰς ἣ ἐπιστήμη, ἀλλ᾽
ὁ νοῦς. Of which, or some similar passage,
what Clement says is a copv
CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE. 559
As Origin places the idea of one God, according to the language of
philosophy, in the same class with the κοινὰς ἐννοίας, (the ideas common to
the consciousness of all mankind,)! so he considers the sentiment of
God in man’s nature to be a mark of its relationship to the Divine Be-
ing. Theophilus of Antioch recognizes a revelation of God in all the
works of creation; but at the same time he supposes a recipiency to be
necessary on the part of man’s moral and religious nature, in order to
perceive this revelation. Where the one is wanting, the other becomes
unintelligible to man. To the common question of sensual-minded Pa-
gans, ‘“‘ Where is your God ? show him to us” —he replied, Show me
thy man, and I will show thee my God. Show me that the eyes of thy
soul see, that the ears of thy heart hear. All have eyes to see the
sun, but the blind cannot see it. As the blurred mirror is incapable
of receiving an image, so the impure soul is incapable of receiving the
image of God. True, God has created all things for the purpose of
making himself known through his works; just as the soul, though in-
visible, makes itself known by what it does. ΑἹ] life reveals Him;
His breath quickens all; without it, all would sink back to nothing: but
the darkness of the soul itself is the reason why it does not perceive this
revelation.” He therefore says to man: ‘“ Submit thyself to the phy-
sician, who can heal the eyes of thy soul; submit thyself to God.” ?
While Clement, who had been conducted to Christianity through the
Platonie philosophy, would fain discover something akin to the Chris-
tian consciousness of God in the sayings of the ancient philosophers,
but suffered himself also to be misled by this effort to interchange coins
of very different value; Tertullian, on the other hand, the friend of
nature, the foe of art and of scholastic wisdom, was secure against all
such danger. He makes his appeal rather to the spontaneous testi-
mony of souls, not trained in the schools, but simple, rude, and uncul-
tivated. While others rammaged the stores of ancient learning, and
even spurious writings, to collect testimonies of the truth presupposed
by Christianity in the religious consciousness of mankind, Tertullan
contented himself with pointing to an obvious testimony, accessible to
all, and of indisputable genuineness, — those sallies of the soul (erup-
tiones animze) which are a tacit pledge of the inborn consciousness.*
Marcion was the only one who, led astray by a misconceived truth,
seized on but one particular side, (see above,) and by a direction of the
Christian feelings not well understood and pushed to an undue ex-
treme, denied that any testimony concerning the God of the gospel was
to be found in the works of creation, or in the common consciousness
of mankind. The more emphatically, therefore, does Tertullian dwell
on this testimony.® ‘ Never,” says he, “ will God be hidden, never will
God be wanting to mankind ; always will he be recognized, always per-
ceived, nay, even seen when he wills it. God has for a witness of him-
self all that we are, and all that is around us. He proves himself to
be God, and the one only God, by the very fact that He is known to
> C. Cels. lib. Le. 4. 4 See place referred to in the last note.
2 Ad Autolye. lib. I. ¢. 2. ὅς, Marcion, lib. I. c. 10; comp. 6. 18
3 De testimonio anime. See vol. I.p.177. and 19.
560 DEVELOPMENT OF
all; for the existence of any other would first have to be demonstrated.
The consciousness of God is the original dowry of the soul; the same,
and differing im no respect, n Eg wypt, in Syria, and in Pontus: for the
God of the Jews is the one whom men’ s souls call their God.”
In respect, however, to the development of the idea of God, it
should be remarked, that it was only by degrees, and after overcoming
a great number of obstacles, that Christianity sueceeded by its spiritu-
alizing and ennobling influence to remove the crass and sensual ele-
ments in which that idea had become smothered. When it proclaimed
‘God is a Spirit,” it still required a new form of thought, springing
from the regeneration of the power of thought itself, to develope therein
what this idea involves, to enable men to understand what spint is. By
men whose habits of thought were entirely wedded to forms of sense,
what was termed πνεῦμα could be conceived no otherwise than as a spe-
cies of matter, though matter of a more attenuated, ethereal kind; and
fancy, overruling the understanding, invented numberless ways of refin-
ing and subtilizing this notion.! Accor dingly no single influence could
effect much here; a counteracting influence was necessary, that should
come from the whole general tendency of thought. Where this general
spiritualization of the habits of thought had not yet taken place, the
most profound and fervid religious feeling, which strove spontaneously
to hold fast every thing in its reality, and to avoid all subtilization,
would from its very depth and earnestness become the more easily
blended with the sensuous element; as we may see illustrated in Ter-
tullian’s case, who found it impossible to conceive any thing to be real,
which was not also, some way or other, corporeal.? F
The influences which at this time contributed to spiritualize men’s
conceptions of the idea of God were, on the one hand, a sober and
chaste practical bent of the Christian mind, springing immediately
from Christianity, and which inclined the soul to elevate itself to God
by the heart, rather than by speculation and fancy, and which, from
the depth of the Christian consciousness, gave them assurance that the
imagery of divine things was only imagery, and a feeble expression of
that which by divine communication becomes the portion of each believ-
ing soul in its own inner life ;— and, on the other hand, the scientifi-
cally cultivated faculty of thought, exercised in endeavoring to master
the contents of Christian doctrme, as was seen in the case of Clement,
Origen, and the Alexandrian school generally. The former of these
tendencies we meet with in such men as Irenzeus and Novatian. [τῸ-
nus says: ““ Whatever we predicate of God, 15 only by way of compar-
ison. These attributes are but the images which love conceives, and
into which feeling introduces something else, which is still greater than
any thing that lies in these images considered by themselves.” And
Novatian remarks, of God’s essence: * “ It is that which Himself only
knows, which every human soul feels, although it cannot express.””® The
1 See Orig. in Joann. T. XIII. ¢. 21. lectionem, sentitur supra hec secundum
2 Tertullian. de carne Christie. 11: Nihil magnitudinem. Lib. 11. ο. 13, § 4.
incorporale, nisi quod non est. Adv. Prax- + See cap. 6 and 8.
eam, ὁ. 7: Spiritus corpus sui generis. ὃ Quod mens omnis humana sentit, etsi
3 Dicitur quidem secundum hee per di- non exprimit.
CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE. 561
same father observes, that although Christ — owing to the necessary
progress of the human mind in religious development — employed fewer
anthropomorphical images than the Old Testament, yet even he could
speak of that Being who is exalted above all human conceptions and
language only in such images as still fall short of the reality itself.
From Anthropomorphism we distinguish Anthropopathism, employing
both terms in the sense which seems chiefly authorized by their etymol-
ogy and their historical use. The latter, so far as it denotes a morbid
exercise of the mind, consists in ascribing to the Absolute Spirit the
same limitations and defects which are found cleaving to the human
spirit. But there is one very important respect in which this anthro-
popathism differs widely from anthropomorphism. For at the root of
the former lies an undeniable and inner necessity; since man, being
created in the image of God, being a spirit in affinity with the Father
of spirits, is constrained and warranted to frame to himself the idea of
God after this analogy. ‘There is, therefore, a true as well as a false
Anthropopathism ; and a correct as well as an erroneous avoidance of it,
according as this analogy is rightly or improperly used. We see all
these tendencies manifesting themselves in the period before us. Both
among Jews and among Pagans there was opposed — as we observed
in the Introduction— to the crass and material humanization of the
idea of God, an over-refining of that idea by the setting aside of all
human analogies, which proceeded especially from the Platonic school.
As Christianity presented the complete image of God in Christ, and
restored it once more in human nature, so must Christianity purify in an-
thropopathism the true from the false, aiming not at its removal, but its
transfiguration — which could be effected, however, only by a reconcilia-
tion of antagonisms in those existing tendencies of mind which were
concerned also in the development of the Christian idea of God.
While Marcion opposed to the ruder conceptions of God’s anger and
vindictive justice, the one-sided notion of a love which excluded justice
altogether; the religious element in those conceptions which he was for
banishing entirely from the system of faith, found a powerful advocate
in that enemy to all spiritualizing subtilty, Tertullian. He supposes he
can point out an inconsistency in Marcion, inasmuch as redemption and
the forgiveness of sin, which the latter acknowledged to be alone the
work of his God, yet presupposed the existence of guilt in the eye of
God as a holy Being! He maintained, on the contrary, that there
was a necessary connection between God’s goodness and his justice.
The latter he regarded as the principle of order, which gives each thing
its due — the principle which assigns to each thing its place and rela-
tion in the created universe — the justitia architectonica, as it was af-
terwards called — so that justice and moral evil were not necessarily
correlative notions, but the notion of a vindictive justice im relation to
moral evil presupposed that more general notion of justice.? He msists
1 Sed et peccata dimittere an ejus possit 2 Ne justitiam de causa mali obfusces. —
esse, qui negetur tenere ; et an ejus sit absol- Omnia ut bonitas concepit, ita justitia dis-
vere, cujus non sit etiam damnare; etan tinxit. L.c.1. 11. ¢. 12 et 18,
congruat eum ignoscere, in quem nihil sit
admissum. c. Marcion, l. 1V.c. 10
562 DEVELOPMENT OF
on the necessity, grounded in the very nature of the human mind itself,
of the anthropopathic form of conception, which has its truth m the
fact that man was created in the image of God. Hence he has, in
common with God, all the attributes and agencies pertaining to the
essence of spirit, — only with this difference, that everything which in
man is imperfect, must be conceived in God as perfect. And this, he
maintained, held “good as well of those attributes which alone Marcion
would ascribe to God — goodness and love —as of those which he
wholly rejected.! Proceeding on the assumption that Christianity
aimed at a transfigured, spiritualized anthropopathism, growing out of
the restoration of God’s image in man, he msisted that stead of trans-
ferring every quality to the “Divine Being ἢ in the same imperfection in
which it was found existing im man, the “endeavor should be rather to
transfigure everything in man to the true image of God, to make man
truly godlike.2 He sees mm the entire revelation of God a continual
condescension and humanization— the end and goal of which is the
incarnation of the Son of God. ‘‘ Whatever you may bring together
that is low, weak and unworthy of God, to degrade the Creator, to all
this I shall give you one simple and certain answer. God can enter
into no sort of contact with man, except by taking to himself human
passions and modes of feeling, whereby he lets himself down and mod-
erates the transcendent excellence of his majesty, which human weak-
ness could not endure ;— an act, in itself, indeed, not worthy of God,
but necessary for man, and for this reason still worthy of God; since
nothing is so worthy of him as that which conduces to man’s salvation.®
God conducted with man as with his equal, that so man might conduct
with God as with his equal. God appeared in lowliness, that man
might thus be exalted to the highest point of dignity. If thou art
ashamed of such a God, I do not see how thou canst honestly believe
in a God who was crucified.” To be sure, this last charge of incon-
sistency did not touch Marcion’s case, because the same principle which
made him opposed to the anthropopathic God of the Old Testament,
made him opposed also to the doctrine of Christ crucified. Tertullian
argues further, from the nature of-a graduated progress in revelation,
that God’s vindictive justice must predominate, before his love could
prevail — that the legal principle of the Old Testament must necessa-
rily thus distinguish itself from the New Testament principle of redeem-
ing love.*
1 Et hee ergo imago censenda est Dei in
homine, quod eosdem motus et sensus ha-
beat humanus animus, quos et Deus, licet
non tales, quales Deus; pro substantia enim
et status eorum et exitus distant. Denique
contraries eorum sensus, lenitatem dico,
patientiam, misericordiam ipsamque matri-
cem earum bonitatem, cur divina preesumi-
tis? Nec tamen perfecte ea obtinemus,
que solus Deus perfectus. c. Marcion, l. II.
c. 46.
2 Satis perversum est, ut in Deo potius
humana constituas, quam in homine divina,
et hominis imagine Deum imbuas potius,
quam Dei hominem. L. 6,
8 Conversabatur Deus, ut homo divina
agere doceretur; ex zquo agebat Deus cum
homine, ut homo ex zxquo agere cum Deo
posset. Deus pusillus inventus est, ut ho-
mo maximus fieret. L. 6. 6. 27.
* Ut bonitatem suam voluerit offendere,
in quibus preemiserat severitatem, quia nec
mirum erat diversitas temporalis, si postea
Deus mitior pro rebus edomitis, qui retro
austerior pro indomitis. ce. Marcion, 1. IL
c. 29.
CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE. 563
As to the Alexandrian church teachers, their philosophical education
led them to try to exclude all material anthropopathism from the Chris-
tian system of faith ; but in so doing it might easily happen, that they
would incline too strongly to the opposite extreme, and draw the doc-
trine of the divine attributes too much over to the subjective side. As
an illustration, we may take the following words of Origen, where, not-
withstanding all that is so truly and beautifully said concerning the
divine plan for the education of mankind, yet he betrays the inclination
to give too subjective a turn to the notion of the divine anger, and fails
of understanding the objective truth which it contains so clearly as does
Tertullian. Availing himself of Philo’s doctrine concerning God repre-
sented as man, and represented not as man,! he says: 2 * When the hol y
scriptures speak of God, in his dive majesty as God, and when they
do not present the divine agency as interwoven with human circum-
stances and relations, they say, He is not like man, for his greatness is
unsearchable, Ps. 145: 3: The Lord is a great God, a great King
above all gods, Ps. 95: 2. But when the divine agency is represented
as interwoven with human circumstances and relations, God assumes
the feelings, the manner and language of men, just as we, conversing
with a child two years old, accommodate ourselves to the child’s lan-
guage ; since, if we preserved the dignity of riper years, and conversed
with children without letting ourselves down to their language, they
could not understand us. So conceive it in relation to God, when he
lets himself down to the human race, and especially to that part of
the race who are still at the age of infancy. Observe how we,
grown-up men, in our intercourse with children, alter even the names
of things; how we call bread by one particular name, and drink by
other, employing a language which belongs not to those of mature
age but to children. Should some one hear us so conversing with chil-
dren, would he say, This cold man has lost his understandmg? And
so God speaks also as with children. ‘Behold I,’ says our Saviour,
‘and the children which God hath given me,’ Hebr. 2: 15. When
thou hearest of the wrath of God, believe not that this wrath is a pas-
sion of God. It is a condescension of language, aiming at the conver-
sion and improvement of the child; for we ourselves assume an angry
look to our children, not in accordance with the feelings of our heart,
but with a feigned expression of countenance. If we expressed the
friendly feeling of the soul towards the child on our countenance, and
let our love be seen, without altering our looks as the good of the child
required, we should spoil him. So God is described to us as angry, in
order to our conversion and improvement, when in truth he is not angry.
But thou wilt suffer the wrath of God, if thou art punished by his so
called wrath, when thy own wickedness shall draw down upon thee
sufferings hard to endure.” ‘Thus Origen expressed himself zn a ser-
mon; but on another occasion, in his commentary on Matthew, where
he brings out the same theory, he observes: ὃ. ‘‘ Zo such as would not
1 See vol. I. p. 57. 8 Ed. Huet. ἢ. 378. T. XV. §1
2 Homil. XVIII. in Jeremiam, § 6.
564 THE ALEXANDRIANS.
be likely to be harmed thereby, we might say much of God’s goodness,
and of the overflowing fulness of his grace, which, not without good
reason, he has concealed from those who fear him.
Here too the Alexandrians took the middle ground between the
Gnostics and the other church teachers. While the latter ascribed to
God the attribute of absolute, punitive justice, and the former opposed
the whole notion of justice as mcompatible with the essential bemg
of the infinitely perfect. God, opposing the attribute of Justice to that of
goodness; the Alexandrians, on the other hand, represented the notion
of justice, which they endeavored to defend against the Gnostics as an
attribute belonging to the divine perfections,! as wholly merged in the
notion of a divine “love, disciplining rational beings who had fallen, ac-
cording to their various moral characters and wants2 Accordingly
they would say, that the distinction which the Gnostics made between
the just and the good God might be employed in a certain true sense ;
as for example when Christ (the divine Logos) —the educator and
purifier of fallen beings, whose discipline 15 aimed to render all capable of
being made recipients of the divine goodness, and thus rendered blessed
— is distinctiv ely called the just one. 5.3 Thus, according to this scheme,
the notion of divine justice merged in that of disciplinary love — of the
wisdom of love — loses its own selfsubsistence. And the same is true
also of the idea of punishment, which is regarded simply as a means to
an outward end, as a purifying process ordained by divine love, without
any reference to the idea of punishment in its relation to the moral order
of the universe, and to the way in which it is to subserve that end.
Already, in the history of the heresies, we have spoken of the close
connection between the doctrine of God, as the absolutely free Creator
of the universe, and the whole peculiar essence of Christianity ; and o
the strong antithesis which this doctrine must have presented to th
existing modes of thought which had been derived from antiquity. The
Apostle Paul sums up ‘the Christian Theism, as the belief in One God,
from whom, by whom, and to whom, all things exist; and the threefold
relation here expressed of all existing things: to God, denotes, at the
same time, the close eonnection between the Chiistian doctrines of crea-
tion, redemption, and sanctification, as well as the close connection be-
tween the doctrine of creation and the ethical element ; — for the phrase
“to him,” which assigns to the Christian system of morals its province and
its fundamental principle, presupposes the ‘ from him ;’’ and the phrase
ἐς by him”’ denotes the synthesis or mediation of them both. Hence, as we
saw in the history of the Gnostic sects, the corruptions’of the Christian
doctrine of the creation which proceeded from the reaction of the spirit
of the ancient world, must superinduce corruptions also of the doctrine
1See Orig. Comment. in Exod.; ed. where he treats of the Gnostic distinction
Lommatzsch, T. VII. p. 300. between the ϑεὸς ἀγαϑός and the “δημιουργὸς
2 A δικαιοσύνη σωτήριος. δίκαιος : (τοῦτο δὲ) οἷμαι μετ’ ἐξετάσεως ἀκρι-
8. Clem. Pedagog. lib. 1. f. 118: Ka9’ ὃ βοῦς βασανισϑὲν δύνασϑαι “λέγεσϑαι ἐπὶ τοῦ
μὲν πατὴρ νοεῖται ἀγαϑὸς Ov, αὐτὸ μόνον ὃ πατρὸς καὶ τοῦ υἱοῦ, τοῦ μὲν υἱοῦ τυγχάνον-
ἔστι κέκληται ἀγαϑὸς, kal ὃ δὲ υἱὸς ὧν ὁ 26- τος δικαιοσύνης, τοῦ δὲ πατρὸς τοὺς ἐν τῇ
γος αὐτοῦ ἐν τῷ πατρί ἐστι, meee ee, δικαιοσύνῃ τοῦ υἱοῦ παιδευϑέντας μετὰ τὴν
ρεύεται, —and Orig. in Joann. T. I. § 40, Χριστοῦ βασιλείαν εὐεργετοῦντος.
Ὃ
΄
HERMOGENES. 565
of redemption and of the system of morals. Accordingly, in the New
Testament, we read of God as the positive original ground of all exist-
ence ; of a God who has revealed himself in creation, — not of a creation
out of nothing. In the important passage, Hebrews 11: 3, that act of
the spirit denoted under the name of faith — whereby the spirit rises
above the whole linked chain of causes and effects in the phenomenal
world to an almighty creative word, as the ground of all existence —is
opposed to the contemplation of the world by the understanding that
judges by sense, and that acknowledges nothing higher than the con-
nected chain of things in the world of appearance.!
But in opposition to the hypothesis of an original matter, as the con-
dition of the creation, the positive element of this faith was pegahvely
defined in this way, namely, that God created all things out of nothing.”
This definition of the doctrme was a stone of stumbling, not only to the
Gnostics, but to all who were still fettered by the cosmo-plastic theories
of antiquity, —or in whom the speculative interest exceeded the reli-
gious, and who would set no limits to the former. ‘To this class be-
longed Hermogenes, a painter at Carthage, who lived near the close of
the second and the beginning of the third century. He differed essen-
tially from the Gnostics in the decidedly Western bent of his mind; the
speculative tendency of the Greeks predominating in his case over
the Oriental intuition. And hence his system, which did not, like the
Gnostic systems, seize such powerful hold of the imagination, obtained a
much smaller number of followers. We hear of no sect called the Her-
mogeneans. Neither was it his wish, like the Gnostics, to set up a dis-
tinct system of esoteric religious doctrines. It was on a single point
only — a point, however, which beyond question would have an impor-
tant influence on the whole system of religion — that he departed from
e received doctrines of the church. It was the doctrine of the Greek
philosophy concerning the ὕλη, which he received into his system, and
the point of union fon; it was furnished him by the manner in “which this
idea had already been appropriated by the Apologetic writers ;—
although it may be shown, that they were far removed from Dualism,
and adopted the Platonic notion οἵ the ὕλη merely in a formal wav,
making it an entirely different thing in the coherence of their system.
He was probably one of the zealous antagonists of Montanism, which
was now making progress in North Africa. The artist would find as
little to sympathize with im the Montanists, as the latter would find in
the artist. It is a mark of the more free, artist-like turn of mind which
he opposed to the stern Pietism οἵ. the Montanists, that he could see_
nothing which ought to give Sco ies in employing his art on the inven-
tions of the pagan my tholog gy.? This indicates an objectiveness in the
1 The negative of the proposition: ἐκ nit. The first part of the sentence might
φαινομένων τὰ βλεπόμενα γεγονέναι. be understood to mean that Tertullian re-
2 The κτίσις ἐκ τοῦ μὴ ὄντος, ἃ5. in Her- garded the art of painting itself as a pagan
mas. and sinful occupation ; but even Tertullian’s
8 The obscure words of Tertullian, from Montanistic hatred of art could hardly be
which this account is derived, run as fol- supposed to go to such an extreme as this,
lows: Pingit illicite, nubit assidue, legem and there is no evidence that it did in his
Dei in libidinem defendit, in artem contem- writings. Neither do the words, “he de
VOL. I. 48
566 DOCTRINE OF CREATION.
habits of thought, which, im the antagonism then existing between Chris-
tianity and Paganism, could hardly consist with a healthy and earnest
tone of Christian feelmg. We mark in him the predominance partly
of a speculative and partly of an artistic tendency over the religious
element of his character.
Hermogenes combated the emanation-theory of the Gnostics, be-
cause it transferred to the Divine Being the notions of sense, and because
the idea of God’s holiness could not be reconciled with the sinfulness of
the beings which were supposed to have emanated from Him. But he
combated also the doctrine of the creation out of nothing; because, if
the world had no other cause than the will of God, it must have corres-
ponded to the essence of a perfect and holy Being, and must therefore
have been a perfect and holy world: nothing imperfect and evil would
have found its way into it; for in a world having its ground only in
God, how could there be any thing foreign from the essential character
of God? Hermogenes was not less disinclined than were the Gnostics
themselves, to recognize the important part which Christian Theism
attributes to the free agency of the creature, in the development of the
universe. In respect to moral evil, he was quite as difficult as were
the Gnosties to be put by with the distinction between positive will and
simple permission, on the part of the Divine Being. At the same time,
however, the strength of the moral interest by which he was governed
shows itself, when we find him rejecting the ground on which many
attempted to explain the origin of evil, viz.: that it was a necessary
foil, for the purpose of exhibiting moral good im its true light by the
means of contrast.1 He probably believed, that by such a Vheodicee,
the selfsubsistence of the idea of goodness would be weakened, and
the existence of evil, if regarded as necessary for the harmony of the
universe, justified. And here, indeed, we do certainly recognize m
him the victory of the Christian principle over that of the ancient
world; but, at the same time, Hermogenes fell into the very error he
wished to avoid, by persisting to trace the origin of evil to a natural
necessity.
The imperfection and evil which are in the world have their ground,
according to his theory, in the fact that God’s creation is condi-
tioned by an morganic matter-which has existed from eternity. From
all etermity, there have existed two principles, the alone active, plastic
principle, God; and the simply passive, in itself undetermined, form-
less principle, matter. The latter is a boundless mass, in constant cha-
otic motion, where all antagonisms meet in an undeveloped state, and
spised the law in its relation to art,” favor
the above sense; for we can imagine no pas-
sage of scripture which Tertullian could in-
terpret as forbidding the art of painting gen-
erally. But it is probable that Tertullian
meant by lex Dei the Old Testament, par-
ticularly the denunciations against the mak-
ers of idols, and that the sense is: He
(Hermogenes). despises the authority of
the Old Testament by the way in which he
employs art; while, on the other hand, he
would still uphold its authority for the pur-
pose of defending repeated marriages (nubit
assidue) against the Montanists, who on
this point declared that the authority of the
Old ‘Testament had been annulled by Chris-
tianity, and by the new revelatiéns of the
Paraclete.
1 Tertullian adv. Hermog. c. 15: Expug-
nat quorundam argumentationes, dicentium
mala necessaria fuisse ad illuminationem
bonorum ex contrariis intelligendorum.
HERMOGENES. ° 567
flow into each other—a mass full of wild impulses, without law or
order, like water in a cauldron boiling over on all sides.! It was not
by a single act that this endless chaos, involved in such boundless con-
fusion, could be seized at any one point, brought to a pause, and com-
pelled to subject itself to form and order. It was only through the
relation of his own essence to the essence of matter that God could
and must exert an influence over it. As the magnet attracts the iron
by an inherent necessity, as beauty exerts a natural power of attrac-
tion on whatever approaches it,” so God, by his bare appearance, by the
transcendent power of his divine essence, exerts a formative influence
on matter.2 According to these principles, he could not, if logically
consistent, fix on any beginning for the creation; and in fact he seems
not to have supposed any such beginning — which is implied also in the
argument he brings in support of his doctrine; namely, that if sove-
reignty belongs to the number of the divine attributes, then God must
always have matter over which to exercise this sovereignty. Accord-
ingly he held to an eternal exercise of the sovereignty of God over
matter ; which sovereignty, according to his system, consists principally
in this victorious formative power. From what has been said, it follows
that, according to this system, we are to conceive of the chaos, not as
though it ever had any independent subsistence by itself, and as though
the eficiency of this divine formative power had begun at some deter-
minate moment; but as having a subsistence only in connection with
this imparted organization, so that the two can never be separated ex-
cept in conception. It was to the resistance which this endless matter,
capable of being reduced to form in all its several parts only by
degrees, presented to the formative power of God, that he traced the
origin of all imperfection and evil. Thus the ancient chaos reveals
itself in whatever is hateful 1 in nature, and whatever is morally evil in
the spiritual world.
In holding the doctrine of a progressive formation of matter in con-
nection with the doctrine of an eternal creation, Hermogenes was guilty
of an inconsistency ; since it is impossible to conceive of a progressive
development which has no beginning. He fell mto a still stranger in-
consistency if it is true, as Theodoretus reports, that he supposed the
development tended toafinal end. For, according to this, he held, like
the Manicheans, that all evil would finally resolve itself again into the
matter from which it had proceeded, and consequently that there would
be a separation of that part of matter which was susceptible of organi-
zation, from that other part which obstinately resisted it.4 Here the
teleological and moral element which he had derived from Christian-
1 Inconditus et confusus et turbulentus
fuit motus, sicut olla undique ebullientis.
2 We here perceive the painter.
8 Non pertransiens materiam facit Deus
mundum, sed solummodo adparens et ad-
propinquans ei, sicut facit qui decor, solum-
modo adparens (vulnerans animum) et
magnes lapis solummodo adpropinquans.
4 Theodoretus, to be sure, does not say
this expressly ; but such a doctrine seems
to be necessarily implied in that which, ac-
cording to his account, Hermogenes main-
tained. The passage from Theodoretus (in
Heeret. fab. I. 19) is as follows: Τὸν δὲ διά-
βολον καὶ τοὺς daiuovac εἰς τὴν ὕλην ἀνα-
χϑήσεσϑαι.
568 DOCTRINE OF CREATION.
ity, —an element not easily combining with the heathen notion of sin
as a natural evil,—rendered him inconsistent with himself.
Irenzeus and Tertullian maintained —the one in opposition to the
Gnostics, the other to Hermogenes — the simple Christian doctrine of
the creation, without indulgig m any speculations on the subject.
From these church teachers Origen differed on this pomt, as on many
others ; — having a peculiar system of his own, the main features of
which we must here present, so far as they are connected with the doc-
trine of the creation. In conformity with the general character of his
Gnosis, he built on the foundation of the system of doctrine generally
received in the whole church, and supposed that his speculative inqui-
ries, extending beyond the limits of this system, might still be in per-
fect consistency with the same. He declared himself im favor of the
doctrine of a creation from nothing, so far as that doctrme expressed,
that the free act of God’s almighty power was not conditioned by a
preéxistent matter ; and this he did, not by way of accommodation, but
out of honest conviction.2 He moreover acknowledged that the spe-
cific existing world had a specific beginning; but the question as to
what was before it, seemed to him one which scripture and the faith of
the church left open for the free range of speculation. It was here,
then, that he supposed he found those reasons against a beginning of
creation generally, which must ever strike the reflecting mind which
cannot rest satisfied with simple faith in that which is incomprehensible.
How is it conceivable, that if to create is agreeable to the divine es-
sence, what is thus agreeable to the divine essence should ever be want-
ing? Why should not those attributes belonging to the essence of the
Divine Being, his almighty power and goodness, be ever active? A
transition from the state of activity to the act of creation is incon-
ceivable without a change, which is incompatible with the being of God.
Origen was opposed also to the doctrme of emanation; since by this
theory the distance between the Creator and the creature was annihi-
lated; a unity of essence seemed to be supposed between the two ; ?
representations of mere sense were transferred to the Almighty, and
he was made subject to a kind of natural necessity.* ΑἹ] communica-
tion of life from God, he regarded not as the result of any natural pro-
cess of development, but as an act of the dive will. But for reasons
which have been mentioned already, he believed it necessary to sup-
1 Theodoretus also ascribes to Hermoge-
nes the doctrine, that Christ put off his
body in the sun. It may be doubted wheth-
er Theodoretus has not here confounded -
the doctrine of Hermogenes with something
else that resembled it;— at any rate, it is
doubtful how his words are to be under-
stood. Perhaps Hermogenes taught that
Christ, in ascending to the heavenly state
of existence, left behind him in the sun the
outward garb he had assumed in the mate-
rial world. Yet so fantastic an opinion can
hardly, be ascribed to Hermogenes; and, in
default of authentic documents, we must
leave the matter in the dark. Some inter-
pretation of Ps. 19: 4, which was under-
stood to apply to the Messiah, may have
given rise to this opinion.
2 See Preefat. libb. wep? ἀρχῶν, f. 4; ibid.
1. 11.6.1, § 4; 1. IL. ς. 5.— Commentar.
Genes. init.
8 Where Origen has reference to the
Gnostic doctrine of the ὁμοούσιον between
the spiritual natures and the ἀγέννητος φύ-
σίς. In Joann. T. XIII. § 25.
4 Δόγματα ἀνϑρώπων, μηδ᾽ ὄναρ φύσιν
ἀόρατον καὶ ἀσώματον πεφαντασμένων οὗσαν
κυρίως οὐσίαν. In Joann. T. XX. § 16.
II. apy. lib. I. ¢. 2, § 6.
ORIGEN. METHODIUS. 569
pose, in connection with the glory of God, an eradiation of it in a
world of spiritual beings, affining to himself, and subsisting in absolute
dependence on him.! He maintained the idea of a continual becoming
of this spiritual creation? — a relation of cause and effect without tem-
poral beginning — the Platonic idea of an endless becoming, symboliz-
ing the eternity of the divme existence.? What Origen says in another
connection, respecting an activity of God not to be conceived under the
dimensions of time, and an eternal becoming, we might apply also, in
his own sense, to the relation of the spiritual world, — akin to God and
deriving its essence from him, — to God as its original source.* He had
respect, in his system, to those difficulties which present themselves,
on one particular side, to the mind hampered and confined by the limi-
tations of time, when striving to conceive a beginning of the creation ;
— but not to the difficulties which arise also on the other side, when it
is attempted to carry out the idea of a becoming, without a beginning of
created existence.
The bishop Methodius, who attacked this doctrme of Origen in his
work ‘“ On the Creatures,” was vastly his inferior in the genius for
speculation.” He had not even power enough of speculative intuition
to comprehend Origen’s ideas ; and what he could not comprehend, he
represents as being senseless and atheistic. Comparing the relation of
God to created things with the relation of a human architect to his
work, he brings against the system of Origen objections which are alto-
gether irrelevant. How mcompetent he was to understand the great
man whom in his ignorant zeal he nicknames a centaur, 1s shown by one
of his objections against the argument of Origen; namely, that if the
transition from inactivity to the act of ereation supposed a change in
God, so also the transition from the act of creation to the cessation of
that act would imply a like change in him. But God must have ceased
from creating the world, when the world was finished, and then there
would consequently be a change in him. But Origin, arguing from his
own position, might reply to this, that we are not to conceive of God’s
activity in creation as ceasing at a certain point of time, —as an action
begun at a specific time, and then brought toan end. He might retort
the objection of Methodius, and say that, by the comparison which the
latter introduced, a self-subsistence is attributed to the creature which
does not belong to it——as though its existence were not every moment
conditioned by, and grounded in, the same creative power of God, ex-
erted for its preservation. More to the point, though aimed against an
unbefitting expression rather than against the idea of Origen, was the
objection, that the notion of God’s perfection involves the necessity of
ἰοῦσα αἰώνιος εἰκών.
1 The μερικὰ ἀπαυγάσματα τῆς δόξης τοῦ
ϑεοῦ in the λογεκὴ κτίσις. In Joann. T.
XXXII. § 18.
* According to Methodius, a γενητὸν ded
γενέσεως ἀρχὴν OVA ἔχον, an ἀνάρχως κρατεῖν
τοῦ τεχνήἥματος.
3 Plato in the Timzeus, εἰκὼν κεινητὴ αἴω-
voc, μένοντος αἴωνος ἐν évi κατ’ ἀριϑμὸν
48"
Comp. Plotin. 111.
Ennead. 7.
4 “Ὅσον ἐστὶ τὸ φῶς ποιητικὸν τοῦ ἀπαυγά-
σματος, ἐπὶ τοσοῦτον γεννᾶται τὸ ἀπαύγασμα
τῆς δόξης. In Jerem. Hom. IX. § 8.
5 Extracts from the work of Methodius
in Photius. Cod. 235.
570 DIVINE OMNIPOTENCE.
its being self-grounded, dependant on nothing else, conditioned by
nothing else.
In connection with Origen’s doctrine of the creation, must be taken
his peculiar way of conceiving the doctrine of God’s almighty power.
When he says, We ought not to conceive of the divine Omnipotence,
if we would apprehend it in its true glory, as infinite power, without
any farther modification,? the proposition has a meaning which, in one
respect, is altogether true. The conception of the divme Omnipotence,
as contradistinguished from the principle of Nature-religion, according
to which the gods themselves were conceived as being subjected toa
higher necessity, was, in fact, something entirely new, and hence pos-
sessed so much the greater significance for the Christian consciousness,
in expressing its opposition to the earlier views. It was the usual
answer which uneducated Christians, and those who were incapable of
assigning any more distinct reason for the faith that was in them, gave,
when urged with objections against that doctrine, that with God all
things are possible, even those things which to men seem impossible.
By this antithesis, however, of a supernatural Theism to the ancient
Naturalism, many were led into the error at least of so expressing them-
selves, as if, under the idea of Omnipotence, they conceived of an infi-
nite, arbitrary will, — whereby they laid open to those who attacked
Christianity from the position of Paganism, many weak points, of which
such men as Celsus were not slow to take advantage.? Now, in opposi-
tion to the notion of such an unlimited arbitrary will, Origen placed
the idea of Omnipotence as an attribute not thus indeterminate, but
standing connected with the essential being of God, as God, and with
the other divine attributes, rightly defined. ‘‘ God can do anything,”
says he, ‘‘ which does not contradict his essential bemg as God, his
goodness and wisdom — anything by which he would not deny his own
character as God, as a being of infinite goodness and wisdom.” * If
by that which is contrary to nature® is meant what is bad, irrational,
self-contradictory, the notion of the divine Omnipotence cannot be ex-
tended to such things. But the case becomes different, when nature is
understood according to its ordinary meaning, as the common course
of nature. The laws of nature, thus understood, are valid only for
one particular point of view; and there may be something, therefore,
considered from this particular point of view, above nature, which, in
the other sense of the word, is not contrary to nature. In its relation
to a higher, divine life, which is in its essence supernatural, the mira-
cle, regarded as an individual effect of this higher power introduced
into humanity, may be something in harmony with nature.” Many
1 πὸ αὐτὸ δ ἑαυτὸ ἑαυτοῦ πλήρωμα ὄν
καὶ αὐτὸ ἐν ἑαυτῷ μένον, τέλειον εἷναι τοῦτο
μόνον δοξαστέον.
2 ἸΠεπερασμένην γὰρ εἶναι καὶ τὴν δύναμιν
τοῦ ϑεοῦ λεκτέον καὶ μὴ προφάσει εὐφημίας
τὴν περιγραφὴν αὐτῆς περιαιρετέον. IIL. apy.
ΤΟΝ.
8 See Orig. c. Cels. 1. Ὗ. ¢. 14.
4 Δύναται πάντα ὁ Sede, ἅπερ δυνάμενος
τοῦ ϑεὸς εἶναι καὶ τοῦ ἀγαϑὸς εἷναι καὶ σο-
doc εἶναι οὐκ ἐξίσταται. c.-Cels. 1. III. ο. 70,
διη4.}, V. c. 23.
ὃ Ta παρὰ φύσιν.
6 Ἢ κοινοτέρα νοουμένη φύσις.
Ἰ Ἔστι τινὰ ὑπὲρ τὴν φύσιν ( ἣν κοινοτέ-
pav) νοουμένην, ἃ ποιῆσαι ἄν ποτε ϑεὸς, ὑπὲρ
τὴν ἀνϑρωπίνην φύσιν ἀναβιβάζων τὸν ἄν-
ϑρωπον, καὶ ποιῶν αὐτὸν μεταβάλλειν ἐπὶ
φύσιν κρείττονα καὶ ϑειοτέραν.
ORIGEN: 571
things may take place according to the divine reason and the divine
will, which, on this very account, although they may be miraculous, or
may seem to be so to many, are still not contrary to nature.!
But the position of Origen, that the divine Omnipotence must not be
conceived as an undefined, indeterminate power, has also another mean-
ing, in which, as in many other instances, we find him mixing up ele-
ments of Platonism with Christianity. The doctrine of the Neo-Pla-
tonic school,? that no consciousness can grasp an infinite series, passed
with him for a demonstrated truth; and hence he inferred, that God
could not create an infinite, but only a determinate, number of rational
beings ; — because otherwise they could not have been ‘grasped by any
consciousness, and a providence, reaching to every individual thing,
could have no existence.? It will be seen of what importance this
single point was, in its bearmg on the whole system of Origen. With
this was connected in his mind the peculiar shaping of his doctrine of
an eternal creation, namely, that there was no such thing as a multipli-
cation of the number of created spirits; that all manifoldness was to be
derived, not from the production of new beings, but only from the
changes undergone by those already brought into existence by the eter-
nal creation ; that there were no new creations, but only metamorpho-
ses of the original ones.
Although Origen in other respects agrees, in many of his results,
with those who teach that everything possible must also be actual, and
who represent the divine Omnipotence as wholly expending itself m
events that actually transpire, yet this principle was never expressed
by him, and it is one altogether foreign from his whole philosophical
and dogmatical bent; *— as indeed it is usually found united with a
certain doctrine of determination, to which Origen’s views stood directly
opposed.
Even here where he errs, we cannot fail to perceive the religious in-
terest which was uppermost in the feelings of the great teacher. He
supposes it impossible, without this doctrine, to place beyond dispute
the necessity of acknowledging a personal God, embracing in his con-
sciousness everything that exists — a truth which he considered it of
vital importance to hold fast, in opposition to the Neo-Platonic theory,
which assumed an impersonal ὄν, pure being without consciousness, as
the highest and absolute being, while it only supposed an immanent
πρόνοια.ὃ
We now proceed to the doctrine in which Theism, taken in its con-
Peels. EY. c:.23- of Origen: Οὐκ ἐμποδίζεται, τὸ εἶναι τὰ πολ-
2 See 6. g. Plutarch. de defectu oraculor.
c. 24.
3TH yap φύσει τὸ ἄπειρον ἀπερίληπτον"
πεποίηκε τοίνυν τοσαῦτα, ὧν ἐδύνατο περι-
δράξασϑαι καὶ συγκρατεῖν ὑπὸ τὴν αὐτοῦ
πρόνοιαν. II. apy. |. Il. ο. 9. "Απειρα τῇ
φύσει οὐχ οἰόντε περιλαμβώνεσϑαι τῇ περα-
τοῦν πεφυκυΐᾳ τὰ γνωσκόμενα γνώσει. In
Matth. T. XIII. ξ 1; ed. Lommatzsch, T.
III. p. 210.
* The opposite is expressed in the words
Aa δυνατὸν, ἑνὸς ἐκ τῶν πολλῶν ὄντος TOU
ἐσομένου. In ep. ad Rom. lib. 1..; ed. Lom-
matzsch, T. V. p. 251.
6 The true opposite of the Neo-Platonic ov
is expressed in what he says of God the
Father: Αὐτὸν ἐν ἑαυτῷ δοξαζόμενον, ὅτε ἐν
τῇ ἑαυτοῦ γινόμενος περιωπῇ ἐπὶ τῇ ἑαυτοῦ
γνώσει καὶ τῇ ἑαυτοῦ ϑεωρίᾳ εὐφραΐνεται ἄφα-
τόν τινα χαρών. In Joann. T, XXII. § 18°
ed. Lommatzsch, T. II. Ὁ. 470
δ DOCTRINE OF
4
nection with the proper and fundamental essence of Christianity, or
with the doctrine of redemption, finds its ultimate completion, the doc-
trine of the Trinity. This doctrine does not strictly belong to the fun-
damental articles of the Christian faith; as appears sufficiently evident
from the fact, that it is expressly held forth in no one particular pas-
sage of the New Testament ; — for the only one in which this is done,
the passage relating to the three that bear record, (1 John 5,) is un-
doubtedly spurious, and in its ungenuine shape testifies to the fact, how
foreign such a collocation is from the style of the New-Testament
scriptures. We find in the New Testament no other fundamental arti-
cle besides that of which the Apostle Paul says, that other foundation
can no man lay than that is laid, the annunciation of Jesus as the Mes-
siah ; and Christ himself designates as the foundation of his religion,
the faith in the only true God, and in Jesus Christ whom he hath sent,
(John 17:38.) What Paul styles distinctively the mystery, relates in
no one instance to what belongs to the hidden depths of the divine
essence, but to the divine purpose of salvation which found its accom-
plishment i in a fact. But that doctrine presupposes, im order to its be-
ing understood in its real significancy for the Christian consciousness,
this fundamental article of the Christian faith; and we recognize therein
the essential contents of Christianity, summed up in brief, as may be
gathered from the determinate form which is given to Theism by its
connection with this fundamental article. It is this doctrine, by which
God becomes known as the original Fountain of all existence; as he
by whom the rational creation, that had become estranged from him, is
brought back to the fellowship with him; and as he in the fellowship
with whom it from thenceforth subsists : 1, 2,
which God stands to mankind, as primal ground, mediator and end, —
Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier,— in which threefold relation the
whole Christian knowledge of God is completely announced. Accord-
ingly all is herein embraced by the Apostle Paul, when he names the
one God and Father of all, who is above all, and works through all and
in all, (Ephes. 4: 653) or Him from whom are all things, through
whom are all things, and to whom are all things; — when, ur pro-
nouncing the benediction, he sums up all in the formula: the grace of
the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the
Holy Spirit. God, as the living God, the God of mankind, and the
God of the church, can be truly known in this way only. This shape
of Theism presents the perfect mean between the wholly extra-mundane
God of Deism, and the God brought down to, and confounded with, the
t world, of Pantheism. As this mode of the knowledge of God belongs
to the peculiar essence of Theism and the Theocracy, it follows, that
its ground-work must be given with the ground-work of the latter m the
Old Testament — the doctrine of God whose agency is in the world
through his Word and with his Spirit : and hence it was no accident, to
be explained by the supervention of outward influences merely, that
1 Jn the παλαΐος doy oc: Ὅ ϑεὸς ἀρχὴν τε ἔχων. Plato legg. Ι΄. Ed. Bip. vol. VIII
καὶ τελευτὴν καὶ peo* τῶν ὄντων ἁπάντων p. 185
THE TRINITY. 573
such a shaping of the consciousness of God grew out of the germs
already contained in the Old Testament ;— a truth which has not been
duly attended to, by those who, in their account of the progressive de-
velopment of doctrines, have been inclined to explain too many things
by a reference to outward causes.
We must take care not to be deceived by false analogies, in compar-
ing this doctrine with apparently kindred dogmas of other religions, or
with mere speculative theories. Its connection, already pointed out,
with the fundamental consciousness of Christianity, must furnish, in this
case, the right standard of comparison. Aside from this, the three-
fold designation of the Supreme Essence, or the hypothesis of a three-
fold gradation in the principles of existence, can furnish only a delusive
analogy, where perhaps there may be lying at bottom some theory most
directly opposed to the Christian view of the world ;— as the case is,
indeed, with regard to the Indian Trimurti, which stands connected
with a thoroughly pantheistic scheme, wholly at war with the theistic
and theological principle of Christianity, — the doctrine, namely, of a
divine essence, which manifests itself m a constant repetition of the
same process of rising and vanishing worlds. And even within the
Christian church itself, systems, consisting of a pantheistic deification
of reason and of the world, have employed this doctrine, wrested from
its original connection, and made to bear a sense at variance with its
true import, for the purpose of giving currency to some scheme under
a Christian garb, which in essence was wholly opposed to Christianity.
The doctrine of the Trinity, however, in its practical or economical
import, does not preclude the reference to an inner and objective
relation within the essence of the divine nature itself; since indeed in
the revelation of God in his works, his essence is presented to us,
though to our faculties of knowledge it appears at first, as it were in a
glass, darkly, as an enigma to be solved — and since, from the contem-
plation of God’s self-manifestation in his works, we are constrained to
form our conception of the divine attributes according to the analogy
of our own mind. Only we are not to forget that the practical or eco-
nomical Triad, which starts from God revealed in Christ, or from the
position of the Apostle Paul, that God was in Christ reconciling the
world to himself, must ever be considered as the ground-work of the
whole, — the original element from which the speculative or ontologi-
cal view is derived ; — a position which we shall find substantiated im
tracing, as we now propose to do, the historical development of this
doctrine in these first centuries. This economico-practical doctrine of
the Trinity constituted from the beginning the fundamental conscious-
ness of the Catholic church, while forming itself in its conflict with the
opposite theories of the heretical sects. It is that which forms the
basis of the true unity of the church and the identity of the Christian
consciousness in all ages. But the intellectual process of development,
by means of which the economico-practical doctrine of the Trinity was
reduced to the ontological, was a gradual one, and must necessarily
run through manifold opposite forms, until it issued at last in some
574 DOCTRINE OF
mode of apprehension, satisfying the demand of unity in the Christian
consciousness, and in the activity of the dialectic reason.
It is already evident, from what has been said, that the development
of this doctrime must start from the reference to the person of Christ ;
and the original element here, which preceded all speculation, is the
imave which Christ himself left on the consciousness of those who re-
ceived the immediate impression of his life, and were appointed to be
witnesses of it. The doctrine of the divine essence dwelling in Christ
grew first out of the intuition of the divine glory manifested in his life,
as it was expressed by the Apostle John, —‘‘ We beheld his glory,
the glory as of the only-begotten of the F ather ; ;”? and out of the dis-
courses, in which, from his own self-consciousness, without any connec-
tion whatever with the existing ideas of the period, but rather im oppo-
sition to those ideas, he expressed himself with regard to his relation to
his heavenly Father. It 1s the intuztive view of his person, which hes
at the’ basis of the representation of it, even where it appears less
strongly developed, in the three first gospels, and which beams forth
with peculiar lustre in many individual traits, Matth. 11: 27; --- 12:
6, 42; — 16: 16, (compared) with Christ’s manner of approving what
was here expressed ;) and when he employs the 110th Psalm, for the
purpose of leading those whom he addressed to the recognition of him
who was greater than the Son of David. The doctrine concerning
Christ as taught by the Apostle Paul, proves that the view of Christ’s
person as it is presented through all the writings of John, was not one
of later origin. Moreover, if we leave out the minor epistles of Paul,
the genuineness of which several writers in modern times have, without
any sufficient grounds, been pleased to call in doubt, and which form,
notwithstanding, the necessary point of termination in the development
of the Pauline ‘theology ; ; if, | say, we leave these aside, the same thing
is implied in the designation : Him by whom are all things, Ct Corinth.
8:6.) In the J ewish theology, which prepared the way for Christian-
ity, we may distinguish two different tendencies; first, in the idea of
the theocratic king, who was to realize the idea of the Theocracy — who -
should concentrate m himself all the rays of the divine Majesty; and
from this necessarily proceeded the intuition of a person transcending
the finite human nature, the image of the Son of God, as it beamed
forth transfigured in the consciousness of inspired prophets ; — and
next, the limited apprehension of the Messiah’s person, connected with
the limited apprehension of his work, in the common: Jewish conscious-
ness. We have observed in the history of the Judaizing and Gnostic
sects, how both these modes of apprehension proceeded to develope
themselves into opposite theories, each wholly excluding the other. As
to the above-mentioned prophetic element, we find it once more taken
up, and still farther prosecuted, in the doctrine concerning Christ,
taught by the Apostles Paul and John. ‘That being by whom the
human race, when estranged from God, was to be brought back to fel-
lowship with him, appears as the one through whom the procession of
all existence from God had been mediated from the beginning, — as
the one who, being the original self-manifestation of the hidden divine
—— ll
THE TRINITY. 575
Essence, always formed the transition link between God and the crea-
tion. The same was the first-born of every creature, and the first-born
of the new creation of humanity, restored to the image of God in the
transfigured human nature which he exhibited after his resurrection.
The same was the image of God before all existence, and the image of
God in humanity ; the divine fountain of light and of life, from whom
all spirits were from the beginning to draw their supplies, and he
who appeared as such in humanity, for the purpose of revealing in it,
and of imparting to it divine life — the original Word of God, the first
act of the divine selfmanifestation, (of God’s self-affirmation,) which
humanized itself, in order that everything pertaming to humanity might
become godlike.
The title ‘* Word of God,’? employed to designate this idea, the
Apostle John could have arrived at within himself, independent of
any outward tradition; and he would not have appropriated to his own
purpose this title, which had been previously current in certain circles,
had it not offered itself to him, as the befitting form of expression for
that which filled his own soul. But this word itself is certain ily not
derived, any more than the idea originally expressed in it, from the
Platonic philosophy, which could furnish no occasion whatever for the
choice of this particular expression.! But it is the translation of the
Old-Testament term 721; and it was this Old-Testament conception,
moreover, which led to the New-Testament idea of the Logos. An
intermediate step? is formed by what is said im the epistle to the He-
brews concerning a divine Word ; and thus we find in the latest epistles
of Paul, from the first epistle to the Corinthians and onward, in the
epistle to the Hebrews, and in the gospel of John, a well-connected
series of links in the progressive development of the apostolic doctrine.
If this idea of the Logos was not placed in connection with Christ-
lanity by the authority of an apostolic type of doctrine, but if it must
be considered as merely the product of a fusion of Platonism, or of
the Alexandrian-Jewish theology with the Christian doctrine ; its wide
diffusion, of which church fathers of the most opposite tendencies bear
witness, could hardly be accounted for. If it could so commend itself
to the teachers with whom the Platonic element of culture predomi-
nated, still the others, by whom every thing derived from that quarter
was suspected, must, for this very reason, have been prejudiced against
it. As the defenders of the doctrine of Christ’s divinity, in the begin-
ning of the second century,’ could appeal, in evidence of the fact that
this was the ancient doctrine of the church, to the oldest church-
teachers and to the ancient Christian hymns, so this evidence 15 in facet
confirmed by the report of Pliny, already cited on another occasion.4
But while, in the tradition of the church, the Logos-idea was tanght
and transmitted in the form which most perfectly harmonized with the
habits of thought that had resulted from the previous stage of spuirit-
1 The Platonic philosophy led rather to Commentary, has made some excellent re-
the employment of the term νοῦς as a de- marks.
signation of the mediating principle. 8 Euseb. 1. V. c. 28.
2 Respecting which, Bleek, in his master ly 4 See vol. I. p. 97.
O76 DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY.
ual culture ; namely, as the idea of a spirit, first begotten of God and
subordinate to him; there was, besides this, another view of the doc-
trine concerning the Trinity, which may be designated, after the cus-
tomary language of this period, as that of the Monarchians. Although
opposite tendencies are to be found among the followers of this sect,
and they were drawn into still more violent disputes with each other,
than they ever engaged in against the subordination-theory of the
church; yet they were agreed with regard to everything expressed by
the term Monarchianism. ‘They felt a common interest m preserving
the unity of the consciousness of God, which made them unwilling to
acknowledge any other divine being besides one God, the Father.
Either they disclaimed all knowledge of the Logos-doctrine generally,
or they understood by the Logos simply a divine energy, the divine
wisdom or reason, which illuminates the souls of the pious ;—Jin this
respect falling in with a certain modification of the Logos-idea which
was adopted by one class of Jewish theologians.t Now it may appear
singular, that precisely at this period, — when a Christian conscious-
ness was struggling to form itself in the midst of Paganism, and sur-
rounded by its influences, — such a strictly monotheistic interest could
arise, and the hypostatical Logos-doctrine create scruples in. this par-
ticular quarter.?- But when we consider how the case really was with
Christians of this age; when we call to mind, that their Christian
consciousness developed itself in direct opposition to their previous
Pagan mode of thinking, that the doctrine of the divine unity had ~
been deeply impressed on their minds by the earliest catechetical
instruction which they received, and that the Logos-idea did not origi-
nally belong to the primitive, simple confession of faith at baptism,
(as in fact it does not occur in the so-called Apostolic Creed ;) it may
easily be explained how it should happen, that when afterwards this
doctrine came to be set before them, they would believe it contained
something in contradiction to the principle of the μοναρχία, which they
had been first taught.?
Among these Monarchians, who were agreed in combating the doc-
trine of a hypostatical Logos, two classes are still to be distinguished ;
since, with some of them, the monarchian interest of the common re-
ligious faith, or of reason, predominated, the interest immediately con-
nected with the person of Christ, the interest of Christian piety in the
proper sense, being a quite subordinate matter; while, in the case of
others, both these interests were combined, and both codperated with
equal power; and in close connection with this difference was another,
that while with the one class the dialectic, critical faculty of the
understanding was supreme, with the other it was the practical element
and Christian feeling which predominated. The former were of the
1 Already mentioned.
2 Orig. in Joann. T. II. § 2: Td πολλοὺς
φιλοϑέους εἶναι εὐχομένους ταράσσον, εὐλα-
βουμένους δύο ἀναγορεῦσαι ϑεούς.
8 This is confirmed by Tertullian, adv.
Praxeam, c. 3: Simplices quique, ne dixe-
rim imprudentes et idiot, quae major sem-
per credentium pars est, quoniam et ipsa re-
gua fidei a pluribus Diis seculi ad unicum
et verum Deum transfert, expavescunt ad
οἰκονομίαν, (the trinity to be connected with
the unity.) Monarchiam, inquiunt, tene
mus.
4 Origin clearly distinguishes these two
THE MONARCHIANS. OTT
opinion that in the church system the distance was not sufficiently
marked between Christ and the only true God. They denied that
Christ was divine in every sense, and would only admit that he was
divine in a certain sense. They taught, namely, that Jesus was a man
like all other men; but that from the first he was actuated and guided
by that power of God, the divine reason or wisdom, bestowed on him in
larger measure than on any other messenger or prophet of God; and
that it was precisely on this account he was to be called the Son of
God. They differed from the Ebionites, properly so called, in this,
that they did not believe, with them, such a union of Christ with God
had first taken place at a determinate moment of his life, but regarded
it as lying at the basis of his entire development; since in fact they
acknowledged his miraculous conception.
But the second class consisted of those whom not merely the inter-
est for Monotheism or Monarchianism, in which a Jew also might
participate, but the imterest at the same time for the faith in the true
deity of Christ, made opponents of the hypostatical Logos-doctrine in
the form in which it was then understood. The common notion of the
Logos, that he had become man in Christ, as a being personally distinct
from, and subordinate to, God the Father, although most intimately
related to him, appeared to them to be too inadequate a representation
of Christ. The idea of such a distinction between him and the Su-
preme God was revolting to their faith in Christ: he was for them the
only true and supreme God himself, who had revealed himself here
im humanity so as he had done nowhere else, had appeared in a human
body. They regarded the names Father and Son as only two different
- modes of designating the same subject, the one God, who, with refer-
ence to the relations in which he had previously stood to the world, is
called by the name of the Father; as with reference to Acs appearance
in humanity, he is called the Son.! They would have in Christ only
the one, unditided God;—the feelmg which was uppermost with
them, would admit here of no distinction or division. While the first
class of Monarchians recognized nothing in Christ but the man, and
banished the divine element out of view; the others saw in him noth-
ing but the God, and the human element was, on the other hand,
wholly suppressed or overlooked. The tendency of their views was to
make of the human appearance simply a transient, removable veil,
serving for the manifestation of God in humanity. Yet we are igno-
rant as to the particular way in which they developed their thoughts
on this point. The more profound pipus feeling among the laity who
were without education, seems to have inclined them rather to the last-
classes ; in Joann. T. IT. ὁ 2: Ἤτοι dpvov-
uévove ἰδιότητα υἱοῦ ἑτέραν παρὰ τὴν τοῦ
πατρὸς, ὁμολογοῦντας ϑεὸν εἶναι τὸν μέχρι
ὀνόματος παρ᾽ αὐτοῖς υἱὸν προςαγορευόμενον,
(they acknowledge the divinity of Christ,
but deny him a personality distinct from
the Father, and call him the Son in name
only,— they do not consider him as such
in truth, inasmuch as they identify him
VOL. I.
with the Father; these are the Patripas-
sians:) ἢ ἀρνουμένους τὴν ϑεότητα Tov υἱοῦ,
τιϑέντας δὲ αὐτοῦ τὴν ἰδιότητα καὶ οὐσίαν
κατὰ περιγραφὴν, (an individual existence,
natura certis finibus circumscripta,) τυγχά-
vovoav ἑτέραν τοῦ πατρός, (the other class.)
T. Il. § 18; T. X&. §.21; c..Cels..1. VII.
ce. 12.
1 Two ἐπίνοιαι ἑνὸς ὑποκειμένον
578 DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY.
mentioned view; and if, as appears evident from the passages cited
from Tertullian and Origen, this view had many adherents even as
late as ito the third century, yet this cannot be regarded as any
evidence whatever against the antiquity of the Logos-doctrine, as if
the latter had first made its appearance im the conflict with some mode
of apprehension far older than itself; but it might easily be the case,
that, while the Logos-doctrine was becoming moulded into shape in
theology, the view just mentioned sprung up out of the popular con-
sciousness. It was the reaction of the Christian consciousness among
the laity, agaist the doctrine of the Logos, as it became more precisely
defined in a subordination-system.! ‘This is the class, of whom Origen
says, that under the show of aiming to honor Christ, they teach what
is untrue of him.” It is such whom he has in mind, when he describes,
as belonging to a subordinate position, those whose God is the Logos,
— who imagined that im him they possessed the whole essence of God,
and who held him to be the Father himself.? And it is the same class,
perhaps, of whom he says, that they knew nothing but Jesus the
crucified ; that they imagined they possessed in him who became flesh
the entire Logos ; that they knew Christ only according to the flesh ;
and as such he describes the great body of believers, over against
whom he was accustomed to place the genuine Gnostics.4 Just as
Philo distinguishes those who elevate themselves to the Absolute, and
those who imagine they have all in the Logos, considering the latter as
the Supreme God himself; and as the Gnostics distinguish those who
elevate themselves to the Supreme God, and those who held the Dem-
lurge to be the Supreme God himself; so Origen distinguishes those
who elevate themselves to God the Father himself, and those who
never proceeded beyond the Son, and held him to be the Father
himself.®
1 Instead of being able, with Dr. Baur,
(whose positions we have not neglected to
consider in the statement above given,) to
regard the Logos-doctrine as an attempt to
strike the mean between the two classes of
the Monarchians, and to account hence for
its spread; we must on the contrary main-
tain, that it was precisely the antithesis of
the Logos-doctrine in the form of subordin-
ation, which called forth Patripassianism.
We discern in this last tendency the same
interest, expressing itself in a purely prac-
tical way, without dialectic reasoning, which
afterwards sought its satisfaction by means
of dialectic reasoning, in the matured πο-᾿
tion of the Homoiision.
2 In Matth. T. XVIL. § 14: Οὐ νομιστέον
εἶναι ὑπὲρ αὐτοῦ τοὺς τὰ ψεύδη φρονοῦντας
περὶ αὐτοῦ, φαντασίᾳ τοῦ δοξάζειν αὐτὸν,
ὅποιοί εἰσιν οἱ συγχέοντες πατρὸς καὶ υἱοῦ
ἔννοιαν καὶ τῇ ὑποστάσει ἕνα διδόντες εἶναι
τὸν πατέρα καὶ τὸν υἱὸν, τῇ ἐπινοίᾳ μόνῃ καὶ
τοῖς ὀνόμασι διαιροῦντες τὸ ἕν ὑποκείμενον.
He distinguishes such from heretics.
3'O λόγος τάχα τῶν ἐν αὐτῷ ἱστάντων τὸ
πᾶν καὶ τῶν πατέρα αὐτὸν νομιζόντων ἐστὶ
ϑεός. In Joann. T. II. § 8.
#L.c.: Οἱ μηδὲν eidorec, εἰ μὴ ᾿Ιησοῦν
These latter were usually denommated Patripassians,° — ἃ
Χριστὸν καὶ τοῦτον ἐσταυρωμένον, τὸν γενό-
μενον σάρκα λόγον τὸ πᾶν νομίσαντες εἶναι
τοῦ λόγου, Χριστὸν κατὰ σάρκα μόνον γινώ-
σκουσι' τοιοῦτον δέ ἐστι τὸ πλῆϑος τῶν πε-
πιστευκέναι νομιζομένων. Yet we should
not omit to notice, that in the above-cited
passage, Matth. T. X VII. § 14, Origen dis-
tincuishes those who, out of a mistaken
wish to honor Christ, identify him with the
Father, from the great mass of orthodox
believers, who, though they do not consider
Christ as a mere prophet, yet are far from
having a sufficiently high conception of
him, are unable to form to themselves any
clear conception of his character. Οἱ ὄχλοι,
κἀν μὴ τῇ λέξει ὡς προφήτην αὐτὸν ἔχωσι, 4,
τι ποτ᾽ ἂν ἔχωσιν αὐτὸν, πολλῷ ἔλαττον ἔχου-
σιν αὐτὸν οὗ ἐστιν, οὐδὲν τρανοῦντες περὲ
αὐτοῦ.
ὅ Οἱ μὲν ϑεὸν ἔχουσι τὸν τῶν ὅλων ϑεὸν,
of δὲ παρὰ τούτους δεύτεροι ἱστάμενοι ἐπὶ
τὸν υἱὸν τοῦ ϑεοῦ. τὸν Χριστὸν αὐτοῦ. L. ¢.
6 Qui unam eandemque subsistentiam
Patris ac Filii asseverant, unam personam
duobus nominibus subjacentem, qui latine
Patripassiani appellantur. Orig. fragment.
Commentar. in ep. ad Titum.
THE MONARCHIANS. 579
name which would be applied to them, however, only by those who
maintained the subordination-theory of the church; and on the
ground that they saw it must tend to impair the superior dignity of
the Father, if that was transferred to him which could only be pre-
dicated of the Logos,? who came into all manner of contact with the
creature.
We shall now proceed to consider more in detail the several phases
of Monarchianism.
As it regards the first-named class, we find the earlest traces of it
in the Roman church; and since it has been found that Monarchians
of the third century appeal to the agreement of the older Roman bish-
ops with their views, modern inquirers have been led to infer from this
circumstance, that the Monarchian tenet was in this church originally
the prevailmg one, while the doctrine of the Logos was unknown to it:
and this was connected with another position, namely, that the Roman
church had its origin in a Jewish element. But if this last position is
an erroneous one, and the Pauline, Gentile-Christian element must be
regarded much rather as the origial one in this case,? (as we think we
have shown it must be, in another place,*) one of the principal argu-
ments for such a supposition falls at cnce to the ground. Moreover, on
such a supposition, it would be least of all possible to account for the
favorable reception which the Patripassians met with at Rome; for it
is evident, that there was nothing which so contradicted the fundamen-
tal principle of the Jewish Christians, nothing so far alien from Ebion-
itism, as this theory concerning the person of Christ. We have seen,
in fact, that the two classes of the Monarchians stand in well-defined
opposition to each other. Hence both cannot at one and the same time
have been dominant in this church, cannot have sprung out of its origi-
nal element; although one side might doubtless, by its extreme positions,
have called forth the other. Now, if Patripassianism was the predomi-
nant doctrine, this would least of all have presented any foothold for
the other classes of the Monarchians. These could expect nothing
after this, but to meet with the warmest resistance. But if that ten-
dency of Monarchianism which was more nearly akin to Ebionitism had
its ground im the original doctrine of this church, the favorable recep-
tion which a Patripassian teacher met with here, could not be accounted
for. The intimate connection, moreover, of Irenzeus with the Roman
church,* to the doctrinal tradition of which he especially appeals, testi-
fies against the existence of such a Monarchian tendency opposed to
the Logos-doctrine in this church. And it is by no means clear, that
those Monarchians were at home in Rome: they came from some other
ἘΠ ες to the capital of the world, where was a confluence of the most
eterogeneous elements from all directions. ‘The Monarchians of the
first class did in fact, from the first, meet even here with a very unfa-
1 Τὴ ἃ different sense from what was in- 2 See the words of Tertullian, cited above .
tended, when, at a later period, those who Pater philosophorum Deus.
were accused of not duly distinguishing the 8 See my Apostol. Zeitalter, vol. I. p. 384
diyine and the human in Christ were de- 4 See vol. 1. p. 204.
nominated Theopaschites.
580 DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY.
yorable reception. But as to the circumstance of their appealing to
their agreement with the more ancient doctrine of the Roman church,
this just as little proves that the original doctrine of the Roman church
really favored them, as their appeal which they also made to the scrip-
tures of the New Testament proves that the latter favored them.’ The
true state of the case probably was, then, that they simply took advan-
tage of the more crude and undigested form of the doctrme in the
Roman church to introduce their own.
The founder of this Monarchian party in Rome appears to have been
a certain Theodotus, a leather-dresser (σκυτεύς) from Byzantium? It
is evident, from the way in which he interpreted the language of the
angel, (Luke 1: 51,05 that although he acknowledged nothing of an
indwelling divine nature in Christ, he yet supposed that Christ had
grown up from the beginning under the special influence of the divine
Spirit. The language was not, he said, the Spirit of God shall enter
into thee; therefore the fact here denoted was not an incarnation of
the divine Spirit,! but only a descent of the divine Spirit on Mary.
Whence too it appears that he by no means denied the supernatural
character of Christ’s nativity; of which therefore he is unjustly ac-
cused by Epiphanius. The Roman bishop, Victor, is said to have
excommunicated him from the church, whether this took place at the end
of the second or at the beginning of the third century; yet his party
continued to propagate itself, independently of the dominant church,
and endeavored to get into notice by contriving to elect for its bishop
Natalis, a venerated confessor. The latter seems, however, to have in-
troduced a schism into his own breast, by departing from a conviction
which had once given him strength for conflict and suffermg. The dis-
quiet of his heart manifested itself in frightful dreams and visions; and
in the end he penitently returned back to the Catholic church.?
There arose, independently of this Theodotus, another Monarchian
sect in Rome, whose founder is called Artemon. It is certain that the
party which derived its origin from this man did not acknowledge Theo-
dotus as belonging to them; and if they supposed they could-appeal to
their agreement in doctrine with the Roman bishop Victor, who had
excommunicated Theodotus, they must either have assumed that their
doctrine differed from that of Theodotus, or that the latter had been
excommunicated for other reasons than his erroneous doctrines. The
latter may be supposed, if the somewhat highly colored and, as we
must admit, not sufficiently well-supported account,® that Theodotus
1 Although we may be inclined to sup-
pose that the Artemonites did not receive
the gospel of John, yet we must admit that
they acknowledged the epistles of Paul.
2 The latter is reported by Epiphanius
and Theodoretus.
3 His words, cited by Epiphanius heres.
54, are: Kai αὐτὸ τὸ εὐαγγέλιον ἔφη τῇ Ma-
pia πνεῦμα κυρίου ἐπελεύσεται ἐπὶ σὲ, καὶ
οὐκ εἶπε: πνεῦμα κυρίου γενῆσεται ἐν ool.
4 Whether it was, that by this divine
Spirit he understood the Logos, or whether
he disclaimed all knowledge of such a he-
ing. We should not forget here, that these
words were in fact referred, at that time, to
the. incarnation of the Logos. See Justin
M. Apolog. 11. ed. Colon. f. 75: To πνεῦμα
καὶ THY δύναμιν τὴν παρὰ ϑεοῦ οὐδὲν ἄλλο
νοῆσαι ϑέμις ἢ τὸν λόγον.
5 If we may trust to the repors of an op-
ponent. LEuseb. lib. V. c. 28.
6 Besides being cited in Epiphanius, it
may be found in the appendices to Tertul-
lian’s Preescriptions, c. 53
THE MONARCHIANS. THE’ ARTEMONITES. 581
was first excommunicated from the church on account of his denial of
the faith under a persecution, may have some foundation of truth.
The Artemonites continued to propagate themselves in Rome till far
into the third century. About the middle of this century, the Roman
presbyter Novatianus still considered it necessary, in his exposition of
the doctrine of Christ’s divinity, to notice particularly the objections
of that party ; and, during the later Samosatenian disputes, it was spoken
of as a party still in existence.
If the Artemonites pretended that what they called the truth, had
been preserved in the Roman church down to the time of the Roman
bishop Zephyrinus, yet this, as we have remarked before, signifies
nothing more here than it does in the other cases, where they cited the
older church teachers generally and the apostles themselves as wit-
nesses for the truth of their doctrme. When aman entrenches himself
in some particular dogmatic interest, and makes that his central posi-
tion, he can easily explain every thing i in conformity with his own views,
and find everywhere a reflection of himself. But when they asserted,
that from the time of Victor’s successor, Zephyrinus, the true doctrine
in this church become obscured 1 — some fact must be lying at the bot-
tom of this assertion, which unhappily, m the absence of historical data,
it is impossible at present accurately to ascertain. Perhaps by these
very disputes, the Roman church was led to fix some more clearly de-
fined doctrinal distinction or other, which was unfavorable to the inter-
ests of this party. But the Roman bishops, who, even at this early
period, held so tenaciously to traditional forms, even in unimportant mat-
ters, would hardly be induced to exchange, at once, the Monarchianism
received from their predecessors, for the Logos-doctrine coming to them
from abroad ; and such a change, moreover, did not admit of being so
easily effected.
As it regards the tendency of mind in which the doctrine of these
Artemonites originated, we are furnished with a very instructive hint
on this subject, in one of the objections brought against them. They
busied themselves a good deal with mathematics, dialectics, and eriti-
cism; with the philosophy of Aristotle and with Theophrastus. lt
was, then, a predominantly reflective, critical, dialectic bent of mind,
which, in their case, encroached on the fervency and depth of Christian
feelings. They were for a Christianity of the understanding, without
any mystical element. Every thing of a transcendent character , every
thing which would not adapt itself to their dialectic categories, was to.
be expurged from the system of faith. It is worthy of notice, that they
devoted particular attention to the Aristotelean philosophy. We per-
ceive here the different kinds of influence exerted by the systems of
philosophy; the Platonic being employed to defend the doctrine of
Christ’s divinity, while the opposite direction of mind, tending to combat
that doctrine, leaned to the side of the Aristotelean.
It was alleged against those Artemonites, that, under the pretence of
emending the text of the holy scriptures, they indulged in a very ar-
1 ᾿Απὸ te τοῦ διαδόχου αὐτοῦ Zedupivov παρακεχαράχϑαι τὴν ἀλήϑειαν. Euseb. 1. V. c. 28
49"
582 DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY.
bitrary kind of criticism. An accusation of this sort from the mouth of
opponents is in itself, it must be admitted, not entitled to much credit.
There was ever a strong inclination to charge those who deviated from
the church doctrine, whenever they cited other readings than those
which were customarily received in the church, with mterpolating and
corrupting the holy scriptures so as to make them favor those opin-
ions in which they differed from the church.! But the peculiar intellec-
tual bent of these people renders it not improbable, that they did
indulge in a licentious criticism, favoring the interest of their own pecu-
liar dogmas. ‘Their antagonists speak of the variations which were to
be found in the several recensions of the text proceeding from the theo-
logians of this party, as each was ambitious to acquire importance by
his skill in criticism.?
Many of the Artemonites were led also by this critical bent of mind,
as it would seem, to oppose the tendency to confound together the fun-
damental positions of the Old and New Testament; to combat the
practice of implying, by means of allegorical interpretation, every Chris-
tian truth in the scriptures of the Old Testament. They were for hold-
ing the two positions more distinctly apart; for distinguishing more clearly
the new, specifically Christian element from that of the Old-Testament
scriptures. Possibly, also, they may have discriminated more carefully
the peculiar character of the agency exerted by the Holy Spirit in the
case of the New-Testament, from that in the case of the Old-Testa-
ment scriptures. ΤῸ the latter they may not have ascribed the same
authority as to the former.®
1 Tertullian’s Prescriptions: Ubi veritas
discipline et fidei Christiane, illic erit veri-
tas scripturarum et expositionum. De pre-
script. c. 19.
2 There were many copies of the New
Testament, inscribed with the names of the
critics of the several sects from which the
revision of the text proceeded. IloAAov
(avtiypagav) ἐστιν εὐπορῆσαι, διὰ τὸ φιλοτί-
pwc ἐγγεγράφϑαι τοὺς μαϑητὰς αὐτῶν, τὰ
ὑφ᾽ ἑκάστου αὐτῶν, ὡς αὐτοὶ καλοῦσι, κατωρ-
ϑωμένα. Euseb. 1. V. c. 28.
3 We infer this from the remarkable
words in the controversial notice just cited,
Euseb. 1. V. ¢. 28: Ἔνιοι δ᾽ αὐτῶν οὐδὲ τα-
ράσσειν ἠξίωσαν αὐτὰς (τὰς γραφὰς) ἀλλ᾽
ἁπλῶς ἀρνησάμενοι τόν τε νόμον καὶ τοὺς
προφῆτας, ἀνόμου καὶ ἀϑέου διδασκαλίας
(here ἃ word must have, slipped out, for I
do not feel at liberty to supply ἕνεκα, nor
do I believe that this is the word missing.
Neither can I, with Stroth, take these words
as in apposition with χάριτος.) προφάσει
χάριτος (under the pretext, that they would
glorify the grace bestowed by the gospel)
εἰς ἔσχατον ἀπωλείας OAS pov κατωλίσϑησαν.
We may here compare what Origen says
of the same class: Qui Spiritum Sanctum
alium quidem dicant esse, qui fuit prophe-
tis, alium autem, qui fuit in apostolis.
Fragment. Commentar. in epist. ad Titum.
But when I find Dr. Baur endeavoring to
establish a connection between the tendency
here described and the sect of Marcion, I
must be allowed to say, that I see no ground
whatever for any such hypothesis. If these
people agreed with the school of Marcion
in opposing the practice of confounding to-
gether the fundamental positions of the
Old and the New Testament, (and yet they
were certainly very far from proceeding to
the same length in this opposition as Mar-
cion did,) this cannot possibly be regarded
as sufficient evidence of any relationship
of theirs with the sect of Marcion. ‘They
were driven to this result from an entirely
different starting-point, by an intellectual
tendency directly opposed to that of the
Marcionites. Had they stood in any sort
of connection with the sect of Marcion,
other Christians certainly would never have
had so much to do with them, but would
have repelled them, without ceremony, from
their society, as notorious heretics. But
neither can we believe, that it was to this
party the opponents belonged, whom Ter-
tullian combats as a Montanist, (see above,
p 525, note 2;) for had it been in his power
to charge these opponents with such errors
as the above-described, he would assuredly
not have allowed such an opportunity to
pass without availing himself of it
THE PATRIPASSIANS. 583
We recognize the same tendency in the oldest opponents of John’s
gospel, who were connected with this party, —the so-called Alog?, whom
we have already spoken of, as a sect that pushed the antithesis of Mon-
tanism to its farthest extreme on the other side.1
As to the second class of Monarchians, the Patripassians, the first
one of the party who comes to our knowledge is the confessor Praxeas.
He came from Asia Minor, the father-land of Monarchianism, where he
had made himself known as an antagonist of Montanism ; from which
circumstance, however, it is by no means clear, that the peculiar direc-
tion he took with regard to the doctrine of the Trinity had any connec-
tion whatever with this opposition ; especially if we consider that the
prophetic spirit of the Montanists itself, as we have before pointed out,
assumed in the first place an Old-Testament form, and spoke in the name
of God the Father only. He afterwards travelled to Rome,? and by
his influence induced the Roman bishop, either Eleutherus or Victor,
to pronounce sentence of excommunication against the Montanists in
Asia Minor. He at that time encountered no opposition on the score
of his Patripassianism ; whether it was that men were less disposed to
examine rigidly into the creed of the confessor ; or that, amidst the ne-
gotiations respecting many other important matters connected with the
interests of the church, this difference in doctrine never happened to be
mentioned ; or that Praxeas found in the church doctrine at Rome,
which as yet was not very precisely defined, a point of union for his
own views, and by his zeal in behalf of the faith in Christ, as the God-
man, perhaps by his hostility to the other party of the Monarchians,
won over the public opinion im his favor. He next went to Carthage,
where too he may have relied for support on the before-described pious
interests of simple faith in the laity, which had not yet passed through
any process of theological development.? Yet here an opponent of this
doctrine presented himself, and a controversy arose. If we may believe
the hostilely-disposed Tertullian, Praxeas was induced.to recant his
opinions.* Yet we should here probably distinguish between the real
matter of fact, and the interpretation of the fact by an antagonist. It
may be doubted whether the explanation of Praxeas, to which Tertul-
lian alludes, may not have been simply a vindication of his doctrine
against some falsely charged conclusions. Somewhat later, when Ter-
tullian had already gone over to the Montanistic party, the controversy
broke out afresh ; and he had now a double motive for writing against
Praxeas.
According to his representations, there were two possible ways of
construing the doctrine of Praxeas: either that he denied the exist-
ence of any distinction in the being of God himself — denied the ex-
istence of any duality in God, which might seem to be presupposed by
Christ’s appearance, even a duality understood merely m a formal sense —
1 See above, p. 526. are: Dormientibus multis in simplicitate
2 For the precise time, see above, p. 513, doctrine. c. Praxeam, ¢. 1.
note 3, and 525. 4His language is: Caverat pristinum
8 Tertullian’s words, where he is speaking doctor de emendatione sua et manet chiro-
of the spread of this doctrine in Carthage, graphum apud psychicos. L. ¢.
584 DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY.
and applied the name Son of God to Christ simply with reference to
his bodily appearance on earth ;! or that he admitted the doctrine of a
divine Logos in a certain sense. In the latter case, he would not only
_ have applied the name Son of God to Christ with reference to his
human appearance, but he would have acknowledged a distinction, from
the creation of the world, between the hidden, invisible God, and him
who revealed himself in the work of creation, in the Theophanies of
the Old Testament, and finally in a human body, in Christ. In the
last-mentioned relation, God would be called the Logos or the Son. By
extending, in some sense, his activity beyond himself, and so generat-
ing the Logos, he thus made himself a Son.2 Now Tertullian, when
he expresses himself in this last way, has either failed to enter fully
enough into the whole connection of his opponent’s mode of thinking,
has transferred to Praxeas his own way of construing the meaning of
Praxeas, or else different views must have existed among Praxeas’ fol-
lowers, according to the degree of their intellectual culture, and ac-
cording as they adhered more or less closely to the church terminology.
To this class of Monarchians belongs, moreover, Moetus, who ap-
peared in the first half of the third century at Smyrna.’ It is a char-
acteristic fact, and serves to confirm what we have said before re-
specting the import of Patripassianism, that when Noetus was cited
before an assembly of presbyters, to answer for the erroneous doctrine
of which he was accused, he alleged im his defence that his doctrine
tended only to honor Christ. ‘ Of what evil am I guilty,” said he,
‘‘when I glorify Christ?’’?* The unity of God and Christ, this only
God — was his motto. In proof of his doctrine he referred to Rom.
