v"^ ^tUBRARYQ^ ^tllBRARYQc. ^OJIWDJO^ ■sa /5J\FUNIVER% B ^ .^ ^OF-CAllFOi?^ -v;,OFCAllFO% ,5,WEUfJIVERJ/A so -< -<^HIBRARYQ<;^ -5^1UBRARYQ<- ^OJIWJJO'^ ^WEUNIVERS-/A . , ^ ^ o >&AHvagni^ '^smwm'^ o AWEUNIVER% ^-lOS-ANCElfx^ ^UIBRARYO^ ^^tL i S JU c i S JU <^^^•lIBRARYQ^^ "^ - — ■ ^ -^'tllBRARYQc. < ^OFCAIIFO/?^ Jl?Aavaaii#' ^MEUNIVEW/A AvlOSANCElfj^. o o .W^EDNIVERS/A. '^/ia3AiNn3W^' ^lOSANCElCr>. O %a3AiNn-3\\^ ^\WEUNIVER% ^>.10SANCElfj> ^tUBRARY^K -j^lllBRARYQr 1 1 inr i I Linr i RECENT WORKS BT THE REVEREND H. N. OXEN HAM, M.J. THE CATHOLIC DOCTRINE of the ATONEMENT; an Historical Inquiry into its Development in the Church, with an Introduction on the Principle of Theological Developments. Second Edition. 8vo. los. 6d. London: W. H. Allen and Co., 13, Waterloo Place. CATHOLIC ESCHATOLOGY AND UNIVERSALISM; an Essay on the Doctrine of Future Retribution. London: B. M. Pickering, 196, Piccadilly. DR. PUSEY'S EIRENICON CONSIDERED in RELA- TION to CATHOLIC UNITY. A Letter to the Rev. Father Lockhart. Second Edition. 8vo. 2s. 6d. POEMS. Third Edition. Crown 8vo. 3 s. 6d. London: R. Washbourne, i8a. Paternoster-row. LECTURES on the REUNION of the CHURCHES. Translated, with Preface, from the German of J. I. von Dol- linger, D.D., D.C.L. RECOLLECTIONS OF OBER-AMMERGAU in 1871. Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d. London, Oxford, and Cambridge : Rivinc;Tons. HISTORY OF THE COUNCILS of THE CHURCH. Vol. II., translated from the German of C. J. Hefele, D.D., Bishop of Rottenburg. Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark. THE FIRST AGE OF CHRISTIANITY THE CHURCH. THE FIRST AGE OF CHRISTIANITY AND THE CHURCH. BY JOHN IGNATIUS YON DOLLINGER, D.D., D.C.L., ETC., ETC. TRANSLATED BV HENRY NUTCOMBE OXENHAM, M.A., LATE SCHOLAR OF BALLIOL COLLEGE, OXFORD. ' Attendite ad patram unde excisi estis, et ad civernam laci de qua preecisi estls. THIRD EDITION. IN TWO VOLUMES. VOL. L LONDON : Wm. H. ALLEN & CO., 13, WATERLOO PLACE, PALL MALL, S.W. 1877. All rights reserved. DG7cE THE VERY REVEREND JOHN HEj^HY NEWMAN, D.D., WHOSE ILLUSTRIOUS NAME 13 ALONE A PASSPORT TO THE HEARTS AND A SECURE CLAIM ON THE INTELLECTUAL RESPECT OF HIS COUNTRYMEN BOTH WITHIN AND WITHOUT THE CHURCH, THIS TRANSLATION OF A WORK BY THE GREAT CATHOLIC DIVINE OF THE CONTINENT, IS, WITH HIS KIND PERMISSION, \'ERY RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED, BY THE TRANSLATOR. March, 186(J. 1292453 TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE THIRD EDITION. When ihe publishers informed me of the demand for a new edition of tliis work, my first care was to apply to the author to ascertain whether any later edition of the original had appeared, and whether there were any corrections he would wish to have inserted here. Dr. Dollinger replied that the book had been out of his hands for the last eight years, and that, while there would be much room for mo- difications and many omissions to supply, if he had leisure to rewrite the chapter on the Constitution of the Church, the increasing pressure of his manifold engagements left him no time for such an under- taking at present ; the book had therefore better reappear as it stood. TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. This third edition is accordingly a simple reprint of the last as far as the matter is concerned. But the translation has been again carefully revised, and there is scarcely a page in which corrections have not been introduced, in order to bring out the full meaning of the original with greater clearness and precision, and thus make the work more worthy of the favour it has hitherto received. I will but add now a renewed expression of the hope with wdiich my second edition was issued nearly nine years ago, that " by its calm uncontroversial enunciation of Catholic truth, its habitual moderation of statement and conciliatory tone, and the friendly reception it has met with among English readers of such various schools of religious thought, this work may in a very real, though indirect sense, be sub- serving the ends of an Eirenicon in our divided Chris- tendom." H. N. 0. : Advent, 1876. TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE FIRST EDITIOjN^. - No apology can be needed for introducing to English readers what is considered by competent judges one of the ablest and most instructive works of the first divine and Ecclesiastical historian of Catholic Germany. The Avords used in 1840, in the Preface to his Translation of an earlier work of Dr. Dollinger's, by the late Dr. Cox, President of St. Edmund's College, Herts — who has the high credit of having called the attention of his countrymen to the rich stores of German theological literature, at a period when such knowledge was far less common, both among Catholics and Protestants, even than it is now, — may well be repeated here, when their truth has been so abundantly illustrated by the super- xil TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. added testimony of twenty-six intervening years. *' The name of the learned Professor, the author of this history, may stand as its only, its sufficient re- commendation. The works already published by Dr. Dollinger, in the cause of literature and religion, have spread his fame widely through the nations ot Europe."^ If his name was a sufficient recom- mendation then, it is more than sufficient now. But a few Avords will be in place, to explain the main scope and design of the present work. It is, properly speaking, a sequel to the Author's Heiden- tJium und Judenthum — of which an admirable and scholarly Translation appeared four years ago, from the pen of the Rev. N. Darnell, late Fellow of New College, Oxford" — and a first instalment of what, if life and health be spared him, will be a complete Ecclesiastical History, destined to supersede the earlier and less matured work already referred to. It must be remembered, however, that the Apos- tolic Age, while it forms, so to say, the first chapter in the life of the Catholic Church, is in many re- ' Preface to Cox's Translation ofDolUnger's Ilhtoi-y of the Church. (Dolman, 1840.) - The Gentile and the Jew in the Courts of the Temple. 2 vols. (Longman, 1862). When the Author has occasion to refer to the original, a reference to this Translation is here added in brackets. TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. spects an exceptional period, standing alone and isolated from all later epochs of Christian History. It is no mere portion, however integral, of the edifice of that new Society which Christ set up on earth, but the foundation of the entire building. It is, therefore, a period capable of separate treatment ; and the description of it may be viewed as a whole in itself, not, indeed, as having no relation to the later history, but as containing the fundamental axioms for its right interpretation. To use the Author's words in another work ; '• The Catholic theologian cannot but regard the whole course of the Church in the light of a grand process of development, a continual growth from within, not the growth of a tape-worm, but of a tree, into which the mustard seed of the Apostolic age has expanded. He cannot arbitrarily choose a period here or there, and content himself with studying that, but must investigate the Church in the entirety of her outward life and his- torical continuity from the beginning until now, and do his best to exhibit it adequately to others ; and this is the work of a lifetime.''^ We are to examine in the present treatise the sources of this ' Rede iiber Vergantjenheit und Gegenicart der kathoUschen Tkeo- logie, p. 2i. XIV TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. development, the seed from whicli the tree has grown. 1. Among its peculiar excellences not the least is, that the Author has described the Apostolic age, as far as possible, from the stand-point of a contem- porary observer, and by the light of contemporary documents ; excluding all reference to the traditions or usages, still more to the prepossessions, of a later period. The Church of the Apostles is the Church of the New Testament ; and he accordingly traces in the Apostolic writings the moral and dogmatic aspects of Apostolic Christianity. The Second Book, which is concerned with doctrine, consists chiefly of a comment on those writings. The truths presented to our notice are, indeed, substantially identical with those we are familiar with in the creeds and defini- tions of the Church from Nicfea to Trent ; but they come before ns here, not in their ultimate develop- ment, which was the groAvth of centuries, and in that technical and systematic shape Vvdiich the pressure of heresy ultimately compelled them to assume, but in the freshness of their first utterance^ as they fell from the lips of Apostles and Evangelists, and in the devotional or hortatory form natural to Epistles TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. XV addressed, for the most part, to particular individuals or communities, and called forth by special exigences of time or place. To take one instance ; the doc- trine of Justification, of which our Author gives a full and luminous exposition, is handled at length in several of St. Paul's Epistles, especially in the Epistle to the Romans, and the Tridentine definitions explain and summarise his teaching. Here, ft is put before us, not in the words of the Tridentine formula, but as gathered from the fuller, though, at first sight, less explicit, statements scattered through the writ- ings of the great Apostle himself. We are thus reminded of the fundamental harmony between the language of Scripture and of Theology, and of those needs and capabilities of the human mind which are the ground and justification, within certain limits, of doctrinal development in the Church ; " the text of Scripture being addressed principally to the affec- tions, and though definite according to the criterion of practical inference, vague and incomplete in the judgment of the intellect."