9: ὃ, where Christ is called God over all ; — to the words of Christ,
John 10: 30, “1 and my Father are one ;’”’ — perhaps also® to the
words John 14: 9, ‘* He that hath seen me, hath seen the Father.” It
appears, from these examples, that Patripassianism appealed to the
authority of St. John’s gospel, as well as to others; and it is evident,
how slight are the grounds furnished by the spread of such doctrines
for presuming that this gospel was either not known to exist, or not re-
ceived. If, in the case of Praxeas, we were still uncertain whether he
made the distinction between God hidden within himself and God in
his selfmanifestation, it is, on the other hand, clearly evident from the
report of Theodoretus, that Noetus made a doctrine of this kind his
very starting-point. There is one God, the Father, who is invisible
when he pleases; and appears (manifests himself) when he pleases ;
1 See Tertullian, c. Praxeam ec. 27.
2 L. ο. ὁ. 10, 14, and 26. The objections
of Baur cannot move me. The passage
marked c. 14, especially, where the writer
is speaking of the application of the doc-
trine to the Old Testament, leads necessa-
rily to this result?
3 Theodoretus, together with Hippolytus,
furnishes the most characteristic notion of
this doctrine, (vid. Heret. fab. III. ο. 3.)
He correctly remarks that Noetus set forth
no new doctrine invented by himself, but
that others before him had already broached’
one of the same kind, among whom he
names two individuals unknown to us,
Epigonius and Cleomenes.
4 Vid. Hippolyt. c. Noét. § 1: Τὲ οὖν κα-
κὸν ποιῶ, δοξάζων τὸν Χριστόν ; '
5 T say “ perhaps,” because it is πού abso-
lutely certain from the words of Hippoly-
tus, whether he is answering an objection
actually made, or only one which he con-
conceived possible.
—_— =~ *
“
DOCTRINE OF THE LOGOS. 585
but the same, whether visible or invisible, begotten or unbegotten.
Theodoretus refers this last expression to the birth of Christ ; — but it
may be doubted whether he has in this instance rightly taken the sense
of the man; whether the latter had not in his mind the γέννησις τοῦ λόγου ;
and by this he could have understood here nothing else than God’s ac-
tivity without himself. At all events, he must have so appropriated
the Logos-doctrine of John as to understand by the Logos only a desig-
nation for God proceeding forth from his hidden essence,— God re-
vealing himself; —the same God, denominated, in different relations,
ὧν and λόγος.
In the conflict with these two classes of the Monarchians, the church
doctrine of the Trinity unfolded itself— and in two different quarters,
in the Western and in the Eastern church. In the latter, the doctrine
of subordination became firmly established in connection with the hypos-
tatical :view of the Logos; since in the controversy with the Monar-
chians, who denied the distinction of hypostases, that distinction became
still more prominently set forth. On the other hand, we see how the
Western mind, starting from the doctrine of subordination received
along with the distinction of hypostases, is ever striving to make promi-
nent the unity of the divine essence in connection with this distinction.
The designation of Christ as the Logos could have been known from
the gospel of John, without any use being made of it, however, for a
speculative exposition of the doctrine concernmg Christ. This first
took place, when a species of intellectual culture which had been
formed in the schools of philosophy, particularly in the Platomie school,
though after a superficial manner and more under the impulse of a reli-
gious than of a philosophical interest, came into contact with Christian-
ity. ‘The first author still extant, in whom this character may be dis-
cerned, 15 Justin Martyr! He availed himself, in his speculations (as
Philo, whose ideas seem to have been known to him and to have influ
enced him, had already done) of the ambiguity of the Greek term Lu
gos, which denotes both reason and word. Hence the comparison of
the reason, which dwells in God, (the λόγος ἐνδιάϑετος, Ὑ and the revela-
tion of this reason, appearing creatively without — the self-subsistent
Word, (λόγος προφορικός, the word as it stands related to the thought,) by
which the ideas of the divine reason are revealed and become actual-
ized. Accordingly this word — so taught Justin— emanated from
Grod before all creation, (being his selfmanifestation,) as a personal-
ity derived from God’s essence, and ever intimately united with him
by this community of essence, — a distinction which does not arise out
_ _ 1} Justin describes the doctrine of Christ’s
divinity as one taught by Christ himself.
Πείϑεσϑαι τοῖς δ αὐτοῦ διδαχϑεῖσι. Dial.
Tryph. f. 267. The doctrine concerning
Christ as the Son of God in that higher
sense, he thought he found in the ἀπομνη-
μονεύματα τῶν ἀποστόλων, by which phrase
he means the gospels, as being memorials
of Christ’s life. See f. 327; and when all
the scattered atlusions to the gospel of
John, in his writings, are compared togeth-
er, it is impossible to doubt that he had
read this gospel, and comprised it among
his apostolic commentaries ; for, indeed, he
describes these commentaries as having
been composed partly by the apostles them-
selves, (Matthew and John,) and partly by
their disciples, Luke and Mark. Τοῖς ἀπο-
μνημονεύμασι, & φημι ὑπὸ τῶν ἀποστόλων
καὶ τῶν ἐκείνοις παρακολουϑησάντων συντε
τάχϑαι. Dial. Tryph. f. 331
586 DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY.
of any necessity of nature, but is brought about by an act of the divine
will. ‘The idea of this Logos, as the invisible teacher of the spiritual
world, from whom all goodness and truth proceed, Justin employs for
the purpose of setting forth Chri istianity as the central point, where all
the hitherto-scatter ed. rays of the godlike i in humanity converge, — the
absolute religion, in which all that “has been, till now, fragmentary and
rent piece-meal, is brought together into a higher unity ; and for the
purpose of comparing the full and unalloyed revelation of the absolute,
divine Logos in Christ, with the partial and fragmentary revelations —
so fragmentary as to contradict each other—of truth in the human
consciousness, growing from the implanted seed of the Logos, which is
of one nature with that eternal, divme reason.! The same fundamental
view we find in the other apologetic writers ; 2 but we may notice, in
the case of Athenagoras, how, im endeavoring to strip away everything
that savors of Anthropopathism, and im contrasting the spiritually con-
ceived idea of the Son of God with the pagan myths concerning sons of
deities,® he is led to express himself on the unity of the divine essence,
in a way which strikes a middle course between the Monarchian theory
and the doctrine of the church in its later and more matured form. It
is easy to see how the above-named Monarchians might avail them-
selves of the authority of such passages, to maintain the higher an-
tiquity of their own form of doctrine.
Thus unfolded, this doctrine passed over into the Alexandrian school,
whose philosophically cultivated minds strove from the first to remove
away from it all relations of time and analogies of sense, as the analogy,
for example, drawn from the expression of thoughts in words.* Already
Clement describes the Logos as the ground-principle, without beginning ~
and timeless, of all existence.? He transfers what was taught in the
Neo-Platonic school concerning the relation of the second principle, the
νοῦς living in self-contemplation, the hypostatised ideal world, to the ab-
solute, the vy, he transfers and applies this to the revelation of the Lo-
gos to the Father, — although, at the position he occupied, and with his
mode of contemplating the universe in the light of a Christian Theism,
which acknowledged a living, personal, acting God, it was still impossi-
ble for him to appropriate to his own purpose the sense in which all this
was meant in the coherence of that philosophical system.® The specula-
1 Which proceeds-from the ἔμφυτον παντὶ
γένει ἀνϑρώπων σπέρμα τοῦ λόγου, the κατὰ
λόγου μέρος, compared with the λογικὸν τὸ
ὅλον, πάντα τὰ τοῦ λόγου ὕς ἐστι Χριστός."
Apolog. Ι. f. 48.
2 In Athenagoras after the following
form: The Logos, as God’s indwelling rea-
son, projects the ideas;— The Logos, as
Word, emanated into self-subsistence, car-
ries them into realization, λόγος ἐν ἰδέᾳ καὶ
évepyeia; —as προεχϑὼν ἐνεργείᾳ, it is that
by which the organized world was formed
out of chaos.
3 The πρῶτον γέννημα, οὐχ’ ὡς γενόμενον;
for the Father had from all eternity his Lo-
gos in himself
4 Τὴ the λόγος ἐνδιάϑετος and προφορι-
κός.
5 *Aypovoc καὶ ἄναρχος ἀρχὴ, ἀπαρχὴ τῶν
ὄντων. Strom. 1. VIII. f. 700. Ἡ τῶν
ὅλων ἀρχὴ ἐπεικόνισται ἐκ τοῦ ϑεοῦ τοῦ ἀο-
ράτου πρώτη καὶ πρὸ αἰώνων. Lc. 1 V. f,
565. Λόγος αἰώνιος. L. ο. 1. VII. f. 708.
6 We see this by comparing Clement,
Strom. 1. IV. f. 537, with Plotinus, Ennead.
Loe. 7. 5668: It is true, Clement may
not have taken any thing from Plotinus,
who wrote some years later; but we must
presuppose doctrines of the Neo-Platonic
school still older than Plotinus. Clement
says: Ὁ ϑεὸς ἀναπόδεικτος ὧν, οὔκ ἐστιν
ἐπιστημονικός. This answers to the Neo-
ALEXANDRIAN LOGOS-DOCTRINE. 587
tive ideas of Neo-Platonism were, in his case, mixed up with Christian
intuitions. As we observed on a previous page, that Clement intro-
duced into certain philosophical propositions ἃ rehgious matter which
was foreign from them, so here too we see him striving to find the idea
which grew out of his own Christian consciousness and thought — this
idea of the unity of the divine life, and of negation and schism as the
very essence of unbelief — striving to find this idea in the speculative
maxims of the Neo-Platonic school concerning the νοῦς. But the Alex-
andrian system, which sprang out of the germ furnished by Clement,
was first carried out and moulded into its perfect shape by Origen ; —
and the influence of his exposition of the doctrine continued long to be
felt in the Eastern church. ‘The leading ideas in it were as follows.
There is an original source of all existence, to be called God in the
absolute sense 3? the fountain of divine life and blessedness to a world
of spirits, who, as they are allied to him by nature, are also, by
their communion with him, deified and raised superior to the limitations
of a finite existence. In virtue of this divine life, which flows to them
through their communion with the original divine essence, the more ex-
alted spirits may be denommated, in a certain sense, divine beings,
gods.? But as the αὐτόϑεος 15 the original source of all existence and
of all divine hfe, so the Logos is the necessary mtermediate link through
which all communication of life from him proceeds. ‘This latter is the
concentrated manifestation of God’s glory, its universal, all-embracing
reflection, by whom the partial eradiations of the divine glory are dif.
fused abroad through the whole world of spirits.*
As there is but one original divine essence,” so there is but one origi-
nal divime reason, the absolute reason,° through which alone the eter-
nal Supreme Being reveals himself to all other existences. He is to
them the source of all truth, — objective, selfsubsistent truth itself. Ori-
gen considers it very important to hold fast the position, that each sev-
eral rank of reasonable beings, or each several intelligence, has not its
own subjective Logos, but that one absolute objective Logos, as well as
one absglute objective truth, exists for all; the one truth of the divine
Platonic maxim concerning a suprarational,
intellectual intuition, by which the νοῦς, ris-
ing above itself, soars to the 6v,—so Ploti-
nus says of the ov: ὙὝπερβεβηκὸς τοῦτο τὴν
τοῦ νοῦ φύσιν, τίνι ἁλίσκοιτο ἐπιβολῇ ἀϑρόᾳ;
What Plotinus says of the νοῦς as the ἐνέρ-
yea πρώτη ἐν διεξόδῳ τῶν πώντων, as the
ἕν πᾶν, Clement transfers to the Logos.
1 Because the λόγος is the πάντα év, — τὸ
εἰς αὐτὸν καὶ τὸ δι’ αὐτοῦ πιστεῦσαι. μοναδι-
κόν ἐστι γίνεσϑαι, ἀπερισπάστως ἑνούμενον
ἐν aitw, τὸ δὲ ἀπιστῆσαι, διστίώσαι. ἐστὶ καὶ
διαστῆναι καὶ μερισϑῆναι.
2 The ἁπλῶς ϑεός., αὐτόϑεος.
ὃ Μετοχῇ τῆς ἐκείνου ϑεότητος ϑεοποιού-
μενοι. Intimately connected with this dis-
tinction, stands Origen’s theory concerning
the process of the development of Theism.
They occupy the highest position, who
have soared to the αὐτόϑεος himself ; — the
second, those who believe that they possess
in Christ the Supreme God himself, (see
above ;) the third, those who are conducted
first to some notion of God, by recognizing
those higher divine essences, the divine in-
tellirences which animate the planets. Ori-
gen argues, as Philo had already done from
Deut. 4: 19, a certain necessity of Polythe-
ism, and in particular of Sabeism, in the
process of the religious development of
mankind, ordained by God: Τῷ τοὺς μὴ
δυναμένους ἐπὶ τὴν νοητὴν ἀναδραμεῖν φύσιν,
δι αἰσϑητῶν ϑεῶν κινουμέν ους περὶ ε εότη:
τος, ἀγαπητῶς κἀν ἐν τούτοις ἵστασϑαι καὶ
μὴ πίπτειν ἐπὶ εἴδωλα καὶ δαιμόνια, See in
Joann. T. XII. ὁ 8,
4 Τῇ Joann. T. II. c. 2; T. XXXII. c. 18
5 The αὐτόϑεος.
6 The αὐτόλογος
588 DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY.
conscidusness, which binds man with all the different ranks of intelli-
gences in the world of spirits. , “‘ Every one certainly will admit,” says
he, ‘‘ that truth is one. None surely will venture to affirm that the truth
of God is one thing; that of the angels, another ; and that of men, still
another ; since, in the very nature of the case, there can be but one
truth im regard to each one thing. But if truth is one, it rightly fol-
lows that the evolution of truth, which is wisdom, must be conceived as
one, inasmuch as all false wisdom comes short of the truth, and cannot
properly be called wisdom. But if there is one truth and one wisdom,
then the Logos also is one, who reveals truth and wisdom to all such as
are capable of receiving it.”” Although the Logos, however, is by his
own nature the absolute one, yet he places himself in manifold forms
and modes of activity, according to the different positions and the
different wants of reasonable beings, to whom he becomes whatsoever is
necessary for their well-bemg. While the Gnostics made different hy-
postases out of these different modes of operation of one and the same
Redeeming Spirit, Origen referred back these different hypostases to
different ideas and relations, (ἐπινοίας -Ὑ but while he combated these
all-hypostatising Gnostics, he opposed also the Monarchians, who re-
duced the whole Triad simply to different relations of one and the same
divine essence. He who denied the independent existence of the divine
Logos, seemed to him to reduce every thing to the subjective, — to
deny the existence of an absolute objective truth,— to make of this
a bare abstract thing; for he could not otherwise conceive of the divine
Logos, than as he had been accustomed to conceive of the νοῦς of the
Neo-Platonic philosophy. ‘Not one of us,” says Origen, “is pos-
sessed of so mean an intellect as to suppose that the essence of truth?
did not exist before the earthly appearance of Christ.”
As Origen explained the several designations of the Logos to be sym-
bolical, so he considered it to be also with the name Logos itself; and
he spoke against those who, availing themselves of the comparison with
the λόγος προφορικός, Which seemed so inadequate to the Alexandrians,
held fast to the name Logos alone, and thought they might refer to this, ,
all passages of the Old Testament where a λόγος was spoken of.? The
notion, which went along with this view, of an emanation of the Logos
to self-subsistent existence before the creation of the world, was, like
every other transfer of temporal relations to the Eternal, combated by
Origen. He who fixed no beginning to the creation, but supposed it to
be eternal, would far less fix any beginning here. He strove to banish
all notions of time from the conception of the generation of the Logos.
It was necessary here —as he thought— to conceive of a timeless
present, an eternal now; and this he supposed to be intimated by the
expression ‘‘ to-day ’’ in the second Psalm.*
In excluding all notions of time, it is also implied, in his opinion, that
the generation of the Logos should not be conceived as something which
1¢. Cels. 1. VIII..c. 12. προφορὰν πατρικὴν οἱονεὶ ἐν συλλαβαῖς κει-
2 Ἡ τῆς ἀληϑείας οὐσία. μένην εἶναι τὸν υἱὸν τοῦ ϑεοῦ.
8 Ἐπεὶ συνεχῶς χρῶνται τῷ; ἐξηρεύξατο ἡ 4 Τῇ Joann. I. 32; 11.1.
καρδία μου λόγον ἀγαϑόν, ψ. 44, 1, οἰόμενοι
ALEXANDRIAN LOGOS-DOCTRINE. 589
happened once and was then over. With the conception of beginning,
that also of an end must be carefully excluded — it should be conceived
as a timeless, eternal act. Origen seeks to render this theogonic pro-
cess clear by an analogy — by comparing it with the process accord-
ing to which the divine life developes itself in believers — the just man
not being born of God at once, by virtue of the divine life imparted to
him, but being ever born anew of God; so that all the good he does,
proceeds from this generation of the divine lifein him. With the glory
of God exists also its radiation m the Son; from the light ever goes
forth its radiation.2, We should not forget here, that Origen was led
into this view by his philosophical education in the Platonic school; for
he only needed to apply what was taught in this school concerning the
relation of the ὄν to the νοῦς, to the relation of the Father to the Logos.
But here, owing to the difference between his own fundamental position
and the Neo-Platonic, a question might occur to him. On the Neo- ἡ
Platonic principle, all teleological considerations, all will and action of
the absolute, were excluded ; nothing properly had any place here but a
necessity of the conception. But it was otherwise with Origen’s idea
of God the Father : —hence the question arises, whether, in reference
to the generation of the Logos, he conceived of a necessity grounded
im the divine essence, or of an act proceeding freely from the divine
will. Had he been possessed of the later-developed notion of the unity
of essence in the Triad, it would have resulted from this as a matter
of course, that he would be led to distinguish the eternal generation of
the Son, as an immanent act grounded in the divine essence, from a
fiat of the divine will as the mediating cause of the creation. But the
matter presented itself in a different aspect to Origen, viewed in the
light of his principle of subordination, which, strictly taken, excluded
such a mode of conception. And this result, to which Origen’s princi-
ple would lead, he is said actually to have expressed in his disputation
with the Valentinian Candidus, in which he attacked the Gnostic doctrine
of emanation. He affirmed, that we are not to conceive of a natural
necessity in the case of the generation of the Son of God, but, precisely
as in the case of the creation, we must conceive of an act flowmg from the
divine will; but he must have excluded here all temporal succession of
the different momenta.? From this view of the subject, Origen was
1 Concerning Christ: Ὅτι οὐχὶ ἐγέννησεν
ὁ πατὴρ τὸν υἱὸν καὶ ἀπέλυσεν αὐτὸν ὁ Ta-
THP ἀπὸ τῆς γενέσεως αὐτοῦ, ἀλλ᾽ ἀεὶ γεννᾷ
αὐτόν. Concerning the just man: Οὐ γὰρ
ἅπαξ ἐρῶ τὸν δίκαιον γεγεννῆσϑαι, ἀλλ᾽ ἀεὶ
γεννᾶσϑαι Kay ἑκάστην πρᾶξιν ἀγαϑὴν, ἐν
ἡ γεννᾷ τὸν δίκαιον ὁ ϑεός. In Jerem. Hom.
ΙΧ. § 4.
2 Ὅσον ἐστὶ τὸ φῶς ποιητικὸν τοῦ ἀπαυ-
γάσματος, ἐπὶ τοσοῦτον γεννᾶται τὸ ἀπαΐύ-
γασμα τῆς δόξης τοῦ ϑεοῦ.
* Jerome says: Habetur Dialogus apud
Grecos Origenis et Candidi, Valentiniani
heresis defensoris, in quo repugnat, Dei
Filium vel prolatum esse vel natum, (the lat-
ter certainly he could only deny so far as it
was too sensuously conceived,) ne Deus Pa-
7151. δ0
ter dividatur in partes, sed dicit sublimem
et excellentissimam creaturam voluntate ex-
stitisse Patris, sicut et caeteras creaturas
Hieronym. T. II. contra Rufin. ed. Vallarsi
T. 11. p. I. p. 512. Venet. 1767, or ed. Mar-
tianav, T. ΠΥ. f. 413. It must be confessed,
the source from which we obtain this is not
wholly to be relied on; for we know not
with what degree of care the notes of this
disputation were taken down. Many ex-
pressions which are here ascribed to Origen,
do not agree with his mode of thinking or
style of language. Zhe above definition,
however, as must be evident, is well sup-
ported by Origen’s system; and it is easy to
see, that he would have been led to state
this in so express terms, only when driven
590 ' DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY.
also led to object emphatically to the notion of a generation of the Son of
God from the essence of the Father, (γέννησις ἐκ τῆς οὐσίας, inasmuch as
such a theory seemed to him to lead to the supposition of a natural ne-
cessity to which the divme essence was subjected —to the supposi-
tion of a sensuously. conceived emanation —a severing of the divine
essence.!
In conformity with this development of ideas, Origen held it to be
quite necessary to insist on the absolute exaltation and superiority of
God the Father, so far as his essence is concerned, above every other
existence ; just as he was accustomed, when a Platonist, to consider the
highest ὄν as immeasurably superior to all other things, and exalted, in
its essence, even above the νοῦς itself. It appeared to him, therefore,
something like a profanation of the first and supreme essence, to sup-
pose an equality of essence or a unity between him and any other be-
ing whatever, not excepting even the Son of God. As the Son of God
and the Holy Spirit are incomparably exalted above all other existences,
even in the highest ranks of the spiritual world, so high and yet higher
is the Father exalted even above them.? ΤῸ this distinction between
the essence of the Son of God and that of the Father,’ Origen was in-
duced to give still more prominence in opposing the Monarchians. As
these latter, with the distinction of essence, denied also the personal
distinction, so it was with Origen a matter of practical moment, on ac-
count of the systematic connection of ideas in his philosophical system
of Christianity, to maintain in opposition to these the personal mdepen-
dence of the Logos. Sometimes, in this controversy, he distinguishes
between unity of essence, and personal unity, or unity of subject, m
which case he was only interested to controvert the latter.‘ And this
certainly was the point of greatest practical moment to him; and he
must have been well aware, that many of the fathers, who contended
for a personal distinction, held firmly at the same time to a unity of
essence. But the internal connection of his own system required that
both should stand or fall together : wherever he spoke, therefore, -from
the position of that system, he affirmed at one and the same time the
ἑτερότης τῆς οὐσίας and the ἑτερότης τῆς ὑποστάσεως OF τοῦ ὑποκειμένου ὃ
From this doctrine he drew the practical inference, that we are bound
to pray to the Father alone, and not to the Son; whence it is apparent,
what a strong practical interest the Patripassians, they whom Origen
accused of knowing only the Son, without being able to elevate them-
selves to the Father, must have had to controvert such a system. But
still Christ was, even to Origen, the way, the truth, and the life —as
to it in opposing the doctrines of a sensu- πρότερον εἶχε, δόγματα ἀνϑρώπων, μηδ᾽ ὄναρ
ous emanation-theory, or of natural neces- φύσιν ἀόρατον καὶ ἀσώματον πεφαντασμένων.
sity. 2 In Joann. T. XIII. § 25.
1 Against those who erroneously explain-
ed the passage, John 8: 44, as referring to
the generation of the Logos, he says, in
Joann. T. XX. § 16: "“AAAow δὲ τὸ ἐξήλϑον
ἀπὸ ϑεοῦ, διηγήσαντο ἀντὶ τοῦ yeyévvnuat
ἀπὸ τοῦ ϑεοῦ, οἷς ἀκολουϑεῖ ἐκ τῆς οὐσίας
φάσκειν Tov πατρὸς γεγεννῆσϑαι τὸν υἱὸν,
οἱονεὶ μειουμένου καὶ λείποντος τῇ οὐσίᾳ, ἡ
8 The doctrine of ἃ ἑτερότης τῆς οὐσίας,
in the dispute against the ὁμοούσιον.
4 In Joann. T. X. against those who said,
"Ev, ob μόνον οὐσίᾳ, ἀλλὰ καὶ ὑποκειμένῳ
τυγχώνειν ἀμφοτέρους.
5In Joann. T. II. § 2. De orat.c. 15:
Kar’ οὐσίαν καὶ καϑ’ ὑποκείμενόν ἐστιν 6
υἱὸς ἕτερος τοῦ πατρός
THE ALEXANDRIAN LOGOS-DOCTRINE. 591
he expressed it with full conviction, even on the grounds of his own
philosophical system of Christian ideas. He knew of no other way to
the Father; no other source of truth ; no other spring of divine life
for all creatures, but him: he was the mirror, through which Paul and
Peter, and all who were like the€f saw God.! He says, the Gnostics
may be allowed in a certain sense to be right, when they affirm that the
Father was first revealed by Christ. Until then, men could have no
other knowledge of God, than as the Creator and Lord of the world,
since it was first through the Son they came to the knowledge of him
as their Father; and it was by the spirit of adoption which they re-
ceived from him, they were first enabled to address God as their
Father.2 He recognized him as the Mediator from whom alone Chris-
tians derive their communion with God; to whom they should con-
stantly refer their Christian consciousness, and in whose name and
through whom.they should always pray to God the Father. He says,
** Why may it not be expressed in the sense of him who said, Where
fore callest thou me good? There is none good but one, that is God.
Why prayest thou to me ? Thou shouldst pray to the Father alone, to
whom 1 also pray. As you learn from the holy scriptures, you are
not to pray to the High Priest ordained for you by the Father, to him
who has received it from the Father to be your Advocate and Interces-
sor ; but you must pray through the High Priest and the Intercessor,
through him who can be touched with your infirmities, having been
tempted in all points like as ye are, yet, by the gift of God, without
sin. Learn, then, what a gift you have received from my Father, when,
by your new birth in me, ye have received the spirit of adoption, that
ye might be called sons of God, and my own brethren.” ὃ
We have already remarked, that Origen unfolded and matured his
doctrine of the Logos in the controversy with the two classes of the
Monarchians ; and the systematic foundation which he laid for this doc-
trine could not fail once more to call forth a reaction from the Monar-
chian party; for his views, as must appear evident from the exhibition
of his system, were hardly suited to remove the scruples they enter-
tained against the hypostatical Logos-doctrine, in a way which would
be satisfactory to them at their own position. But Monarchianism, in
order to support itself, now made its appearance under a new shape.
Amid the strifes of the two classes, there arose a conciliatory Monar-
chian tendency. It proceeded from those who agreed with the Mo-
narchians in contending against the doctrine of a hypostatical, subor-
as its forerunner, must take the place which
1 Τῇ Joann. T. XIII. § 25.
belongs to him, between the two above-
2In Joann. T. XIX. § 1. vol. VI. f. 286,
and
ed. de la Rue; T. II. p. 146, ed. Lom-
matzsch.
3 De orat. Ὁ: 15.
* In opposition to Dr. Baur, who denies
the existence of any such third class of
Monarchians, I must once more affirm, that
the phenomena presented in this portion of
history could not possibly be understood
without the supposition of such a concilia-
ting tendency ; and that Beryllus of Bostra,
named classes of the Monarchians
Sabellius. I add, that neither the strictures
of Dr. Ullman, in his Hallischen Weihnachts-
programm, v. J. 1835, in the Studien und
Kritiken, J. 1836, 4165 Stiick, 5. 1073, nor
those of Dr. Baur, in his History of the
Doctrine of the Trinity, are of such force
as to induce me to abandon the views which
1 held before.
592 DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY.
dinate Logos; but whose interest for Christianity forbade them to be
satisfied with the way in which the first class of the Monarchians con-
templated Christ in his relation to other enlightened teachers ; — who
felt constrained to believe that he possessed a special divme nature ;
but who at the same time, as their #@ason could not be satisfied to re-
move back the difficulties by appealing to the incomprehensibleness of
the subject, must have felt themselves repelled by the Patripassian
hypothesis of an incarnation of God the Father himself. Accordingly
there started up a new theory concerning the person of Christ, which
aimed to strike a middle course between those who ascribed to him too
much, and those who conceded to him too little. It was not the whole
infinite essence of God the Father which dwelt im him, but a certain
efflux from the divine essence; and a certain influx of the same into
human nature was what constituted the personality of Christ. It was
not before his temporal appearance, but only subsequently thereto, that
he subsisted as a distinct person beside the Father. This personality
originated in the hypostatizing of a divine power. It was not proper to
suppose here, as the first class of Monarchians taught, a distinct hu-
man person like one of the prophets, placed from the beginning under
a special divine influence; but this personality was itself something
specifically divine, produced by a new creative communication of God -
Ὗ ;
to human nature, by such a letting down of the divine essence into the
precincts of that nature. Hence in Christ the divine and the human
are united together; hence he is the Son of God in a sense in which
no other being is. As notions derived from the theory of emanation
were in this period still widely diffused; as, even in the church mode of
apprehending the incarnation of the Logos, the doctrine of a reasonable,
human soul in Christ was still but imperfectly unfolded (it being by
Origen’s means, as we shall see afterwards, that this doctrine was first
introduced into the general theological consciousness of the Hastern
church); —so, under these circumstances, a theory which thus substi-
tuted the divine, which the Father communicated from his own essence,
in place of the human soul in Christ, could gain the easier admittance.
If we transport ourselves back into the midst of the process whereby —
the doctrines of Christianity were becoming unfolded in consciousness,
into the conflict of opposite opinions in this period, we shall find it very
easy to understand how a modified theory of this sort came to be
formed.
It belongs also to the peculiarity of this new modification of Monar-
chianism, that it spoke of an ideal being of Christ, a being in the
divine idea, or predestination, before his temporal appearance. Cer-
tainly they who expressed themselves thus did not wish to deny, that
this could be said concerning the relation of God’s eternal plan to
everything that appears in the succession of time. But, when they
gave prominence to this point in reference to Christ’s appearance in
particular, they must have connected with the assertion some peculiar
meaning; they meant without doubt to mark thereby the important
bearing which the appearance of Christ had on the execution of the
divine plan of the universe, as being the end and central point of all;
Ps
BARYLLUS OF BOSTRA.
593
to mark the necessity of such an appearance, in order to the realiza-
tion of the divine ideas. And by virtue of their peculiar mode of ap-
prehending the essence and the origin of Christ’s personality, they might
certainly ascribe to it this significancy.
To this, then, they would also
refer those passages of the New Testament which speak of Christ’s
being with the Father before his temporal appearance.
The first who took a conciliatory position of this sort was Beryllus,
bishop of Bostra, in Arabia, a man well known in his times as one of
the more learned teachers of the church.!
1 See Euseb. 1. VI. ec. 20. His doctrine
is described by Eusebius in the somewhat
obscure passage in 1. VI. ο. 33: Tov κύ-
plov μὴ προὐφεστώναι κατ᾽ ἰδίαν οὐσίας περι-
γραφὴν πρὸ τῆς εἰς ἀνϑρώπους ἐπιδημίας.
In the interpretation of these words, I
must agree, on one point, with Baur, and
differ from Schleiermacher, in his well-
known dissertation on the Monarchians,
and from Ullmann, and maintain that περι-
γραφῆ certainly does not denote a circum-
scription of the divine essence; but, as I
have already explained the same thing
above, and, as I believe, proved in the first
edition of this work, it can mean, in the
scientific language of Origen, nothing else
than a personal, individual existence, as
contradistinguished from a barely ideal ex-
istence, or a mere distinction of the under-
standing. Compare 6. g. in Joann. T. 1.
§ 42, where the εἶναι κατ᾽ ἰδίαν περιγραφῆν
is opposed to the eivae barely κατ᾽ ἐπίνοιαν
ἕτερον, the ἀνυπόστατον. The words mean,
then, that Christ, before his appearance in
humanity, had no self-subsistent, personal
existence. He could thus be, before this.
different from the Father only kat’ ἐπίνοιαν,
or have only an ideal being. This marks
the opposition to the hypostatical Logos-
doctrine, but also to the doctrine of the
Patripassians; for, according to the latter,
there was not acknowledged to be in Christ,
even when he appeared on the earth, any
οὐσία Kar’ ἰδίαν περιγραφὴν ἑτέρα, in rela-
tion to the essence of the Father. But we
must now bring in also the second part of
the description: μηδὲ μὴν ϑεότητα ἰδίαν
ἔχειν, ἀλλ᾽ ἐμπολιτευομένην αὐτῷ μόνην τὴν
πατρικήν. ‘The explanation of this passage
by Baur, who professes to adhere to the
etymological and original meaning of the
word πολιτεύεσϑαι, 1 cannot but regard as
somewhat arbitrary and artificial. The
word denotes, according to the use of lan-
guage in that period, and according to the
context, certainly nothing else than the no-
tion of indwelling. Now such an expression
would assert too much, if it was meant to
denote barely a certain inworking of God
‘upon a man standing under his special in-
fluence. These words would rather char-
acterize the view of the Patripassians; but
which we cannot suppose to be expressed
here, on account of the preceding proposi-
*
«
The peculiar modification
tion. We must, then, seek for a hypothe-
sis holding the middle place between the
two views above mentioned, as that does
which is presented in the text. Why should
Eusebius waste so many words, if he meant
simply to attribute to Beryllus a theory
akin to that of the Artemonites ἢ He would
doubtless have expressed himself in this
case, as he did in speaking of the doctrine
of Paul of Samosata, with much more heat
and acrimony. I must therefore decidedly
object to the view of Baur; according to
which, moreover, it would be impossible to
point out any difference between the doc-
trine of Beryllus and that of the Artemo-
nites. We must next compare what Origen
says concerning the Monarchians, in his
Commentary on the Epistle of Titus, which
had a striking resemblance to the above-
quoted language of Eusebius; but which,
unhappily, has come down to us only in the
Latin version of Rufinus: Qui hominem
dicunt Dominum Jesum precognitum et
predestinatum, qui ante adventum carna
Jem substantialiter et proprie non exstiterit,
sed quod homo natus Patris solam in se
habuerit Deitatem. True, one might sup-
pose, since the others whom he describes in
the second member of the sentence are the
Patripassians, (see the passages cited above,
p. 578, note 6,) it would be necessary to
infer that we are to conceive here of the
same class of Monarchians as in the passa-
ges quoted above, (p. 576-7, note 4, begin-
ning at line 12;) but, on the other hand, it is
to be considered that Origen’s expression
denotes higher views of the divine element
in Christ, than we can attribute to the first
class of Monarchians, — that Origen would
doubtless have expressed himself more
strongly against these, and that he had al-
ready spoken before of those who held
Christ to be a mere man, and therefore would
not have repeated it. We find in these
words, then, a confirmation of our views.
And, if it may be presumed of itself, that
Beryll supposed no human soul in Christ,
distinct from the indwelling of the divine
nature in him, I see not why we may not
be warranted to place in connection with
this the report of Socrates, (III. c. 7,) that
the synod convened against Beryll settled
the doctrine concerning a human soul in
Christ. A doctrine so determined always
594 DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY.
of the Monarchian doctrine which he presented having excited contro-
versy, im the year 244 a synod convened for the purpose of settling
the matter in dispute. The great Origen, then residmg at Czsarea
Stratonis, in Palestine, was drawn into this controversy, being the most
important advocate of the opposite doctrine of the Logos. He entered
largely into the dispute with Beryll; and probably by his intellectual
superiority, argumentative skill, and moderation, succeeded in convin-
cing the latter of his error. ‘True, we here follow the account of Euse-
bius, one of Origen’s enthusiastic friends; and, as we no longer have
access to the sources of information from which Eusebius drew his ac-
count, we are without the means of forming an unbiassed and indepen-
dent judgment of our own. Yet we should give its due weight to the
fact, that at this period, when as yet there was no religion nor church
of the state, there existed no earthly power which could force Beryllus
to recant ---- though the authority of an episcopal collegium had great
— indeed too great— power over the churches. But had it been the
purpose of the bishops to crush their colleague under the weight of
their numbers, they needed not to call to their aid the banished and heret-
ical presbyter, whose only power was in his knowledge. Nor was Ori-
gen a man who would be disposed to overwhelm another by the weight
of his name or the superiority of his mtellect.
It is the men of the Alexandrian school alone, who furnish us the
rare example of such theological conferences, which, instead of result-
ing in still greater divisions, created a union of feelings. Such was
the influence of men who were not slaves to the mere letter, and who
knew how to unite with zeal for truth, the spirit of love and moderation.
According to Jerome’s account,! Beryllus addressed a letter of
thanks to Origen for the instruction he had received from him. We
have no reasons for doubting this ; yet the account of Jerome is not so
much to be relied on as that of Eusebius.
If the midway tendency of Beryllus was thus obliged to yield under
the preponderance of thé other system, yet we soon notice the appear-
ance of a similar attempt, conceived and carried out in a still more sys-
tematic form. Sabellius of Ptolemais in Pentapolis, Africa, who pro-
ceeded still farther in the path struck out by Beryllus, appears to have
been the most original and profound thinker among the Monarchians.
Unhappily we have only a few fragmentary remains of his system, from
which we must seek to reconstruct the whole, and.among which not a
little still remains doubtful or obscure. Since the time of Schleiermach-
er’s profound dissertation on this subject, the opinion has obtained some
considerable currency, that Sabellius shows, particularly in one respect,
an important advance in the. further development of the Monarchian
theory. While, for instance, the earlier Monarchian tendencies agreed
leads us to infer its opposite as the means both were united also in his polemical ef-
by which it was distinctly brought out. And forts. Thus we must reckon Beryll with
since, in the case of Origen, his Logos-doc- those who held Christ to be a ἕν πάντ᾽
trine was so closely connected with his doc- ἀσύνϑετον. Orig. in Matth. T. XVI. § 8.
trine concerning the human soul of Christ. it 1 De vir. illustr. c. 60
becomes so much the more probable, that
SABELLIUS. 595
with the system of the Logos-doctrine so far as this, that they consid-
ered the name of God the Father to be a designation of the primal
divine essence, and all besides this to be something derived ; Sabellius,
on the other hand, referred all the three names of the Triad to relations
wholly codrdinate. he names Father, Logos,! and Holy Ghost, would,
according to him, be, after the same manner, designations of three dif-
ferent phases, under which the one divine essence reveals itself. All
the three would belong together, to designate, in a manner exhausting
the whole truth, the relation of God to the world. There would thus
be the general antithesis between the Absolute, the essence of God in him-
self, the μονάς, which must be regarded as the pure designation of the
Absolute, of the ὄν ; and the Triad, by which would he denoted the
different relations of the self-evolving μονάς to the creation. We have,
it is true, several sayings of Sabellius, according to which one might
suppose, that he would have distinguished God the Father, as well as
the Logos and the Holy Ghost, from the μονάς in itself; as for instance,
when he taught that the Monad unfolded became the Triad.2 But, in
other places, he clearly identified the Father with the μονάς, and con-
sidered him as the fundamental subject, which, when hidden within him-
self, was the pure Monas, (the év,) and, when revealing himself, unfolded
his essence to a Triad, as he expressly says: ‘* The Father remains the
same, but evolves himself in the Son and Spiit.”’® It is this only that
distinguishes Sabellius from the other Monarchians ; — he received the
whole Triad, and, along with the rest, the doctrine on the Holy Spirit,
into his Monarchian theory.
How the one divine essence comes to be called by different names, —
according to the different relations or modes of activity into which it
enters, he sought to illustrate by various comparisons. What the Apos-
tle Paul says about the relation of the multifarious modes of activity
and gifts to one Spirit, who, persisting in his oneness, exhibits himself
notwithstanding in these manifold forms, — this Sabellius transferred to
the self-evolution of the Monad into the Triad.* That which is, in it-
i Or, according to Baur’s view, “ Son.” guage, but imputed to him a mode of ex-
2 Ἢ μονὰς πλατυνϑεῖσα γέγονε τρίας.
Athanas. orat. TV. ο. Arian.§ 13. Wemay
especially advert to the fact, that the ques-
tion occurred even to Athanasius, whether
Sabellius did not distinguish the μονάς from
the Father. κτὸς ei μὴ ἡ λεγομένη παρ᾽
αὐτῷ μονὰς ἄλλο τί ἐστι παρὰ τὸν πατέρα. ---:
“Ὥστε εἷναι μονώδα, eita καὶ πατέρα καὶ υἱὸν
καὶ πνεῦμα. But as Athanasius, in_ this
place, is only aiming to show Sabellius, that,
conceive of the matter as he might, he must
still find that he fell into absurdities, we
ought not to lay too much stress on this
imputation of consequences, as helping to
determine the doctrine really taught by the
man.
ὅ Ὃ πατὴρ 6 αὐτὸς μέν ἐστι, πλατύνεται
δὲ εἰς υἱὸν καὶ πνεῦμα. Athanas. orat. IV.
25. I do not see with what’ propriety it
ean be asserted, that Athanasius has not al-
lowed Sabellius here to use his own lan-
pression to which he was a stranger. Even
when Sabellius designates the Father as
one of the πρόσωπα, it still by no means
follows, as has been asserted, that he could
not employ this name also to designate the
μονάς. The same name which designates
the ὧν in itself, serves also to distinguish it
from the different phases of its self-manifes-
tation and self-communication. In its re-
lation to the other ἐπινοίαις under which
God is epneeived, the one which designates
originally God’s essence in itself is also the
name of a particular ἐπίνοια, different from
the others. When God speaks as the ὦν,
this too is a πρόσωπον, in which he presents
himself.
4 “Ὥσπερ διαιρέσεις χαρισμάτων εἰσὶ, τὸ δὲ
αὐτὸ πνεῦμα. οὕτω καὶ ὁ πατὴρ 6 αὐτός ἐστι,
πλατύνεται δὲ εἰς υἱὸν καὶ πνεῦμα. Athanas.
orat. IV. § 25.
596 DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY.
᾿
self, and continues to be, one, presents itself; in its manifestation, as
threefold. He is said to have made use also of the following compari-
son, drawn from the sun. “ΔΒ in the sun we may distinguish its pro-
per substance,! its round shape, and its power of communicating warmth
and light, so may we distinguish in God his proper self-subsistent es-
sence, the illuminating power of the Logos, and the power of the Holy
Spirit, in diffusing the warmth and glow of life through the hearts of
believers.”’? He did not scruple to make use of the church phrase,
‘“‘three persons,” (tres person, τρία πρόσωπα :)ὺ but he took it in an-
other sense, as denoting different parts, or personifications, which the one
divine essence assumed accordimg to varying circumstances and occa-
sions. According as it behooved that God should be represented act-
ing in this or that particular way, so would the same one subject be
introduced in the sacred scriptures, under different personifications,? as
Father, Son, or Spirit.*
According to this theory, the selfdevelopment of the divine Essence,
proceeding forth from the unity of its solitary, absolute being, is the
ground and pre-supposition of the whole creation. ‘The self-expression
of the Supreme Beng — the ὄν becommg Logos ® —1is the ground of
1 The ὄν, the μονάς.
2 Epiphan. heres. 62. I leave it unde-
termined, whether Sabellius made use also
of the comparison drawn from the ¢richo-
tomy of man’s nature, body, soul, and spirit,
actually in this form. It seems to me not
like his usual subtle manner.
3 Tt is plain from Sabellius’ language, that
he attached no other sense than this to the
term πρόσωπον. The word, however, has
sometimes been taken in its signification of
“countenance,” and in this sense applied
to explain the ideas of Sabellius ; but I must
object to this as wholly arbitrary and un-
warranted.
4°Kva μὲν εἷναι τῇ ὑποστάσει τὸν Vedr,
προσωποιεῖσϑαι δὲ ὑπὸ τῆς γραφῆς διαφόρως,
κατὰ τὸ ἰδίωμα τῆς ὑποκειμένης ExaoToT
χρείας, καὶ νῦν μὲν τὰς πατρικὰς ἑαυτῷ περι-
τιϑέναι φωνὰς, ὅταν τούτου καιρὸς ἢ τοῦ προ-
σώπου, νῦν δὲ τὰς υἱῷ πρεπούσας, νῦν δὲ τὸ
τοῦ πνεύματος ὑποδύεσϑαι προσωπεῖον. Basil.
ep. 214, § 3. Τὴν αὐτὴν ὑπόστασιν πρὸς τὴν
ἑκάστοτε παρεμπίπτουσαν χρείαν μετασχή-
ματίζεσϑαι. Ep. 235,§ 6. Τὸν αὐτὸν ϑεὸν
ἕνα τῷ ὑποκειμένῳ ὄντα, πρὸς τὰς ἑκάστοτε
παραπιπτούσας χρείας μεταμορφούμενον, νῦν
μὲν ὡς πατέρα, νῦν δὲ ὡς υἱὸν, νῦν ὡς τὸ
ἅγιον πνεῦμα διαλέγεσϑαι. Ep 210.
5 We may here notice the theory of Dr.
Baur, who holds that Sabellius did not con-
sider the Logos to constitute one of the
πρόσωπα of the Triad, but conceived this
notion as holding an altogether different
relation to the Godhead. ‘The Logos, ac-
cording to Baur, would only denote what
stood opposed to the pure being of deity in
itself, —the principle which supported and
maintained this being in the form of an
actual, concrete existence. It was first and
only in this divine being, become an actual,
concrete existence, that Father, Son, and
Holy Ghost would constitute three coordi-
nate designations, exhausting the whole
sphere of this being, and corresponding to
the three momenta, or periods of the uni-
verse, in its historical development. Hence,
again, they would not subsist simultaneous-
ly, but follow one after the other; so that,
when the πρόσωπον of the Son made its
appearance in Christ, the πρόσωπον of the
Father which belonged to the Old Testa-
ment period would disappear; and, in like
manner, the Holy Spirit would take the
place of the Son, when the latter disap-
peared. But I cannot possibly look upon
this ingenious combination as one which
correctly represents the theory. It were
quite contrary to the whole analogy of the
opinions and modes of thinking in this
period to suppose, that the notion of the
Logos was conceived as independent of that
of the Father, and even prior to it. And
in the language of Sabellius himself, all
those expressions relating to a γεννᾷν, a
προβώλλειν of the Logos, refer back, with-
out any doubt, to the presupposed notion
of the Faiher. Baur appeals, it is true, to
the words of Sabellius already cited, (in
note 4,) where a διαλέγεσϑ αι is attributed as
well to the Father, as such, as to the other
πρόσωπα, --- is represented as common to all
the three πρόσωπα. But manifestly this
διαλέγεσϑαι has no reference to the proper
Logos-notion. The author is treating in
that passage simply of the different parts
or personifications under which the same
divine subject is introduced in the sacred
scriptures, speaking sometimes as the Fath-
er, sometimes as the Son, (*vhich here ip
SABELLIUS. 597
Hence, says Sabellius, ‘‘ God silent, is inactive, — but
speaking, is active.! Ina particular manner, he recognized the sym-
bol of the divine Logos in the human soul. So Philo Maintained, that
to the ὄν, no creaturely existence can have any likeness; but that the
soul was created after the image of the Logos. The condition, then,
of the soul’s existence was, that God broke silence —the ὄν became
Logos, or that he caused the Logos to proceed from him, — begat the
Logos from himself. Hence Sabellius could say, in reference to mankind: ἢ
ἐς ΠῸ the end that we might be created, the Logos came forth from God,
(or was begotten ;) and because he came forth from God, we exist.”’ 2
But when these souls, by sinning, swerved from their true destina-
tion, which is, to represent the image of the divine Logos, it became
necessary for ‘that archetypal Logos himself to descend into human
nature, in order that he might perfectly realize the image of God in
humanity, and redeem the souls which are akin to him. In his views
relative to the person of Christ, Sabellius coincides with Beryllus. The
same remarks which we made with respect to the doctrine of the lat-
ter, will apply also to that of the former. The Logos is first hyposta-
tized in Christ, but then only in a transient form of its manifestation.
The divine power. of the Logos appropriated to itself a human body,
and by this appropriation begat the person of Christ. We may com-
pare this theory of Sabellius with the doctrine taught by a class of
Jewish theologians, who held that God caused to proceed from himself,
and then withdrew again, his power of manifestation, the Logos; as
the sun does his rays: — that the Angelophanies and Theophanies of
the Old Testament are nothing else than different transitory forms of
manifestation of this one power of God.? In like manner, Sabellius
conceived the Theophany in the appearance of Christ. He made use
of the same image: God caused the power of the Logos to go forth
from him, as a ray from the sun, and then withdrew it again inte
himself.#
Where Sabellius expressed himself strictly ὅ according to his system,
all existence.
deed is not, in the sense of Sabellius, iden-
tified with the Logos absolutely,) and some-
times as the Holy Spirit. The Logos,
therefore, may well be regarded as one of
these three πρόσωπα. Again, according to
the scheme of Sabellius, the transition from
the Monad to the Triad begins with the
πλατύνεσϑαι οἵ the ὄν. But the πλατύνεσϑαι
is necessarily connected with the genera-
tion of the Logos. Here, then, a separation
into the several πρόσωπα must be already
supposed. And if the notion of the Logos
was intended to designate the universal
sphere to which all the three πρόσωπα be-
long, there would be an incongruity in con-
ceiving the Logos and the Son as correla-
tive notions, and in ascribing the incarnation
to the Logos in particular.
1 Tov Gedv σιωπῶντα μὲν ἀνενέργητον, λα-
λοῦντα δὲ é ἰσχύειν. Athanas. orat. LV. § 11.
2 Ἴνα ἡμεῖς κτισϑῶμεν, προῆλϑεν ὁ λόγος,
καὶ προελϑόντος αὐτοῦ ἐσμεν. Athanas.
orat. IV. § 25,—or: A’ ἡμᾶς γεγέννηται,
προεβλήϑη. Τ,.. 6.8 11. The words would
give another sense, if we preferred to un-
derstand them as referring to the καινῇ κτί-
σις, and to the incarnation of the Logos.
But taking them as they read, and as they
are cited by Athanasius, the meaning above
ascribed to them must still be regarded as
the most natural.
8 Dial. c. Tryph. Jud. f: 358. As the
light issues from and returns back to the
sun, οὕτως 6 πατὴρ, ὅταν βούληται, δύναμιν
αὐτοῦ προπηδᾷν ποιεῖ, καὶ ὅταν βούληται, πά-
λὲν ἀναστέλλει εἰς ἑαυτόν.
4 Ὡς ὑπὸ ἡλίου πεμφϑεῖσαν ἀκτῖνα, καὶ
πώλιν εἰς τὸν ἥλιον αναδραμοῦσαν. Epiphan.
heeres. 62.
5 It was somewhat different, when, (per-
haps by way of accommodation to. the
church terminology.) speaking of a genera-
tion of the Logos, he may have styled him
the Son in a certain figurative and improp-
er sense.
598 DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY.
he applied the name Son of God to the personality derived from the
hypostatizing of the Logos. The Logos is, in itself, only Logos ; —
with its humanization it first becomes the Son of God.t But while this
was the original doctrine of Sabellius, that the name Son of God was
not to be applied to the Logos im itself, but only to Christ, yet the ad-
herents to this system, as appears from the quotations of Athanasius,
had different ways of explaining themselves on this point. Either it
was said, that not the Logos, but the man ito whom the Logos en-
tered, was the Son of God;? or both taken together, that which re-
sulted from the union of the human nature with the Logos, was the Son
of God ;® or the Logos itself, so far as it was hypostatized in the man-
ner described, was styled the Son of God. All these three modes of
expression might doubtless flow out of one system. By reason of this
connection of ideas, it might now be said again, — the Logos is called
the Son of God, not in respect to essence, but only in reference to a
certain relation.*
It may be gathered from the whole coherence of this system, that in
it the personality of Christ could not be regarded as anything possessed
of an eternal subsistence, but only as a transitory appearance. The
ultimate end of all is defined by Sabellius to be this: that the Logos,
after having conducted the souls created in his image to their perfec-
tion, would return back into his original being, into oneness with the
Father,® — the τρίας would again resolve itself into the μονάς δ Whence
it necessarily follows, that, when everything has reached this ultimate
end, God once more withdraws into himself the power of the Logos,
which had been hypostatized into a self-subsistent, personal existence ;
and, consequently, this personal existence itself is annihilated.
The question, however, might arise, whether it was not the opinion
of Sabellius, that after Christ had accomplished his work on the earth,
God did then, with his ascension to heaven, re-absorb this ray which
had flowed from himself, and by which the personality of Christ was
constituted. ‘The manner in which Epiphanius represents the doctrine
might seem to favor this view; namely, that, after the Son had accom-
plished all that was necessary for the salvation of mankind, he was
conveyed up once more to heaven, like a ray of light flowing from the
the sun, and returning back to it again.’ A comparison of this with
the above-mentioned doctrine of the Jewish sect respecting the Theo-
phanies, where a similar image is employed, would seem to confirm
this view. And we might suppose a connection of ideas, somewhat
1’Ev ἀρχῇ μὲν εἷναι λόγον ἁπλῶς" ὅτε δὲ
ἐνηνϑρώπησε, τότε ὠνομώσϑαι υἱὸν" πρὸ γὰρ
τῆς ἐπιφανείας μὴ εἷναι υἱὸν, ἀλλὰ λόγον μό-
νον" καὶ ὥσπερ ὃ λόγος σὰρξ ἐγένετο, οὐκ OV
πρότερον σὰρξ, οὕτως ὁ λόγος υἱὸς γέγονε,
οὐκ ὧν πρότερον υἱός. Athanas. orat. IV.
§ 22.
2 Tov ἄνϑρωπον, ὃν ἐφόρησεν ὁ λόγος, αὐ-
τὸν εἶναι τὸν υἱὸν τοῦ ϑεοῦ — τὸν μονογενῆ,
καὶ μὴ λόγον, υἱόν. Τ,. α. § 20.
3 Συνημμένα ἀμφότερα υἱός.
ΤΟ yi.
4 Kar ἐπίνοιαν υἱὸν λέγεσϑαι τὸν λόγον.
Athanas. orat. IV. § 8.
5 AV ἡμᾶς γεγέννηται, καὶ pe ἡμᾶς ava-
τρέχει, iva 7, ὥσπερ ἣν. Lc. § 12.
6'L. c. § 25.
7 Πεμφϑέντα τὸν υἱὸν καιρῷ ποτε, ὥδπερ
ἀκτῖνα, καὶ ἐργασάμενον τὰ πάντα ἐν τῷ κό-
σμῳ τὰ τῆς οἰκονομίας τῆς εὐαγγελικῆς καὶ
σωτηρίας τῶν ἀνϑρώπων, ἀναληφϑέντα δὲ
αὗϑις εἰς οὐρανὸν, ὡς ὑπὸ ἡλίου πεμφϑεῖσαν
ἀκτῖνα, καὶ πώλιν εἰς τὸν ἥλιον ἀναδραμοῖ'-
σαν.
.
ES ΝΣ ναι σδδεδνοι
ὡ «ὰ τ ee ———E Νὰ Ὁ.» ..
SABELLIUS. 599
like the following: that, after God had withdrawn again into himself the
personifying power of the Logos, the infusion of life into the distinct
personalities of believers by the divine power, in the form of the Holy
Spirit, was thenceforth to take the place of the former. But when we
consider that Sabellius, however, seems to describe the ἐπίνοια of the
Son of God, which the Logos assumed, as something permanent, some-
thing which was to end only when this entire τλατυσμός, whereby the
Monad had become ‘Triad, should cease, after the purpose which the
whole was to subserve, had been attained ;! we might rather be inclined
to think it was his opinion, that the person of Christ would cease to
exist only with this final consummation. Although Epiphanius enter-
tained a different opimion, yet this may have arisen from his not under-
standing what Sabellius had said respecting the ultimate purpose of the
redemption, exactly according to the latter’s meaning.” Thus it may
be explained, how Sabellius could jom in the anathema pronounced on
such as believed not in the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost,’ since he con-
sidered all the three πρόσωπα as continuing until that final consummation.
But the question may still arise, how Sabellius, if he defined the evolution
of the Monad to the Triad to be something which preceded the appear-
ance of Christianity, could apply this to the Holy Spirit; smce, mdeed,
according to his opinion, the communication of the Holy Spirit is but a
consequence of the redemption accomplished by the hypostatized
Logos. But we may perhaps assume that he supposed a certain actua-
tion of the Holy Spirit, even in the ante-Christian period, particularly
under the Old-Testament dispensation ; and from this we might per-
haps infer some such connection of ideas in his mind as the following :
that the ante-Christian efficiency of the divine Spirit stood related to
the efficiency of the same Spirit mediated through the personal appear-
ance of the Son of God, or to that which is to be entitled the Holy
Spirit in the strieter sense, in the same manner as the efficiency of the
Logos, in itself, under the Old-Testament dispensation, stood related
to the efficiency of the Son of God, under the New-Testament dispen-
sation. We may here refer to the remarks made on a former page,”
concerning those who are said to have distinguished the Holy Spirit
that actuated the apostles, from the Spirit of God in the prophets.
And thus the Triad of Sabellius would possess also a historical signifi-
1 Τῆς χρείας πληρωϑείσης. Athanas. orat.
IV. § 25.
2 After this statement, we may under-
stand why Dionysius of Alexandria (Euseb.
]. VII. ec. 6) accused Sabellins of many
blasphemies against God the Father, (so
such an expression as the expansion of the
divine Monad into the Triad must have ap-
peared to the Origenists,) of great unbelief
with regard to the incarnation of the Lo-
gos, (inasmuch as he looked upon it only in
the light of a transitory manifestation of
the divine power,) and of great insensibili-
ty (ἀναισϑησία) in respect to the Holy
Spirit, (because he denied his reality and
objectivity, and had represented him as
nothing more than single transitory emana-
tions of divine power.)
8 According to Arnobii conflictus eum
Serapione. Bibl. patr. Lugd. T. VIIL
4“In the Old Testament,” said Sabel-
lius, “no mention is made of the Son of
God, but only of the Logos.” (μὴ εἰρῆσϑαι
ἐν τῇ παλαιᾷ περὶ viol, ἀλλὰ περὶ λόγου.)
Athanas. orat. IV. § 23, which perhaps
would lead us to presume also a difference
in his mode of explaining passages in the
Old Testament.
5 P. 582, note 3, and the passage there
quoted from Origen’s Commentary on the
Epistle to Titus
600 DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY.
cancy, having some reference to the succession of events in time. At
the legal stage, where a separating gulf stands between God and man-
kind, God reveals himself as the Father; and along with this is to be
found, in the Old Testament, only the preparatory agency of the Logos
and the Spirit, until the Logos, m Christ, hypostatizes himself to the
Son of God; and, by virtue of this intimate union of God with human-
ity, the Spirit of God now becomes also a real, individual, animating
principle in the human personalities of which it takes posession."
The ultimate end, then, was considered by Sabellius to be the resto-
ration of the original unity ;— that God, as the absolutely one, should
be all in all—%in which sense, probably, he interpreted the words in
1 Corinth. 15: 28. But in this case, what were his views respecting
the continued duration of the separate creaturely existence? Did he
suppose, that at length all existence, as it had been begotten from God
through the mediation of the Logos, would, at the close of this media-
tion, return back again to God, and no existence subsist any longer out
of himself? Since the Christian faith m a personal, eternal life stands
on the faith in the eternal duration of the personality of Christ, we
might conclude, that as Sabellius made Christ’s personality to be noth-
ing more than a transitory appearance, so he must have conceived it to
be also with regard to all personal existence. And, in general, he who
has not found that personal existence, by its very nature, can subsist
no otherwise than for eternity ; he who can make up his mind to regard
any personal existence, and especially the most perfect of all, as being
merely an ephemeral appearance, will find it a comparatively easy
thing to conclude the same to be true of ald personal existence. ‘The
pantheistic element which lies under such a mode of apprehension,
may easily push him on further. Athanasius * understood these conse-
quences, which might result from the system of Sabellius. But as he
himself, the warm opponent of this system, signalizes this only as one
of the consequences resulting from it, but by no means charges it upon
Sabellius as a position actually maintained by him; so we should be the
less warranted to attribute to him such a pantheistic denial of immortal-
ity, which, if it had been suspected, would have been more severely cas-
tigated by his Christian contemporaries. At the same time, this first
shaping of Monarchianism, which was somewhat akin at least to a pan-
theistic tendency, remains a noticeable historical phenomenon.
We need, it is true, no outward ground of explanation to account for
such a system, springing as it did from a mind so speculative as we
must suppose that of Sabellius to have been. But as there are so many
points of resemblance in this system to what we find in the Alexandrian-
Jewish theology, a report of Hpiphanius, who supposes Sabellius bor-
rowed his system from an apocryphal gospel derived from the same
source with the latter, the εὐαγγέλιον κατ᾽ Αἰγυπτίους ὃ deserves some npn
1 See Theodoret. fab. heeret. II. c. 9. δρομοῦντος τοῦ λόγου, οὐχ’ ὑπάρξει ἡ κτίσις.
2 Ei ἵνα ἡμεῖς κτισϑῶμεν, προῆλϑεν ὁ λό- L. ο. § 12.
γος, καὶ προελϑόντος αὐτοῦ ἐσμεν, δῆλον ὅτι 8 Exhibition of the gospel history accord-
ἀναχωροῦντος αὐτοῦ εἰς τὸν πατέρα, οὐκέτε ing to the Egyptian (the Alexandrian) tra-
ἐσόμεϑα. Athanas. orat. ΕΥ̓. ὁ 25. Παλιν- dition.
PAUL OF SARMOSATA 601
In this gospel, Christ is said to have communicated ‘to his disciples,
as a doctrine of esoteric wisdom, some similar notions respecting the
relation of the Monad to the Triad: ‘“‘ If the multitude, who cannot ele-
vate themselves to the intuition of the highest, simple unity, hold God
the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, to be different divine beings,
they (the disciples) should know that Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, are
but one, but three different forms of the revelation of the divine es-
sence.”’! Moreover, the Sabellian doctrine, akin to the pantheistic
element, that all antitheses would finally resolve themselves to unity,
seems to have been set forth in this gospel; for to the question of Sa-
lome, who asks when his kingdom should come? Christ replies:
‘© When two shall be one, and the outer as the mner, and the male with
the female ; when there shall be no male and no female.”
Soon after Sabellius, we see Monarchianism revived in an opposite
form by Paw of Samosata, bishop of Antioch. Except that he re-
ceived into his system the Logos-doctrine, after modifying it by that
system, he had little or nothing peculiar to distinguish him from the
Artemonites, with whom indeed he was usually compared by the
ancient writers.2, But it is worth while to notice the contrast which
these two shapes of Monarchianism, with which the evolution of the
doctrine of the Trinity in this period terminates, form, when compared
to each other, both in respect to their peculiar mode of apprehending
the doctrine concerning Christ, and in respect to the whole intellectual
bent out of which they grew. While in Sabellianism, the human and
personal element in Christ was made simply a transitory form of the
manifestation of the Divine, the theory of Paul of Samosata, on the
other hand, gave prominence to Christ’s human person alone, — and
the Divine appears only as something which supervenes from without.
While Sabellianism tended towards a Pantheism which confounded God
with the world, we discern in the theory of Paul the deistic tendency
which fixes an impassable gulf betwixt God and the creation, — which
admits of no community of essence and of life between God and hu-
manity.
1 Epiphan. heres. 62. Concerning this
gospel: Ἔν αὐτῷ γὰρ πολλὰ τοιαῦτα ὡς ἐν
παραβύστῳ μυστηριωδῶς ἐκ προσώπου τοῦ
σωτῆρος ἀναφέρεται, ὡς αὐτοῦ δηλοῦντος τοῖς
μαϑηταῖς, τὸν αὐτὸν εἷναι πατέρα, τὸν αὐτὸν
εἶναι υἱὸν͵ τὸν αὐτὸν εἶναι ἅγιον πνεῦμα.
The passage in Philo, de Abrahamo f. 367,
may serve to explain the sense, where it is
said, that the ὄν, from which proceed the
two highest δυνάμεις, the ποιητικῇ and the
βασιλικῇ, appear, according to the different
positions at which the sotls that are more
or less purified stand, as one or as threefold.
If the soul has risen above the revelation
of God in the creation, to the intellectual
intuition of the ὄν, then for that soul the
Trinity rises to Unity, — the soul beholds one
light, from which proceed, as it were, two
shadows, God’s essence, and those two
modes of operation, merely shadows, which
fall off from his transcendent light. Τρι-
51
VOL. I.
τὴν φαντασίαν ἑνὸς ὑποκείμένου καταλαμβά-
vel, τοῦ μὲν ὡς ὄντος, τοῖν δ' ἄλλοιν δυοῖν͵
ὡς ἂν ἀπαυγαζομένων ἀπὸ τούτου σκιῶν.
Next: Παρέχει τῇ ὁρατικῇ διανοίᾳ τότε μὲν
ἑνὸς, τότε δὲ τριῶν φαντασίαν ; ἑνὸς μὲν, ὅταν
ἄκρως καϑαρϑεῖσα ἣ ψυχὴ καὶ μὴ μόνον τὰ
πλήϑη τῶν ἀριϑμῶν ἀλλὰ καὶ τὴν γείτονα
μονάδος δυάδα ὑπερβᾶσα xtA. There is also
a striking resemblance between Sabellius’
mode of expression and that which is _pe-
culiar to the Clementines, a work which
proceeded from some Jewish-Christian The-
osophist. Clementin. H. 16. c. 12: Κατὰ
yap ἔκτασιν Kai συστολὴν ἡ μονὰς δυὰς εἶναι
νομίζεται.
2 Baur, who attacks me on account of
this assertion, contributes, however, by his
own representation of the matter, consid-
ered apart from his parenthetical remarks,
to confirm the same view.
602 DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY.
The Logos — according to Paul of Samosata —is in relation to God
nothing other than reason in relation to man,!—the Spirit in relation to
God, nothing other than the spirit in relation to men. As he contro-
verted the doctrine of a personal Logos, so too he declared himself op-
posed to the theory of an incarnation of the Logos, of an indwelling of
its essence in human nature. He would only concede, that the divine
reason or wisdom dwelt and operated in Christ after a higher manner
than in any one else. To his mode of developing himself, as man,
under the divine influence,’ is to be attributed the fact that Ws outshone
in wisdom all other messengers of God that preceded him. For this
reason — because he was, m a sense in which no other prophet before
him had been, an organ of the divine wisdom that revealed itself
through him —he is to be styled the Son of God. This Paul is said
to have employed the expression ‘‘ Jesus Christ, who comes from here
below,” (Ἰησοῦς Χριστὸς κάτωϑεν,Ὑ in order to indicate that the Logos did
not enter into a human body, but Christ, as man, was deemed worthy
of bemg exalted to this pecuhar union with God by means of such
an illumination from the divme reason. And hence, indeed, Paul
affirmed that the divine Logos came down and imparted his influence to
Christ, and chen rose again to the Father.? Although, by this theory,
Christ was regarded as a mere man, yet Paul, adopting the scriptural
and church phraseology, seems to have called him God in some im-
proper sense, not exactly defined. In this case, however, he explained,
that Christ was not God by his nature, but became so by progressive
development. If his language was strictly consistent with his system,
he certainly referred the name Son of God to Christ alone,— to the
man specially distinguished by God after the manner above described ;
and hence he ever made it a prominent point, that Christ, as such, did
not exist before his nativity; that when a being with God before all
1 “Ὥσπερ ἐν ἀνϑρώπου καρδίᾳ ὁ ἴδιος λύγος.
Epiphanius, heres. 67.
2°Evoixjoat ἐν αὐτῷ τὴν σοφίαν, ὡς ἐν
οὐδενὶ ἄλλῳ. He taught οὐ συγγεγενῆσϑαι
τῷ ἀνϑρωπίνῳ τὴν σοφίαν οὐσιωδῶς, ἀλλὰ
κατὰ ποιότητα. Paul’s words, as cited in
Leontius Byzantin. c. Nest. et Eutychen;
which work, till lately, had been known only
in the Latin translation; but the fragment
of Paul, in the original Greek, has been pub-
lished from the manuscript in the Bodleian
library at Oxford, in Erlich’s Dissertation :
de erroribus Pauli Samosat. Lips. 1745,
Ρ. 23.
31 must agree with Baur on this point,
viz. that there is no satisfactory evidence for
supposing that this Paul denied the super-
natural birth of Christ.
4 See the synodal letter in Euseb. 1. VIL.
c. oe
5. Ελϑὼν ὁ λόγος ἐνήργησε καὶ μόνον καὶ
ἀνῆλϑε πρὸς τὸν πατέρα, in Epiphanius.
6 So Athanasius (de Synodis, c. 4) repre-
sents the doctrine of the Samosatians con-
cerning Christ: Ὕστερον αὐτὸν μετὰ τὴν
ἐνανθοώπησιν ἐκ προκοπῆς τεϑεοποιῆσϑαι
αὐτόν. These words might, indeed, be un-
derstood to mean, that Christ first raised
himself to the divine dignity through the
moral perfection which he had attained by
his own human efforts. But if this were
his opinion, he would doubtless have said,
as the Socinians afterwards did, that Christ
raised himself by what he had accomplish-
ed in his life on earth, to such divine digni-
ty, in yirtue of his glorification. But, in all
the other citations from him, we find no evi-
dence of such a separation made by Paul
between that which Christ was originally,
and that which he became by his own ef-
forts and his own doings. In the system of
Sabellius, what Christ was over and above
all other men, is, in fact, traced to the very
circumstance, that he stood from the begin-
ning under the special influence of the di-
vine reason or wisdom. The προκοπῆ forms
here simply the antithesis to the Kata φύ-
σιν —to the ἄνωϑεν answers the κάτωθεν ----
and so, accommodating himself to the
church phraseology, he is reported | to have
said: Θεὸς ἐκ τῆς παρϑένου, ϑεὸς ἐκ Ναζα-
ped ὀφϑείςς. Athanas.c. Apollinar. 1. 11. ὁ 8
PAUL OF SAMOSATA. 603
time is ascribed to him, this is to be understood as relating only to an
ideal existence in the divme reason, in the divine predetermination.!
Hence, when his opponents, judging rather from the connection of ideas
in their own mind than in his, accused him of supposimg two Sons of
God, he could confidently affirm, on the contrary, that he knew of but
one Son of God.2 It may be, however, that, where it was for his
interest to accommodate himself to the terminology of the church, he
too spoke of a generation of the Logos in his own seuse, understanding
by this nothing else than the procession of the Logos to a certain out-
ward activity, — the beginning of its creative agency, — what was usu-
ally designated by the phrase λόγος προφορικός.3
Of this man’s character, the bishops and clergy, who composed the
synod that condemned his doctrines, give a very unfavorable account.*
They describe him as haughty, vain-glorious, and self-seeking — a man
that eagerly entered into the cares and business of the world. It 15
true, the accusations of polemical opponents, especially opponents
so passionate as these were, are seldom entitled to much confidence ;
but the charges in the present case contain so much of a specific char-
acter, that we can hardly suppose them to have been wholly without
foundation; and unhappily this picture accords but too well with what
we otherwise learn respecting the bishops of the large towns, like Anti-
och, the great capital of Roman Asia in the East.° These districts
were then comprised under the empire of Zenobia,® Queen of Palmyra,
who is said to have been friendly to Judaism.’ Paul is accused of
having sought to present the doctrine concerning Christ in a dress
which would be more acceptable to the Jewish mode of thinking, ex-
pressly with a view to gain favor with this princess.
1 Τῇ the synodal letter to Paul of Samo-
sata, published by Turrian, cited in Mansi,
(Concil. I. f. 1034,) the only credible docu-
ment among those made known by him re-
lating to these transactions, this opposite
thesis is set up, viz. that the Son of God
existed πρὸ αἰώνων οὐ προγνώσει ἀλλ᾽ οὐσίᾳ
καὶ ὑποστάσει : from this we may infer, then,
that Paul taught the contrary: Τὸν υἱὸν tov
ϑεοῦ oby’ ὑποστάσει, ἀλλα προγνώσει κτλ.
Which is confirmed also by the representa-
tion of Athanasius, who says of Paul’s doc-
trine concerning Christ: Λόγον ἐνεργὸν ἐξ
οὐρανοῦ καὶ σοφίαν ἐν αὐτῷ ὁμολογεῖ, TO μὲν
προορισμῷ πρὸ αἰώνων ὄντα, τῇ δὲ ὑπάρξει
ἐκ ἀναζαρὲτ ἀναδειχϑέντα. ec. Apollinar. 1.
II. § 3.
2 Μὴ δύο ἐπίστασϑαι υἱούς. Leont. Byzant.
8 This is made probable by the opposite
thesis in the before-cited synodal letter: Aca
Tov λόγου ὁ πατὴρ πάντα πεποίηκεν, ODX’ ὡς
δι’ ὀργάνου, οὐδ᾽ ὡς Ov ἐπιστήμης ἀνυποστάτου,
γεννήσαντος μὲν τοῦ πατρὸς τὸν υἱὸν ὡς ζῶ-
σαν ἐνεργείαν καὶ ἐνυπόστατον. From this
it may be inferred that Paul had spoken of
a σοφία, ἐπιστήμη ἀνυπόστατος, and by the
γέννησις of the λόγος understood nothing
else than an ἐνεργεία ἀνυπόστατος of God
as the Creator. From this, however, it does
But there is no
not certainly follow that he himself made
use of the expression γέννησις.
4 Ruseb. 1. VII. c. 30.
5 See what Origen says in Matth. f. 420,
ed. Huet., or Vol. IV. T. XVI. § 8, p. 24,
ed. Lomm.: “ We, who either do not under-
stand what the teaching of -Jesus here
means, or who despise these express admo-
nitions of our Saviour himself, we proceed
so far in the affectation of pomp and state,
as to outdo even bad rulers among the pa-
gans; and, like the emperors, surround our-
selves with a guard, that we may be feared
and made difficult of approach, especially
by the poor. And in many of our so-called
churches, particularly in the larger towns,
may be found presiding officers of the
church of God, who would refuse to own
even the best among the disciples of Jesus,
while on earth, as their equals.” Μηδεμίαν
ἰσολογίαν ἐπιτρέποντας ἔσϑ᾽ ὅτι καὶ τοῖς καλ-
λίστοις τῶν ᾿Ιησοῦ μαϑητῶν, εἷναι πρὸς αὖ-
τούς.
6 Married to the Roman commander,
Odenatus, who had made himself indepen-
dent of the Roman empire.
τ᾿ Ἰουδαῖα ἣν Ζηνόβια. καὶ Παύλου προέστη
τοῦ Σαμοσατέως. Athanas. hist. Arianor
ad Monachos, ὁ 71.
604 ο΄ - DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY.
evidence that this charge’was well founded; the facts of the case re-
quire no such explanation ; and the constancy with which Paul adhered
to his convictions, even after the political circumstances were changed,
suffices to vindicate him from this imputation. It were more reasona-
ble to suppose, that his intercourse with Jews about the person of the
queen, with whom Paul, being a man of the court, stood in high con-
sideration, may have had some influence in giving this turn to his
doctrinal opinions ; — though we are under no necessity of supposing even
this. It may have been, ‘too, that his peculiar doctrinal opinions con-
tributed to procure for him the favor of the queen. The connection
once formed with this powerful patroness, he made use of it to gam
influence and consideration in secular affairs, and to surround himself with
state. In direct contrariety to the ecclesiastical rules which had already
been publicly expressed, at least in the Western church, (see above, )
he held a civil office not quite compatible with the vocation of a bishop.!
At Antioch, the profane custom seems already to have passed over
from the theatre and rhetorical schools to the church —a practice
which put church teachers on the same level with actors and declaimers
— that of applauding popular preachers, by the waving of handker-
chiefs, exclamations of applause, and the clapping of hands. The vain-
minded Paul was delighted with all this; but the bishops, his accusers,
seem well aware, that it was contrary to the dignity and order becom-
ing the house of God. The church hymns which had been im public
use ever since the second century, he banished as an mnovation ; prob-
ably on the same principle which at a later period was advanced also
by others, that in the church nothing ought to be sung but pieces taken
directly from the holy scriptures. Probably, therefore, he ordered
that, in place of those church hymns, Psalms only should be used.*
There is no good reason for the conjecture, that Paul did this merely
out of flattery to his Jewish patroness, Zenobia. It is more probable,
that, knowing what a deep impression the sentiments contained in those
church hymns made on the minds of the hearers, he was hoping to
banish, with those ancient songs of praise to Christ, the sentiments they
contained from the hearts of men. When we are told, that the man
who so carefully weighed every expression which was applied to Christ,
delighted in the incense of extravagant flattery heaped on himself, un-
der the form of odes and declamations in holy places --- and in being
called, in the swollen, rhetorical language of the times, an angel come
down from heaven, we are not indeed to give implicit faith to such
stories from the mouths of heated opponents; nor yet have we any
good reason whatever to reject them as wholly false.
It seems to have been the design of Paul of Samosata to mtroduce
his peculiar views of Christ into the minds of his flock by degrees. ΤῸ
this purpose served the change which he introduced with regard to the
1 The office of Ducenarius procurator, (not he was already in possession of this office
to be confounded with the Ducenarius ju- when elected bishop; in this case the bish-
dex,) so called because the pay amounted ops would accuse themselves for tolerating
to 200 sestertia. See Sueton. Claudius, such an infraction of the ecclesiastical laws
c. 24; Cyprian. ep. 68. It is possible that
VIEWS OF THE WESTERN CHURCH. 605
use of church hymns; and he contrived, as we have seen in particular
cases, to explain the church terminology in conformity with his own
views. Hence it might be difficult to convict him of erroneous doc-
trine ; and it was not till after many previous unsuccessful attempts,
that the bishops finally succeeded, at a synod convened in 269, to bring
him, chiefly by means of the presbyter Malchion, an expert dialecti-
cian, to an open avowal of his opinions.!. He was deposed, and his
office conferred on another; but as he still had a party in his favor,
and was moreover patronized by Zenobia, it was impossible to carry the
matter through, until the year 272, when Zenobia was conquered by
the Emperor Aurelian. ‘The latter referred the matter to the decision
of the Roman bishop.? .
But while, in the Eastern church, the struggle with this Monarchian .
tendency, which gave an undue prominence to the wnzty in the Triad,
had an influence m causing the distinctions and gradations in it to be
more precisely marked, and the subordination system, which had been
reduced by Origen into a settled form, to be more decidedly pronounced,
a quite different relation was gradually working itself into shape in the
Western church, which we will now more closely consider.
How differently the same Christian truth may shape itself to the ap-
prehension of minds which have been differently trained, is seen by
comparing Origen with Tertullian. .To Tertullian, accustomed and
familiarized to material notions of the divine essence, the same difficul-
ties would not present themselves here, as revolted the philosophical
mind of Origen. He could quite clearly conceive, by the aid of his
material notions of emanation, how the Godhead might cause to pro-
ceed from its own essence a being possessed of the same substance,
only in an inferior degree, and standing in the same relation to the
former as a ray of light to the sun. He asserted, therefore, the doc-
trine of one divine Essence, shared in a certain gradation by three per-
sons, most intimately connected.?
The Son, so far as it concerns the divine essence, is not numerically
distinct from the Father; the same essence of God being also in the
Son; but he differs in degree, being a smaller portion of the common
mass of the divine essence.* Thus the prevailing view in the Western
church came to be this: one divime essence in the Father and Son;
but, at the same time, a subordination in the relation of the Son to
the Father. Here were conflicting elements. The process of develop-
ment must decide which of the two should gain the preponderance.
This, then, constituted the difference between the two churches: — that
while, in the Eastern church, the prominence given to the distinctions
in the Triad did not leave room for the consciousness of the unity ;
in the Western church, on the other hand, the unity of essence, once
1¥From Eusebius’ expressions, although 2 See vol. I. p. 142,
Theodoretus, to whom perhaps they ap- 8 Una substantia in tribus coherentibus.
peared offensive, explained them otherwise, * Deus de deo, modulo alter, non nume-
we must infer, that this ecclesiastic, too,ex- ro. Ady. Praxeam.
ercised a profession not wholly befitting his
spiritual calling, that of a rhetorician.
51*
606 DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY.
decidedly expressed, caused the subordination-element to retire more
into the back-ground.
Thus, from a difference in the process of the development of doc-
trine in the two churches, an opposition of views naturally arose on
this subject; as we see in the case of the above-mentioned council at
Antioch, in 269, which, in the heat of the polemical opposition to Mon-
archianism, was moved to condemn the expression “‘ éuoobcov,”’ answer-
ing to the doctrinal formula of the West “una substantia.”’* And
we see, again, in another noticeable appearance, a premonitory symp-
tom of those doctrinal controversies which, in the fourth century,
sprung out of the opposition thus prepared between the two churches.”
The doctrine of Sabellius, and his mode of interpreting the church
terminology so as to accord with his own system, having found their
way among the bishops of that district, Dionysius, the bishop of Alex-
andria, felt it incumbent on him, since the whole of that church diocese
fell under his supervision, to issue a pastoral letter against these spread-
ing tenets.? The opposition into which he was thus brought with the
Sabellian denial of the hypostases, led him to express the distinction
of hypostases, and hence too the doctrine of subordination, in a more
stiff and decided manner than he would otherwise have done. He
made use of several expressions which Arianism could afterwards fall
back upon. He made it a prominent point, that the Son of God had
his existence by the will of the Father; he styled the Son, in relation
to the latter, a ποίημα, and employed many singular comparisons, with a
view to mark his subordinate relation to the Father. He is reported
to have made use of expressions, for the purpose of affirming with em-
phasis that the Son received his existence from the Father, which after-
wards became favorite mottos of Arianism ; as, for example, that he
did not exist before he was begotten; there was a moment when he
did not as yet exist. He also declared himself opposed to the
Homoousion. .
Certain individuals, to whom these expressions of Dionysius appeared
a disparagement of the divine dignity of Christ, laid their complaimts
before Dionysius, bishop of Rome ; and the latter was thus led to com-
pose a work,® wherein he opposed to the different tendencies of the
1 See e. g. Athanas. de Synod. § 43; Hi-
lar. de Synod. § 86.
2 As this admits of being so naturally
explained from the system of doctrines held
in the Alexandrian school, and moreover
the reasons urged by the council against
this church expression answer perfectly
to this system, the account is for these rea-
sons, if there were no other, rendered prob-
‘able. The Arians, from whom we receive
the account, are, it is true, on this point,
suspicious witnesses; but the fact that their
warm opponents, Athanasius, Hilarius of
Poitiers, and Basilius of Czsarea, quote
the same account from their mouth, yet
without contradicting it, may be considered
as a confirmation of its truth.
® The letter to Ammonius and Euphra-
nor, of which fragments have been preserv-
ed in Athanasius’ work on the doctrines of
Dionysius.
4 Athanas. de sententia Dionysii, ὁ 14.
For the purpose of strongly emphasizing
the οὐκ ἀεὶ ἣν, he is reported to have said:
Οὐκ ἣν πρὶν γεννηϑῇ, ἀλλ᾽ ἣν more ὅτε οὐκ
nv. Being a disciple of Origen, he may
have expressed himself in the latter way;
perhaps to mark a beginning of existence,
but no beginning in time. But, in truth, it
is impossible, since Dionysius’ work has not
been preserved entire, to determine, with any
degree of certainty, what his language real-
ly was, so as to distinguish what he actually
did say, from the conclusions which men
thought proper to draw from what he said.
5 ᾿Ανατροπῆ, fragments of which work
DIONYSIUS OF ALEXANDRIA. 607
Eastern church, that system of the unity of essence which had become
already.matured in the Western church, and from which every trace of
subordination had been nearly obliterated.! Besides the Sabellians, he
attacks two other tendencies. He says he had heard that many among
their teachers ? had fallen into an error directly opposed to that of Sa-
bellianism, viz. Tritheism ;° that they had separated the holy unity into
three hypostases, totally alien and totally separated from one another.
Yet we can hardly reconcile it with the general shaping of Christian
thought and speculation among the Orientals, to suppose that those
teachers did really hold to the existence of three essences, equally
without beginning, and standing in no relation of dependence on each
other. The Roman bishop here assuredly followed the reports of
others, who so interpreted the explanations of those teachers. It is
probable that, in marking broadly and strongly the distinction of the
hypostases in the conflict with Sabellianism, they may only have so
expressed themselves as to furnish some color for those complaints.
The third of these erroneous views, censured by the Roman Dionysius,
was precisely that one, according to which the Son of God was re-
garded as a creature, and a beginning assigned to his existence ;—the
error which some were bent on finding in Dionysius of Alexandria.
Now, had the latter clung pertinaciously to the difference which did
really exist on this doctrine between himself and the Roman Dionysius,
had he given still greater distinctness and prominence to the differences
between his own and the Roman form of doctrme, and set himself to
defending these points, the signal would have been given for a con-
troversy, which might have terminated in a separation of the two
churches.
But. Dionysius demeaned himself according to the spirit, so superior
to dogmatic narrowness, which had descended to him from his great
master Origen. ‘The common ground-work of the Christian faith stood
at a higher value with him than subordinate differences of opinion ;—
he was more anxious to preserve alive the consciousness of unity, than
to give prominence to the dividing points of opposition. Without man-
ifesting any resentment to his accusers, who had resorted to a foreign
bishop, and one so eager to obtrude himself as a judge in the concerns
of other churches; without beimg ruffled even by that bishop him-
self, who seems to have assumed the tone rather of a judge than of a
colleague, he endeavored, with calmness and prudence, and without
denying his own convictions, so to explain the offensive propositions, by
pointing out their connection with his whole system, as to remove all
scruples against them, even from those who adopted the principles of
have been preserved in Athanasius’ book
on the decrees of the Council of Nice.
1 We still perceive, however, some re-
mains of the old system of subordination,
when the Father, as the dpy7, the God of
the universe, is styled absolutely the Al-
mighty. Τὴν τριάδα εἰς ἕνα, ὥσπερ εἰς κο-
ουφῆν τινα, τὸν ϑεὸν τῶν ὅλων τὸν παντοκρώ-
τορα λέγω, συγκεφαλαιοῦσϑαι καὶ συνάγεσϑαι
πᾶσα ἀνάγκη. Athanas. de decretis synodi
Nicene, § 26.
2 His words are, 1. c.: Πέπυσμαι εἶναι
τινὰς τῶν παρ᾽ ὑμῖν κατηχούντων Kal διδασ-
κόντων τὸν ϑεῖον λόγον ταύτης ὑφηγητὰς τῆς
φρονήσεως.
ὃ Οἱ κατὰ διάμετρον ἀντίκεινται τῇ Σαβελ-
λίου γνώμῃ.
608 DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY.
the Roman church. He expounded, in the manner of Origen, the
notion of the eternal generation of the Logos. He was even willing
to tolerate the term ὁμοούσιον, so far as it was employed to denote sim-
ply the relationship of essence between the Son of God and the Father,
and to distinguish him from all created bemgs; though he had it to
object, that it was a term not hitherto sanctioned by ecclesiastical use,
and nowhere to be found in the holy scriptures, — an objection of little
weight, we must allow, against a doymatic expression, since the changes
arising from the progressive development of the dogmatic spirit gener-
ally, and from the new errors which strike into it, may make it absolutely
necessary to resort to new expressions ; and since all that is really im-
portant here, is to see that the notion which the dogmatic term should
express, is clearly deducible from the scripture doctrine. By this self:
denying moderation. of Dionysius, the dispute was brought to an end,
and a schism avoided which might have rent the bonds of Christian
fellowship.! It is true, this practical union had no power of enduring
influence. The oppositions which had once made their appearance in
the process of doctrinal development, must continually assert over again
their rights within the sphere of thought, and strive on towards their
reconciliation in a higher unity.
In the doctrine concerning the Holy Spirit, the want of correspon-
dence between what was contained in the Christian consciousness
and its notional expression, clearly manifested itself. In the first youth-
ful age of the church, when the power of the Holy Spirit made itself to
be so mightily felt in the life, as a new creative, transforming principle,
it was still very far from being the case, that the consciousness of this
Spirit, as one identical with the essence of God, had been thoroughly
apprehended and presented in conceptions of the understanding.
If we except the Monarchians and Lactantius,? men were agreed in
conceiving of the Holy Spirit as a personal bemg. ‘The conception of
his reality and objective essentiality coincided in the Christian thought
with the conception of his personal, selfsubsistent existence. But the
logical consistency of their system of subordination in the Logos-doc-
trine, compelled the church fathers to conceive of the Holy Spirit as
subordinate to the Father and the Son; the first of the beings pro-
duced by the Father through the Son;— and we shall perceive the
after-influence of this tendency of thought m the Eastern church, till
late into the fourth century. When, on the one hand, men felt them-
selves constrained, by the demands of the Christian consciousness and
of the holy scriptures, to recognize in the Holy Spirit something be-
yond a creaturely existence, to bring him into nearer relation to the
Son of God, and assign him a place in the Triad; and were driven,
on the other hand, by the logical consistency of the theory of subordi-
nation, to represent him as the first being created by the Logos, through
1 See the fragments of the secgnd letter Father and of the Son, eum vel ad Patrem
to the bishop Dionysius, under the title: referri vel ad Filium; et sanctificationem
Ἔλεγχος καὶ ἀπολογία, in Athanasius de utriusque personz sub ejus nomine demon-
sententia Dionysii. strari. Vid. Hieronym. ep. 41 ad Pamach
2 Who is supposed to have explained the et Oceanum.
Holy Spirit as the sanctifying energy of the
Pe ον. eh
THE HOLY SPIRIT. 609
whom God called all things into existence ; — the thought, proceeding
on such different assumptions, must entangle itself in contradictions,
which would give an impulse to still further efforts to place the doc-
trine in its right shape. Thus, in Justin Martyr particularly, we may
observe a wavering of this sort, between the idea of the Holy Ghost,
as one of the members of the Triad, and a spirit standing im some rela-
tionship with the angels.! Also, in Origen, we observe the two ele-
ments coming together, — the sound Christian view, producing itself
out of the immediate contents of the Christian consciousness, and the
speculative view, standing in no sort of relation to it. On the one
hand, he considers the Holy Spirit as the substance of all the gracious
oifts proceeding from God, communicated through Christ,? the source
of sanctification to believers ; and then he describes him, notwithstand-
ing, as only the first-begotten of the Father through the Son, to whom
1 The reasons which have been presented
by Catholic and Protestant theologians
against my exposition of Justin’s expres-
sions respecting the Holy Spirit, cannot pre-
vail on me to abandon it. See the literature
on this dispute in a monography on Justin,
remarkably full and thorough, written by
Semisch, II. p. 318. If it has been at-
tempted to show, that Justin’s notions of
the essence of the angels and of creatures
generally were irreconcilable with that
view, yet this objection is set aside by our
remarks in the text. Self-contradictory
momenta ought not to be considered as
anything strange, when found at this stage
of the development of doctrine ; but unless
we return back to old doctrinal prejudices,
and overlook once more the essential char-
acter of the process of historical develop-
ment,— the besetting sin of a certain narrow
and narrowing church tendency, of which
however, I cannot accuse many of my op-
ponents, — they must appear rather as a
matter of course. On the same grounds, I
must protest against that which the Herr
Diaconus Semisch brings 885. evidence
against the truth of my own view of the
matter, where he says: “ΝΟ representation
certainly clashes, so much as this, with the
scriptural position and the common feeling
of the ancient church.” But as it concerns
the scriptural position, we have nothing to
do with that question here. The included
contents of the divine Word must, in its
process of development for the human
thought, go through manifold intermediate
forms. The position taken by Justin con-
stitutes one among these historically con-
ditioned intermediate forms. And as it
respects the common Christian feeling, we
do, in truth, recognize such a common feel-
ing, by which the church in all ages is knit
together; but this common feeling did not
find at once its corresponding expression
in the forms evolved by the understanding.
Of the two passages from Justin, which we
are concerned with, one is where Justin, in
confronting the charge of ἀϑεότης. enumer-
ates the objects of religious worship among
the Christians; Apol. II. f. 56: Ἑκεῖνόν τε
καὶ TOV Tap’ αὐτοῦ υἱὸν ἐλϑόντα καὶ διδάξαντα
ἡμᾶς ταῦτα καὶ τὸν τῶν ἄλλων ἑπομένων καὶ
ἐξομοιουμένων ἀγαϑῶν. ἀγγέλων στρατὸν,
πνεῦμά τὲ τὸ προφητικὸν σεβόμεϑα καὶ προς-
κυνοῦμεν. Now Semisch affirms, that it is
contrary to the laws of language and of
logic to refer the word ὠλλων to that which
follows after. But the simple question is,
whether, in a writer like Justin, such an
instance of negligence in stvle may not be
supposed. If, with Semisch, we take the
passage in this way,—that Justin, under
the term ἄλλων, had in mind Christ, and
understood the word ἄγγελος at one and the
same time in the more general sense (of a
messenger of God) and the more limited
one (of angel) —it still remains certainly
a very harsh construction, not admissible
in the case of any other writer. For the
rest, in whatever way the word ἄλλων might
be explained,—a circumstance by no means
decisive as to the whole meaning of the
passage, — it still ever remains the easiest
and best way, to account for what we find
here associated together, by referring to the
connection which existed between the no-
tions of the Holy Spirit and of the angels.
But in no case can I concede to Hr. Sem-
isch, that by the angel of God, the might
sent by Christ for our assistance, (Dial. 6,
Tryph. f. 344,) Justin could have under-
stood snything else than the Holy Spirit.
The reference to the passage in the 3d of
Zechariah has nothing to do with the ques-
tion here; but if it had, tt would be rather
in favor of, than against, the necessity of
this interpretation. If we pay any regard
to Justin’s peculiar style of doctrinal lan-
guage, it is quite impossible to understand
this term as referring merely to the moral
power bestowed by Christ.
2°YAq τῶν χαρισμάτων, ἐνεργουμένη ἀπὸ
τοῦ ϑεοῦ, διακονουμένη ὑπὸ τοῦ Χριστοῦ. In
Joann. T. II. § 6.
610 DOCTRINE CONCERNING HUMAN NATURE.
not only being, but also wisdom and holiness, is first communicated by
the Son; dependent on him in all these relations.?
It is besides worthy of notice, that, in the dispute with the Monarchi-
ans, the doctrine concerning the Holy Spirit was not touched upon at
all—a proof how little men had busied themselves as yet with the
more accurate determination of this doctrme — how very far it retired
into the background, compared with the significance attached to the
Logos-doctrine. It altogether befitted the peculiar bent of the Patri-
passianists to refer everything to the undivided God, the Father in
Christ; and to consider the Holy Spirit simply as his agency or influ-
ence. But when the doctrine of the Holy Spirit assumed the impor-
tant place which it did im the perfected Montanistic system, the pro-
ceedings entered into with the adherents of this scheme would lead to
more accurate investigations of this doctrine; as indeed we know that
Clement of Alexandria, in whose writings preserved to us no specula-
tive determination of this pomt is to be found, was intending, in his
work on prophecy, (zp? προφητείας.) which had reference to the dis-
pute with the Montanists, to enter into a fuller development of the doc-
trine concerning the Holy Spirit.2. Accordingly Sabellius was the first
who received into his Monarchian scheme the notion also of the Holy
Spirit. In this dogma, too, we see the element of the subordination
theory more and more overcome, by the matured conception of the one
substance in the Western church. This is particularly discernible in
the letter of Dionysius, bishop of Rome, to Dionysius, bishop of Alex-
andria, (see above.?)
From the doctrine concerning God, (theology in the stricter sense
of the word,) we pass to the doctrine concerning human nature, (An-
thropology,) —the two doctrines being, in their peculiar Christian
acceptation, most intimately connected ; both deriving thei peculiar
Christian significancy from their particular relation to the doctrine of
redemption — the central point of Christianity. From the doctrine of
God’s holiness proceeded a conception of sin, entirely different from
that presented in the mode of thinking of the ancient world; and this
of itself had the greatest influence on Anthropology.
Again, the redemption in which entire humanity is destmed to par-
ticipate, presupposes, on the one hand, the need of such a provision ex-
isting in all men — the feeling of their own moral insufficiency, of the
inner schism, the sin and guilt which separate them from God; and, on
the other hand, the coysciousness of a _recipiency for the redemption,
as a quality possessed by human nature in general, by virtue of which
the redemption may find a point of union in the soul’s act of free self-
determination. Both are intimately connected ; for it is out of the
1 Οὐ χρήζειν ἔοικε τὸ ἅγιον πνεῦμα, διακο-
νοῦντος αὐτοῦ τῇ ὑποστάσει, οὐ μόνον εἰς τὸ
εἶναι, ἀλλὰ καὶ σοφὸν εἶναι καὶ λογικὸν καὶ
δίκαιον καὶ πᾶν ὁτιποτοῦν χρὴ αὐτὸ νοεῖν
τυγχώνειν κατὰ μετοχὴν τῶν προειρημένων
Χριστοῦ ἐπινοιῶν. LL. e.
2 The Holy Spirit, as something above
nature, supervening to the original faculties
of the soul: Ἡμεῖς μὲν τῷ πεπιστευκότι προς-
επιπνεῖσϑαι τὸ ἅγιον πνεῦμα φαμὲν, ---- ἀλλ᾽
οὐχ’ ὡς μέρος ϑεοῦ ἐν ἑκάστῳ ἡμῶν τὸ πνεῦ-
μα’ ὅλων δὲ ἡ διανομὴ αὕτη καὶ ὅτι ποτὲ ἔστι
τὸ ἅγιον πνεῦμα, ἐν τοῖς περὶ προφητείας καὶ
περὶ ψυχῆς ἐπιδειχϑῆσεται ἡμῖν. Strom. 1. V.
f. 591g). IV.f.,511.
3 ’Eudivdoxupeiv τῷ ϑεῷ καὶ ἐνδιαιτᾶσϑαι
De decretis Synodi Ni
τὸ ἅγιον πνεῦμα.
cene, ὁ 25.
-
oe ee ee ae
γον τὰν
a.
χω
CHRISTIAN AND HEATHEN VIEWS. 611
recipiency that the want developes itself, and the want without the re-
cipiency would be a self-contradiction m nature. ‘The consciousness of
sin and guilt, which answers to the need of redemption, itself presup-
poses also something akin to God, elevated above natural necessity,
something of the essence of a free self-determination of the spirit, with-
out which sin and guilt can have no existence. On both these sides,
the position occupied by the ancient world was opposed to Christianity.
On the one side was the moral self-sufficiency,! which exhibits itself to
us at its highest point in Stoicism— the self-feeling from which pro-
ceeded the ethical notion of a μεγαλοψυχία, (magnanimity,) and to
which the Christian virtue of humility appeared to be a sort of self:
degradation: on the other side, that point of view which made man
dependent on natural necessity, and caused moral evil to be regarded
as something having its ground in such necessity — a point of view by
which room enough was still left to admit the notion of moral impertfec-
tion, but not the conception of sm. In the stoical doctrine both are
brought together, the Autonomy and Autarchy of the Wise man, and
the. necessity of evil in order to the harmony of the universe. Al-
though, in relation to the first of these pomts, the opposition m which
the fundamental principle of the ancient world stands to Christianity
is tempered by the Platonic philosophy ; 5 yet it comes forth with so
much the greater strength on the other side, when all evil is here
regarded as something involuntary, is traced to a deficiency of knowl-
edge, a preponderance of the natural (of the ὕλη) over the rational
element in man, by virtue of which preponderance the rational element
cannot yet attain to a free development. It is true, different stages
are here to be distinguished in the development of Platonism, accor«-
ing as the tendency predominates to apply and carry out its specula-
tive principles with logical consistency, as in the case of Plotinus, or a
prevailing interest in behalf of religion and morality operates indepen-
dently of those principles, as in the case of Plutarch, who so earnestly
defends moral freedom against the stoical doctrine of necessity. But
even where this notion of freedom most decidedly manifested itself, as,
for instance, in Aristotle, who combated the Platonic principle that evil
implied the absence of freedom,? men must necessarily have felt em-
barrassed by great difficulties in endeavoring to apply the notion of free-
dom to life. They thought they perceived an unconquerable natural
temperament of certain tribes, certain great classes among men, who
had no power of elevating themselves above a very inferior grade of
moral culture. But even these restxictions could not overcome the idea
of freedom in such men as Aristotle. - Yet they could be wholly got
rid of only when the might of evil in humanity came generally to be
understood te be something not original, but to be first traced itself to
an original act of freedom; and when a power was introduced into
1 The Horatian maxim, bonam mentem terminate character of a man, by which he
mihi ipse parabo. is determined in his judgments and actions,
2 See on this relation, vol. I., Introduc- is itself a work of freedom. Ἔξ ἀρχῆς μὲν
tion. ἐξῆν, τοιούτοις μὴ γενέσϑαι, διὸ ἑκόντες εἰσίν
8 Thus he understands, that even the.de- Nicom. III. 7.
612 DOCTRINE CONCERNING HUMAN NATURE.
humanity, whereby those differences of nature could be equalized, and
the same divine life could be imparted alike to all. It was only with
the victory over the nature-principle and over the aristocratic leaning
of antiquity, that the idea of moral freedom could be completely estab-
lished in its rights, as a power belongimg to human nature.
As Christianity, then, brought about an important revolution in the
ethical and anthropological views of mankind, by the doctrine of a prim-
itive condition and of man’s loss of it by an act of his own choice;
so we may add, as another weighty fact, that it placed Anthropology in
connection with the doctrine concerning spirits (Pneumatology), inas-
much as it caused the essence of spirit to be known as the image of God ;
as the common element in man and all ranks of the spiritual world ;
and as lying at the basis and indicating the fact of a common destina-
tion ; inasmuch as it presented to view, on the one hand, the fellowship
of one divine life uniting together all spirits in the kingdom of God,
and on the other, referred back the origm also of the ungodly life to the
first act of the self-will of a higher intelligence. This latter fact was
particularly important as opposed to the pagan nature-view of sin, and
to all the tendencies which led men to regard it as something necessa-
rily rooted in the organism of human nature, in the union of a rational
with a sensuous nature.
Now, while the interests of the Christian faith require the union of
the momenta here unfolded, — of all that has reference to the need of re-
demption, and of all that has reference to the recipiency for redemp-
tion; and the severance of these correlative momenta engenders the
heretical element; yet the greater or less degree of prominence given
to the one or the other of these momenta, depended partly on the oppo-
sitions, and partly on the peculiar character, of the different tendencies
of the theological spirit, which we have previously described. As it
respects the former, we may notice in particular the opposition of Gnos-
ticism. Against this there was no need, as is clear from the represen-
tation of the Gnostic doctrines, to prove in the first place the existence
of a schism in man’s nature, and of a need of redemption grounded in
that schism; but on the contrary, as an original threefold difference of
human natures was asserted by the Gnostics, and a recipiency of the
divine life acknowledged to exist only in one class of these natures, the
capacity for the redemption and the power of moral freedom had to be
demonstrated to belong in common to all. The polemical interest ex-
cited by the controversy with the Gnostics was the cause, therefore,
that many extremely one-sided theories, to which men were afterwards
led by separating momenta of the Christian consciousness which be-
long together, did not as yet make their appearance. The hypothesis
of a predetermination of natures endangering moral freedom was there-
by kept back. Those passages of the Old Testament, such as related
for instance to the hardening of Pharaoh, which subsequently furnished
a foothold for such doctrines, but which were made use of by the Gnos-
tics as points of accusation against the God of the Old Testament, men
must seek to defend against them, and to show them, that these pas-
sages contained a meaning capable of being reconciled with God’s love
CHRISTIAN AND GNOSTIC VIEWS. 613
and justice, and man’s indestructible freedom. Thus it belongs amon
the peculiar characteristics of the position which this period held in the
evolution of the doctrines of the Christian faith, that, as a general thing,
men were far from the thought of framing to themselves, out of some
of the more dark and difficult passages of scripture, —like those from
which, singly taken, in after times, the doctrine of absolute predestina-
tion was derived, — a system to which they would be ready to sacrifice
all other religious interests and the whole analogy of Bible faith,! but
went rather on the principle of holding fast to that which they found,
by comparing different passages of scripture, was the collective doctrine
lying every where at bottom. On this point, those who took the lead
in the guidance of the church were uniformly agreed; and it was only
ignorant, uneducated, and at the same time arrogant individuals among
the laity, who were inclined to fix on such insulated passages, and run
into downright extravagances of doctrine.?
It belongs further to the common ground assumed by all Christians
in opposing Gnosticism, that while the Gnostics regarded Dualism as an
original and absolute truth, and the schism as a necessary thing in the
evolution of existence, necessary to appear at some period in order to
be overcome, something of which the foundation was laid already in the
world of Avons ;— the church fathers, on the other hand, were agreed
in this, that contrary to the Gnostics, they traced everything here to
the freedom of the creature. The Gnostics were used to propose the
dilemma ;—TIfthe first man was created perfect, how could he then
sin? If he was created imperfect, we suppose God himself to be the
author of sin. ΤῸ this the church fathers, if we set aside what was
peculiar in Origen’s system, were accustomed to reply ; — that a dis-
tinction should be made between what the first man was in respect to
his original capacity, and what he was to become by that development
of this capacity which depended on his own free will. Here we meet
with a distinction, widely recognized, around which, in the subsequent
evolution of the doctrines of faith, important differences clustered. The
distinction between that which is denominated poy and that which is
denominated ΠΗ in Genesis, the εἰκών and the ὁμοίωσις τοῦ ϑεοῦ (the image,
and the likeness of God) : — the first being what was laid in the original
capacities of human nature, and what, inasmuch as it was grounded in
its essence, was indestructible ; to which were usually reckoned reason
1 Opposed to this were the hermeneutical
canons which Irenzeus set up against the
Gnostics ; as, for example, that men should
not seek to explain snigmata per aliud
majus znigma, sed ea, que sunt talia, ex
manifestis et consonantibus et claris accipi-
unt absolutiones. Lib. II. ¢.10,§1. Ta
φανερῶς εἰρημένα ἐπιλύσει τὰς παραβολὰς, καὶ
“ιὰ τῆς τῶν λέξεων πολυφωνίας ἔν σύμφωνον
μέλος ἐν ἡμῖν αἰσϑῆσεται. Lib. II. c. 28, ὁ 3.
2 Origen, in his exposition of the passage
in Ex. 10: 27, distinguishes from the Gnos-
tics, who made use of such texts as argu-
ments against the God of the Old Testament,
and those who sought to remove the diffi-
VOL. I. ae
culty by correct interpretation, two classes
among the Christians: Οἱ μὲν φρονοῦσιν,
ὡς ἄρα κατὰ ἀποκλήρωσιν ὁ ϑεὸς ὃν ϑέλει ἐλεεῖ,
ὃν δὲ ϑέλει σκληρύνει" ἕτεροι δὲ βέλτιον παρὰ
τούτους φερόμενοί φασι πολλὰ καὶ ἄλλα κε-
κρύφϑαι τῆς γραφῆς αὐτοῖς νοήματα, καὶ οὐ
παρὰ τοῦτο τῆς ὑγιοῦς πίστεως τρέπεσϑαι.
T. VIL. ed. Lomm. p. 299. The principle
described in these last words of Origen, is
the same with one which is laid down also
by Ireneeus: Ec ἔνια τῶν ζητημάτων ἀνα-
ϑήσομεν τῷ ϑεῷ, καὶ τὴν πίστιν ἡμῶν δια-
φυλάξομεν καὶ ἀκίνδυνοι διαμενοῦμεν. Lib
ὁ 28, § 3.
614 DOCTRINE CONCERNING HUMAN NATURE.
and the power of moral freedom;—the second, the likeness to God
actually realized by the right employment of these capacities, in
which consists the image of God,—but in order to the realization of
which, another principle, besides what is given in man’s natural capaci-
ties, must supervene, — a principle partaking of the supernatural, —
fellowship with God, without which human nature is madequate to at-
tain to its completion. The important thing here was, the recognition
of an indestructible image of God in human nature, and of an original
destination of man for the supernatural, the deep-founded consciousness
of the essence of human nature, as one which could find the fulness of
its true essence and the attamment of its end only in the fellowship
with God ; thus the recognition of the correlation, existing from the
first, of the human and the divine —the recognition of the fact that
they belonged together. This distinction, however, might be so appre-
hended, as to lead to a false separation of thet human and the divine.!
In the next place, the fundamental differences of the theological ten-
dencies which have been described by us, would have a special influ-
ence in determining the peculiar method of treating Anthropology.
Those church-teachers whom we have described as representing the
predominantly supranaturalist tendency, were urged by this their pre-
vailing tendency, to set in the most prominent light the corruption of
man’s nature and his need of redemption, the power of renewing grace,
and the contrariety between grace and nature. Montanism, which we
presented as the extreme exhibition of this fundamental tendency, was
in truth ever inclined to glorify the divine grace in such sense, as that
the human element was entirely swallowed up by it, instead of ‘gecking
to establish the harmonious unioh and ‘codperation of both. Those
church-teachers, on the other hand, who, as thé antagonists of a sheer
supernaturalism, strove after a union between the interest of faith and
that of reason, were led by this their own peculiar tendency, to give
special prominence in their treatment of Anthropology, to human free-
dom and self-activity ; and thus, in the case of those church-teachers
who otherwise held a conciliatory position in relation to the Gnostics,
the polemical interest against Gnosticism could not fail very decidedly
to manifest itself in the treatment of this doctrine.
It becomes very important, therefore, that on this point also, we
should compare together the doctrine of the Worth-African church and
that of the Alexandrian school.
The doctrine of the North-African church took its shape from Ter-
tulian. He adopted, out of the previous doctrine of the church, the
idea, that the first man, as he was created by God, possessed all
the faculties necessary to reveal the image of God through his moral
nature; but that these faculties lay still in a dormant, undeveloped
state. Their development depended on man’s free will. ‘To the in-
working of God on human nature there was, by virtue of its purity, as
yet no obstacle ; by fellowship with God, human nature would have be-
come more and more ennobled and transfigured, and was made capable
1 In the doctrine concerning the relation of the dona gratuita to the dona naturalia
‘TERTULLIAN’S VIEWS. 615
of attaining to a participation in a divine, imperishable life, so as to be
placed beyond the dominion of death. But by the first sm, which con-
sisted in man’s refusing to subject his own will, but setting it up in
opposition to the will of God,! man departed from this fellowship with
God, and so became subject to a sinful and a mortal nature. By
the church-teachers of this period, these two are united in the
notion expressed by φϑορά, while the opposite term ἀφϑαρσία denotes with
them at once a divine, imperishable, and holy life —a connection of
ideas which had an important influence on the systems of faith and
morals. As the harmony between the divine and the human will resulted
in harmony through all the departments of man’s nature, so the schism
between the divine and the human will resulted in the schism which runs
through the whole of human nature. In place of that union with the
divine Spirit, came the union with an ungodly spirit. The orgimal
father entailed the spirit of the world on all his posterity.?
Peculiar, however, to Tertullian was his theory to explain the propa-
gation of this original corruption of human nature, — being connectéd
with his theory respecting the propagation of souls. It was his opmion,
namely, that our first parent bore within him the undeveloped germ of
all mankind; that the soul of the first man was the fountain-head
of all human souls, and that all the varieties of individual human nature
are but different modifications of that one spiritual substance.? Hence
the whole nature became corrupted in the original father of the race ;
and sinfulness is propagated at the same time with souls.*
Although this mode of apprehending the matter in Tertullian is con-
nected with his sensuous habits of conception, yet is this by no means
a necessary connection. At the root of this mode of apprehension lay
a higher truth and necessity, of which Tertullian bore witness as the
author of the so-called doctrine of the traduction of souls.
It is worthy of notice, that the same Tertullian, who first brought
out the doctrine of inherited sin in this explicit form, exclaims —
though in a somewhat earlier work, where he takes ground against the
practice of infant baptism:° ““ Wherefore should the age of innocence
be in haste after the forgiveness of sin ?”’ ®
Tertullian was equally penetrated with the consciousness of sinful-
ness cleaving to man’s nature, and with the consciousness of an unde-
niable godlike nature in man, in contrast with which it is that sin re-
veals itself as sin. This great church-teacher, who in many respects
must be considered as the forerunner of Augustin, is to be compared with
him also in this particular, — since without any doubt he had had occa-
sion to learn from his own experience the resistance of a fiery, violent,
rude nature to the godlike spirit, and so the opposition between nature
and grace. Though we know less about his early development than we
do about Augustin’s, yet we may infer from his wholly peculiar charac-
ter, as it exhibits itself to us in his writings, that it was only after
1 Electio suze potius quam divine sen- 4 Tradux anime tradux peccati.
tentiz. 5 See vol. I. p. 312.
* Spiritum mundi universo generi suo 6 Quid festinat innocens xtas ad remis
tradidit. sionem peccatorem. De bapt.c 18.
8 De anima, c. 10 and c. 19
616 DOCTRINE CONCERNING HUMAN ‘NATURE.
many an inward struggle he could attain to peace ; — and the reaction
of those deep elements of his natural character doubtless furnished
occasion for many an after-conflict.1 But equally mighty was the imme-
diate feeling of the underlying godlike principle in his sturdy, inartifi-
cial nature. ‘The corruption of nature,” he says,? “18 a second
nature, which has its own god and father, even the author of the cor-
ruption himself; so that goodness, however, still resides also in the
soul ; that original, that godlike and genuime thing, which is its proper
nature. For that which is from God is not so much extinguished as
obscured ; for it can be obscured, since it is not God; but it cannot be
extinguished, since it is of God. As the light, when some object is
_ interposed, continues to exist, though it may not be transmitted, owing
to the density of the object ; so goodness in the soul, when suppressed
by evil, as it is the peculiar nature of evil to suppress it, either re-
mains wholly inactive, its light being hid; or else bursts through in
freedom, where it is given it to do so.. Thus it is that some are very
good and others very bad; and yet all souls are of the same stock:
thus, too, there is something good in the very worst, and something bad
in the very best; since God alone is without sin, and as man, Christ
alone without sin, since Christ is also God. ‘Thus itis that the divinity
of the soul, by virtue of its original goodness, breaks out in obscure
presentiments, and the consciousness of God comes forth as its witness.
For this reason no soul is without guilt, for none is without the seeds
of goodness.”
It is a characteristic trait in Tertullian, that, as he laid peculiar
stress, because he was a Montanist, on the unusual psychological phe-
nomena presented in the effects of the new divine life, on the miracu-
lous element‘in the charismata;® so too, where he is led to speak of
man’s natural condition, he is fond of bringing up such eccentric
appearances as the manifestation of a natural power of divination, as
indications of the indestructible, godlike element in human nature.*
He was led still further to unfold and to defend these views, not only
in his controversy with Marcion, who, as we have observed above, did
not acknowledge the existence of anything origmally godlike m the
soul, but also in his dispute with Hermogenes. On this latter occasion,
he wrote a work, which has not come down to us, on the descent of
souls. Hermogenes had combated the theory of a heavenly descent
of the soul, of the inbreathing into it of a divme particle, by which
theory the Divine was subjected to a mar, to a stain, since it was im-
possible to avoid the necessity of tracing to this soul, at the same time,
1 Thus we hear him speaking out of the
fulness of his inner experience, when in his
work, written in praise of the Christian vir-
tue, patience, he says, c. 1: “ Ita miserrimus
ego semper eger caloribus impatientiz,
quam non obtineo patientize sanitatem, et
suspirem et invocem et perorem necesse est,
cum recordor et in mez imbecillitatis con-
templatione digero, bonam fidei valetudinem
et dominice discipline sanitatem, non facile
cuiquam, nisi patientia adsideat, provenire.”
2 De anima, c. 41.
8 The distinction between that natural
faculty of divination and prophecy as a
charisma is stated, de anima, ec. 22: Divi-
natio interdum, seposita, que per Dei gra-
tiam obvenit ex prophetia.
4 De censu anime. We learn what were
the contents of this book from his work de
anima.
a. «ὦ “, tae
«-
ee el σου, ,".. ὦ χα Le ee ee a ee |
-
ἐ ὉΠ δοῦν, ."
TERTULLIAN’S VIEWS. 617
the origin of evil! He thinks himself bound to suppose in matter, —-
that inorganic stuff lying at the ground of the creation, — not only
something akin to the corporeal world which is produced out of it, but
alse something akin to the soul, which was likewise formed out of it.
The wild motion in it, is that which it has akin to the soul, and which
lies at the ground of the soul.? As God, by his organizing influences,
produced the corporeal world out of the chaotic mass, so he formed the
soul out of the chaotic principle of motion.’ ‘Taking his position on this
ground of materialism, he hence agreed with Marcion in denying that
any point of union was presented for Christianity in an origmal element
of the human soul akin to the Divine. Evil he derived from this wild,
chaotic principle of motion, not overcome; just as he would regard
whatever was hateful in the corporeal world as a remnant of the an-
cient chaos. Also in Satan and evil spirits, he believed probably that
he saw the reaction of that untamed chaotic power of motion. Souls
needed the communication of a divine life really related to God, and
imparted to them by the redemption and by regeneration, in order to
be enabled to vanquish the evil element growimg out of their ongin.
Tertullian defended, as he himself affirms,t against Hermogenes, the
free will, as an original property of the soul and indestructible. We
‘might thence infer, that Hermogenes regarded the participation in the
redemption, and in the divine life originally alien from the soul, as not
conditioned by the self-determination of the free will; that he did not
consider faith as proceeding from that source; but derived everything
tere alike from the unconditional divine influence and election; and
he would thus belong among the first advocates of the doctrine of an
unconditioned predetermination, and of an unconditioned, irresistible
grace. The logically consistent development of his principles might
certainly lead to such results; for if the soul, by virtue of its material
origin and essence, presents no pomt of union for grace, there seems
necessarily to follow, as from the theory of an absolute corruption of
human nature, such a result from these premises. Yet we are too 1m-
perfectly acquainted with the system of Hermogenes, to be able to
affirm with any certainty, that such was the connection of his ideas.
From the thesis we cannot argue with perfect safety to the antithesis ;
for it is possible that Tertullian may have been led, simply en the
ground that Hermogenes denied the original existence of anything akin
to God in the soul, to maintain this against him, together with all the
marks and characters belonging thereto, among which he reckoned also
the free will, without Hermogenes having wholly denied the freedom
of the will; just as Tertullian does in fact maintain the doctrme of the
1 Dum incredibile est, spiritam Dei in
delictum et mox in judicium devenire, ex
materia potius anima credatur quam ex Dei
spiritu. De anima,e.11. Tertullian con-
tends, on the contrary, that the soul is de-
rived, not from the spiritus Dei, but from
the flatus Dei; that it was not the essence
of God, but only something imparted im-
mediately by the Spirit of God — something
52"
in affinity with that spirit, which resided in
the soul.
2 The incorporale inconditus motus ma-
terix. Adv. Hermogenem, ¢. 36.
8 Comp. the passage from Plutarch, cited
on p. 376, relative to a soul united originally
with the chaos.
4 Inesse nobis τὸ αὐτεξούσιον naturaliter,
jam et Marcioni ostendimus et Hermogeni
De anima, c. 21.
618 DOCTRINE CONCERNING HUMAN NATURE.
- free will agamst Marcion, while yet we do not know that Marcion ever
denied it.t At all events, Hermogenes denied the natural immortality
of the soul, and regarded immortality only as a consequence of the
new divine life imparted by Christ: hence he considered believers
only to be immortal. All evil — evil spirits, and men who have not be-
come partakers of the divme life —were finally to be resolved into the
matter from whence they originally sprang.”
Agaimst this doctrme of Hermogenes, then, Tertullian maintained,
“that the souls, sprung from that first soul which arose immediately
from the breath of God, are immortal, endowed with free will, in pos-
session of a faculty of divmation: —evident signs of their heavenly
origin.”’ 3 |
He considered all the parts and faculties of human nature as one and
the same work of God, a work good in itself; and everything contrary
to reason in it, therefore, as but a consequence of that origmal schism
which grew out of the first sin. The division which Plato makes of the
soul imto the λογικόν and ἄλογον he was willing to admit; though not in
ia ba the original, but only im respect to the corrupted, human
nature. .
ΤῸ the Gnostic doctrine concerning the different fundamental princi-
ples of human nature, according to which they maimtained that a hylic
or material nature could never be converted into a pneumatic or spirit-
ual one, and that a spiritual nature could never be converted into a
material one — to this doctrine Tertullian opposed the almighty power
of grace and the mutability of the human will. When the Gnostics
appealed to the declaration of Christ, that an evil tree cannot bring
forth good fruit, nor a good tree evil fruit, he replies to them: “ If this
is to be understood so, then God cannot raise up from the stones child-
ren to Abraham; then the generation of vipers cannot bring forth
fruits to repentance ; and the apostle was mistaken, when he wrote,
‘Ye also were sometimes darkness,’ and ‘ We also were once by nature
the children of wrath,’ and ‘ Ye were once among these ; but now are
ye washed.’ But will the declarations of the holy scripture contradict
one another? No; for the evil tree will not bring forth good fruit, unless
at be grafted; and the good tree will bring forth evil fruit, unless it
be cultivated ; and the stones will become children of Abraham, if they
be formed to the faith of Abraham; and the generation of vipers will
bring forth the fruits of repentance, when they have disgorged the
1 We must here remark, by way of supple- advocate of the doctrine of absolute predes-
ment, that, in Marcion’s system, this point tination.
still remains undecided. For the same rea-
sons, as in the case of Hermogenes, such an
hypothesis would perfectly accord with his
system also, and it would moreover harmo-
nize well with his ultra-Paulinism. But the
prominent place which he gives to God’s
paternal love, and the manner in which he
speaks of the arbitrary conduct of the God
of the Old Testament, accusing him of hav-
ing compassion on some, and hardening the
hearts of others, leave it quite improbable,
that Marcion ought to be considered as an
2 Vid. Theodoret. fab. heeret. I. c. 19.
3 Animam Dei flatu natam, immortalem,
liberam arbitrii dominatricem, divinatricem.
De anima, c. 22.
4 De anima, 16. Naturale enim rationale
credendum est, quod anime a primordio sit
ingenitum a rationali videlicet auctore ; irra-
tionale autem posterius intelligendum, ipsum
illud transgressionis admissum atque (quod)
exinde inoleverit in anima, ad instar jam
naturalitatis, quia statim in nature primor
dio accedit.
"ἢ
«ἢ
TERTULLIAN’S VIEWS. 619
poison of wickedness. These effects divine grace can produce ; which,
of a truth, is mightier than the nature to which the free will within us
is subjected. As this last, too, is a natural thing and susceptible of
change, so the nature turns in the same direction as this turns.” 1 One
might understand the above remarkable passage, as if even at this early
period Tertullian would attribute to grace an irresistibly attractive
power over the corrupted will of man; one might say he asserted the
freedom of the will only in opposition to the doctrme of a natural ne-
cessity, to the affirmation of a complete moral want of susceptibility m
the case of certain natures; but not in respect to the soul-transforming
principle of grace. Montanism might easily result in giving the
utmost prominence to the overwhelming influence of the divine power,
and in reducing the free will to a blind passive instrument. But we
are by no means authorized by the connection to give the language such
an interpretation. For Tertullian, according to the context, is only
intending to prove, that grace, through its mworking agency on the
corrupted nature, could, by virtue of the free will, impart to it a higher
power than dwells in itself, and thus transform it to something else ;
and we are bound in justice to adopt that interpretation which best
accords with other explanations that Tertullian gives concerning the
free will. Itis true, as we have before remarked, that the influence
of the whole peculiar tendency lying at the root of Montanism must
have been, to cause that the power of grace should be magnified ; but
even Montanism cannot be accused of rending asunder the momenta
which belong together in Christianity, and giving supremacy to one
wholly at the expense of the other. Even Montanism was far from any
tendency to the doctrme of a constraining grace, operating with irre-
sistible power on the conversion of man generally. That it did not look
upon the agency of grace generally as being of this kind, may be gath-
ered from the fact, that it regarded this kind of gracious agency con-
nected with bare passivity on the part of man, as an exception to the
general rule, —as an extraordinary thing ; — supposed it to be confined
to the prophets. Accordingly we find, even in Tertullian, a passage
in which he speaks of such influences of grace, where everything de-
pends solely on the divine influence, nothing on human conduct — such
extraordinary virtues as could be regarded only in the light of free
sifts of divine grace, which God imparts to each individual as he pleases.”
But this very circumstance, of his ascribing the whole to the action of
grace alone only in such extraordinary cases, may serve as a proof,
that he did not consider this as the general law which governed the
evolution of the Christian life. And we are by no means warranted to
conclude from such a declaration of Tertullian, that he was already a
Montanist when he so expressed himself; — for, in this particular refe-
rence, our general remark will find its application, that Montanism is
1 Hee erit vis divine gratix, potentior
utique natura, habens in nobis subjacentem
sibi liberam arbitrii potestatem, quae cum sit
et ipsa naturalis atque mutabilis, quoquo
vertitur, natura convertitur. De anima, c. 21.
2 Quod bonorum quorundam sicuti et ma-
lorum intolerabilis magnitudo est, ut ad
capienda et praestanda ea sola gratia divine
inspirationis operetur. Nam quod maxime
bonum, id maxime penes Deum; nec alius
id quam qui possidet, dispensat, ut cuique
dignetur. De patientia, ¢. 1.
620 DOCTRINE CONCERNING HUMAN NATURE.
to be regarded merely as the extreme point of tendencies and modes of
thinking which were already in existence.
Buta directly opposite view to this resulted of itself from the process
of development in the Alexandrian church. Accordingly Clement com-
bated, without meaning to do so, the doctrine of the North-African church,
having in his eye simply the Gnostic dualism, which represented birth to
be a work of the evil principle. ‘ How then,” he asks, ‘‘ could the chil-
dren have sinned, or fallen under the curse of Adam, when they are
chargeable with no actions of their own ?’’! ‘The question here related
to the explanation of those passages of the Old Testament, which in the |
North-African church were adduced in proof of the doctrine of inherited /
sin. Job 14: 4— Ps. 51: 7.2 Clement referred such and similar pas-
sages to the natural ignorance of man im reference to God and divine
things, to the power of sinful habits. But it by no means follows, that
Clement did not believe in the doctrine of a fall from a state of moral,
purity. To the Gnostic dilemma,‘ above quoted, he opposed the asser tion,
that an first man was not created perfect, but with the capacity for vir-
tue ;° so that its cultivation and application depended on himself. He
sioliel to the enticements of sensual pleasure in that childhood of his
bemg, as it was for him to decide, according to his own free choice.®
While many Gnostics made the fall to consist in this, that the first man,
yielding to sensuous appetite, gave himself up to the indulgence of the
sexual propensity, whereby both himself and his entire posterity came un-
der the dominion of the 64; Clement, on the other hand, regarded man’s
guilt to consist simply in this, that he did not wait for the suitable period
appointed by God for the satisfaction of thatimpulse.’ Thus he might
regard that power of the sensuous appetites over the spirit as a conse-
quence of the first disobedience — might suppose, that by the guilt of
man the sway of sense became contimually stronger, while still, how-
ever, it continued to depend on man’s will to resist its enticements.
We perceive the influence of the ideas which had found their way into
his mind through his philosophical education, im the imclination he
manifests to refer back evil to the power of sense; and accordingly he
must refer redemption and regeneration mainly to the end of providing
a way for the soul to partake of the divine life, by being delivered from
these foreign elements. ‘It is not without special grace,” says he,
“that the soul attains to this power of soaring aloft on wings, after
haying laid aside every weight, so as to unite “itself with its kindred
element.”8 ‘This was the important thing with Clement, to recognize
both the need in which the free will stood of assistance, "and also the
1 Strom. ]. III. f. 453 et 469.
2 See Cyprian’s collection of proofs from
the scriptures of the doctrines of faith and
morals, ‘Testimonior. 1 TLL ¢./ 54.
5 Συνηϑεία ἧ ἁμαρτωλύς. Τὰς πρώτας ἐκ
γενέσεως ὁρμὰς, Kal’ ἃς ϑεὸν οὐ γινώσκομεν,
ἀσεβείας λέγει. Strom. 1. III. f. 469.
* See above, p. 613.
5 Ἐπ wrdewoc πρὸς THY κτῆσιν ἀρετῆς.
Strom. 1. VI. f. 662.
ὃ ἸΠαρῇγετο ἐπιϑυμίαις ὁ παῖς. Clement,
like Philo, rie “ὲ the serpent as a sym-
bol of ἡδονή. Protrept. f. 69.
7 Taya, που προλαβόντος τὸν καιρὸν τοῦ
πρωτοπλάστου. Strom. 1. III. f. 466. Ἔκι-
νήϑησαν ϑᾶττον ἢ προσῆκον ἦν ἔτι νέοι πεφυ-
κότες, ἀπάτῃ παραχϑέντες. L. ο. f. 470.
8 Οὐ χάριτος ἄνευ τῆς ἐξαιρέτου πτεροῦται
τε καὶ ἀνίσταται καὶ ἄνω τῶν ὑπερκειμένων
αἴρεται ἡ ψυχὴ, πᾶν τὸ βρίϑον ἀποτιϑεμένη
καὶ ἀποδιδοῦσα τῷ συγγενεῖ. Lc. 1. V. f
588,
CLEMENT. ORIGEN. 621
fact that grace was conditioned on its efforts, and was designed to meet
its deficiencies. On this point he thus expresses himself:! ‘“* When
man seeks by his own efforts and practice to free himself from the power
of his passions, he effects nothmg. But when he manifests a true zeal
and earnestness, then he gains the victory, by the accessory power of
God; for God bestows his Spirit on willing souls. But when they remit
their desire, the Spirit, which God bestows, also withdraws. The king-
dom of heaven belongs not to the sleepmg and indolent, but the violent
take it by force.’’ He was too strongly fettered to this dogmatic inte-
rest, too little capable of moving out of the circle of his subjective
notions, rightly to understand, out of its own self, particularly the Paul-
ine type of doctrine —as appears, for example, in his remarkably tor-
tuous interpretation of 1 Corinth. 1: 21; where the last words, accord-
ing to him, are not to be taken as a question, but thus: it was not God
who made the wisdom of this world foolishness, butit became foolish-
ness through the guilt of man.?
Quite peculiar to himself on this subject, is also the system of Ori-
gen. We have observed, that he was attached to a spiritually con-
ceived theory of emanation; in opposition to the Gnostics, who would
account for the difference among rational creatures, partly by a natural
law regulating the graduated evolution of life proceeding from God,
partly by their derivation from different fundamental principles. Origen
sought to trace all differences to moral freedom. God, as the absolute
unity, he taught, can only be a source of unity. So far as all existence
springs from him, the unity of his own essence must reveal itself therein.
No difference, no manifoldness, can spring from him. It would, more-
over, be inconsistent with his love and justice, not to bestow on all his
creatures the same measure of perfection and blessedness.? God there-
fore is to be originally contemplated as the fountain of a world of spir-
its, allied to his own nature, blessed in their communion with him, the
members of which were all homogeneous and equal. In the second
book of his work περὲ ἀρχῶν, he so expresses himself, as if he considered
not only all difference m the measure of powers and of blessedness, but
all differences in individual existence generally, as a thing which was
not original, but which resulted in the first mstance from the difference
1 Quis dives salv. ο. 21.
2 Strom. lib. I. f. 313.
8 Ritter, in his Christlichen Philosophie,
Bd. 1. 5.917, maintains, that, at the founda-
tion of Origen’s doctrine, lies the thought,
“ that created spirits in the outset did not ac-
tually partake of the good and of the perfect,
but had simply received the faculty for all
good. Their connate perfection consisted
in this.” But such a thought would cer-
tainly imply the notion of a development
from a lower stage, — a progressive and
graduated movement from the imperfect to
the perfect; and it is evident hhow utterly
this view clashes with the system of Origen.
Origen does in truth conceive the perfect as
the original state ; — traces all imperfection
to a fall, involving guilt because it was an
act of freedom; and regards, as the final
end, the restoration of the omginal state, and
not the complete development of the capa-
cities bestowed at the creation. This simply
is the thought lying at the basis of his sys-
tem, — that the rational spirit should main-
tain, by freedom as its property, the perfec-
tion bestowed on it already by the creation ;
and, having lost it, should recover it again
by freedom ; — that the fellowship with God,
the source of all good in the rational creature,
is not coercive, but can be preserved only by
virtue of a free appropriation, and can be
acquired again only by the same means.
This is among the points, too, which essen-
tially distinguish the doctrine of Origen
from that of Clement.
622 DOCTRINE CONCERNING HUMAN NATURE.
in the moral bent of the will. According to this, Origen would have
held the original creation to be one of beings perfectly equal and only
numerically different ; and would have regarded all mdividual peculi-
arities as a consequence of estrangement from God. A very narrow
conception of the creation, we must allow, viewed in relation to the in-
finite being of God; but in a characteristic manner does Origen here
show how, in opposition to the Gnosticism and Platonism, by w which he
was at other times governed, the Christian point of view, though but
partially seized by him. predominates im his way of thinking, and how
he places over against the hypothesis of a natural necessity, the moral
point of view, as the highest position, by which everything else must be
determined.}
Already in Origen’s predecessor, Clement, it may be perceived how
the pushing to an extreme of one Christian momentum, the doctrine of
freedom, seized to the exclusion of the other, the pushing of this
doctrine to an extreme, in opposition to the Gnostic distinction of na-
tures, could lead to such a result as that is, where he supposes it neces-
sary to ascribe whatever there was which distinguished the apostles
from other men, not to a peculiar nature bestowed on them by God,
but all to the merit of the right direction of their own will. According
to his opinion, they did not become such, because they were chosen to
be such by God; but they were chosen to their office by God, because
he foreknew what they would become by the direction of their own will.
In proof of this position, Clement adduces the fact, that Judas Iscariot
was also one among the apostles, that Matthias, in consideration of his
worthiness, was afterwards received into the number of the apostles in
place of Judas.2. It was only necessary to carry out this one-sided
view, — which was diametrically opposed to the doctrine of absolute
predetermination and divine decrees, and by which the significance of
any distinction of nature given by creation itself was utterly denied,
and everything here derived solely from moral worth, — to its legiti-
mate consequences, in order to be driven on from the position of Cle-
ment, to the system which Origen carried to its completion.
It may have been the case, however, that at some later period, Origen
retracted this hypothesis, as he did many other immature ideas which he
had brought to view in that work of speculative dogmatism. At least, he
Says, In a passage belonging to a later work,® that the Son of God is the
universal brightness of God’s glory, but that scattered beams of his
glory were spread over the rest of the rational creation, since no cre-
ated being could contain the whole of the glory of God; in which it
would seem to be implied, that what in the Logos is one and the same,
In Matt. T.
1 The importance of the free will, as con- ἢ ἐν τοῖς μεταξὺ τυγχάνειν.
nected with all spiritual development, Origen
describes in the following words : "En? μὲν
TOV σωμώτων οὐ παρὰ τὴν αἰτίαν τοὺ ἀνϑρώ-
που, ἀλλὰ παρὰ τοὺς σπερματικοὺς λόγους, ὃ
μέν τις ἐστὶ βραχὺς καὶ μικρὸς, ὁ δὲ μέγας,
ὁ δὲ μεταξὺ" ἐπὶ δὲ τῶν ψυχῶν καὶ ἐφ᾽’ ἡμῖν
καὶ αἱ τοιαίδε πράξεις καὶ τὸ τοιοῦτον ἦνϑος
τὴν αἰτίαν ἔχει τοῦ μέγαν τινὰ εἶναι ἢ μικρὸν
ΧΠΙ. § 26.
2 Οὐχ ὅ ὅτι ἧσαν ἐκλεκτοὶ γενόμενοι ἀποστολοι
κατά τι φύσεων ἰδίωμα, ἐπεὶ ὁ Ἰούδας ἐξελέγη
σὺν αὐτοῖς, ἀλλ᾽ οἱοίτε ἦσαν ἀπόστολοι γενέσ-
ϑαι ἐκλεγέντες πρὸς τοῦ καὶ τὰ τέλη προορωωυέ-
νου. Strom. |. VI. f. 667.
3JIn Joann. T. XXXII. § 18.
ORIGEN. 625
unfolds itself in the rest of the world of spirits into a manifoldness of
individual natures, of which each reflects and represents the glory
of God in his own peculiar way, so that only the collective sum of all
these individuals would correspond to the glory of God in the Logos.
This must doubtless have been the case, if Origen had clearly opened
out to his own mind all that is contained in the thought which he ex-
pressed; but it may be questioned, if he ever did this. He seems,
in one passage of the same commentary on John from which the passage
just alluded to is taken, to consider it as the final end of this evolution,
that all the rational beings conducted back by the Logos to a perfect
communion with God, would have but one common employment, — that
of the intuition of God; and that, fashioned through the knowledge of
the Father, they would know as completely what the Son is, as at pre-
sent only the Son has known the Father.!_ But since, according to the
system of Origen, all things are, by that final consummation,* to be
once more restored to their original condition, it seems to follow, accord-
ing to the same system, that such a state of equality and unity was the
one which originally existed.
Origen argued still further: God alone is by his own nature good;
all created beings, on the contrary, are, and continue to be, good only by
virtue of. their fellowship with the original fountain of all good, the Lo-
gos. As soon as the desire arises in any rational bemg to be something
for himself, evil exists. ‘‘ What has become goodness,” says Origen,’
‘¢cannot be in like manner good as that which is goodness by its own
essence. It can never be wanting, however, to him who, for its preser-
vation, receives into himself the so-called living bread. Whoever fails
‘of obtaining it, fails by his own fault; since he neglects to partake of
the living bread and of the true water, wherewith, nourished and
refreshed, the wings grow.”’* Evil is the only thing which has the
ground of its existence in itself, and not ἴῃ God. Which, therefore,
generally, is grounded in no being, but is nothing else than an estrange-
ment from the true being, that which has only a subjective and no ob-
jective existence, that which is in itself nothing.® Hence he says:
1Jn Joann. T. I.§ 16. See also the pas-
sage in Matth. T. X. § 2. f. 207: “ Then the
righteous will no longer shine in different
ways, as at the beginning; but all will shine
significance. The μὴ ὄν here is, according
to his view, rather privative than negative.
See in Joann. T. II. § 7: Οἱ μετέχοντες
τοῦ ὄντος, μετέχουσι δὲ οἱ ἅγιοι, εὐλόγως ἂν
like one sun in the kingdom of their Father.”
Matth. 13: 43. (Τότε μάλιστα οἱ δίκαιοι λάμ-
ψουσιν οὐκέτι διαφόρως, ὡς κατὰ τὰς ἀρχὰς,
ἀλλὰ πάντες εἷς ἥλιος.) Yet this passage of
Origen could be understood as referring
barely to an equality of moral condition
and blessedness.
2 The ἀποκατάστασις.
3 ¢. Cels. 1. VI. c. 44.
4 An allusion to the Myth in Plato’s Phee-
drus respecting the wings of the soul.
5 To Plato’s metaphysical idea of μὴ ὄν
(according to which, if we get a clear notion
of it, evil is necessary as a limit to the evo-
lution of life; and, consequently, the idea
of evil, as to its moral import, is virtually
annulled,) Origen gave more of a moral
ὄντες χρηματίζοιεν - οἱ δὲ ἀποστραφέντες "τὴν
τοῦ ὄντος μετοχὴν, τῷ ἐστερῆσϑαι τοῦ ὄντος,
γεγόνασιν οὐκ ὄντες. Hence I cannot ad-
mit at all the correctness of what Ritter says
in his Geschichte der Christlichen Philoso-
phie. Bd. 1. § 524, concerning Origen’s
theory: “ A limitation of this sort, in which
created spirits originally exist, might per-
haps be regarded by Origen as an element of
evil or impurity in them, since he considered
evil generally to be simply a defect of good-
ness.” Such a view is wholly at variance
with the theory of Origen, who thought it
of so much importance to define evil as a
thing which has its ground in no natural
necessity, but which is derivable only from
an act of the free will. The notions of im
624 _ DOCTRINE CONCERNING HUMAN NATURE.
“<The assertion of the Gnostics, that Satan is no creature of God,! has
some foundation in truth; namely, to this extent, that while Satan is —
indeed a creature of God in respect to his nature, he is not so as
Satan.” 2
The will of the spirits, who were enjoying the blessedness of a divine
life, having become estranged from God, the original unity was now dlis-
solved ; a disharmony arose, which could only be restored back to unity
after a long process of purification and culture. The soul of the world
is nothing other than the power and wisdom of God, which is able to
combine these great moral differences into one living whole, and which
pervades and animates the universe, subjecting all dissonances to a
higher law.®
The corporeal world was brought into existence and constituted with
a view to this end, that the spirits which had become incapable of the
purely spiritual, divine life, might be brought to a consciousness of
their estrangement from God, and of their culpable misery ; that the
craving might be awakened in them after a restoration of their fellow-
ship with the divine Fountain of Good; that they might become more
and more purified by conflict. The matter lying at the ground of the
corporeal world is the undetermined element, destitute of all proper-
ties, which receives first, from the plastic hand of Omnipotence, a cer-
tain form and pressure, and that, varying according as bodies of a
higher or lower order, ethereal or more gross, in manifold gradations,
are formed out of it. Thus arise manifold gradations, from the spirit-
ual to the sensuous, corresponding to the different stages of fallen
beings. There exist intelligences, which were united in a freer man-
perfection and of moral evil are, according
to his doctrine, to be carefully distinguished.
God, it is true, is the holy, good being, in a
sense in which no creature can be so called
(see Τ. Il. in Matth. § 10); but moral evil
is not an original element, but is to be traced
only to a voluntary apostacy from God.
The μὴ ὄν is not to be considered as a defect
cleaving to creaturely existence, but as a
voluntary alienation from the ov.
1 See Part IL.
2J%n Joann. T. II. § 7.
ὃ Tept ἀρχῶν, 1. II. e. 1. :
£ In the ἔνυλος κόσμος is to be distinguished
ὕλη lying at the ground, and the λόγος ὁ κοσ-
ὠῶν τὴν ὕλην. In Joann. T. XIX. ὁ 5.
5 We here encounter a difficult question ;
viz. whether Origen supposed, that from the
beginning the ὕλη also was brought into
existence, together with the world of spirits,
as a necessary limit for the creature, 50 that
the creaturelv spirit must of necessity be
always provided with a materia] organiza-
tion, which, corresponding only to the stage
of moral perfection, would be of a higher or
lower order; or, whether he traced the first
origin of matter, and of the material world
itself, to the fall. If we confined ourselves
to a passage in the work “περὶ ἀρχῶν, we
should be under the necessity of considering
the former position as the doctrine of Origen.
The remarkable passage (1. II. c. 2. § 2) runs
as follows: “ Principaliter quidem creatas
esse rationales naturas, materialem vero
substantiam opinione quidem et intellectu
solum separari ab eis et pro ipsis vel post
ipsas effectam videri, sed nunquam sine ipsa
eos vel vixisse vel vivere.” From this, we
should be led to represent the subject as
Ritter understands it; namely, that the
conception of matter arises simply from an
abstraction of the sum total constituting the
creaturely existence; tbat it is nothing else
than the objective conception of the limit of
creaturely existence, of that which forms the
boundary of individual existence, — just as
the Platonists taught, that the conception of
matter could be apprehended only by the
λόγος νόϑος. And it is very certain, that
the antithesis between body and spirit van-
ishes, to our apprehension, if we think of
the manifold gradations in the attributes or
properties stamped on the ὕλη, and by ab-
straction go back to the undetermined some-
what which lies at the ground of all these;
μένειν τὸ ὑλικὸν, τῶν ποιοτήτων μεταβαλλου-
σῶν εἰς ἀφϑαρσίαν. In Joann. T. XIII. § 59.
This would harmonize with his doctrine
concerning the transfigured organization
after the resurrection, which rests doubtless
re
"ἡ ὠὰ eee
ORIGEN. 625
ner with an organic form of higher character, for the purpose of co-
operating with and assisting the other fallen spirits, — those intelligen-
ces residing in the planets,! which administer a painful service of love,
yearning after the time of the universal restoration, when, hghtened
of this burden, they should be raised once more to a state of existence,
emancipated and delivered from all that is sensuous ;— the earnest
expectation denoted'in Rom. 8: 19.2 According to Origen’s doctrine,
these higher intelligences owe it to their own free will alone, to their
own merit, that they occupy this elevated rank in the creation; that
they are united in this freer manner with the corporeal world, and
have received such an organization of higher, transfigured, more ethe-
real mould. The question may now arise, did Origen regard these
beings as those which had no share in the first fall, but, by reason of
their unalterable fidelity to the Creator, had entitled themselves to this
place in the universe ? In this case, he would suppose that, by virtue
of the free direction of their own will, some among the rational exist-
ences’ had persevered in goodness, others swerved from it; but that
those also who had remained steadfast must enter into some sort of con-
nection with the corporeal world, — not as though they were bound to
do so, but because they chose to subject themselves to this connection,
in order to subserve the good of the other fallen beings. Hence the
more do they long for that period when, the end of the universal pur'-
fication having been attained, they too shall be released from this bur-
densome service. Or perhaps— and the doctrine set forth in the work
περὶ ἀρχῶν is certainly more favorable to this view of the matter —
Origen considered these intelligences, not as those who had remained
wholly unaffected by the general defection of the creaturely existence,
but simply as those which had taken the least share in it, and which
on the same general foundation, and with
his doctrine concerning the transfigured,
ethereal bodies of the angels; τὰ τῶν dyyé-
λων σώματα αἰϑέρια καὶ αὐγοειδὲς φῶς. In
Matth. T. XVII. § 30. And to the souls of
the planets, he ascribes a σῶμα αἰϑέριον καὶ
καϑαρώτατον. De orat.c. 7. In this case,
we must, with Ritter, consider that mode of
expression as a strictly scientific one, to
which everything else in the sense of Origen
should be referred. Where, on the other
hand, he speaks of a production of matter
which ensuedat some later period, it must be
explained as a case in which he descends
from the strictly scientific position, and ac-
commodates himself toa more popular mode
of thinking — leaves the position of the
γνῶσις for that of the πίστις. But we very
much doubt, whether we are warranted to
ascribe to Origen a speculative theory of this
sort, so rigidly carried out, and uniformly
adhered to. We cannot believe there is
any good reason for explaining all his asser-
tions belonging to a later period, and seem-
ing to contradict what is here affirmed,
according to the theory set forth in the work
περὶ ἀρχῶν; for it is plain, how —in the
case of a man in whose mode of thinking
VOL. I. 53
speculative elements, borrowed from other
quarters, and derived from Christianity,
came together — he might easily be led to
retract, at some later period, many things
which he Had presented in this first essay
at a speculative system of doctrines. In
this work itself, he rather puts down the
matter as problematical, than decides on it
with confidence. In Joann. T. I. ὁ 17, —
where indeed he also expresses himself. not
in a positive manner, but in the form: dvay-
Kaiov ἐπιστῆσαι el, —he distinguishes from
every corporeal existence, even from every
free connection with an organization of
transfigured mould, an ἄῦλος πάντῃ καὶ ἀσώ-
ματος Cum, as the original one. ἀπά, in
Joann. T. XIX. § 5, he opposes this later
formed corporeal world to the 1 mi νοητός,
subsisting alone: ᾿Αλλὰ καὶ ὁ δεικνύμενος
κόσμος ὑλικὸς γενόμενος διὰ τοὺς δεηϑέντας
τῆς ἐνύλου ζωῆς τύπους μὲν ἔχει διαφόρους,
οἵτινες δὴ πάντες, ὡς μὲν πρὸς τὰ ἄῦδλα καὶ τὰ
ἀσώματα, κάτω εἰσὶν, οὐξτόσον τῷ τόπῳ ὅσον.
τῇ πρὸς τὰ ἀόρατα συγκρίσει. And he says,
that the formation of the κόσμος ἔνυλος is de-
scribed not without reason as a καταβολῆ
1 See above, p. 392.
2 See e. g. de Martyr. § 7.
§26 DOCTRINE CONCERNING HUMAN NATURE.
then, by virtue of this their direction of will, whereby, at least, they
distinguished themselves from the rest, obtained this position in the unt-
verse. But if this is his train of thought, Origen takes away from free
will with one hand, what he gives to it with the other; for, in this
case, the free will no longer constitutes the difference between the
beings who persevered in goodness and those who fell from it, but only
between those who deviated to a greater or to a less extent ; and moral
evil appears in this case as something necessary in the creaturely ex-
istence, — at least in a certain degree, —as a necessary point of tran-
sition.
We see before us only a fragment of the great course of the world,
which embraces in it all moral diversities, together with all the conse-
quences thence resulting, up to their entire removal at the general con-
summation : —hence our defective, limited Theodicee.1
From the doctrine of Origen it necessarily followed, that human
souls were originally the same in kind with all higher spirits; that the.
difference between the former and the latter, and between the former
compared with each other, proceeded only from a diversity in the moral
bent of the will of the several individuals; that accordingly all souls
are fallen heavenly beings. All consciousness in time, which moves be-
tween the antithesis of subject and object, and the understanding which
is directed to things finite, only grew out of the estrangement from
that unity of the divine life, which is the life of immediate intuition ;
and it is the soul’s destination that, after having become purified, it
should rise once more to that life which consists in the pure, imme-
diate intuition of God; or, since the life of the spirit was changed to a
life of the soul by the quenching of that heavenly fire, that the soul
should be once more transfigured into spirit.?
His theory of the preéxistence of the soul is opposed to the doctrine
of the Creationists, who taught that each individual soul is formed by
an immediate creative act of God —a doctrme which seemed to him
irreconcilable with the love and the justice of God, which extend equal-
ly to all his creatures — and also to Tertullian’s traduction system —
a doctrme which he regarded as too crass and sensual. That he might
hold on upon his peculiar speculative theory concerning the origin of
souls without seeming to interfere with the doctrines of the church, he
insisted, as he had done in defending his theory of a creation ante-
cedent to the creation of this temporal world, that these were points
which, by the church doctrine, had been left undecided.
But on the doctrine concerning an adherent corruption of human
nature, he could express himself precisely after the same manner with
the teachers of the North-African church ; he could speak of a mystery
of the birth,! owing to which every individual that comes into the world
needs purification ; and in defence of this he might appeal to the same
texts of scripture which were adduced by others in support of the doc-
1 Homil. IV. in Jes. § 1. ψυχὴ κατορϑωϑεῖσα γίνεται νοῦς. II. apx.
2 Tapa τὴν ἀπόπτωσιν καὶ τὴν ψύξιν τὴν 1. 11]. ο. 8. - Compare the similar view of the
ἀπὸ τοῦ ζῆν τῷ πνεύματι γέγονεν ἡ νῦν yevo- Gnostics above.
μένη ψυχῆ" νοῦς πῶς οὖν γέγονε ψυχὴ, καὶ 3 Μυστῆριον τῆς γενέσεως
ORIGEN. 097
trine of original sin. He had only to trace this condition of human
nature to another source ; namely, to the personal guilt of each fallen
heavenly spirit, m an earlier state of existence. And consequently
this corruption could not, according to Origen’s theory, be the same in
all; but the degree of it depended on the degree of the earlier guilt.
Although he considered Adam to be a true, historical person, yet he
could regard him in no other light than as the first incarnate soul which
had fallen from the heavenly state of existence. Like the Gnostics, he
must give a symbolical explanation to the narrative concerning Para-
dise ; which he represented as the symbol of a higher spiritual world,
Adam being the type of mankind at large, of all fallen souls.!
in his work περὶ ἀρχῶν, Origen — agreeing here too with the Plato-
nists and with many of the Gnostics— had admitted the doctrine, at
least, as one which could not be directly disproved, that fallen souls
might, through total degeneracy, smk down even to the bodies of
brutes.2 But as his system differed essentially from the Neo-Platonic,
in giving predominance to the moral, teleological point of view peculiar
to Christianity, he must have been ultimately led, as this pomt of view
became more clearly fixed m his mind, to reject altogether the doctrine
of such a transmigration of souls, as bemg inconsistent with that end of
purification which presupposes the continuance of conciousness.? His
doctrme, answermg to the ethzco-teleological pomt of view, concerning
the process of the soul’s purification prosecuted to the result of its final
restoration, forms rather the direct opposite to the hypothesis of a eir-
cle of metempsychoses, which grew out of the predominant habit of judg-
ing spiritual things after the analogy of Nature.‘
Origen, like the Gnostics, placed in man’s fallen nature three prin-
ciples, the σαρκικόν, the ψυχικόν, and the πνευματικόν - and also supposed
three different stages or positions of human nature corresponding to
these principles. But he differed from them in one essential point.
As he acknowledged all human souls to be the same in kind, so he held
that each and eyery one of them is possessed of the same principles ;
and consequently he represented the different stages as resulting, not
from any original difference of natures, but from the predominance of
some one or other of those principles occasioned by the different bent
of the will. The spirit (πνεῦμα) is the highest element im man’s na-
ture, that which is immediately divine, that whereby man is connected
with a higher order of things—the organ through which alone he is
capable of understanding divine things. It is not liable to be affected
by sm, or to be corrupted or alloyed by anything foreign. Nothing
evil, nothing but what is divine, can proceed from 1.5 It can retire
1¢, Cels. 1. IV. ὁ 40: Οὐχ οὕτως περὶ ἑνός
τινος. ὡς περὶ ὅλου τοῦ γένους ταῦτα φώσκον-
το. τοῦ ϑείου λόγου. It is reconcilable with
this, that Origen, in’ speaking of Adam on
other occasions, expressed himself wholly
after the manner of the church, as in Joann.
T.J.§ 22; T. XIII. § 34. He might un-
derstand the language in his own sense,
espceially in homilies, where the gnosis did
not properly belong. Hom. XIV. in Jerem.
2 See the Greek fragment π᾿ dpy. 1. 1.
Orig. ed. de la Rue T. I. f. 76.
3 See c. Cels. 1. IIL. ο. 76, II. 16, in Jerem.
where he speaks of metempsychosis in a
parabolical sense, carefully guarding against
the misconception which would arise from
taking his language literally.
4 [ Von vorherrschender Naturanschauung
ausgehenden Annahme.|
δ ᾿Ανεπίδεκτον τῶν χειρόνων τὸ πνεῦμα. In
Joann. T. XXXII. § 11.
625 DOCTRINE CONCERNING HUMAN NATURE.
wholly out of view and become dormant only through man’s guilt, —
only where it is hindered from revealing itself and from acting by the
predominance of sense, of the lower faculties of the soul, of the worldly
temper. In what the Apostle Paul says concerning an opposition be-
tween the works of the flesh and the works of the spirit, Origen finds a
confirmation of his opinion — since he refers the latter to the spirit m
man, as contra-distinguished from the flesh, — the active principle in all
that is good.!_ The reaction of the inward presentiment of God and of
conscience against ungodliness, he derives from this πνεῦμα. There is
here revealed a commanding, judging, punishing power, superior to the
soul itself.2 Those men in whom the soul surrenders itself entirely to
the guidance of this πνεῦμα, those in whom this faculty is predomi-
nant, are hence denominated spiritual men, πνευματικοί. In the case
of such, the true saints, the unity of the whole life is grounded on the
fact of its being determined by this πνεῦμα, ---- this is the governmg prin-
ciple of their whole life. Living in the spirit, all they do and suffer
proceeds from this—it is this which gives their conduct its true im-
port and significancy.t From this point of view, Origen ought to have
been led to see,— for it seems to lie at. the basis of all that is here
said, — that it is by this unity grounded in the godlike alone, the essence,
the destination of human nature can find its completion, its fulfilment,
— that the true end of man consists in this very thmg. Yet he says,
that where Paul opposes the πνευματικός to the ψυχικός (1 Cor. 2: 14,
16,) he describes the latter only, and not the former, as men ; —-since
man consists of body and soul, but the πνευματικός is more than man.°
And this form of expression is not a mere isolated exaggeration, pos-
sessing no farther significance in relation to the fundamental principles
of his theology; but it stands closely connected with that ground-ten-
dency described by us above, by virtue of which Origen, both im theory
and in practice, was inclined to regard the godlike not as the truly hu-
man element, but as something superhuman, — a tendency in which we
recognized the reaction of a principle belonging to the old world,®
which remained yet to be vanquished by Christianity. And connected
1 Τὰ κάλλιστα καρποὶ λέγονται εἷναι τοῦ
πνεύματος, οὐχ ὡς ἂν οἰηϑείη τις, τοῦ ἁγίου,
ἀλλὰ τοῦ ἀνϑρώπου.
2Τη his commentary on Romans, I. II.
where Origen refers what Paul says con-
cerning conscience to the workings of this
πνεῦμα, he expresses himself, according to
Jerome’s translation, as follows: Quia ergo
tantam ejus video libertatem, que in bonis
quidem gestis gaudeat semper et exsultet,
in malis vero non arguatur, sed ipsam ani-
mam, cui cohzret, reprehendat et arguat,
arbitror, quod ipse sit spiritus, qui ab apos-
tolo esse cum animo dicitur, velut peda-
gogus et quidam sociatus et rector, ut eam’
de melioribus moneat vel de culpis castiget
et arguat. Ed. Lomm. T. VI. p. 107.
8 Od κατὰ μετοχὴν ἐπικρατοῦσαν χρηματίζει
ὁ πνευματικός. In Joann. T. II. § 15.
1 Ὡς yap ὁ ἅγιος ζῇ πνεύματι, TooKaTap-
χοντι τῶν ἐν τῷ ζῇν καὶ πάσης πράξεως καὶ
εὐχῆς καὶ τοῦ πρὸς ϑεὸν ὕμνου, οὕτως πᾶν ὅ, τι
ποτ᾽ ἂν ποιῇ, ποιεῖ πνεύματι, ἀλλὰ κἂν πάσχῃ,
πάσχει πνεύματι. In Joann. T. XXXII. ὁ 11.
5 Ἡμεῖς γὰρ οὐ μάτην αὐτόν [the Apostle
Paul] φαμεν ἐπὶ τοῦ πνευματικοῦ μὴ Tpoc-
τεϑεικέναι τὸ ἄνϑρωπος, κρεῖττον γὰρ ἢ ἄν-
ϑρωπος ὁ πνευματικὸς, τοῦ ἤτοι ἐν ψυχῇ ἢ ἐν
σώματι ἢ ἐν συναμφοτέροις χαρακτηοιζομένου"
οὐχὶ δὲ καὶ ἐν τῷ τούτων ϑειοτέρῳ πνεύματι;
ΤῈ yn
6 Thus Aristotle (Ethic. Nicomach. X. 7)
places the contemplative life as the divine,
answering to the godlike in man, above the
practical, which he considers to be the purely
human: εἰ ϑεῖον ὁ νοῦς πρὸς τὸν ἄνϑρωπον,
καὶ ὁ κατὰ τοῦτον βίος ϑεῖος πρὸς τὸν ἀνϑρώ-
πινον βίον, and yet he says of the νοῦς : ravTs
μάλιστα ἄνϑρωπος.
ORIGEN. 029
with this severance of the πνεῦμα from the ψυχῆ, as the purely human
element, is his doctrine, that those im whom the ψυχῆ surrendered itself
to the guidance of the πνεῦμα, would persevere in the unity of this exist-
ence animated by the πνεῦμα, and rise in the perfected state of their
essence, when thoroughly penetrated by the πνεῦμα, to a higher life af-
ter death ; but those in whom the ψυχῇ always resisted the πνεῦμα, would
after death be forsaken by the latter, which would return to God from
whom it came, while they themselves, separated from the πνεῦμα, would
be given up to woe ;4—a doctrine which it is very difficult to reconcile
with Origen’s idea of a purifying process gomg on after death, and of
the universal restoration as the final end of all things. For the rest,
he ascribed to this πνεῦμα ----- as we might presume he would do, from his
idea, already unfolded, respecting the relation of the rational bemg to
God, —no autonomy —no independent self-subsistence, but regarded it
as the organ destined to receive into itself and to represent the workings
of the Divine Spirit. The πνεῦμα in man can be active, according to his
doctrine, only by being connected with the Divine Spiit.?
As Origen, then, supposed a threefold division of human nature, so
he distinguished three different stages of moral development; accord-
ing as the πνεῦμα, the ψυχή, or the σάρξ, predominated. The second stage,
where the personal J, estranged from God, is uppermost, and at the
same time there may be a certam dominion over sense, — where the
soul follows its egoistic inclinations, — is the stage of a certam merely
worldly cultivation, of an intelligent Egoism, where no enthusiasm for
moral goodness impels the man, nor yet does moral evil break out mto
any rude expressions,— where the man, as Origen expresses it, is
neither cold nor hot. This stage does, it is true, in itself considered,
hold the middle place between the two others; yet it might be asked,
from which point the way is easiest to atta the divine life. Origen
brings up the question, whether the σαρκικός (the carnal man) might not
be more easily led than the ψυχικός (the spiritual man) to conviction of
sin, and thereby to true conversion.? Connected with this is Origen’s
idea, that as a wise physician will sometimes call forth the elements of
disease lurking in the body, and by means of his art cause other disor-
ders to arise, that so these elements of disease which threatened to de-
stroy the entire organism may be expelled; so God places men in
situations where the evil lurking in their nature is called forth to open
activity, in order that they may be thus brought to the consciousness
of their moral disorder, and of its destructive effects, and so be the
more easily and radically healed.*
1 We can here cite passages only from
works which have been preserved to us in
Latin transiations; the fidelity of which,
however, on these points, we have no reason
to suspect. Commentar. ep. ad Rom. 1. 11.
ce. 9, p. 108,ed. Lomm. Hic ipse spiritus
est, qui cohzret animabus justorum. Si
vero inobediens ei anima et contumax fuerit,
dividetur ab ea post excessum. Commen-
tar. series in Matth. c. 62, T. IV. p. 352, ed.