^ 2. Dr. Dollinger has not thrown this work into a controversial shape, but it has none the less obviously ' Newman's Ariaiis of the Fourth Century, p. 161. XVI TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. its bearings on Strauss's estimate of the Life of Christ^ — lately republished by the Author with little material alteration — and still more on Baur's con- ception of the history and doctrinal position of the Apostolic Church. Indeed, the favourite theory ot the Tubingen school, of a threefold division of Apos- tolic Christianity, ranging itself mider the rival ban- ners of the three leading Apostles, St. Peter, St. Paul, and St. John, is more than once directly ani- madverted upon ; while those familiar with the destructive criticism of Germany — which has inci- dentally rendered important services to the cause of Truth' — will often recognise a special meaning in passages where it is not expressly named. Recent legislation in this country will have invested the dis- cussion, in the Third Book and the final Appendix, on the Scriptural Doctrine of Marriage and Divorce * Kenan's Vic de Jesus, ■\vhich has evidenll}' exerted an important influence on the composition of a remarkable book lately published in this country, Ecce /iorao (Macmillan, 18C6), did not appear until after the publication of the present work. - It is a remarkable circumstance that, for some years past, the most distinguished Faculty of Catholic Theology in Germany has been that of Tiibingen, where Mohler was reared and remained as theological Professor till 1835, and where he publisbe'l, in 1832, his most im- portant work, the SymboUk. Dr. Kiihn, the present occupant of his Chair, is regarded zs facile secundits among German Catholic divines. TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. xvu with peculiar interest for many English readers. And if there are any besides Dr. Cumming who still retain a lingering respect for the Protestant tradition about Antichrist and the " Man of Sin," they will find in the first Appendix an exhaustive account of its origin and growth. 3. A further remark of more general application to Dr. Dollinger's writings, will probably suggest itself to the reader. While he is a strenuous upholder of the Catholic and dogmatic principle, his manner of explaining and recommending it differs in some important respects from what is not unfrequently in the present day, to our great misfortune, treated by friend and foe alike, as the only legitimate or intel- ligible championship of orthodoxy. There is no need to enter on a detailed examination of those differences here, and it would be a mere impertinence to defend them.^ But the fact deserves a passing recognition, when among those who claim to be the spokesmen and apologists of Catholicism in modern Europe there are not a few who seem to regard as little better than heretics or infidels, men (such as Dollinger and Ros- ' The reader may be referred on this subject to the Speech delivered before the Munich Congress of 18G3, from which my last extract ^vas- taken. VOL. I. b XVI 11 TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. mini) who \\\\\c (K.-dieatecl their liighest intellectual energies and the toils of a lifetime to the pen'ice of the Church of God, but who shrink instinc- tively from a method of serving her cause which appears to them the most fatal, because least inten- tional, contribution to the progress of unbelief. No reader, of whatever school of thought, or however widely he may dissent from the Author's views, need icar to encounter in Dr. DoUinger a narrow dog- matist, or an adroit special pleader, or a fierce and indiscriminate partizan. If, on the one hand, he regards it as " the mark of a true theologian to dig dee]), to examine w^'th restless assiduity, and not to draw back in terror, sliould his investigation lead to conclusions that are unwelcome or inconsistent with preconceived notions or labourite views ;"' lie would certainly Ik; the last to claim for himself any infallibility, in Ibrgetfulness of his own emphatic statement, t-liat " it is a law, as ^•alid for the futuic^ as for the past, that in theology we can only through mistakes attain to truth." ^ Few, iiidced, liave knoAvn so well as himself how to act in the spirit of his own ' \'erhaniU. dcr \'rrsuiii/iiliiiii/ kal/iol. G'ele/ut. in Mixncliai, pp. 50, 68. TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. xix memorable advice at the closing of the Munic^i Con- gress of 18G3 ; '' to make a firm resolution for the future, to use none ]jut scientific weapons in philoso- phical and theological inquiries ; to banish from lite- rature as im-German [lot us add un-English] and un-Catholic, all denunciation and holding np to sus- picion of those who differ from us, and rather to take for our model in dealinci: with them the m-ave and truly Evangelical gentleness of Augustine and the enlightened teachers of the ancient Church."^ To speak now of the Translation ; — it has been my aim throughout to present an idiomatic rendering of the exact sense, not always necessarily the exact words of the original. The following admirable re- marks by one of the greatest living masters of the English language may be fitly quoted here, not in deprecation of criticism, but in explanation of the method pursued, and in extenuation of defects more or less incidental to a task the difficulty of which has been so keenly felt by a writer who has so success- fvilly surmounted it. '' It should be considered that translation in itself is, after all, but a problem, how, two languages being given, the nearest approxima- • lb. p. 133. h 2 TRANS LA TOR'S PREFA CE. tion may be made in the second to the expression of ideas ah-eady conveyed through the medium of the first. The problem almost starts with the assump- tion that something must bo sacrificed, and the chief question is, what is the least sacrifice ? . . . . Under these circumstances, perhaps, it is fair to lay down that, while every care must be taken against the in- troduction of new, or the omission of existing ideas in the original text, yet in a book intended for general reading faithfulness may be held simply to consist in expressing in English the senae of tiie orimnal, the actual words of the latter being viewed as directions into its meaning, and scholarship being necessary in order to gain the full insight which they afford ; and next, that Avhere something must be sacrificed, precision or intelligibility, it is better in a popular work to be understood by those who are not critics than to be applauded by those who are." ^ In describing what he has himself, in fact, attained, Dr. Newman has described what I have aimed at. I have always tried to keep in mind what appears to me the true idea of a translation — tliut it should read like an original composition, so far as is consistent with ' Preface to Church of the Fatherx, pp. 8, '.>. (^Histoi-icul Hkttvhtf, vol. iii. pp. X. xi.) TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. fidelity to tlie sense of the text. How inadequately that standard has been realised here, I am well aware ; and it is only right to add that the fault, where I have failed, is not my author's but my own. Those who are acquainted with Dr. Dollinger's writ- ings will have observed how markedly the clear and luminous simplicity of his style contrasts with the long and involved sentences often so perplexing to us in German writers, the more so as their obscurity of language seems not unfrequently to spring from ob- scurity of thought. In this respect the two great leaders, on the Christian and the infidel side, Dol- linger and Strauss, stand pre-eminently distinguished from the majority of their countrymen. I need scarcely observe, what is obvious, that the office of a translator is to translate, not to criticise. The few notes I have added of my own are simpty designed to explain or illustrate the text, and oc- casionally to point out a difference between high authorities on some question of fact. In one or two instances, where the sense assigned to a word or pas- sage in the Greek Testament seemed doubtful, I have added a literal translation at the bottom of the page. I have also ventured, for the greater con- xxii TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. venience of my readers, to break up each of the three books into cha])ters ; and have re-arranged, and con- siderably enlarged, the Table of Contents. The quo- tations from Scripture are not taken ordinarily from any English version with which the reader, Catholic or Protestant, may be familiar ; Old Testament pas- sages are translated from the Vulgate, New Testa- ment passages from the Greek text, regard being had in doubtful cases to the rendering of the Vulgate. As a general rule, however, the Author does not quote Scripture but paraphrases it ; and even in quotations he does not always follow the precise wordinc; of the oriofinal. Where