Lomm.
53*
In this sense, he explains the
2 In Matt. T. XIII. § 2: Ἕτερον εἶναι τὸ
τοῦ ϑεοῦ πνεῦμα, Kav ἐν ἡμῖν ἢ, Tapa τὸ πνεῦμα
ἑκάστου ἀνϑρώπου τὸ ἐν αὐτῷ: which latter
he here also distinguishes from the ψυχῆ.
8 Περὶ ἀρχῶν, |. III. ο. 4.
4 See de orat. c. 29, and the fragment of the
commentary on Exod. c. 10: 27 ; in the 26th
chapter of the φιλοκαλία, and in the 2d vol. ed.
de la Rue, f. 111. “Ὥσπερ ἐπί τινων σωματικῶν
παϑημάτων, εἰς βάϑος Tov, iv” οὕτως εἴπω,
κεχωρηκότος κακοῦ, ὁ ἰατρὸς εἰς τὴν ἐπιφάνειαι
630 DOCTRINE CONCERNING HUMAN NATURE.
scriptural expression, God hardens the heart, and others of the like
import.
oe the self-determination of the creaturely free will as the
original ground of all the diversities existing among rational beings,
Origen supposed it was likewise this which conditions the whole subse-
quent process of purification and development, including all the stadia
up to the final goal of the restoration.’ Accordingly, it is with him an_
important point to define the notions of God’s foreknowledge, and of
predestination as contradistinguished from the doctrine of an εἱμαρμένη,
or of an unconditional necessity. He teaches, that God arranged the
plan of the universe after having taken into view all the different bents
of will, and all the possibilities of which they were the condition? He
distinguishes, in moral evil, an objective and a subjective necessity.
Although moral evil, when it once exists, must exhibit itself in certain
determinate forms, yet it is not therefore necessary that this or that
determinate evil should be brought about by this or that particular
individual.?
It must be quite clear already, from the exposition of Origen’s doc-
trine respecting the relation of the spiritual world to God, and of the
spirit (πνεῦμα ) m man to the Holy Spirit, (πνεῦμα ἅγιον.) how grace and
free will are, in his system, made to harmonize with each other. In
conformity with this, he says: “As the good thrift of husbandry re-
quires the coming together of two factors, the husbandman’s own activi-
ty and the blessing of God; so, in order to goodness in rational beings,
there must be their own free will and the power of God, to uphold .the
zood purpose. But our own free will and the divine assistance are
both necessary, not only to become good, but also in order to perseve-
rance in virtue, when once attained ;— since even the perfect man
would fall, if he became proud of his goodness, and ascribed it to him-
self, — if he failed to give the honor which is due, to Him who bestowed
on him all by which he was chiefly enabled both to attain to virtue, and
to persevere in it.°
It may be gathered, then, from what has offered itself to our notice
as the views held in common by all in the Anthropology of this period,
that not only —as was the case also among the Gnostics — the
acknowledgment of a Redeemer found its point of attachment im the
universally expressed need of redemption, but that also — which consti-
tuted the difference between the church and the Gnostic Anthropology
—human nature was on no side supposed to be so beset with moral
evil, as to exclude the possibility of a complete appropriation of it by
the Redeemer. Hence, from the very first, the church consciousness
developed itself in antagonism with Docetism under all its forms and
διά τινων φαρμάκων ἔλκει καὶ ἐπισπᾶται τὴν
ὕλην, φλεγμονὰς χαλεπὰς ἐμποιῶν καὶ διοιδῆ-
δεις καί πόνους πλείονας ὧν εἶχε τις, οὕτως
οἶμαι καὶ τὸν ϑεὸν οἰκονομεῖν τὴν κρύφιον
κακίαν εἰς τὸ βώϑος κεχωρηκυίαν τῆς ψυχῆς.
T. VIII. p. 305, ed. Lomm.
1 Tov ϑεὸν ἑκάστην οἰκονομεῖν ψυχὴν, ado-
ρῶντα εἰς τὴν ἀΐδιον αὐτῆς ζωὴν, ἀεὶ ἔχουσαν
τὸ αὐτεξούσιον. De orat. ὃ 29
2 See the commentary on Genesis.
8 ᾿Ανάγκη ἐστὶ, ταῦτα ἐλϑεῖν, οὐκ ἀνάγκη
δὲ διὰ τοῦδέ τινος. In Matth. T. XIII. § 22.
- 4 πὸ τοῦ λογικοῦ ἀγαϑὸν μικτόν ἐστιν ἔκ τε
τῆς προαιρέσεως αὐτοῦ καὶ τῆς συμπνεούσης
ϑεΐας δυνάμεως τῷ τὰ κάλλιστα προελομένῳ.
5 From the commentary on ¥. IV. Philo-
cal. c. 24. Ed. Lomm. T. XI. p. 450.
ORIGEN. TERTULLIAN. 6051"
degrees. Thus this anti-Docetic tendency is strongly marked in such
passages of the epistles ascribed to Ignatius, as, by their stamp of an-
tiquity, form a decided contrast to the prevailing tone of these letters.
It is here said of the Docetze, im an original way: ‘‘ They who would
make nothing but a spectre of Christ, are themselves like spectres —
spectral men.” ! And Tertullian says to the Docetz: ‘“ How is it,
that you make the half of Christ a he? He was all truth.” 2 “ You
are offended,” says he in another place,’ “ when the child is nourished
and fondled in the uncleanliness of its swaddling-clothes. This rever-
ence shown to nature you despise — and how were you born yourself?
Christ, at least, loved man in this condition. For his sake, he came
down from above ; for his sake, he submitted to every sort of degrada-
tion, to death itself. In loving man, he loved even his birth, even his
flesh.”’
In opposition no less to Docetism, which objected to Christ in the
form of a servant, which would receive only a ‘glorified Christ, than to
the esthetic Paganism, which idolized the beautiful,’ the person of our
Saviour was represented as being without form or comeliness, as that
of one whose outward appearance contradicted the glory within; — a
notion which was based partly on a passage in the 53d chapter of Isaiah,
too literally understood, and partly on misinterpreted passages in the
gospels. Tertullian says:° ‘This was the very thing which excited
meu’s wonder as to everything else in him, when they said, Whence
hath this man this wisdom and these mighty works? The exclamation
comes from men who thought they might despise his form.” ®
If we here compare Tertullian with the Alexandrians, we see at once
the great advantage which the former, from deriving everything solely
from his own Christian consciousness, possessed over the latter, with
whose notions other elements of a foreign culture had been blended.
His characteristic trait was that of a vigorous, Christian realism. We
have remarked already, in contemplating the Gnostic systems, what a
close connection subsisted between the peculiar essence of the Christian
system of morals, and the views entertained concerning the person and
life of Christ. The intuition of Christ’s life was destined to give birth
to a new ethical standard, — from this was to proceed forth the pecu-
har principle of the Christian system of morals. But in those cases
where the ethical principle itself was adulterated by the influence of
other standards conjoined with the Christian, this corruption reacted
also on the views entertained concerning the person and life of Christ ;
—as we have seen, indeed, in the case of the Gnostics;—and the
same thing may be remarked in the case of Clement of Alexandria.
Founding his judgment on that moral system which demanded an abso-
lute estrangement from all human feelings, and which made Neo-Pla-
tonic philosophers, and other ascetics of that period, ashamed of their
1 Αὐτοὶ τὸ δοκεῖν ὄντες ἀσώματοι καὶ dat- 4 See vol. I. the Introduction.
uovixoi. Ep. ad Smyrn. § 2. 5 De carne Christi, ¢. 9.
2 Quid dimidias mendacio Christum 1 6 Nec humane honestatis corpus fuit, ne-
Totus veritas fuit. De carne Christi,c.5. dum celestis claritatis.
Si.'c. c. 14. ;
»
632 HUMAN NATURE OF CHRIST.
own bodies, he was incapable of understanding the revelation of the
divine life in the purely human form, as it was presented in the person
of Christ. Instead of the purely human character, he was for the super-
human. Christ was to represent the Ideal of estrangement from sense,
of a life wholly independent of sense ; not to be affected by sensuous im-
pressions ; by wants, as hunger and thirst, by feelings of pam, by agreeable
or disagreeable sensations —the ideal of a perfect tnaSem, Ag the
Logos became man, he must, in his essence, be superior to such things ;
and so the genuine Ghostio, in imitation of him, should strive, by the
efforts of his will, to attain toa similar apathy. He says character-
istically: “ It would be absurd to suppose, that in the case of our Sa-
viour, the body, as such, required the necessary services for its support ;
he ate, not for the body’s sake, for this was preserved by a holy power.””!
Now this principle might have led him to a Docetism of his own. The
contemplation of Christ, as he is presented in the gospel history, exer-
cised, however, too great a power over him, — the historical truth was
a thing of too much weight with him, to allow him to settle down on
any such position as that. He would only say, that Christ was not, by
any necessity of nature, subjected to those various wants and affections,
—but subjected himself to them of his own free choice, out of volun-
tary condescension for the well-being of man ; — to give a proof of the
reality of his human nature, so that no room nor pretext might be left
for Docetism.2, We must, however, do Clement the justice to acknowl-
edge, that, along with this distempered element, there was much which
was sound ‘and healthy i in his ethical tendencies, as they were influenced
by his contemplation of the life of Christ? —as, for instance, when in
another place, speaking against the ascetic contempt of the body, he
says Christ would not with the health of the soul have restored that. of
the body also, if there ought to be any enmity between the body and
the soul.4
With this tendency of Clement, which caused him to overlook the
purely human element in Christ, the other, which led him, by his exag-
gerated notions of the servant-form, to imagine that Christ possessed an
uncomely person, might seem to stand in direct contradiction ; ;— and
undoubtedly he never would have arrived at any such view himself;
but, transmitted to him by the church tradition, he contrived to bring it
into harmony with his own peculiar bent of mind and habits of think-
ing, by applying it in the following manner: — that, since the Godlike
presents itself im this mean, uncomely shape, men should be led there-
by to despise sensuous beauty, to soar by spiritual contemplation from
the sensuous to the Godlike, which is exalted above all that partakes
1 Ἐππὶ τοῦ σωτῆρος τὸ σῶμα ἀπαιτεῖν ὡς
σῶμα τὰς ἀναγκαίας ὑπηρεσίας εἰς διαμονὴν
γέλως ἂν εἴη, ἔφαγεν γὰρ οὐ διὰ τὸ σῶμα,
δυνάμει συνεχόμενον ἁγίᾳ. Strom.1|. VI. f. 649.
᾿ 2. Accordingly he says of Christ: “Δπαξ
ἁπλῶς ἀπαϑὴς ἦν, εἰς ὃν οὐδὲν παρειςδύεται
κίνημα παϑητικὸν, οὔτε ἡδονὴ οὔτε λύπη.
8 Compare the remarks in vol. I. p. 279,
on the reaction of the Christian spirit in
Clement, against a one-sided ascetic ten-
dency.
4 Οὐκ ἂν δὲ͵ εἰ ἔχϑρα ἡ oaps ἦν τῆς ψυχῆς,
ἐπετείχιζεν αὐτῇ τὴν ἐχϑρὰν δὶ ὑγιείας ἐπι-
σκιάζων (probably itshould read, according
to Hervet’s emendation, σκευάζων); he woald
not have taken the hostile σάρξ under his
protection. Strom. 1 IIT. f. 460.
CLEMENT. ORIGEN. 633
of sense.!_ No one should be misled to admire the beautiful form, and
so give less heed to the substance of Christ’s discourses.”
This view of Christ’s person, as one who appeared in the form of a
servant, took a different shape with Origen, so as to harmonize with the
whole connection of his system. We have stated on a former page,
how his doctrine of the different stages in Christianity was connected
with his idea of the different forms of manifestation of the divine Logos.
The Logos becomes all things to all, in a still higher sense than that in
which Paul would say this of himself; and this Origen applied also to
Christ’s temporal appearance. He becomes all things to all men, ap-
pears to them in different forms, suited to their recipiency. ‘To some
he reveals himself in his glory, in a celestial light which spreads from
himself to his word; so that now, for the first time, after having come
to the knowledge of Christ himself in this higher way, they can under-
stand it in the plenitude of its meaning, — nay, in a light which re-
flects itself back even on the Old Testament, which now becomes trans-
figured in its relation to Christ become known in his glory. ‘To others
he appears only in the form of a servant, as one without form and come-
liness — namely, to those who are unable to elevate themselves, beyond
the temporal appearance, to the contemplation of the Logos revealing
himself in it.? Accordingly, the Christ of the transfiguration and the
Christ without form or comeliness, as men were used to represent him,
would be nothing other than designations of two different ways — de-
pending on the recipiency of the subject — of contemplating one and
the same Christ, whom all were not in a condition to know in his divine
exaltation. Thus to him it must have appeared necessary that the mass
of believers should frame to themselves the conception of Christ, as of
one who appeared without form or comeliness. Their whole view of
Christ and Christianity, which, at the position they occupied, could be
none other than it was, reflected itself under this particular form. And
accordingly he could have considered the transfiguration of Christ in
no other hght than as a symbol of that higher form of beholding, in
which Christ presented himself to his more advanced disciples.4 But
if he regarded particular facts as symbols of universal ideas, or of a
general stadium in the evolution of the spiritual life, yet he by no means
denied, in so doing, the objective reality of such facts, which at the same
βλεπομένοις. Moreover, the composition with
1 The words of Clement respecting Christ
κατα has a force in this connection — the
are: Ἔν σαρκὶ μὲν ἀειδὴς (as the reading,
beyond all doubt, should be, as may be
gathered from the following context, and
from the allusion to Isa. 53:2) διελήλυϑεν
καὶ ἄμορφος, εἰς τὸ ἀειδὲς Kal ἀσώματον τῆς
ϑείας αἰτίας ἀποβλέπειν ἡμᾶς διδάσκων.
Strom. 1. ILI. f. 470.
2 Οὐ μάτην ἠϑέλησεν εὐτελεῖ χρῆσασϑαι
σώματος μορφῇ, ἵνα μῆ τις τὸ ὡραῖον ἐπαινῶν
καὶ τὸ κάλλος ϑαυμάζων, ἀφίστηται τῶν λε-
γομένων καὶ τοῖς καταλειπομένοις (this latter
word offers here no good sense. It can
neither mean, — what should be left behind,
nor what has been left behind. I have scarcely
a doubt that the correct reading is κατα-
looking downward to the object of sense,
instead of upward — ἄνω βλέπειν πρὸς τὰ
νοητὰ) TPOCAVEXWY, ἀποτέμνηται τῶν νοητῶν.
Strom. |. VI. f. 690.
8 Ὁ σωτὴρ μᾶλλον Παύλου τοῖς πᾶσι πάντα
γενόμενος, ἵνα τοὺς πάντας κερδῆσῃ. In
Joann. T. XX. § 28; and, in respect to the
two-fold μορφῇ in which Christ appeared, in
Matt. T. XII. § 37.
4 See c. Cels. 1. 1V. c. 16, where he says
of those who received the account of Christ’s
transfiguration too literally and sensuously ;
Μὴ νοΐσαντες τὰς ὡς ἐν ἱστορίαις λεγομένας
μεταβολὰς ἢ μεταμορφώσεις Tov ᾿Ιησοῦ.
634 HUMAN NATURE OF CHRIST.
time answered to a more universal idea --- and accordingly that more
general view of the transfiguration of Christ in no wise precluded its
historical reality. As Origen was prone to explain away the objective
into the subjective, so, on the other hand, was he inclmed to represent
the subjective as something objective, — of which we have seen many
examples. And thus it happened, that the profound idea of the neces-
sarily manifold gradations in the views entertained of Christ, were ob-
jectively represented by him, as so many different forms which Christ
assumed in relation to the different positions held by the men with
whom he had intercourse. As the manifoldness of the forms of revela-
tion (μορφαί) in which he presents himself to the spiritual world, be-
longs to the essential character of the Logos, so Christ mirrored forth,
in this respect also, the activity of the Logos himself in his own tempo-
ral appearance. It pertains to his peculiar and essential character,
that he had no unchangeable, determinate form; but appeared, accord-
ing to the different characters of men, to some in the lower form of a
servant ;-—— to others, divested of this form, and in a shape of light, in
affinity with his godlike nature. Thus Origen explained to himself the
fact of the transfiguration, and several other appearances im the gospel
history.1. The whole view was closely connected with his notions of the
stuff lying at the ground of the corporeal world, as something ideter-
minate, and which could run through various metamorphoses from the
higher to the lower.?
The complete victory over Docetism implied the complete recognition
of the purely human nature in Christ; and this could not be separated
from the supposition that he possessed a human soul. Yet this particu-
lar point did not immediately,stand forth clearly developed in the dog-
matic consciousness. In the first place it was only the two conceptions,
the λόγος in his essential divinity, and the σάρξ, from which all the human
characteristics proceeded, which were clearly separated and distin-
guished. True,men must necessarily have been driven, if they were
disposed to carry through the identity in Christ’s person with the hu-
man nature, to ascribe to him a soul, also, with human feelings ; but
still all this, as we see in the example of Irenzeus, was referred back
simply to the σάρξ, the flesh taken from the earth. Although this
same father says, that Christ gave his own body for our body, and his
own ψυχῆ for our ψυχῆ; and we are constrained, in this distinction, to
1 e, Cels. 1. VI. ¢. 77: Τὸ παραλλάττον τοῦ
σώματος αὐτοῦ πρὸς τοῖς ὁρῶσι δυνατὸν καὶ
διὰ τοῦτο χρήσιμον, τοιοῦτο φαινόμενον, ὁποῖον
ἔδει ἑκάστῳ βλέπεισϑαι. This is applied to
the transfiguration, of which he directly says:
Ἔχει τι καὶ μυστικὸν 6 λόγος, ἀπαγγέλλων τὰς
τοῦ ᾿Ιησοῦ διαφόρους μορφὰς ἀναφέρεσϑαι ἐπὶ
τὴν τοῦ ϑείου λόγου φύσιν, in the sense
already expounded. In perfect harmony
with this is the passage which has been pre-
served to us only in the Latin translation:
Quoniam non solum dus forme in eo fue-
runt, una quidem, secundum quam omnes
eum videbant, altera autem secundum quam
transfiguratus est coram discipulis in monte,
sed etiam unicuique apparebat secundum
quod fuerat dignus. _Commentar. Series
in Matth. ὁ 100. Ed. Lomm. T. IV. p. 446.
2 Οὐ ϑαυμαστὸν τὴν φύσει τρεπτὴν καὶ
ἀλλοιωτὴν καὶ πάσης ποιότητος, ἣν ὁ. τεχνίτης
βούλεται δεκτικὴν ὁτὲ μὲν ἔχειν ποιότητα, Kay’
ἣν λέγεται τὸ" οὐκ εἶχεν εἶδος οὐδὲ κώλλος,
ὁτὲ δὲ οὕτως ἔνδοξον καὶ καταπληκτικὴν καὶ
ϑαυμαστὴν, ὡς ἐπὶ πρόσωπον πεσεῖν τοὺς
Seatac. c. Cels.1. VI. § 77.
3 The emotions excited at the approach
of death are classed under the σύμβολα σαρ-
κὸς τῆς ἀπὸ γῆς εἰλημμένης. Lib. III. c. 22
ORIGEN. TERTULLIAN. 625
understand by the term ψυχῆ, not life, but the soul;! yet he at least
makes no farther use of this distinction, in other cases, where he speaks
of Christ as man. Justin seems to have applied the common trichoto-
my of man’s nature to Christ, with the following modification : Christ,
as the God-man, consisted, like every other man, of three parts; the
body, the animal soul, (the lower principle of life,) and the thinking
‘reason ; but with this difference, that in him the place of the fallible
human reason, which is but aray of the divine reason, of the Abyoc,? was
represented by the universal divine reason,* by the λόγος itself: * hence
it was in Christianity alone that the universal revelation of religious
truth, a revelation not disturbed by partial, one-sided representation,
would be given.®
Tertullian was the first to express distinctly and clearly the doctrine,
that Christ possessed a proper human soul; having been led to this by
the views which he entertained in general concerning the relation of
the soul to the body, and by the tendency of his controversial writings,
relating to the doctrine of the person of Christ in particular. He did
not hold, like others, to the three parts of human nature mentioned
above, but supposed it to consist of only two parts. He affirmed that
it was not a mere animal soul, distinct from the reasonable soul i man,
which was to be considered as the animating principle of the body ; but
that, in all living things, there is but one animating essence, although
this, in the human nature, is endued with superior powers; that the
thinking soul itself, therefore, is the animating principle of the human
body.6 If Tertullian, then, conceived of but one soul, as the medium
between the divine Logos and the body of Christ, he must necessarily
have conceived of it as a reasonable human soul in the proper sense.
Again, he was engaged in controversy with a Valentinian sect, who
taught that Christ, instead of veiling his soul in a gross material body,
so modified the ψυχῆ itself that it could, like the body, be visible to men
under the dominion of sense. Against these he maintained, that it
was necessary to distinguish, in the person of Christ, as in the case of
every man, soul and body, and what belongs to both; that Christ, in
order to redeem men, was under the necessity of uniting to himself a
soul of that kind which belongs peculiarly to man; — and so much the
more, as the soul constitutes man’s proper essence.’
But still greater than the influence of Tertullian was that of the sys-
tematizing intellect and the conciliatory, apologetic bent of Origen, in
1 See the words of Irenzus, ]. V. ¢. 1. §1:
Τῷ iWiw αἵματι λυτρωσαμένου ἡμᾶς τοῦ κυρίου
καὶ δόντος τὴν ψυχὴν ὑπὲρ τῶν ἡμετέρων
ψυχῶν καὶ τὴν σάρκα τὴν ἑαυτοῦ ἀντὶ τῶν
ἡμετέρων σαρκῶν. As the thought here is,
that Christ surrendered to Satan — who
claimed a power over man’s soul and body
— his own body, as a ransom for the men
whom he held captive, the word here can
hardly be understood otherwise than of the
human soul.
2 The σπέρμα λογικόν, the λόγος σπερματι-
κός, the λόγος κατὰ μέρος.
8 Λυγικὸν τὸ ὅλον.
4 Apolog. II. ὁ 10. One might be led to
suspect, however, that the words, καὶ σῶμα
καὶ λόγον καὶ ψυχῆν, are the interpolation of
a some later hand, who would make Justin
orthodox on this article, since this precise
definition occurs in Justin’s writings nowhere
else, and stands here not exactly in its
proper place. But we must admit, that the
first reason is of little force, and the second
of none at all in the case of such a writer as
Justin.
5 Justin is, in time, before Apollinaris.
6 De anima, c. 12.
7 De carne Christi, c. 11, and onwards.
636 HUMAN NATURE OF CHRIST.
unfolding and establishing this doctrine in the church system of faith.
He did not proceed here upon speculative principles, but upon an analogy
drawn from the Christian consciousness. As the divine life in believers
leads back to Christ as its original source, he endeavored to illustrate
the union of the Logos with the human nature in Christ by the analogy
of the union between Christ and believers. If believers, as Paul says,
become of one spirit with the Lord, this is in a far higher sense the
case with. that soul which the Logos had taken into indissoluble
union with himself. According to the theory of Origen, it is in truth
the soul’s original destination to surrender itself wholly to the Logos,
and, by virtue of its communion with him, to live wholly in the divine
element. Now that which, in the case of other souls, is found to be
true only in the highest moments of the inner life, — namely, that they
pass wholly into union with the divme Logos, lose themselves com-
pletely in the intuition of God, — was in the case of that soul a continu-
ous and uninterrupted act, so that its entire life rose to the communion
with the Logos: — it became wholly transformed mto a divine being.!
As Origen, again, distinguished, m every man,” the spirit (πνεῦμα)
from the soul (ψυχῆ) in the more limited sense of the word, so too he
applied this distinction to the human nature of Christ.2 Human nature
in general attains to a moral perfection just in proportion as everything
in it is determined by the spiritual principle (the πνεῦμα) ; but this has
been completely and perfectly realized only by Christ. ‘If this is so
in the case of every holy man, how much more must we affirm it of
Jesus, the forerunner and pattern of all saints, m whose case, when he
assumed the entire human nature, the πνεῦμα was the moving spring of all
the rest of the man !# |
But, as we have said, it was a leading point in the system of Origen,
that in the spiritual world everything depends on the moral bent of the
will. ΤῸ this general law in the divine order of the world, he could not
allow that this highest dignity to which any soul had attained, formed
any exception. ‘That soul had merited, by the true bent of its will, by
the love whereby it had remained constantly united with the divine
Legos, to become, in the manner above described, wholly one with him,
wholly divine.® He explained the words in Ps. 45: 5, as referring to
such a fusion of this soul with the Logos, deserved by its bent of will.
But here arises a question of some importance in its bearing on the
altogether foreign; viz. the “ ἐταράχϑη τῷ
πνεύματι." John 13: 21.
5 ἀρ Te e601 ‘ev. Gels) ΠῚ π ͵Ή 6: 9:
]. III. ¢. 41. In Joann. T. 1.§ 30; T. XIX.
§ 5, where he says, quite in the Platonic
1 Οὐ μόνον κοινωνία ἀλλ᾽ ἕνωσις καὶ ἀνά-
κρασις͵ τῆς ἐκείνου ϑεότητος κεκοινωνηκέναι,
εἰς ϑεὸν μεταβεβηκέναι.
2 See above.
8 See above.
4 In Joann. T. XXXII § 11: Οὐ τὸ πνεῦμα
τοῦ ἀνϑρώπου ἐν τῷ ἀνειληφέναι αὐτὸν ὅλον
ἄνϑρωπον τὸ ἐν αὐτῷ διέσεισε τὰ λοιπὰ ἔν
αὐτῷ ἀνϑρώπινα. A dogmatico-ethical re-
mark ; but which Origen — as often happens
with him, in introducing his own doctrinal
and speculative distinctions into the scrip-
tures — would base upon a text, from which,
according to the verbal sense, the remark is
manner: Ἡ ψυχῆ τοῦ ᾿Ιησοῦ ἐμπολιτευομένη
τῷ ὅλῳ κόσμῳ ἐκείνῳ ---- the κόσμος νοητὸς,
τῶν ἰδέων, synonymous with the νοῦς or the
λόγος itself — καὶ πάντα αὐτὸν ἐμπεριερχομένη
καὶ χειραγωγοῦσα ἐπ᾽ αὐτὸν τοὺς μαϑητευομέ-
γους. In Joann. T. XX. § 17: T. II. opp.
ed. de la Rue, f. 226. In Matth. f. 344 et
423; T. XIII. § 26; T. XVI. § 8. Com-
mentar. ep. ad. Rom. lib. I. T. V. p. 250, ed.
Lomm. In Jerem. Hom. XV. § 6.
ORIGEN. 637
system of Origen. Had the intelligence which was taken into such
indissoluble fellowship with the Logos, been affected by the general de-
fection and fall of the creature; and did it differ from all the intelli-
gences which had in some way departed from that original unity, only
by the circumstance that, in surrendering itself to the dive Logos, the
universal Redeemer, it had become not only freed from all the conse-
quences of that defection, but elevated to a still higher unity with God
than it possessed before, a unity which precluded the possibility of any
future separation? Or did this intelligence have no part whatever in
the defection of the others? Was it secured against this defection by
the steadfast perseverance of its fellowship with the Logos; and by the
same means did the divine life, which it first received into itself by the
bent of its will, pass wholly into its essence? If the latter is assumed
to be according to the spirit and sense of Origen, an important conse-
quence would follow in relation to his principle of creaturely mutability.
‘It would be evident, that he did not hold the defection from the origmal
unity to be an absolutely necessary transition-link in all creaturely de-
velopment; for at least the example of this one intelligence would be
evidence to the contrary.
Now when we reflect, that, according to Origin’s theory, the νοῦς
became ψυχῆ first by the fall, we see no reason, especially as he is care-
ful to distinguish, even in Christ, between the πνεῦμα and the ψυχῆ, why we
are not warranted, according to his theory, to apply this principle also
to the soul which, by its steadfast bent of will, had attaimed to that in-
dissoluble union with the Logos. We must suppose, then, that as the
spirit first became soul by its defection from the original unity, and the
end of the recovery is that the souls, returning back to the onginal
unity, should once more become divested of their psychical being and
thoroughly penetrated with the pure life of the spirit,|—so this par-
ticular soul had, before all others, and in a higher manner than all others,
already attained to this end, and hence would become the mediatory in-
strument of conducting all other fallen souls to the same end, But it is
nevertheless impossible to retain this view of the matter, consistently
with the sense and spirit of Origen. or im this case it would all along
be presupposed, that what in Christ is denominated a soul, is not a soul
in the proper sense. We must all along assume, that the soul in Christ,
which had returned back to the pure being of the νοῦς, had made itself
like to the fallen souls, only in order to their recovery, — had appro-
priated to itself an outward veil of psychical being, and entered into the
contracted sphere and divided being of the psychical life, for the pur-
pose of conducting it back again to that higher unity. And im truth
we might find some confirmation of this view in the language of Ori-
gen.2_ But when we have once assumed the necessity of,such a pro-
1 Οὐκέτι μένει ψυχὴ 7 σωϑεῖσα ψυχῆ. ---- 2 Τάχα yap ἣ τοῦ ᾿Ιησοῦ ψυχὴ ἐν τῇ ἑαυτῆς
ἔσται, ὅτε οὐκ ἔσται ψυχῆ. De princip. 1. II. τυγχάνουσα τελειότητι ἔν ϑεῷ καὶ τῷ πληρώ-
6. 8, ὁ 3. So [δ says, as anencouragement part ἣν εκεῖϑεν ἐξεληλυϑυῖα, τῷ ἀπεστώλϑαι
to martyrdom: Ei ϑέλομεν ἡμῶν σῶσαι τὴν ἀπὸ τοῦ πατρὸς, ἀνέλαβε τὸ ἐκ τῆς Μαρίας
ψυχὴν, ἵνα αὐτὴν ἀπολάβωμεν κρείττονα σῶμα. In Joann. T. XX. § 18,
ψυχῆς, μαρτυρίῳ ἀπολέσωμεν αὐτήν. Ad
Martyr. § 12.
VOL. I. 54
6358 HUMAN NATURE OF CHRIST.
cedure in the case of the soul of Christ, which had returned back to
the pure life of the spirit, the reason grounded in the connection of Ori-
gen’s ideas immediately disappears, which compelled us to suppose that
the intelligence which the Logos had received into such a fellowship
with himself, must also have shared in the general defection of the crea-
ture. It is evident now, that Origen might have so conceived the mat-
ter, as to suppose this intelligence to be one which from the beginning
had not become a soul by falling, but which had only assimilated itself
to the fallen souls by a voluntary humiliation. We should thus be forced
to the other view, which in many respects would better harmonize with
the system of Origen. It would now be quite consistent that this intel-
Hpac which had ever persevered in the original unity, should, on this
very account, deserve to be appropriated by the Logos, as an organ
indissolubly united with himself, for the purpose of extending the re-
demption, which it did not need itself, to other bemgs who were in need
of it. This view is confirmed when we find Origen distinguishing this
intelligence above all others, as one which from the beginning of the cre-
ation had ever remained inseparably united with the Logos,! — where, to
be sure, we must understand by the creation, the original one, and not that
which was first occasioned by the fall. Accordingly, he could designate
this spirit as one which, free from all contact with the corporeal world, ever
lived m the contemplation of the intelligible world, (the κόσμος νοητός.)
the latter being identical with the Logos ;? for with the defection from
the original unity, is also supposed, according to Origen’s doctrine,some
contact or other with the corporeal world. Thus Christ might be said
to be without sin, in a sense in which no other creature could, since that
intelligence had never been touched by evil.? Although, by virtue of
the creaturely mutable will, it was, like all others, subject to be tempted
to evil, yet since it stood this test where the others fell, it attained, by
its unalterable submission to the Logos, to a divine life exalted above
all temptation to evil; and what was originally the work of its free will,
now became a second nature.* Yet Origen, in saying this, meant by no
means to assert, that the soul, when arrived at such an immutable state
of the divine life, dispensed ‘with the free will belonging to its own
essence ; for so indeed, as must certainly have been his opinion on the
principles he held, this essence would itself be annihilated. He as-
1 Ab initio creature et deinceps insepara-
biliter ei inherens. De princip. 1. 11. ¢. 5.
§ 3.
2 In Joann. T. ΧΙΧ. ὁ 5; ed Lomm. T.
II. p. 188.
8 Τῇ Joann. T. XX. § 25
4 Quod in’arbitrio erat positum, longi usus
affectu jam versum in naturam. De prin-
cipiis, 1. II. c. 5, § 5. We may now refer
also to those words of Origen, in which he
expressly guards against a ‘conclusion which
possibly might be drawn from his doctrine ;
viz. that every rational creature must neces-
sarily, at some time or other, succumb to the
temptation to sin. Sed non continuo, quia
dicimus, nullam esse creaturam, que non
possit recipere malum, idcirco confirmamur,
omnem naturam recepisse malum, id est
malam effectam. L.c.1.I.¢.8,§3. As
the translation of Rufinus cannot be per-
fectly relied on, we should not venture to
make use of these words, to determine what
was the opinion of Origen, unless what we
would prove from them might be gathered
also from his general train and connection
of thought, as it has been shown in the text
that it may. But in order to make every
thing in Ovigen harmonize, we must sup-
pose also, that he did not always use the
ψυχῆ in the same sense, but sometimes in a
more general sense, to denote the spirit or
intelligence generally, and sometimes in a
more limited sense, in contradistinction to
vov¢ or πνεῦμα.
ORIGEN. 639
eribed to this soul, even after the incarnation of Christ, a selfdeter-
mining power,! — though persisting in union with the πνεῦμα, and thereby
with the Logos. But here, if we examine into the connection of his
ideas, the question will come up, how, supposing he conceived this soul
to be one which had already attained to such perfection, he could still
admit of any human development in Christ, in his earthly existence —
how this in his case would be anything else than a mere appearance.
And yet he believed he could fully receive the entire narrative m Luke
2: 40, relating to the progressive development of the child Jesus ; and
he considered this progress as having its ground in the free will of
Christ.2. But there was a similar difficulty, according to Origen’s doc-
trine, with regard to the earlier, conscious, personal existence of the
soul generally, in the case of every human development.
We have to mention one other particular point, in which the connec-
tion between Origen’s doctrine concerning man, and his doctrme con-
cerning Christ, is very clearly exhibited. Holding it as a general prin-
ciple, that the character of the instrument or organ given it as a body,
corresponded exactly to the work of each soul, which stamped on it the
form and pressure of its own peculiar essence, he applied the same prin-
ciple to the relation between the body and soul of Christ. The most
exalted of all souls was veiled in the most glorious of all bodies ;—
only this glory was, during its earthly existence, still hidden — broke
forth on such individuals as were capable of receiving it only at mdi-
vidual moments — fore-tokening what should one day appear. By virtue
of Christ’s exaltation to heaven, this body, —a thought perfectly har-
monizing with Origen’s doctrme of matter, already described as an
element in itself undetermined and capable of endless modification of
form,— this body is now freed from all the defects and limitations
of the earthly existence, transfigured to an ethereal character, more
nearly akin to the essence of the Spirit and of the divine life.’
By this exposition of Origen’s theory, one difficulty which must have
struck reflecting minds in considering the doctrine of the incarnation of
the Logos, though many never became conscious of it, was removed ; —
the difficulty, to wit, of conceiving how the divine Logos could become
united with a human body; how the purely human nature could be
transferred to him. This difficulty now vanished, since it was assumed,
that the Logos did not directly appropriate to himself the body, but that
he appropriated to himself the soul as his natural organ. Thus it was
made possible, also, to conceive of everything that belongs to human
nature existing in Christ unalloyed. But, in place of the former, an-
other difficulty now arose ;— namely, to conceive how the unity of
Christ’s person and life could be maintained, in this combination with
a human soul persevering in its own individuality. We have seen in
what way Origen supposed that it was possible to surmount this diff-
1 By the ἐφ᾽ ἡμῖν τῆς ψυχῆς. In Matth. 8 See c. Cels. 1. I. c. 32; 1. IL. ¢. 23; 1. III.
T. ΧΊΠ. § 26; ed. Lomm. p 257. ce. 42; 1. 1V.¢. 15; 1. ΥἹ. ο. 75,etseqq. On
5 Το οὐ: Ὡς yap éx rod ἐφ᾽ ἡμῖν τῆς ψυχῆς the ubiquity of the glorified body of Christ,
αὐτοῦ ἣν 7 ἐν σοφίᾳ προκοπὴ καὶ χάριτι, οὕτως 566 in Matth. T. IV. ἢ, 887, ed. de la Rue.
καὶ ἐν ἡλικίᾳ. By which last, Origen means
the ἡλικία πνευματική.
640 DOCTRINE OF REDEMPTION.
culty also. Yet this view of the matter seems to have given umbrage
to many, and he drew upon himself the accusation from such persons,
that, like many of the Gnostics, he distinguished from each other a
Superior and an inferior Christ, or a Jesus and a Christ ; or that he
represented Jesus as a mere man, who differed from other men only in
possessing a higher degree of fellowship with the Logos, and therefore
only in degree.t Thus we see here, also, the germ of a controversy
-which reached into the followmg period.
As it regards the work of Christ as the Redeemer of mankind, we
find already in the language used by the church fathers on this point, in
the period under consideration, all the elements which lie at the basis
of the doctrine as it afterwards came to be defined in the church —
elements grounded in the Christian consciousness itself, and indicating
how Christ manifested himself to the religious feelings and to the intui-
tions thence resulting, as a deliverer from sin and its consequences, a
restorer of harmony in the moral order of the universe, a bestower of
divine life to human nature. But on this point no antagonisms were as
yet presented, by which men would be constrained to distinguish and
separate more accurately what lay in their conceptions. We, for the
most part, hear only the language of immediate religious feeling and
intuition; and hence, in comparing the expressions of these church-
teachers with the later doctrines of the church, men were liable to err
on both sides, in ascribing to them more, and in finding in them less,
than they really contained.
The doctrine of redemption has a negative and a positive moment: the
former relates to the removing of the disturbance introduced into the mo-
ral order of the universe, the raising-up of humanity out of its schism with
God ;—the second, to the glorifying or rendering godlike of human nature
when delivered from this schism. Asitrespects the first, there was here
presented in particular a certain peculiarity in the mode of thinking,
which, as we see it expressed under different modifications in men of
the most diverse principles and tendencies, — in a Marcion, an Irenzeus,
and an Origen, —we may consider as a more general expression of the
Christian consciousness of this period. It is this idea: Satan hitherto
ruled mankind, over whom he had acquired a certain right, because
the first man fell under the temptation to sin, and was thereby brought
under servitude to the evil one. God did not deprive him of this right
by force, but caused him to lose it in a way strictly conformable to law.
Satan attempted to exercise the same power which he had thus far ex-
ercised over mankind, on Christ, a perfectly holy being, meaning to treat
him like the others, as a man in all respects the same with them; but
here his power was baffled, and he must find himself overmatched.
Christ, being perfectly holy, could not remain subject to the death which
Satan, by means of sin, had brought on mankind. By him, the repre-
1 See the Apology of Pamphilus in behalf siders it necessary to guard against any such
of Origen, T. IV. f. 35, and several of the misinterpretation of his doctrine; as, for
passages above cited, in reference to his doc- instance, in Matth. 'T. XVI. § 8, towards the
trine on the union of the Logos with the end, where he adds: Πλὴν σήμερον ob λύω
soul in Christ, — in which passages he con- τὸν ᾿Ιησοῦν ἀπὸ τοῦ Χριστοῦ
-
ORIGEN. IREN AUS. 641
sentative of human nature, the latter has been delivered, on grounds of
reason and justice, from the dominion of Satan —he has no more claims
upon 10.1 Marcion simply transferred, as we have seen above, that
which in the church view of the matter was true of Satan, to the Demi-
urge. At the bottom of this whole theory, lies the idea of a real objec-
tive might, which the ungodly principle in humanity, that had made
itself a slave to that power, had acquired, and of a real, objective over-
coming of this might, the redemption, as a legal process in the history
of the world, corresponding to the requisitions of the moral order of
the universe. We ought here surely to distinguish the inadequate form,
in which the idea at bottom has enveloped itself, from this idea itself.
Combined with this negative moment, we find in Irenzeus the positive
one, in which the original picture of humanity is represented im a per-
fectly holy life, and in the communication to it of a divine life, which
should sanctify and refine it in all the stages of its development. His
ideas, dispersed through his writings, amount, when we bring them to-
gether, to what follows: ‘*‘ Only the Word of the Father himself could
declare to us the Father ; and we could not learn from him, unless the
teacher himself had appeared among us. Man must become used to
receive God into himself, God must become used to dwell in humanity.
The Mediator betwixt both must once more restore the union between
both, by his relationship to both; he must pass through every age, in
order to sanctify every age, in order to restore the perfect likeness with
God, which is perfect holiness.?- In a human nature which was like to
that burdened with sin, he condemned sin, and then banished it, as a
thing condemned, out of human nature, Rom. 8:3; but he required
men to become like him. Men were the prisoners of the evil one, of
Satan; Christ gave himself a ransom for the prisoners. Sin reigned
over us, who belonged to God; God delivered us, not by force, but in
a way of justice, nasmuch as he redeemed those who were his own. If
he had not, as man, overcome the adversary of man; if the enemy had
not been overcome in the way of justice ; and, on the other hand, if he
had not, as God, bestowed the gift of salvation, we should not have that
sift in a way which is secure. And if man did not become united with
God, he could have no share in an imperishable life.2 It was through
the obedience of one man that many must become justified, and obtam
salvation ; for eternal life is the fruit of justice. The import of the
declaration, that man is created in the image of God, had hitherto not
been clear, for the Logos was as yet invisible. Hence man too easily
1 This is what Ireneeus refers to, when he
says (1. V. c. 1): Rationabiliter redimens
nos, redemptionem semetipsum dedit pro
his, qui in captivitatem ductisunt. Et, quo-
niam injuste dominabatur nobis apostasia,
et, cum natura essemus Dei omnipotentis,
alienavit nos contra naturam, suos proprios
faciens discipulos, potens in omnibus Dei
verbum et non deficiens in sua justitia, juste
etiam adversus ipsam conversus est aposta-
siam ; non cum vi, sed secundum,suadelam,
quemadmodum illa initio dominabatur nos-
54"
tri; sed secundum suadelam, quemadmo-
dum decebat Deum suadentem, et non vim
inferentem, accipere qui vellet, ut neque
quod justum est confringeretur, neque an-
tiqua plasmatio Dei deperiret.
* See the remarks on a former page re-
specting the relation of the εἰκών to the
ὁμοίωσις τοῦ ϑεοῦ.
“ὃ The communication of a divine life to
mankind through Christ, the ἕνωσις πρὸς
ἀφϑαρσίαν.
+ Two ideas are here to be taken together’
642 DOCTRINE OF REDEMPTION.
lost his likeness with God. But when the Logos became man, he set
the seal to both. He truly revealed that image, by becoming, himself,
that which was his image; and he exhibited incontestably the likeness
of man to God, by making man like to God, who is invisible.” }
In Irenzeus, the suffermgs of Christ are represented as having a
necessary connection with the rightful deliverance of man from the
power of Satan. ‘The divine justice is here displayed, in allowing even
Satan to have his due. Of satisfaction done by the sufferings of
Christ to the divine justice, as yet not the slightest mention is to be
found ; but doubtless there is lying at bottom the idea of a perfect ful-
filment of the law by Christ; of his perfect obedience to the holiness of
God in its claims to satisfaction due toit from mankind. But in Justin
Martyr may be recognized the idea of a satisfaction rendered by Christ
through suffermg,— at least lying at the bottom, if it is not clearly
unfolded and held fast in the form of conscious thought; for Justin
says:? ‘The law pronounced on all men the curse, because no man
could fulfil it, in its whole extent (Deut. 27: 26). Christ delivered us
from this curse, in bearing it for us.’ His train of thought here can
be no other than this: Crucifixion denotes curse, condemnation : no-
thing of that sort could touch Christ, the Son of God, the Holy One:
in reference to himself, this was only in appearance.? The significancy
of this curse related to mankind, who were guilty of violating the law,
and hence involved in condemnation. Christ, m suffering, took this
condemnation resiing on mankind, upon himself, in order to free man-
kind from it. The for, im this case, passes naturally over to the znstead.
The author of the letter to Diognetus thus brings together the active
and the passive satisfaction, yet with predominant reference to the for-
mer, when he reduces the whole to the love of God, which in itself re-
quired no reconciliation, and was itself the author of the reconciliation :
“God, the Lord and Creator of the universe, is not only full of love to
man, but full of long-suffering. Such he ever was and is, and such he
will ever continue to be;—supremely kind, without anger, true, the
alone good. He conceived a vast and ineffable counsel, which he
communicated to none but his Son. So long as he reserved this
as a hidden counsel in his own mind, he seemed to have no con-
cern for us. He left us, during the ages past, to follow our lusts at
will, not as though he could have any pleasure at all in our sins, but in
order that we, having in the course of that time, by our own works,
proved ourselves unworthy of life, might be made worthy by the grace
of God; and that we, having shown our own inability to enter into the
kingdom of God, might be enabled to do so by the power of God. But
when the measure of our sins had become full, and it had been made
one, which we find already in Philo, that
man, as the image of God, was created after
the image of the Logos ; the other, that God
designed to represent in the person of the
God-man, as the original type of humanity,
the ideal of the entire human nature. Limus
1116 jam tum imaginem induens Christi futuri
in carne, non tantum Dei opus, sed et
pignus filii, qui homo futurus certior et
verior. 'Tertull. de carne Christi, c. 6; adv.
Praxeam, ce. 12.
1 Vid. Iren. 1. III. c. 20, Massuet (accord-
ing to others, 22) ; 1. III.c. 18 (20), 31; 1. V.
Ci EO!
2 Dial. c. Tryph. Jud. ο. 30, f. 322. Ed. Col
8 Aoxovoa κατάρα. f. 317
IRENAUS. JUSTIN MARTYR. ORIGEN. 6438
perfectly manifest that punishment and death were ready to be our
reward, he neither hated us nor spurned us, but showed us his long-
suffermg. He even took upon himself our sins, he even gave his own
Son a ransom for us, the Holy One for sin; for what else would cover
our sins but his righteousness ? ”
According to the connection of ideas which has just been exhibited
as peculiar to Origen, the highest end of the earthly appearance and
ministry of Christ is to represent that divine activity of the Logos,
which, without being confined to any limits of time or space, aims to
purify and restore fallen beings. Accordingly, all his actions possess a
higher symbolical import, to master which is the great problem of the
Gnosis; but thereby, as is shown in the case of his miracles, the saving
effect which they are calculated of themselves to produce, is by no
means excluded; and in this way he could also appropriate to himself
what was contained in the consciousness of all Christians, relative to
the redeeming sufferings of Christ. We find here a great deal which
he could not have been led to adopt by the general ideas of his system,
unless he had been first led to such a conviction in some other way, m-
dependent of his system. ΤῸ speak of a feeling of sin, a sense of
being forsaken of God, in the case of the soul of Christ, which he re-
garded as perfectly holy, exalted above all contact with evil, is what he
could find no ground or reason for in the speculative ideas of his sys-
tem. But in many of the facts of the gospel history he came to per-
ceive such a connection between Christ and the whole spiritual life
of humanity estranged from God, by virtue of which connection Christ
felt its trespass as his own, — and what no conception could grasp, he
was enabled to construe to himself by an intuition springing out of the
inmost depth of his being. Thus could he affirm of Christ, that which
is intelligible only to him who is at home in, and familiar with, the world
of Christian consciousness: ‘‘ He bore in himself our infirmities, and
carried our sorrows ; the infirmities of the soul, and the sorrows of the
inner man; on account of which sorrows and infirmities, which he bore
away from us, he says that his soul is troubled and full of anguish ;”’ 1
and in another place: ‘“ This man, the purest among all creatures,
died for mankind ; he who took on himself our sins and_ infirmities,
because he could take on himself and destroy the sins of the whole
world.” 2
Origen believed that by a hidden law, pertaining to the moral order
of the universe, the self-sacrifice of a perfectly holy bemg must serve
to cripple the power of evil, and to free therefrom the beings subjected
to it. He found proof of this in the prevailing belief of mankind, that
innocent individuals, by a voluntary sacrifice of themselves, had saved
whole populations and cities from threatening calamities.? It was not
to God, but to Satan, that the ransom for those held in captivity
by him was paid; according to the prevailing views of this period,
1 With reference to Isa.53:4,5. Αὐτὸς ἀφ᾽ ἡμῶν περίλυπον ἔχειν τὴν ψυχὴν ὁμολογεῖ
ἐβάστασε ἀσϑενείας τὰς τῆς ψυχῆς καὶ νόσους καὶ τεταραγμένην. In Joann. T. II. § 21.
τὰς τοῦ κρυπτοῦ τῆς καρδίας ἡμῶν ἀνϑρώπου, Φ ΤΙ T. XXVIIL. ὁ. 14.
6: ἃς ἀσϑενείας καὶ νόσους βαστάσας αὐτὰς 5.1. 6. ΜΙ 34; T. XXVIII. § 14
644 DOCTRINE OF REDEMPTION.
which have been already explained. In lighting upon this holy soul,
which could not be held in the bonds of death, the power of Satan must
necessarily be broken.!
~The peculiar manner of Christ’s death serves to satisfy him, that it
proceeded from an act wholly voluntary. He died at the precise point
of time when he chose to die, not succumbing to an outward force, like
those whose limbs were broken. From this circumstance, he endeavors
to explain the unusual suddenness of his death.?
A necessary connection between redemption and sanctification was
involved in the whole Christian mode of contemplating the work of re-
demption, and the nature of the union with Christ. We need only
make clear to ourselves the relation of the conceptions which here
grew out of the Christian consciousness, to perceive that this was so.
Godlike life and a holy life — these were inseparable notions at the
Christian point of view. Both were comprehended in one im the notion
of ἀφϑαρσία, immortal life. Now the Logos was regarded as the source
of this life; Christ, as the appearance of the Logos in humanity ; as
the Mediator of this higher life to human nature ; as the one through
whom, in every stage of its development, it became pervaded and ren-
dered holy by such a divine life. By the faith in Christ, by baptism,
each individual became incorporated mto the fellowship with Christ,
and consequently penetrated by this divine life, the principle of holi-
ness. Christ was understood to be the destroyer of Satan’s kingdom,
and to this kingdom was reckoned everything partaking of the nature
of sm. It was by becoming united to Christ through faith, that each
was bound to make this triumph of Christ over Satan’s kingdom his
own. Hence the Christian was converted from a miles Satanz into a
miles Christi.2 Moreover, the idea of the universal priesthood of all
Christians had its root in this conviction.
We may here introduce a few examples, to illustrate how some of the
church-teachers conceived this connection between redemption and
sanctification, faith and life. Clement, bishop of Rome, after having
emphatically borne his testimony to the truth, that no man can be justi-
fied by his own righteousness and his own works, but that every man
must be justified by the grace of God and by faith alone, goes on to
say : —‘‘ What are we to do, then, my brethren? Shall we be weary
in well-doing, and leave off charity ? The Lord forbid that this should
ever be done by us; but let us, with unremitted zeal, strive to accom-
plish all the good we can; for the Creator and Lord of all takes pleas-
ure in his own works.” * The author of the letter to Diognet remarks, .
after the beautiful passage above cited concerning the redemption:
‘¢ With what joy wilt thou be filled, when thou hast come to the knowl-
edge of this ; and how wilt thou love Him who so much earlier loved
1 Τίνι ἔδωκε τὴν ψυχὴν αὐτοῦ λύτρον ἀντὶ 2 Ὥς βασιλέως καταλιπόντος τὸ σῶμα καὶ
πολλῶν ; οὐ δὴ τῷ ϑεῷ᾽" μῆτι οὖν τῷ πονηρῷ; ἐνεργῆσαντος μετὰ δυνάμεως καὶ ἐξουσίας.
οὗτος γὰρ ἐκρώτει ἡμῶν, ἕως δοϑῇ τὸ ὑπὲρ In Joann. T. XIX. ὁ 4; ed. Lomm. T. II.
ἡμῶν αὐτῷ λύτρον, ἡ τοῦ ᾿Ιησοῦ ψυχὴ, ἀπατήη- yp. 172. In Matth. Lat. ed. Lomm. T. ΕΥ̓
ϑέντι, ὡς δυναμένῳ αὐτῆς κυριεῦσαι, καὶ οὐχ jp. 73, et seqq.
ὁρῶντι ὅτι οὐ φέρει τὴν ἐπὶ τῷ κατέχειν 3 See vol. I. p. 309.
αὐτὴν βάσανον. In Matth..T, XVI. § 8. 4 Vid. ep. I. ad Corinth. § 32. 33.
DOCTRINE OF REDEMPTION. 645
thee | But if thou lovest him, thou wilt be an imitator of his good-
ness.” Trenzeus thus draws the contrast between that voluntary obedi-
ence hich flows from faith, and the slavish obedience under the law:
«ς The law, which was given to bondmen, disciplined the soul by means
of outward and sensible things, dra eging it, as it were, with chains to
the obedience of its commands ; but the Word, which sets us free, in-
culcated a voluntary cleansing of the soul, and thereby of the body.
After this has been done, the chains of bondage, to which man had
become inured, must indeed be removed, and he must follow God w ith-
out chains. But the requisitions of freedom must extend all the
further, and obedience to the King must become’a fuller obedience ;
so that no one should turn back again, and prove himself unworthy of
his Deliverer ; for he has not freed us that we might go away from him;
since no one that forsakes the fountain of all good, which is with the
Lord, can by himself find the food of salvation ; but he has freed us for
this, that the more we have obtained, the more we might love him. To —
follow the Saviour is the same as to partake of salvation, and to follow
the light is the same as to partake of the light.’’!
But as the confounding of the Jewish with the Christian point of
view, and the consequent outward and material way of conceiving
spiritual things, was found to be the main cause of the corruption of
the Christian consciousness generally, so the influence of this disturb-
ing element is discernible also im the prevailing notion of faith. By
depres, that view of it which the Apostle Paul had set forth in opposi-
tion to the Jewish principle, became more and more obscured, and
instead thereof appeared the Jewish notion of a certain faith on out-
ward authority; not one which was suited to produce out of itself,
through a necessary inner connection, all the fruits of the Christian
life, but one which was only to draw after it, in an outward way, by
means of new moral precepts and new motives addressed to the under-
standing, the new habits of Christian living. We have already noticed,
how this notion of faith led to the undervaluing of the stage of mere
faith (πίστις) among the Gnostics, and in part among the Alexandrians
also; and how the reaction of Marcion tended to the re-establishment
of the Pauline view. But to the material and outward conception of
faith, on this side, was united also a material and outward conception
of the system of morals, which was rent from its inner connection with
the system of faith; whence followed, side by side with an outward
system of faith, a legal system of duties and good works, in which the
ascetic element had by far the ascendancy over the assimilating princi-
ple. And in connection with this, might arise the notion of a supererog-
atory righteousness, a perfection surpassing the requisitions of the law,
which strove to fulfil the so-called counsels of Christ, (concilii evange-
lici,) by the renunciation of all earthly goods.?
A great influence to confirm this outward and material view of faith
must have been especially exerted, by the manner in which the fellow-
ship of life with Christ, instead of being considered to flow from the
1 Lib. IV. c. 13, 14. 2 See vol. I. p. 277
646 DOCTRINE OF THE =ACRAMENTS.
inner appropriation of Christ alone, was made to depend on the out-
ward mediation through the church — a point on which we have spoken
‘already in the section relating to the church constitution. ‘To this out-
ward mediation of the church belonged the sacraments. As the essen-
tial character of the invisible and that of the visible church were not
carefully discriminated, a little confusion of the divme thing and
its outward sign must, from the same cause, take place in respect to the
doctrine of the sacraments. ‘This, in the case of baptism, is shown in.
the prevailing notion of a divine power which was imparted to the water,
and of a sensible union, brought about by means of it, with the whole
nature of Christ, for the deliverance of the entire spiritual and mate-
rial nature of man. ‘‘ As the dry wheat,” says Irenzeus, ‘‘ cannot be-
come one mass of dough and one loaf of bread without moisture, so
neither can we all become one in Christ without the water which is
from heaven. And as the parched earth cannot yield fruit unless it
receive moisture, so neither can we, who at first are but sapless wood,
ever produce living fruit, without the rai which is freely poured out
from above ; for our bodies through baptism, but our souls through the.
Spirit, have obtained that communion with the imperishable essence.” ἢ
Tertullian finely remarks, concerning the effects of baptism:? ‘ When
the soul attains to faith, and is transformed by the regeneration of
water and the power from above, the covering of the old corruption
having been removed, she beholds her whole light. She is received
into the communion of the Holy Spirit; and the soul which unites
itself with the Holy Spirit is followed by the body, which is no longer
the servant of the soul, but becomes the servant of the Spirit.” But
even Tertullian did not understand here how to distinguish nightly be-
tween the inward grace and the outward sign. In maintaining against
a sect of the Cainites (see section second) the necessity of outward bap-
tism, he ascribes to water a supernatural, sanctifying power. Yet we
see, even in the case of Tertullian, the purely evangelical idea break-
ing through this confusion of the inward with the outward, and directly
contradicting it; as when he says, it 1s fazth which in baptism obtains
the forgiveness of sin; and when, in dissuading against haste in bap-
tism, he remarks, that true faith, wherever present, is sure of salva-
tion. Even in the spiritual Clement of Alexandria we may discern
the influence of that outward and material conception of spiritual mat-
ters, when ke agrees with Hermas ‘ in thinking that the apostles per-
formed in hades the rite of baptism® on the pious souls of the Old ‘Tes-
tament who had not been baptized.
We have already, in the history of the forms of worship, taken notice
of the injurious practical consequences which resulted:-from this con-
fusion of the inward grace and the outward sign in the case of bap-
1 Lib. III. c.17. The divine principle of | 8. Fides integra secura de salute.
life for soul and body in Christ, the ἕνωσις 4 Lib. IIL 5. [X. Fabric. Cod. apocryph.
πρὸς ἀφϑαρσίαν. III. p. 1009.
2 De anima, 6. 41. Compare above the > Strom. lib. 11. f. 379
passage concerning the corruption of human
nature
THE SACRAMENTS. 647
tism. It was by confounding regeneration with baptism, and thus look-
ing upon regeneration as a “sort of charm completed at a stroke, by
Supposing a ‘certain magical purification and removal of all sin in ‘the
act of baptism, that men were led to refer the forgiveness of sins ob-
tained through Christ only to those particular sins which had been com-
matted previous to baptism ; instead of regarding all this as something
which, with the appropriation of it by faith, must go on dev eloping
itself through the whole of life. After this was presupposed, the ques-
tion must have arisen, How are we to obtain forgiveness for the sins
committed after baptism ? And the answer was: Although we have
obtained once for all, by the merits of Christ, the means of satisfaction
for the sins committed before baptism ; yet, in order to make satisfaction
for the sins after baptism, it is necessary that, in addition to this, we
should have recourse to voluntary exercises of penitence and to good
works. This mode of conception is clearly exhibited in the following
words of Cyprian:? ‘ When our Lord came, and had healed the
wounds of Adam, he gave to the restored a law, bidding him sin no
more, lest a worse evil should befall him. By the injunction of inno-
cence, we were circumscribed to a narrow circle ; and the frailty of hu-
man weakness would have been ata loss what to do, unless divine grace
had once more come to its aid, and, pointing out to it the works of
mercy, paved the way for it to secure salvation; so that we might
cleanse ourselves from all the lingermg remains of impurity by the
practice of alms. The forgiveness “of sin having been once obtained at
baptism, we earn by constant exercise in well-doing, which is, as it were,
a repetition of baptism, the divine forgiveness anew.’ Here, if we
only add what was remarked on an earlier page on the subject of the
sacerdotal absolution, we have the germ of the catholic doctrine re-
specting the sacrament of penance.
To the doctrine concerning the Lord’s Supper, may be applied, in
general, the same remarks which have been made in relation to the
doctrine concerning baptism ; but with this difference, that we may ob-
serve three different grades in the outward and material conception of
this ordinance. ‘The most common representation was that which we
find in Ignatius of Antioch,’ im Justin Martyr, and in Irenzeus. _ It is
a conception of it most nearly related to that view just noticed of bap-
tism, as the means of a spiritual-corporeal communion with Christ. It
was supposed, for instance, that as the Logos in Christ became man,
so here also he immediately appropriated to himself a body — this
body, by virtue of the consecration, became united with the bread and
1See Tertullian’s work, de pcenitentia.
This writer, it is true, brought over with
him from his legal studies, the expression,
satisfactio, into the doctrine of repentance ;
yet we should not be warranted, on this ac-
count, to ascribe to his legal habits of think-
ing and conceiving, nay, we should not be
warranted to ascribe to the ideas of any in-
dividual, so great an influence on the pro-
gress of error in the doctrinal notions of
the church on this point; for, the πρῶτον
ψεῦδος having been once established, all the
consequences involved in it must of neces-
sity unfold themselves, especially as these
consequences find so many points of at-
tachment in human nature.
2 De opere et eleemosynis.
3 Hence, in Ignatius, ep. ad Ephes. ec. 20,
the holy supper is called : φάρμακον ἀϑανα.
σίας, ἀντίδοτον τοῦ μὴ ἀποϑανεῖν, ἀλλὰ Civ
ἐν Ἰησῶ Χριστῷ διὰ παντός.
648 THE SACRAMENTS.
wine, and thus entered into the corporeal substance of those partakers
of it, who thereby received into themselves a principle of imperishable
life! In the North-African church, on the other hand, neither Ter-
tullian nor Cyprian seems to have entertained the notion of any pene-
tration of this sort. Bread and wine were represented rather as sym-
bols of the body and blood of Christ, though not as symbels without
efficacy. Spiritual communion with Christ at the holy supper was
made the prominent point; yet, at the same time, those that partook
were supposed to come into a certain sanctifying contact with Christ’s
body.2 The practice of the North-African church shows, moreover,
that, according to the prevailing belief, a supernatural, sanctifying
power resided in the outward signs of the supper: hence the daily
communion ;? hence also the communion of infants in connection with
infant baptism. The passage in John 6: 63 being incorrectly under-
stood as referrmg to the outward sensible participation of the supper,
the inference was drawn, that without this outward and sensible par-
ticipation none could be saved ;° as it had been inferred from the pas-
sage in John 3: 5, that none could be saved without outward baptism.
By the Alexandrians, especially by Origen, the distinction was
clearly drawn, in the doctrine concerning the sacraments, as through-
out his entire system of belief, between the imner divine thing, the
invisible spiritual agency of the Logos,® and the sensible objects by
which it is represented.’ ‘* Outward baptism,”’ says he, “‘ considered
as to its highest end, is a symbol of the inward cleansing of the soul
through the divine power of the Logos, which is preparatory to the
universal recovery ;— that commencing in the enigma and in the glass
darkly, which shall afterwards be perfected im the open vision, face to
face ; but at the same time, by virtue of the consecration pronounced
over it, there is connected with the whole act of baptism a supernatural
sanctifying power; it is the commencing point of gracious influences
bestowed on the faithful, although it is so only for such as are fitted,
by the disposition of their hearts, for the reception of those influ-
ences.’
He makes the same distinction also in regard to the holy supper ;
separating what is called, in a figurative sense, the body of Christ,
from the true spiritual manducation of the Logos,!"— the more dwine
1 That which distinguishes this mode of
conceiving the matter from a later one, is,
that the Christ who has ascended to heaven
is not considered to Ue present here; but
the Logos, in this zase, directly produces for
himself a body. This we find more dis-
tinctly expressed, it is true, in the next fol-
lowing period ; but it lies at the basis of the
following language of Justin: Τὴν δ ed-
χῆς λόγου τοῦ παρ᾽ αὐτοῦ εὐχαριστη-
ϑεῖσαν τροφὴν, ἐξ ἧς αἷμα καὶ σάρκες
κατὰ μεταβολὴν τρέφονται ἡμῶν, ἐκείνου τοῦ
σαρκοποιηϑέντος ᾿Ιησοῦ καὶ σάρκα καὶ αἷμα
ἐδιδάχϑημεν εἷναι. Apolog. 1. ὁ 66.
2 Tertull. c. Mare. 1. 1. c. 40: corpus
meum, i. e. figura corporis mei. De res.
carn. c. 8: anima de Deo saginatur. De
orat. c. 6: The perpetuitas in Christo, con-
stant, spiritual fellowship with him, and in-
dividuitas a corpore ejus.
3 See vol. I. p. 332.
4 See Cyprian. sermo de lapsis.
5 See Cyprian. Testimonior. 1. III. ¢. 25.
6 Comp. above, what is said of the ἐπι-
δημία αἰσϑητῆ, and the ἐπιδημία νοητὴ Χρισ-
τοῦ.
7 The νοητόν or πνευματικόν and the αἰσ-
ϑητόν.
8 See in Joann. T. VI. § 17; in Matth.
T. XV. § 23.
9 Τὸ σῶμα Χριστοῦ τυπικὸν καὶ συμβολι-
κόν.
10 The ἀληϑινὴ βρῶσις τοῦ λόγου.
DOCTRINE OF THE MILLENNIUM. 649
promise, from the common understanding of the holy supper,— adapted
to the capacities of the simple! The former refers to the spir-
itual communication of the Word made flesh, which is the true
heavenly bread of the soul. Of the outward supper the worthy
and the unworthy may partake alike ; but not of that true heavenly
bread ; since otherwise, it could not have been said, that whoever eats
this bread shall live for ever. Origen says therefore, that Christ in the
true sense called his flesh and blood the word, which proceeds from the
word, and the bread which proceeds from the heavenly bread —
the living word of truth, by which he communicates himself to the souls
of men; as the breaking of the bread and the distribution of the wine
symbolize the multiplication of the word, by which the Logos commu-
nicates himself to many souls. He supposed, moreover, that with the
outward supper, as with outward baptism, there was connected a higher
sanctifying influence by virtue of the consecrating words ; yet in the
sense, that nothing divine could be united with the earthly material
signs, in themselves considered ; and that, as in the case of baptism,
none could participate in the igher influence, unless made susceptible
of it by the inward disposition of the heart. As not that which enters
into the mouth defiles the man,— though by the Jews it is considered
unclean ; so nothing which enters mto the mouth sanctifies the man ;
though by the simple, the so-called bread of the Lord is supposed to
possess a sanctifymg power. We neither lose anything by failing to
partake of the consecrated bread, by itself considered ; nor do we gain
anything by the bare partaking of that bread; but the reason why one
man has less and another more, is the good or bad disposition of each
individual. The earthly bread is by itself in no respect different from
any other food. It was Origen’s design here, no doubt, to controvert
particularly the erroneous notions which attached to the supper a sort
of magical advantage, independent of the disposition of the heart —
notions which the other fathers also were far from entertaming ; but
yet, at the same time, his objections applied also to every representation
which attached to the outward signs any higher importance or efficacy
whatever, and even to those views which were received in the North-
African Church.? -
It remains that we should speak of the prevailing ideas in this
period, respecting the ultimate end of the whole earthly development
of humanity. The teleological point of view was, in this regard, insep-
arable from the Christian mode of contemplation. The kingdom of
God, and each individual life thereto pertaining, was to be conducted
onward to a completion: it was this certain prospect which formed the
contrast between the Christian view of life, and the Pagan notion of a
circle aimlessly repeating itself by a blind law of necessity. But the
intermediate #inks of the chain, up to that ultimate end, were still hid-
den from the ken of contemplation: this belonged to the prophetic ele-
_ 1 The xoworépa περὶ τῆς εὐχαριστίας ἐκδο- 2 Vid. Origen, Matth. T. XI. § 14; in
xn τοῖς ἁπλουστέροις and κατὰ τὴν Seworépav Joann. T. XXXII. § 16; in Matth. f. 898
ἐπαγγελίαν, corresponding to the two posi- V. LII. opp.
tions of the γνῶσις and of the πίστις.
VOL. I.
650 DOCTRINE OF THE MILLENNIUM.
ment, which must ever remain obscure till its fulfilment. To the earnest
expectaticn of the pilgrim, as he cast a glance over the windings
of the way, the end appeared at first near at hand, which, the farther
he advanced, retreated to a greater distance. ‘The signs in the course
of history alone would shed more light on the darkness, which the Lord
himself was unwilling to clear up by his prophetic intimations.
The Christians were certainly convinced, that the church would come
forth triumphant out of its conflicts, and, as it was its destination to be
a world-transforming principle, would attam to the dominion of the
world; but they were far from understanding at first the prophetic
words of Christ mtimating how the church, in its gradual evolutions,
under natural conditions, was to be a salt and a leaven for all human
relations. They could at first, as we have before remarked, conceive
of it no otherwise than this, that the struggle between the church and
the pagan state would endure till the triumph brought about from with-
out, by the return of Christ to judgment. Now it was here that many
seized hold of an image which had passed over to them from the Jews,
and which seemed to adapt itself to their own present situation, — the
idea of a millennial reign, which the Messiah was to set up on earth
at the end of the whole earthly course of the world, where all the
righteous of all times should live together in holy communion. As the
world had been created in six days, and, according to Psalm 90: 4, a
thousand years in the sight of God is as one day, so the world was to
continue in its hitherto condition for six thousand years, and end with a
thousand years of blessed rest corresponding to the sabbath. In the
midst of persecutions, it was a solace and a support to the Christians, to
anticipate that even upon this earth, the scene of their suffermgs, the
church was destined to triumph in its perfected and glorified state. As
the idea was held by many, it contained nothing m it which was un-
christian. They framed to themselves a spiritual idea of the happiness
of this period, perfectly corresponding with the essence of the gospel,
conceiving under it nothing else than the universal dominion of the
divine will, the undisturbed and blissful reunion of the whole commu-
nity of the saints, and the restoration of harmony between a sanctified
humanity and all nature transfigured ito its primitive innocence.!
But the crass images, too, under which the earthly Jewish mind had
depicted to itself the blessings of the millennial reign, had m part
passed over to the Christians. Phrygia, the natural home of a sensual,
enthusiastic religious spirit, was inclined to the diffusion also of this
grossly conceived Chiliasm. ‘There, in the first half of the second cen-
* tury, lived Papias, bishop of the church in Hierapolis ; a man, it is true,
of sincere piety, but, as appears from the fragments of his writings, and
from the accounts which we have of him, of a very narrow mind and
easy credulity. He collected from oral traditions, certain narratives
concerning the life and sayings of Christ and of the apostles ;? and
among these he received a great deal that was misconceived and un-
1 So Barnabas, 6. 15.
2In his book, λόγων κυριακῶν ἐξηγῆσεις, receive tales of the marvellous, has been
from which a fragment on Judas Iscariot, published in J. A. Cramer Catena in Acta
which serves to illustrate his propensity to Apostolorum. Oxon. 1838, pag. 12
SUPPRESSION OF CHILIASM. 651
true. Thus by his means were diffused abroad many strange, fantas-
tic images of the enjoyments to be expected in the thousand-years’
reign. The injurious consequence of all which was, to foster among
Christians the taste for a gross sensual happiness, incompatible with the
spirit of the gospel, and to give birth among the educated heathens to
many a predjudice against Christianity.!
But he who knows anything about the hidden depth of the spiritual
life, in which religion has its seat and its laboratory, will be cautious
how he pronounces judgment, from such appearances on the surface,
agamst the entire religion of a certain period, in which these disturb-
ing mixtures of a sensuous element were still to be found, when in such
aman as Jrenzeus we find vital Christianity and an exalted idea of the
blessedness of fellowship with God, united with these strange subordi-
nate notions. ‘he thousand-years’ reign he regarded as only a pre-
paratory step for the righteous, who were there to be,trained for a more
exalted heavenly existence, for the full manifestation of the divine
glory.? a
What we have just said, however, is not to be so understood as if
Chiliasm had ever formed a part of the general creed of the church.
Our sources of information from different parts of the church, in these
early times, are too scanty, to enable us to say anything on this point
with certainty and positiveness. Wherever we meet with Chiliasm, in
Papias, Irenzeus, Justin Martyr, everything goes to indicate that it
was diffused from one country and from a single fountain-head. We
perceive a difference in the case of those churches where originally an
anti-Jewish tendency prevailed ; as in the church at Rome (see above. )
We find subsequently in Rome an anti-Chiliast tendency. Might not
this have existed from the first, and only have been called out more
openly by the opposition to Montanism? ‘The same may be said also
of an anti-Chiliast tendency which Irenzeus combats, and which he ex-
pressly distinguishes from the common anti-Chiliastic tendency of Gnos-
ticism. It was natural, however, that the zealots for Chiliasm should in
the outset be disposed to represent all opposition to it as savoring of
Gnosticism.®
Two causes cooperated to bring about the general suppression of
Chiliasm: on the one hand, the opposition to Montanism ; on the other,
the influence of the spirit proceeding from the Alexandrian school. As
-the Montanists laid great stress upon the expectations connected with
the millennium, and although their conception of it was by no_means
grossly sensual,* yet as they contributed, by their enthusiastic visions,
to spread many fantastic pictures of the things which were then to hap-
pen,’ the whole doctrine of Chiliasm by this means lost its reputation.
1 Vid. Orig. Select. in ¥. ἢ. 570. T. II.
2 Tren. 1]. V. c. 35: Crescentes ex visione
Domini et per ipsum assuescent capere
zloriam Dei et cum sanctis angelis conver-
sationem. — Paullatim assuescent capere
Deum. c. 32.
3 Tren. 1. V. ο. 32: Transferuntur quorun-
_ dam sententize ab hxreticis sermonibus.
* Tertullian, at least, places the happiness
of the millennial reign in the enjoyment of
all manner of spiritual blessings, spiritalia
bona.
5 Of the wonderful city, for instance, the
heavenly Jerusalem, which should come
down from above. See Tertullian.
652 DOCTRINE OF THE MILLENNIUM.
An anti-Chiliast party, which had sprung up doubtless before, were
thus presented with an opportunity of pushing home their attacks; and
the more zealous opponents of Montanism seem to have combated this
error in connection with the other Montanistic doctrmes. Caius, a
presbyter of Rome, in his controversial tract against the Montanist
Proclus, endeavored to stigmatize Chiliasm as a heresy set afloat by the
- detested Gnostic, Cerinthus; and it is not improbable, though not
wholly certain, that he considered the Apocalypse as a book which had
been interpolated by the latter, for the express purpose of giving cur-
rency to this doctrine.
Next, the more intellectual and scientific direction of the Alexan-
drian school, which had so great an influence generally in spiritualizing
the system of faith, must have contributed also to spiritualize the ideas
concerning the kingdom of God and of Christ. Origen im particular
was a zealous comhatant of these sensual notions of the millennium, and
sought after a different explanation of those passages of the Old and
New Testament, on which the Chiliasts depended, and all of which they
took in the most literal sense. Add to this, that the allegorical method
of interpretation, peculiar to the Alexandrian school, was generally in
direct opposition to the grossly literal interpretations of the Chiliasts.
The moderate Alexandrians, who were no friends to expurgatory criti-
cism, did not reject the Apocalypse at once, as an unchristian book,
with a view to deprive the Chiliasts of this important support ; — they
only combated the literal interpretation of it. It was natural, how-
ever, that the spirit of the Alexandrian school did not so easily spread
from Alexandria into the other districts of Egypt, which, in point of
intellectual cultivation, fell so far behind that flourishing seat of the sci-
ences. Nepos, a pious bishop, belonging to the nome of Arsenoe mm
Egypt, was a devoted friend of this sensual Chiliasm ; and wrote in de-
fence of it a book against the Alexandrian school, entitled, a Refutation
of the Allegorists;1 in which probably he set forth a theory of Chili-
asm in accordance with his own anti-allegorical method of decyphering
the Apocalypse. This book seems to have found great favor with the
clergy and laity in the above-mentioned district. Great mysteries and
disclosures of future events were supposed to be found here; and many
engaged with more zeal in the study of the book and theory of Nepos,
than in that of the bible and its doctrines. By their zeal for these
favorite opinions, which had no connection whatever with the essence of
the gospel, men were led astray, as usually happens, from that which con-
stitutes the main element of practical Christianity, the spirit of love.
They affixed the charge of heresy on those who would not embrace
these opinions ; and matters went so far, that whole churches sepa-
rated themselves, on this account, from their communion with the
mother church at Alexandria. A country priest, named Coracion, took
the lead of this party, after the death of Nepos. Had the bishop Dio-
nysius of Alexandria now been disposed to exercise his ecclesiastical
authority, had he condemned the erroneous dogma by an absolute de-
1 Ἔλεγχος τῶν ἀλληγοριστῶν.
SUPPRESSION OF CHILIASM. 653
cree, such a proceeding would have laid the foundation of a lasting
schism; and Chiliasm, which it was intended to crush by words of au-
thority, would in all probability have become only the more fanatical.
But Dionysius, that worthy disciple of the great Origen, showed in this
case, how charity, moderation, and the true spirit of liberty, which
dwells only with love, can accomplish what exceeds the power of force
or of law. Not, like others, forgetting the Christian in the bishop, he
was moved by the love of souls to repair in person to those churches.
He called together those of the parochial clergy who supported the
opinions of Nepos, and, moreover, allowed all laymen of the churches,
who were longing after instruction on these points, to be present at the
interview. ‘The book of Nepos was produced ; for three days the bishop
disputed with those pastors over the contents of the book from morn to
eve; he patiently listened to all their objections, and endeavored to
answer them from the scriptures ; he entered fully into the explanation
of every difficulty, taking the scriptures as his guide; and as the
issue of the whole —a result which had seldom before followed theo-
logical disputations — the clergy thanked him for his instructions, and
Coracion himself honestly recanted, in the presence of all, his former
views, and declared himself convinced of the soundness of the opposite
doctrine. This happened in the year 255.!
Dionysius, having thus restored the unity of faith among his own
churches, wrote, for the purpose of confirming those who had been con-
vinced by his arguments, and for the instruction of others, who still
held fast to the opinions of Nepos, his work on the Promises.? In this
instance also, the Christian gentleness and moderation with which he
speaks of Nepos is well worthy of notice. ‘Qn many accounts,” says
he, “‘ I esteemed and loved Nepos;—on account of his faith, his untir-
ing diligence, his familiar acquaintance with the holy scriptures; and
on account of the great number of church hymns composed by him,
which to this day are the delight of many of the brethren.? And the
more do I venerate the man, because he has already entered into his
rest. But dear to me, and prized above all things else, is the truth.
We must love him, and, wherever he has expressed the truth, agree
with him; but we must examime and correct him in those passages of
his writings where he seems to be in the wrong.”
The millennial reign was regarded by Chiliasm as forming, in the
grand development of the kingdom of God, an intermediate point of
transition to a higher state of perfection ; and, answering to this, a simi-
lar intermediate point was conceived to exist also in the development
of each individual. It was here the doctrin® concerning Hades, as the
common receptacle of all the dead, found its point of attachment. To-
gether with Chiliasm, tizs doctrme also had to be defended against
the Gnostics ; for by Hades the latter understood the kingdom of the
1 Euseb. 1. VII. c. 24. I have rendered it, as referring to the many
2 Περὶ ἐπα γγελιῶν. hymns composed by him, which perhaps is
8 Τῆς πολλῆς ψαλμῳδίας, Ὦ μέχρι νῦν πολλοὶ the most natural way; or as referring to
τῶν ἀδέλφων εὐϑυμοῦνται. The passage may the variety of church melodies introduced
he understood in two ways; either in the way by him.
50*
654 DOCTRINE OF THE
Demiurge, on this earth. It was to this kingdom Christ descended — it
was out of this he delivered those who were capable of fellowship with
him, so that after death they could be received immediately to heaven.
Yet, as we remarked certain indications that Chiliasm had other oppo-
nents to contend with besides the Gnostics, so the same may be said of
this doctrine alsv, which was connected with a mode of thmking not
essentially different. Here, too, we find indications of antagonists other
than the Gnostics, but yet in whom their opponents might easily be led
to believe they perceived a relationship to the Gnostics.! They were
such as taught that Christ, by his descent to Hades, delivered the faith-
ful from the necessity of passing into the mtermediate state after death,?
and opened for them an immediate entrance into heaven. Accord-
ing to the doctrme of the Montanist Tertullian, those only who had
been thoroughly cleansed by the bloody baptism of martyrdom were to
constitute an exception—were to be raised immediately, if not to
heaven, at least to an exalted state of blessedness, under the name of
Paradise. All others would need to pass through that intermediate
stage, in order to be freed from the defects and stains which remained
still cleaving to them, and then, according to the measure of their at-
taiuments, would come sooner or later to participate in the millennial
reion.2 It is easy to see how this notion would stand connected with
the opmion of which we have already pointed out the grounds, that a
particular satisfaction and penance were required for sins committed
after baptism. And this notion, of such an intermediate state for the
purpose of purification in Hades, passed over, at a later period, into the
doctrine of purgatory. This sprung in the first place out of a mixture
of Persian and Jewish elements. It was the idea of a fire-current at
the end of the world to purge away everything unclean ;— to which
we may observe some allusion in the Clementines and in the Pseudo-
Sibylline writers. Thence arose the notion of a purgatory after death*
— the ignis purgatorius of the Westerns.°
The doctrine of the resurrection, imasmuch as it relates to the per-
sistence and exaltation of the entire being of the individual, is most
intimately connected with the peculiar essence of Christianity, and, on
account of the importance which it gives to the individual existence in
its totality, forms a strong contrast with the ancient pantheistic view of
the world; ® as we saw in fact very clearly exhibited in the pagan
attacks on Christianity. ‘The dignity of the body as a temple for the
Holy Spirit, and the command that it should be appropriated to this
1 As Irenzus describes them, l. V. c. 31:
Quidam ex his, qui putantur r@cte credi-
disse, supergrediuntur ordinem promotionis
justorum et motus meditationis ad incorrup-
telam ignorant, hzereticos sensus in 86
habentes.
2 In hoe, inquiunt, Christus inferos adiit, ©
ne nos adiremus. Tertullian, de anima, c. 55.
3 Modicum quoque delictum mora resur-
rectionis illic luendum; where he refers to
the novissimus quadrans, Matth. 5: 28, af-
terwards understood of the ignis purgato-
rius. L.c. ¢. 58.
4 Τὴν διὰ πυρὸς κάϑαρσιν τῶν κακῶς βε-
βιωκότων. Strom. ]. V. f. 549.
> The earliest trace of it would be found
in Cyprian, ep. 52, if the words, ‘‘ missum
in carcerem non exire inde, donec solvat
novissimum quadrantem, pro peccatis longo
dolore cruciatum emundari et purgari diu
igne,” (instead of which another reading
has diutine,) are to be understood of the
state after death, which is certainly the more
probable meaning, and not of penance in
the present life.
6 See vol. I. p. 11.
RESURRECTION. 650
end, being grounded in this doctrine, there necessarily arises out of
it an opposition to the Oriental, dualistic contempt of the body ; and
hence it was no accidental thing that the Gnostics furiously assaulted
it; while, on the other hand, we may remark, in the zeal with which
it was defended by the church fathers, a right Christian instinctive
feeling — though not always accompanied with clear knowledge — of
the connection of this doctrine with the essence of Christianity. But
their cautious adherence to the letter, as well as their opposition to the
Gnostics, led them not seldom to apprehend the doctrine of the resur-
rection in too crass and material a way, and to form too narrow and
limited conceptions of the earthly body. Origen endeavored here also
to strike a middle course between these opposite tendencies, making
more use of what the Apostle Paul says (1 Corinth. 15) concerning
the relation of the earthy to the glorified body; and distinguishing,
from the mutable phenomenal form, the proper essence lying at the
foundation of the body, which remains the same through all the
changes of the earthly life, and which, moreover, is not destroyed at
death. This proper essence lying at the foundation of the body would,
by the operation of the divine power, be awakened to a nobler form,
corresponding to the ennobled character of the soul; so that, as the
soul had communicated its own peculiar stamp to the earthly body, it
would then communicate the same to the transfigured body.! In proof
of this he alleges, that the identity of the body im this life consists not
in its momently changing phenomenal form, which had been fitly com-
pared to a flowing stream,? but in the peculiar stamp which the soul
impresses on the body, whereby it becomes the proper form of mani-
festation of this or that particular personality.®
Natural as it would be to the Christian feelings of those who had
been converted from Heathenism, to seek — by entering more deeply into
the whole connection of the work of redemption, into the spirit of the
gospel, into the sense of single passages often too superficially under-
stood — some ground of consolation with respect to the fate of their ances-
tors who had died without faith in the gospel; yet they were deterred
from it by a mistaken adherence to the letter in the understanding of
scripture, and by the stern, uncompromising opposition to Paganism.
And the outward, materialized view of regeneration which arose out
of the habit of confounding it with baptism, also contributed to promote
these narrow views, which afterwards, carried to the extreme, issued in
the notion of absolute predestination. Marcion alone did, on this side,
1 The «eidog’ χαρακτηρῖζον in the σῶμα
πνευματικόν, just as in the σῶμα ψυχικόν.
To illustrate this point, he had recourse
sometimes to his own doctrine concerning
the ὕλη. in itself undetermined, but capable
of receiving, through the plastic power of
God, qualities of a higher or lower order;
and sometimes to the doctrine of a dynamic
essence, underlying the body, a λόγος σπερ-
ματικός (ratio ea que substantiam continet
corporalem, que semper in substantia cor-
poris salva est,) which, however, is itself
also to be reduced to his doctrine of a ὕλη
lying at the ground of the corporeal world,
and susceptible of the whole manifold vari-
ety of properties. See 7. ἀρχ. 1 11. ο. 10;
eOele. td Va Ct Bz.
2 Selecta in Psalmos: Od κακῶς ποταμὸς
ὠνόμασται τὸ σῶμα, διότι ὡς πρὸς τὸ ἀκριβὲς
τάχα οὐδὲ δύο ἡμερῶν τὸ πρῶτον ὑποκείμενον
ταὐτόν ἐστιν ἐν τῷ σώματι ἡμῶν. T. ΧΙ,
p. 388. ed. Lomm.
3 “Ὅπερ ἐχαρακτηρίζετο ἐν τῇ σαρκὶ, τοῦτο
χαρακτηρισϑῆσεται ἐν τῷ πνευματικῷ σώματι.
656 EMINENT CHURCH TEACHERS.
enter more profoundly into the spirit of the evangelical doctrine; and
here he was joined by the Alexandrians, who, to explain this matter,
had recourse to the doctrine of a progressive development and course
of purification after death, and moreover found, or supposed they found,
an allusion to this in the descent of Christ to Hades. With great zeal
Clement maintained this doctrine, as one necessarily grounded in the
universal love and justice of God, with whom is no respect of persons.
The beneficent power of our Saviour—he affirms —is not confined
barely to the present life, but operates at all times and everywhere.!
But the Alexandrians, as might be gathered from what has already
been said respecting their doctrine concerning the δικαιοσύνη σωτήριος, (sav-
ing justice,) went still further, and supposed, as the ultimate end of
all, a universal redemption, consisting in the annihilation of all moral
evil, and a universal restoration to that original unity of the divine life
out of which all had proceeded (the general ἀποκατάστασις.) Yet, in the
case of Origen, this doctrine lost its full meaning, by reason of the con-
sequences which he was pleased to connect with it. His theory con-
cerning the necessary mutability of will in created beings, led him to
infer, that evil, ever germinating afresh, would still continue to render
necessary new processes of purification, and new worlds destined for
the restoration of fallen beings ; until all should again be brought back
from manifoldness to unity; so that there was to be a constant inter-
change between fall and redemption, between unity and manifoldness.
Into such a comfortless system was this profound thinker betrayed, by
carrying through with rigid consistency his one-sided notion of crea
turely freedom and mutability, and thus marring the full conception of
redemption. This doctrine he had expressed with great confidence in
his work περὶ ἀρχῶν; but it may be questioned whether this also was not
one of those points upon which his views became changed at a later
period of his life; yet traces of it are still to be found (though not so
certain and distinct traces) in his later writings.?
IV. Notices of the more Eminent Church Teachers.
The ecclesiastical writers who followed next after the apostles, are
the so-called Apostolic Fathers, (patres apostolici,) who lived in the
age of the apostles, and are supposed to have been their disciples. A
phenomenon singular in its kind, is the striking difference between the
writings of the apostles and the writings of the Apostolic Fathers, who
were so nearly their contemporaries. In other cases, transitions are
wont to be gradual; but in this instance we observe a sudden change.
There are here no gentle gradations, but all at once an abrupt transi-
2 Orig. π. apy. 1. II. ¢. 3; ¢. Cels. L IV
c. 69, he barely says: E? μετὰ τὸν ἀφανισ-
pov τῆς κακίας λόγον ἔχει, τὸ πάλιν αὐτὴν
1 Οὐ γὰρ ἐνταῦϑα μόνον ἡ δύναμις ἡ εὐερ-
γητικὴ φϑάνει, πάντῃ δέ ἐστι καὶ ἀεὶ ἐργάζε-
ται. Strom. 1. VI. f. 638 et 639. He also
makes use of the legend noticed on a for-
mer page— which legend itself perhaps
grew out of the felt need of some solution
of this question — that the apostles descend-
ed, like Christ, to the place of the dead, and
bestowed on them baptism. ᾿
ὑφίστασϑαι ἢ μὴ, ἐν προηγουμένῳ λόγῳ τὰ
τοιαῦτα ἐξετασϑῆσεται. ‘There is an obscure
hint in Matth. f. 402. After the ἀποκατά-
στασις has been completed in certain Atens.
he speaks of πάλιν ἄλλη ἀρχῆ.
APOSTOLIC FATHERS. CLEMENT. 657
tion from one style of language to another ; a phenomenon which should
lead us to acknowledge the fact of a special agency of the Divine Spirit
in the souls of the apostles. After the times of the first extraordinary
operations of the Holy Ghost, followed the period of the free develop-
ment of human nature in Christianity ; and here, as in all other cases,
the beginnings must be small and feeble, before the effects of Chris-
tianity could penetrate more widely, and bring fully under their influ-
ence the great powers of the human mind. It was to be shown first,
what the divine power could effect by the foolishness of preaching.
The writings of the so-called Apostolic Fathers have unhappily, for
the most part, come down to us in a condition very little worthy of con-
fidence, partly because under the name of these men, so highly vene-
rated in the church, writings were early forged for the purpose of giv-
ing authority to particular opmions or principles; and partly because
their own writings which were extant, became interpolated in subservi-
ence to a Jewish hierarchical interest, which aimed to crush the free
spirit of the gospel. |
In this connection, we should have to notice first Barnabas, the well-
known companion of the Apostle Paul; if a letter, which in the second
century was known under his name in the Alexandrian church, and
which bore the title of a catholic epistle,! really belonged to him. But
we cannot possibly recognize in this production, the Barnabas who was
deemed worthy to take part as a companion in the apostolical labors of
Paul, and who had derived his name from the great power of his dis-
courses in the churches.” It breathes a spirit widely different from
what might be expected of such an apostolic man. We see here a
Jew of the Alexandrian school, who had embraced Christianity, and
was prepared by his Alexandrian traming for a more spiritual concep-
tion of Christianity ; but who, at the same time, attached too much im-
portance to the Gnosis of the Alexandrian Jews —a man who sought
in the mystic allegorical interpretation of the Old Testament, — more
consonant with the spirit of Philo than that of Paul, or even of the
epistle to the Hebrews,—a peculiar wisdom, in which he seems to
take a vain sort of pleasure. We meet nowhere in this letter with
those views of the Mosaic ceremonial law, as a religious means of culture
adapted to a certain stage of human development, which we meet with
in Paul; but such views as evince an altogether peculiar, Alexandrian
turn of mind — views which are not found to recur in the following
church-teachers, and which sprang from the wildest class of idealists
among the Alexandrian Jews.? Moses spake everything im the spirit
(ἐν πνεύματι :) ---- that is, he had only presented universal, spiritual
truths under a symbolical form. But the carnal Jews, instead of pene-
trating into the meaning of these symbols, understood and believed
everything i in the literal sense, and supposed they must observe the law
according to the letter. Thus the entire ceremonial religion had sprung
1 ᾿Ἐπιστολὴ καϑολικῆ. i.e. a letter intend- a shovionae which answers to the contents
ed for general circulation, and containing of this epistle.
matter of general interest, —an exhortato- 2 Ὑἱὸς mapakAnoews, υἱὸς ποοφητείας
ry writing destined for several churches, — 8 See above, vol. I. p. 49
658 APOSTOLIC FATHERS.
out of a misconception of the carnal multitude. A bad angel, it is said,}
had led them into this error; just as in the Clementines, and other
writings of that stamp, it is a favorite hypothesis that original Judaism
had been adulterated by the spurious additions of wicked spirits. The
author of this epistle is even unwilling to admit, that circumcision was
a seal or sign of the covenant; alleging, as evidence to the contrary,
that circumcision was practised also among the Arabians, the Syrians,
and the idolatrous priests Gn Egypt.) But it is made out, that Abra-
ham circumeising the 318 men, Gen. c. 17, and 14: 14, prefigured
the crucifixion of Jesus; IH (18) being the initial letters of the name
Jesus, and T (300) the sign of the cross. These characters and nu-
merals, peculiar to the Greek language, could have occurred to no one
but an Alexandrian Jew, who had lost his knowledge of, or perhaps had
never been acquainted with, the Hebrew, and who was familar only
with the Alexandrian version — certainly not to Barnabas, who could
have shown no such ignorance of the Hebrew tongue, even if 1t were
possible to suppose him guilty of such egregious trifling. Yet the tri-
fler himself looks upon it as a remarkable discovery, as is evident from
the pompous remark, which so exactly characterizes the mystery-traf-
ficking spirit of the Alexandrian-Jewish Gnosis: ‘ No one ever learned
from me amore genuine doctrine; but I know that ye are worthy
of it.”’ 2
The prevailing drift of the epistle is in opposition to carnal Judaism,
and to Judaism in Christianity. We recognize the polemical aim
against the latter, the dogmatic influence of which extended to the
views entertained concerning the person of Christ, when, in chap. 12,
it is emphatically observed, that Christ is not merely the Son of man
and the Son of David, but also the Son of God. The epistle is all of
a piece, and cannot possibly be separated into two parts,’ of which Bar-
nabas was the author of one, and somebody else of the other.
For the rest, there is no hint which intimates that the author of the
epistle wished to have it supposed he was Barnabas. But his spirit
and style being im accordance with the Alexandrian taste, it may have
come about, that, as the author’s name was unknown, and it was wished
to give credit and authority to the document, the report found currency
in that city, that Barnabas was the author.
Next to Barnabas we place Clement; perhaps the same whom Paul
mentions m Philipp. 4: ὃ. About the end of the first century, he was
bishop of the church at Rome. We have, under his name, an eprstle
to the church of Corinth, and the fragment of a second. 'The first of
these was, in the first centuries, read at public worship in many of the
churches, along with the scriptures of the New Testament. It con-
tains an exhortation, interwoven with examples and general maxims,
recommending concord to the Corinthian church, which was rent by
divisions. This epistle, although genuine in the main, is still not exempt
from important interpolations. We detect a palpable contradiction,
1 Cap. 9.
2 Οὐδεὶς γνησιώτερον ἔμαϑεν ἀπ’ ἐμοῦ λόγον" ἀλλὰ οἶδα ὅτι ἄξιοί ἐστε ὑμεῖς.
3 As Schenkel has asserted.
CLEMENT. 659
\
when, for example, we observe, gleaming through the surface of the
whole epistle, the simple relations of the oldest constitution of the
Christian church, where bishops and presbyters were placed wholly on
a level, and then in one passage, § 40 and onward, find the whole
system of the Jewish priesthood transferred to the Christian church.
The epistle which passes under the name of the second, is manifestly
nothing but the fragment of a homily. |
Under the name of this Clement, two other epistles have been pre-~
served in the Syrian church, which were published by Wetstei, in an
appendix to his edition of the New Testament. They are circular let-
ters, addressed particularly to those Christians of both sexes who lived
in the state of celibacy. ‘The praise which these writings bestow on
the unmarried life, is by no means sufficient to prove that Clement was
not their author ; this high estimation of celibacy * having become com-
mon at a very early period. There are several thmgs in favor of the
high antiquity of these epistles: they nowhere indicate the presence
of a hierarchical effort ; they do not, like other writings of this kind,
apply the Old-Testament ideas of the priesthood to the Christian
church ; they make no prominent distinction between clergy and laity,
nor between bishops and presbyters ; they represent the gift of healing
diseases, especially demoniacal possessions, as a free gift, not attached
to any particular office. Still, however, these considerations do not
amount to a certain proof of the high antiquity of the writings ; the
whole admitting of an easy explanation, even on the supposition of
their later origin, from the tendencies peculiar to certam countries of
the Hast.
As these epistles must have been quite agreeable to the ascetic ten-
dency of the Western, particularly of the North-African church ; as,
in similar writings of a practical character, (aimed against the same
abuses which are reproved in these epistles,) there was frequent occa-
sion for alluding to them, it must appear the more singular, that they
are found nowhere cited before the fourth century ;? a fact sufficient of
itself to excite suspicion with regard to their authenticity. |
These epistles bear every mark of having been forged in some East-
ern church, in the last times of the second or m the third century,
partly with a view to exalt the merits of the unmarried life, partly to
counteract the abuses which, under the show of celibacy, began to gain
ground, particularly the irregular connections of the συνείσακτοι ὃ
Under the name of this Clement, various other writings were forged,
subservient to some hierarchical or dogmatic interest; as, for example,
the tract which relates to the history of Clement himself, who is repre-
sented to have been a convert of the Apostle Peter, together with his
father, whom he lost and afterwards finds again ;* the Clementines,
whose peculiar style of thought, resembling that of the Ebionites, we
1 See vol. 1. p. 277. the synodal letter against Paul of Samosata.
2 The first allusions to it are in Epipha- Euseb. 1. VII. ο. 30. δὰ
nius and Jerome. 4 Hence the title to one of the revisions
8 Which abuse had spread in the church preserved to us in the version of Rufinus
of Antioch, as well as of North Africa. See ἀναγνωρισμοί, Recognitiones.
660 APOSTOLIC FATHERS. HERMAS. IGNATIUS.
have already described; finally, the collection of apostolical constitu-
tions, (διατάξεις or διαταγαὶ ἀποστολικαΐ,.) and the apostolical canons, (κάνονες
ἀποστολικοί. )
The origin of these two collections may be explained in the same
way as that of the so-called Apostles’ Creed. As men originally spoke
of an apostolical tradition relating to matters of doctrine, without its
ever having occurred to them that the apostles had drawn up a confes-
sion of faith ; so they were accustomed to speak of an apostolical tra-
dition relating to the constitution and usages of the church, without
ever having supposed that the apostles had given any written laws on
the subject. The expressions ‘ apostolical traditions, apostolical ordi-
nances,” having thus once become familiar, a foothold was furnished
for the opinion, or the pretence, that the apostles, having prepared a
written confession of faith, had also drawn up a collection of ecclesias-
tical laws. Hence, to subserve different interests, different collections
of this kind may have sprung into existence, sce the one which
Epiphanius cites in many places is evidently not the same with our
present Apostolical Constitutions. These latter appear to have been
formed gradually, in the Eastern church, out of different fragments, dur-
ing a period reaching from the close of the second into the fourth century.
Hermas would follow the next in this series, were he same with the
one mentioned in Paul’s epistle to the Romans, chap. 16, as many
among the ancients supposed. We have, under this name, a work en-
titled The Shepherd, (ποίμην ;) so called, because in the second book an
angel, the appointed guardian of Hermas, is introduced in the character
of a shepherd.
It cannot be certainly determined whether the author had, or imag-
ined he had, the visions which he describes; or whether he invented
them to procure a more favorable reception for the doctrines, chiefly
practical, which he advances. The work was written originally m
Greek, but has been preserved to us, for the most part, only in a Latin
translation. It stood in high repute among the Greek writers of the
second century, a distinction, perhaps, to which the name of the sup-
posed author, and his famous visions, not a little contributed. Irenzeus
cites the book under the title of the scripture. Yet it may be very
much doubted whether the Hermas of the Apostle Paul was really its
author ; although the other tradition, also, (cited in the poem against
Marcion, ascribed to Tertullian, and in the fragment on the canon of
the New Testament, published by Muratori,!) which ascribes it to the
brother of Pius, bishop of Rome, about the year 156, is no less doubt-
ful ; since it is impossible to determine how much credit is due to these
two documents; and the high reputation of the book in the times of
Irenzeus and Clement of Alexandria, can hardly be reconciled with the
bapothesis of so late an origin.?
Ignatius, bishop of the ‘church at Antioch, is said, in the reign of
1 Antiq. ital. jud. svi, T. III. stroying the authority of the book were led
2 It may have been, that the Roman for this very purpose to fix on so late an
Bishop Pius actually had a brother of this author.
name; and those who were desirous of de
POLYCARP. THE APOLOGISTS. 661
Trajan, to have been conveyed as a prisoner to Rome, where he was
expecting to be thrown to the wild beasts. On the way, he is said to
have written seven epistles; six to churches of Asia Minor, and one to
Polycarp, bishop of Smyrna. These letters, it must be allowed, con-
tain passages which at least bear throughout the stamp of antiquity.
Such especially are the passages directed against Judaism and against
Docetism; but even the briefer revision, which is the one most entitled
to confidence, has been very much interpolated. As the account of
the martyrdom of Ignatius may be justly suspected,! so too the
letters which presuppose the correctness of this suspicious legend, do
not wear at all a stamp of a distinct individuality of character, and of a
man of these times addressing his last words to the churches. <A hie-
rarchical purpose 15 not to be mistaken.
The letter to Polycarp, bishop of Smyrna, wears very much the ap-
pearance of an idle compilation ‘That to the Roman church possesses
more decided marks of originality than the others.
Of Polycarp, bishop of Smyrna, we have already spoken. To him
is ascribed an epistle to the church at Philippi; nor are there any suf-
ficient reasons for doubting that he was the author of it.
Immediately after the apostolical fathers, we place the Apologists,
who follow next in the order of time. The existing scientific culture
would first be‘made subservient to the defence of Christianity under
the government of Hadrian ; and the Apologists, who began to appear
about this period, are therefore to be considered as the earliest repre-
sentatives of such a combination.
Among these, the first to be noticed is Quadratus. He was known
as an evangelist,? and stood in high repute on account of his prophetic
gifts. He must not be taken for the same person as a Quadratus, who,
in the time of Marcus Aurelius, was bishop of the church at Athens,
and with whom Jerome has confounded him. It is to be regretted,
that his Apology has not come down to us. Eusebius has preserved
the following remarkable passage from it: ‘ The works of our Saviour
were always to be seen, for they were real ; — those that were healed,
and those that were raised from the dead, were seen, not only when
they were healed or raised, but they were always there ; not only whilst
he dwelt on the earth, but also after his departure, which they long sur-
vived ; so that some of them have lived even to our own times.” ®
The second, Aristides, still retained, after he became a Christian,
the philosopher’s cloak, (τρίβων, pallium,) so that he might be able to
present Christianity to the educated Heathen as the new philosophy
from heaven.
Justin Martyr is worthy of notice, as being the first among these
1 See vol. I. p. 191. 4 Hieronym. de vir. illustr. ec. 20, ep. 83,
2 This word is to be understood in the ad Magnum: Apologeticum contextum phi-
sense of the New Testament, i.e. as desig- losophorum sententia. The traveller De
nating a teacher, not connected with any la Guilletiére says, that in a cloister, about
particular church, but travelling about asa twenty-four miles from Athens, they pretend
missionary to preach the gospel. still to be in possession of this Apology.
3 Euseb. 1. III. c. 37; L IV. ¢. 351. V.
e 17.
VOL. I. 56
662 THE APOLOGISTS.
apologists whose writings have come down to our times, and the first
Christian father, intimately known to us, in whom we observe Christian-
ity im contact with the Hellenic culture, and more particularly with the
Platonic philosophy ; in which respect, he is the precursor of the Alex-
andrian church-teachers. The accounts of his life and education we
must derive for the most part from his own writings ; and it will be the
safest course to confine ourselves in the first place to his two Apologies ;
inasmuch as these are the undoubted productions of Justin, and bear
indubitable marks of a decided intellectual bent. As to his other
writings, they must first be compared with these, before we can decide
about their genuineness.
Flavius Justinus was born in the city of Flavia Neapolis, the ancient
Sichem in Samaria: it was at that time a Roman-Greek colony, in
which the Greek language and culture predominated. Probably it was
not a decided taste for speculative inquiries, which in truth he did not
possess, but the longing after some stable ground of religious conviec-
tion, that led him, with many others of his age, to the study of philoso-
phy ; and precisely for this reason the philosophy of Plato would pre-
sent the most attractions for him. It was not so much true that he
became a systematic follower of this philosophy, as that he adopted
many of its ideas, and particularly such as were suited to meet the
spirit of an age which felt the necessity of religion. But the spirit of
this philosophy could not so pre-occupy his mind, as to unfit it, as it did
many other minds, for other spiritual impressions. He informs us him-
self how he came to be a Christian. ‘I also,” says he, ‘‘ was once
an admirer of the doctrines of Plato; and 1 heard the Christians
abused. But when I saw them meet death, and all that is accounted
terrible among men, without dismay, I knew it to be impossible that
they should live in sin and lust. I despised the opmion of the multi-
tude ; I glory in being a Christian, and take every pains to prove my-
self worthy of my calling.”
After becoming a Christian, Justin still retamed the mantle? which
he had worn as a pagan philosopher and ascetic, availing himself of his
former garb and mode of life as a means which enabled him easily to
introduce, in his intercourse with men, religious and philosophical sub-
jects, and through these to prepare the way for brmging home the gos-
pel to their hearts. Thus he may be regarded as an itinerant preacher
in the garb of a philosopher.? From one of his remarks m the second
Apology, where, describing the Christian cultus, he says, “ We conduct
the convinced, after we have baptized them, to the assembled brethren,”
it has been too hastily inferred,* that he was ordained to the spiritual
office. Nosuch distmction was made, as yet, between clergy and laity,
as renders it improbable that Justin expressed himself in this way on
the principle of the universal Christian priesthood. But whether he
1 Apolog. I. p. 50, 51. since we might at least assume that the
2 See vol. I. p. 275. author was acquainted with the history of
8 Even if the Dialogue with Trypho were Justin’s life.
not genuine, yet on this point we might 4 By Tillemont.
avail ourselves of the accounts it contains;
JUSTIN MARTYR. 663
had been solemnly ordained, in the name of the church, to the office
of an evangelist or not, — a question.of little importance, — his gifts as
ἃ; teacher would hardly be suffered to he idle, when they could be so
usefully employed, both in spreading the gospel among the Heathen,
and in giving instruction to the churches themselves. If any reliance
can be placed on the story of Justin’s martyrdom, it would appear from
this narrative, that, while he resided at Rome, a portion of the church,
who understood the Greek language, were accustomed to meet and hear
him discourse in his own house.
We remarked in the first section of this history,! that, soon after the >
death of the Emperor Hadrian, and at the beginning of the reign of
Pius, the Christians were persecuted. It was on this occasion that
Justi, who happened to be then living at Rome, felt himself called
upon to present to the emperor a written defence of their cause. As
the name of Marcus Aurelius with the title of Czesar does not appear
at the head of this document, it was probably written before Aurelius
had been nominated to that dignity, which happened in the year 139.7
It is more difficult to determine at what time the work which goes by
the name of the first Apology of Justin was written. The immediate
occasion of his writmg in defence of the Christians was an incident,
which presents a striking illustration of the working of Christianity and
of the persecutions. A woman of Rome, who with her husband had
led an abandoned life, became a convert. She now refused to share
any longer in the vices of her husband, and used all her influence to
reclaim him. Being unsuccessful in this, and finding it impossible to
remain connected with her husband without participating in his sins, she
availed herself of the privilege allowed in such cases according to the
doctrine of our Lord, and procured a divorce. In revenge, her hus-
band accused her of bemg a Christian. The woman now petitioned
the emperor, that she might first be allowed to arrange her domestic
affairs, when she would submit the matter to a judicial investigation.
The husband, perceiving that his vengeance against his wife was thus
likely to be delayed, turned his malice upon her Christian teacher, whose
name was Ptolemzus. The latter was seized by a centurion, and car-
ried before the prefect of the city. Having boldly declared before
the preefect that he was a Christian, he was condemned to death.
1 See vol. I. p. 103.
2 The superscription runs as follows: Ad-
τοκρώτορι Litw Αἰλίζῳ ᾿Αδριώνῳ ᾿Αντωνίνῳ
Εὐσεβεῖ Σεβώστῳ Καίσαρι καὶ Οὐηρισσίμῳ
i ‘ ἃ. Ὁ
υἱῷ Φιλοσόφῳ καὶ Λουκίῳ φιλοσόφῳ (accord-
ing to Eusebius, φιλοσόφου) καΐσαρος φύσει
υἱῷ καὶ Ἐὑσεβοῦς εἰσποιήῆτῳ, ἐραστῇ παιδείας,
ἱερᾷ τε συγκλήτῳ καὶ δήμῳ παντὶ Ῥωμαίων.
The first named is the Augustus Antoninus
Pius, who had then entered upon his reign ;
the second, M. Antoninus Philosophus, to
whom the Emperor Hadrian (at whose re-
quest Antoninus Pius adopted him) had
given the name Annius Verissimus; the
third, Lucius Verus Antoninus, who after-
wards was co-regent with M. Aurelius. He
was son of Lucius A®lius Verus, whom Tra-
jan had adopted, and nominated Cesar.
After the early death of Lucius, he also, in
compliance with the wish of Hadrian, was
adopted by Antoninus Pius, who took the
place of his father. The reading found in
Eusebius is most probably the correct one ;
for it can hardly be supposed that Lucius
Verus would have two epithets. The sur-
name “ philosopher” is quite incongruous
applied to a youth but nine years oid ; while
he might be styled, with perfect propriety,
the ἐραστὴς παιδείας. The surname “ philo-
sopher” would sooner be given to the now
deceased /®lius Verus, whom Spartianus
calls “ eruditus in literis.”
664 THE APOLOGISTS.
Another Christian by the name of Lucius, on hearing this decision,
said to the przfect: ‘* Why do you condemn to death a man who is
guilty neither of murder, nor theft, nor adultery, nor any other crime,
but merely because he has called himself a Christian? Such a pro-
ceeding does not become the pious emperor, nor the philosopher, the
emperor’s 50η.᾽ 1 From these words, the preefect gathered that the
speaker was also a Christian, and, upon his avowing that it was so, con-
demned him likewise to death. A third met with the same fate.
The question now arises, whether these events agree best with the
reign of Antoninus Pius, or with that of Marcus Aurelius. We find
nothing here which might not have happened under the reign of the
former; for, as we have said,? the law of Trajan was in fact by no
means repealed by the rescripts of Hadrian and of Antoninus Pius: the
public confession of Christianity might still be punished with death,
although the clemency of the emperor left it in the power of every well-
disposed magistrate to exercise great indulgence. But is it probable,
that a Christian would thus address the przefect, if the reigning empe-
ror himself had issued a severe edict against the Christians as such ? 8
Moreover, the Apology itself contains no allusion whatever to the exist-
ence of a new law against the Christians, for the repeal of which Jus-
tin was petitioning the emperor. It may be said that it is only to the
times of M. Aurelius the language of Justin is applicable, where he
speaks of confessions extorted by the rack from slaves, women and
children, in which those popular rumors about the unnatural crimes,
said to be committed in the Christian assemblies, were acknowledged
to be true. Beyond question,* we find examples of such proceedings
against the Christians first cited under the reign of M. Aurelius; but
as popular fanaticism had already, from the time of Nero, set in circu-
lation such reports against the Christians, the same fanaticism may have
found many a magistrate, previous to the time of which we are speak-
ing, disposed both to credit it and to administer to it. Besides, in the
Apology which by universal consent is placed in the reign of Antoninus
Pius, Justin only asks that men would cease to place reliance on the
blind reports of the populace against the Christians. He says, it is
true, that the things which happened at Rome in the time of Urbicus
were everywhere occurring ; that other governors acted in the same
unreasonable manner ; that generally, where an individual was reformed
by Christianity, one of his most intimate relations or friends would ap-
pear as his accuser, —all which seems to agree chiefly with the times
of general persecution under M. Aurelius. But in the times of Anto-
ninus Pius also, the Christians in many districts were furiously attacked
by the populace, whence the emperor was moved to publish those
edicts which were designed to quiet the minds of the people. It is
1 Οὐ πρέποντα EvoeBet αὐτοκράτορι, οὐδὲ
φιλοσόφῳ (according to Eusebius; the eom-
mon reading, φιλοσόφου.)
2 See vol. I. p. 105.
8 The reasons alleged by Hr. Semisch
(Studien und Kritiken, J. 1835, p. 939)
against believing in the existence of any
such law, are far from being satisfactory,
The psychological problem is solved in the
way I have shown in my account of this
persecution. It might be conceded, how-
ever, that the words may possibly have been
spoken before the publication of such a law.
4 See vol. 1. p. 108.
—
JUSTIN MARTYR. 665
singular too, that, m the above-cited titles of the reigning princes by the
Christian Lucius, the surname ‘ philosopher’ should not be given to
M. Aurelius, to whom it properly belonged, but should be transferred
to Verus, to whom it did not belong and was never applied; while that
of Antoninus Pius should be given to M. Aurelius, who in his lifetime
was never known by that title.’ Even if we rejected the reading in
Eusebius, it would not help the matter; for, at the end of the Apology,
the same predicates are once more subjoined to the names of the two
emperors.” ‘These reasons concur to show, that this Apology ought not
to be placed, as it is by the common hypothesis, supported by the
weighty authorities of. Pagi, Tillemont, and Mosheim, in the reign of
M. Aurelius ; but in the times of Antoninus Pius, as is maintained by,
Valesius and Longuerue.
It is remarkable,’ again, that Justin twice refers,‘ in this Apology, to
something he had said before, which nevertheless does not occur in this
Apology, but which is found in the first. He uses the same phrase,
ὡς προέφημεν, which he employs elsewhere, when he refers to passages in
the same document ; — and this hardly admits of being reconciled with
the long interval of time by which, on the other hypothesis, we must sup-
pose the two Apologies were separated from .each other. |
With all this, we shall not deny that the authority of Eusebius is»
against us; for we must allow, that he seems to consider the first-cited
Apology as the first, composed under the reign of Antoninus Pius, and
to place the second under that of M. Aurelius.® It would be neces-
sary, then, in retaining our own view of the matter, to suppose that the
right relation of the two Apologies to each other had, in the time of,
Eusebius, already become confused ; which assuredly is possible. But
we should not omit also to remark, that, if this Apology was written im
the reign of Antoninus Pius, it must seem strange that Lucius did not
appeal to the laws enacted by that emperor against the popular attacks
on the Christians, and favorable to their interests; though we must ad-
mit that in such laws the Christians were ever disposed to find more
than they really contained.®
We have had occasion to speak already of Justin’s peculiar idea with
1 Comp. the reasons, certainly not with-
out weight, which Semisch has presented in
favor of the common explanation of these
titles, in the Studien und Kritiken, J. 1835,
ὅ. 921.
2 Ein οὖν ὑμᾶς ἀξίως εὐσεβείας καὶ
φιλοσοφίας τὰ ὀίκαια ὑπὲρ ἑαυτῶν κρῖναι.
That the epithet φιλόσοφος, which occurs at
the beginning of the Apology of Athenag-
oras, whether applied to, L. Verus or to
Commodus. cannot serve to relieve this dif-
ficulty, is plain; since it may be easily shown,
that the predicate, belonging properly to
only one of the emperors, is attributed to
them both in common, as the case there
stands. ,
8 As the Benedictine editor long ago
nuticed.
* According to the Benedictine edition,
§ 4, where he speaks of enmity to God; § 6,
where he speaks of the incarnation of the
Logos; and § 8, where he speaks of Hera-
clitus.
5 By comparing II. 13 and IV. 16 (IV. 11
is less clear), and by comparing ὁ. 17 with
what precedes, we can scarce doubt that
either the reading πρότερα is corrupt, or
Eusebius so wrote through a mere oversight.
6 Though {I cannot think the difficulty so
greatas it is considered to be by Hr.Semisch
(1. ¢. p. 920}, who does not believe that a
prefect under this reign would have acted
in this manner; for ‘Trajan’s rescript was
certainly still in full foree, and a Christian
who, before the civil magistrate, professed a
religio illicita, and declared himself opposed
to the state religion, had to be punished for
his obstinacy (obstinatio.)
666 THE APOLOGISTS.
regard to the spermatic Word, (λόγος σπερματικός,) as related to the abso
lute, divine Logos, and constituting the transition-link betwixt Christianity
and everything true and good in the times antecedent to Christianity —
an idea which was laid hold of and prosecuted still farther by the Alex-
andrians. It is singular, however, that in Justin’s other writings not a
hint is to be found respecting this idea, so predominant in the Apolo-
gies. It might be said, indeed, Justin simply made use of this idea in
accommodation to his particular purpose, which was, to render the
philosophical emperor more favorably mclined to his propositions ; but
the supposition is an unnatural one. Forming our estimate of Justin
especially from his own writings, we could hardly give him credit for
possessing versatility of mind enough, to range so freely in a circle of
ideas which had been merely borrowed from abroad to answer a present
purpose. That more candid and liberal judgment of the Greek philo-
sophy, and that impartial and fair statement even of opimions which he
censures, we must regard rather as the expression of his real views.
But in his other writings, which aimed at the conversion of the Heathens,
he might beyond doubt have employed the same method with as good
effect as in the Apologies. Why, then, did he not employ it? The
case would appear still more singular, if we supposed, according to the
common view, that Justin wrote the two Apologies in times so widely
different.
We have a production, under the name of Justin, entitled an Adino-
nition to the Gentiles, (παραινετικὸς πρὸς “EAAqvac,) the design of which is to
convince the Heathens of the insufficiency of their popular religion, as well
as of their philosophical doctrines of religion, and of the necessity of a
higher instruction from God himself. It is most probably the same
treatise which we find cited by Eusebius and Photius under the title of
The Refutation, (ἔλεγχος,) a title well suited to the contents.!
In this treatise, we find no trace of that milder and more liberal way
of thinking which we observe in the Apologies, —no trace of that pe-
culiar circle of ideas of which we have spoken, but rather the reverse.
All true knowledge of God is here represented as derived solely
from revelation. It is admitted, deed, that among the Heathen there
were many feeble though misunderstood echoes of the truth ; yet these
were derived from a misunderstood and corrupt tradition ;— which
agrees with the idea prevailing among the Alexandrian Jews, that
a knowledge of the doctrines communicated by divine revelation to the
Jews, had come to the Greeks through Egypt. While, in the Apolo-
gies, men are acknowledged to have existed among the Heathen, who,
following the revelation of the λόγος σπερματικός, were witnesses for the
truth before the appearance of Christianity, it is here asserted,? on the
contrary: ‘‘ Your own teachers have been constrained, even against
their will, to say a great deal for us concerning divine providence ; and
particularly those of them who have resided in Egypt, and profited by
the religion of Moses and his fathers.”
1 Comp. Semisch’s thorough investigation “ Monographie,” p. 105, where also will be
respecting this writing in the first vol. of his found a list of the authors on this subject.
2 Cohortat. p. 15.
JUSTIN MARTYR. 667
We cannot possibly suppose, that this treatise sprung from a mind οὖς
the same way of thinking, as that which produced Justin’s Apolo-
gies. Yet, if we are disposed to ascribe it to him, we must at least
not follow the common hypothesis, and consider it the first production of
his after his conversion, but, on the contrary, one of his latest. We
must suppose, that the mild and liberal way of thinking which he
originally indulged, became afterwards more narrow and rivid; and
that those views, resulting from the peculiar direction of his mind, and
originally predominant with him, concerning the relation of the revela-
tions of the λόγος σπερματικός to the revelation of the absolute Logos,
which we find predominant in the Apologies, had at some later period
been wholly suppressed by the notions which he had imbibed from the
Alexandrian Jews concerning a source of outward tradition.! Such a
change is indeed possible, and examples of the same kind are doubt-
less to be met with; but it may be a question, whether this treatise
contains sufficiently decisive evidence of having proceeded from Justin,
to make such an hypothesis necessary.
We have next, under the name of Justin, a short address to the
Gentiles, (λόγος πρὸς Ἕλληνας.) with which indeed no title mentioned in
the indexes to the writings of Justin among the ancients corresponds, but
which, however, if we cannot consider it a production of Justin be-
cause it differs from the style of his writings,” bears at least the stamp
of the same age. It is a rhetorical exhibition of the untenableness of
the pagan doctrine concerning the gods, in which the finest passage is
the conclusion: ‘‘ The power of the Logos does not produce poets ; it
1 ΤΊ is not to be denied, that these notions
occur also in the Apologies; but they are
kept more in the background, while the
other view predominates. Apotog. II. p. 81:
“ All that philosophers and poets have said
about the immortality of the soul, about
punishments after death, about the intuition
of heavenly things, or about similar doc-
trines, they have been enabled to know, and
have unfolded, because they have been fur-
nished with a clue to them by the prophets.
Hence there seems to be one and the same
sun of truth for them all; and it is plain,
that they have not correctly understood it,
if they contradict one another.” So too, p. 92,
Plato’s doctrine of the creation is traced to
Moses.
2 Although I agree with Semisch in the
result, yet I cannot approve the reasons
which he adduces (p. 166) for deciding that
the writing is not Justin’s. The difference
between the Admonitions and the Apologies
is in fact greater than that which he makes
so prominent between this writing and the
Other writings of Justin. What Justin says
in the Apologies, respecting the motives
which led him to abandon Paganism, may
be easily reconciled with what he alleges
here, when he speaks of his abhorrence of
the immoralities in the pagan mythology;
for although he had learned already, in the
+
philosophical schools, to give another sense
to the mythological narratives, yet this arti-
ficial concealment of the breach with the
traditional religion could not satisfy him
He might then very justly mention this as
one thing which led him to Christianity,
though it was not the only one. In truth,
one is not always under the necessity of
expressing in full every thing that has con-
tributed to induce a change in his convie-
tions and mode of conduct. The manner,
however, in which Christianity operated on
him, he describes here not otherwise than
he does in his other writings. Hr.Semisch
labors under a mistake, when he supposes
that in this writing he finds it made the
boast of Christianity, that it does not form
philosophers. 17΄λὲ8 is not what is said; bu‘
that it makes men more than philosophers,
that it converts mortals into gods; and
this, too, Justin might have said. Nor does
it admit of being proved from this writing,
that the author supposed no intermediate
state after death, — no Hades as a transition
stage ; for, when he speaks of the return of
redeemed souls to God, the reference is here
to the ultimate end —the final goal; and,
moreover, the expression is too general and
vague to furnish any grounds for deciding
as to what the author’s views were on this
point.
668 THE APOLOGISTS.
does not create philosophers, nor able orators; but, by formimg us
anew, it makes of mortal men immortal, converts mortals into gods. It
transports us from the earth beyond the limits of Olympus. Come, and
submit yourselves to its influence. Become as I am, for I too was as
you are: this has conquered me, the divinity of the doctrine, the power
of the Logos; for as a master serpent-charmer lures out and frightens
away the hideous reptile from his den, so the word drives the fearful
passions of our sensual nature from the most secret recesses of the soul.
And the cravings of lust having once been banished, the soul becomes
calm and serene ; and, delivered from the evil which had cleaved to it,
returns to its Creator.” 4
The largest and most important work we have from Justin, is, next
to the Apologies, his Dialogue with Trypho the Jew — the object of
which is to prove that Jesus is the Messiah promised in the Old Testa-
ment, and to refute the objections then commonly urged by the Jews
against Christianity. Justin comes, probably to Ephesus, in company
with Trypho a Jew, whom the war excited by Barcochba had driven
from Palestine, and who was traveling about Greece; having there
studied, and become enamored of the Greek philosophy. The phi-
losopher’s cloak, which Justin wore, led Trypho to accost him as he was
taking a solitary walk; and a conversation arose between them about
the knowledge of God, which Justin finally turns to the subject of
Christianity. The conversation is supposed to be here put down in
writing.
The unanimous testimony of the ancients assigns this Dialogue to
Justin. The author intimates that he is the same Justin who wrote
the Apologies, by citing a passage from the so-called second Apology,
as his own production.2 He describes himself in the introduction as
one who had left Platonism for Christianity — which applies perfectly
well to Justin. No unprejudiced reader can deny, that the writing
must have been composed by a contemporary of Justin, or at least by
aman who lived very near to those times. Such being the case, no
good reason can be imagined, why a man, who, as appears evident from
this book, was by his own personal qualifications entitled to rank as
high as Justin himself, should, instead of writing it in his own name,
cause it to appear under that of a contemporary. Besides, the book
is wholly, free from those marks of studious design, so apparent in other
forgeries of the same period, written for the purpose of giving spread
to certain favorite opinions. ‘The prevailing aim is a polemical one
against Jews and Judaizing Christians; and here nothing was to be
9 gained i in the estimation of either party by using the name of the Sa-
maritan pagan, and former Platonist.?
1 Respecting the treatise “on the Unity of
God,” (περὲ μοναρχίας.) incorrectly ascribed
to Justin, see the remarks of Semisch, l. ec.
p- 167.
2 Vid. Simon Magus, Dial. Tryph. f. 349.
3 The arguments brought against the
_ genuineness of this book by Wetstein, Pro-
legomena in Nov. Test., and Semler in his
edition of the same, 1764, p. 174, are drawn
from the mode of citation from the Alexan-
drian version. Comp., on the other side,
Stroth, in the Repertorium fiir bibl. u. mor-
cenlind. Literatur, Bd. 11. S. 74; next Roch,
Justini M. Dial. e. "Tryph. secundam regulas
criticas examinat. et voJetarwe convictus.
1700, — a work which I have not seen; and
JUSTIN MARTYR. 669
We may be struck, it is true, at meeting here with the same phe-
nomena which we remarked in speaking of the “ Refutation of the
Gentiles ;”’ but here the case is altered. We saw, in fact, that Justin
is seeking to point out, on the one hand, the affinity of Christianity
with the better sort of Greek philosophy, and, on the other, the unsatis-
factory nature of that philosophy so far as it respects religion. Now,
if in the Apologies, directed to the philosopher Marcus Aurelius, par-
ticular prominence would. necessarily be given to the former point of
view ; in a work, on the contrary, which is aimed against Jews, who
sought in the Greek philosophy a supplement to the religious instruc-
tion of the Old Testament, this point of view would necessarily be kept
wholly in the back ground. Yet, at the same time, there is an evident
affinity of ideas between the Dialogue and the Apologies, even in that fa-
vorite thought of the Apologies relating to the λόγος σπερματικός. In like
manner as in the first Apology, he says that men would have had some
excuse for their sins, if the Logos had first revealed himself to man-
kind but a hundred and fifty years ago; if his agency had not been
felt at all times among men through the medium of that λόγος σπερματικός :
so, in the present treatise, he makes the same remark in reference to
the moral ideas (φυσικαὶ ἐννοιαι) inseparable from human nature, which
force men everywhere to recognize sin as sin, and which, by the influ-
ence of the evil spirit, by bad education, manners and laws, were capa-
ble of bemg extinguished and suppressed rather than totally destroyed.
What he says here also concerning that which had revealed itself at all
times and by its pwn nature, as the goodness whereby alone men could
please God,— in contradistinetion to the ceremonial law, which was
valid only as a means of discipline and culture for the Jewish hardness
of heart, or as typical of the future,! — naturally leads to the idea of
that λόγος σπερματικός, by which a moral consciousness was given to all
mankind.
It is very true, that in the Apologies we find no trace of Chiliasm :
but the spzrttwal ideas of eternal life and of the kingdom of Christ,
which are so clearly displayed in the Apologies, stand in no manner of
contradiction with this doctrine ; and we should not forget that the
Chiliasts themselves regarded the millennium as being but a medium of
transition to a higher stage of existence. It may perhaps be explained,
that this doctrine, which could not fail to be peculiarly offensive to the
educated Heathen, was not mentioned by him in his Apologies, because,
although important according to his own views, yet it did not belong to
the fundamental doctrines of Christianity, which latter, we must allow,
he exhibited without the least disguise, even when they were offensive
to the Heathen. In a dialogue designed to vindicate the Christian
doctrine against the objections of the Jews, he had special occasion, on
the contrary, to make this a prominent point, in order to show, that the
Christians were orthodox in this particular, even according to the Jew-
Lange in the first vol. of his Dogmenge- ed. Rosenmueller, Fuldner, et Maurer. T. I.
achichte, —an excellent refutationof Muen- P. II.
scher. Vid. Commentationes theologice, 1Ta φύσει καὶ ἀεὶ καὶ di ὅλου καλὰ καὶ
δίκαια καὶ ἀγαϑά. See p. 247, 264. 320
670 THE APOLOGISTS.
ish representations. The antipathy to Gnosticism and to the doctrines
of Marcion is strongly marked in both works ; and with this spirit, Chili-
asm at that time readily sympathized.
In respect to the doctrine of the Logos and of the Holy Spirit, we
find in the Apologies and in the Dialogue a striking coincidence. More-
over, the thoughts and expressions which occur in both productions, ex-
hibit still more evident marks of their having proceeded from the same
author.!
We cannot determine with certainty, whether Justin actually had
such a disputation with a Jew by the name of Trypho ; but it is at least
quite probable that various disputations with Jews furnished him an in-
ducement to write such a Dialosue, as he had thereby acquired so inti-
mate a knowledge of the Jewish theology of the age.. He was always
ready to give Jews and Gentiles the reasons of his faith. As we are
not able to distinguish what is mere drapery in this Dialogue from what
is fact, so neither can we find in it any sufficient marks by which to de-
termine its exact chronology ; but it is certain, from the citation out of
the first Apology, that it was composed at a later period than the lat-
ter, and probably, when we take into consideration all that has been
said, later than either of the Apologies.
Justin speaks of the power of the gospel, from his own experience,
in the Dialogue, as well as in the Apologies. “I found in the doctrine
of Christ,” says he, “‘ the only sure and salutary philosophy ; for it has
in 1t a power to awe, which restrains those who depart from the right
way ; and the sweetest peace is the portion of them that practise “it.
That this doctrine is sweeter than honey is evident; since we who
have been formed by it, refuse to deny his name, even iy death.”
We have to regret the loss of a work which Justin wrote against all
the heretical sects of his day, and of his book against Marcion.
Whether the fragment of a work on the resurrection, which John of
Damascus in the eighth century published under Justin’s name, really
belongs to him, is extremely doubtful: Kusebius, Jerome, and Photius,
knew nothing of any such work. ‘Their silence, however, is no proof
that it was not his.”
Among the finest remains of Christian antiquity belongs the letter to
Diognetus on the characteristics of the Christian worship compared
with Paganism and with Judaism, which is found among the works of
Justin. It contains that noble description of the Christian life, from
1 The mystical interpretation of the Mes-
τιν passage, Gen. 49: 11. Apolog. II. p.
: TO γὰρ » πλύνων τὴν στολὴν αὐτοῦ
ἐν αἵματι σταφυλῆς" πρθαγγελτικὸν ἦν
τοῦ πάϑους, οὗ πάσχειν ἔμελλε; oe’ αἵματος
καϑαίρων τοὺς πιστεύοντας αὐτῷ" ἧ γὰρ κε-
κλημένῃη ὑπὸ τοῦ ϑείου πνεύματος διὰ τοῦ
προφῆτον στολὴ, οἱ πιστεύοντες αὐτῷ εἰσιν
ἄνϑρωποι, ἐν οἷς οἰκεῖ τὸ παρὰ τοῦ ϑεοῦ
σπέρμα, ὁ λόγος, τὸ δὲ εἰρημένον αἷμα τῆς
σταφυλῆς, σημαντικὸν τοῦ ἔχειν μὲν αἷμα τὸν
φανησόμενον, GAN οὐκ ἐξ ἀνθρωπείου σπέρ-
“ατος, UAW ἐκ ϑείας δυνώμεως. Comp. with
this the passage in Dial. Tryph. 273, which
betrays the same author; only that, in the
former passage, he makes use of expressions
which were borrowed more from the Greek
philosophy, as his purpose required that he
should: Τὸ τῷ αἕματι αὐτοῦ ἀποπλύνειν
μέλλειν τοὺς πιστε ὕοντας αὐτῷ ἐδήλου. Στο-
λὴν γὰρ αὐτοῦ ἐκώλεσε τὸ ἅγιον πνεῦμα τοὺς
dv αὐτοῦ ἄφεσιν ἁμαρτιῶν λαβόντας, ἐν οἷς
ἀεὶ δυνάμει μὲν πάρεστι, καὶ ἐνεργῶς δὲ
παρέσται ἐν τῇ δευτέρᾳ αὐτοῦ παρουσίᾳ. Τὸ
δὲ αἷμα σταφυλῆς εἰπεῖν τὸν λόγον, δεδήλωκεν,
ὅτι αἷμα μὲν ἔχει ὁ Χριστὸς οὐκ ἐξ ἀνϑρώπου
σπέρματος" ἀλλ᾽ ἐκ τῆς τοῦ ϑεοῦ δυνάμεως.
2 Comp. Semisth, 1]. c. I. 5.. 146
JUSTIN MARTYR. ΟἿ]
which we have already made a brief quotation. Its language, its
thoughts, and the silence of ancient writers, prove, that the letter did
not come from the hand of Justin. But the Christian simplicity which
pervades it is an evidence of its high antiquity ; to which may be add-
ed, that the author places J udaism and Paganism in the same cate-
gory’ that he seems not to consider the Jewish ritual as of divine
origin — and yet nothing properly Gnostic is to be found in the compo-
sition. Such’an appearance can be explained only on the supposition
of its belonging to a very early date.
The circumstance, however, that the author speaks of the Jewish
sacrificial worship as an institution still in existence, would not warrant
us to infer that it was written before the destruction of the temple at
Jerusalem; for m a lively description, he might naturally represent as
actually existing, an institution belonging to the past. Nor does he fur-
nish us with any certain chronological mark, when he styles himself a
disciple of the apostles ; for so he might call himself as a follower of
their writings and doctrines. There is some doubt, however, whether
this passage in the beginning of the eleventh par acraph belongs to the
genuine part of the letter.
What follows after this, came evidently from another hand. The
remarks which here occur respecting the Jewish people, respecting the
divine authority of the Old Testament, and the orthodoxy attaching
itself to the decisions of the fathers, are not in harmony with the pre-
vailing turn of spirit and mode of thinking which we find in this letter.
Justin expected, as he informs us himself in the Apology last cited,
that a certain individual, Crescens by name, and a cynic by profession,
— who belonged to one of the then famous classes of pretended saints,
and used his great influence with the populace in stirrmg them up
against the Christians, — would be the means of his death; for he had
drawn on himself the particular hatred of that man by unmasking his
hypocrisy. According to Eusebius, Crescens actually accomplished
what he had threatened: but, in evidence of this, Eusebius adduces a
passage from Tatian, Justin’s disciple, which yet amounts to no proof; +
for Tatian simply says that Crescens sought to destroy Justm, from
whence certaimly it does not follow that he actually accomplished his
purpose.?
Eusebius may be right, however, in saying that Justin suffered mar-
tyrdom under the reign of Marcus Aurelius. This account agrees
with a report of the martyrdom of Justin and his companions, which
comes to us, it 15 true, through a suspected channel,? but yet possesses
many internal marks which are more in favor of than against its
authenticity.*
1§ 19, orat. contra Grecos.
Ζ Θανάτῳ περιβαλεῖν πραγματεύσασϑαι.
8 In the collection of the Metaphrast Sy-
meon.
4 The fact that no wonderful stories,
nothing strained or exaggerated, occurs in
it; that it contains nothing inconsistent with
the simple relations existing among Chris-
tian communities in that age; that it makes
no mention of Crescens, whereas we shouid
expect, if such a tale of martyrdom had been
invented by some Greculus, that Justin’s
death would be ascribed to the contrivance
of Crescens, and the latter, as a principal
character, be made the subject of many
fables.
672 THE APOLOGISTS.
Next after Justin follows his disciple, Tatian of Assyria, of whom
we have already spoken in our account of the Gnostic sects... He has
himself furnished us, in the only work of his, soon to be mentioned,
which we possess, the means of tracing the history of his religious de-
velopment. He was educated a Heathen; and his extensive travels
aiforded him an opportunity of becoming acquainted with the multifa-
rious kinds of heathen worship which then existed in the Roman em-
pire. Not one among them. all appeared to him to be a reasonable
worship. He saw religion everywhere made an instrument for the ser-
vice of sin. Nor could he be satisfied with the fine-spun allegorical
interpretations of the ancient fables, which represented them as sym-
bols of a speculative system of nature ; and it seemed to him dishonor-
able for one to jom in the popular worship, who could not fall in with
the common religious persuasion, nor see in the doctrine of the gods
anything else than symbols of the elements and agencies of nature.
The mysteries, also, into which he became initiated, seemed to him not to
answer the expectations which they excited; while the conflicting sys-
tems of the philosophers furnished no certain ground of religious con-
viction. he contradiction which he often observed in pretended phi-
losophers, between the affected gravity of their costume, of their looks
and discourses, and the frivolity of their conduct, filled him with dis-
trust. While in this state of mind, he happened to hght upon the Old
Testament, to which his attention had been drawn by what he had heard
concerning the high antiquity of these writings compared with the re-
ligion of the Greeks — as might very naturally happen toa Syrian. As
to the impression made on his mind by the perusal of the Old Testa-
ment, he remarks himself: ‘‘ These writings won my confidence by the
simplicity of their style, the unaffected directness of the speakers, the
intelligible account of the creation; by the predictions of future events,
the salutary tendency of the precepts, and the prevailing doctrine of
one God.” The impression which he received from the study of the
Old Testament, seems, accordingly, to have prepared the way for his
belief in the gospel.2 Having made a visit to’ Rome while in this state
of mind, he was there converted to Christianity through the mstrumen-
tality of Justin, of whom he speaks in terms of high veneration.
After the death of the latter, he wrote his Discourse to the Gentiles,
in which he vindicates the ‘‘ philosophy of the barbarians ”’ (φιλοσοφία τῶν
βαρβάρων) against the contempt of the Greeks, who nevertheless had re-
ceived the germs of all science and arts originally from the barbarians.
In the view he takes of the-relation of the Greek philosophy as well as
religion to Christianity, we recognize the later much more than the earlier
Justin. We have remarked on a former occasion,* that in this work
the germ already appears of that speculative and ascetic way of think-
ing, which he had probably brought along with him from Syria; as we
1 See vol. I. p. 456. Tatian should subsequently become an anti-
2 Tatian had therefore already been con- Jewish Gnostic; but we have already ob-
vinced of the untenableness of polytheism, served (p. 456-7) that we are by no means
and indeed become satisfied that no religion warranted to adopt this supposition.
but a monotheistic one could be true. 4 See p. 456.
8 It would be very strange, then, that
TATIAN. ATHENAGORAS. HERMIAS. 673
may also perceive in it some obscurity of style which was peculiar to
the Syrians. He says to the Heathens: “ Wherefore would you excite
the religions of the state to a conflict with us? And wherefore, if I
am unwilling to follow your religious laws, should I be hated as the
most impious of men? The emperor commands us to pay tribute; I
am ready to pay it. The Lord commands us to serve him; I know
how I am bound to serve him: for men are to be honored after the
manner of men ; but that God only is to be feared, who can be seen by
no human eye, and comprehended by no human art. Only when bid-
den to deny Jum, shall 1 refuse to obey, but choose rather to die, that
I may not appear both falge and ungrateful.”
Next after Tatian, follows Athenagoras, who addressed his Apolog
(πρεσβεία περὶ χριστιανῶν.) to the emperor Marcus Aurelius and his son Com-
modus.t. Of his personal history we have no definite accounts. Onl
two of the ancient writers name him,— Methodius, and Philip of Sida.
This Philip of Sida, the last head of the Alexandrian catechetical
school, is the only individual who enters into any details respecting the
hfe of Athenagoras;? but the known incredibility of this author, the
discrepancy between his statements and other more authentic reports,
and the suspicious condition in which his fragment has come down to
us, render these details unworthy of confidence. Neither the remarks
of Athenagoras concerning the second marriage, nor what he says of
the ecstacy of the prophets, whom he represents as blind organs of the
activity of the Holy Spirit, would suffice to prove that he was a Mon-
tanist ; for, as we have remarked before, the Montanists said nothing
on these points that was altogether new: they only pushed to the ex-
treme a way of thinking on religious subjects and on ethics which was
already existing.
Of this Athenagoras, we have still remaining a work in Defence of
the doctrine of the Resurrection. |
In connection with the Apologists, we may notice a certain Hermias,
of whom we know nothing, save that he wrote a short satire against the
heathen philosophers (διασυρμὸς τῶν ἔξω φιλοσόφων.) His aim is, to bring
together a number of absurd and contradictory opinions from the Greek
philosophers, without presenting anything positive of his own ;— a pro-
cedure which could hardly serve any useful purpose ; for, to convince
those who had been philosophically educated, something more was
necessary than this sort of declamation ; and the uneducated needed
no such precautions against the errors of the philosophers, and no such
negative preparation for the reception of the gospel. We see in Her-
mias one of those bitter enemies to the Greek philosophy, attacked by
Clement of Alexandria, who, following the idle Jewish legend, pre-
tended that the Greek philosophy had been derived from fallen angels.
In the title of his book, he is called the philosopher: perhaps before
1 See the treatise of Mosheim concerning Ireneum. He reports that Athenagoras
the time when this Apology was composed, _ lived in the times of Hadrian and of Anto-
in the first vol. of his Commentationes δά ninus Pius; that he presented his Apology
hist. eccles. pertinentes. to these emperors ; and that he was cate-
2 Published by Dodwell, Dissertat. in chist before Clement at Alexandria.
VOL. I. δ
014 THEOPHILUS OF ANTIOCH.
his conversion he wore the philosopher’s mantle ; and, after it, passed
from an enthusiastic admiration of the Greek philosophy to extreme
abhorrence of it. It turns on the differences of natural disposition and
of the mode of conversion, whether the new Christian principle will
seek after what is related to it in the earlier transition-system, or rather
present itself only in stern hostility to it.
The community in the great capital of Roman Asia in the Kast —
that flourishing seat of learning—could not fail to be supplied with
church-teachers of a regular scientific education; and the contact ito
which these were thrown with educated Heathens, and with the Gnos-
tics, whose native country was Syria, would*naturally stimulate their
literary activity. Under the emperor Marcus Aurelius, Theophilus
became bishop of this community. After the death of this emperor,
and in the reign of Commodus, he wrote an apologetical work in three
books, addressed to Autolycus, a Heathen, whose objections against
Christianity moved him to compose this treatise, in which he displays
great erudition and power of thought. From this work we have already
made some extracts. It is worthy of notice, that this Theophilus, who
wrote against Marcion and Hermogenes, had also composed commenta-
ries on the sacred scriptures. We may here observe the germ of that
exegetical bent of the church at Antioch, of which we shall again have
occasion to speak at the close of this section.1
We have before observed, how a tendency, antagonistic to the
germinant Gnosis, grew out of the reactions of the Johannean spirit
in Asia Minor —a tendency which sought to preserve uncorrupted
and in its practical significancy the historical and objective side of
Christianity ; but we have seen also how this tendency might be mis-
led, by its opposition to Gnosticism, to surrender itself too much to the
influence of a material Jewish element. And owing to the common in-
terest of Christianity and the church in the struggle with Gnosticism,
spiritual elements among which very important differences otherwise
existed, here came to be combined. Thus might even those with whom
the Jewish element more strongly predominated, find in this common
opposition, which caused all other differences to be overlooked, a point
of agreement; as we see, for example, in the case of Justin, who cer-
tainly was far from being inclined to Ebionitism, and yet judged far
more mildly of those who bordered on this position, provided only they
did not refuse to acknowledge the Gentile Christians as brethren in the
faith, than he judged of the Gnostics. Thus it may be explained, why
1 Jerome cites, c. 25 de vir. ill. a commen-
tary of his in evangelium (which may de-
note the entire corpus evangeliorum) and
on the Proverbs ; but adds, qui mihi cum
superiorum voluminum elegantia et phrasi
non videntur congruere. But, in the preface
to his commentary on Matthew, he cites,
very distinctly, commentaries of Theophilus ;
and in his letter to Algasia, tom. IV. f.
197, he cites, as it seems, an explanatory
harmony or synopsis of the evangelists by the
same author (qui quatuor evangelistarum
in unum opus dicta compingens.) It is
possible, indeed, that all this refers only to
one and the same work. We have nothing
more of his, (as the Latin fragments which
go under the name of Theophilus do not
belong to the present Theophilus,) unless
other fragments may still be found in the
Catenz. The examples which Jerome gives
of his method of interpretation, are remote
from the spirit of the later Antiochian
school; for they savor of an allegorizing
fancy, which, however, might be expected
from his Alexandrian education, —so easy
to be recognized in the first-cited work.
HEGESIPPUS. 675
Hegesippus, a church-teacher, of strong Jewish coloring and Jewish
origin, who lived under the reigns of the emperors Hadrian and Anto-
ninus Pius, and from whom proceeded the first attempt to compose a
church history, should show himself melined to favor the anti-Gnostic
tendency of the church. In the reign of the lastmamed emperor, this
father — perhaps for the purpose of reconciling the differences existing
between the communities which followed Jewish and those which fol-
lowed Gentile customs, or to convince himself by personal observation
of the agreement in essentials among all the ancient churches — un-
dertook a journey to Rome, where he spent some considerable time.
The result of his inquirie$ and collections was embodied in five books
of ecclesiastical events (πέντε ὑπομνήματα ἐκκλησιαστικῶν πράξεων.) In prose-
cuting such a work, we may well suppose that he would adopt many
corrupt traditions of Jewish origin, and be influenced by various errors
growing out of the low, sensual conception of a Jewish Christian. The
sketch he gives of James, who was called the brother of our Lord, is
drawn quite after the Ebionitic taste! From a quotation made by
Stephanus Gobarus,? a monophysite author who lived near the close of
the sixth century, we might conclude indeed, that, as a decided Kiion-
ite, he was opposed to the Apostle Paul; for in the fifth book of his
History of the Church, after citing the words in 1 Corinth. 2: 9,
ἐς What eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither has entered into the
heart of man,’ — he remarks this is false, and those who use such
language contradict the sacred scriptures and the Lord, who says,
“ς Blessed are your eyes, that they see; and your ears, that they hear,”
Matth. 15: 16.° If we refer these words of Hegesippus to the above-
cited passage from Paul, it would seem to follow, that he accused the
latter of a false doctrine, or, at least, charged him with having quoted
something as scripture, which is not to be found in the scriptures. But
the concurrence which Hegesippus expresses in the universal tradition
of the church, and his connections with the church of Rome, are against
this supposition; according to which, he must necessarily have been
opposed to them both.
By several critics of church history m recent times, the matter
has been represented in a directly opposite way. Proceeding on
the assumption that Hegesippus was given to the above-mentioned
anti-Pauline Ebionitism, they have thought themselves warranted
to infer from his testimony of concurrence just alluded to, that
in the greater portion of the church, and in the Roman church particu-
larly, a kindred spirit prevailed. But our opinion is, that this argu-
ment proves too much, and therefore nothing at all; for, if this result
were a correct one, it would follow that we must just reverse the whole’
church history of the first centuries, and suppose changes, of which
there is not the slightest indication, but which only would be sufficient
to account for the more general recognition of the apostolical authority
of Paul. That the Roman church did not take its departure from a
1 Euseb. 1. 11. ο. 23. 8 Μάτην μὲν εἰρῆσϑαι ταῦτα καὶ καταψεύ-
2 Jn Photius, cod. 235. δεσϑαι τοὺς ταῦτα φαμένους τῶν τε ϑείων
γραφῶν καὶ τοῦ κυρίου λέγοντος κτλ.
676 HEGESIPPUS.
fundamental Jewish principle, we believe has been proved by our ex
position of the facts. What shall we say of a method of scientific inves-
tigation, which erects a theory on some obscure, isolated passage, in
conflict with the more certain results which flow from the investigation
of the credible and plenteous sources of the ancient church? And as
Hegesippus believed that he found the pure doctrine of Christ in the
first epistle of Clement to the Corinthians,! where the Pauline element
is not to be mistaken, he cannot have been an opponent to Paul, as he
' necessarily must have been, if it were really his intention, by the words
above quoted, to controvert this apostle.
So far as we can judge, (without knowing’ in what connection those
words of Hegesippus occurred,) we may rather conjecture, therefore,
that he made this remark, not in opposition to Paul,? but, in his flamimg
zeal against the adversaries of the sensual Chilasm, who doubtless
might employ the above-cited passage from Paul, and others of the like
character, to controvert the sensual representations of future happiness.
The controversy respecting the tume of the Haster festival,® and re-
specting the prophetic spirit of Montanism, furnished afterwards, in
addition to the disputes with the Gnostics, and the Apologies against
the Gentiles, new materials for the literary activity of these church-
teachers. The catalogue of the writings drawn up by Melito, bishop
of Sardis, whom we have already cited as the author of an Apology
addressed to the emperor Marcus Aurelius, shows on what sort of mat-
ters the attention of the church-teachers of Asia Minor was at that
time employed. We find among them the following : — Rules of life,
and of the prophets; of prophecy; of the Church; of the Revela-
tion of John (writings which, collectively, may have had reference to
the great point of the Montanistie controversy ;) the Key (4 κλεις) (per-
haps also referring to the same subject, and alluding to the key of the
church in the disputes about penitence ;) a discourse on the Lord’s day
(perhaps with reference to the controversies between Jewish and Gen-
tile Christians on the observance of the Sabbath or of Sunday ;) of the
corporeity of God;* in defence of the material, anti-Gnostic views.
The contents of the following writings might also relate to the contro-
versy with Gnosticism :— Of the nature of man; of the creation ; of
the soul, whether from the body or from the spirit; of the birth
of Christ; of truth; of faith; of the senses in obedience to faith.®
The importance of these topics, which entered so deeply into the life
of the church in this period, gives us the more occasion to regret the
loss of such writings.®
1 Euseb. 1. IV. c. 22.
2 It may be a question in fact from what
source he took these words, as it is still an
unsettled point from whence Paul himself
made the citation. .
3 See above, vol. I. p. 298.
4 Tlept ἐνσωμάτου Yeov. These words, it
is true, may be understood, — of God who
appeared in the body; therefore, of God
who became man: but the comparison with
the account which the trustworthy Origen
gives of the contents of this book (fragment.
commentar. in Genes. vol. II. opp. fol. 25)
compels us to adopt the interpretation given
above.
5 For the catalogue of these writings, see
Euseb. 1. IV. c. 26.
6 Comp. on this point the learned and
thorough disquisition of my worthy col-
league and friend Prof. Piper, in the Studien
und Kritiken, J. 1838, lstes Heft. Would
that the author might be induced to furnish
IREN AUS. 677
A contemporary of Melito was the Claudius Apollinaris, bishop of
Hierapolis in Phrygia, whom we have mentioned on a former oceasion.
His writings, although not so voluminous, treated on many of the same
topies.} \
ae the school of these church-teachers of Asia Minor proceeded
Trenzeus, who, after the martyrdom of Pothinus, became bishop of the
community at Lyons and Vienna.?_ He still remembered in his old age
what he had heard in his youth from the lips of the venerable Poly-
carp, concerning the life and the doctrmes of Christ and of the apos-
tles. Ina writing addressed to Florinus, a false teacher with whom,
in his youth, he had enjoyed the society of Polycarp, he says: ‘‘ These
doctrines, the elders who preceded us, who associated also with the
apostles, did not teach thee; for while I was yet a boy, I saw thee in
company with Polycarp in Asia Minor; for I bear in remembrance
what happened then, better. than what happens now. What we have
heard in childhood, grows along with the soul and becomes one with it ;
so that I can describe the place in which the blessed Polycarp sat and
spake ; his going in and out; his manner of life, and the shape of his
person; the discourses which he delivered to the congregation; how
he told of his intercourse with John and with the rest, who had seen
the Lord ; how he reported their sayings, and what he had heard from
them respecting the Lord, his miracles and his doctrine. As he had
received all from the eye-witnesses of his life, he narrated 1t in accord-
ance with scripture. hese things, by virtue of the grace of God im-
paxted to me, I listened to, even then, with eagerness ; and wrote them
down, not on paper, but in my heart; and by the grace of God, I
constantly brmg them up agai fresh before my memory. And I can
witness before God, that if the blessed and apostolic presbyter had
heard such things, he would have cried out, stopped his ears, and, ac-
cording to his custom, said, ‘O my good God! upon what times hast thou
brought me, that I must endure this!’ and he would have fled away
from the place where, seated or standing, he had heard such dis-
courses.”’® The same spirit which expresses itself here, passed over
to Irenzeus. Of his peculiar practical turn of mind, in his mode of
conceiving and treating the doctrines of faith ; of his zeal for the essen-
tials of Christianity, and his moderation and liberality of mind im all
controversies about unessential outward things, we have spoken before.
We have also remarked, that he probably stood forth as a peacemaker
between the Montanists and their fierce adversaries. his supposition
accords most fully with the spirit of his writings; for that he held
many opinions and tendencies which coincided with the spirit of Mon-
tanism, and therefore contributed also to make Tertullian especially
soon a more ample work relating to these
matters, as the fruit of his zealous researches
during a series of years in this wide field of
the ancient fathers!
1 If in the Catenzee — especially the Catenze
published at Leipsic, 1772, of Nicephorus
on the Octateuchus — the fragments belong-
ing to this Apollinaris were duly separated
from those belonging to Apollinaris of Lao-
dicea; and the fragments which are found
in Eusebius, and in 1 the Chronicon Paschale
Alexandrinum, were compared with them,
we should have better means of determining
the characteristics of this church-teacher.
2 See above, vol. I. p. 84.
8 Euseb. |. V. c. 20
678 IREN AUS.
dear to him, is a circumstance which, after what has been said before
respecting the relation of Montanism to the views of the church, can-
not possibly serve to prove that he was a Montanist himself. If he
had been a zealous Montanist, he would hardly have refrained, when
touching upon any favorite theme of Montanism, to have appealed
himself also to the new disclosures imparted by the Paraclete ; but he
uniformly appeals to the scriptures alone, or to the traditions of those
elders of Asia Minor. We cannot possibly suppose indeed, that, where
he speaks of the condemnation of false prophets,! he means by these
the Montanistic prophets ; for he probably cherished too high a regard
for the Montanists to do that: but if he were an ardent Montanist, he
would hardly have omitted in this case to mention, in connection with
the false prophets, the opponents also of the true prophets, since he
reckons together here all that was worthy of condemnation. Instead
of this, there immediately follows a passage which marks the spirit of
Irenzus,? as being far rather that of a lover of peace, who sought to
prevent the schism between the Montanistic communities and the other
churches, who even hushed the disputes in the controversy about Has-
ter. ‘The Lord,” he says, ‘ will judge those also who excite divi-
sions, who are destitute of the love of God, and seek their own profit,
but not the unity of the church,— who, for slight and frivolous rea-
sons, rend, and, so far as in them 1168, destroy the great and glorious
body of Christ; strainmg in truth at a gnat, and swallowing a
camel. But all the good they can do, can never compensate the evil of
schism.”’
Any stamp of Montanism it would be impossible to find, except in
those words of Irenzeus where he combats the extreme antimontanis-
tic tendency of those adversaries of John’s gospel, who have been men-
tioned on a previous page.? When he speaks with so much heat and
acrimony against those who refused to acknowledge the prophetic gift
in the church, but looked on everything that pretended to be prophecy
as, nothing but the inspiration of fanaticism or of the evil spirit, charg-
ing them with the unpardonable sin against the Holy Ghost, he departs
widely indeed from that character of moderation which he uniformly
displays, except where he has anything to do with the Gnostics. But
this simply shows the great importance which he attached to the extra-
ordinary phenomena of Christian inspiration, as marking the continued
communication of life to the church by the Holy Spirit; a remark
which is confirmed, moreover, by many expressions in his writings. In
this is involved no essential character of Montanism ; for on this point,
too, Montanism simply exhibited, as may be gathered from what has
already been said, the extreme position of a tendency of the religious
spirit which had been existing long before in the church. Moreover,
if Irenzeus lays stress on the fact, that the prophetic spirit was poured
out on women as well as men; and if he assumed and believed that
1 Lib. IV. ο. 33, § 6. otherwise Tertullian would have called
2 From the very manner in which Tertul- him, as he does Proculus just afterwards,
lian, adv. Valentinian, c. 5, notices Irenzeus, “ noster.”
we may infer that he was no Montanist; 8 See above, pp. 526, 583
IREN AUS. 679
he found proof in 1 Corinth. 11: 4, 5, that the prophetic calling, by
an exception to the general rule, authorized women to speak in the
church assemblies; even this would afford no conclusive evidence
of his connection with Montanism. But he remarks, at the same time, of
his opponents, that they reduced to nothmg those spiritual gifts, which,
by the good pleasure of the Father, had been poured out in the last
times on the human race. And the question now is, whether he in-
tended here the effusion of the Holy Spirit connected with the first
appearance of Christianity, or one which laid the foundation of a new
special epoch in the progressive development of the church. If the
latter is the case, he would thus have recognized the mission of the new
prophets, but at the same time have sought to prevent a schism be-
tween the communities adhering to these prophets and the rest of the
church.
The principal work of Irenzeus, which, for the most part, has:come
down to us only in the old verbal Latin translation, together with several
unportant fragments of the Greek original, is his Refutation of the
Gnostic System, in five books ; a work which presents us with the most
faithful transcript of his mind.
Many writings of Irenzeus, we know only by their names. He him-
self cites a work, wherein he had treated a topic which seems to lie re-
mote from the direction of mind common to these church-teachers ;
viz., “ the peculiarities of the style of Paul,” his frequent use of hy-
perbata.2, The work, as we may conjecture, did not relate particularly
to the peculiar style and phraseology of this apostle ; but the topic
might be occasionally touched upon by Irenzeus, in attacking the arbi-
trary method of the Gnostic exegesis. He attributes this peculiarity
of Paul’s style to the crowd of thoughts pressing for utterance from his
ardent mind ; ?— an important remark in its bearing on the development
of the notion of inspiration; for it in fact implies a distinction of the
divine and the human element, — the consciousness that all is not to be
traced in like manner to the actuation of the Holy Spirit; but that
some regard is to be had also to the form, conditioned by the charac-
teristic individuality and self-activity of the man. Such a mode of ap-
prehending the notion of inspiration, by which the informing agency of
the Holy Spirit i is not conceived to preclude the natural ‘evolution in
entire harmony with psychological laws, but rather gives that evolution the
form im which it works, is clearly implied also in many of the expres-
sions of Tertullian; as when he assumes that the Apostle Paul did not
always follow the ‘same method in his apostolical work — supposes in
him a progressive development of the Christian spirit — asserts that he
was at first, when the life of grace began in him, stern and uncompro-
mising ; but afterwards became milder ; ;—at first, like the Neophyte,
pronounced with more emphasis his opposition to former principles ;
but afterwards learned to moderate this, to become all things to all
1 Ut donum Spiritus frustrentur, quod in et alibi ostendimus hyperbatis eum uten-
novissimis temporibus, secundum placitum tem.
Patris, effusum est in humanum genus. 8 Propter velocitatem sermonum suorum
2 Lib. 111. ο. 7: Quemadmodum de multis et propter impetum, qui in ipso est, spiritus.
680 IREN EUS.
men.! Two opposite elements, that is to say, came together here in
the case of these church-teachers: the exclusively supranaturalistic
view of inspiration, derived from the Jews, and specially apphed by
them to the prophetic element of the Old Testament, — which supposed
an altogether passive state of the soul; and the conception which, after
the analogy of the Christian consciousness, was derived from contem-
plating the apostolical writings in their characteristic mdividuality, —
a conception, however, which uttered itself only in single occasional
remarks, but without attaining to any systematic and matured form.
We should remark, however, that Montanism, in giving special promi-
nence to the former notion, yet applying it only to the properly pro-
phetic states, led the way, by this very means, to a mode of distinguish-
ing, from this extreme point of ecstatic inspiration, lower stages in which
consciousness was filled by the divine Spirit, but the human self-activity
operated, as it was animated by that Spirit.?