the nomenclature or arrangement of the Vulgate differs from that of the English " Authorised Version" (as in the Psalter) a reference to the latter is added in brackets, for the convenience of those who use it. To the Translator himself it has been a privilege thus to sit, as it were, for awhile at the feet of so great and good a man. And, should the appearance of this work in an English dress lead any of our countrymen hitherto miacquainted with Dr. Bol- linger's writings to study them, or any who know something of them already to seek to know more . TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. xxiu and thus contribute, in an age of bitterness and con- tradiction, to make the influence of his calm, fear- less wisdom, truth-loving spirit, and large-hearted charity more widely felt, the time and labour ex- pended on the work of translation for the benefit of others will not have been spent in vain. H. N. 0. Feast uf St. Gregory the Great, 1866. AUTHOR'S PREFACE. This work deals with 'the history of a period of only seventy years, and indeed with one event and insti- tution only, which to far the greater number of those living at the time either remained unknown or seemed much too insignificant for it to be worth their while to trouble themselves further about the matter. Yet this mere span of time is the most important in the history of mankind. The foundation of the Chris- tian Church closes a preparation and development of many thousand years, and is the starting point of a new order in the world. The Avorld before Christ, and the world after Christ — that is, and ever must be, the simplest and truest division of history. It is but the beginnings and simple form of the original Apostolic Church, self-contained, like a seed- corn, and hiding its inner reality from strangers, that AUTHOR'S PREFACE. we are here concerned Avitli. But these beginnings contain the powers and secrets of a culture whicli, embracing the whole of humanity in its universal scope, is still, after eighteen centuries, ever receiving ifew life and in constant growth ; there is laid up in them a wealth of creative ideas, a fulness of new forms in Church, in State, in Art, in Knowledge, and in Manners, which are far, indeed, from being exhausted ; nay, more, which in time to come will bring to light developments in knowledge and in life that as yet we can scarcely conjecture. The sharpest and most concentrated gaze of the naturalist, who opens and dissects a seed-corn, cannot discern the forms potentially and substantially con- tained in it, or suggest what it will grow into. And just so, the acutest Greek or Roman, had he scruti- nised ever so carefully and impartially the young- Christian communities at his side, would either have refused to predict anything of their future jirogross and place in history, or would have given an entirely wrong account of what actually folIoAved, not to say exactly the reverse of the true one. Nor only so ; Christians themselves were very far from appreciating the reach, and the force for the world's culture, of AUTHOR'S PREFACE. xxvii those spirituul and moral powers laid np in the bosom of their Society, and entrusted to their care and administration. On the other hand, nearly two thousand years of Christian history are spread before our eyes ; we are in a position to embrace and mea- sure the process of development working itself out by an internal law of necessary sequence, a continually advancing and constructive process, never, indeed, transcendino- the orio-inal fulness of its internal bein2:, but far surpassing the simple outlines and primitive forms of thought and life in the^Apostolic age. In the light of this long experience, where every age is a commentary to illustrate the preceding one, we can pierce more deeply into the spirit of the Apostolic Church, and exhibit all its bearings more fully than former generations could. The reader, then, will easily comprehend the scope and nature of the pre- sent work, as it floated before the Author's mind ; he readily admits that it has not been adequately; realised here. Munich, September 18, 1860. CONTENTS OF VOL. I. BOOK I.— CHRIST AND THE APOSTLES. Chap. I.— .Ministry and Teaching of Christ. PAGE St. Johu the Baptist, the Precursor of Christ .... 1 Early Life and Baptism of Christ . . . . . . 3 His Answer to the Messengers of the Baptist ....(» His fii-st Disciples ......... 7 First Cleansing of Temple . . . . . . . !> Conversation with Nicodenius . . . . . . . 10 Conversation with Samaritan Woman . . . . .11 His Ministi-y in Galilee . . . . . . . . 13 Call of the Apostles IG His Relation to the Jews and their AuthoritiL'S . . . . 18 Relation to His own Followers ...... 20 His Miracles 22 His Prophecies . 25 His Teaching —On the Fatherhood of (iod . . . . . 26 On His own Persou as God and Man and ou the Holy Ghost 27 His Example .......... ;]1 His Tearhinfj — On Sin, the World, and Satan . . . . 32 On Redemption ...... 33 On Faith and Repentance . . . . . S.") On Love, Trae Righteousness, and Fulfilling the Law . . . . . . . 30 On the Church, or Kingdom of God . . .41 XXX CONTENTS. Page ///*■ Teach! »[/ — On the Primacy of Peter . . . . . 47 On the Plenary Powers of the Apostles . . 50 On the Jlixture of Good and Evil in tlie Church 53 The Translij^uration ......... 54 Raising of Lazarus, Entry into Jerusalem, the Second Cleans- ing of Temple ......... 55 The Last Supper, and Institution of the Eucharist . . . 57 The Agony, Trial, and Cnicifixion CI The Resurrection and Ascension . . . . . . 05 Chap. IL — St. Peter and St. Pall. The First Disciples C8 Election of St. Matthias G9 Descent of Holy Ghost at Pentecost . . . . .69 St. Peter — His Preaching at Jerusalem and Imprisonment ; the Infant Church . 71 Appointment of Seven Deacons ; St. Stephen's Mar- tyrdom ........ 7G St. Philip preaches at Samaria ; St. Peter confinns there with St. John, and rebukes Simon Magus 77 The Conversion of Cornelius 79 Founding of the Gentile Church at Antioch; Labours of St. Barnabas there 83 St. Pmd—ll\9. Conversion 83 Journeys to ^Arabia and Jenisalem (Martyrdom of St. James) . . . . . . . . 87 Divine Call to the Apostolate, with St. Barnabas . 91 The Dispute about the Jewish Lavi- . . . . 94 The Council of Jerusalem . . . . .98 St. Peter and St. Paul at Antioeh . . . . 101 St. Paul's Journeys and Epistles (1, 2 The.ss. ; Gal. 1, 2 Cor. ; Rom.), till his first Imprisonment at Rome 106 His An'ival and Sojourn at Rome . . . . 126 His Epistles written in Prison (Col., Ejili.. Pliilem., Philipp.) . . 127 His Liberation . . . . . . . . 130 CONTENTS. XXXI PAGE ill. Paul — lli.s Pastoral Epistles ...... 1315 His second Imprisoiimeut at Roniu . . . . 1 35 The Epistle to the Hebrews ....... 137 St. PmiVs Character and Teaching , . . . . . 140 His Relation to the other Apostles .... 149 /SV. Peter's Epistles . . . • 152 His Relation to the Roman Church .... 150 Martyrdom of St. Peter and St. Panl at Rome . . 1G4 Burning of Rome and Neronian Persecution . . IGG (JuAF. III. — St. James. St. Jude, St. John, and the Re.maixixg Apostles. St. .Jitmes — Son of Alphaaus, the Lord's Brother and Bishoj) of Jerusalem ....... 1G9 His Observaiice of the Jewish Law and Ascetic Life . 1 73 His Martyrdom ....... 175 His Epistle 170 St. Jude, and his Epistle ........ 178 Destruction of Jerusalem, and its results for Judaism and the Church . .17!) *S7. Jvhn, Apostle and Evangelist ....... 185 His Epistles 18(5 The Apocalypse, its Author.=liip and Date . . . 188 Contents of Apocalypse . . . . . .195 TIte Beginnini/s of Heresy., combated in Apostolic \Yritiugs . . 205 Platonic Judaism .... 205 Various foiTns of Gnosticism . . . 208 Simon Magus, the Father of Heresy . 211 The Nicolaitans 212 The Balaamites 214 Tli:> Synoptic Gospels and ^Vcts of the Apostles . . . . 215 St. John's Gospel, and its Relation to the Synoptics . . . 220 Gospel of the Hebrews, and its Relation to St. Matthew's . . 220 The Remaining Apostles and Evangelists 228 Epistle of Barnabas 228 xxxii CONTENTS. BOOK II.— DOCTRINE OF THE APOSTLES. CllAP. I. — SCRIPTIRE AND TRADITION. PAGE Scripture — Occasion and Object of the Apostolic Writings .^ 232 Fragmentary Nature of their Doctrinal Contents . 237 Varieties of Individual Character .... 238 Use of Greek LaiiguaL,'e . . . . . ^ . 238 Old Testament inherited by Christian Church from Judaism 240 How used by Christ and the Apostles ; its Inspira- tion 243 Septuagint Version generally followed : its Character 246 Uncanonical Writings used 250 Canon and Inspiration of New Testament . .251 Tradition — Oral Teaching anterior to New Testament Scrip- tures ........ 254 But embodied in them . . . . . . 255 Jewish Tradition passed into the Christian Church . 25G Relation of Tradition and Scripture to Christian Belief 259 First Fixing of Tradition 262 Development of Doctrine . ■ . . . 264 Its Continuity 268 CnAV. II. — The Teixitv, Ixcarn.\tiox, and Redemption. Divinity of Christ ; the Logos of St. John (and of Philo) . . 270 The Holy Ghost : His Mission, Office, and Work . • . . 276 The Holy Trinity 279 The Kingdom of Good Angels 281 The Kingdom of Evil Angels 283 The Incarnation, Atonement, and Redemption . . . . 286 Sin and the Law, Justification and Sanctification . . . 294 The Offer of Salvation universal. Election and Reprobation . . 