Of the writings belonging to this Father, which we find noticed among
the ancients, we shall mention, besides those already named, only two
letters, possessing an historical importance on account of their object ;
for they are said to have been the means of healing certain divisions in
the Roman church. One of these is addressed to Blastus, who was
probably a presbyter in the church of Rome. ‘The fact stated in the
appendix to Tertullian’s Prescriptions may have been not without some
foundation; that Blastus had occasioned a division in the Roman
church, by adhering to the custom of Asia Minor with regard to the
time of holding Easter. This accords fully with the times of the Ro-
man bishop Victor. Perhaps to this he united also several other Judaiz-
ing notions.
The other letter was addressed to Florinus, a presbyter, with whom
Irenzeus, in early youth, had lived in the society of the venerable Poly-
carp, and who, as it seems, had pushed Monarchianism, or the doctrme
of one only Creator of all existence, to such an extreme, as to make
God the author of evil.®
1 Paulus adhuc in gratia rudis, ferventer,
ut adhuc Neophytus, adversus Judaismum ;
postmodum et ipse usu omnibus omnia
futurus, ut omnes lucraretur. ὁ. Marcion,
lib. I. ¢. 20.
2’ Thus Tertullian distinguishes what Paul
(1 Corinth. 7) set forth, on the ground of
the common principles of Christianity, as
human counsel, and what he taught as revela-
tion of the divine Spirit: Cum ergo, qui se
fidelem dixerat, adjecit postea, Spiritum Dei
se habere, quod nemo dubitaret etiam de
fideli, idcirco id dixit, ut sibi apostoli fas-
tigium redderet: proprie enim apostoli Spir-
itum Sanctum habent, in operibus prophetiz
et efficacia virtutum documentisque lin-
guarum, non ex parte, quod ceeteri. Ex-
hortat. castitatis, c. 5.
3 From the title of the book, as it is cited
by Eusebius, 1. V.c. 26, it is difficult to make
out what there was peculiar in the opinions
of Florinus. The title is as follows: Περὶ
povapyiac, ἢ περὶ τοῦ μὴ εἷναι τὸν ϑεὸν ποιη-
τὴν κακῶν. The first part of this title may
doubtless be understood to mean, that Flori-
nus, as a Gnostic Dualist, had denied the doc-
trine of the μοναρχία: but with this, the
second part does not agree; for the words
cannot refer to any such fact, as that Flori-
nus held to an absolutely evil principle, or
a Demiurge, as the author of an imperfect
system of the world. In this case, the title
must have run thus: Περὲ τοῦ μὴ εἷναι ϑεὸν
τὸν ποιητὴν κακῶν. Nothing else, therefore,
can be understood, than that it was the de-
sign of Irenzeus to show how the Monarchian
doctrine ought to be maintained, so as not
to make the pia ἀρχῆ the ἀρχὴ τῶν κακῶν;
and that Florin, therefore, had made God
the author of evil, either by teaching a system
of absolute predestination, — which many
uneducated Christians derived from passages
of the Old Testament, too literally under-
stood, (according to Origen, Philocal. c. 1.
HIPPOLYTUS. 681
One of Irenzeus’ disciples, according to Photius,! was Hippolytus,
who took an important place among the ecclesiastical writers belonging
to the first half of the third century. Of his works, however, but a
few fragments still remain. ‘True, the testimony of Photius does not
suffice of itself to establish beyond a doubt, that he was a disciple of
Irenzeus: but since, as appears evident from his citation, he had be-
fore his eyes certain statements of Hippolytus himself respecting his
relations to Irenzeus; since there is nothing in this writer’s theological
drift, so far as we can understand it from the fragments and titles of
his works, — if we may form any judgment, from these titles, of the sub-
ject-matter and tendency of his labors as an author, — which contradicts
this supposition, but, on the contrary, much which favors it, we may
allow the fact to have been so.
Hippolytus was a bishop. But as neither Eusebius nor Jerome was
able to name the city in which he was bishop, we can say nothing more
definite on the matter; and neither those later accounts, which transfer
his bishopric to Arabia,? nor the others, which place it im the neighbor-
hood of Rome,? deserve .consideration. Certainly, there is much in
favor of the supposition, that his field of labor was in the East; but, on
the other hand, much also which seems to show that it was in the West.
Both of these suppositions easily admit of being reconciled with each
other, by distinguishing the different periods of his life; and the very
circumstance, that his field of labor was at different times in different
countries, may have been the occasion of the imdefiniteness which we
observe in the ancient accounts. |
The complete list of his writings is obtamed by comparing the testi-
monies in Eusebius and Jerome; the notices of his works which are
found on his statue,* dug up in the year 1551, near Rome, on the road
to Tivoli; the accounts of Photius; and the catalogue of Ebedjesu,° a
Nestorian author in the thirteenth century. From this list we see that
he composed works on a variety of subjects, exegetical, dogmatic, po-
lemical, and chronological ; besides homilies.
We shall mention none of his writings, except those which, on account
f.17: Τοιαῦτα ὑπολαμβάνοντες περὶ τοῦ ϑεοῦ, God, he fell into the other extreme, and
ὁποῖα οὐδὲ περὶ τοὺ ὠμοτάτου Kal ἀδικωτάτου
ἀνϑρώπου,) ---- or by making God the creator
of an absolutely evil being, whether a
conscious or an unconscious one (a ὕλη.)
Again, if Florin had barely entertained one
of the common Gnostic doctrines concerning
the origin of evil, Irenzeus would not have
said, that no other heretic had ever as yet
ventured to bring forward such views. And,
moreover, when Eusebius says, that Florin
subsequently had allowed himself to be car-
ried away by the doctrines of Valentine,
and IJrenzeus had been induced by this fact
to write his book, περὶ dydoadoc, against him,
(see above the account of the Gnostic sys-
tems,) it seems certainly to follow from this,
that the previous doctrines of Florin were
not Gnostic. We may conceive, then, that,
when Florin perceived the untenableness of
a theory which placed the cause of eyil in
supposed an independent principle of evil
existing out of God.
1 Cod. 121.
2 According to the conjecture of some
authors, Portus Romanus, or Aden in Ara-
bia; — a report which perhaps originated in
a misconception of the passage in Eusebius,
LV 1.20:,20;
3 Portus Romanus, Ostia.
4 He is represented sitting on his episco-
pal chair, κάϑεδρα or ϑρόνος : under him
is the Easter-cycle of sixteen years, which
he prepared, κανὼν ἑκκαιδεκαετῆρινος, upon
which there is a critical essay in the second
vol. of Ideler’s Handbuch der Chronologie,
p- 214. An engraving of the monument
itself is to be found in the first vol. of Fab-
ricius’ edition of the works of Hippolytus.
5 In Assemani Bibliotheca orientalis, T
me £
682 HIPPOLYTUS.
of the topics they discuss, are worthy of notice in an historical point
of view. In respect to those of an exegetical character, Jerome signi-
fies, that he anticipated Origen in giving the example of more full and
copious expositions of scripture, and that Origen’s friend Ambrosius
had adyised the latter to follow the same plan. He must also have
somewhere met with Origen, either at Alexandria, in Palestine, or Ara-
bia; since Jerome cites a homily of Hippolytus in praise of the
Saviour, which he had pronounced in Origen’s presence.!_ His exege-
sis, if we may judge from the few remaining frayments, was of the alle-
gorizing kind.
In the catalogue of his writings found on the ancient monument
occurs a work: Ὑπὲρ τοῦ κατὰ ᾿Ιωάννην εὐαγγελίου καὶ ἀποκαλύψεως, This can
hardly be a commentary on these two books of scripture, though Je-
rome seems to cite a commentary of Hippolytus on the Apocalypse ;
but the title denotes rather a treatise in defence of these books. The
title which Ebedjesu gives to the work also agrees with this supposition.
We must conceive it, then, to have been the design of this treatise to
defend the genuineness of these scriptural books, and to vindicate them
against the objections of the Alogz. If, in this case, it would appear
that Hippolytus was an opponent of the ultra-Antimontanists, yet with
this accords the fact, also, that he had written a work on the charis-
mata. It might be taken into consideration, moreover, that by
Stephanus Gobarus the judgments of Hippolytus and of Gregory of
Nyssa, respecting the Montanists, are set one against the other; so
that we may conclude the former belonged with the defenders of the
Montanists. Whether the κεφάλαια πρὸς Taiov, which Ebedjesu ascribes
to him, ought here to be brought also into the account, (upon the sup-
position, namely, that this Caius was the warm opponent fo Montanism, )
cannot be certainly determined.
A work against thirty-two heresies is cited as belonging to Hippoly-
tus. It ends, according to Photius, with the heresy of Noetus. He
stated, as Photius cites, that he had availed himself in this work of a
series of discourses by Irenzeus against these false teachers. His trea-
tise against Noetus, which has been preserved, and probably formed the
conclusion of the work, we have alluded to on a former occasion.
We have besides from him a writing of little importance, concerning
Antichrist, with which also Photius was acquainted. The same com-
piler cites from him a commentary on Daniel, from which he adduces
the noticeable fact, that Hippolytus set the end of the world at five
hundred years after the birth of Christ. In the circumstance of his
fixing on a period more remote than it was commonly represented to be
in the early church, we discern the effect of the tranquil times which
the church then enjoyed under Alexander Severus.
1 Perhaps much light would be thrown on
the history of the Epiphany and Christmas
festivals, if these homilies had been preserved
to our times.
2 It cannot be determined with entire cer-
tainty, whether this work bore the title:
᾿Αποστολικὴ παράδοσις περὶ χαρισμάτων, or
whether the work on the charismata and
the exhibition of the apostolic tradition were
two different productions.
3 The words of Photius are: Ταύτας
τὰς αἱρέσεις) δὲ φησὶν ἐλέγχοις ὑποβληϑῆναι
ὁμιλοῦντος Ἑϊρηναίου" ὧν καὶ σύνοψιν ὁ ‘In-
πόλυτος ποιούμενος τόδε τὸ βιβλίον φησ'
συντεταχέναι.
4 Cod. 202.
TERTULLIAN. 683
In the list of the writings of Hippolytus, found on the monument of
which we have spoken, occurs a προτρεπτικὸν πρὸς Σεβήρειναν. It 15 scarce-
ly to be doubted, that this is the same treatise from which Theodoret,
in his ἐρανίστης, quotes several passages, under the title of a letter to a
queen or empress, (πρὸς βασιλίδα, Ὑ which passages Fabricius has collec-
ted in his edition of Hippolytus. The subject-matter of them cor-
responds with the title which the work bears on the monument. It is
an exposition of the doctrines of the Christian faith for the use of a
heathen lady. The Severina referred to must therefore have been a
queen or empress. But the name Severina can hardly be quite
correct ; — it should be Severa ;—— and there is every reason to sup-
pose it was Severa, the wife of the emperor Philip, the Arabian.!
The theological development of the North-African Church preserved
a character altogether peculiar to itself. The theological spirit that
prevailed here was continually shaping itself into a more settled form,
from the time of Tertullian to that of Augustin; and afterwards,
through Augustin, acquired the greatest influence over the whole West
ern church.
Tertullian presents special claims to attention, both as the first rep-
resentative of the theological tendency in the North-African church,
and as a represeutative of the Montanistic mode of thinking. He was
aman of an ardent and profound spirit, of warm and deep feelings;
inclined to give himself ‘up, with his whole soul and strength, to the
_ object of his love, and sternly to repel everything that was foreign from
this. He possessed rich and various stores of knowledge; which had
been accumulated, however, at random, and without scientific arrange-
ment. His profoundness of thought was not united with logical clear-
ness and sobriety : an ardent, unbridled imagination, moving im a world
of sensuous images, governed him. His fiery and positive disposition,
and his previous training as an advocate or rhetorician, easily impelled
him, especially in controversy, to rhetorical exaggerations. When he
defends a cause, of whose truth he was convinced, we often see in him
the advocate, whose sole anxiety is to collect together all the arguments
which can help his case, it matters not whether they are true arguments
or only plausible sophisms ; and in such cases the very exuberance of
his wit sometimes leads him astray from the simple feeling of truth.
What must render this man a phenomenon presenting special claims to
the attention of the Christian historian is the fact, that Christianity is
the inspiring soul of his life and thoughts ; that out of Christianity an
entirely new and rich inner world developed itself to his mind: but the
leaven of Christianity had first to penetrate through and completely
refine that fiery, bold, and withal rugged nature. We find the new
wine in an old bottle ; and the tang which it has contracted there, may
easily embarrass the mexperienced “judge. Tertullian often had more
within him than he was able to express: the overflowing mind was at a
loss for suitable forms of phraseology. He had to create a language
1 See vol. I. p. 126.
684 TERTULLIAN.
for the new spiritual matter, —and that out of the rude Punic Latin, —
without the aid of a logical and grammatical education, and as he was
hurried along in the current of thoughts and feelings by his ardent
nature. Hence the often difficult and obscure phraseology ; but hence,
too, the original and striking turns in his modes of representation. And
hence this great church-teacher, who unites great gifts with great fail-
ings, has been so often misconceived by those who could form no friend-
ship with the spirit which dwelt in so ungainly a form.
Quintus Septimius Florens Tertullianus was born, probably at
Carthage, in the later times of the second century. His father was a
centurion in the service of the proconsul at Carthage. He was, at
first, an advocate, or perhaps a rhetorician ; nor did he embrace Chris-
tianity until he had arrived at the age of manhood. He then obtained,
if Jerome’s account is correct, the office of presbyter ; whether at
Rome or at Carthage is, however, doubtful. The latter place 1s, in it-
self, the most probable ; since in different writings, composed at differ-
ent times, he discourses like one who was settled in Carthage ; though
the reports of Eusebius and Jerome speak for the former.1
Tertul-
lian’s conversion to Montanism may be satisfactorily explained from its
affinity with the original bent of his mind and of his feelings.
His writings run through the widest range of topics relating to Chris-
tian doctrine and to Christian life ; and it is here particularly important
to distinguish those of his works which bear the stamp of Montanism,
from those in which there are no traces of that error.”
1 The words of Eusebius, 1. II. c. 2: τῶν
μώλιστα ἐπὶ Ῥώμης λαμπρῶν, do not say
directly; that when a Christian he took an
important place in the Roman church; but,
according to the connection, may very well
mean, that, before his conversion to Chris-
tianity, he stood in high repute at Rome as
a jurisconsult (for the arbitrary translation
of Rufinus — “inter nostros scriptores ad-
modum clarus” —must at all events be
rejected:) but we might then, to be sure,
still infer, that, if Tertullian lived at Rome
when a Heathen, and enjoyed there so high
a reputation, it is also probable that he was
there first clothed with a spiritual office.
Jerome says that he had been moved to
embrace Montanism, by the envy and calum-
nies of the Roman clergy. But such stories,
with which the ancient fathers were so apt
to impose on themselves, are always very
suspicious; because the inclination was but
too strong to ascribe invariably to some out-
ward cause any defection from the Catholic
church to the heretics ; and Jerome, in par-
ticular, although he respected the cathedra
Petri in the Roman church, was yet inclined
to repeat over bad stories about the Roman
clergy, who had occasioned him so much
annoyance during his residence in Rome,
especially after the death of Damasus. He
was particularly prone to accuse them of
envy towards great talents.
2A more full investigation of this topic
may be found in my Monograph on the
spirit of Tertullian. I will here only add a
few remarks in reference to the objections
made against what I have asserted, by Dr.
von Colln. The passage concerning fasts
and mortifications cannoi at all be consid-
ered as an evidence of the Montanism of
the author; for a voluntary ἄσκησις was cer-
tainly resorted to by many who were no
Montanists. The expression, “ jejunia con-
jungere,” might, although not necessarily,
be understood as referring to a— not Mon-
tanistic — superpositio, (continuation of fast-
ing from Friday to Saturday, on which no
Montanist fasted.) Besides, the whole man-
ner in which penitence is here spoken of,
the spirit of gentleness which breathes
through every remark, does not savor of
Montanism. As to the work on the prescrip-
tions, I do not find myself led, in reviewing
it, to alter my opinion of it, as not having
originated in Montanism. The words, “ alius
libellus hunc gradum sustinebit,” contr. Mar-
cion. 1. I. 6. 2, Tertullian might use con-
cerning a work written already, no matter
whether by himself or by some other _per-
son, personifying it as an advocate. From
the circumstance, that, in the symbol of
faith, c. 18, the doctrine of creation from
nothing is made particularly prominent, it by
no means follows, that he had already had
to sustain a conflict with Hermogenes ; for,
even in the controversy with the Gnostics,
CYPRIAN. 685
It is a question difficult to determine, whether Tertullian always re-
mained in the same connection with the Montanistic party, or whether,
at some later period, he again inclined more to the Catholic church,
and endeavored to strike out a middle path between the two parties.
The reports of Augustin ! and of Preedestinatus,? as well as the account
given by the latter ° of a Montanistic work of Tertullian, in which he
labors to dimimish the number of controverted points between the two
parties, favor indeed the latter supposition; and on this hypothesis
many writings of Tertullian which are moderately Montanistic, or
which merely border on Montanism, might be assigned to a different
period of his life. These accounts, however, are not sufficiently worthy
of credit. From the disposition of Tertullian, it may easily be con-
ceived, that he would persevere in the mode of thinking he had once
shaped out for himself, and only become the more obstinate by oppo-
sition. The distinct sect of Tertullianists, which appears to have
existed in the fifth century at Carthage, furnishes no evidence in favor
of that supposition ; for it is possible that this sect, holding to the pecu-
har opinions of Tertullian, had been formed at a later period, when
separated from the correspondence with the Montanistic churches in
Asia.
The study of Tertullian’s writings had manifestly an important influ-
ence on the development of Cyprian as a doctrinal writer. Jerome
states, after a tradition which was said to have come from a secretary of
Cyprian, that the latter was in the habit of reading something daily
from the writings of Tertullian, whom he was accustomed to call em-
phatically the Zeacher.*
Concernmg the character, the labors, and the most important
writings of Cyprian, we have already said enough in various places.
We shail only mention here a remarkable work of Cyprian’s, his three
books of testimonies, (testimonia,) consisting of a collection of the
most important passages of the Bible, to prove that Jesus is the Mes-
siah promised in the Old Testament, and to serve as a foundation for
the scheme of Christian faith’and morals. The collection was intended
for the use of a certain Quirinus, who had requested the bishop to draw
this article was necessarily made a promi-
nent point; and the connection in which the
words there stand, intimates that it was the
Hermogenes. The way in which he speaks
of the emanation of the Logos, cannot be
called Montanistic ; for he expresses himself
Gnostics, rather than Hermogenes, whom
he had in mind. Besides, it is certain from
c. 30, that, when Tertullian wrote this book,
Hermogenes had already come out with his
peculiar opinions ; but it cannot possibly be
proved, that Hermogenes might not have
broached his opinions a great while before
Tertullian wrote his book against him.
From the cursory manner in which Tertul-
Jian speaks of him in the Prescriptions, we
might conjecture, that he was then consid-
ered by him as a person of no great impor-
tance ; and that it was not until the Montanis-
tic interest was superadded to other occasions
of hostility, that he was led to engage in a
more detailed attack of the doctrines of
WOT. Te
after the same manner in the Apologeticus,
c. 21. And on the passage in the book de
patientia, c. 1, compare the remarks on
page 619.
1 Heeres. 86.
2.180.
3H. 26.
* Da magistrum, said he to his secretary ;
Jerome de viris illustribus, ὁ. 53. To see
what use he makes of Tertullian’s writ-
ings, compare particularly the writings of
Cyprian de oratione dominica and de pati-
entia with Tertullian’s treatises on the same
subjects; and de idolorum yanitate with
the Apologeticus.
636 CYPRIAN. COMMODIAN.
up for him, as a daily exercise and aid to the memory, a short abstract
of this sort, embracing the essential points of scriptural faith and prac-
tice. As Cyprian calls him “my son,” it cannot have been a bishop
or presbyter for whom Cyprian had prepared a collection of this sort,
to be used as a guide in imparting religious imstruction.1 When we
compare together the introduction to the second and to the third books,
it becomes very probable, that the individual to whom Cyprian wrote
was a layman of his own church, whom he would assist in making him-
self perfectly familiar with the practical truths and most important
rules bearing on all the principal relations of the Christian hfe.2 This
collection, then, would serve to show the mtimate connection subsisting
between the bishop and those members of his flock who were solicitous
about the welfare of their souls, and the anxiety he felt to bring
each individual to a more familiar acquaintance with the divine word ;
a wish which he particularly expresses in the beautiful words at the
conclusion of the preface to the first book: ““ More strength will be im-
parted to thee, and the insight of thy understanding will continually
grow clearer, if thou searchest more carefully through the Old and
New Testament, and diligently perusest all parts of the holy scriptures ;
for I have only drawn for thee a little out of the divine fountain to send
thee in the mean time. Thou canst drink more copiously and satisfy
thyself, when, with us, thou also approachest to the same fountain of
divine fulness, to drink after the same manner.”
The particular rules, which Cyprian sets forth and supports with pas-
sages from scripture, evince the deep interest which he took m coun-
teracting the erroneous notion, that it would be possible to satisfy the
demands of the gospel and to obtain salvation by a mere outward pro-
fession and observance of Christian ceremonies ; but at the same time
also show how important he felt it to be, that the laity should be deeply
impressed with reverence for the priestly order, understood according to
the principles of the Old Testament.
In the same country, not long after Cyprian, followed a writer known
to us only by a production of some importance on account of its bear-
ing on the history of Christian manners and of Christian worship,
namely, Commodian.? His work is composed in verse, and entitled
Rules of Living (Instructiones, exhortations and admonitions.) He
describes himself in the preface as one who had formerly been devoted
to Paganism, and had been led by the study of the Bible to see the
1 As we might be led to suppose from
the words at the beginning, “ quibus non
tam tractasse, quam tractantibus materiam
prebuisse videamur.” On this supposition
we could only presume, that he had prepar-
ed the collection as an assistant for a dea-
con or a catechist, a doctor audientium. But
the following words show, that the collec-
tion was also designed for the purpose of
impressing deeply on the memory, by fre-
quent perusal, certain important passages
and doctrines of scripture. It must have
been intended, then, to serve at the same
time as a guide for the religious teacher,
and as a manual for the catechumens. The
view expressed above, however, is the most
natural one.
2 Que esse facilia et utilia legentibus pos-
sunt, dum in breviarum pauca digesta et
velociter, perleguntur et frequenter iteran-
tur.
8 Gennadius, (c. 15,) has nothing more to
say about him, than what might be gathered
by any one out of his writings.
COMMODIAN. ARNOBIUS. 687
vanity of Paganism, and to embrace the Christian faith.1 He intimates
that as he believed, with the great majority, death to be the end of
man’s personal existence, he was especially attracted by the promise of
an eternal and divine life, which was presented to him in the scrip-
tures.2, He complains of himself as one who, by falling into sim after
baptism, had subjected himself to the penance of the church: this he
confesses in his address to the poenitentes,? whom he exhorts to surren-
der themselves to mortification for their sins, but not to’despair; to seek
after the physician and the right méans of cure, and not to separate
themselves from the church.* And in encouraging his Christian breth-
ren to the conflict, he says that he does not in selfexaltation addréss
them as the just one.® Considering the extent to which the hierarchi-
cal element flourished in North Africa, it 15 the more remarkable to ob-
serve how he ventures, though a layman, to admonish and censure even.
the clergy. While avaricious teachers allowed themselves to be bribed
by presents, or induced, by the respect of persons, to be silent, where
they ought to have reproved sinful conduct, he felt constrained £0 rouse
the misled laity out of their security.6 We ‘discern the more free spirit,
incapable of bowing the knee to priestly dignity, which had passed over
to him from the study of the Bible, by which he had been led to Chris-
tianity. ‘The Christian spirit, however, in these admonitions, which
evince so lively a zeal for good morals, is disturbed by a material Jew-
ish element, a crass Chiliasm ; as for example, when it is affirmed that
the lordly masters of the world should in the millennium do menial ser-
vice for the saints.’
The work was composed at a time when the church enjoyed quiet,
perhaps under the reign of Gallienus, and refers to the recent persecu-
tions, to the multitude of the lapsed, to the schisms of Felicissimus and
N ovatian. The author testifies himself, that he wrote in the third
century.®
We have still to mention here, as belonging to the same church, Ar-
nobius, although he discovers a doctrinal traming more particularly his
own, and the spirit of the North-African church, at least in the time
when he appeared as a Christian author, seems to have exercised no
influence on him ; — a fact which may be accounted for, if we consider
i Ego similiter erravi tempore multo,
Fano prosequendo, parentibus insciis ipsis,
(His parents were Pagans, which class is
denoted throughout this work by the term
“ insciis.” )
Abstuli me tandem inde, legendo de lege.
2 Gens et ego fui perversa mente moratus,
Et vitam istius seeculi veram esse putabam,
Mortemque similiter sicut vos judicabam adesse ;
Cum semel exisset, animum periisse ae a
N. 26.
2 Numatie. fatebor enim, unum me ex yobis adesse
: Terroremque linquendum : sensi ipse ruinam.
Idcirco commoneo yulneratos cautius ire.
N. 49.
4 Poenitens es factus, noctibus diebusque precare :
Attamen a matre noli discedere longe,
Et tibi misericors poterit altissimus esse.
Tu si vulnus habes, herbam medicumque require.
5 Justus ego non sum, fratres, de cloaca levatus :
Nec me supertollo, sed doleo vestri. N. 61.
6 Si quidam doctores, dum exsnectant munera
vestra,
Aut timent personas, laxant singula vobis;
Ht ego [non] doleo, sed cogor dicere verum.
And afterwards:
Observas mandatum hominis (the clergy) et Dei
devitas.
Tu fidis muneri, quo doctores ora procludunt,
Ut taceant, neque dicant tibi jussa divina.
Me vera dicente, sicut teneris, prospice eo
Ν: 54;
7 Nobilesque viri, sub antichristo devicto, (Nero,
who was to burn Rome,)
Ex preecepto Dei rursum viventes in gvo
Mille quidem annis, ut serviant sanctis, et alto
Sub jugo servili, ut portent victualia collo. N. 80.
8 Et si parvulitas sic sensit, cur annis ducentis
Fuistis infantes ; numaquid et semper eritis? N.6
688 ARNOBIUS.
the free, independent manner in which he seems to have come to Chris-
tianity, through the reading of the New Testament, especially the gos-
pels. He was a rhetorician of Sicca, in Numidia, under the reign of
the emperor Diocletian.! His writings bear testimony of the literary
acquirements considered necessary for a rhetorician in so considerable
‘a city. Jerome narrates in his chronicle, that Arnobius, who till then
had ever been an‘enemy to Christianity, was moved by a dream to em-
brace the faith ; but that the bishop, to whom he applied, knowing his
hostility to Christianity, would not trust him, and that hence Arnobius
was led to write his apologetical work, (the septem libros disputationum
adversus gentes,) to prove to him the honesty of his convictions. This
story has come to be suspected as a foreign interpolation ; for certainly
it stands here wholly out of place. That all this should have taken
place in the twentieth year of Constantine, (in the year 326,) is a mani-
“fest anachronism. Arnobius appears, moreover, like one who had been
led to the faith after a long protracted examination, and not by a
sudden impression from dreams. The work does not show the novice,
who was-still a catechumen, but a man already mature in his convic-
tions, if he was not orthodox according to the views of the church.
At the same time, however, we are not warranted for these reasons
to reject the narrative entirely. We have already had occasion to re-
mark,? how, by such impressions, many were prepared for conversion.
By this, indeed, it is not meant to be asserted, that- his conversion was
due wholly to such impressions ;— his own work, we must admit,
would speak against this. But if Arnobius was devoted, as it is evi-
dent from the passages about to be cited that he was, to blind heathen
superstition, it is so much the less improbable, that powerful outward
impressions were requisite, in’order that the zealous Pagan might be
induced, in the first instance, to enter upon the examination of Chris-
tianity. But, however this may have been, it seems probable that he
had been convinced of the truth for some time before he offered him-
self for baptism ;— a fact easily explained, especially when we con-
sider the circumstances of the times. His apologetical work seems to
have been written, it is true, in consequence of an impulse from within,
and not by any outward occasion. But it may have been, also, that
his determination to make a public profession of Christianity, and to
appear ag a public defender of Christianity, had been conceived at one
and the same time, and that it was with this determination he pro-
ceeded to the bishop. Subsequently, the bishops were often too little
disposed to mistrust those who became Christians from outward mo-
tives. But that a bishop, in these dubious times of the church, when
he saw before him a man who had expressed himself with bitterness
against Christianity, should fear that he had to do with a malicious spy,
is not so improbable. And now, for the purpose of dispelling his doubts
at once, Arnobius produces his Apology. He speaks of the change
which had been wrought in himself by Christianity, in the following
manner : 8. “© blind infatuation! But a short time ago, 1 worshipped
1 Hieronym. de vir. illustr. c. 79. 2 See vol. I. p. 75. 8 Lib. I. ¢. 39
ARNOBIUS. 689
the images that had just come from the furnace of the smith, the gods °
that had been shaped on the anvil and by the hammer. When I sawa
smooth worn stone, besmeared with oil, I addressed it, as if a living
power were there, and from the senseless stone prayed for benefits to
myself, thus doing foul dishonor even to the gods, whom 1 esteemed as
such, when I supposed them to be wood, stone, or bones, or imagined
that they dwelt im such things. Now that I have been led by so great
a Teacher in the way of truth, I know what all that is.”
As to the time when Arnobius wrote his work, he gives it himself, ἡ
when he says,! that it was 1050 years, or not much less, since the build-
ing of Rome. ‘This would comeide, according to the Adra Varroniana,
then commonly adopted, (the building of Rome being 7538 B. C.,) with
the year 297 of the Christian era. But this cannot stand so; since
the work contains evident allusions to those persecutions under Diocle-
tian which first broke out in the year 303.2 We must, therefore, either
suppose, that Arnobius adopted some other era than the common one,
or that the exact number did not occur to him, or that he had written,
on the work at different times. He says to the Heathen :* ‘ If you were
animated by a pious zeal for your religion, you should long ago have
rather burned those writings, and demolished those theatres, in which
the scandal of the gods is daily made public in shameless plays. For
why did our scriptures deserve to be committed to the flames, and our
places of assembly to be destroyed, in which the Supreme God is wor-
shipped, peace and blessing invoked on all who are in authority, on the
army and the emperor, joy and peace on the living and those who have
been liberated from the bonds of the flesh ; — im which nothing else 15
heard, but what is calculated to make men humane, gentle, modest, and
pure ; ready to communicate of their substance, and to become kinsmen
of all those who are united in the same bond of brotherhood ¢”’
Moreover, the objection brought by the Héathens against Christian-
ity, which moved Arnobius to write, (as he says himself,) imdicates the
point of time in which he wrote ; for it was precisely the same charge
which had occasioned the Dioclesian persecution ; namely, the public
calamities, which had arisen because the worship of the gods had been
supplanted by Christianity, and because men no longer enjoyed their
protection and aid. Arnobius justly replies to this: ‘‘ If men, instead
of relying on their own wisdom, and following their own devices, would
but make the experiment of following the salutary and peace-bringing
doctrines of Christ, how soon would the face of the world be changed,
and iron, instead of subserving the art of war, be converted into imple-
ments of peace!”
Important as the Roman church became, through its outward eccle-
siastical influence, and through the influence of the political element of
the Roman spirit on the development. of the church, yet it was from
1 Lib. II. ¢. 71. not accurate. Thus, lib. I. ¢. 13, he says:
2 See vol. I. p. 147. Trecenti sunt anni ferme, minus vel plus
8 This is the most natural supposition; aliquid, ex quo coepimus esse Christiani.
for certainly the chronology of ἮΝ: is 4 Lib. IV. ec. 36.
690 CAIUS. NOVATIAN. - MINUCIUS FELIX.
the first comparatively barren in respect to all theological science. The
care for the outward being of the church, which here became predom-
inant, seems early to have suppressed the interest in theology as a sci-
ence. But two individuals appear to have distinguished themselves as
ecclesiastical authors, among the Roman clergy, neither of whom, how-
ever, could be compared perhaps with a Tertullian, a Clement, or an
Origen — the presbyter Caius, whom we have already noticed as an
opponent of the Montanists, and the presbyter Novatian, who has also
been mentioned. Of the writings of the former, none have come down
tous. Of the latter, we have some brief expositions of the more im-
portant Christian doctrines, particularly of the doctrine of Christ’s divin-
ity, and of the Trinity. According to Jerome, (§ 70,) this work was
an abstract of a larger work by Tertullian. At all events, however,
this author was something more than a mere follower in the direction
of some other man’s mind. He shows that he had a mind of his own.
Without possessing the power and depth of Tertullian, he had a more
decidedly intellectual bent.
Next we have from him a writing on the Jewish laws respecting food,
consisting of a playful allegorical exposition of them, with the design
to show, that they are no longer obligatory on Christians.? We see
from this production, that it was written by a bishop, removed at a dis-
tance from his church by persecution, who was in the habit of constant
correspondence with them, and sought to guard them from being led
astray by Pagans, Jews, and heretics; all which suits perfectly to a
Roman church, Rome being the residence of a multitude of Jews. The
only difficulty is, to see how this writing could have come from a pres-
byter ; — the author speaks as no one, at that time, but a bishop, could
speak to his church. We know, moreover, from the letter of Corne-
lius, that, durmg the Decian persecution, Novatian had not removed
from Rome. We must therefore call to mind the relation in which No-
vatian stood to the churches which acknowledged him as their bishop ;
and it is the most natural hypothesis, that he wrote this work under the
first persecution of Valerian,’ by which so many bishops were separated
from their churches.
We may mention last, as belonging to the Roman church, a man
whose felicitous and dramatic representations, seized from the life, re-
plete with good sense, and pervaded by a lively Christian feeling, give
him an important place among the Apologists of this period — Minu-
cius Felix, who, according to Jerome, before his conversion to Chris-
tianity, had acquired reputation at Rome as an advocate. He lived,
probably, in the first half of the third century, but before Cyprian,
who availed himself of his writings. We have already had occasion to
1 Novatian’s adversary, the Roman bish- 2 Jerome names this work as one which
op Cornelius, seems, in Euseb. 1. VL. ¢. 43,
manifestly to allude to this writing, when
he calls Novatian:. ὁ δογματιστὴς, ὁ τῆς
ἐκκλησιαστικῆς ἐπιστήμης ὑπερασπιστῆς. A
remark which doubtless hints also at the
fact, that such a phenomenon was not so
common among the clergy of Rome.
came from Novyatian, and also two others,
on the sabbath and on circumcision, cited
by Novatian as two letters that had pre-
ceded this letter to his church; in which
letters he designed to show que sit vera
circumcisio et quod verum sabbatum.
3 See vol. 1. p. 137.
CLEMENT. . 691
make some extracts from this Apologetical Dialogue, which is entitled
the Octavius.
We pass now to the teachers of the Alexandrian school, concerning
whose relation to the progressive development of the chur ‘ch, we have
spoken in a previous part of this history. Of the individual ‘whom we
find named as the first eminent teacher of this school, Pantzenus,
(ilavraivoc,) the philosopher converted to Christianity, no written
remains have reached us. Our only knowledge of him is through his
disciple Clement.
Titus Flavius Clemens first became a Christian at the age of manhood :
hence he classed himself with those who abandoned the sinful service
of Paganism for faith in the Redeemer, and received from him the for-
giveness of their sms. He convinced himself of the truth of Chris-
tianity by free inquiry, after he had acquired an extensive knowledge of
the systems of religion and the philosophy of divine things known: at
his time in the cultivated world.2 This free spirit of inquiry, which
had conducted him to Christianity, led him, moreover, after he had be-
come a Christian, to seek the society of emment Christian teachers of
different tendencies of mind in different countries. He informs us,’
that he had had various distinguished men as his teachers: an Jonian in
Greece ; one from Coslo-Syria : one in Magna Grecia, (Lower Italy,)
who came originally from Egypt; an Assyrian in Eastern Asia (doubt-
less Syria;) and one of Jewish descent, in Palestine. He finally
took up his abode in Egypt, where he met with the greatest Guosticus,
who had penetrated most profoundly into the spirit of scripture. This
last was doubtless none other than Pantzenus. Eusebius not only ex-
plains it so, but also refers to a passage of Clement * in his Hypotyposes,
where he had named him as his instructor. Perhaps when Pantenus
entered on the missionary tour which has been mentioned before, Cle-
ment became his successor in the office of catechist, and at the same
time, or still later, a presbyter in the Alexandrian church. The perse-
cution under Septimius Severus, in the year 202, probably compelled
him to retire from Alexandria.? But after this juncture the history οἵ,
his life and place of his residence are involved in great obscurity. We
only know, that, in the begmning of the reign of the emperor Caracalla,
he was at J erusalem, whither even at this early period many Christians,
especially ecclesiastics, were accustomed to travel, partly for the pur-
pose of surveying with their own eyes the places rendered sacred by
the memorials of religion, partly for the benefit which might be de-
rived from a more familiar knowledge of these countries, in elucidating
the scriptures. Alexander, bishop of Jerusalem, who was at that time
in prison on account of the faith, recommended him to the church at
Antioch, whither he was travelling, by a letter, in which he called him
1 Pedagog. lib. II. c. 8, f. 176. 8 Strom. lib. I. f. 274,
2 Πάντων διὰ πείρας ἐλϑὼν ἀνὴρ. Euseb. 4 Lib. VI. ¢. 13.
Prieparat. Evangel. lib. 11. ο. 2. 5 Euseb. lib. VI. ο. 3
692 CLEMENT.
a virtuous and tried man, and intimated that he was already known to
the Antiochians.1
We have three works from his hand, which form, as it were, a con-
nected series; since his starting point is the idea, that the divine
teacher of mankind, the Logos, first conducts the rude Heathen, sunk
in sin and idolatry, to the faith ; then progressively reforms their lives
by moral precepts; and finally elevates those who have undergone this
moral purification to the profounder knowledge of divine things, which
he calls Gnosis. Thus the Logos appears first exhorting sinners to
repentance, converting the Heathen to the faith ( προτρεπτικός -)ὺ then
as forming the life and conduct of the converted by his discipline
( παιδαγωγός ) ; and finally, as a teacher of the Gnosis to those who are
purified.2 This fundamental idea is the conducting thread of his three
works, which still remain, — the apologetical or protreptic ; the ethical
or pedagogic: and the one containing the elements of the Gnosis, or the
Stromata.? Clement was not a man of systematic mind. Many hete-
rogeneous elements and ideas, which he had received in his various in-
tercourse with different minds, were brought together in him — a fact
which occasionally becomes evident in his Stromata, and which must
have been still more clearly evinced in his Hypotyposes, hereafter to be
noticed, if Photius rightly apprehended him. By occasional lightning
flashes of mind, he operated, without doubt, to excite the minds of his
disciples and readers, as we see particularly in the example of Origen.
Many fragmentary ideas, sketched with masterly power, and containing
the germs of a thorough, systematic theological system, lie scattered
in his works, amidst a profusion of vain and hollow speculations.
As regards his Stromata, it was his express design in this work, as he
testifies m many places, to bring together a chaotic assemblage of truth
and error out of the Greek philosophers and the systems of the Chris-
tian sects, in connection with fragments of the true Gnosis. Each should
find out for himself what suited his case; it was his aim to excite rather
than to teach; and he often purposely only hinted at the truth, where
he might fear to give offence to the believers, (πιστικοῖς,) who were as
yet incapable of comprehending these ideas. The eighth book of this
work is wanting; for the fragment of dialectical investigations, which
at present appears under the name of the eighth book of the Stromata,
evidently does not belong to this work. As early as the times of Pho-
tius, the eighth book was already lost.*
We have to regret the loss of the ὑποτυπώσεις of Clement,° in which
he probably gave samples of dogmatic investigations and expositions on
the principles of the Alexandrian Gnosis. Fragments of this work,
consisting of short expositions of some of the catholic epistles, which
have come down to us in the Latin translation,® perhaps also the frag-
1 Kuseb. lib. VI. ¢. 11. designation at that time for works of mis-
2 Καϑαρὰν πρὸς γνώσεως ἐπιτηδειότητα cellaneous contents.
εὐτρεπίζων τὴν ψυχὴν δυναμένην χωρῆσαι Έ γιά. Cod. 111.
τὴν ἀποκάλυψιν τοῦ λόγουι Ῥαάαροσ. 1. I. 5 Probably it should be translated: Sketch-
6 es, shadings, general outlines. Rufinus
3 Like the similar word, κεστός, a usual translates: adumbrationes. 4
§ See vol. II. of Potter’s edition
ORIGEN. 693
ment of the ἐκλογαὶ ἐκ τῶν προφητικῶν, belong to this class. From the larger
work, it was customary to make abstracts on particular parts of the
sacred scriptures for common use, and several of these abstracts have
been preserved to our times; which may have contributed, with other:
causes, to the loss of the entire work.
There is some mystery about the fragment of an abstract from the
writings of Theodotus, and of the διδασκαλία ἀνατολική (that is, of the theo-
sophic doctrine of Eastern Asia) which has been preserved among the
works of Clement ;—a document of the highest authority in relation
to the Gnostic systems. It is perhaps the fragment of a critical col-
lection, which Clement had drawn up for his own use, during his rest-
dence in Syria. Of Clement’s work on the time of the passover,! and
of his dissertation : Τίς ὁ σωζόμενος πλούσιος, which furnishes so much in-
formation relative to the history of the Christian system of morals, we
have spoken already on a former occasion.
Origen, with the surname Adamantios,? was born in Alexandria in‘
the year 185. In connection with his early culture, it 1s important to
remark, that his father Leonides, a devoted Christian, and, as it is con-
jectured, a rhetorician, was in a condition to give him a good literary
as well as a pious Christian education. Both had an abiding influence’
on the direction of his inner life: the development of mind and heart
proceeded, in his case, with equal step; a striving after truth and after
holiness continued ever to be the actuating tendency of his life. As
we have remarked before, that the Bible at that time was not reserved
exclusively for the study of the clergy, but was also the devotional book
of families, so we may see from the example of Origen, that a wise
use was also made of it in the business of education; and we may
observe at the same time its happy effects. Leonides made his son‘
commit daily a portion of sacred scripture to memory. The boy took
great delight in his task, and already gave indications of his profoundly
inquisitive mind. Not satisfied with the explanation of the literal sense,
which his father gave him, he required the thoughts embodied in the
passages he had committed to be fully opened out, so that Leonides.
frequently found himself embarrassed. The father chided, indeed, his
inconsiderate curiosity, and exhorted him to be satisfied, as became his
years, with the literal sense ; but he secretly rejoiced in the promising
talents of the youth, and with a full heart thanked God that he had
given him such a son. Often, it is said, when the boy was asleep, he
would uncover his breast, kissing it as a temple where the Holy Spirit
designed to prepare his dwelling, and congratulated himself in possess-
ing such a treasure.
The trait just alluded to in the early character of Origen discloses
1 Of a kindred nature doubtless were also mantine bonds,” but rather the interpreta-
the contents of the writing which Eusebius tion of Jerome: “ from his iron diligence,
cites: Κανὼν ἐκκλησιαστικὸς, ἢ πρὸς τοὺς as we commonly express it.” Hence he
ἸΙουδαΐζοντας. was also called συντώκτης and χαλκέντερος.
2 In case this surname were given tohim Yet Eusebius, 1. VI c, 14, seems to cite
after his death, we must not follow the this cognomen as one which Origen bore
strained interpretation of ‘Photius, c. 118, from the first.
“because Origen’s proofs resembled ada-
694 ORIGEN.
to us already that tendency of mind, which, unevenly developed, and
misled by a wrongly conceived opposition to the contrary error, betrayed
him into an arbitrary allegorizing method of interpretation; but under
more favorable conditions, and with the helps and appliances necessary
to the harmonious education of the biblical mterpreter, would have
made him a thorough and profound expositor of the scriptures. By
‘his father, this inclination was checked rather than encouraged. But
if the intellectual and religious bent of Origen was determined at an
early period by the influence of the theological school at Alexandria,
this ‘inclination must Have soon found means of nourishment, and ripened
to maturity. As we afterwards become acquainted with ‘Origen from
his writings, there is mcontestable evidence of the influence which Cle-
ment had exerted on his theological development; we find once more
in his works the predominant ideas of the latter, systematically un-
folded. Now it is certain! that he was, at least when a boy, a scholar
of Clement the catechist. But a youthful indiscretion of Origen (here-
after to be noticed) imto which he was led by a grossly literal mterpre-
tation of sacred scripture, proves, that in his youth he was still at a far
remove from the theological direction of his later years; and he says
of himself, in allusion to this false step of his youth: “1. who once
knew Christ, the divine Logos, only according to the flesh and the
letter, now no longer know him so.”? It is quite evident from this,
that the education of his father had more influence im giving the first
religious direction to the mind of Origen, than the structions of Cle-
ment, and that the influence on him of the Alexandrian theological spi-
rit belongs to a period of development still later in his life. We admit
‘that a great deal of obscurity continues to rest on the history of his
early training, which the poverty of our materials will not allow us to
clear away. The religion of the heart was at first uppermost with
Origen; and this great teacher, too, must be numbered with those in
whom the early direction given to the feelings by a pious education has
acted as a check on the too intellectual tendency of their later studies.
, ‘The above-mentioned persecution which befel the Christians in Egypt
under the reign of Septimius Severus gave the youth of sixteen an
opportunity of displaying the ardor of his faith. The example of the
martyrs fired him with such enthusiasm, that he was ready to avow him-
self a Christian before the pagan Btu ay and expose himself to cer-
.tain death.
ς
1 According to Eusebius, 1. VI.¢c.6. Alex- 1. VI.c.14. Yet, alas! the earlier influence
ander, bishop of Jerusalem, who was either
born in Alexandria, or had come there in
his youth to place himself under the in-
structions of its catechists, seems indeed to
hint in: his letter to Origen, that the latter
had enjoyed the society of Panteenus, al-
though not directly, that he was his scholar:
“We rec ognize as our fathers, those blessed
men who have gone before ns, Pantzenus
and Clement, who was my master, and has
been useful to me, and whoever besides be-
longs to the number of these men, through
whom I became acquainted with you. Euseb.
of these men on the education of Origen
is involved in an obscurity, which our defi-
cient means of information will not enable
us to dispel.
2In Matth. T. XV. § 3, ed. Huet. f. 369:
Ἡμεῖς δὲ, Χριστὸν ϑεοῦ͵ τὸν λόγον τοῦ ϑεοῦ,
κατὰ σάρκα καὶ κατὰ τὸ γράμμα ποτὲ νοῆσαν-
τες, νῦν οὐκέτι γινώσκοντες. And T. ΧΙ.
§ 17, where he speaks of an interpretation
of the scriptures for the ἁπλούστεροι : Ἡμεῖς
δὲ οἱ εὐχόμενοι ἐξ ἀληϑείας λέγειν" εἰ καὶ
Χριστόν ποτε κατὰ σάρκα ἐγνώκαμεν, ἀλλὰ
νῦν οὐκέτι γινώσκοντες.
ORIGEN. 695
Such was the zeal of the enthusiastic Christian youth: quite differ’
ent was the judgment of the prudent Christian man, who better un-
derstood the nature of the Christian system of morality, from the study
of that system itself, and from contemplating the life of Christ and of the /
apostles.! He acknowledges, that, on the question whether the danger
ought to be evaded or met, no general rule can be laid down, but every-
thing depends on the particular circumstances and on the call; that it
requires Christian truthfulness to decide the question in each individual
ease. ‘‘ A temptation which overtakes us without any meddling of our
own,” he says in reference to this subject, ‘‘ we should endure with
fortitude and confidence ; but it is fool-hardy not to avoid it when we
can.”’?. And in another place, where he is speaking of Christ, who was
not to be deterred by the prospect of death from making his last jour-
ney to Jerusalem, and of Paul, who was not to be hindered from going
to that city by the voices which warned him of what awaited him there,
he adds: ‘‘ We say it behoves us neither at all times to avoid danger,
nor at all times to meet it. But it needs the wisdom of a Christian
philosopher to examine and decide what times require that one should
withdraw himself, and what, that he should stand fast, ready for the
conflict, without withdrawing himself, and still more without fleemg.” ὅ
When the father of Origen himself was thrown ito prison, the son»
felt impelled, still more than before, to go and meet death along with
him. Remonstrance and entreaty having been tried im vain to dis-
suade him from his purpose, his. mother knew of no other way to detain
him, than by concealing his garments. Then the love of Christ so far
exceeded all other emotions, that, seeing himself prevented from sharing
in his father’s imprisonment and death, he wrote to him, ‘“ Look to it,
that thou dost not change thy mind on our account.”’
Leonides died a martyr; and, as his property was confiscated, he
left behind him a helpless widow, with six young children besides Ori-
gen. ‘The latter was kindly received into the family of a rich and noble ,
Christian lady of Alexandria. Here he characteristically displayed
his steadfast adherence to that which he had recognized as the true
faith, showing how much he prized it above all things else. His patron-
ess had become devoted to a certain Paul of Antioch, one of those
Gnostics who so often resorted from Syria to Alexandria, with a view
to propagate their system, after having so modified it as to suit the
Alexandrian taste. ‘This man she had adopted; and he was allowed
to hold his lectures at her house, which were attended, not only by the
friends of Gnosticism in Alexandria, but also by others of the true faith
who were curious to hear something new. But the young Origen
would not be restrained, even by respect for his patroness, from freely
expressing his abhorrence of the Gnostic doctrines ; and nothing could
induce him to attend these assemblies, because he would be obliged to
join in the prayers of the Gnostic, and thereby express his fellowship
with him in the faith.
He was soon enabled to free himself from this condition of depen-
1 He refers to Matth. 14:13;—10:23. ?In Matth. T.X.§23. %Lc.T.XVL41
596 ORIGEN.
dence. His knowledge of the Greek philology and literature, which
he had continued to cultivate after the death of his father, placed him,
at Alexandria, where such knowledge was particularly valued, in a con-
dition to gain his own subsistence by giving instruction on these
subjects.
, Having, by his various attainments and gifts of mind, by his zeal for
the cause of the gospel, and by his pure, exemplary life, acquired a
name even among the Heathens, he was applied to, now that the office
of catechist at Alexandria had been made vacant in the persecution,
by a number of Heathens, who were seeking for instruction in Chris-
tianity ; and, through the instrumentality of the young man, some were
conducted to the faith, who afterwards became renowned as martyrs or
teachers of the church. By this zeal and activity in promoting the
spread of Christianity, he could not fail to draw upon himself more
and more the hatred of the fanatic multitude ; especially since, without
regard to his own danger, he showed so much sympathy for those who
were imprisoned on account of the faith, not only visiting them in their
dungeons, but accompanying them to the place of execution, and in the
very face of death refreshing them by the power of his faith and ardor
of his love. Often was he rescued by Providence from threatening
danger, when soldiers had already surrounded the place where he re-
sided, and he was obliged to escape secretly from one house to another.
At one time he was seized by a band of Pagans, who dressed him in
the robes of a priest of Serapis, and conducted him, thus arrayed, to
the steps of the temple. Here they placed in his hand a branch of
palm, which he was bid to distribute, in the customary manner, to those
who entered. Origen did as he was bidden, but said to those to whom
he presented the branches, ‘‘ Receive not the idol’s palm, but the palm
of Christ.” 1
The successful labors of Origen, in imparting religious instruction,
drew on him the attention of Demetrius, bishop of Alexandria, who was
induced to confer on him the office of a catechist im the Alexandrian
church. ‘To this office, however, no salary was then affixed; and as
he now wished to have it in his power to devote himself wholly to the
labors of his spiritual calling and to his theological studies, without be-
Ing mterrupted or withdrawn from them by foreign occupations, and as
he did not choose to be dependent on any one for the means of subsist-
ence, he determined to sell a collection of beautiful copies of the an-
cient authors, which he had been forming at great pains for his own use,
to a literary amateur, who, im compensation, allowed him, for several
years, four oboles a day. ‘This was enough to satisfy the very limited
wants of Origen; for he led the life of the most rigid ascetic. He
was at this time, as we have said, given to the literal interpretation of
the Bible ; and as he now felt himself bound to aim at the ideal of holi-
Epiphanius. But the first of these con-
siderations, although it may excite doubt,
yet does not disprove the fact , and Epipha-
nius is entitled to more credit than usual,
1 Vid. Epiphan. h. 64. The story may
in itself seem improbable, when we reflect
how likely such language would be to in-
flame the fanatic fury of the Alexandrian
populace, and when we consider what little
reliance can be placed on the authority of
where he repeats anything to the advantage
of a man branded as a heretic.
ORIGEN. 697
ness presented by our Saviour ; as he endeavored with conscientious
fidelity to apply every word of the Saviour to his own case; he could
hardly fail, in his youthful ascetic zeal, unchecked by a judicious inter-
pretation of the scriptures, to be betrayed into many a practical error,
either by taking the figurative expressions of Christ in a literal sense,
or by clinging to what Christ had said with reference only to particular
cases, as valid for all times and im all circumstances. The most sur-
prising mistake of this sort, which afterwards occasioned him much
vexation, was in suffering himself to be misled by a literal understand-
ing of the passage in Matth. 19: 12,1 to execute upon himself what
he believed to be enjoined by these words on those who would be sure
of entermmg the kingdom of heaven. It was a misconception, which
might easily arise from a one-sided ascetism and from that method of
scriptural interpretation, and which was fostered by many a tract then
in circulation.2. Even in this false step, however, the earnest effort,
the ardent desire of the young man after holiness, — his sincere love of
the Redeemer, whom he was ready literally to obey in every hint which
had been given by hin, shine forth conspicuously. But although such
errors, arising out of what is holiest in man, should always be treated
with the greatest gentleness ; yet there are many at all times, who, with
but one standard for everything, pronounce judgment on aberrations of
this kind with so much the greater severity, as the principle from
which alone even such acts of enthusiastic extravagance can proceed,
1 The correctness of this fact has, it is true,
very recently been called in question by Prof.
Schnitzer, “ Origines ueber die Grundlehren
der Glaubenswissenschaft,” and by Dr. Baur
in his critique on this work, Jahrbiicher fiir
wissenschaftliche Kritik, Mai 1837, Nr. 85.
But 1 must still, with Dr. Engelhardt, in the
Studien und Kritiken, Jahrgang 1838, Istes
Heft, S. 157, and Dr. Redepenning, in his
Monographie ueber Origenes, hold to the
contrary opinion. Eusebius, whose notices
concerning Origen are derived from the
most authentic sources, is (1. VI. c.8) a
trustworthy witness; and his account of a
matter of this sort we should not be at all
warranted to put down as false, without the
most weighty reasons. It is not to be con-
ceived, that he would allow himself to be
imposed upon by any rumor growing out of
a wrong interpretation of facts, and the less
so, as he could have no inclination whatever
blindly to adopt any such rumor; for he
did everything in his power to exalt Origen,
and such a step, even in the opinion of Euse-
bius, although he seeks to give the utmost
prominence to the good motive at bottom,
still requires the excuse (φρενὸς ἀτελοῦς, as
he expresses it). Origen himself says in
fact, (in the passage referred to, Matth. T.
ΧΥ. 3,) that he was once inclined to the
literal interpretation, out of which that mis-
conception arose. In the fulness of detail
with which he there treats this subject, — in
his manner of speaking of the mischievous
Val: E: 59
consequences of such a step, — we seem to
hear one who speaks from his own painful
experience, and holds up his own example
as a warning to others. It is nothing strange
if a certain delicacy of feeling restrains him
‘from expressly avowing that this is the case.
Assuredly, therefore, it cannot be inferred
in the least from the words, “ he would not
have spent so much time on this subject,
(εἰ μὴ καὶ ἑωράκειμεν τοὺς τολμῆσαντας,) ”
that he had observed this only in others.
2 Philo, opp. f. 186: ᾿Ἐξευνουχισϑῆναι
ἄμεινον, ἢ πρὸς συνουσίας ἐκνόμους λυττᾷν.
See moreover a gnome of Σέξτος, 12, which
was widely circulated among the Alexan-
drian Christians; according to the transla-
tion of Rufinus: Omne membrum corporis,
quod suadet te contra pudicitiam agere, ab-
jiciendum. These gnomes, by the way,
came neither from a Roman bishop, by the
name of Sextus, (whether the first or the
second,) as Rufinus supposed; nor, as was
the opinion of Jerome, ( V.ep. ad Ctesiphon,)
from a heathen Pythagorean: but they are
the work of some man, who, from certain
Platonic and Gnostic maxims, and expres-
sions of scripture wrested out of their proper
connection, had drawn up for himself a sys-
tem of morals, the highest aim of which was
the ἀπάϑεια. They do not contain a moral
system pervaded by the spirit of the gospel ;
but many lofty maxims, along with many
perverse ones.
698 ORIGEN.
lies remote from their own carnal sense or tame understandings. ΟΥἹ-
gen speaks from experience, when he takes notice of those who, by
similar misconceptions and similar false steps, have involved themselves
in disgrace, not only with the unbelieving world, but lkewise with that
whole class who will sooner pardon any other human frailty than those
errors which spring out of a mistaken fear of God, and an immoderate
longing after holiness.! When the bishop Demetrius first heard of the
transaction, he did not overlook in the error the purity of the motive ;
though afterwards he took advantage of this false step as a means to
injure Origen.
An important pomt would be gained, were it possible fairly to de-
termine the precise time and manner in which Origen passed over —
to speak in the Alexandrian style — from the πίστις to the γνῶσις, After
what has been said above respecting Clement’s peculiar bent of mind,
it is impossible to doubt, that, if Origen was his immediate disciple as
a theologian, he had from the first been stimulated by Clement to make
himself accurately acquainted with the systems of the Greek philosophy,
and of the different heretics ; as indeed the liberal spirit of the Alex-.
andrian theology required that he should do. But probably the origi-
nal turn of Origen’s mind was of a far more decided and determinate
character. There was in his case no mutual interpenetration of the ele-
ments subsisting beside each other inhis mind. The practical Christian,
the ascetic, and the literary element never kindly intermingled. He says
himself, that it was first by an outward occasion he was led to busy
himself with the study of the Platonic philosophy, and to make himself
better acquainted generally with the systems of those who differed from
himself; by his intercourse, namely, with heretics and Pagans of phi-
losophical education, who, attracted by his reputation, entered with him
into discussions of religious topics, when he was compelled to give them
a reason of his faith, and to refute the objections which they brought
against it. He expresses himself on this pomt in the followmg manner,
in a letter in which he defends himself for bestowing his time on the
Greek philosophy : “* When I had wholly devoted myself to the pro-
mulgation of the divine doctrines, and the fame of my skill in them
began to be spread, and sometimes heretics, sometimes such as had
been conversant with the Grecian sciences, and particularly men from
the philosophical schools, came to visit me, it seemed to me necessary,
that I should examine the doctrinal opinions of the heretics, and what
the philosophers pretended to know of the truth.” He proceeds to say,
that he attended the lectures of the teacher of philosophical science,
with whom Heraclas, a convert of Origen’s, had already spent five
years. As he here particularizes an individual known at that time m
Alexandria, simply as the teacher of philosophy, chronology would
naturally lead us to think of the famous Ammonius Saccas, the teacher
of the profound Plotinus, from whose hand the chaotic eclecticism of
the Neo-Platonists — that compound of Oriental and Grecian 6]6-
ments — received a more definite shape. Add to this, that Porphyry,
1Jn Matth. ὁ 3, T. 15. f. 367
\
ORIGEN. 699
in his work against Christianity, expressly calls Origen a disciple of
this Ammonius.!
From this time began the great change in the theological bent of Ori-
gen’s mind. It now became his endeavor, to trace the vestiges of truth
in all human systems; to examime all things, that he might everywhere
separate the true from the false. His residence in Alexandria, where
sects so widely different were brought together; his journey to Rome
(in the year 211;) his journeys to and within Palestine ; to Achaia, to
Cappadocia; gave him opportunity, as he tells us himself? of visiting
those who pretended to any extraordimary knowledge, and of becoming
acquainted with and examining their doctrmes. He made it his prin-
ciple, not to suffer himself to be governed by the traditional opinion of
the multitude, but to hold fast that only as truth; which he found after
unbiassed examination. ‘This principle he expresses m a practical ap-
plication of Matth. 22: 19, 20: ‘“ We here learn from our Saviour,
that we are not, under the pretext of piety, to pm our faith on that
which is said by the multitude, and which therefore stands m high
authority ; but on that which results from examination and the internal
connection of truth; for it is well to remark, that when he was asked »
whether men should pay tribute to Czesar or not, he not only expressed his
own judgment, but, having asked them to show him a penny, he inquired
whose image and superscription is this; and when they said it is
- Ceesar’s, he answered that men should give unto Cesar the things that
are Cesar’s, and not, under the pretext of religion, deprive him of what
was his own.”’? Hence the mildness with which he passed judgment on
those who were wrong, an illustration of which we have in the following
beautiful remark on John 13: 8: “It is clear, that although Peter
‘said this in a good and respectful disposition towards his Teacher, yet
1 For there can be no doubt on this point;
viz. that Porphyry, in Euseb. 1. VI. ¢. 19,
meant no other person than this Ammonius,
although Eusebius confounds him with the
church-teacher Ammonius, who had written
a Harmony of the Gospels, still extant, and a
book on the agreement between Moses and
Jesus. There were, at periods not far remote
from each other, and in Alexandria itself,
a pagan Ammonius, highly distinguished
among the learned,—a Christian Ammo-
nius,—and two Origens. We may here re-
mark, that, when Porphyry says of Origen:
“Ἕλλην ἐν ἕλλησι παιδευϑεὶς λόγοις, πρὸς τὸ
βάρβαρον ἐξώκειλε τόλμημα, (he became an
apostate to the religion of the barbarians,)
one part of the assertion has its truth ;
namely, that Origen, from the first, had been
disciplined in the Greek literature; but it
was a false insinuation of Porphyry, that
he had been educated in Paganism. We
cannot suppose that Porphyry, in this case,
confounded the two persons bearing the
name of Origen; for he knew them both.
I must agree with Dr. Redepenning, in
his Monographie ueber Origenes, that the
reasons adduced by Ritter are by no means
sufficient to refute the hypothesis, — that
the philosopher whose lectures Origen at-
tended was Ammonius Saccas.. Although
several philosophers taught at Alexandria,
still the words which Origen employs: —
Παρὰ τῷ διδασκάλῳ τῶν φιλοσόφων
μαϑημάτων, naturally suggest the famous
one; and chronology points to the Ammo-
nius in question. And even though Am-
monius sprung from Christian parents, and
again fell back to Paganism, yet this is no
sufficient reason for maintaining that Origen
must have had scruples about hearing him,
— being, as he was, a famous teacher of the
Platonic philosophy. And it still remains
open for inquiry, whether really the descent
of Ammonius from Christian parents is an
ascertained fact.
2c. Cels. 1. VI. c. 24: Πολλοὺς ἐκπεριελ-
ϑόντες τόπους τῆς γῆς, Kal τοὺς πανταχοῦ
ἐπαγγελλομένους τι εἰδέναι ζητῆσαντες.
8 Τῇ Matth. T. XVII. § 26, f.483: Μὴ τοῖς
ὑπὸ τῶν πολλῶν λεγομένοις Kal διὰ τοῦτο
ἐνδόξοις φαινομένοις, προφάσει τῆς εἰς ϑεὸν
εὐσεβείας προσέχειν, ἀλλὰ ὑπὸ τῆς ἐξετάσεως
καὶ τῆς ἀκολουϑίας τοῦ λόγου παρισταμένοι
700 ORIGEN.
he said it to his own hurt. Life is full of this kind of sins, attaching to
those who in their faith mean what is. right, but out of ignorance say,
or even do, what leads to the contrary. Such are those who say:
Thou shalt not touch this, thou shalt not taste that, thou shalt not han-
dle the other. Col. 2: 21,22. But what shall we say of those who, in
the sects, are driven about by every wind οἵ doctrme; who set forth
that which is soul-destroying as saving doctrine; and who frame to
themselves false notions of the person of Jesus, under the supposition
that they honor him thereby ? ”’ 4
By this liberality of mind, it was the happimess of Origen to bring
back many heretics, with whom he fell in contact at Alexandria, par-
ticularly Gnostics, to the simple doctrine of the gospel. One remarka-
ble example of this sort was that Ambrosius, a wealthy man in Alex-
andria, who, not satisfied with the manner in which Christianity had
been exhibited to him in the common representations of the church-
teachers, had sought, and supposed that he had found, a more spiritual
conception of it among the Gnostics; until, through the influence of
Origen, he was undeceived of his error, and rejoiced at now finding,
through his means, the right Gnosis at the same time with the true faith.?
He now became Origen’s warmest friend, and endeavored especially
to promote his literary labors for the good of the church.
If Origen, after having been taught, by his own experience, the
errors resulting from a grossly literal interpretation of scripture, and
the hurtful consequences to which it might lead, passed over to the
other extreme of an arbitrary allegorizing method of exposition ; his
conscientious and zealous endeavors to avail himself of every help which
could be used in restoring back to its original condition, and in rightly
understanding, the literal text of scripture, deserve the greater esteem.
To this end, he studied the Hebrew, after he had arrived at the age of
manhood, —a task of some difficulty to a Greek. He undertook an
emendation of the biblical manuscripts, by. comparing them with one
another: he is the creator of sacred literature among the Christians ;
although his arbitrary principles of interpretation prevented, in his own
case, the full realization of all those results which might otherwise have
been expected fromit. Many pregnant ideas were scattered abroad
by him, which needed only to be applied in a different way from that
which his own one-sided speculative bent and his mistaken notions of
inspiration allowed, to lead to fruitful results.
As the number of those who now resorted to him for religious in-
struction continued to increase, and at the same time his literary labors
on the scriptures, which extended over a widening field, claimed more
of his attention : in order to gain time, he shared the task of catechist
with his friend Heraclas; giving over to the latter the preparatory reli-
gious instruction, and reserving for himself the exacter instruction of
the more advanced,?—a division of labor which probably had reference
to the two classes of catechumens of which we have formerly spoken.*
1Jn Joann. T. XXXII. § δ. 8 Kuseb. lib. VI. c. 15.
2 See the words to Ambrosius, T. Evang. 4 See vol. I. p. 305.
Joann. p. 99, cited on a former occasion.
ORIGEN. 701
The division of his official labors in this department made it possible
for him to enlarge the sphere of his activity as a teacher of the church,
and to establish a sort of preliminary school to the Christian Gnosis, in
a course of lectures’on that which was reckoned by the Greeks to the
Encyclopedia, or general circle of education, as well as on philosophy.
He expounded to his pupils all the ancient philosophers in whom a
moral and religious element was to be found, and sought to train them
to that mental freedom which would enable them everywhere to sepa-
rate truth from the mixture of falsehood; as his disciple, Gregory
Thaumaturgus, has described, in the account of Origen’s method of in-
struction, which he has given in a work hereafter to be mentioned.
Thus he entitled himself to the great merit of diffusing a more liberal
system of Christian and scientific education, of which the schools that
resulted from his labors are the evidence. It was also his lot to con-
duct many, who had been drawn to him solely through the love οἵ sci-
ence, by gradual steps, to faith in the gospel; — first inspiring in them
a longing after divine things ; then poiting out to them the inadequacy
of the Greek systems of philosophy to satisfy the religious wants of hu-
man nature; and finally exhibiting to them the doctrme of scripture
concerning divine things, contrasted with the doctrines of the ancient
philosophers. His course of instruction ended with his lectures on the
interpretation of scripture, which, following the principles unfolded in
the earlier studies, gave him an opportunity to exhibit his whole theo-
logico-philosophical system, or his whole Gnosis, in single investigations
and remarks. Many of those whom Origen was enabled thus gradu->
ally to bring to the knowledge and to the love of the gospel, became
afterwards zealous and influential teachers of the church. _
Ambrosius, whom we mentioned above as the friend of Origen, took
special interest in his scientific labors. Origen used to call him his
work-driver (ἐργοδιώκτης.) He not only excited him by his questions and
challenges to many inquiries, but also employed his great wealth in pro-
viding him with the means of pursuing expensive investigations ; such,
for instance, as made indispensable the purchase and collation of manu-
scripts. He furnished him with seven ready scribes, who were to
relieve each other as his amanuenses, besides others to transcribe every-
thing in a fair copy. Origen says of this friend, in one of his letters :*
“He who gave me credit for great diligence, and a great thirst after
the divine word, has, by his own diligence and his own love of sacred
science, convinced himself how much he was mistaken. He has so far
outdone me, that I am in danger of not coming up to his requisitions.
The collation of manuscripts leaves me no time to eat; and after meals
I can neither go out nor enjoy a season of rest; but even at those times
I am compelled to continue my philological mvestigations and the cor-
rection of manuscripts. Even the night is not granted me for repose,
but a great part of it is claimed for these philological inquiries. 1 will
not mention the time from early in the morning till the ninth and some-
times the tenth hour of the day ;? for all who take pleasure in such
1 T. I. opp. ed. de la Rue, f. 3. ;
2 Till three or four o’clock, P. M. according to our reckoning
Q*
702 ORIGEN.
labors, employ those hours in the study of the divine word, and in
reading.”
Ambrosius urged Origen, by the publication of his theologian labors,
to give the entire church an opportunity of enjoying the benefit of
them, and thus to counteract the influence of the Gnostics, who had
first excited among the Christians a spirit of deeper research into the
things of God, and, under the pretence of a more profound scriptural
interpretation, contrived, by arbitrary allegorical expositions, to intro-
duce their Theosophy into holy writ. The object last mentioned is
one which Origen himself assigns for his labors, at the close of the fifth
Tome of his commentary on the gospel of John, which was in part aimed
against the Gnostic Heracleon. ‘As at present the heterodox,” he
says, ‘“‘under cover of the Gnosis, set themselves against God’s “holy
church, and scatter abroad works of many volumes, which promise to
expound the evangelical and apostolical writings ; so will they succeed,
if we remain silent, without placing the sound and true doctrines by
their side, to snatch away the hungry souls, who, for want of wholesome
nourishment, hasten to that which is forbidden.”
He completed at Alexandria his commentaries on Genesis, the
Psalms, the Lamentation of Jeremiah, (of which writings some frag-
ments only remain, ) his five first Zomes on the gospel of John, his tract
on the resurrection, his Stromata, and his work concerning principles.1
The work last mentioned derived great importance from the struggle
which it called forth between opposite tendencies of the theological
mind, and from the influence which it had on the fortunes of Origen
and of his school. Platonic philosophy and doctrines of the Christian
faith were then, still more than at a later period, blended together in
his mind. His wildness of speculation became afterwards moderated
by the influence of the Christian spirit. Many ideas which he had
thrown out in this work, (rather as problems, however, than as deci-
sions,) he afterwards retracted; although the principles of his system
always remained the same. He declared himself, m a letter subse-
quently written to Fabian, bishop of Rome, before whom his doctrines
had probably been accused as heretical, that he had set forth many
things in that book which he no longer acknowledged as true, and that
his friend Ambrosius had published it against his will.?
Yet, as has often happened, unless there had been an outward occa-
sion for it, an intervention of personal and unworthy passions, the con-
flict between Origen and the party ofthe church zealots would not have
broken out, at least so soon; especially as Origen was far from possessing
that pride ‘which in other cases so readily connects itself with a theo-
logical tendency of this sort, and as he constantly evinced the utmost
forbearance towards those whose religious and theological principles
differed from his own. The authority of his bishop, Demetrius, was to
him an important support; but this man, who was full of the hierarchi-
cal pride, which in these times we find especially rife in the bishops of
1 Tlept ἀρχῶν = τῶν κορυφαιοτάτων καὶ 2 Vid. Hieronym. ep. 41, T. IV. opp. edd
ἀρχικῶν δογμάτων, as Origen himself ex- Martianay, f. 341.
presses it in Joann. T. X. § 13
ORIGEN. 108
the large cities, had his jealousies excited by the great reputation of
Origen, and the honor which he received on particular occasions.
Hspecially the honor paid him by two of his friends, Alexander,
bishop of Jerusalem, the friend of his youth, and Theoctistus, bishop
of Czesarea in Palestine, gave no small umbrage. The haughty Deme-
trius had already taken it greatly amiss of them, that they had per-
mitted Origen, when a layman,! to preach in their churches.2 Yet
when, in obedience to the call of his bishop, he returned back to Alex-
andria, he was enabled to restore the friendly relations m which they
had previously stood to each other. But in the year 288, he happened
to make a journey to Greece on some ecclesiastical busmess of which
we have no further account.’ While upon this journey, he made a visit
to his friends in Palestine; and these ordained him as a presbyter at
Ceesarea.
This was a step, for which Demetrius could not forgive the two
bishops, nor Origen. After the return of the latter, Demetrius con-
vened a synod, composed of presbyters from his own diocese, and of
other Egyptian bishops, 4nd here brought against Origen that indis-
crect act of his youth, by which, we must allow, according to the strict
letter of the ecclesiastical canons, he was excluded from the spiritual
order. But it should have been duly considered, that he had since
become an entirely different man; that he had long condemned the
step into which his youthful zeal had betrayed him. Yet for this
reason he was deprived of the presbyterial rank which had been be-
stowed on him, and forbidden to exercise the office of a public teacher
in the Alexandrian church.6 Having once drawn upon himself the
jealousy and hatred of the pharisaical bishop, he could enjoy no further
peace in Alexandria. Demetrius did not stop with the first attack
upon him: he now began to stigmatize the doctrines of Origen as hereti-
1 See vol. I. p. 197.
2 There were, probably in the year 216,
certain warlike demonstrations in Alexan-
dria, according to Euseb. 1. VI. c. 19, which
made it unsafe for him to reside there any
longer; perhaps when the demented Cara-
calla, on his way to the Parthian war, gave
up this city to the rapacious and murderous
lusts of his soldiers, Ail. Spartian. 1. VI.
c.6. It may be supposed that the fury of the
pagan soldiers would light especially on
the Christians. Origen betook himself to
Palestine, for the purpose of visiting his
ancient friends, and, as he says himself, (in
Joann. T. VI. § 24,) for the purpose of ex-
ploring the footsteps of Jesus, of his disciples,
and of the prophets (ἐπὶ ἱστορίαν τῶν ἰχνῶν
Ἰησοῦ καὶ τῶν μαϑητῶν αὐτοῦ Kal τῶν προ-
ONT v, ) {
3 Perhaps he was called into these coun-
tries for the purpose of disputing with Gnos-
tics who had spread there, — his skill in
managing disputes of this sort being exten-
sively known. His disputation with Can-
didus the Valentinian, the acts of which are
cited by Jerome, might lead us to infer this.
4 It is very probable, that the ecclesiastical
law was already existing, which we find in
the XVII. of the Apostolic Canons. It was
here by no means unconditionally forbidden,
after the example of the Old-Testament law,
Deut. 23, that a eunuch should be chosen
to the spiritual order; but expressly defined,
that whoever had been subjected to such a
mischance, without any fault of his own, if
worthy, might become an ecclesiastic; only
ὁ ἑαυτὸν ἀκρωτηριάσας μὴ γινέσϑω κληρικός.
It was simply designed to offer a check to
that ascetic species of enthusiasm.
5 Photius says, it is true, that this same
synod not only forbade Origen to exercise
the office of teacher, but also to remain a
resident in the Alexandrian church. But
it is difficult to see how a bishop at that time
could enforce this. He could in fact only
exclude him from the communion of the
church, and this was first done in the second
synod. Moreover, the words of Origen do
not seem to intimate, that he had been forced
to leave Alexandria.
704 ORIGEN.
eal —a proceeding for which, perhaps, some assertions of the latter,
in his disputations with the Gnostics, had given fresh occasion.1
Yet from the resources of his own inner life he drew sufficient peace
of mind to complete his fifth Z'ome on the gospel of John, amid the
storms at Alexandria (since, as he says,? Jesus commanded the winds
and the waves of the sea;) when he finally concluded to leave that
city, and to take refuge with his friends at Czesarea in Palestine. But
the persecutions of Demetrius followed him even there. The bishop
now seized on a pretext, which would enable him easily to find allies
in Egypt and out of Egypt; masmuch as the prevailing dogmatic
spirit, in many parts of the church, was violently opposed to the edeal-
éstte tendency of Origen’s school, and inasmuch as the work περὶ ἀρχῶν
would furnish such abundant materials for the charge of heresy. Ata
more numerous synod of Egyptian bishops, Demetrius excluded Origen,
as a heretic, from the communion of the church; and the synod issued
against him a violent invective. ΤῸ this document Origen alludes,
when, in commencing once more.at Cesarea the continuation of his
commentary on the gospel of John, he says: ‘‘ That God who once led
his people out of Egypt, had also delivered him from that land; but his
enemy, in this recent letter, truly at variance with the spirit of the
gospel, had assailed him with the utmost virulence, and roused against
him all the winds of malice in Egypt.” ὃ
1 As we might infer from the disputation
with Candidus the Valentinian. Hieronym.
adv. Rufin. lib. 11. f. 414, vol. IV.
2J%n Joann. T. VI. § I.
8 We are in want of connected and trust-
worthy accounts respecting these events, so
pregnant of consequences. We can only
endeavour, by a combination of particulars,
to trace the facts of the case as they really
occurred. It is certain, indeed, from the
intimation which Eusebius gives, and from
Origen’s words, which have already been
cited, concerning that indiscretion of his
youth, that the latter was then urged against
him ; but this could be employed only as a
reason for excluding him from the clerical
office. The other steps against him must
have originated in some other complaint.
Photius, who had read the Apology of Pam-
philus in behalf of Origen, says, it is true,
Cod. 118, that Demetrius accused him of hay-
ing undertaken the journey to Athens without
his permission, and of having caused himself,
on this journey undertaken without his per-
mission, to be ordained a presbyter, — which
certainly would have been an infraction of
the laws of the church on the part of Origen,
as well as of the bishops. But if Demetrius
brought this charge against Origen, still it
may be asked, whether he had any grounds
for it. We see from the citation of Jerome,
de vir. illustr. c. 62, that Alexander, bishop
of Jerusalem, had to allege against Deme-
trius, the fact that he had ordained Origen on
the authority of an epistola formata, which
Origen brought with him from his bishop.
The church laws respecting these matters
were at that time, perhaps, still so vague, that
Alexander might suppose he had every right
to ordain a man who belonged to another
diocese; and yet Demetrius might look upon ©
this as an invasion on the rights of his epis-
copal office. At any rate, however, this was
no sufficient reason for excommunicating
Origen. The participation of other churches
in this attack upon him; the brand of heresy,
which Origen continued to bear even after
his death; his own language in justification
of himsélf, in the letter already cited, ad-
dressed to the Roman bishop Fabian (as he
had also written to other bishops in vindi-
cation of his orthodoxy, Euseb. 1. VI. ¢.
36 ;) —all conspire to show, that his doctrines
were the cause of his excommunication.
We see also from what Jerome cites, 1. 11,
adv. Rufin. f. 411, and from the letter of
Origen against Demetrius, that he was ac-
cused of errors in his system of faith; since
he defends himself against the charge of
having asserted that Satan would one day
become holy, — although we cannot well
understand how he could deny this assertion,
which is necessarily grounded in his system.
Rufinus cites passages from one of Origen’s
letters of vindication, addressed to his friends
in Alexandria; from which we learn, that
a forged protocol, pretending to give an
account of a disputation held between him
and the heretics, had excited surprise at his
doctrinal positions, even among his friends
in Palestine. They had despatched a mes-
senger after him to Athens, and requested
ORIGEN. 705
This personal quarrel became now a conflict between the opposite
doctrinal parties. The churches in Palestine, Arabia, Phoenicia, and
Achaia, took the side of Origen: the church of Rome declared against,
him.! How Origen judged of those who stigmatized him as a heretic,
appears from a remark,” which he makes after citing 1 Corinth. 1: 25:
“Tf 7 had said,” he observes, ‘‘ the foolishness of God, how would the
lovers of censure® accuse me! How should I be accused by them, even
though I had said a thousand times what they themselves hold to be
true, yet had not rightly said this single thing, — how should I be 8ο-
cused by them for saying, ‘ the foolishness of God’!”’ In his letter of
vindication against the synod which had excommunicated him, he quotes
some of the denunciations of the prophets agamst wicked priests and
potentates, and then adds: ‘‘ But we should fir rather pity than hate
them, far rather pray for them than curse them; for we are made to
bless, and not to curse.’”4
The efforts of Origen’s enemies only contributed to extend the sphere’
of his activity. His removal to Palestine was certainly important in
its consequences, an opportunity being thus given him of laboring also
from him the original of the protocol. _ Also
protocols of this sort had been dispersed as
faras Rome. Vid. Rufin. de adulteratione
librorum Origenis, in opp. Hieronym. T. V.
f. 251, ed. Martianay. Although Rufin is
not a faithful translator, yet this cannot have
been a story wholly invented by himself.