344 FIRST BOOK. CHRIST AND THE APOSTLES. CHAPTER I. THE PUBLIC MINISTRY AND TEACHING OF CHEIST. The Jewish kingdom united under Herod was again broken up at his death, and in 779, A.u.c, the procurator, Pontius Pilate, ruled in what had become the Roman province of Judaea. The Emperor was a vokmtary exile in Caprea3, where he disgraced his old age by the most shameful vices, while his favourite Sejanus made the trembling inhabitants of the capital feel how powerless and defenceless they were against the new imperial power, now turned into a murderous despotism. At this time there ap- peared in the remotest and south-easternmost corner of the empire, in that desolate region stretching west- wards from the Dead Sea, and reaching up to the VOL. I. B 2 THE FIRST AGE OF THE CHURCH. mouth of the Jordan, a preacher of repentance, John, the son of the Jewish priest Zachariali/ In him was renewed the old race of Prophets — extinguished for centuries — of whom he was the last and greatest. It was his office to proclaim what none of the earlier prophets could, that the Promised One and His kingdom were close at hand, and to prepare the way before Him. He was to be the last and innnediate messenger of the new kingdom of faith, and the herald of its Founder, who was already on earth, but as yet hidden and unknown. On him rested the zeal and the avenging fierv spirit of Elias. He denounced in the sharpest words the ruling sins of the ruling classes ; nay, the whole nation seemed to him unclean, and unworthy the high destiny now awaiting it. He announced not only the setting up of Messiah's kingdom, but that a separation and a great judgment was to accompany His appearance." For six months he worked on the })cople by his preaching, before calling them to be baptized in the Jordan. This baptism was an outward and pro- phetic one. John baptized with water only; He, of whom he spoke, was first to bring in a baptism with the Spirit and with fire, bestowing liigher powers.^ For the present, men were to testify by ' Luke iii. 1 sqq. • Matt. xi. 11 ; iii. 7 sqq. Luke i. 17 ; iii. 7 sqq. ^ Matt. iii. 11. John i. 2C, .33. MINISTRY AND TEACHING OF CHRIST. .^ laying aside their clothes at the water baptism their willingness to put off the old man, and by their im- mersion their willingness to be cleansed from moral defilement. John waited, baptizing at the Jordan, for Him whom he preached, but as yet knew not. For he had been promised a miraculous sign from heaven to point out Him for whom ho was looking.^ A youth ap- proached him in whom he recognised a near relative on the mother's side. This young man, Jesus, was the son of a poor woman who lived in the little Galilean town of Nazareth, and the secret of His fatherless conception liad not got beyond the walls of the house at Nazareth; before the world Ho passed for the son of the carpenter, who had married His mother. He had first seen the light of day in a stall at Bethlehem, and a manger had been His cradle. His foster-father and His mother had fled with the Child into Egypt from the murderous attack of Herod. On His return from thence He had been brought up to His foster-father's trade, and had lived, as the " carpenter," at Nazareth, quiet and unobserved : only once, as a Boy twelve years old, when he accom- panied His parents to Jerusalem at the festival, He had attracted passing notice by His premature know- ledge of the Scriptures. But that had been long forgotten ; His immediate neighbourhood had per- > John i. 33. b2 4 THE FIRST AGE OF THE CHURCH. ceivecl nothing remarkal)le in Him ; so for from it that, when He afterwards hegan to teach in pubh'c, His relations thought Him mad, and wished to hiy hands on his person/ The Baptist felt an immediate presentiment that this and no other was the object of universal desire, the long expected Messiah, that Greater One, whose shoe latchet, as he had already said, he himself was not worthy to unloose. He knew that this Youth had no need of his baptism, the baptism of repent- ance; that he, the unclean, had nothing to offer to the Holy One. He drew back and said, " It is I that have need of Thy baptism, and comest Thou to receive of me this token of sin and repentance ?" But the Son of Mary insisted on being baptized by him, " for so it becometh us," He said, '' to fidfil all righteousness." It was right, that is to say, for Him to put the seal on the Divine mission of His fore- runner, and the sacred institution of the baptism he administered, by Himself receiving it; it was right, too, for Him, Avhose office it was become to bear the burden of His people, that He should submit, as a son of that people, to the token of national guilt and defilement. Moreover, this baptism had in Him the meaning of a vow for the future, to lead a life entirely devoted to fulfilling the will of God. His voluntary abasement was turned into an occa- ' Mark iii. 21. MINISTRY AND TEACHING OF CHRIST. 5 sion of glory for Him ; to Jolin it was the promised sign by which he recognised tlie Messiah. Both of them at the ])aptism heard the voice from heaven, "This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased ;" both saw the heavens opened, and the dove descend, and rest upon Jesus.i Thus the baptism, and what accompanied it, were the initiation of Christ to His Messianic office. He had received His consecration as King, Prophet, and High Priest of the new king- dom thi'ough this baptism and the over-shadowing of the Holy Ghost, as under tlie old law the high priests were consecrated by washing with water and the unc- tion poured on their head." St. John looked much further and deeper than the mass of the people to whom the idea of a suffering, self-sacrificing Messiah was then a strange one, and had already pointed out Christ to his disciples as the Lamb devoted to God and destined to offer Himself for the sins of the v>diole world. He had already declared to the messengers of the Sanhedrim, the highest spiritual tribunal, when questioned about his office and credentials, that not he but another already standing among them was the Messiah, and by this saying he brought Christ His first disciples. Though he still continued to baptize, his office closed, properly speaking, with the baptism of Jesus. He said that » Matt. iii. 13 sqq. Mark i. 9-11. Luke iii. 21—23. Joliu i. 32. 2 Exod. xxix. 4, 7. THE FIRST AGE OF THE CHURCH. Christ's influence must increase while his own de- creased.' Ilerod Antipas tetrarch of GaHlee had at first paid some attention to the severe preacher of repentance who held up his sins as in a mirror Lefore him, but when the prophet denounced his incestuous con- nection with Herodias, his own niece and his brother's wife, he imprisoned him in the castle of Machar, partly to protect him from Hcrodias's anger, partly fearing liis influence over an excitable people.- The news of the attitude and works of Christ, which reached the Baptist in prison, roused his sus- ])icions. The worker of so many miraculous cures seemed to him more like one of the prophets and a herald of the cominfr kin";dom than one introducins it as himself its king. He had not expected this re- served and unobtrusive line, but rather an immediate display of Messianic dignity and judicial power, such as he had himself threatened the terriHcd Jews with as close at hand. He therefore sent tAvo of his dis- ciples to Jesus to ask, " Art thou the Messiah that was to come, or must we wait for another ?" This tiuestion clearly implied the wish and expectation that, on being thus pressed, Jesus would openly assume his Messianic title and ollice, for the consolation of all »agerly looking for the moment. ' John i. 19—2? ; Hi. 30. - Matt. xiv. 1 sqq. Mark vi. 1-i— 29. Luke iii. 19, 20. MINISTRY AND TEACHING OF CHRIST. 7 The messengers found Him surrounded by tlioso miraculouslv healed, and He referred them to His works; tliey were to tell their master what they had seen and heard, how by Christ's power the blind saw, the lame walked, the deaf heard, the lepers were cleansed, the dead raised, the poor — 'whether spirit- ually or from bodily want— had the Gospel preached to them. He could not but remember that this ful- filled the Messianic promises of the old Prophets; and thus his question received the most emphatic reply.' Christ was led to give a solemn attestation to the dignity and greatness of John before the people, from observing that, though they had eagerly sought him out as a prophet, they now esteemed him lightly Mdien in prison, and made small account of his person, his mission, and his words. He therefore declared him the greatest among the prophets or those born of women, and more than a prophet, for he had pro- claimed what they could not — the actual presence of the Promised One and the kingdom of God. He knew more of the Messiah, and had drawn a fuller and clearer picture of Him, than the old Prophets and the whole people after them." Christ had found His first disciples among the fol- lowers of the Baptist. B}^ his testimony Andrew and another — by whom the fourth Evangelist means • Isa. XXXV. 4—6 ; xvi. 1. Matt, xi, 1—6. Luke vii. 18—23. - Matt. xi. 7 sqq. 8 THE FIRST AGE OF THE CHURCH. himself— had joined liim. Andrew brought liis bro- ther Simon, in -whom Jesus recognised at the first ghance that type of character whicli specially fitted him to become the rock of the Church, and He there- fore gave him the prophetic name of Rock, Peter or Cephas. On the way towards Galilee, a fourth, named Philip, was called by Jesus to follow Him, coming, like Andrew and Simon, from Bethsaida. Then came Kathanael or Bartholomew, who, when Philip first told him that ho had found the true Mes- siah in the carpentei*'s son of Nazareth, inquired doubtfully if any good could come out of a town so ill-reputed of as Nazareth ? But this doubt vanished when Jesus showed knowledge of an important mo- ment in his life which he thought only known to himself. Jesus promised him and the rest that they should see greater things than these ; in His school and service they would be allowed to gaze into the open lieavens, the depth of the Divine counsels ; they would witness His constant intercourse with God, as it were through angels ascending and de- scending upon Him, and those higher powers which He had l^rought with Him as a heavenly gift to the earth. Of those powers He gave the first proof ut the marriage feast in Cana of Galilee, which He at- tended with His mother and disciples, by turning water into Avine.' ' John i. 33 — 51 ; ii. 1 sqq. MINISTRY AND TEACHING OF CHRIST. 9 During His stay in Judaea, when He went with His disciples to Jerusalem for the Passover of 780, A.U.C., Jesus performed an act, which in itself an}^ zealot for the law mif^ht have undertaken, but which in Him was a proclamation at once of His high dignity and His Messiahship ; — He cleansed His Father's house, usino; His nVht as the Son of Him whose the temple was to drive out the buyers and sellers. He thus declared Himself to be the promised Messiah, who should reform and cleanse the temple. It was not from men recognising His dignity and claim that He was not opposed, but from surprise at the suddenness and boldness of the procedure, and still more from something about His presence, which overawed them, as when afterwards the majesty of His nature broke forth from its accustomed veil, it disarmed the soldiers sent to seize Him, and cast them to the ground.^ This act was a reflection on the priesthood who had before favoured this disorder in the temple, and thus, while it reminded the disciples of that devour- ing zeal for the House of God spoken of in the Mes- sianic psalm, the Pharisees required Him to justify it by a miracle, showing Him to be either a prophet divinely commissioned, or the Messiah. He replied, " Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise- it up again," referring to His own body as the true > John ii. 14 sqq. ; vii. 46 ; xviii. G. Mai. iii. 1 — 3. I O THE FIRST AGE OF THE CHURCH. temple, wherein the Godhead dwelt, nnd thus givmg the sign at once of a double prophecy, of His death and resurrection. But they, who of course could not understand His meaning, asked contemptuously whether He would rear in three days an edifice which took forty-six years to build ?/ The frequent cures which Christ then wrought in Jerusalem led to a belief in many that He v/as either a true prophet, or the expected Messiah himself; but He saw through the untrustworthiness of this merely external half-belief produced by miracles, and con- fided neither His person nor His secret doctrine to such men, knowing that those who had a deeper and more living faith would follow after Him, and never rest till received among His disciples. Nicodennis, a member of the Sanhedrim, came to visit Him by in'ght, in order to gain a deeper insight into His mission and real teaching. This interview, in which Xicodemus wanted to ascertain whether Jesus was the Messiah, showed how hard it was for a Pharisee, influenced by the Jewish notions then prevalent, even to understand the great truths on which His teaching was based. He declared to the astonished Jewish Ilabbi, " No mortal has yet ascended into heaven to search out the counsels of God ; I alone was there, though ap- ' Ps. Ixviii. 12 (Ixix. 9, r.. v.). Jolm ii. 18—20. MINISTRY AND TEACHING OF CHRIST. II jjcuring now as Son of Man ; from theiicc I came down upon earth to bo a man among men, and as the surest evidence of it I prochiim to them what I there saw, the Divine phm of salvation. Though now on earth in human form, I am in abiding com- munion witli God, and have also a more than earthly being. In his pitying love for man God has sent Me, His Only-Begotten, to be lifted up as a public spectacle on the gibbet, and therel)y to become a source of redemption to all who rely in faith on this Divine means of healing, as of old the brazen serpent was lifted up in the wilderness, that those bitten of serpents might look on it in faith and be healed.^ From my death flows the power of that baptism of water and the Spirit whereby men shall be born again to a new life, and received into the kingdom of God I am come to found." When Jesus saw that His influence with the people had drawn on Him the suspicious watchfLdness of tlie Pharisee ]iarty, He resolved, late in the autumn of 780, to withdraw into Galilee, where He would be less exposed to their observation and the snares they laid for Him. His way led through Samaria, which the strict zealots of the Law used to avoid, out of hatred for the Samaritans, by taking a circuitous route through Pcra}a. At Sichem He ' Xumb. xxi. !). 12 THE FIRST AGE OF THE CHURCH. rjot into conversation with a, Samaritan woman, and, Avliilc maintaining the just daim of the Jewish wor- ship against tlie arbitrarily devised Samaritan rite, to As. occasion to point out tlie temporary character of botli forms, and the speedy introduction of a new and no longer local worship in their stead. " You Samaritans," He said, " honour God by sacrifices you have invented or adopted for yourselves, but which for you, who reject the Prophets and the whole course of that increasing revelation which points entirely to the Messiah, have no force or inward meaning. But we in Judrea, from whom comes salvation by the Messiah, celebrate the typical sacrifices of the Law on Sion. This quarrel, how- ever, between Gerizim and Sion will soon have an end, for the time is come when the true worshippers of God will serve Him, not with the legal and typical ceremonies belonging to this or that place or temple, not with the blood of goats and lambs, but with a sacrifice suited to the spiritual nature of God, itself spirit and truth, and accompanied by the purely spiritual acts of prayer, adoration, love, and hope, — the one mystical mibloody sacrifice of the New Covenant, to be offered everywhere throughout the whole extent of tlie church."^ Thus Jesus did in Samaria what He had not yet done in Jerusalem or Judrea or Galilee; He told the ' John iv. 1 sfjq. MINISTRY AND TEACHING OF CHRIST. 13 woman plainly that He was the Messiah, and having sent for the inhabitants of Sichem devoted two days to confirming their belief in Him. This He could do safely among a people with whom the Jews held no intercourse, where no Scribes and Pharisees were spies on Him, and where there was no fear lest a re- cognition of His claims should kindle an insurrection against the Roman Government. From Samaria He went into Galilee, and wa? better received there than before, for the Galileans returned from Jerusalem had already spread the feme of His deeds and teaching. Thenceforward He spent great part of His public life in this fertile and popu- lous region. In Jerusalem and Judoea a hostile feeling against Him had already grown up among the influential classes and leaders of the people, and especially since He healed a sick man on the Sabbath during the Feast of Tabernacles, and defended Him- self as being the Son of God, they had sought after His life as a Sabbath-breaker and blasphemer. He, therefore, preferred to live and work in Galilee rather than where the Pharisees and lawyers were strongest. There He dwelt among Gentiles in that part of Israel most slighted and abandoned to itself. It was a saying of the Pharisees that no prophet could come out of Galilee. But as He wished to fulfil all right- eousness as a Jew, and to show Himself a loyal and strictly conscientious son of His nation. He always 14 THE FIRST JGE OF THE CHURCH. came foi' a, short time to Jerusalem on tlie hig]i festivals.^ He fixed His abode in tlie little town of Caper- naum, separating Himself finally from His family in the distant Xazareth, and thence made his journeys^ passing gradually through all Galilee and teaching everywhere in the synagogues. But the neighbour- hood of the Sea of Tiberias was His most frequent resort. He avoided the more important towns, such as Tiberias, where Herod the tetrarch lived, Sephoris, Gadara and the fortified Giskala, only teaching and workinor in the smaller towns and villao-os, true to His plan of not courting danger before the time, and avoiding an uproar which would be sooner ex- cited among the masses in the larger toMiis. He shunned the interior of the country Avherc the really Jewisli population Avas, seeking rather the frontier mountains and remote regions, partly for undisturbed prayer, partly to avoid a populace craving for miracles and a political Messiah, who at one time wanted to proclaim Him king, while at another — so sudden was their revulsion of feeling — they were ready to sur- render Him as a criminal.^ His public ministry lasted two years and some mo}iths. Certain women, some of them relatives, accompanied Him on His journeys besides the Twelve. ' John iv. 43 ff|q. ; v. 1 — l>t; vii. 52. * Matt. iv. 13. John vi. 10. MIXfSTRV AND TEACHING OF CHRIST. 