The disputations with the Gnostics, more-
over, could not fail to furnish occasions,
which would bring out prominently the
peculiar religious opinions of Origen; and
every opportunity of making his orthodoxy
suspected in his own church must have been
eagerly welcomed by those who found in
him so powerful an antagonist.
1 Hieronym. ep. 29, ad Paulum: Dam-
natus a Demetrio episcopo, exceptis Palzs-
tine et Arabiz et Phoenicize atque Achaiz
sacerdotibus. In damnationem ejus con-
sentit urbs Roma: ipsa contra hune cogit
senatum. ΤῸ be sure, he adds to this: non
propter dogmatum novitatem ; non propter
heeresin, sed quia gloriam eloquentiz ejus
et scientiz ferre non poterant. But this is
not fact; itis the subjective interpretation
of motives, according to interests which
Jerome at that time espoused. Compare,
moreover, the remark made in the case of
Tertullian. ᾽
2 Hom. VIII. in Jerem. § 8.
8 Οἱ φιλαίτιοι. ;
1.366]. 6. Hieronym.1.1V.f. 411. Comp.
what Origen says against the significancy.
of unjust excommunication, see vol. I. p. 219.
Comp. also in Matth. T. XVI. § 25, ἢ, 445,
the words in which we discern the zealous
opponent of hierarchy, who was able to dis-
cover.the pious disposition even when hid-
den under the most unpromising shapes,
and, wherever it appeared, embraced it in
his love. Different from this, however, was
the course of those bishops who were filled »
with the spirit of a priestly caste and hie-
rarchical pride, and of whom he says, apply-
ing to them the passage in Matth. 21: 16:
“ As these scribes and priests were censura-
ble according to the letter of the history, so,
in the spiritual application of this passage,
there may be many a blame-worthy high-
priest, who fails to adorn his episcopal dig-
nity by his life, and to put on the Urim and
Thummim, (the Light and Fight, Exod. 28.)
These, while they behold the wonderful
things of God, despise the babes and
sucklings in the church, who sing praises
to God and his Christ. They are dis-
pleased at their spiritual progress, and
complain of them to Jesus, as if they did
wrong when they do no wrong. ‘They ask
Jesus, ‘ Hearest thou what these say?’ And
this we shall better understand, if we con-
sider how often it happens, that men of
ardent minds, who hazard their liberty in
bold confessions before the Heathen, who
despise danger, who with all constancy lead
lives of the strictest continence and‘severest
austerity, — how often such men, who are
rude, however, in their expressions, [ἰδιῶται
τῇ λέξει.) are calumniated by these blame-
worthy high-priests as disorganizers, — how
often they are accused by them before Jesus,
as if they themselves behaved better than
such honest and good children. But Jesus
testifies in favor of the children, and on the
other hand accuses the high-priests of igno-
rance, saying, ‘ Have ye not read: Out of
the mouth of babes and sucklings thou hast
ordained praise ?’” It might well be, that
Origen here had before his mind’s eye, Deme-
trius and similar bishops, who were inclined
to judge with the greatest severity, those
errors which proceeded out of a pious zeal
706 ORIGEN.
from that point, for the diffusion of a liberal scientific spirit in the
church ; and long were the traces of his activity to be discerned in
these districts. Here, too, a circle of young men gathered around
him, who were trained under his influence to fill the posts of theolo-
gians and church-teachers. To the number of these belongs that
active and laborious preacher of the gospel, Gregory, of whom we shall
speak more particularly hereafter. Here Origen prosecuted his
literary undertakings. Here he composed, among other works, the
treatise, already noticed, on the Utility of Prayer, and on the Exposi-
tion of the Lord’s Prayer, which he addressed to his friend Ambrosius.
Here he maintained an active correspondence with the most distin-
guished church-teachers in Cappadocia, Palestine, and Arabia; and he
was often mvited to assist at deliberations on the concerns of foreign
churches.
During the persecution of Maximi the Thracian, in which two of
Origen’s friends, the presbyter Protoctetus, of Czesarea, and Ambro-
sius, had much to suffer, he addressed to these confessors, who were
awaiting in prison the issue of their trials, his treatise on Martyrdom.
He exhoris them to steadfastness in confession ; he fortifies their reso-
lution by the promises of scripture, and takes pains to refute those
sophisms which might be employed to palliate the denial of a faith
grounded im facts ; as, for example, when Gnostics; who held outward
things to be of no importance, and pagan statesmen, who were wont to
regard everything solely from the political point of view, sought alike
to persuade the Christians, that, without violating their private convic-
tions, which no one wished to deprive them of, they might jom im those
merely outward ceremonies of the state religion. Although that moral-
ity, aiming at an absolute estrangement from all human passions, con-
cerning the connection of which with Origen’s whole mode of thinking
we have already spoken, is everywhere to be met with im this book,}
and also those false notions of martyrdom as an opus operatum, —
which, infused into him by the prevailing spirit of the church in his
time, were incorporated with several of his own peculiar ideas, — shine
through the surface ; yet, at the same time, the energy of his unwaver-
ing trust and of his zeal in behalf of the gospel faith, finely expresses
itself in this work. Says he to the two confessors :? ‘ T could wish that
you, too, in the whole conflict that is before you, mindful of the great
reward reserved in heaven for those who suffer persecution and
reproach for the sake of righteousness and of the Son of man, might
rejoice and be glad, as the apostles once rejoiced, when they were
found worthy to suffer reproach for the name of Christ. But should
ever anguish enter your souls, may the Spirit of Christ, that dwells with-
= you, say, tempted though you may be on your part to disturb it,
* Why troublest thou me, my soul? and why art thou disquieted within
me? Hope in God, for I shall yet praise him, who is the health of my
countenance and my God,’ Ps. 42:5. May it, however, never be
1 This is seen particularly in Origen’s. referred to not allewing him to take them
artificial way of explaining the words spok- according to their natural sense
en by Christ in his agony ; the spirit above 2§ 4.
ORIGEN. 707
troubled, but even before the tribunal itself, and under the naked sword
aimed at your necks, be preserved by that peace of God which passeth
all understanding.”” He says to them, im another place:! ‘* Since the
Word of God? is quick and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged
sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and is
a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart, Heb. 4: 12; so
let this divine Word, especially now, cause to reign m our souls, as he
did im his apostles, that peace which passeth all understanding ; but he
has cast the sword between the image of the earthly and the image of
the heavenly within us, that he may for the present receive our heay-
enly man to himself, and then, when we have attained so far as that
we need to experience no more separation,’ that he may make us alto-
gether heavenly. And he came, not only to bring the sword, but also
to send five on the earth, concerning which he says: ‘ What would I
rather, than that it be already kindled?’ Luke 12:49. May this fire,
then, be kindled even in you, and consume every earthly feeling within
you, and cause you to be joyfully baptized with that baptism of which
Jesus spake. And thou, (Ambrosius,) who hast a wife and children,
brothers and sisters, remember the words of the Lord: ‘ Whoever
cometh unto me, and hateth not his father, mother, wife, children,
brothers and sisters, cannot be.my disciple.’ But both of you be mind-
ful of the words: ‘ If any man come unto me, and hate not even his
own life, he cannot be my disciple.’ ”’
It was, perhaps, this same persecution which imduced Origen to
leave for awhile the place where he had hitherto resided. ‘The perse-
cution at that time bemg merely local, it was gsy to escape from it,
by fleeing to other districts, where tranquillity happened to prevail.
Origen repaired to Ceesarea in Cappadocia, where he visited his friend,
the bishop Firmilian, with whom he had been in the habit of correspond-
ing on scientific and theological subjects.?
But, perhaps, at the very time while he was there, the persecution
broke out in Cappadocia,® which was the occasion of his retiring to the
house of Juliana, a Christian virgin, who concealed and entertained
him in her dwelling during the space of two years. It was here he
made a discovery, which had an important bearing on his literary un-
dertakings. He had been employed for years on a work which was
‘to contribute both to the emendation of the text of the Alexandrian
version of the Old Testament, — which was the translation chiefly used
in the church, being regarded by many Christians,’who followed the
old Jewish legend, as inspired, and of which the different manuscripts
varied considerably from each other in their readings, —and also to the
improvement of this translation itself, by comparing it with other
ancient versions, and with the original Hebrew text. Origen, who was
in the constant habit of disputing with Pagans and Jews on religious
"1§ 37. 5 They occasionally visited each other for
2 He understands this of the Logos. the purpose of conversing on theological
8 No separation of the godlike and the topics. Euseb.1. VI. c. 27.
ungodlike. , 6 See vol. I. p. 126.
* Luke 12: 50.
708 ORIGEN.
matters, had found, as he says himself, by his own experience, how
necessary was an acquaintance with the original text of the Old Testa-
ment, to avoid laying one’s-self open to the Jews, who ridiculed the
ignorance of those Gentile Christians that disputed with them, when
they cited passages from the Alexandrian version which were not to be
found in the Hebrew, or when they showed that they knew nothing of
passages which were to be found in the Hebrew only.t. He had there-
fore employed the wealth of his friend Ambrosius, and availed himself
of his own frequent journeys, to collect various manuscripts of the
Alexandrian version, and other ancient translations, which it was still
possible to procure. Thus he had, for example, in ransacking every
corner, found, in a cask at Jericho, an ancient translation, not before
known to exist, of some books of the Old Testament. It now fell out,
that this Juliana had become heiress to the writings of the Ebionite
Symmachus, who had lived perhaps inthe beginning of this century ;
and among these writings Origen found both his commentary on the
gospel according to the Hebrews, (εὐαγγέλιον κατὰ ‘EBpaiove,”) and his
version of the Old Testament. He was now enabled to bring to a com-
pletion the great work of collating the ancient versions still extant, and
of comparing them with the Hebrew text.4
1 Orig. ep. ad African. ὁ 5.: Τοιαύτης
οὔσης ἡμῶν τῆς πρὸς αὐτοὺς ἐν ταῖς ζητῆσεσι
παρασκευῆς, οὐ καταφρονῆσουσιν, οὐδ᾽ ὡς ἔϑος
αὐτοῖς, γελώσονται τοὺς ἀπὸ τῶν ἐϑνῶν πισ-
τεύοντας, ὡς τ’ ἀληϑῆ καὶ παρ᾽ αὐτοῖς ἀνα-
γεγραμμένα ἀγνοοῦντας.
2 The words of Eusebius, 1. VI. ο. 17, re-
specting the work of Symmachus, are: ’Ev
οἷς δοκεῖ πρὸς TO κατὰ Ματϑαῖον ἀποτεινόμε-
νος εὐαγγέλιον τὴν δεδηλωμένην αἵρεσιν (τῶν
"EGtwvaiwy) κρατύνειν. As he subsequently
classes this work with the commentaries of
Symmachus on the scriptures, (ἑρμηνείας
εἰς τὰς ypadac,) one might be led to sup-
pose it was some writing of his, in which
he expounded this gospel, or rather the
Ebionitic gospel according to the Hebrews,
which resembled it, and employed it to
prove the Ebionitic doctrines ; but the Greek
phrase, ἀποτείνεσϑαι πρός τι. connected
with κρατύνειν, favors much rather the sup-
position, that a writing is here meant which
attacked the gospel of Matthew by assum-
ing the genuineness of the Ebionitic revis-
ion of the gospel according to the Hebrews.
8 Palladius (in the beginning of the fifth
century) relates, in his history of the monks,
(Aavoiaxa,) c. 147, that he had found in an
old manuscript, coming from Origen, the
words written in his own hand, giving the
account cited in the text. True, this Pal-
ladius is a witness liable to some suspicion
on account of his credulity; but in this case
we have no reason to disbelieve him, espe-
cially as his testimony agrees with the nar-
rative of Eusebius, 1. VI. c. 17.
*The Hexapla: to say anything more
concerning this work and kindred works of
Origen, would be foreign from our purpose.
See the Introductions to the Old Testa-
ment. We shall merely cite here the words
of Origen himself respecting the compari-
son instituted by him between the Aijexan-
drian version and the other ancient transla-
tions of the Old Testament. After having
spoken, (Commentar. in Matth. f. 381,) of
the differences in the copies of the New
Testament, which had arisen partly from
the negligence and partly from the arbitra-
ry criticism of the transcribers, he adds:
“As regards the differences between the
copies of the Old Testament, we have, with
God’s help, found a means of adjusting
them, by using the other translations as our
criterion. Wherever in the version of the
Seventy anything was doubtful on account
of the differences of the manuscripts, we
have retained that which coincided with the
other translations; and many passages, not
to be found in the Hebrew text, we have
marked with an obelisk, (the critical sign of
omission,) not daring wholly to omit them.
But some passages we have noted with an
asterisk, in order to make it clear, that such
passages, which are not found in the Seven-
ty, have been added by us from the other
translations coinciding with the Hebrew
text; and in order that whoever is so in-
clined, may receive them tnto the text, (I sup-
pose that the reading should be mpog7raz;)
but whoever takes any offence at them, may
receive or not receive them, as he pleases.”
From these last words, we see how much
Origin had to fear from those who were
ready at once to accuse any one that de-
parted from the traditional and customary
route, of falsifying the sacred scriptures.
ORIGEN. 709
After the assassination of Maximin, and under the reign of the em-
peror Gordian, in the year 238, Origen was enabled to return once
more to Caesarea, and resume there his earlier labors.
Long before, while he resided at Alexandria, the church of Greece,
where he enjoyed a high reputation, had sent for him to advise with
them on some ecclesiastical matters : he now probably received a second
invitation of the same kind. His way led him through Nicomedia in
Bithynia, where he spent several days with his old friend Ambrosius,
who, if the narrative of Jerome is correct, had meanwhile become dea-
con; whether it was that the latter had his appomtment in the church
of that city, or whether he had come thither for the sake of meeting
Origen. ‘There he received a letter from another friend, Julius A fri-
canus, one of the distinguished learned Christiaas of that ἂρ. Ori-
gen, in a conversation which took place in the presence of Africanus,
had cited the story of Susanna, on the authority of the Alexandrian
version, as a part of genuine scripture, belonging to the book of Dan-
161. In this letter, equally characterized by the moderate, respectful
tone of literary controversy, and by the unbiassed freedom of criticism,
Africanus expressed his surprise at what he had heard, and asked for
further explanations. Origen replied in a full and elaborate letter from
Nicomedia. Not so free from prejudice as Africanus, he labored to
defend the authority of the Alexandrian version and collection of the
sacred writings. It is well worth observing, how the free inquiring
mind of Origen, out of a misconceived piety, perhaps, too, rendered
timid by the convulsions which, in spite of his own will, he had occa-
sioned in the church, took refuge in the authority of a church tradition
preserved pure under the guidance of a special Providence. ‘“ But
ought not that Providence,” says he,? “ which in the sacred writings has
1 He was then a very aged man, as is evi-
dent from the fact, that he could address
Origen, who was now fifty,.by the title,
“my son.” His usual place of residence
was probably the ancient and ruined city of
Emmaus or Nicopolis in Palestine, (so call-
ed by the Romans after the Jewish war, and
not to be confounded with the Emmaus of
the New Testament, being more distant,
namely, 176 stadia from Jerusalem.) The
inhabitants of this ruined place chose him
as their delegate to the emperor Heliogaba-
lus, for the purpose of obtaining from that
emperor the restoration of their city, a mis-
sion in which he was successful. Hieronym.
de vir. illustr. c. 63. He is known as the
first author of a Christian History of the
world, (his ypovoypagia in five books, vid.
Euseb. 1. VI. ο. 31.) This work, of which
our only knowledge is derived from the use
made of it by other writers, and from frag-
ments, undoubtedly had its origin in an
apologetic aim. He is known, again, on
account of his letter to Aristides, on the
method of reconciling the differences be-
tween the genealogies of Jesus in Matthew
and Luke, of which Eusebius, Hist. lib. I.
c. 7, has preserved to us a fragment. There
is another remarkable fragment of the same
VOL. I.
letter, published by Routh, reliquiz sacre,
vol. I. p. 115. He controverts here those
who asserted, that these different genealo-
gies had been given merely for the purpose
of demonstrating in this way the truth, that
Christ was at once King and High Priest,
being descended from the royal and priest-
ly families. And in this connection he ex-
presses himself very strongly against the
theory of “pious fraud.” “God forbid,”
says he, “ that the opinion should ever pre-
vail in the church of Christ, that any false
thing can be fabricated for Christ’ s glory.”
Μὴ δὴ κρατοίη τοιοῦτος λόγος ἐν ἐκκλησίᾳ
Χριστοῦ, ὅτι ψεῦδος σύγκειται εἰς αἷνον καὶ
δοξολογίαν Χριστοῦ. Eusebius ascribes to
him a work which contained a sort of lite-
rary omniana, after the fashion of the unsci-
entific Polyhistories of those times, entitled
the κέστοι. A great deal, however, as-
cribed to him in the fragments of this work,
does not accord with the views and princi-
ples which should belong to this man, ac-
cording to what we otherwise know of him.
It were certainly the most natural hypothe-
sis, that he wrote this work before his habits
of thinking had become decidedly Chris-
tian.
Ὁ:
110 ORIGEN.
given the means of edification to all the churches of Christ, to have cared
for those who are bought with a price, for whom Christ died -— Christ,
the Son of that God who is love, and who spared not his own Son, but
gave him up for us all, that he might with him freely give us all things ?
Besides, consider whether it is not well to think of those words, ‘ Re-
move not the ancient landmark, which thy fathers have set.’ ’’ Prov.
22: 28. He then proceeds to say, that although he by no means ne-
glected the other ancient translations, yet he had bestowed peculiar dili-
gence on the Alexandrian yersion, that it might not seem as if he
wished to introduce into the church any falsifying innovation ; and that
he might give no pretext to those who sought occasion for, and took de-
light in, accusing and calumniating the men who were universally
known and held an important place in the church.!_ Origen’s journey
terminated at Athens, where he resided for some time, finished his com-
sei jae on Hzekiel, and began his commentary on the Song of Solo
mon. 3
‘To the end of his life, he was occupied with theological labors. Under
the reign of Philip the Arabian, with whose family he was on terms of
correspondence, he wrote the work against Celsus, which has already
been mentioned, his commentary on the gospel of Matthew, and other
treatises. When he was sixty years of age, he now for the first time
permitted his discourses to be taken down by short-hand writers. In
what high consideration he stood with the churches of these countries,
is evident from the fact, that on important ecclesiastical questions,
where it was difficult to come at a decision, the opinion of Origen was
consulted by synods of bishops. A case of this sort, in which Beryl-
lus, the bishop of Bostra in Arabia, submitted to be taught by him, we
have noticed on a former occasion. We may here mention as another
instance of this kind, that a controversy had been excited by a party
among the Arabian Christians, who asserted, that the human soul died
with the body, and that it was to be revived only with the body at the
resurrection, — an ancient Jewish notion. Perhaps, too, in these dis-
tricts, whose situation brought them into frequent contact with Jews, it
was no new doctrine, but the one which had prevailed there from an-
cient times; and perhaps it was first brought about through the influ-
ence of Origen, —in whose system the doctrine of the natural immor-
tality of the soul, which is related to God, held an important place, —
that this latter doctrine now became here the more general one, and
the small party who still adhered to the old opinion, appeared to be
heretical ; if the case really was, that the prevailing voice had expressed
itself thus early agamst them.? Hence it is explamed, how the con-
vention of a great synod came to be thought necessary for the purpose
of settling these disputes. As they could not come to an agreement,
1 Ἴνα ph τι παραχαράττειν δοκοΐημεν ταῖς
ὑπὸ τὸν οὐρανὸν ἐκκλησίαις " καὶ προφάσεις
δίδωμεν τοῖς ζητοῦσιν ἀφορμὰς, ἐϑέλουσι τοὺς
ἐν μέσῳ συκοφαντεῖν καὶ τῶν διαφαινομένων
ἐν τῷ κοινῷ κατηγορεῖν.
2 Euseb. lib. VL. c. 82.
3 Eusebius (1. VI. c. 37) may perhaps
judge concerning the controversies of these
times too much according to his own sub-
jective views and the church orthodoxy of
his age, when he represents the defenders
of this opinion as men generally acknowl-
edged to be teachers of error and propaga-
tors of a new doctrine.
ORIGEN. 111
Origen was sent for; and it was brought about by his influence, that
the opponents of the soul’s natural immortality confessed and renounced
their error.
Origen, who, on account of some particular opinions, was by a great
part of the church stigmatized as a heretic and enemy to the evangeli-
cal scheme of faith, is said in the last days of alife consecrated to labor
and conflict in behalf of that which he considered to be the cause of
Christ, to have refuted by his conduct the accusations of his adversa-
ries, and shown how he was ready to sacrifice all for the faith, — how
he belonged to that number who are willing to hate even their own hfe
for the Lord’s sake.
As the fury of the enemies of Christianity, in the Decian persecu-
tion, was directed particularly against those men who were distinguished
among the Christians for their station, their wealth, or their know-
ledge, and their activity in promulgating the faith,’ it was natural that
such a man as Origen should become a shinmg mark for fanatical cru-
elty. After a steadfast confession, he was thrown into prison ; and
here it was attempted, in conformity with the plan of the Decian perse-
eution, to overcome the infirmity of age, by exquisite and gradually
increasing tortures. But the faith which he bore at heart, sustained
the weakness of old age, and gave him power to withstand every trial.
After having suffered so much,” he wrote from his prison a letter full of
consolation, of encouragement for others. ‘The circumstances hereto-
fore mentioned, which contributed first to moderate, and then to bring
wholly to an end, this persecution, procured finally for Origin also free-
dom and repose. Yet the sufferings which he had undergone, served
perhaps to hasten his death, which took place about the year 254,5 mm
the seventieth year of his age.
The influence of Origen on theological culture was no longer connected
with his person, but continued to spread independently of the man,
through his writings and his scholars, not without continual conflict with
the minds of the opposite tendency. The friends of Chiliasm, of the
gross literal method of scriptural interpretation, and of the anthropo-
morphic and anthropopathic mode of representing divine things con-
nected therewith, and the zealots for the letter of the church doctrinal
tradition, were opponents to the school of Origen. The conflict between
these antagonistic directions of mind presents the most important phe-
nomena connected with the theological development at the close of this
period. We shall here, in the first place, glance at the church which
1 The persone insignes.
2 Euseb. 1. VI. ο. 39.
3 Euseb. 1. VII. c. 2. According to Pho-
tius, cod. 118, there were two different re-
ports concerning the manner and time of
Origen’s death. Pamphilus, and many oth-
ers who had been personally acquainted
with Origen, reported that he died as a mar-
tyr, at Caesarea, under the Decian persecu-
tion. Others reported, that he lived till the
times of Gallus and Volusianus, and then
died at Tyre, and was there buried; which
account was confirmed also by the letters
written by Origen after the persecution,
concerning the genuineness of which, how-
ever, Photius was not fully convinced. But
according to what Eusebius says, in the
above-cited passage of his Church Histo-
ry, — who undoubtedly followed the account
of his friend and teacher Pamphilus,—it can
hardly be supposed that Pamphilus really
reported any such thing. Perhaps Photius
misunderstood Pamphilus, when the latter
meant simply confession under torture, or
perhaps was speaking of the indirect conse
quences of those sufferings to Origen.
712 HERACLAS. DIONYSIUS.
was the original seat of Origen’s activity, namely, the church of Alez-
andria and of Egypt.
Origen had here left behind him disciples, who continued to labor on
in Ais own spirit, although with less of the zeal for speculation. Deme-
trius the bishop was, as it appears from what has been said, rather the
personal enemy of Origen, than the enemy of his theological direction
of mind: his attack upon the latter had probably been only a pretext.
Hence he permitted the disciples of Origen to continue their labors
without disturbance ; and he himself died soon after the outbreak of
these controversies, in the same year 231.
Heraclas, the disciple and friend of Origen, — who has already been
mentioned, and who, after the death of the latter, was placed at the
head of the catechetical school,— succeeded Demetrius in the episcopal
ofice. Heraclas was succeeded —in the year 247 —as catechist,
and afterwards as bishop, by Dionysius, another worthy disciple of Ori-
gen, who always retained his love and respect for him, and when he
was in prison, under the Decian persecution, addressed to him a letter
of consolation. Dionysius, as he tells us himself, had come to the faith
in the gospel in the way of free examination, — having searched im-
partially through all the systems; and hence he remained true to this
principle, both as a Christian and a teacher of the church. He read
and examined without prejudice all the writings of the heretics, and
rejected their systems only after he had made himself accurately ac-
quamted with them, and put it into his power to refute them by argu-
ments. A presbyter of his church warned him of the injury which
might accrue to his soul by the distracting occupation of perusing so
many godless writings. But the Spirit of God gave him assurance,
that he needed not to be disturbed by that fear. He believed that he
had heard a voice, saying to him: ‘‘ Read whatever falls into thy hands,
for thou art capable of judging and proving all things; and from the
first this has been to thee the occasion of faith.” By this encourage-
ment, Dionysius was confirmed in his purpose ; and he found it agreea-
ble to that diréction of the Lord (in an apocryphal gospel) to the
stronger Christians: ‘Be ye skilful money-changers,”’ yiveode δοκιμοὶ τραπε-
Gra, 1.6. skilful to distinguish the genuine from the counterfeit coin.t
We have, on several occasions, already adduced examples of the
freedom of spirit and moderation of this Father, and of the happy
effects thence resulting. The same Christian moderation and gentle-
ness appear also in his letter to Basilides, an Egyptian bishop, on ques-
tions relative to matters of church discipline and worship.2_ The letter
of Dionysius to his subordinate bishop concludes thus: ‘‘ These ques-
tions you have not proposed to me as if you were ignorant of the sub-
ject, but to honor mé, and to be assured that I am of the same mind
with yourself, as ndeed Iam. I have laid open to you my own opin-
ions, not as a teacher, but with all the frankness which we are bound to
1 Dionysius, in his letter to the Roman ing an ἐπιστολὴ κανονικῆ. The fragments
presbyter Philemon, Euseb. 1. VII. ¢. 7. of it which still remain were last edited by
2 Which letter acquired the authority of Routh, in his Reliquizw Sacre, vol. II
canonical law in the Greek church, as be-
HIERACAS. 118
use in our communications with each other. But it is now your busi-
ness to judge of what I have said, and then write me what seems to
you better than this, or whether you hold that to be right which I have
advanced.”’ ἢ
The next that distinguished themselves as teachers in the Alexan-
drian church were Pierius and Theognostos, who lived in the last times
of the third century. In the fragments of their writings, (preserved
by Photius,) we recognize the peculiar doctrines of Origen.
We have observed before, that in Egypt itself there existed two op-
posite parties, of Origenists and anti-Origenists. We meet with them
again im the fourth century, especially among the Egyptian monks,
under the names of Anthropomorphites and Origenists. Perhaps this
opposition among the Egyptian monks may also be traced to the times
of which we are now speaking. In these times, it 15 true, there were
as yet no monks; but, as early as the close of the third century, there
existed in Egypt societies of ascetics, who lived retired in the country."
Among these Egyptian ascetics, appeared, at the end of this period, a
man by the name of Hieracas, who, in the following times, was placed
among the heretics, by those who judged him according to the standard
of the church scheme of faith, as it had formed itself in the fourth cen-
tury ; but who could hardly have been considered as a heretic during
his life-time.? So far as we are able to understand his spiritual bent
and his doctrines from the fragmentary accounts, for which we are in-
debted for the most part to Epiphanius,* there was much in his peculiar
views which savored of the school of Origen; and the fact may have
been, that he came from that school: yet we find no such relationship
as could be explained only in this particular way. The same tenden-
cies may easily have sprung up in Egypt from different quarters.
Hieracas passed the life of an ascetic in the city of Leontopolis, in
Egypt,° and, after the manner of the ascetics, earned the necessaries of
life, and the means of bestowing charity, by the industry of his own
hands ; exercising an art that was highly esteemed and much employed
in Egypt, that of calligraphy, which he practised with equal skill both
in the Greek and in the Coptic language. He is said to have lived
beyond the age of ninety, and — which may be easily accounted for
from his simple habits — to have retained to the last the full exercise
of his powers, so that he could pursue his art to the very end of his
life. He was equally familiar with the Greek and with the Coptic lit
erature ; from which very circumstance, however, it may have resulted
that he introduced many foreign elements from both these sources into
1 A considerable fragment of the work of
this Dionysius on Nature, in which he de-
fends the belief in a Providence against the
atomistic system of the Epicureans, has
been preserved to us by Eusebius, in the
XIV. Book of the Preparatio evangelica,
introduced by Routh, 1. c. vol. IV.
2 See Athanasius’ life of Antonius. We
shall have occasion to say more on this
point iv the following period.
60*
8 For this reason, as we can take the no-
tion of heresy in the present work only in
its historical sense, we have not placed Hie-
racas, as is usually done, among the heretics.
+ Heres. 67.
5 Unless he lived at the head of a com-
munity of ascetics, somewhere in the neigh
borhood of that city.
714 HIERACAS.
Christianity. He wrote commentaries on the Bible, in the Greek and
in the Coptic tongue, and composed many church hymns.
He was given to the allegorical method of interpretation, which was
closely connected with a certain theosophic tendency. Like Origen,
he explained particularly the account of Paradise as an allegory, deny-
ing that there had ever been a material Paradise. It may be conjec-
tured that, like Origen, he considered the Paradise as a symbol of that
higher spiritual world, from which the heavenly spirit fell by an inclina-
tion to earthly matter. But as there was no general agreement of opin-
ion as to what should be understood symbolically and what literally, in
that narrative of Genesis ; as, moreover, nothing was yet settled in the
system of the dominant church, respecting the origin of the soul; and
as the peculiar opinions of Origen had still many important advocates,
particularly in the Egyptian church,— he could not on this account be
generally condemned as a heretic.
From that theory of his concerning the manner in which the heav-
enly spirit, sunk into union with matter, became invested with a body,
we may easily understand why Hieracas should contemn this earthly,
material body, make its mortification the leading aim of the Christian
system of morals, and oppose the doctrine that the soul, once set free,
should again be incarcerated in this prison of the body by the resurrec-
tion. In reference to the latter pomt, however, he may, at the same
time, have supposed, perhaps, that the soul would be veiled in a higher
organ of ethereal matter, (a σῶμα πνευματικόν.) Even this opinion he
might present under such a form as not directly to reject the doctrine
of the resurrection of the body, but only to explain it according to his
own sense.
In respect to the former pomt, he represented the abstemious unmar-
ried life as something essential to the proper perfection of the Christian.
The recommendation of the unmarried life, he made to constitute the
characteristic distinction between the great moral principle of the Old,
and that of the New Testament. Those false notions respecting the
essence of morality, respecting the demands of the moral law on hu-
man nature, by which men were led to imagine they could so easily ful-
fil it, and even do more than it requires, (opera supererogationis,) dis-
cover themselves in Hieracas, when he asks: ““ What new thing has the
doctrine of the Only-begotten introduced? Of what new benefit has
he been the author to humanity ? Respecting the fear of God, respect-
ing envy, covetousness, and the like, the Old Testament has already
treated. What new thing is there still remaining, unless it be the in-
troduction of the unmarried life?” This question shows, we allow,
that Hieracas had no right apprehension, either of the demands of the
moral law, or, what is strictly connected therewith, of Christ as the
Redeemer of mankind, and of the nature of the redemption. From
the views which we here find expressed, of human nature, and of the
demands of the moral law on the same, might be drawn a doctrine,
teaching that man needed no Redeemer. But it is with no good rea-
son the doctrine has, therefore, been ascribed to Hieracas, that Christ
was merely the author of a perfect system of morals, and not the Re-
HIERACAS. 715
deemer of mankind. A zealous Montanist might have said nearly the
same as Hieracas has done. Indeed, the traces of these erroneous ethi-
cal and anthropological notions may be found elsewhere, in the same
period, particularly among the Alexandrians.
He endeavored to prove, by texts wrested out of their proper con-
nection, in the seventh chapter of the first epistle to the Corinthians,
that Paul had permitted marriage only out of respect to human infirm-
ity, and only for the sake of avoiding, in the case of the weak, a still
greater evil. In the parable of the virgins, Matth. 25, he neglected
the rule requiring that, in a comparison, we should not give weight to
each individual circumstance, but only to the particular point to be
illustrated ; and, from the fact that none but virgins are here men-
tioned, drew the conclusion, that none but unmarried persons could have
any portion in the kmgdom of heaven. In the application of the pas-
sage, ‘* Without holiness no man can see the Lord,’ Heb. 12: 14, he
proceeded on his own principle, that the essence of holiness consists in
a life of celibacy.
As Hieracas himself allows that Paul permitted marriage to the
weak, it follows from this, that he by no means condemned uncondi-
tionally married Christians, and excluded them from the number of the
faithful. It may have been, perhaps, that too hasty conclusions were
drawn from some of his extravagant assertions in recommending the
unmarried life. Or, when he said that none but those living in celi-
bacy could enter into the kingdom of heaven, he must have understood
by the kingdom of heaven, not the state of blessedness generally, but
only the highest degree of that blessedness ; a dogmatic use of language
pecuhar to himself, as seems probable from what we are about to
remark.
In consequence of his ascetic bent, Hieracas was accustomed to
dwell with great earnestness on the position, that every man must earn,
by his own moral conflict, his own ascetic efforts, a portion in the king-
dom of heaven. ‘This circumstance, of his laying a peculiar stress on
each one’s own moral conflicts, was also entirely in accordance with the
peculiar Alexandrian tendency. Inasmuch now as Hieracas assumed
the position, that a participation in the kmgdom of heaven can only be
the reward of a conflict, and that he who has not fought, cannot obtain
the crown; he inferred that children who die before they come to the
years of understanding, do not enter into the kingdom of heaven. It
can hardly be supposed, that by this he meant to pronounce on them
an unconditional sentence of condemnation, but only that he excluded
them from the highest grade of blessedness which results from com-
munion with God, from the glorification of human nature by its union
with the Godhead in Christ ; for to the participation in this it was im-
possible to attain, except by one’s own moral efforts, and by doing more
than the law demands. He assumed a middle condition for these chil-
dren — an hypothesis which Pelagius and many of the Orientals after-
wards adopted with regard to unbaptised children. If Hieracas
asserted this of all children, including those who had been baptized, it
follows, that he denied the connection of any supernatural influence
es GREGORY THAUMATURGUS.
with infant baptism. Perhaps, on this principle, he combated infant
baptism itself, and represented it as a practice of more recent origin,
at variance with the end of baptism, and with the essential character Ὁ
of Christianity. ‘The remarks which we have here made tend to con-
firm also what was just before observed, that Hieracas by no means
honored Christ merely as a moral Teacher. It is clearly evident, on the
contrary, that he recognized him as one who had glorified human
nature, and acquired for it that highest grade of blessedness, to which
men could not have attained by their own powers.
From the position assumed by the later church orthodoxy, the charge
was brought against Hieracas of entertaining certain errors in regard
to the doctrine of the Trinity. He is said to have employed the fol-
lowing comparison: ‘The Son of God emanates from the Father, as
one lamp is kindled from another, or as one torch is divided into two.’’!
Comparisons of this sort, drawn from sensible objects, were at variance,
we admit, with the spiritual tendency of Origen ; but the older church-
teachers, such as Justin and T'atian, had certainly been partial to them.
He a‘firmed again, that under the type of Melchisedec is represented
the Holy Spirit, since the latter is designated, Rom. 8: 26, as an inter-
cessor for men, consequently as a priest. He represents the image of
the Son, being subordinate, indeed, to the Son but bearing the nearest
resemblance to him of all beings ;— a notion altogether conformed to
Orizen’s theory of subordination, which long continued to maintain its
place in the Eastern church.”
From Palestine the influence of Origen was extended, by means of
his friends and disciples, even to Cappadocia and to Pontus, as the three
great church-teachers of Cappadocia in the fourth century still testify.
Here it 1s proper to mention particularly his great disciple Gregory,
to whom the admiration of the Christians gave the surname of Wonder-
worker (Oavuarovpysc.) His original name was Theodorus. He was
descended from a noble and wealthy family of Neoczesarea in Pontus.
His father, a devoted Pagan, educated him in Heathenism. At the age
of fourteen, however, he lost his father, and then first he was gained to
Christianity ; affording another illustration of the fact, that it was often
through children and women the gospel first found its way into fami-
hes. He was acquainted with Christianity, however, as yet only
through the oral teaching of others, being himself still ignorant of the
scriptures. The religious interest was with him as yet but a subordi-
nate one, the strife after a splendid career in the world seeming to him
vastly more important. His mother exerted herself to the utmost to
have him taught everything which, under the existing circumstances,
L'Qe λύχνον ἀπὸ Adxvov,} ὡς λάμπαδα εἰς
δύο. Arius ad Alexandr. apud Epiphan.
heres. 69,§ 7. Athanas. T. I. P. II. 68.
“He appeals also to a passage in an
apocryphal writing of some importance on
account of its bearing on the history of the
oldest doctrines, —the ἀναβατικὸν Ἡσαΐου,
i. e. the account of Isaiah’s ascension to the
several regions of heaven, and of what he
there saw. After the angel attendant of Isaiah
has shown him the Son of God, sitting at
the right hand of God, ὁ ἀγαπητός, Isaiah
asks: Καὶ τίς ἐστὲν ὁ ἄλλος, ὁ ὅμοιος αὐτῷ,
ἐξ ἀριστέρων ἐλϑών ; καὶ εἶπε" σὺ γινώσκεις,
τοῦτ᾽ ἐστι τὸ ἅγιον πνεῦμα τὸ λαλοῦν ἐν ool
καὶ ἐν τοῖς προφήταις. Καὶ ἦν, φησι, ὅμοιον
τῷ ἀγαπητῷ. This passage is found in the
writing now published entire, after the old
Ethiopic translation, by R. Lawrence, Oxo-
niz, 1819; p. 58, 59, v. 32—36.
GREGORY THAUMATURGUS. ΤΙ]
could contribute to the successful prosecution of his aims. He received,
therefore, a good rhetorical education, in order to place him on the step
of preferment as a rhetorician or an advocate ; and he learnt, moreover,
the language of the established government and laws, —the Latin. His
teacher in the Latin language pointed out to him how very necessary
to the attainment of his end was the knowledge of the Roman law. He
commenced the study of this, and had already laid his plans to visit
Rome, for the purpose of improving his knowledge of the Roman juris-
prudence. But Providence had chosen him to be an instrument for
higher ends ; and, without dreaming of it or willing it, as he observes
himself, in describing the remarkable vicissitudes of his life, he was to
be formed for those higher purposes.
His sister’s husband, who was legal adviser to the Przefect of Pales-
tine, had been called by the duties of his office to Caesarea. He had
left his wife behind at Neocxsarea; and now she was sent for to follow
him. His brother-in-law, the young Theodorus, was requested to attend
her on the journey; and it was intimated, that he could thus most
easily prosecute his plan of studying the Roman jurisprudence at the
celebrated school of Roman law, not far distant from Ceesarea, at Bery-
tus in Phoenicia. Theodorus accepted the invitation ; but this journey
had a different resnlt from what he had anticipated. At Ceesarea he
became acquainted with Origen: the latter soon observed the talents
of the young man, and sought to direct them to a higher end than that
which he then contemplated. Attracted, in spite of himself, by this
great teacher, he forgot. Rome, Berytus, and the study of law. ‘To
awaken in him the activity of his own mind, a free, unprejudiced spirit
of inquiry, was, as Theodore himself describes it in his farewell dis-
course, the principal endeavor of Origen. After having made him
- search for the scattered rays of truth in the systems of the Greek phi-
losophy, he showed him what revelation furnishes of a higher order: he
led him to the study of the sacred scriptures, and expounded to him
their meaning. ‘Theodore says of Origen’s exposition of scripture : ‘It
is my firm belief that he was able so to discourse only by communion
with the divine Spirit; for to be a prophet and to understand prophets
requires the same power. And no man can understand the prophets,
on whom the Spirit himself, from whom the prophecies came, has not
bestowed the power of understanding his own language. This man had
received from God that greatest of gifts, to be to men an interpreter of
the words of God; to understand God’s word, as God speaks it, and
to announce it to men, as men can understand it.” }
After he had spent e¢ght years with Origen at Ceesarea, where proba-
bly he also received baptism and adopted the name Gregorius, he
returned to his native land. With deep sorrow he took leave of the
teacher to whom his whole soul was affectionately bound. He com-
pared the tie that united them, with the bond of friendship between
Dayid and Jonathan. ‘To Origen, and to the Providence which, without
his own knowledge or will, had conducted him to such a friend, he testi-
1 Panegyric. in Orig. c. 15
718 GREGORY THAUMATURGUS.
fied his thanks in the parting address, in which he describes the provi-
dential events of his own life, and Origen’s method of instruction and
training.?
In tearing himself with pain from the society of his beloved teacher,
and from those sacred studies which had so long been his exclusive
occupation, to engage with sorrowful heart in employment of an entirely
different kind, which he must devote himself to in his native city, he
exclaims: “But why grieve at this? We have, verily, a Saviour for
all, even for those that are half dead and fallen among thieves — one
who cares for all, is the Physician of all, the watchful Keeper of all
men. We have also within us that seed which we have been made con-
scious by thy means, (Origen,) that we bear within us; and the seed
which we have received from thee, those glorious doctrmes. Having
these seeds, we part, with tears indeed, for we are leaving thee, but yet
taking these seeds with us. Perhaps the heavenly Keeper will accom-
pany us and deliver us ; but perhaps we shall return to thee, and from
the seed bring with us also the fruits and the sheaves; and if none are
ripe, (for how could that be?) yet may they be such as can thrive
amidst the thorns of civil employments.” And then, addressing him-
self directly to Origen, he proceeds: ‘* But do thou, beloved Aes
stand up and dismiss us with thy prayer. As thou hast guided us 2 all
the long time we have been with thee, by thy holy doctrines, to salva-
tion ; so now, when we are to leave thee, guide us to salvation by thy
prayers. Give us over and commend us, or rather give us back, to that
God who conducted us to-theo.. Thanks to him for what -he has hith-
erto done for us; but do thou implore him also, that he would guide us
in the future, that he would inspire our minds with his precepts, that
he would imbue us with the fear of God, and make this our most whole-
some discipline. For we shall not be able, far away, to obey him with
the freedom with which we could obey him, so long as we were with
thee. Pray him, that, to console us in our separation from thee, he
would send with us a good angel to lead us. But pray to him also,
that he would once more bring us back to thee; for the assurance only
of this would be our greatest consolation.”
After his removal, Origen still retained him in affectionate remem-
brance. We have preserved to us a letter which he wrote him, full of
paternal love.? In this he assures him, that’ his distinguished talents
fitted him for the station either of an able teacher of the Roman law,
or of an eminent instructer of one of the famous philosophical schools ;
but it was his wish, that Gregory would make Christianity his single
i This discourse we have followed, as the
source chiefly to be relied on for the history
of the early life and education of Gregory.
The narratives of Gregory of Nyssa, in his
biography of this Gregory, openly contradict
the autobiography of the latter; and, as
Gregory of Nyssa set out with rhetorical
flourishes what he had taken from incredible
or inaccurate stories, it were a fruitless labor
to undertake to reconcile the two contradic-
tory accounts with each other. The Pane:
gyric of Gregory may be found in the fourth
vol. of the edition of Origen’s works by de
la Rue, and in the third vol. of the Biblio-
theca Patrum of Galland.
2 He speaks here in the plural, probably
because he has in mind also his brother
Athenodorus, who had come in company
with him to Origen, and afterwards became
bisbop of a church in Pontus. Vid. Eusub
1. IV. ¢. 30.
3 Philocal. c. 13.
GREGORY THAUMATURGUS. 119
aim, and employ his talents only as a means to this one great object.
Following out his own principles, above exhibited, respecting the rela-
tion of the sciences, and particularly of philosophy, to Christianity, he
goes on to advise him to make himself master of everything in the
general circle of the sciences and m philosophy, which he could apply
to any use in behalf of Christianity. By a variety of beautiful allegoric
expositions of the narratives of the Old Testament, he endeavors to set
clearly before him the duty of making everything subservient to the
divine calling, and of sanctifyimg every other interest by referring it to
this ; instead of forgetting, as was frequently done, the divine calling
itself in the crowd of foreign matters, or profaning it by letting it be-
come mixed up and confounded with them. He then addresses him as
follows: ‘‘ Study, then, my son, before all things else, the sacred scrip-
tures ; but let it be to thee an earnest study; for it needs a very ear-
nest study of the scriptures, that we may not express anything, or judge
anything, too rashly respecting their sacred contents. And if thou
studiest the holy scriptures with a believing temper of mind, well pleas-
ing to God,! then wherever anything in them seems shut up from thee,
knock, and it shall be opened to thee by the porter, of whom Jesus
speaks in John 10: 3, 70 him the porter openeth. Search, with un-
wavering faith in God, after the sense of the sacred word, which is hid-
den from the great mass of readers. Let it not suffice thee, however,
merely to knock and to seek ; for prayer also is especially necessary to
the understanding of divine things; in exhorting us to which, the
Saviour has said not only: Knock, and it shall be opened unto you, and
seek, and ye shall find ; but also ask, and it shall be given you.”
Gregory answered the hopes of his great teacher. In his native city,
of which he became bishop, there were at first but seventeen Christians.
Through his instrumentality, the majority of its inhabitants were con-
verted, and Christianity became widely diffused m Pontus. It is to be
lamented, that we have no exhibition of the labors of this remarkable
man, more accurate and more worthy of credit than the legendary
account of his life, set forth with so much of rhetorical ornament, which
Gregory of Nyssa wrote a century afterwards. Perhaps, in followmg
out those principles of the Alexandrian school which permitted and
inculcated the practice of descending to the weakness of the multitude
and held to a progressive course of religious education, he was in the
habit of yieldmg too much, im order to increase the number of his
heathen converts; perhaps he conceived, that, if they were but once
introduced into the Christian church, the spirit of the gospel, and the
continued labors of their teacher, would gradually conduct them onward
to a more enlightened Christianity. Having observed that many of .
the common people remained bound to the religion of their fathers by
their love for the ancient sports connected with Paganism, he deter-
1 The Greek word πρόληψις hardly admits
of being well rendered in the present case.
Neither “ prejudice” nor “ prejudgment ”
would answer here. “ Presupposition” would
come nearer to the sense. Origen means to
say, that the reader of the scriptures should
be fully persuaded beforehand, that the sacred
word is pervaded throughout with a divine
spirit, and not allow himself to be embar-
rassed at particular passages, where the di-
vine meaning does not immediately appear.
720 METHODIUS.
mined to provide the new converts with a substitute for these. After
the Decian persecution, under which numbers in this country had died
as martyrs, he instituted a general festival in honor of the martyrs, and
permitted the rude multitude to celebrate it with banquets similar to
those which accompanied the pagan funerals (Parentalia) and other
heathen festivals. He imagined that, in this way, one main obstacle
to the conversion of the heathen would fall away, and, if they once
became members of the Christian church, they would, by degrees, of
their own accord, after their minds had become enlightened and spirit-
ualized by Christianity, bid farewell to those sensual pleasures.! But
he did not seem to consider what intermingling of Pagan and Christian
notions and customs might result from this loose accommodation, — an
issue which was afterwards realized, — nor how difficult it would be for
Christianity to penetrate directly into the life, when, from the very first,
it had become adulterated by such an alloy.”
We have from Gregory a simple and clearly written Paraphrase of
Heclesiastes. A confession of faith on the doctrine of the Trinity,
which he is affirmed to have written by special revelation, was appealed
to in the fourth century in opposition to the Arians. In attestation of
its authenticity, it was said that it remained in his own hand-writing,
preserved in the church of Neocesarea. But although the first part
of this confession, in which the peculiar doctrmes of Origen are dis-
tinctly to be recognized, might prove genuine; yet the second part is
manifestly a later addition, inasmuch as it contains distinctions wholly
unknown to the school of Origen, and which arose first out of the con-
troversy with the Arians, in the fourth century.
Among the violent opponents of the school of Origen, we have
already mentioned in another place, Methodius, —first, bishop of
Olympus in Lycia; afterwards, of Tyre, —a martyr in the persecution
of Diocletian. Yet he seems not to have always stood in the same re-
lation to this school. . Eusebius of Czesarea, in continuation of the
Apology of Pamphilus in behalf of Origen, affirms that Methodius
contradicted his own earlier remarks, which had been in praise of Ori-
gen.3 The ecclesiastical historian Socrates asserts, on the other hand,‘
that Methodius had first declared himself against Origen, and after-
wards, in his dialogue called ξένων, retracted his censures, and expressed
his admiration of the man. ‘There must be some truth lying at the
bottom of these two accounts. Eusebius and Socrates derived their
impressions from what Methodius himself had declared in his own writ-
ings. But it seems not improbable, that these two authors determined
1 Vita Gregor. c. 27.
2 The canonical letter which we have from
this Gregory, shows perhaps, that, in the
conversion of large bodies of the people,
there may have been a great deal which was
barely outward and in appearance; for it
relates to a class of persons who took ad-
vantage of the confusion occasioned by the
devastation committed by the Goths in the
country around Pontus, to make the public
misfortunes a source of profit to themselves.
and even to rob their own countrymen.
This letter furnishes, at the same time, evi-
dence of Gregory’s wakeful zeal for the
morals of his people
8 Apud Hieronym. lib. I. adv. Rufin.
Hieronym. opp. ed. Martianay, T. IV. fol.
359: Quomodo ausus est Methodius nunc
contra Origenem scribere, qui hzc et hee
de Origenis loquutus est dogmatibus ὁ
@ Lib, LV. 6:43
PAMPHILUS. 121
the chronological order of these writings, not by any historical data, but
each according to his own private conjectures ; and in matters of this
kind the ancients were very far from being accurate. Methodius, in
his Symposium, which we shall presently notice, appears to be by no
means a stickler for the letter of the church doctrine. On the contrary,
the work betrays a leaning to Theosophy, a fondness for the allegorical
mode of interpretation ; it contains much, therefore, indicating the same
general direction of mind as we find in Origen; indeed, expressions
occur which at least favor the doctrine of the soul’s preéxistence.! But
it also contains much which is directly at variance with the doctrines of
Origen ; — for instance, a decided leaning to Chiliasm.? It may safely
be conjectured, therefore, that Methodius, who was no systematic
thinker, was in the first place drawn by many of the views and writings
of Origen, which flattered his favorite opmions and pleased his taste ;
which only prepared him, however, to be the more strongly repelled by
that in the system of Origen which went counter to his own intellectual
bent and his own dogmatic principles.
The most important and authentic of the writings which remain of
this Methodius is his Banquet of the Ten Virgins, in eleven conversa-
tions, contaming a eulogy, oftentimes exaggerated, of the unmarried
life.
The treatise which we have under the name of Methodius, on free-
will, (περὲ αὐτεξουσίου,) seems to belong rather to the Christian church-
teacher Maximus, who lived under the reign of Septimus Severus,’
than to Methodius.* It is an attack on the Gnostic Dualism.
One who stood up for Origen against those that accused him of being
a heretic was the presbyter Pamphilus of Ceesarea, in Palestine, a man
distinguished for his zeal in the cause of piety and science. He found-
ed at Czesarea an ecclesiastical library, which contributed in no small
degree to the furtherance of scientific studies even in the fourth cen-
tury. very friend of science, and in particular every one who was
disposed to engage in a thorough study of the Bible, found in him all
possible encouragement and support. He exerted himself to multiply,°
to disseminate, and to correct the copies of the Bible. Many of these
copies he distributed as presents ; sometimes to women, whom he saw
much occupied in reading the scriptures. He founded a theological
school,’ in which the study of the sacred writings was made a special ob-
ject of attention.’ From this school probably proceeded the learned Eu-
sebius, who owed everything to Pamphilus, and looked up to him as his
1 Orat. IT. Theophil. § 5.
2 Orat. IX. § 5.
3 Euseb. lib. V. c. 27, Hieronym. de vir.
’ illustr.c.47. This Maximus can hardly be
identical with the bishop of Jerusalem, of
the same name. LEuseb. 1. V. ο. 12.
* See, on this point, my genetic develop-
ment of the Gnostic system, p. 206.
Vid. Montfaucon catalog. Mss. biblioth.
Coislinian. f. 261.
6 Eusebius says of him, in the account of
his life, Hieronym. ady. Rufin. lib. I. f. 358,
VOL. I. 61
359, vol. 1V.: Quis studiosorum amicus non
fuit Pamphili? Si quos videbat ad victum
necessariis indigere, prebebat large, que
poterat. Scripturas quoque sanctas non ad
legendum tantum, sed et ad habendum
tribuebat promptissime. Nec solum viris,
sed et feminis, quas vidisset lectioni deditas.
Unde et multos codices preeparabat, ut, quum
necessitas poposcisset, volentibus largiretur.
7 Euseb. lib. VII. ο. 82: συνεστήσατο δια-
τριβήν. εἰς
᾿ δ Euseb. de martyrib. Palestine, c. 4.
722 HESYCHIUS. LUCIAN.
paternal friend. Pamphilus communicated to his scholars his own rever-
ence for Origen, as the promoter of Christian science, and exerted himself
to counteract the narrow spirit that proceeded from those who accused
Origen of being a heretic. As the ignorant zeal of these people, Pam-
philus says, went to such an extreme, that on every one who did but
occupy himself with the writings of Origen, they forthwith pronounced
sentence of condemnation, — Pamphilus, while in prison under the Dio-
clesian persecution, in the year 909,1 wrote a work in Origen’s defence,
conjointly with his disciple Eusebius ;2 which defence was addressed to
the confessors who had been condemned to the mines. After the mar-
tyrdom of Pamphilus, Eusebius added to the five books of the unfin-
ished work a supplementary sixth book. The first book of this Apolog
we still possess, in the arbitrary version of Rufinus, with the exception
of a few fragments of the Greek.®
The example of this Pamphilus shows us how the comprehensive
mind of Origen, which grasped and united together so many different
pursuits, gave birth not only to the spirit of dogmatic speculation, but
also to the thorough study of the Bible and the careful investigation
of the letter of the scriptures, however much this may seem irrecon-
cilable with his allegorizing licentiousness. Another example of the
same kind probably is that of the Egyptian bishop Hesychius, who pre-
pared a new emended revision of the text of the Alexandrian version,
which became the current one in Egypt.*. He likewise suffered mar-
tyrdom under the Dioclesian persecution, in the year 310 or 311.5
Finally, it was also owmg in part perhaps to the influence of Origen,
that a new and peculiar school of theology sprung up at Antioch, which
first arrived at its full development in the course of the fourth century,
whence the science of hermeneutics and exegesis received a healthy
direction between the extremes of the grossly literal and arbitrary alle-
gorical methods of scriptural interpretation. Learned presbyters, at-
tached to the church of Antioch, who took a special interest m the study
of biblical interpretation, may be regarded as the progenitors of this
school; particularly Dorotheus and Lucian, of whom the latter died as
a martyr, in the begining of the year 312, under the Dioclesian
persecution.®
1 One illustration of the influence which most cruel torture, and finally, after having
Pamphilus had over those who lived near
him, is furnished by his slave Porphyrius,
a young man of eighteen years, whom he
had educated with a father’s love, and in
promoting whose religious and intellectual
culture he had spared no pains. ‘To this
young man he had imparted a glowing love
for the Redeemer. When Porphyry heard
the sentence of death pronounced on his
beloved master, he requested that he might
be allowed the privilege, after the execution
of the sentence, of paying him the last tribute
of affection by committing his body to the
grave. This request at once excited the
anger of the fanatical prefect. And, as he
steadfastly confessed that he was a Christian,
and refused to offer, he was subjected to the
been dreadfully lacerated, was conducted to
the stake. All this he bore with the utmost
constancy ; only exclaiming once, when the
fire reached him, — “Jesus, Son of God,
help me.” Euseb. de martyrib Paleest.
ce. 11, f. 388.
2'The charge of the passionate Jerome,
that Rufinus had falsely ascribed such a
work to Pamphilus, deserves no credit.
3 The loss of the Life of Pamphilus, by
Eusebius, is much to be regretted.
4 Hieronym. adv. Rufin. lib. 11. f. 425.
5 Kuseb. hist. eccles. lib. VIII. ο. 13, f. 308.
6 Lucian prepared a new revision of the
corrected text of the Alexandrian version,
and probably also of the New Testament.
The codices written after this revision were
CONCLUSION. 723
Thus the historical development of doctrine in this period terminates
with the conflict of opposite tendencies, which, in order that Christianity
might not be maimed and crippled by partial human views, and in order
that it might be preserved as that which is destined to overcome and
reconcile all human -antagonisms, should act as a counterpoise to each
other. And as this process of development and purification is trans-
mitted from one generation to another, so the conclusion of this first
great stadium contains in it the foretoken and presage of all the suc-
ceeding periods, which, by struggles and victories ever renewed, are to
prepare the way for the last great struggle and the final victory which
is to make an end of all strife.
called Aovxcaveta, Hieronym. de vir. illustr. account which has been left by Alexander,
ce. 77, adv. Rufin. lib. 11. f. 425, vol. IV. bishop of Alexandria, since that account is
What we are to believe concerning the liable to the suspicion of being colored by a
earlier relation in which Lucian stood to polemical interest. Theodoret. hist. eccles.
Paul of Samosata, is a point which cannot lib. Lc. 4.
be determined, with any certainty, from the
END OF VOL. I.
a Dips Aa Nd a NG
Pay ' A, ἕ
ΝΗ pier. Pah ihe heath ait οἷ i oe A ANAT COMA an kW
Aeon Sala esis tian ne ee “evo ai |
Peres (fF HD ag) Hie weNy. tea) fi sit Fa TRE ΠΡΟ ΡΩΝ af ἈΠ ant
Ate ee Ty waka. ἡ AY i Ot Ei Halt ae
aa Ὦ ἜΝ al Gt slate Ae one | ah es pet iy ey erent i SUR |
ΚΟ Rt or ie lures ie ἐδ thi Beacon: HH Ὁ a ay ister 1
ey wth ve Pi isy fe siege bel Bat ie
Ree vail. dyer ity He seis . Pte share Os AR τ
Wage ΠΣ ee Bo ars Peers abn tek A ena anh 40d tb,
fi he a cea aE bs seat ti ieee Abc ee peters
“δ ἘΠῚ ἘΝ a ee tf i ἢ } a} ba snl ΡΝ ὙΠ sv Hg χα
ἀνέρα i ti ἣ i IN
~
=
Mf id ta saree
; ἰὴ amas gi
he ἴῃ: » er , τὰ ier ἘΜῈ ee oer
ee ᾿ ee ol ae ὺ : an ahd ert a a Mies ye ears
We aie: EPA Loot papier
ya as i
Pate ane ‘i
py Ω uf τ
Mh) see
GENERAL INDEX.
A.
~ Abgarus. See Uchomo and Bar Manu.
Abraxas, p. 401.
Absolution. See Church discipline.
Elia Capitolina, 344.
Africa, diffusion of Christianity in, 83.
Agape, 325. See Lord’s supper—Tertullian
—Clement of Alexandria.
~ Agrippinus, bishop, 318.
Acolytes, 201.
τ Alcibiades, confessor, 275.
~- Alexander of Abonoteichus, 30, 72, 104.
τα Alexander, B. of Alexandria, 724.
~ Alexander of Jerusalem, 703.
~ Alexander Severus, 125.
Alexandria, 49, 527,558. See Clement —
Origen—Philo—Alexandrian.
Alexandrian Gnosis. See Alex. theology.
Alexandrian Judaism, 49—66.
Alexandrian catechetical school, 306, 527.
Alexandrian theology. History and char-
acter of, 527—557. Doctrine of the Trin-
ity, 571. Anthropology, 620. Sacraments,
648. Chiliasm, 652. See articles, Alex.
Catechetical school—Christian doctrines.
Christian theology—Gnosis —Gnostics—
Clement—Origen—Dionysius— Heraclas
—Pierias—Theognostus. ὁ
Alogi, 526, 583.
~ Ambrosius, 700, 701, 706.
Ambrosius on Apelles, 475.
~Ammonius Saccas, 698.
Ammonius, church teacher, 699.
Αναγνῶσται, 201.
- Anicetus, bishop of Rome, 299.
Anthropology, 610—630.
Anthropomorphism, 561.
Anthropopathism, 561.
Antinomians, 449.
Antioch, feast of the Epiphany, 301. School
at, 722.
Antitactes, 449.
~ Arrius Montanus, 118.
- Antoninus Pius, conduct towards the Christ-
ians, TAL. /O 3
~ Apelles, 474. '
Apokatastasis. See Eschatology.
Apollinaris of Hierapolis, 298.
Apollonius of Tyana, 26, 30, 31.
~Apollonius, Roman senator, 118.
Apologists, 174, 661. See the individuals.
*
Apostolic Fathers, 656. See Clement of
Rome —Ignatius— Polycarp—Hermas—
Barnabas—Aquila, 290
Arabia, spread of Christianity in, 81.
Archelaus of Cascar, 485.
Aristides, letter to Hadrian, 101.
Aristotle, 611.
Arnobius, 687.
“Arian, the Stoic, 159.
“Artemon, Artemonites, 580.
Ascetics, 275.
(Athanasius on Sabellius, 595.
Athenagoras on Christianity, 78. Doctrine
of the Logos, 585. Apology, 673.
Athenodorus, brother of Gregory Thauma-
turgus, 718.
* Attalus, the Martyr, 113.
Auditores. See Catechumens.
Augustin on Christianity, 77. Popular ha-
tred against the Christians, 92. On Ter-
tullian, 685.
“Aurelian, edict of, 108. Situation of the
Christians under, 141.
Autun, persecution at, 114.
B.
Baptism, 305—307. Controversies respect-
ing, 317—325. Baptism of heretics, 477.
Doctrine of baptism, 645—647. See ar-
ticles Catechumens—Catechists—Symbol
—lInfant baptism — Confirmation— Bap-
tism of heretics—Gnostic worship—Mani-
cheism—Irenzeeus—Tertullian—Cyprian.
~Bardesanes, 80, 304, 441.
* Barcochba, 103, 344.
Bar Manu, Abgar of Edessa, 80.
Barnabas, 295, 381.
Bartholomew the Apostle, 81.
»Basilides, Spanish bishop, 216.
‘Basilides, Egyptian bishop, 712,
-Basilides, Gnostic, 400—413. See Epiphani-
us, Clement of Alex.—Basilideans.
Basilideans, feast of Epiphany, 302. 413—
416. See Basilides—Gnostics—Pseudo-
Basilideans.
-Beryllus of Bostra, 593.
Bishops. See ’Exioxozoc.
~Blandina, 114.
'Blastus, letter to, 680.
Brahmaism, 370.
Britain, Christianity introduced into, 85
120
Buddas, predecessor of Mani, 480.
Buddaism, 370.
C.
Cecilius of Bilta, on exorcism, 310.
Caianians, 476.
Cainites, Anti-Jewish Gnostics 448.
Caius, 399.
Candidus, Valentinian, 589.
Canones Apostolici, 660.
+ Caracalla, 122.
~Carpocrates, the Gnostic, 449-—451.
Carpocratians, 451.
Carthage, Christianity in, 83.
Cassian Julius. See Encratites.
Catechists, 306.
Catechumens, 305.
Catechetical schools, 517.
Cathedra Petri, 218.
Catholic church. Its formation, 207—217.
Controversy with the Novatians, 246.
See Church—Church divisions—Church
discipline.
Celibacy. 274, 385, 457.
~Celsus, 70, 88, 90, 160—166, 265, 272.
~ Cerdo, 465.
~Cerinthus, 396—399. See Irenzeus—Dio-
nysius of Alexandria—Caius Epiphanius.
Chiliasm. See Eschatology.
Xwperioxorot. See Country Bishops and
Ἐπίσκοπος.
Chrism, 315. See articles Tertullian and
Cyprian.
Christianity, propagation of. In general, 69
—78. In particular countries, 78—86. Op-
position to, by force, 86-—156. By writings,
157—178. See Christian life, manners,
doctrines, church.
Christian worship, 288—335. See articles
Church—Images — Sign of the cross—
Festivals—Sacraments—Baptism of here-
tics—Agapze—Gnostic worship.
Christian life in the family. Marriage, 280.
Festivals in honor of the dead, 333.
Christian festivals. See Festivals.
Christian life, 249—288. See Christian do-
mestic life—Ascetism—Clement of Alex-
andria—Tertullian.
Christian doctrine, history of, 336—656.
Christian morals. See Christian life.
Christ, doctrine concerning. See Redeemer
—Redemption.
Chrysostom on the Marcionites, 478.
Church, situation of under the Emperors, 90
—156. Apostolic Constitution 179—190.
Novatian on the conception of the church,
246—248. Outward mediation of the
church, 645. See Christianity—Christian
life—Christian morals, worship, doctrine
—Tertullian—Cyprian.
Churches, 291.
Church offices, multiplication of, 200.
Church Psalmody, in the New Testament,
304.
Church Hymns. Bardesanes. Paul of Sa-
mosata, 304.
Church doctrines. See Church theology.
GENERAL INDEX.
Church teachers, their history, 656—722.
See the individuals.
Church divisions, history of, 221—248. See
the articles Cyprian—Novatus—Novati-
anus.
Church fathers. See Church teachers.
Church constitution. See Church.
Church Assembly at Elvira, 296,301. At
Carthage, 310, 313, 318,319. At Iconi-
um and Synnada, 318.
Church discipline, 217—221.
Church theology, 506—626. See the arti-
cles Christian doctrine—Church teachers
— Montanism— Theology— Anthropolo-
gy—Eschatology.
Church teachers of Asia Minor, 674—683.
Cicero, 8. ἥ
~Claudius Apollin. 117. Legio fulmin. His
writings, 677.
~Claudius. Banishment of Christians from
Rome, 94. [
(Claudius Albinus, 119.)
~Clement of Alexandria, on perecutions, 119.
Fraternal kiss, 262. Asceticism, 272. Τίς
ὁ σωζόμενος πλούσιος, 279. Community of
goods, 280. Marriage, 281. Prayer, 286.
Church, 289. Servant-form, 291. Images,
292. Symbols, 293. Feast of Epiphany,
301. Reading of scripture, 307. Agape,
326. Basilides, 402,412. Heracleon, 434.
Pseudo-Basilideans,447. Carpocrates,449.
Nicolaitans, 452. Tatian,457. Doctrines
of Clement, 530—543. Doctrine concern-
ing God, 558. Doctrine of the Logos, 586.
Doctrine of the Holy Spirit, 610. Anthro-
pology, 620. Christology, 631. Baptism,
646. Life and writings, 691—693.
Clemens Romanus, 189, 353, 644, 658.
Clementines, 32, 353, 395.
Commodus, 117.
~Commodianus, 237, 280, 288.
Communion. See Lord’s supper.
Confessors, 200, 228.
Confirmation. See Imposition of hands.
~Constantius Chlorus, 154.
Constitutiones apostolice, 197, 201.
Continentes. See Ascetics.
Coracion, 652.
Cornelius, bishop of Rome, 136, 201; 237.
Cosmas Indicopleustes, 82.
Country bishops, 202.
Creation, doctrine of, 564—570.
~Crescens, the Cynic, 671.
Cross, sign of the, 293.
Cultus. See Christian and Gnostic forms of
worship.
Cyprian. Flight in the persecution, 134.
Care for the churches, 134. Thibaritani-
ans, 136. Trial, 137. Martyrdom, 140.
Relation to the Presbyters, 192. De lap-
sis, 197. Council of the church, 200. De
unitate ecclesiz, 210. Cathedra Petri,
214. Schism of Felicissimus, 222—236.
Libri testimoniorum, 253. Liberality, 256.
Gladiatorial shows, 263. Profession of
stage-players, 267. Lord’s prayer, 287.
Sprinkling in baptism, 310, Infant Bap-.
GENERAL INDEX.
tism, 318. Baptism of heretics, 319. Idea
of sacrifice, 331. Penance, 647. See
Carthage — Tertullian — North-African
church. ;
Cyril of Jerusalem, 484.
Ώ.
Decius Trajan, 130.
Demetrius, 81, 197, 702.
Demiurge. See Gnosis — Gnostics—Gnos-
tic systems — Ophites.
Demonax of Cyprus, the Cynic, 10.
Demons, 28.
Deacons, 188.
Deaconesses, 188.
Διατάξεις ἀποστολικαΐ.
apostolicee.
Dio Chrysostom, the Rhetorician, 27.
Diognetus, letter to, 69, 642, 644.
Dioclesian, 142,506.
Dionysius of Alexandria. On the Decian
persecution, 132. Valerian, 135, 138.
Novatian, 241, 243. Christian brotherly
love, 257. Baptism of heretics, 320. Six-
tus II., of Rome, 320. Cerinth. 396.
Sabellius, 599. Homoousion, 600. Chili-
asm, 652. Life and character, 712.
Dionysius of Halicarnassus, 12, 29.
Dionysius of Paris, 84.
Dionysius of Rome. Controversy with Di-
onysius of Alexandria, 606. Onthe Holy
Spirit, 610.
Dioscorides, 82.
Dioscurus, the Martyr, 182.
Disciplina arcani, 308.
Docetism, 386, 630.
Domitian, 96.
Domitius Ulpianus, 126.
Dorotheus, 722.
Dositheus, 454.
Dragomans, 303.
See Constitutiones
E.
Ebionites, 344—350.
Ecclesiz apostolicse, 204.
Egypt, diffusion of Christianity in, 83.
Eleutherus, 525.
Elxaites, 352.
Elymas, 352.
Emanation, 372. See Gnosticism.
Encratites, 458. Julius Cassianus — Seve-
rus — Severians — Enoch, book of, 535.
Ephraem Syrus, 462.
Epicureanism, 8.
Epiphanes, 450.
Epiphany, feast of, 301.
Epiphanius on the Ebionites, 344, 351,352.
Cerinth. 398. Basilides, 400. Valentine,
417. Bardesanes, 441. Cainites, 448.
Saturninus, 455. Marcion, 461. Mon-
tanus, 513. Theodotus, 580. Sabellius,
600. Gospel of the Egyptians, 600.
᾿Επίσκοπος, 190, 200. See Church offices.
Episcopus epicoporum, 214.
Episcopal system, 190.
Epistole formate, 205
121
Eschatology, or doctrine of last things, 649
— 656.
Esseans, 43—48.
Ethiopia, diffusion of Christianity in, 83.
Eucharist, 329. See Lord’s supper.
Euemerus, 6.
Euodius of Uzala, 400, 494.
Eucrates, 447.
Eusebius on the Abgar Uchomo, 80. De-
metrius of Alexandria, 81. Pantznus,
81, 82. Persecution of the Christians in
Thebais, 83. Paul’s journey to Spain, 85.
Hadrian, 101. Marius, the martyr, 140.
Dioclesian, 176. Images, 292. Barde-
sanes, 442. Tatian,458. Montanus, 513.
Letter of the church of Lyons, 524. Alex-
andrian catechists, 527. Beryll of Bos-
tra, 593. Malchion, 605. Apology of
Justin Martyr, 663. Death of Justin, 671.
Florinus, 680. Symmachus, 708. Im-
mortality of the soul, 710. Death of Ori-
gen, 711. Methodius, 720. Apology of
Pamphilus, 721.
Exorcism, 309.
F.
Fabian, Roman bishop, 238.
Fabius of Antioch, 238.
Faustus, the Manichean, 492, 501,502. See
Mani—Manicheans — Manicheanism.
Felicissimus, 225. See Church schisms.
Felicitas, the Martyr, 124.
Felix, the Manichean, 504.
Festivals, 294—301.
Fidus, 313.
Firmilianus of Cesarea. Against Stephanus
of Rome, 216. Church discipline, 220.
Baptism of heretics, 320. Formula of
baptism, 322. Origen, 707.
Flora, letter of Ptolemy to, 437.
Florinus, 680.
Fortunatianus, the Martyr, 152.
Fortunatus, 235.
Frumentius, 83.
G.
Galerius, Caius Maximianus, Cesar, 145.
Gallienus, Cesar, 136.
Gallus, Cesar, 136.
Germany, diffusion of Christianity in, 84,
Gnosis, 360—395. Influence of, on church
doctrine, 47. Alexandrian, 530—554.
Gnosticism. See Gnostics.
Gnostics, 366—478.
Gnostic systems. See Gnostics.
Gnostic worship, 476—478.
Goetz, 71, 78.
God. Doctrine concerning, 557—564. See
Clement—Tertullian— Origen--Theophi-
lus of Antioch — Marcion — Jreneus —
Novatian — Alexandrian school — Crea-
tion — Trinity — Holy Spirit.
Tpaupata τετυπωμένα. See Epistole for-
mate.
Gregory of Nazianzen on the Apostle Tho
mas, 82.
728
Gregory of Nyssa on Gregory Thaumatur-
gus, 718.
Gregory Thaumaturgus, 287. His life, 716
—720.
Gregory of Tours, 84.
H.
Hadrian, 101.
Ham, the Patriarch, 408.
Hands, imposition of, 316. See Confirma-
tion.
Hegemonius, 485.
Hegesippus, 675, 676.
Heliogabulus, 125.
Heraclas, disciple of Origen, 700, 712.
Heracleon, the Gnostic, 434—436.
Heraclian, bishop of Chalcedon, 485.
Herculius Maximinianus, Cesar, 147.
Heretics, baptism of, 317. See the articles
Baptism — Cyprian — Tertullian — Ste-
phanus — Dionysius of Alexandria.
Hermas, 278, 646, 660.
Hermes, Trismegistus, 176.
Hermas, Apologist, 673.
Hermogenes. Doctrine of creation, 565—
568. Anthropology, 616. See Tertulli-
an — Creation — Theodoretus.
Hesychius, 722.
Hexapla. See Origen.
Hieracas, Egyptian ascetic, 713.
Hierocles against Christianity, 145, 173.
Hilarianus, the Martyr, 152.
Hilarius, 506.
Hippolytus, celebration of the sabbath, 297.
Celebration of the Lord’s supper, 333.
Noetus, 584. Life and writings, 681—683.
Hormisdas, king of Persia, 488.
Hystaspes, interpolated writings, 176.
1.
Jaldabaoth. See Ophites.
Iconium, council of, 318.
Idealism. See the article Alexandrians.
Ignatius of Antioch. To Polycarp, 269.
Festival of Sunday, 295. Docetism, 631.
Lord’s supper, 647. His letters, 661.
Images, use of images, 293.
India, spread of Christianity in, 81.
Infants. communion of, 333, 648.
Infant baptism, 311-315. See the articles
Cyprian — Ireneeus — Tertullian — Ste-
phanus — Dionysius of Alexandria.
Inspiration, 356, 511.
Jrenzus. Miraculous cures, 74. Christianity
in Germany, 84. Persecutions, 119. Pres-
byters — bishops, 192. Ecclesia apostol-
ica at Rome, 204. Conception of the
church, 209. Dispute about the passover,
213, 800. Gladiatorial shows, 263. Phi-
losopher’s cloak, 275. Places of assembly
of the Christians, 290. Christ as arche-
type, 311. Oblation, 331. Ehbionites, 344,
' 601. Doctrine of accommodation among
the Gnostics, 388. Cerinthus, 396. Satur-
nin, 455. Tatian, 456. Prodicians, 452.
GENERAL INDEX.
Nicolaitans, 452. Intermediate position
of Irenzus, 508. Montanistic proceed-
ings, 524. Knowledge of God, 560. Cre-
ation, 528. Soul of Christ, 634. Re-
demption, 647. Faith and law, 645. Bap-
tism, 646. Lord’s supper, 647. Chiliasm,
651. Life and writings, 677—681.
Isidorus, son of Basilides, 400, 408, 415.
J.
Jacob, ἀναβαϑμοΐ of, 352.
Jamblichus, the Neo-Platonician, 173.
John the Apostle, 191, 212, 237, 342.
“ Disciples of, 376, 447.
Josephus on false prophets, 38. Sadducees,
42. Pharisees,42. Essenes, 43.
Jews, religious condition of the, 35.
Jewish Christians — two classes, 341.
Jewish theology, 39—62.
Jewish sects, 39—49.
Jewish proselytes, 67.
Jewish Goetz, 67.
Judaism, in relation to Christianity, 62.
Judas of Gamala, 37.
Judas, gospel of, 443.
Julia Mammeea, 125.
Juliana in Cesarea, 707,
Julius Africanus, 709.
Justin Martyr. Infidelity of the philoso-
phers,9. Jewish deniers of angels, 42.
Proselytes, 67. Miraculous cures, 74.
Christian patience, 76. Extension of
Christianity 129. Defects of Christians,
254. Magistrates, 259. Divine worship,
303. Form of baptism, 310. Celebra-
tion of the Lord’s supper, 332. Baptism
and the supper, 328. Two classes of
Jewish Christians, 341. Doctrine of the
Logos, 585. Christ’s humanity, 635. Sat-
isfaction, 642. Sacrament of the supper,
647. Chiliasm, 651. Life and writings,
661—671.
K.
Κάνονες ἀποστολικοΐ, 660.
Κήρυγμα ἀποστολικόν, 806.
Κλῆρος, κληρικοῖ, 195.
L.
Lactantius on the Holy Spirit, 608.
Laity, resistance of, to the catholic idea of
the priesthood, 196. Participation in the
choice of church officers, 199.
Lapsi, controversies respecting their restora-
tion to the fellowship of the church, 226.
Synods on their account, 234.
Lectores, 201.
Legio fulminea, 115.
Leonides, father of Origen, 693, 695.
Libellatici, 132. See the article Church
divisions.
Libelli pacis, 229.
Liter formate, 205.
Logos, doctrine of the.
Trinity.
See doctrine of the
GENERAL INDEX.
Lord’s supper, views concerning the, 323.
Doctrine of the, 646. See the articles
Agapx—Justin— Ireneus—Tertullian—
Cyprian — Epiphanius —Ignatius.
Lucianus, founder of the Antiochian school,
4 hee
Lucian, the Confessor, 230.
Lucian, preepositus cubiculariorum, 143.
Lucian, the opponent of Christianity, 8,
157
Lucius, bishop of Rome, 136.
Lucius, the British king, 85.
Lugdunum, persecution at, 112.
Lucan. See Marcionites.
Lucretius, 8.
M.
Maguszans, 489.
Macrianus, 140.
Malchion, Presbyter, 605.
Mandzans, 376.
Mani, 478—488. See Manicheism.
Manichzans, 478—486.
Manichzism, 478—506.
Marcellus the Centurian, a martyr, 147.
Marcion, form of baptism, 310. Missa fide-
lium, 328. Marcion and his doctrine, 458
—476. Doctrine concerning God, 559.
Marcionites, 473.
Marcionitism, opposed to the Clementines,
395.
Marcosians, 476.
Marcus, the Gnostic, 440.
Marcus, the Marcionite, 474.
Marcus, presiding officer of the church at
Alia, 344.
Marcus Aurelius, emperor, 104.
Marius, the Martyr, 140.
Mark, the Evangelist, 83.
Martialis, Spanish bishop, 216.
Martyrs, feast of the, 334.
Maximianus Herculius, 142.
Maximilianus, the Martyr, 146.
Maximilla, the Prophetess, 514,
Maximinus, the Thracian, 126.
Maximus, Church teacher, 721.
Melito of Sardis, 101, 164.
Menander, 454.
Mensurius, bishop of Carthage, 150.
Messiah, idea of among the Jews, 37.
Methodius of Tyre, against Origen’s doctrine
of the creation, 569. His writings, 720.
Metropolitans, 203.
Miltiades against the Montanists, 519.
Minucius Felix, 11, 690.
Minucius Fundanus, Proconsul, 101.
Missa catechumenorum, missa fidelium, 478.
Monarchians, 575—583, 591—606.
Montanism, 508—537. Anthropology, 614.
Position of the church to Montanism, 525
—527.
Montanists, public speaking of women, 182.
Resistance of the evangelical spirit to
them, 280, 294. See Montanism.
Montanus. His importance as the founder
of a sect, 509. His education, 513. On
martyrdom, 521: Pepuza, 525.
129
Ν,
Natalis, the Theodotian, confessor, 580.
Nature, doctrine of human. See Anthro-
pology.
Nazareans, 349. See articles Paul—Sects.
Nepos, Egyptian bishop, Chiliast, 652.
Nero, persecution under, 94.
Nerva, 96.
Nicolaitans, 452.
Nicolaus, pretended founder of a sect, 452.
Nicomedia, meeting of Dioclesian and Gale-
rius at, 147.
Noetus, Patripassianist, 584.
North-African church, its theological devel-
opment, 688—689. See articles Carthage
—Tertullian— Cyprian--Arnobius—Com-
modianus — Church theology — Church
divisions — Persecutions.
Novatian, 237—248. Theology, 560. Against
the Artemonites, 581.