15 The larger body of seventy disciples seem only now and then to have been with Him, while at other times they were despatched on the business He gave them. Out of loving condescension to the cai)acities of the poor in spirit and spiritual infants, He clothed His teaching in proverbs and parables and examples drawn from nature and human life. He used the Old Testa- ment and appealed to prevalent'popular belief, but Ho handled the sacred books as a Lord and Master who had learnt from no human teacher and received the impress of no school or party, but who was exalted above such limitations and brought to those books a lio;ht and clearness derived from His owii hijxher wisdom. He showed Himself fully and in all respects a true and jjenuine member of the Jewish nation and Church. As He received in childhood the national covenant sign of circumcision, so from the opening of His public ministry He observed the ritual law. He kept the Sabbath, though refusing to be bound by the later glosses put upon the rule. In the Sermon on the Mount He insisted on a stricter righteousness in observino; the moral law than was found in the letter of the commandment or the prevalent opinions and practice of the Jews, but the works of this law Avere to grow spontaneously, like the fruits of a good tree, out of the pure root of a sanctified will wholly given up to God. The righteousness of His king- dom was to be the reverse of that dark, self-pleasing, 1 5 THE FIRST AGE OF THE CHURCH. often liypocrltical righteousness of works which He denounced so sharply in the Pharisees. Full well did He foresee that the majority of His people at last would roject Him and His teaching. They took offence at His humble birth, His intercourse with publicans and sinners, and His not sharing the com- mon hatred of the Roman Government and the desire to get rid of it. The Scribes and Pharisees saw in Him a dangerous rival who Avould injure their credit and influence with the people. His whole life was such that He could challenge even His enemies to accuse Him of one sin or error. The spies and watchers, who at last followed Him everywhere, could discover nothino; which cast the slightest shadow on Him. But He taught and worked from the first with the full consciousness that He was rousing or augmenting the hatred of men, and that He must give up His life as a sacrifice to it.^ He announced during His first journeys that the kingdom of heaven was at hand, and His work on earth was to found it. He now first called to a life- long and undivided activity in his service those four fishermen who had previously joined him, Andrew and Simon, John and James. Thomas and Nathanael now again joined Him. From the crowd of disciples and adherents who gradually collected round Him Jesus chose out an inner circle of men with whom ' Matt. xiii. 55; ix. 11. John viii. 4G. MINISTRY AND TEACHING OF CHRIST. 17 to hold a more confidential intercourse, and who should form, as it were, His own family. These Twelve, all of them Galilean fishermen, peasants, and publicans, were to be the foundation stones of His future Church, the twelve patriarchs of the new Israel corresponding to the twelve tribes. He had prepared for the great work of choosing them by a night of solitary prayer. He named them Apostles, that is — Sent. Six of them had attended Him from the beginning of His ministry, the brothers Peter and Andrew, James and John the sons of Zebedee, Philip and Bartholomew, or Nathanael. To these were now added Thomas (Didymus), and Matthew (Levi) the publican, James and Jude, or Thaddffius, sons of Alphajus and cousins of Jesus, Simon, whose surname, Zclotes, shows that he had once belonged to the party of zealots against foreign rule, and lastly, Judas Iscariot, who seems to have been the only one not a Galilean. ^ The poor carpenter's Son and His Galilean fisher- men and publicans — these were the powers for work- ing the greatest revolution the world had yet seen. From the time he began His public teaching He could have no safe home anywhere. When he appeared as a teacher in the synagogue at his native Nazareth, the enraged inhabitants wanted to throw 1 Matt. iv. 18—22. Mark. i. 16-20 ; iii. 14—19. Luke ^^^ 13—16. VOL. I. U"3L t8 the first age of the church. Him down from the steej) rock their town stands on, and he only escaped by a miracle. So He travelled from town to town, from village to village, in Galilee, attended by His chosen band of disciples and by women who ministered of their means to the wants of tlie Lord and His followers. The people every- where regarded His appearance as extraordinary and siirnificant, and connected Him as a forerunner Avitli fclie expected Messiah. Some thought John the Baptist, whom Herod Antipas liad beheaded, was risen again, others that Elias or one of the old pro- pliets had returned to life. AVhile these carnal ex- pectations and seditious ideas were popularly con- jaected with the Messiah, Jesus could have no wish to be recognised as such before His Passion, and forbade His disciples to speak of it.^ He recognised the Scribes and Pharisees of his day as sitting in Moses' seat and having lawful autlisrity to teach ; but the whole condition of the people impressed Him with their being untaught, neglected, given over to false teachers, sheep without a sliepherd. His compassion for them made Him send the Apostles on a preliminary mission to go two and two through the country, with power to heal diseases, to pi-each everywJiere the tidings of His coming, and of tlie near approach of God's kingdom. At another time He sent out a larger body of dis- ' Luke iv. 28—30 ; viii. 1—3. Matt, xvi. li— 20. MINISTRY AND TEACHING OF CHRIST. 19 ciples trained by Himself, the Seventy, to go into all the places He meant to visit and prepare the people for His appearance and teaching.^ More than once His life was endangered by a popular tumult. The Pharisees watched and spied after him everywhere. But His presence inspired a kind of awe which long kept them from laying hands on Him. Once the Sanhedrim sent their servants to seize and bring Him before them, but they were dis- armed by the power of His words, and could not fulfil their commission. Scribes were sent from Jerusalem with orders to follow and watch Him. The Pharisees scattered over Galilee and Judaja used their influence everywhere with the people to coun- teract His. There were those amongst the priests and Scribes in the capital who judged Him worthy of death as a breaker of the law, and urged His being quietly made away Avith. He seemed to them to display a studied contempt of their maxims ; Pie taught men that their righteousness must be other and better than that of the Pharisees, outward and fictitious with its show of scrupulous obedience. They saw in Him a dangerous enemy who threatened and undermined their whole influence and credit with the people. He had not studied in their school, pr.id no regard to their traditional glosses on the Law, and ventured sometimes to put them to shame before the ' Matt, xxiii. 2 ; ix. 36. Luke x. 1 sfiq. c 2 20 THE FIRST AGE OF THE CHURCH. people by His striking answers. He knew men's hearts, and often replied more to their thoughts than their Avords, which made them the more indignant at seeing their inward nakedness so unsparingly ex- posed.^ He liad much to bear patiently even from His Apostles, with their want of insight, their national prejudices, their carnal expectations and wishes, and their consequently always misconceiving His office. What He said about His future kingdom, eating and drinking His flesh and blood, and His return to the Father, Avas a pure enigma to them. At last, however, they advanced so far that Peter could express in his own name and theirs the firm belief that He olone was the Messiah, the Son of God. Thenceforth He tried to familiarize them with the thought that they would lose Him through a violent death endured in the discharge of His office. He no loncrer busied him- self chiefly with the miracle-loving crowds who were always thronging and pressing upon Him, but always fickle, carried about, as it were, by opposite winds, at one time from the influence of the Phari- sees, at another from the impression produced by His own presence and acts. From this time He withdrew Himself more from public view, and only wrought miraculous cures on special occasions. He occupied Himself, on the other hand, all the more ' John v., vii., viii., xi. Matt, v., sxi., xxiii., xxvi. MINISTRY AND TEACHING OF CHRIST. 2f carefully with His disciples ; His chief work now was to prepare* them for their office, to train them for His representatives and successors in the mission He had undertaken. So infinitely was Christ exalted above all human teachers, that in Him word and deed, the idea and its realisation, were always one. What he taught referred principally to Himself, His mission. His work ; the mere fact of His appearance among men was the most eloquent sermon ; His very presence, His acts. His sufferings, and His death, were the living, energizing commentary on His teaching, and its most superabundant confirmation. He put forth no detailed doctrine about God, His being, His at- tributes and characteristics ; but He offered Himself directly as the Image of the Father, so that whoever knew Him knew the Father. He spoke little about God being merciful towards men, and loving them as a father loves his children ; but He presented Him- self to them as the living embodiment of mercy, in whose Person God had humbled Himself to man's estate. When He said, " All power is given to Me in heaven and upon earth, "^ it was but a description of His own acts, for where He worked, the blind saw, the lame walked, and the dead were raised. In that fulness of power which He exercised on earth, as the mighty Ruler of nature and of natural forces, » John xii. 45 ; xiv. 7 — 10. Matt, xxviii. IS. 22 THE FIRST JGE OF THE CHURCH. men were able and were l)Ouncl to recognise that the Supreme Lord and LaAvgiver of all had appeared in His Person. He not only, like the Baptist, exhorted ]nen to repentance, He not only spoke of the righteousness of God, and His displeasure against sin ; but He took also on Himself the greatest of all penances, He showed through His sufferings and His voluntary death what an offering the holiness of God and the sinfulness of men required. What gave to His teaching about the powerlessness of death, the indestructibility of life, and the future resurrection of man its convincing power, was the fact of His appearing among men Himself for forty days as the Conqueror of death and the First-fruits of the re- surrection. Thus, then, His works, like His words, had a stamp peculiarly their own. To work miracles was His natural, His normal state ; He showed Himself in His miracles as the Lord and lluler of nature. He commanded the winds and they were still ; He walked upon the waves ; He attested His power over nature and IL's human kindliness, hy turning water into wine ; Ho fed thousands with a few loaves ai^d fishes ; He freed those possessed with devils ; He healed multitudes of the sick. Even in the earlier period of His ministry the fame of His Avondcrful healings had spread through Galileo, and the sick MINISTRY AND TEACHING OF CHRIST. 23 streamed together to Ilim.' lie fanned into a new flame the spark of life \\\\g\\ ah'cady quenched, and raised the daughter of Jairus, the youth of Na:n, His friend La:'.arus. In remoter regions, also, lie performed healings, as on the servant at Capernaum, the son of the royal officer there, and the daughter of the Canaanitisli woman. Thus Avas every step of His way mai'kcd by deeds of mercy, not wrought through human means, tlu'ough gold or goods, but liy the Divine powers Ho possessed in Himself to form, to uphold, to heal. He Avas busied till late into the ni. Mark x. 32-34. 5^ THE FIRST AGE OF THE CHURCH. For, now that the hour was come, there was no longer any ground for a prudential holding back. He entered tlie capital, saluted as Son of David and Messiah by the Hosannahs of the multitude coming to the Easter festival.^ In vain the Pharisees urged Him to forbid the vociferous homage of the people. He noAV taught and healed openly in the temple, which He yet once more cleansed of buyers and sellers, not without symbolic reference to His own mission of purifying Israel itself.^ In the temple, so strong a feeling of horror came over Him at the thought of His Passion, now close at hand, that He first prayed to be "delivered from this hour;" but immediately afterwards, in the triumphant conscious- ness of His lofty destiny. He made a complete offer- ing of His will to that of the Father, and only prayed that tlie Father would glorify His name through His suffering of death. On this, a voice from heaven, ' Matt. xxi. 1 — 11. Mark xi. 1—10. Luke xix. 29—40. John xii. 12—10. - Matt. xxi. 12—16. Mark xi. 15—17. Luke xix. 45—46. [Cf. supr. p. 6. The reader will of course remember that the cleans- ing of tlie temple is pluced by St. John at the commencement, by the synoptic Gospels at the conclusion of our Lord's public ministry. AVhether lie performed the act twice, as Dr. Dollinger here implies; or whether all the Evangelists refer to the same event, though in a different connection, as others suppose, and which date we are in the latter case to adopt, are questions disputed among modern critics in Germany. There seem strong reasons for preferring the opinion adopted by our author. — Tk.] MINISTRY AND TEACHING OF CHRIST. 57 which sounded like thunder, prochumed that the Father accepted tlie offerino; of His Son, and would make it serve for His glorification.' Bj day He worked in the capital, spending every night till Thursday in the neighbouring village of Bethany, for Jerusalem was full of strangers, and He wished, too, to with- draw from His enemies. His public teaching closed with the woes pronounced upon the hypocritical guides of the people, upon the city and its inhabi- tants, whom Ho had so often and so constantly sought in vain to draw to Himself, and upon the temple devoted to speedy destruction, coupled with the prophecy that they would now fill up the mea- sure of their father's sins, and bring the whole burden of their blood-guiltiness on themselves and on their people.^ On the day before the Paschal feast,^ at a supper ' John xii. 27 — 30. ^ Matt, xxiii. 13 sqq. 2 John xiii. 1 sqq. zspo hi rTJ: ioprv^g rov rsdff^rx. [The author here supposes the supper described by St. John (ch. xiii. — xvii.), to have taken place on the Wednesday evening, and to be distinct from that mentioned in the synoptic Gospels at which the Eucharist was instituted. But this method of reconciliation creates more difficulties than it removes. And it is quite clear, however the difference be ex- plained, that St. John assumes the feast of the Passover to have com- menced on the Friday evening, the day of the crucifixion (John xviii. 28), while the synoptic Gospels make our Lord eat it on the Thursday evening, the day of the Last Supper. (Matt. xxvi. 17, 10 ; Mark xiv. 12, 16 ; Luke xxii. 7, 13). For patristic explanations of the difficulty, see Wordsworth's G>: Test., and for modern expla- nations Alford's Gr. Test, on Matt. xxvi. 17, and John xviii. 28. -Tk.] 58 THE FIRST AGE OF THE CHURCH. held \Yitli His disciples, Jesus performed, in token of loving humility, an act which onlj slaves or the lowest of the company Avere wont to perform ; — He washed His discij)les' feet. He now foretold that one of them, and that one Judas, would betray Him, that Peter would deny Him, and that on the night He was taken prisoner, all would forsake Him. On Thursday He ate the Passover with the Twelve, and in doing so ordained the Sacrament of His Bod}'' and Blood, which waste take its place in His Church.^ He wished to open the eyes of His disciples to the necessity of His death, as a free-will offering for them and for the whole human race ; He wished to associate them with Himself in the communion of His death, and at the same to give them the highest proof of His love." lie had pointed out the neces- sity of laying down His life for the rcdem])tion of the world on the actual day of the Passover, and liad therefore taken care tliat His entry into Jerusa- lem should fall on the very day when, according to the ordinance of Moses, the Paschal lamb was chosen. The connnunion of the Paschal lamb, as the cha- racteristic offering of the Old Law, had formed the foundation and centre of the whole sacrificial system of the Old Testanicnt, and now the time was come when He was about actually to offer up His life as a ' Matt. xxvi. 20—28. Mark xiv. 22—24. Luke xxii. 19, 20. 1 Cor. xi. 23 — 25. - John xiii. 1 sqq. MINISTRY AND TEACHING OF CHRIST. 59 Victim, in place of tlie Paschal Sacrifice and all tlio otliers connected with it, and also to establish in His Chnrch an abiding sacrificial mj'stery, exalted high above the mere fragmentary and shadowy system of animal sacrifices. Since the Fall, men had become incapable of offer- ing to God of themselves the right and proper sacri- fice, viz., their own persons. Since their persons liad been defiled by sin, and a separation brought about between God and man, all sacrifices were essentially insufficient, they "could not cleanse the conscience;"^ they only pointed to the offering of a future sacrifice, from which they derived their light, their strength, and their meaning. But now He, in whom was realised the ideal of humanity, was to accomplish the one great sacrifice, all-sufficient for time and eternity, by freely giving His life for the whole race of whom He had made Himself a member: and, by at once disclosing and repairing the defectiveness of all pre- vious sacrifices, to put His own in their place. As the Passover Avas a feast of life and deliverance to the people, a meal at which the people exhibited and ratified their communion with God and rejoiced in it; so was this transfigured Passover to be to them the sacrificial feast of the Ncav Testament, wherein the fiiithful, by feeding on His Body, would bo brought into substantial communion with the great 1 Heb. ix. 9. 6o THE FIRST AGE OF THE CHURCH. Sacrifice, would receive remission of their sins, be cleansed and sanctified, and united as members to the body of which Christ is the Head, and thus be able to offer themselves as a sacrifice to their re- conciled God. When He blessed the Bread and Wine, His eye was fixed on His approaching death upon the Cross on the morrow, and on the whole course of earthly time, and the development of the human race. His priesthood, which He began with His assumption of human nature, was not to terminate and be laid aside, with one act of sacrifice once ofi'ered ; He meant to exercise it continually in the world above before tlie Father, and here below through human representa- tives, who under the veil of bread and wine were to offer Himself, His glorified Body, His spiritualised Blood, and with Him those who fed upon Him, as the uninterrupted offering of the Church constantly realising itself yet ever one and the same. What He was in no position to testify to the world on the following day, when the soldiers laid their rude hands upon Him and bound Him — that His death was really an offering, a free-will surrender of Himself — that He testified now ; " What I give you to eat is My Body which is broken for you, what ye drink is My Blood which I shed for you." Thus were the altars of His Church for the future to be one with the Cross, the same Body, the same Sacri- MINISTRY AND TEACHING OF CHRIST. 