Novatus, exciter of the Carthaginian schism,
224. Participation in the Roman, 241.
Numidicus, confessor, 133.
O
Oblationes. See Lord’s supper.
Ophites, 442—446.
Oracles, Plutarch’s defence of the, 23. Por-
phyry’s views of them, 171.
Origen on psychological phenomena, 74.
On the preaching of Christianity in the
country, 79. Labors of Origen in Arabia,
81. Correspondence with Julia Mam-
mea, 125. Situation of the Christians
under Philip the Arabian, 127. On the
persecutions, 128. Celsus, 161. On hu-
mility, 167. Ordination of Origen in
Palestine, 197. Baptism, 253. The mili-
tary profession, 272. Prayer, 283. Prayer
in the study of the Scriptures, 287. Spir-
itual worship of God, 289. Catechumens,
305. Infant baptism, 314. Ebionites,
845. Gnostic interpretation of the Bible,
388. Ophites, 446. Simon Magus, 454.
Origen, as a catechist, 520. Isaiah, 530.
Gnosis and Pistis, 544—550. Principles
in relation to the holy scriptures, 552—
557. The divine attributes, 563. Doc-
trine of creation, 568—570. Doctrine of
the Logos, 587—592. Anthropology, 620
—630. Christ's servant-form, 633. Hu-
manity of Christ, 635. The human soul
of Christ, 6836—640. Redemptive activity,
643. Doctrine of the sacraments, 648.
Resurrection, 655. Life and works of
Origen, 5983—611. See the articles Le-
onidas — Clement —Ammonius — Alex-
andrian theology — Catechetical schools.
Origen, the Pagan, 699.
Origen, school of. Ante-Origenistic party
711—722. See the articles Origen—Greg-
ory Thaumaturgus — Pamphilus.
Ostiarii. See Ovpwpoi.
Pe
Pacianus of Barcelona, 246.
730
Palladius, 708.
Pamphilus, Presbyter at Caesarea, 720.
Pantznus, Catechist, 81, 529, 691.
Papias of Hierapolis, 650.
Παράδοσις ἀποστολικῆ, 306.
Paraclete, 511.
Parchor, the Prophet, 408.
Parsism, 369. See articles Gnosis — Gnos-
tics — Gnostic system.
Παρϑένοι, 275.
Passover, festival of, 298—299,
Passover, controversies with regard to the,
299.
Paternus, the Proconsul, 137.
Patripassians, 578, 583.
Paul, the Apostle. Journey to Spain, 85.
Universal priesthood, 180. Church disci-
pline, 218: Observance of times, 294.
Church singing, 304. Labors among gen-
tile Christians, 342. -Ebionitism, 349.
The Nazareans concerning Paul, 349.
Gnosis, 371.
Paul of Samosata, 142, 309, 602. See articles
Monarchians — Logos — Malchion.
Pausanius, defence of the mythes, 12.
Peccata venalia, mortalia, 221.
Pella, 344.
Penitence and penance.
pline.
Pentecost, festival of, 300.
Pepuza, a place in Phrygia, 525.
Pepuzians, 525.
Perpetua, the Martyr, 123.
Persecutions, 86—156.
Persia, spread of Christianity in, 80.
Pescennius Niger, 119.
Peter, the Apostle, 213. See Cathedra Petri.
Pharisees, 39.
Phariseism, relation to Christianity, 63.
Philemon, the Roman presbyter, 712.
Philip, the Arabian, 126.
Philip of Sida, the catechist, 673.
Philo. His tendency, 52—60. . The perpet-
uity of the temple and the law, 65. The
golden age of Jerusalem, 85.
Philostratus, the Rhetorician, 178.
Philumene, 475.
Photius on Mani, 485. On Hippolytus,
682. On Origen, 704, 711.
Pierias, the Alexandrian, 713.
Plato. View of Socrates, 18.
notheism, 20.
Platonism, 18.
19, 33.
Pliny the elder. On the spirit of nature, 10.
Essenes, 43.
Pliny the younger.
See Church disci-
His mo-
Relation to Christianity,
Governor of Bithynia
and Pontus, 97. Report to Trajan, 97.
Plotinus, 31. Against the Gnostics, 390.
Anthropology, 611.
Plutarch. Against foreign religious cus-
toms, 13. Superstition and infidelity, 13.
Against epicureanism, 15. Relation of
religions, 20. Hypocrisy ef philosophers,
21. Anthropology, 511.
Pneumatology. See Anthropology.
Peenitentes, 219.
GENERAL INDEX.
Polybius on Roman superstition, 6.
Polycarp of Smyrna, the Martyr, 109. Dis-
pute about the passover, 299. Meeting
with Marcion, 465. Letter to the Philip-
pians, 661.
Polycrates of Ephesus, 298, 299.
Ponticus, the Martyr. 114.
Porphyry, 27. Defence of image worship,
27. Oracles, 30. Against Christianity,
170—173. On Origen, 699.
Pothinus of Lyons, 112.
Pre-existence, doctrine of, among the Esse-
nes, 50. Doctrine of, 624.
Praxeas against the Montanists, 513, 525,
583.
Πρεσβύτεροι, 184.
Priesthood of all Christians,180. See Ter-
tullian.
Priscilla, 514. On celibacy, 521.
Prodicians, 451.
Procopius, the Presbyter, 154.
Proculus, 119.
Proselytes of justice, of the gate, 67.
Protoctetus, the friend of Origen, 706.
Provincial synods, 206. See Church consti-
tution.
Pseudo-Basilideans, 447.
Pseudo-Paulinists, 342.
Pseudo-Petrinists, 342.
Ptolemeus, 437.
Pupian, 236.
Pythagoras, 173.
Q
Quadrigesimal fast, 300.
Quadratus, the Apologist, 101.
Quintus, 109.
Quintus, the African bishop, 319.
Quirinus, 685.
R.
Realist tendency. See the articles Poly-
carp — Papias — Melito of Sardis — Ire-
nzus — Tertullian — Montanus.
Recognitions, 358.
Resurrection. See Eschatology.
Revocatus, the Martyr, 123.
Rhodon. See Marcionites.
Rome, 203. See Cathedra Petri.
Roman church. It character, 508. Rela-
tion to the Monarchians, 581. Its scten-
tific importance, 689.
Rufinus, 306, 722.
5.
Sabbath, 295.
Sabellius, 594—606. See the articles Mon-
archians — Logos — Epiphanius — Atha-
nasius.
Sadducees, 40.
Sadduceism, 63.
Sacraments. Their meaning, 304. Doc-
trine of the Alexandrians concerning the
sacraments, 648. See Baptism and the
Lord’s supper.
Saturnin of Toulouse, 84.
Saturninus, 455. See the articles Gnostics
— Irenzus — Epiphanius.
GENERAL INDEX.
Saturninus, the Martyr, 123.
Saturninus, the Proconsul, 122.
Scapula, the Proconsul, 122.
Scepticism, 12.
Schisms. See Church divisions.
Scillita, persecution at, 564—570.
Scythianus, 485.
Secundulus, the Martyr, 123.
Sects. See the particular.
Seneca, 7.
Serennius Granianus, the Proconsul, 101.
Servianus, the Consul, 102.
Seth, representative of the Pneumatici, 445.
Sethians, 448.
Sees: See Encratites.
Severus.
Severus Septimius, Emperor, 119.
Severus, Alexander, 125.
Severus of Asmonina, 485.
Simon of Cyrene. See Pseudo-Basilideans
and Carpocratians.
Simon Magus, 395, 454.
Simonians, 453.
Simplicius against Mani, 490.
Sixtus, bishop of Rome, 321.
Slavery, 267.
Smyrna, persecution at, 109.
Socrates against the Sophists, 5
mony concerning the divine, 18.
Socrates, the Church Historian, 720.
Sophists, 5.
Sozomen on the sermon, 303.
Speratus, the Martyr, 122.
Sponsors. See Baptism.
Stationes, dies stationum, 296.
Stephanus, bishop of Rome, 344- 3D } “ὦ
Stephanus, the Martyr, 341.
Stoicism, 15—18.
Strabo on superstition, 7. Craving after a
simpler mode of worship, 9.
Stromata. See Clement of Alexandria.
Subdiaconi, 201.
Subintroducte, 277.
Sunday. See Sabbath.
Συνείσακτοι. See Subintroducte.
Symbolum, 306.
Symmachus, 708.
Symphorian of Autun, the Martyr, 114.
Synods. See Provincial Synods.
Testi-
ἼΣ
Tacitus, 98.
Tatian, the Gnostic, 456—458. Apologist,
672, 673.
Terebinth, 485.
Tertullian. Relation of Pagans to Christ-
ianity, 72. Conversion by means of ex-
traordinary psychological phenomena, 75.
Mutual love of the Christians, 76. Their
courage, 77. Diffusion of Christianity, 77.
Universal intelligibleness of Christianity,
78. Diffusion of Christianity in Africa,
84. On the participation of the Christ-
ians in heathen festivals, 91. Tiberius’
proposal to the senate, 93. Rescript of
Trajan, 100. Letter of Marcus Aurelius,
191
117. Extortion of money in the persecu-
tions. 121. Favorable treatment of Chris-
tians by magistrates, 121. To Scapula,
122. The testimony of the soul, 177.
Presbyters and bishops, 192. Summus
sacerdos, 195. Universal priestly right,
196. Prelectors, 201. Synods, 206. Ar-
rogant claims of the Roman bishops, 214.
Excommunication, 218. Penance, 219,
220. Delay of baptism, 252. Deficien-
cies of the church, 254. Mixed marriages,
255, 282. Payment of their tribute by
the Christians, 259. Fabrication of idols,
262. Gladiatorial shows, 263. Spectacles,
265. Pleasures of the Christians, 266.
Christian freedom and equality, 269. Civil
offices, 270. Necessity of Paganism to
the emperors, 272. Military profession,
272. Life of Christians in the world, 273.
Ascetics, 275. Hypocritical ascetism, 277.
Christian marriage, 281. Female dress,
282. Consecration of marriage, 284.
Prayer, 286, 288. Worship not confined to
place, 289. Symbols of the Christians, 292.
Jewish and Christian festivals, 294. Law
of the Sabbath, 295. Fasting on the Sab-
bath, 296 Controversy ow the Sabbath,
297. Infant baptism, 312. Baptism
and confirmation, 317. Baptism of here-
tics, 318. Agape, 325. Catechumens
and believers among the heretics, 328.
The fourth petition, 332. Sacramental
bread, 332. Ebion, 344. Ptolemzeus, 437.
Marcion, 461—473. Marcion’s disciples,
474. Baptism by substitution, 478. Ter-
tullian as a Montanist, 509. Prophetic
extacy, 511. Progressive development of
the church, 516. Montanistic revelations,
517. Against the outward church, 517.
Forgiveness of sin and sanctification, 522.
Arrogance of the confessors, 523. Against
the enemies of Montanism, 523. Divine
attributes, 561, 562. Revelation, 562.
Creation, 568. Monarchians, 576. Prax-
eas, 583. ‘Trinity, 605. Anthropology,
614—620. Humanity of Christ, 635. Bap-
tism, 646. Lord’s supper, 648. Interme-
diate standing, 654. Life and writings of
Tertullian, 683—685.
Tertullianists, 685.
Theodoret. Tatian’s εὐαγγέλιον διὰ τεσσά-
pov, 458. Hermogenes, 567. Noetus, 584.
Theodorus. See Gregory Thaumaturgus.
Theodotus, the Monarchian, 580.
Theognostus, 713.
Theoctistus, 703.
Theology. See Church theology, and the
articles God — Creation — Trinity.
Theonas, bishop of Alexandria, 143.
Theophilus of Antioch. Revelation, 559.
Apology and commentaries, 674.
Theophilus Indicus, 83.
Theotecnus, bishop of Cesarea, 141.
Therapeutz, 66—64.
Thomas, the Apostle, 82.
Thoth, interpolated sayings of. 176
Tiberius, 93
192
Titus of Bostra, 501.
Traducianism, 615.
Trajan, 97.
Trinity, 571—608.
Ovpwpoi, 201.
τ.
Uchomo, Abgar of Edessa, 80.
Unity of the church, 180, 181.
Vv
Valentine, the Gnostic, 417—433. Valen-
tinian school, 434—442.
Valerian, the Emperor, 136.
Varro. Threefold theology, 7. On the true
in religion, 9.
Vattius Epagathus, the Martyr, 112.
Victor, bishop of Rome. Arrogant claims,
GENERAL INDEX.
214. Dispute about passover, 299. Thee-
dotus, 580.
Victoria, the Martyr, 152.
Virgines. See Παρϑένοι.
W.
Western church. See Roman church.
x
Xerophagians, 521.
Z.
Zabeans. See Disciples of John.
Zealots, Jewish, 38.
Zenobia, 693.
Zephyrinus, Roman bishop, 581.
Zoroaster, 369.
INDEX TO THEvGITA TIONS.
I. CITATIONS FROM SCRIPTURE. *
Genesis, 1 : 26, 27, p. 444.
658. 31: 13, p.397. 49: 11, p. 670.
Exodus, 10 : 27, p. 613. chap. 28: p. 705.
33:18, p.558. 34:20, p. 554.
Leviticus, 20 : 9. 24 : 20, p. 439.
Numbers, 11: 29, p.179. chap. 25, p. 452.
Deuteronomy, 4: 19, p. 587. 22: 5, p. 267.
97:26, p. 642. 32: 8,9, p. 380. 32: 43,
p. 409.
Samuel, 1: τ 25, p. 226.
Isaiah, τι p. 530. 7:14, p.348. 8:23.
9:1. 2 8, p.349. 43.19, p.532. 53:
2, p. τὰ 633. 53: 4, ὅ, p. 643.
Jeremiah, 31 : 33, p. 308
Joel, chap 3: ἢ. 518.
Zechariah, 3: p. 609.
Malachi, 3:15, p. 451.
Psalm, 19:4, p. 568. 42:6, p.706. 44:
1:p.588. 45 : 5, p. 636. 90: 4, p.399, 650.
Sb 2 moses. ST. 7,409.) es. 110) p.
574. 11:10, p.41l. 145: 8, p.563.
Job, 14 : 4, p. 412, 620.
Proverbs, 22 : 28, p. 710.
Maccabees IL. : 6, p. 151.
ΔΙ πον ὁ: 10.. 5 316, p,'2538. δ᾽: F7,.p.
apo, 3:28, p. 654. 19:14, p. 312. 10;
23, p. 695. 11:13, p. 525. 11 27, p.
ΘΟ O14 12ciG, p: 5.1: 13 > 10. p.675.
13: 43, p. 623. 13:52, p. 360. 14:13,
p. 695. 17:1, p. 563. 18:20, p. 211.
be Ὁ. 4199... 19 ep. 097- 19. 14.
p. 552. 21:16, 8.705. 22:19, 20, p.
699. 22: 21, p..259.
Mark, 6: 13, p. 119. “10: 46, p. 364. 15:
2, p. 447.
Luke, 1 : 31, p.580. .2: 40, p.639. 9: 50,
p- 313. 12:8, p.434—436. 12:49, p.
707. (13 > 25p.A12,. 13 : 50, p. 707. 115 :
8, p. 420. 22: 24, p. 212.
John, 8 : 29, p. 434. 4:34,p.436. 4:35,
p- 436. 4:48, p.434. 5:14, p. 253. 3:
5, p.648. 6:53, p. 648. 6:54, p. 324.
7:49, p. 346. 8:24, p.544. 8:43, 45,
p.545. 10:3, p. 719. 10:30, p. 584.
13:8, p.699. 14:9, p.584. 15:1, p.
Wit. | Livne, p.ot2.
VOL. I. 62
14:14 V7, po | Acts, ΤΣ 17, p. 196. "2246 -pseb. 05:92}
—40, p. 88. 10:46,p.186. chap. 19, p.
SIG: 20 = ΘΟ. ΤΟΙ». 105. a
17, 28, p. 182. 23:8, p. 42.
Romans, 8:19, p. 625. 5: 20, 21, p. 411
8 : 26, p. 716. 9:5,p.584. 12 : 7.8.) Ὁ:
187. 12:11. 14:15, p.180. 16 : 5, p. 185,
290. 16: 14, p. 660.
1 Corinthians, 11 : 19, p.341. 1: 21, p.621.
1: 25, p. 105. 2: G,'p. 388.. 2 : 9, p. 631.
675. 2:14, p. 628, 3:17, p. 253. 14:
23, 25, p. 327. 5:4, p.190. 5:7, p. 207.
6:12, p.385. chap. 7,p.680. 7: 21,p.
269. 8:6, p.574. 9, 0.885. 8:19,
p. 189. 9: 22,p.245. 9: 24, p. 258. 11:
4,5, po 6795 we: Ὁ; Pp. 159. 12 224m
189. 13:10, Ὁ. 487. 14: 30, p. 320. 14:
34, p. 182. chap. 15, p. 655. 15: 28, Ὁ:
600. 15: 29, p.478. 16:19, p. 185. 16:
19, 20, p. 290.
2 Corinthians, chap. 5, p. 546.
Galatians, chap. 2, p.171. chap. 4, p. 548.
5:19. Ὁ: 499. 6: 6, Ὁ. 478.
Philippians, 1: 1, p. 183. 1:16, Ὁ. 323. 2
15, p. 253. 4: 8, p. 658
Ephesians, 3 : 10, p. 382. 4: 5, 6,p.318. 4:
6, p. 572. aes p.471. 5:4, p. 262. 35:
5, p. 245. 316 p. 262. 6: 11, p. 188.
Ga 1, 22, p.700. 4: 16, p- 185,
290.
1 Timothy, 3:1, 184. 3:
p. 184. 5:17, Ὁ. 185: 588.
366.
2 Tent, wie
Titus, 1 τον. 184. 1:
Philemon, ν. ἌΡ 185.
Hebrews, chap. 2, p. 382. 2: 13, p. 563. 4:
2,p.196. 3:8,
6:12, p.
14, p. 199. 3:7, p. 506.
7, Ρ. 184.
19. ρ. 707. 11:3, p. 372,565. 12:14,
p. 715.
1 Peter, 2:9. p. 180. 3:21, p. 306, 308.
Ds delete 19.
1 John, 2: 1,2, p. 246. 1:7, p.523. 2:
19, p. 341.
James, 5 : 14, p. 119.
Revelation, 1:6, p. 197. 1:10, p. 295.
194
INDEX TO THE CITATIONS.
Il. CITATIONS FROM WRITERS ON CHURCH HISTORY.
Acta concilii Carthagin. p. 150, 308, 309.
— concilii Niceni LL., actio V., edid. Man-
si, t. 13, f. 167, p. 500.
—— martyrum (edid. Ruinart} Scillitanor-
/um. Perpetuz et Felicitatis, p. 122.
Perpetuz et Felicit. przefatio, p.
516, 518.
-—— Feliciss. p. 151.
— Justini, p. 269.
— Procopii, p. 303.
martyrum coptiaca edid. Georgi, Ro-
mx, 1797, prefatio pag. 109, p. 146.
— Saturnini, Dativi, et aliorum in Africa,
(Baluz, Miscellanea, t. 2,) p. 152.
Martyrii Justini, (Symeon Metaphras-
tes,) p. 671.
cum Felice Manicheo, ]. 1, ¢. 9. (Au-
gustin. opera, edid. Benedict, t. 8,) p.
487.
— Thome, edid. Thilo; codex apocr. f. 10,
poA49K. 6 Wes. ps 492.
Alexander Alexandrinus, apud Theodoret.
histor. ecclesiast. |. 1, ¢. 4, p. 723.
Alexander Lycopolitanus, ce. Manicheos,
(Combefisii graecor. patrum auctarium no-
vissimum, Paris, 1672, 't..2,{. 4,) p. 482.
c. 8, p. 494, 500. ο. 5, p.494, 500. ¢. 24,
Ρ. 497.
Apollinaris Hierapolitanus.
chale Alexandr. p. 298.
Apollonius, (ap. Euseb. hist. eceles. 5, 18,) p.
513.
Arius ad Alexandrinos, (ap. Epiphanium
heeres. 69, § 7,) p. 716.
Arnobius, disputatio, ec. gentes, 1]. 1, 6. 13, p.
688. 1,39, p. 688. 2,71, p. 689. 3, 7,
p. 150. 4, 36, p.689. Arnobii conflictus
cum Serapione, (Bibliothec. patr. Lugdu-
nensis, t. 8,) p. 599.
Athanasius, c. Apollinarem, 1. 2, ὁ 3, p. 602,
603. historia Arianorum ad Monachos,
ὁ 64, p. 154. § 71, p. 603. Oratio IV.,
6. Arianos, ὁ 8, p. 598. § 11, p.597. §
Chronicon pas-
12, p.597. § 18, p. 595. § 21, 22, p.598.
§ 23, p. 599. § 25, p. 595, 597, 598, 600.
§ 26, p. 596. de sententia Dionysii, § 14,
p. 606. de synodis, ce. 4, p. 602. ο. 43, p.
606. de decretis synodi Nicene, t. 1. P.
2, pag. 68, p. 716. ὁ 26, p. 607.
Athenagoras, legatio pro Christianis, f. 37,
ed. Coloniensis, p. 522
Augustinus, c. Faustam Manicheum, |. 11,
p. 502. ἢ 1Bye.’3,;pe49h. 01,18; p. 502.
1, 18, ¢. 5, p. 505. 1. 20, Ρ. 494. 1. 32, p
500. c. Fortunatum, |. 1, (appendix,) p.
505. 6. Julian, opus imperf. 1. 3. ο. 172,
p- 494, 497. ο. 174, ». 496. c. 177, p.
497,498. c. 186, p. 496, 497.” c. 187. p.
497. 6. epist. fundamenti. c. 5, p. 487.
c. 8, p. 505. ἐν 13, p. 490. de Genesi, c.
Manichzeos, 1. 9116. 39, p. 497. de mori-
bus Manich. c. ao seqq. Ρ. 503. de mo-
rib. eceles. cathol. c. 35, p. 504. de natura
boni, c. 46, p. 495. breviculum colla-
tionis cum Donatistis, ἃ. 3, c. 13, p. 150,
151. de heresibus, ἢ. 32, p. 504. ἢ. 86,
p- 685. sermo, 202, § 2, p. 302. sermo,
212, p. 307, 308. de civitat. Dei, 1. 5, 6.
SiMp. 91 136. .Ὁ. Syseqq. pea: 1. 9. 0:29.
p 172. de doctrina Christ. 1. 2, ¢. 11, p.
303.
Barnabas epistola, ο. 9,15, p. 650.
650.
Basilides tractatus (ἐξηγητικά) in disputa-
tione Archelai cum Mani, c. 55, p. 402.
apud Clementem Alexandr. Stromata ].
6. f. 508, p. 405. f. 509, p. 403.
Basilius Cesar, epistol. 188, (ep. canon. 1,)
p- 320.
Canon, de canone novi testamenti fragm.
(antiquit. italic. evi Jud. ed. Muratori, t.
3,) p. 660.
Celsus, λόγος ἀληϑῆς, (ap. Originem, c. Cel-
sam): Ὁ δ Ὁ 160. ΟΣ 7, op: ΠΙ Ὁ.
28, p. 161, 162. ς. 67, p.169. 1. 3, 6. 13,
pe ΘΟ (ps P6525 Cha pbous » Ὁ.
41, 42, p. 169. ¢. 55, 63, 67, p. 169. 1. 3,
c. 10, seqq. p. 164. ¢. 44, p. 164. 6. 59,
p- 166: e658) (p. 166. 14628. 4171.
c. 62, seqq. p. 166. ἀρ 69,p.h67. © e) 73,
p. 1609. ὁ. 75, p. 167, 169. ¢. 76, p. 167.
e S81, p. 168. 6.99; p.- 168.0 Lb seh63.p:
164. δ ΘΟ ΘΟ hey, wp. M7 76:
41 0. ΤΌΤ δ ΘΟ ΟΥ̓ ΞΟ:
165. c. 62, p.165. 1. 8, ο. 17, p. 289 6.
21, p. 265. κατὰ μάγων, p. 161.
Chronica Edessena, (Assemani bibl. orient.
t. 1, f. 891,) p. 291.
Claudius Apollinaris, ap. Euseb. 1. 5, p.117.
“lemens Alexandrin. ed. Paris, 1641, προ-
τρεπτικός, f. 45, p. ae f. 69, p. 620. παι-
δαγωγόξι, ϑοὺ 1 ΟῚ 1 p2692) She. 6p.
6 2. {0 103, Ῥ. 317. f. 118, p. 564.
1. 2, c. 8, f.176, p. 691. 1. 2, 6. 12, p. 382.
f. 142, p. 826. £.194,d. p. 286. 1.3,¢.
1, p. 278, 292. f 246, p. 293. f. 247, p.
298, 312. f. 250, p. 281. f. 255, p. 274.
f. 256, p. 317. f. 257, p. 262. Stromata,
, f. 272, p. 351. ἢ 578, ἃ. Ῥ. 580. ἢ
. £278, p. 534, 555: f. 291,
‘F292; 7. Sasso Ey O9B ΘΟΕ ΤΩΣ
, p. 452. ἢ. 309, p.5387. f. 311, p. 520.
3, p. 621. ἢ 818, p. 588. f. 319, p.
537. f. 320, p. 450. f. 340, p. 301.
1. 2, f. 362, a. p. 530. f.
63, Ρ. 414,415. £364, p. 558. f. 365,
Ὁ. p. 581. f.371, p. 414, ΘΗ i372. 0.
530. f. 373, p. 530. £.375, p. 425. f.379,
p- 646. f. 381, p.532. f. 384, p.531. f.
407, p. 419. f. 408, p. 402 f.409, p. 482.
f. 411, p. 885, 453. (£414, pales, eis,
f. 497. p. 415, 416. f. 498, p. 451. ἢ 431,
p. 466. f. 436, p. 452. f. 438, p.452. ἢ
448, p. 451. f. 444, p.531. f. 446, p. 278,
457. f. 448, p. 188. f. 449, p. 280. f.
451, p. 429. f. 453, p.620. f. 457, p. 262.
c. 12, p.
INDEX TO THE CITATIONS.
f 460, d. p. 452, 453, 632. f. 465, p. 456,
458. f. 466, p. 620. f. 469, p. 620. f.
470, p. 620, 633. 1. 4, f. 490, p. 532. f.
503, p. 434. f. 503, p. 434. f. 506, p. 407,
412. f. 507, p. 403. f.508, p.405. f. 508,
a. p. 406, 424. f. 509, b. p. 448. ἔ 511,
p. 520, 610. f.518, 519, p.540. f. 528.
Ὁ. p. 580. ἢ 533, p. 280. f. 536, p. 413.
f. 539, p. 400. Ι. 5, f. 546, p. 468. f. 549.
p. 654. f. 554, p. 535. f. 565, p. 586. f.
582, p. 307. f. 583, d. p.407. f..587, p.
. 533. f. 591, p. 610.
]. 6, ἢ 621, p. 402. f. 636, seqq. p. 638.
f. 638, 639, p. 656. f. 641, p. 407. 409,
427. f. 644, p. 537, 538. f. 647, p. 520,
536. ἢ 649, p. 632. f. 652, p. ὅ40. ἢ
655, p. 535. f. 659, b. p. 528, 535. ἢ. 660.
Ρ. 528. f. 662, p. 620. f. 667, p. 622. f.
672, p. 176, 538. f. 675, p. 535, 539. f.
677, p. 553. f. 680, p.364. f. 688, p. 538,
f. 690, p. 683. f. 691, p.541. f. 693, p.
537. 1.7, f. 700, p. 585. f. 702, p. 541,
f. 708, p. 586. f. 715, b. p. 289. f.°722,
p. 286, 452. f. 728, p. 286. f. 730, p. 551.
Ε 732, b. p. 308. ὦ 732, p. 532. f. 741,
p- 281. f.753, p. 164. f. 754, p. 307. f.
755, p. 808. f. 756, p.533. f..757, p. 532.
f. 759, p. 826. | f2 762; p. 533..f. 764, p.
417. τίς πλούσιος σωζόμενος, c. 11, p. 279.
ΟἽ 21, p. 621. ¢. 42, p. 196. Ὑποτυπώσεις,
apud Euseb. prep. evang. |. 2, c. 2, p.
691. epistoli. Euseb. b. 3, p. 691.
Clemens Romanus, epistola J. ad Cor. ¢. 5,
p. 85. 6. 82, 33, p. 644. ὁ. 40, p. 659. c.
42, p. 79, 185, 189. ¢. 44, p.189. Clem-
entinz homilize, ἢ. 2, ὁ. 6, p. 354. ὁ. 9, p.
354. ¢.17, p.362. ¢. 38, p.358. ἢ. 3,
c. 19, p. 860. ¢. 20, p. 354, 855. ἢ. 6, 6.
4, p. 357. c. 22, 23, seqq. p. 357. c. 26,
p- 355. ὁ. 42, p. 354. ς. 51, p. 359, 360.
πὸ δ’ ΡΣ θ 55: > c.27 5 pasbOn. 0.0:
854. ¢. 11,12, p. 8656. c. 22, 23, p. 356.
h. 16, ¢. 10, p. 358. 6. 12, p. 601. ἢ. 17,
C.17, p. 359: ¢219;) p7r352.'. h. 18, ¢€.13,
p. 357. Clementine Recognitiones, p. 32.
1. 8, ¢. 53, p. 359.
Commodianus, instructiones, p. 68. i. 26, p.
687. 1.47, p. 200. i. 48, p. 280. i. 57, p.
687. i.59, p. 281. i. 61, p. 687. i. 62,
p. 260. i. 66, p. 198, 237. i. 76, p. 303,
329. i. 79, p. 288. i. 80, p. 687.
Commonitorium, quomodo sit agendum cum
Manichzxis, (August. ed. Bened. t. 8, ap-
pend,) p. 504.
Concilium ITllihgritanum, ¢. 13, p. 277. 6.
18, p- 198.6 δ. pi 229. o'e. 26, pii296.
¢e. 33, p. 277. 6. 36, p. 293. ce. 43, p. 301.
c. 77, p. 233.
Concilium Neocesariense, c. 12, p. 238.
Constitutiones apostolice, 1. 2, c. 28, p. 326.
ΘΕ p. 7035, ¢..26).p. 2015 6 512).
262. c. 32, p. 197.
Cornelius, ep. R. Epistola ad Fabium epise.
Antiochenum, ap. Euseb. h. eccles. 643, p.
201, 238, 690.
Cyprianus, ed. Baluz., ep. 1 ad Donatum, p.
249, 263. ep. 2, p. 134, 231. ep. 3, p.
180
206, 226. ep.4, p 134.
200, 224. ep. 6, p. 229.
ep. 9, p. 227. ep. Ll, p. 227. ep. 12, p.
231. ep. 13, p. 200, 231. ep. 14, p. 134,
226, 231. ep. 18, p. 133. ep. 21, p. 159.
ep. 22, p. 229. ep. 26, p. 220. ep. 31, p.
132, 239. ep. 33, p. 199. ep. 38, p. 233.
ep. 40, p. 131, 207, 223. ep. 42, p. 241.
ep. 49, p. 224, 225,233. ep. 52 ad An-
tonianum, p. 220, 234, 235, 239, 240, 242,
243, 244, 245,654. ep. 54, p. 234. ep. 55
ad Cornelium, p. 136, 214, 233, 235. ep.
56, p. 136. ep. 59, p. 313. ep. 60, p. 256.
ep. 61, ad Euchratem, p. 267. ep. 62 ad
Pomponium, p. 277. ep. 63, 0». 3832. ep.
66 ad Fernenesium, p. 198,199. ep 68.
p- 200, 217, 604. ep. 69 ad Pupianum,
p. 236. ep. 70, p. 315, 322, 323. ep. 71
ad Quintum, p. 318, 219, 320. ep. 72 ad
Stephanum, p. 316. ep. 72 ad Jubaja-
num, p. 316. ep. 73, p. 320, 323. ep. 74
ad Pompeiium, p. 214, 216, 822. ep. 75,
p- 126, 201, 207, 216, 220, 318, 320, 322.
329. ep. 76 ad Magnum, p. 307, 309, 310.
ep. 77, p. 138. ep. 82 ad Successum, p.
139. ep. 83, p.139. ep.ad Demetrianum,
p. 258. de lapsis, p. 134, 230, 332, (edid.
Baluz. f. 189.) p. 640. de habitu virgin-
um, p. 277. de spectaculis, p. 263. ὁ. 29,
p- 265. de mortalitate, p. 258, 334. de
opere et eleemosynis, p. 330, 647. de
unitate ecclesiz, p. 210. de oratione do-
minica, p. 829. apologia, p. 136. de tes-
timoniis, initio, p. 686. c. 25, p. 253, 648.
c. 26, p. 253. ¢..28, p. 227. ¢. 54, p. 620.
finis, p. 686. de rebaptismate, p. 322,
928.
Diognetus, epistola ad, p. 69. ὁ 11, p. 644.
Dionysius Alexandrinus, apud Euseb, h. ec-
cles. 5. 5, (epist. ad Stephanum,) p. 320.
6. 41, (ep. ad Fabium Antiochenum,) p.
130. 6. 46, (ad Novatianum,) p. 241. 7.
1, (ad Sixtum Secundum,) p. 320. 7. 5,
ep: Ὁ, Φ.. 192;
ep. 75 p. 135.
Ῥ. 318. 7.6, p.599. 7.7, (ad Philemo-
nem,) p. 712. 7.8, p. 243. 7.9, p. 821.
7.10, p. 137. 7. 22, p. 958. 7. 24, (περὶ
ἐπαγγελιῶν.) p. 653. Preeparatio evangel.
1. 15, (περὶ φύσεως.) p. 713. apud Athan-
asium, de sententia Dionysii, (ἔλεγχος καὶ
ἀπολογία, ad Dionysium Rom.,) p. 608.
§ 14, (ep. ad Ammonium et Euphranor.)
p- 606. apud Routh, reliquiz sacre, vol.
2, (ad Basilidem,) p. 712.
Dionysius Rom. apud Athanasasium. De
decretis synodi Nicsenze, § 20, (ἀνατροπῆ,)
Ρ. 610.
Disputatio Archelai cum Mani. Opera Hip-
polyti ed. Fabricius, f. 193, p. 505.
Ebed Jesu, catalogus scriptorum. Assemani
biblioth. orient. p. 682.
Ephraem Syrus. opera Syriace et latine, t. 2,
sermo 1, f 438, seqq. p. 402. sermo 14,
f. 468, d. p. 466. sermo 102, § 6, f. 551,
552, p. 471. ἢ, 553, 555, p. 442. ap.
Wegener de Manichzorum indulgentiis,
Lips. 1827, pag. 69, seqq. p. 533
Epiphanius, heres. h. 26, § 3,9, p.446 ἢ
.
190
80, p. 346, 351, 352, 353. § 15, p. 358.
§ 16, p. 331. § 18, p. 358. ὁ 25, p. 345.
h. 33. § 3, p. 437. h. 38, p. 331. h. 44.
§ 2, p. 475. h. 48, p. 515. h. 51, p: 526,
h. 57, p. 580. ἢ. 64, p. 696. ἢ. 62, p.
596, 597, 601. ἢ, 67, p. 602, 718. ex-
positio fidei catholics, c. 21, p. 303.
Epistole, Ecclesiz Romane ad ecclesiam
Carthageniensem, (Cypr. ep. 2,) p. 132,
231. confessorum ad Cypr., (Cypr. ep.
26,) p. 220. ecclesia Smyrnens, (Euseb.
1. 4, c. 15,) p. 109, 335. ecclesiarum Lugd.
et Vienn. (Euseb. 1. 5, c. 1, seqq.,) p. 112,
276. Petriad Jacobum (prefatio Clemen-
tinarum,) p.361. Synodiad Paulum Samo-
satenum, (Mansi cone. 1, f. 1084.) p. 503.
Ἡσαΐου αναβατικόν, ed. Lawrence, Oxon.
1819, p. 716. f. 38, 59, v. 32, 36, p. 716.
Euodius Uzal. de fide contra Manicheos, ec.
4, p. 501. ¢. 10, p. 494. @ 11, p. 490.
6. 28, p. 500.
Eusebius. Historia eccles. 1. 1, ¢. 7, p. 769.
c 10, p. 82. ¢. 10, § 2, p.85. 12, ὁ: 9,
p. 681. ¢. 13, p. 665. ¢. 23, p. 675. 1.
3, Ὁ. p. 80. c.'5, p. 343. ©. 28; p. 399.
1. 4, ¢. 3, p. 661. c. 6, p. 344. ¢. 13, p.
467. c. 15, p. 109, 335, 472. ¢.16, 17, p.
665. c. 23, p. 204, 206. c. 26, p. 101, 104,
Zuo, GiG. °C 29y p..408) e..30,"p. 718 ΟΣ
af, pc OOl; Lee) 7112. ΠΟ siipco24.
[εἶ δ, p- 117, 320; 891. C12 p. Far ve.
15. Ρ. 474. te, 16, PP S13 Sis. ΟΡ pz
661. ς 18, p. 513. ¢. 20, p. 677. ¢. 21,
Ρ. 118. 6. 24, p. 194, 298, 300, 332. 6.
2b, p. 6802) σῶν po Qld? 7212! 228)" p.
575, 580, 581, 582., 1. 6, ο. 1, p. 83, 691.
ΘΟ p> 99... G94. G7," p. 21. 2 XkOy p.
S27 ΟΡ G92.) ΚΟ a. S91. ©. 14,
p. 693, 694. ¢. 15, p. 700. 17, p. 708
6. 19, p. 81, 171, 197. ὁ. 20, p. 593, 601,
703. ¢.27,p.707. 6. 28, Ὁ. 126. 6. 81,
P7092 6/32, ΡΠ ee: Sap. 991} Ὁ:
36, p. 704. ὍΣ 37,710. ¢.39,p. 711. ὁ.
41, p. 130. ¢. 43, p. 201, 238, 316, 690.
@ 469. 24830 7G. 2 ine PLS ΟΥ̓ ͵ν ἢ:
320, 712. 6. 8, p. 348. 6. 9, p. 309, 321.
ce. 10, p. 127. © 11, p.138. ¢. 12, p.472.
C313; Loy p: Ὁ 18,p292) "hls, p.
306. c. 22, p. 258. c. 24, p. 653. c. 30,
p. 602, 603, 659. c. 32, p. 721. 1. 8, ¢.
2. p. 148. c. 4, p. 147. preeparatio evan-
géelicay 1 που Ὁ. ps 691i 9:36. 7;9p. 27.
l 4622, p. 146) 90-1, p. 91 es 1d) p20.
ΠΩ 22? ΡΒ δ.) 1.5, eT, p.146. 1. 6, αἱ
LOttp.'§0. “fm. ἢ. ἄχ. 11.7.61 8; p44
demonstratio evangelica, 1. 3, pag. 134, p.
172. vita Constantini, 1. 2, c. 32, seqq. p.
148. ς. 50, p. 145. de martyribus Pal-
est.¢. 1,3, 9... 154. οὐδ pi721. - ¢:/10,
Ρ. 472. ¢. 11, f. 388, p. 722. adversus
Hieroclem, p. 174.
᾿Εναγγέλιον Kar’ Αἰγυπτίους, apud. Epiph. h.
62, p. 601.
Evangelium ad Hebreos, apud Epiph. ἢ. 30,
§.13, p. 348. apud.Hieron. in Micham. 1.
2, 6. 7, (t. 6, f. 520,) apud Orig. in Joann.
t. 2, § 6, p. 350.
Faustys Manicheeus, apud Agust., c. Faus-
INDEX TO THE CITATIONS.
tum, I. 11, 18, p. 503. 1. 20, p.494. 1. 32,
p- 500, 502.
Felix Manicheus, apud Agust., c. Felicem,
1. 1, ¢. 19, p. 504.
Firmilianus, episc. Ceesar. epistola ad Cypr.
(Cypr. ep. 75,) p 126, 201, 207, 216, 390,
318, 320, 322.
Gennadius, c. 15, p. 686.
Gobarus, apud Photium cod. 235, p. 675.
Gregorius Naz. orat. 25, p. 82.
Gregorius Nyss. vita Gregorii Thaumatur-
DT Ge aT, Ps 790):
Hegesippus, apud Euseb., 1. 23, ο. 23, p- 675,
1. 4, ¢. 22, p. 675.
Heracleon in evang. Joann. apud Orig. in
Joann! ‘t: 2) 9! 15; pi 4232 6.9, $1 2)"p.
441. § 23, p. 873. t. 10, § 14, p. 481.
§19,p.431. t.13,§ 11, p. 373, 431. § 16,
p. 422. § 25, 80, p. 429, § 48, Ὁ. 423.
§ 51, p. 422. § 59, p. 422. t. 20, ὁ 20,
Ῥ. 422. in evangel. Luce, apud Clement.
Strom. I. 4, ἢ 503, p. 434.
Heraclianus, episc. Chalcedon.,
cod. 95, p. 485.
Hermas, Pastor, Fabr. cod. apocr. cod., 3, 1.
9, (p. 1009,) p. 464. 1.°3, p. 278, 296.
Hieronymus, (ed. Martianay.) Epist. 5 ad
Ctesiphont. p. 697. ep.27 ad Marcellum,
p. 521. ep. 29 ad Paulum, p. 705. ep.
41 ad Pamach. et Ozean. p. 608, 702.
ep. 71 ad Lucin. p. 333. ep. 72 ad Vi-
talem, p. 297. ep. 83ad Magnum. p. 661.
ep. 146 ad Evangel. p. 190. ep. 148, p.
82. de viribus illustribus, c. 1, Ὁ. 227. 6.
3, p. 849. ¢. 20, p 661. c. 25, p. 269. Ὁ.
36, p. 527. “6. 42, p. 118. ©. 47, p. 721
c. 53, p. 685. c. 60, p. 222. c. 72, p. 485.
c. 44; Pp. 723." .e.-79;<p. 6884 \ adversus
Rufinum, vol. II., p.1, p. 512. vol. 4, 1.
1, f£. 358, p. 721. 1. 1,f 359, p. 720, 721.
art 411, pe 705: ἢ ‘413, p- 589. f. 414,
p- 704. ἡ 425, p. 722. commentar. in
Isaiam, 1. 1, Ὁ. 1, t. 8, f. 71, (ed. Vallarsi,
Venet. 1767, t. 4, p. 21,) p. 349. I. 2,¢.
5, ad Isai. 5, 18, f. 83, (ed. Vallarsi, p.
130,) p. 349. 1. 9,¢. 29, v. 18, f. 250, (ed.
Vallarsi. p. 398,) p. 349. ad Isai. 31 : 7,
8, f. 261, (ed. Vallarsi, p. 428,) p. 349.
commentar. in Micham. 1. 2, e. 7, t. 6, f.
520, p. 350.
Hilarius in epist. ad Ephes. c. 4, v. 12, p.
182. in epist. ad Timoth. II., ο. 3, 7, p.
506. de synodis, § 86, p. 606.
Hippolytus contra Noetum, § 1, p. 584. apud
Phot. cod. 121, 202, p. 6
Ignatius, epistola ad Ephes. ec. 11, p. 196.
6. 20, p. 647. ep. II. ad Polycarp, § 5, p,
284. ad Magnes. c. 9, p. 295, 296. ad
Smyrn. § 2, p. 631.
Trenzus, (ed. Massuet.) Heres. 1. 1, ¢. 1,
§3,p. 418. ο:. ὃ. ὁ .5; Ρ' 420: οὐδ; δ 2
424, c. 6, p. 263. c. 7 § 3, 4, p. 426. ¢.
8, ὁ 4, p. 423. ¢.10,p. 84. c. 11, § 2, p.
438. c¢.12,§ 8, ». 424. ¢. 21, § 4, p.476.
c. 24, p. 400, 448, 471. ς. 25, p. 450. 6.
26; p. 348. § 2, p. 348, 897, 452. ¢. 27,
ὁ 2, p. 471. ὁ. 31, p. 448. 1.2, ¢. 4, p.375
c. 10, § 1, p. 613. 6. 16, p. 400. 6. 22, ὁ 4,
ap. Phot.
INDEX TO THE CITATIONS.
c. 28, § 3, p. 613, 619. c. 32, ὃ 4,
. 2, p. 389. ὁ. 3, p. 196, 204.
C. 4, p- 85. ¢. δ, p- 389. Cc.
+P G79. eC: TL, ps δύο §.9jap.-527. 1 «.
12, p- 188. c. 18,§ 4, p. 560. c. 14, p.
192. c. 15, p. 890, 393. c. 17, p. 646. ὁ,
18, 20, (alias 22,) p. 642. ¢. 22, p. 635.
ς. 24, § 1, p. 209. «31, p. 642. 1]. 4, ὁ.
13, 14, p. 645. ο. 18, p. 380. § 4, p. 331.
€ 26, p. 192.2 .c. 20; p..119,;274.....c..83,
θυ G78.::§-2, p.:209;54,.9;\p-119,,.. 1, 5,
6.1. § 1, p. 635, 641. ¢. 32, p. 651. ©. 35,
p- 651. epistola ad Victorem, ap. Euseb.
5, 24, p. 215, 310, 332. epistola ad Flori-
num, ap. Euseb. 5. 20, p. 677.
Isidorus, comment. in prophet. Parchor. ap.
Clem. Strom. 1. 6, f. 641, p. 406.
Julius Africanus, epistola ad Aristidem, ap.
Euseb. 6. 31, (Routh, reliq. sacr. vol. 2, p.
115,) p. 709.
Justinus Martyr, (ed. Colon. 1686,) apolo-
gia 1. § 66, p. 648. f. 540, p. 69. f. 48, p.
586. f. 50, 51, p. 662. apologia II. p.
250, 259, 275, 283, 303, 662. f. 56, p.609.
f. 74, p. 670. ἢ 75, p. 580. f. 81, p. 667.
f. 88, p. 62. f. 92, p. 661. f. 98, p. 79.
§ 10, p. 635. § 61, p. 305. dialogus, ο. Try-
phone Judzo, f. 218, p. 9, 275. ἢ 247, p.
669. ἢ 267, p. 342, 585. f. 273, p. 670.
f. 291, p. 347. f. 315, p.348. £317, p.
642. f. 320, p. 668. ἢ 322, p. 642. ἢ.
327, 331, p.585. f. 338, p. 298. f. 344,
p- 609. f. 345, p. 129, 330. f. 370, p. 62.
cohortatio, p. 15, p. 666. Δόγος πρὸς
“Ἕλληνας, p. 666. editio Benedict. apol. I.
§ 4, 6, 8, p. 665.
Lactantius, institutiones, 1. 4, 6. 27, p. 145.
Lae. Lipp: 126/011. 6, e213, pr 172; de
mortib. persecutorum, c. 10, p. 150, 152. ο.
16, p. 154.
Leontius Byzantinus contra Nestorium et
Eutychen, (translation,) Greek fragments
in Erlich dissertatio de erroribus Pauli
Samosateni, Lips. 1745, (p. 23,) p. 602.
Mani, epistola fundamenti, ap. August. de
epist. fund. ὁ. 13, p. 490. de fide contra
Manicheos, (Euod. Uzal.,) ὁ. 4, p. 501. e¢.
11, p. 490. thesaurus, ap. August. de
natura boni, c. 46, p. 495. epistola ad
Scythianum Fabricius bilioth. graeca, vol.
7, f. 316, p. 486. epistola ad virginem
Menoch, ap. August. opus imperfect. c.
Julian. |. 3, ¢. 174, p.496. ¢. 172, p. 498.
ad Patricium, av. August. op. imp. ec. Ju-
lian. c. 186, p 497. ad Abdam, Fabr.
biblioth. greeca, (edit. nova,) vol. 7, ἢ. 316,
Ῥ. 499. epistole Fabr. biblioth. greca,
vol. 7, f. 316, p. 502.
Melito Sard. apud Euseb. 1. 4, 6. 26, p. 101,
102.
Methodius, Combefis. biblioth. grec. patr.
auctar. noviss. P. 1. f. 113, p. 358. περὶ
κτισμάτων, ap. Phot. cod. 235, p. 569. de
libero arbitrio, Galland, biblioth. patr. t. 3,
f. 762, p. 422.
Miltiades περὶ τοῦ μὴ δεῖν προφήτην ἐν
ἐμστάσει λαλεῖν, p. 519
Minucius Felix, Octavius, p. 92. ¢. 8, p. 78
187
271. ὍΣ ΘΙ p16.
Montanus, apud Epiphan. heres. 48. Euseb.
Lebee 16, p. 515.
Novatianus de trinitate, ¢. 6, 8, p. 560. epist.
ad Dionys. Alexandr. ap. Kuseb. 1. 6, ¢
46, p. 241,
Optatus Milevensis de schismate Donatista-
rum, ed. Du Pin, (p. 174,) p. 150.
22, p. 155.
L.A e@,
Origenes, ὁ. Celsum, |. 1, ¢. 1, p. 74, 88, 108.
c.2,p.4. 6. 4, p. 160, 559.
544. ¢. 28, p. 161, 162. ¢. 32, p. 639.
CAG peiaa (Ce 5iqp- 454s, C68; po 169,
250... 1./2,,¢.:9, p. 636. .¢. 10; p, 169... δι
23, p. 629. “0. 27, p. 165. ¢. 34, 41, 42
p. 169. ¢. 55, 63, 67, p. 169. 1.3, f. 55
Ps 70.428. dy Po 8s. δ By ps ΡΣ e2.9)-p.
193.6: LOG LGA, 4p 89s e715) p,
128. 6. 24, p. 75. 6. 27, p. 474. ο. 29,
p- 250. ¢. 41, p.636. ¢. 42, p. 640. ὦ
44, p. 1064. ο. 46, p. 544. ©. 50, p. 305.
c. 51, p. 219, 305. ©. 59, p. 166. ¢. 65,
Py l66.ex, 70, pr oO. ΘΟ. ὍΡΟ ων 1.
4,c. 15, p.639 oc. 16, p. 633. Ὁ, 36, p.
160. , c. 40; p. 627. ¢..48, p. 171. ¢.57,
p: 655: . c. 62, 69;:/p..168., ὁ 69, 0.656.
δ 69,7576, 8b, pu 167,,168.1e. 73,75; p.
169% ΟΥ̓́Θ. pal68.* 1.5 1 λσ Ο Ο:
23, p. 570. ¢. 54, p. 475. 6761, p. 177,
348. ὃ. 63, p. 164. 1. 6, & 12, seqq. p.
544. ¢. 13, p. 544. ὁ. 15, p. 167. ὁ. 24,
p- 699.9 16, 25,6 p.. 91s ἐκ 2854p. T28ey Ὁ.
35, p. 170. c¢. 36. 42, p. 161. c. 42, p.
402. 6. 44, p.623. ¢. 75, p. 639. c¢. 77.
p. 639. 1. 7, c. 26, p. 128. 1. 8, ¢. 12, p.
577, 588. ¢. 17, p. 90, 284.. Ὁ; 21, p. 265,
c. 22; p. 300.. ὁ: 41, p..108. c. 63, 67, p.
91.) e968; pel 29.269; δε,
p29.) e072; pi902 ¢ fins ap.-272: (In
Joannem, ft. 1, § 9, p. 548,552. 11,p
550. 16, p. 623. 17, p.103. 22, p.544.
30, p. 636. 32, p.588. 40, p. 564. 42,
p. 593." t.2, § 1, p. 588. 2, p. 576, 577;
587, 590. 8, p. 578. 4, p. 552. 6, p. 350.
7, p. 623, 624. 15, p. 628. 18, p. 577.
21, p. 643. t.5,§ 4, p.367. (edit. Lom-
matzsch, vol. 1, p. 172,) p. 478. t. 6, § 1,
p- 704. 2, p. 520. 12, p.441. 17) p.
258, 648. 23, p. 430. “24, p. 703. 28,
p.447. t.10,p.590. §4,p.556. 13,p
702. 14,19, p.399. 21, p.577. 27, p.
BAT: ti 2764'S, pi 481g δὴν 2.13, Ὁ 5,
p. 551. 10, p.432. 11, p. 432. 16, p.
421, 422, 427. 20, p. 432. 21, p. 560.
25, p. 568, 590, 591. 34, p. 627. 38, 41,
p. 476. 48, p. 438. 52, p. 546. 59, p.
432, 624. t.18, § 1, (ed. Lomm. vol. 2,
p. 143,) p. 591. 8, p. 251. 4. p. 643. 5,
p- 624, 625, 630, 638. t. 19, § 1, p. 591
t. 20. § 16, p. 590. 20, p. 421, 422. 28,
p. 549, 633. t. 28, § 14, p. 643. t. 32,
§5, p. 700. 11, p. 627, 628, 636. 16, p.
649. 18, p. 568, 569, 587. In Math. ed.
Huet. t. 2, § 10, p. 624. t. 10, § 2, p. 623.
9, p. 646. (ed. Lomm. vol. 3, p. 26,) p.
548. t.11,§ 12, p.345 14, p. 649. 17
c. 9, p. 164,
~
738
p.694. t.12,§6,p.647. 37, p. 633. t. 13,
ὁ 4, (ed. Lomm. vol. 3, p. 210.) p. 571.
7, p- 201 22, p. 630. 26, p. 622, 636. t.
15, ὁ 8, p. 697. 7, (ed. Lomm. vol. 3, p.
340,) p. 552. t.15,§14,p.709. t.16,§ 1,
p- 695. 8, p. 594, 603, 636, 640, 644. 9, p.
530. 12, p.345. 16, p.528. 22, p. 233.
25, p. 705. t.17, § 14, p.578. 26. p. 699.
30, p. 625. t. 25, § 1, p. 564. f. 268, p.
850. f. 290, p. 550. ἢ 344, p. 636. f.
363, p. 522. f. 367, (t. 15,) p. 698. f. 374,
375, p. 552. f. 378, p. 563. ἢ, 381, (t.
15,) p. 708. f, 402, p. 656. f. 423, p. 636.
f. 445, (τ. 16,) p. 705. opera de la Rue,
vol. 3, f. 887, p. 639. f. 898, p. 649.
Commentar. series in Matth. § 100, (ed.
Lomm. t. 4, p. 446,) p. 634. Homiliz in
Jeremiam, h. 2. 16, p. 626. ἢ. 8. 8, p. 705.
h. 9. 3, p. 569. h. 9. 4, p. 589. h. 14, p.
627. h. 15. 6, p. 636. h. 18. 6, p. 563. h.
18. 12, p. 346. h. 19. 4, p. 2
ἀρχῶν, preef. f. 4, p. 568. Ι΄
568. (ed. de la Rue, t.
δ᾽ 8.9, p- 698: ΘΟ, Ἢ
Ρ. 568. c. 2. 2; p 623.
5. 3, p. 088. 6. 5. 5, p. 638. 5
c. 8, p. 625. ὁ. 8. 3, Ὁ. 697. ὁ, 9, p. 570
c. 10, p. 463. de oratione dominica, ΟἿ
Ρ.695. ς. 19, Ρ. 286. c. 18, p. 285.
15, p. ὅ90. ὁ. 22, p. 285.
630. Commentar. in epist. ad Rom. 1.
(ed. Lomm. vol. 5, p. 250,) ]
(ed. Lomm. vol. 5, p. 251,) 1.
(ed. Lomm. vol. 6, p. 107,) p. 628. 6.
») ]
3) ]
-
.
(ed. Lomm. vol. 6, P 108
(ed. de la Rue, t. 4, f. 549 Ρ. 404.
p- 314. commentar. in Genesin, init. p.
568. ed. de la Rue, t. 2, f. 25, p- 676.
Selecta in Psalmos, ed. de la Rue, t. 2, f.
570, p. 651. ed. Lomm. t. 11, p. 388, p.
655. commentar. in Exod. 10: 27, p. 629.
ed. Lomm t. 8, p. 299, p.613. ed. Lomm.
τ. 8, p. 300, p.564. commentar. in Titum
fragm. p- 578. homilia in Isaiam, 4, 1, p.
625. homilia in Lucam, 14, p. 314. "de mar-
tyribus, ὃ 4, p. 706. 7, p. 625. 12, p. 637.
epistola ad Gree. Thaumaturg. Ῥ- 287, epis-
tolaad Jul. African. ὁ 4,p.710 5, p. 708,
epist. ad Demetrium, (apud Hieron. adv.
Rufinum, 2, f. 411, ed. Mart.,) p. 704.
epist. ad synodum, (Hieron. adv. Ruf. 2,
f. 411, ed. Mart.,) p. 705. epist. t. 1, f. 3,
(ed. de la Rue,) p. 701. dialogus de recta
in Deum fide, (opp. de la Rue, t. 1, f. 807.)
p. 474. Philocalia, ο. 1, p. 17, p. 557, 681.
p. 28, p. 554. p. 51, p. 554. c¢. 2, p. 6, 10,
pone. 0: 13, ‘p. TLS.) ος 14) Ῥη δύο δ οι
15, p. 544, 553. p. 139, p. 556. c. 24, (ed.
Lomm. t. 11, p. 450,) p. 680. c¢. 26, (de
la Rue, t. 2, f 111; Lomm. t. 8, p. 305,)
p. 629.
Pacianus Barcelenensis, epist. 3, contra No-
vat., (Galland. biblioth. patr. t. 7,) p. 246.
Palladius, Lausiaca, c. 147, p. 708.
Pamphilus, apologia Origenis, (ed. de la
Rue, t. 4, ἢ. 35,) p. 640.
Papias, λογίων κυριακῶν ἐξηγήσεις, fragm.
INDEX TO THE CITATIONS.
J. A. Cramer Catena in acta apost. Oxon.
1838, p. 12, p. 650.
Paulus Samosatenus, ap. Epiphan. heres. ἢ.
67, p. 602. ap. Leont. Byzant. contra
Nest. et Eutych. p. 602.
Περίοδοι ἀποστόλων, act. conc. Nic. 2, actio
5, (ed. Mansi, t. 13, f. 167,) p. 501.
Philostorgius, hist. eccles. 1. 3, c. 4, 5, p. 88.
Photius, cod. 95, p. 485. cod. 111, p. 692.
cod. 118, p. 693, 704. cod. 121, p. 681.
cod. 202, p. 682. cod. 255, p. 675.
Polycrates, ap. Euseb. ἢ. eccles. 5. 24, p. 194,
298.
Pontius diaconus, vita Cypriani, p. 222, A.
1, p. 223.
Preedestinatus, h. 26, 86, p. 685.
Ptolemeus, ep. ad Floram, p. 437, 438.
Rhodon, ap. Euseb. ἢ. eccl. 5. 18, p. 467.
Rufinus, expositio symboli apostolici, p. 307.
de adulteratione librorum Origenis, (opp.
Hieron. t. 5, f. 351, 64. Martianay,) p. 705.
Sabellius, ap. Athan. c. Arian. or. 4, § 8, p.
598. §11, p. 597. ee 129; 598, 600.
§ 13, p. 595. § 20, 21, 22, p. 598. § 23,
p- 599. §°25, Ὁ. 595,597, '598, 599. ap.
Basihium, ep. 210, 214. § 3, ep. 235, § 6,
p. 596. ap. Epiphan. heres. 62, p. 596.
ap. Justin. Mart. dial. ec. Tryph. Jud. f.
358, (ed. Colon.,) p. 597. ap. Theodoret.
heeret. fab. 2. 9, p. 600.
Severus Asmonin., (Renaudot, hist. patri-
arch. Alexandr. p. 40,) p. 485.
Socrates, ἢ. eccles. 1. 8, ¢. 7, p. 598. ¢. 28,
p. 170. 1. 4, ¢. 18, Ὁ. 720. ¢. 28, p. 294.
Sozomenus, ἢ. eccl. 1. 7, ο. 19, p. 803.
Tabenistanensis, annales regnum atque le-
gatorum Dei, vol. 2, p. 1, Gryph. 1835, p.
103, p. 350.
Tatianus, oratio contra Grecos, § 19, p.
671.
Tertullianus, Apologeticus, vol. 2, f. 63, p.
76. £..98, p. 79... G1, p. 84. ¢. 38, ΡΞ 269.
c; 4, p84: en 5,-p. 93,116.) αὐ ΡΥ.
c 17; pe 171... δ. 21, p. 272; 168b.) ey a4,
p- 90. ¢..39, p. 76, 191, 825. .¢. 42; p.
259, 273. 6. 46, p. 78. ad Nationes, 1. 1,
c. 5, p. 218, 254. οἱ 18, p.77. ad Scapu-
lam; ¢s 25, Ὁ: L275.) .ch4ipoliBy LIM rons;
p- 102, 119. ad Martyres, c. 1, p. 230.
de idololatria, c. 6, p. 262. -¢. 11, p. 262,
6. 14, p.277, 301. ¢.15,p. 91, 969. ὁ. 18,
p- 271. ¢. 19, p. 273. de spectaculis, c.
1; p. 265.) το. 2, p..72: .eii24)\p. 26aniiide
corona militis, c. 2, p. 273. ¢.3, p. 293,
308, 309, 334, 517. “6. 4, p. 269. c¢. 11 p.
270. Cs 13, p- 269. de fuga in persecu-
tione, ¢. 12, p12), 1229 521: ἃ, 18,Np.
121... ¢. 114, pe 191: de pudicitia, α. 1,
p- 214. 0. 4, DP: S225iGe4, p. 202 ee 12,
p- 517. ¢. 19, p. 221, 315, 523. 6. 21,
p- 517. .¢. 22, -p. 5232, de poenitentia, c.
5, p. 220. c. 6; p. 232. . ¢,,9) pp; 249, 220.
6. 10, p. 219. de jejuniis, c. 11, p. 525.
6. 13, p. 206, 256, 280, 521. 6. 14, p. 294,
296. c. 17, p. 256. de exhortatione cas-
titatis, c. 5, p. 680. 6. 11, p. 334, 522. de
baptismo. c. 7, p. 315. 6. 8, p. 316. ¢. 15
INDEX TO THE CITATIONS.
p..818. .c. 17, p. 195,196. ΟΣ 18, p. $12,
615. de virginibus velandis, c. 1, p.516.
c. 9, p. 188, 214. de pallio, p. 275. de
monogamia, 6. 1, p. 522. 6. 12, p. 197.
c. 20, p. 522. ad uxorem, ]. 2, c. 4, p. 255.
c. 8, p. 255, 281, 284. de cultu foemina-
rum, £2, ¢.- 8s ps 282 οὐ pe 275i \e.1,
p. 280. de patientia, c. 1, p. 616, 619.
de oratione, c. 6, p. 648. c. 19, p. 332. ¢.
23, p. 259, 296. c. 25, 26, p. 286, seqq. c.
28, (Muratori Anecdota bibl. Ambros. t.
3,) p. 284. De anima, c. 9, Ὁ. 521. ὁ, 10,
p. 615. 6. 21, p. 617, 619. c¢. 22, p. 616,
518. c. 41, p. 616, 646. c.47,p.75. ¢.
55, p. 654. c. 56, p. 523. c. 58, p. 654.
de testimonio anime, c. 1, p. 559. de
carne Christi, c. 5, p. 681. ¢. 6, p. 642.
c. 9, p. 631. 6.1], 5644. p. 560, 625. 6.
c. 14, p. 631. de resurrectione carnis, c.
2. p. 474. . c. 8, p. 315, 648. ὁ. 48, p. 308.
478. adv. Judxos, c. 7, p. 85. adv. Va-
lentinianos, ¢. 4, p.437. c.5,p.678. adv.
Praxeam, c.3, p. 576. δὴ 7, p: 560. c. 10,
p.584. ¢.11,p.642. ¢.14, 26, 27, p. 584.
contra Marcionem, |. 1, ¢. 2, p. 684. ¢. 5,
p- 467. ¢. 7, p. 466. c. 10, p.559. ¢.11,
p- 468. ¢. 14, γ᾽ 315. ¢.15, p. 466. ec.
19, p. 469, 559. 6. 20, p. 680. ©. 28, p.
AS, OF S45 Px bias (LirB iG. 12) 13,8 p.
561. c. 16, 27, p.562. c.29, p.562. 1.
Se 35, Pi 4705) 16.3; -4, p47] 5.2 15," p:
470. c. 24,p.468. 1.4, p. 462. ¢. 2,3,
Ρ. 473. ¢. 5, p. 474. ὁ. 9, p. 465, 470, 561,
Gay, p-A6S, G22, prols. ΟΣ 295 pi 471,
ΠῚ, CITATIONS FROM
ZElius Lampridius, vita Alexandri Severi,
ec. 24,p. 103. c. 45, p. 199. vita Com-
modi, c. 6,7, p. 119. vita Heliogabali, c.
3, 6, 7, p. 175.
flius Spartianus, vita Hadriani, ec. 22, p.
102. vita Caracalle, ὁ. 1, p. 703. vita
Septimii Severi, c. 17, p. 120.
Ammianus Marcellinus, 1. 25, c. 4, p. 107.
Apollonius Tyanensis, apud Euseb. preepa-
rat. evangel. |. 4, c. 13, (Porphyr. de abstin.
earn. |. 2,§ 34), p. 26. epistolee, (Philostra-
tus opp. ed. Olearius ep. 58, f. 401,) p. 31.
Arrhianus, diatribe, 1. 4, ¢. 7, p. 159.
Aristides, encomium Rome, p. 88.
nes, p. 73.
Aristoteles, ethica Nicomach. 1. 3, ¢. 7, p.
611. 9.13, p. 267. 10.7, p. 628. ethica
magna, 1, (ed. Becker, p. 1197,) p. 558.
1. 34, p. 281. ethica Eudem. 3. 3, p. 19.
Metaphysica, 10. 8, (ed. Becker. t. 2, p
1074,) p. 7. Politica, 1. 2, p. 46. 3. 5, Ὁ.
29. de anima, 3. 5, p. 426.
Artemidorus, Oneirocrit. 1. 4,5,¢. 18, p. 275.
Athenzus, Deipnosoph. 1]. 1, § 36, p. 205.
Aulus Gellius, noctes attic, 1. 12, ¢. 11, p.
158.
Cicero de legibus, 1. 2, c. 8, p. 86.
oratio-
739
c. 35, p. 470. 6.86, p.465. 6. 40, p. 648.
1.5, ¢. 1,10, p. 478. adv. Hermogenem,
p- 566. 6, 15, p. 366. ¢. 36, p. 617. Pre-
scriptio hereticorum, ο. 13. p. 685. ¢. 19,
p. 582. 6. 22, p. 918. 6. 80, p. 462, 463,
474. ς. 39, p. 463. ¢. 41, p. 201, 328, 478.
addit. p. 462. addit. ο. 53, p. 580.
Testamentum XII. patriarcharum. Test.
III. ¢.8,p.174. t.1V. (Jud.) ¢. 21, p. 365.
t. IV. οὐ 23, p. 348. t. VII. (Dan.) ¢. 5, p.
348, 352.
Theodorus, Panegyricus in Originem, ο. 15,
ΠΡ Gri
Theodoretus, heeret. fab. I. 14, p. 444. 19,
p. 567, 618. 20, p. 458. 21, p.458. ἢ.
IL.3, p. 396. 9, p. 600. f. III 3, p. 584.
Theodoretus, ἢ. 600]. 1. 1, ¢. 4, p. 723.
Theodotus, didase. Anatol., (opp. Clem. ed.
Par. 1641,) f..794, Ὁ. 404. f. 796, TD. p.
411. f. 797, B. p. 425, 433. f. 800, col. 2,
D. p. 477. f. 806, p. 457.
Theonas Alexandr. epist. ad Lucianum,
(@Achery Spicilegium, f. 297. Galland.
bibl. patr. t. 4,) p. 143.
Theophilus ad Autolycum, I. 1, ο. 2, p. 559.
or. 2,§ 5, p. 721. or. 9, § 5, p. 721.
Titus Bostrensis, ec. Manichzos, 1. 1, ο. 12.
ΡῈ 492. c¢. 30, p. 500. pref. ad lib. 3,
(Can. lect. ant. ed. Basn. Antv. 1725, t.
1, f. 137,) p. 496. 1 3, initio, p. 501.
Victorianus, episc. Patab., (in Pannonia,)
hist. creationis (ed. Cave, hist. ap. Galland.
bibl. patr. t. 4; Routh, rel. sacr. vol. 3, p.
273, Oxon. 1815,) p. 296.
PROFANE WRITERS.
Digesta, t. 12, 1. 12, 6. 1, § 14, p. 120. t. 14,
Lie. 4; pT 26.
Dio Cassius, p. 96. 1.55, c. 23, p. 116. 71,
p- 116. 72.4, p. 118.
Dio Chrysostomus, (orat. att. ed. Reiske,
. vol. 1, pag. 405,) orat. 12, p. 27, 86.
Diocletianus, edictum contra Manich., (Hi-
larius in epist. see. ad Timoth. 3, 7,) p.
144. edictum, c. Christian. (Euseb. ἢ. ecel
1. 8, ὁ. 2; vita Constant. 1. 2, c. 32; Lac-
tant. de mort. persecut. ο. 10,) p. 148.
Dionysius Halicarn. antiquitt. Rom. 1. 2, ¢.
18, p.6. 19, Ρ. 88. 20, p.29. 68, Ρ. 12.
4.62; 7. 56, p. 177.
Domitius Ulpianus de officiis Proconsulum
fragm. Digest. t. 14, 1. 1, 6. 4, seqq. p.
126.
Flavius Vopiscus, Saturninus, c. 8, p. 102.
vita Aureliani, ο. 20, p. 142.
Galenus de differentia pulsuum, (ed. Char-
ter,) 1. 3, c. 3, (t. 8, f. 68,) p. 164, 172.
Galerius, edictum, p. 144, 156.
Hadrianus, ep.ad Cons. Servianum, ap. Flay.
Vopise. in Saturnino, 6. 8, p. 102.
Hierocles, λόγοι φιλαλήϑεις πρὸς τοὺς Χρισ-
τιανούς, (ap. Lact. institut. 1. 5, 6. 2; de
mort. persecut. 6. 16,) p. 173.
740
INDEX TO THE CITATIONS.
Historia Edessena 6 nummis illustrata, (auct. | Philostratus, 1. 4, (f. 200, ed. Morelli, Paris,
Bayer,) 1. 3, pag. 73, p. 80.
History of the East Moguls, (in German:
Schmidt, p. 271,) p. 482.
Homerus, Ilias, 1. 2, v. 204, p. 154.
Josephus, Archeeol. 1. 16, c. 2, § 4, p. 88. 1.
18, c. 1, p. 38, 41,48. § 4,p.48. de bello
Judaico, |. 2, c. 8, § 1, p.38,43. § 6, Ὁ. 45.
§ 9, p.47. § 10, p.43. § 13, p. 45. con-
tra Apionem, I. 1, § 8, p. 41.
Julius Capitolinus, vita Antonini Pii, ¢. 9, p.
103. ¢.11,p. 105. ¢. 13, 21, p. 107. μοὶ
24, p. 105. [p. 87.
Julius Paulus, sententiz receptae, t. 21, 1. 5,
Juvenalis, Sat.2,p.16. Sat.3.v. 75, p. 108.
Lucianus. ᾿Αλιεεύς, p. 9. Demonax. Cypr.
p. 10. Hermotimos, § 81, p. 16. Ζεὺς
ἐλεγχόμενος, Ὁ. 34. Jupiter Trageedus, p.
93. Peregrinus Proteus, p. 158, 5666.
᾿Αλέξανδρος ἢ Ῥευδομάντις, § 21, p. 161.
Mare. Aurelius, εἰς ἑαυτόν, 1. 1, ο. 6, p. 78.
¢.17, p. 106. 1-1, fin. p. 116. 1. 10,¢. 14,
p. 17... 1. 18,,¢..13,p..106.- e..18,:p.-106.
1.12, c. 28, p. 106. edict. in Pandect. p. 106.
Malalas, Johannes, ed. Niebuhr, 1. 11, p. 273,
p- 39.
Mihr Nersch. Proclamation, (St. Martin,
memoires hist. et geograph. sur 1 Armenie,
t. 2,p.47. Paris 1819. Eliszeus, history’
of the religious wars between the Armen-
ians and the Persians, transl. into English
by Prof. Newman, p. 1099, Lond. 1830,) p.
489. [p. 116.
Notitia dignitatum imperii Romani, sec. 25,
Pausanias, |. 8, c. 2, ὁ 2, p. 12.
Pherecides, fragm., (ed. Sturz. p. 46,) p. 402.
Philo. Quod omnis probus liber, § 12, p.
44,48. Oratio in Flaccum, § 6, p. 50.
de vita Mosis, 1. 1, f. 607, p. 51. § 27, ἢ
625, p. 52. 1.2,§ 38, p.65. § 38, p. 55.
1.5. 627, p. 65... 1.8, £681, p..Gl.,. de
confusione ling. § 2, f. 320, p. 51. de
nominibus mutatis, § 8,p.1053,p.51. de
caritate, § 2, f. 699, p. 52. de Abrahamo,
§ 19, f. 364, p. 52. ἢ 367, p. 601. de vic-
timis, f. 238, p. 52. de victimas offerent.
f. 854, p. 61. § 12, f. 856, p. 52. de plan-
tat. Now, § 17, p. 53. 1. 2, § 8, f. 249, p.
54. Questiones in Genesin, |. 1, § 55, p.
57. 1.9.0. 3, (ed. Lips. opp. Philonis, t.
7, p- 5,) p. 538. Quis rerum divinarum
heres. ὁ 16, f. 492, p. 55. Legis allegoria,
1 1302, p06, 1 5 7 ps.50. πὸ Ρ:
59. 1. 3, § 33, p. 57. § 73, p. 397. Quod
deterior potiori insidiatur, ὁ 6,p.56. ὁ 7,
p- 60. Quod Deus immutab. § 11, p.
54,58. ὁ 14, Ὁ. 58, § 16, p.66. de pre-
mio et pena, § 7, p.57. § 18,19, Ὁ. 65.
de Cherubim, § 5, p. 58. de migratione
Abrahami, ὁ 16, p. 58. ἢ 402, p. 59. de
decalogo, § 22,p.59, 60. £.760,p.62. de
profugis, 41, p. 59. § 6, p. 60. §6, ἢ
454, p. 60. § 7, p.60. § 15, 18, p. 66.
de monarchia, 1. 2, p. 407. 1. 2, ὁ 3, Ὁ. 64,
65.. f. 816, p. 61. de vita contemplativa,
ὁ 8, p. 62. de execrationibus, ὁ 9, p. 65.
de mundi opificio, § 24, p. 396.
186, p. 703. de somniis, l. 1, f. 580, p. 54.
opp. f. Varro,
1608; c. 40, f. 181, ed. Olearius,) p. 31.
ep. 58, (ed. Olear. f. 401,) p.31.. vita
Apollonii Tyanensis, c. 6. 29, p. 174.
Plato, Pheedrus, (ed. Bip. vol. 10, p. 285,) p.
5. de Wegib. ]. 4, (ed. Bip. vol. 8,) p. 19.
1: 10, 87, 91, (ed. Bip. vol. 9,) p. 375.
Timeeus, p. 25, 26. Tim. (t.9, p.326, ed.
Bip.) p. 396. de republic. p. 26. 1. 2, (p.
257 ); 1. 3, (vol. 6, p. 266, ed. Bip.,) p. 58.
Philebus, p. 26. [p. 10.
Plinius, hist. nat. 1. 2, ¢. 4, seqq.; 1. 7, ¢. 1,
Plinius, see. epist. 1. 1, ep. 12, 22; 1. 3, ep.7;
1, 6, ep. 24, p. 16. 1. 10, ep 97, p. 97, 99.
Plotinus, (anecdota greeca, t. 2, p. 237, ed. Vil-
loison, Venet. 1781,) p. 26. Ennead, I.1. 8,
6.121, p..876;_ 101.9, p 369. 1. 10. p,
Ρ. 29. IIL 1.2, p. 406. 1. 7, p. 569, 586.
Plutarchus de superstitione, ο. 33, p. 13.
περὶ δεισιδαιμονίας καὶ ἀϑεότητος, p. 13, 14.
de Iside et Osiride, c. 1, p. 88. ¢. 20; p.
23. c. 37, p. 20. c. 71, p. 14. Non posse
suaviter vivi secundum Epicurum, ec. 20.
p. 15. 6. 22,p.21. de Stoicorum repug-
nantiis, c. 34, p. 16. ¢.6, p. 18. ¢. 13, p.
16. c. 15, p. 22. ¢. 38, p. 22. de séra
numinis vindicta, c. 3, 0. 19. de defectu
oracnlorum, 1od, c. 2, p.20.. .¢)9; par.
c. 12, p. 28. ὁ. 47, p. 23. adversus Stoi-
cos, c. 81, p. 20. Pericles, c. 7, p. 238.
de Pythiz oraculis, ¢. 9, p. 176. c¢. 7, p.
24. ¢.24,p.514. de εἰ apud Delphos,
_ ¢. 20, p. 25. Oratio 1, de Alexandri vir-
tute sive fortuna, ὁ 6. 10, p.50. Quees-
tiones Platonicee, qu. IV. p. 375. de anima
procreatrice in Timzo, c. 9, (opp. ed. Hut-
ten. t. 12, p. 296,) p. 376.
Polybius, 1. 3. 6, c. 6, p. 3. 1. 6, c. 56, p. 6.
Porphyrius de abstinentia carnis, 1. 1, c. 40,
seqq. p. 385. 1. 2, 6: 34, p. 26. vita Plo-
A, AP 2h Cs io, Do, το κα 1: aaa
περὶ τῆς Ex λογίων φιλοσοφίας, Euseb. pre-
εὐ Par. evang..|, 4.6 9 9 }5.91. lio ep:
171. ap. Augustin.de civitate Dei, 1. 19,
c. 23, p. 171. ap. Euseb. demonstrat.
evang. 1. 3, p. 1384, p. 171. . ep. ad Mar.
cellam uxorem, c. 18, p. 172. 6. 24, (ed.
Maji, Mil. 1816), p.170. κατὰ Χριστια-
νῶν Kuseb. 1. 6,¢. 19, p. 699. Euseb. ἢ.
ecclJ. Gc. 19. 9. 111:
Pseudosibyllinz, p. 96.
Seneca, ep. 41 ad Lucil. p. 18.
Septimius Severus in Digestis, 1. 12, tit. 12,
§ 14, p. 120.
Sextus, Gnome, 12, p.697. [336, p. 354.
DIX ΓΞ] in Eisenmenger, Part I.c. 8, pag.
Stobzeus, Eclogee, 1. 2, c. 1. 11, (ed. Heeren,
P. II. p. 1:0;): p..10:
Strabo, 1. Vpcs.2ypak. yak she, ¢./2pa8e
Suetonius, vita Claudii, c. 24, p. 604.
Tacitus,-Annal. I. 2, ¢. 85, p. 89. 1. 11, ¢.
15; 1.13, ¢. 32, p. 89. 1.14, ¢. 42, p. 88,
268. bo 5, 42) p.096. ¢./44, peOay
95... Hist. 2). 8, pa 90:
Themistius, or. 15. τίς 7 βασιλικωτάτη τῶν
ἀρετῶν, p. 116. ΄
pag. 15, p. 86.
Virgilius, IV. p. 177,
13694YB 128
12-12-82 32188 BF
Ren Ke ve
ΚΦ ἜΑ, hy . Γ ΕΠ
᾿ | Ἰ
[Ὁ > lari
" ἢ 4
i “i U fA
ie Pi γὼ ' ᾿
wl ee
Mi ᾿ ἢ di)
Aa r woe
Ay ;
My i
ὺ ὶ
ῃ ᾿ ' ᾿ ᾿
ν ᾿
é Ι
}
͵
ΜΉΤ
“wie
we Coe
me ἐν ,
j ) ᾿ 7
1,0")
iu γι
Η '
i
it
i
UU MALTA
1 1012 01292 2128
ΔΝ ἡ Vt ᾿
ὶ i
᾿
Sronenty
tne we
~
Sy
τ ecg
elt
ee Ley
φασι kp ew
Nai Rly .
Ἄδα οἢ χὰ κε Fy
wae
lat teers
ν᾿ -
Cpr etre
PORN Bee
NaF Oy 0 oe,
Mine
aig aeons
Sept tae ae
rs
= SES eh ee
Δ ΝΕῸΣ OAR γάνος :
oe
ae — 2 pi Wy
a ΟΝ ν nN “es
Se ee oe “Mr
Narn
6 oe: OP EH SNe orang
PS SG Ae ke. ‘
PN Ree
"
᾽ pe
{5 φηξῆροιΣν
et rae
ae “em
NP peek py
Me ohms
MONT AE aa pe
ma
Roae
La ee Oren
Ste tare
τὰ α Nias
mew
aren
ere
°F iat an gtyp wets