6\ fice here as there, one great and single offering, not repeated, but extended in time to be co-extensive with the duration of His Churcli ; this was the one oblation truly worthy of the Divine Majesty, and the solemn worship of the New Covenant, which would not be less but fiir more real in His Church than that preparatory and typical system of sacrifices and core- monies administered hitherto by the sons of Aaron. So did He attain in the simplest manner the double object of giving to His Church a continual sacrifice and a centre-point of common worship, and at the same time of p-ivino; to believers a food which would convey to the whole man, body and soul, the benedic- tion and the sanctifying power of His own Humanity and plant in them the germs of future immortalit}". This was done by His elevating bread and wine, as representing the most elementary ingredients of man's bodily food, by a substantial change, but in a sphere removed from all cognisance of sense, to the dignity of His glorified Body and Blood, penetrated with the powers of His Divine life. Thus the Eu- charist Avas the fulfilment of what He had begun in the Incarnation, and thus He provided for the incor- poration of His Church in all future generations, so that it might continually be able to appear before God as an acceptable sacrifice, being inseparably united to Himself. While Jesus was awaitino; the moment of His 6z THE FIRST AGE OF THE CHURCH. seizure in tlie Garden of Gethsemane, an ovei'power- in Matt, xxvii. AS. Cf. Vs. xxi. 1 ; (xxii. 1. e.v.) - John X. 17, 18. ' Matt. xii. 38—40. VOL. I. F 66 THE FIRST AGE OF THE CHURCH. So little could tliey at first take in the foct and trust their senses, notwithstanding His predictions, that the Lord was obliged to convince them of the reality of His Body come forth from the grave, by letting them touch it, and by eating some food. Eight days later, Avhen Tiiomas, who had before been away, and was still unbelieving^ was present, He appeared again among them, and this time the Apostle con- vinced himself and acknowledged his Lord and his God.^ But it was not in Jerusalem or by His ene- mies, that He chose to be seen ; in Galilee, where He had carried on His ministry and found the greatest number of followers, it was His will to appear to this multitude of believers, and at the same time to prepare His Apostles for the discharge of their ministry after His departure. By His com- mand they went directly after Easter from Jerusalem into Galilee, and here He appeared first to seven of them on the lake of Tiberias, where Peter was declared to be the Head of His Church.' More than five hun- dred disciples saw Him there and heard His words." Shortly before Pentecost, the Apostles returned to Jerusalem, and were there also strengthened and taught by repeated visits of Jesus. His a[)pearance, His form, His demeanour convinced them that He had indeed a true body and was no unsubstantial ' Luke xxiv. John xx. ; xxi. 12 — 14. * Matt, xxviii. 10, IC. John xxi. ' 1 Cor. xv. 6. MINISTRY AND TEACHING OF CHRIST. 67, spirit, Init that His Body was no longer subject to the- limits and conditions of earthly and corporeal exist- ence, that it was glorified. In a room with closed doors, He stood suddenly in the midst of them ; sometimes His form was known to them ; sometimes it was strange and could not be recognised. Finally,, on a Thursday, the fortieth day after His Resurrection, He appeared for the last time to His Apostles on the- Mount of Olives, near Bethany ; He commanded them to tarry in Jerusalem for the outpouring of the Holy Ghost ; and then, while a cloud Avithdrew Him from their gaze, He ascended and returned to the glory of the Father.^ * Mark xvi. 19. Luke xxiv. 50, 51. Acts i. 4 — It. '6"8 THE FIRST AGE OF THE CHURCH. CHAPTER 11. ST. PETER AND ST. PAUL. When Jesus departed fi*om the earth, He left only small and scanty beginnings of a new Church. He had appeared in Galilee to five hundred brethren after His Resurrection ; one hundred and twenty disciples, including the Apostles, were now assembled in Jeru- salem. It was natural that those only should believe on Him who had seen and heard Him since His Jlesurrection, and these amounted to at most about six hundred. This was the hidden mustard seed, and nothing could be unlikelier in all human estimation, than that out of this little gathering of peasants and craftsmen, 'fishers and publicans, among whom there was not even one man of cultivation, who were alike unacquainted with the world and unknown by it, should grow that mighty tree overshadowing the ST. PETER AND ST. PAUL. 69^ work], a Church eiiibnichig niillious, taken froiu nations the most widely separated. Tlie first thing to bo done was to fill up the num- ber of the Apostolic College. Cln^ist had appointed twelve Apostles, according to the original iiuml)er of the family from which the people of Israel were de- scended. Before the outpouring of the Holy Ghost this number had to bo restored, and the vacancy caused by the fall of Judas to be filled, and that by a man who had been an eyewitness and disciple of Jesus during the whole time of His earthly ministr}-. This was done under St. Peter's direction in an as- sembly of the little community. Christ Himself was to decide by their casting lots between the two pro- posed, for He alone could confer the Apostolic office. Thus Matthias became one of the Twelve. On the feast of Pentecost, in the year 783, ten days after the Ascension of Jesus, the feast when the Jews brought bread and meal into the temple as first fruits of the harvest to consecrate to Jehovah, the outpouring of the Holy Ghost took place. The first fruits of the new harvest of the Spirit, the disciples, were assembled in a house. Long ago had the Pro- phets promised a great and mighty outpouring of the Divine Spirit upon whole communities, upon every sex and age, and that God would write His law upon their heart and mind, and give them a ncAv heart and .70 THE FIRST AGE OF THE CHURCH. •a new spirit.^ Christ Pllmsclf liad repeatedly pro- mised this outpouring to His disciples, adding, liowever, that it coukl not take place till after His departure from the earth, that His human form and appearance to which they had too carnal an attach- ment must be removed from them, before their hearts would be a fittins: soil to receive the o-ifts of the Spirit." Thus, then, oame that outpouring, the bap- tism of the Spirit and of fire, which St. J^hn the Baptist had already announced as the work of Christ. As fire pierces through to the marrow while water remains on the surfiiee, so Avas the Spirit from on liigh of whom that fire is a type to penetrate the Apostles and disciples to their very inmost soul, and fill them with His gifts ; He Avas, as Jesus said, to -clothe them with poAver from on high." The sound of a mighty Avind and the appearance of tongues of flame, symbols of the Spirit and of the new gift of tongues, over the heads of the assemblage, including the Avomen Avho Avere present, announced the com- rannication of the Holy Ghost. Its first result Avas -•a state of ecstasy, in Avhich the possessed spoke in foreign languages, hitherto unknoAvn to them, es- pecially the Greek and Persian, and in various dialects, and Avere understood by the Hellenistic JcAvs of the Dispersion, Avho had come to Jerusalem ' Joel ii. 28, 20. Ez. xi. 19 sqq. ■ John xvi. 7. •■ Luke xxiv. 49 (^iiOuffyjsic). ST. PETER AND ST. PAUL. 71 for the feast, and by the Proselytes, while the native Israelites, who did not know these languages, mocked them, thinking they were already drunken with wine early in the morning. This was the beginning and inauguration of the great work, destined to re-unite in one vast communion the human race which had been split up and divided into hostile nations since the confusion of tongues, to exalt all languages into instruments of the one uniform truth, and liind to- gether the peoples hitherto sharply sundered from each other in the higher unity of the Church. Some- times after this, the communication of the Holy Ghost, or rather the renewal of the occurrence of Pentecost, took place in the same striking and sen- sible manner. The first time was when another outpouring of the Spirit on those assembled, accom- panied by the same sign of shaking the house, fol- lowed the thanksgiving offered by the Apostles Peter and John, when they returned to their friends after being released from imprisonment/ The second time was when the first Proselytes of the gate were received into the Church, and the phenomenon of speaking with tongues was repeated." The same thing oc- curred with the Samaritans, and -with those disciples of John on whom St. Paul laid his hands at Ephesus.^ St. Peter's address on the occurrence of the Pente- » Acts iv. 31. * Acts X. 46. ^ Acts viii. 18 ; xix. 6. 72 THE FIRST AGE OF THE CHURCH. costal miracle had a powerful effect. The impression of Avliat they had seen and heard liad already pre- pared the hearts of many to receive his words ; " An old promise is here fulfilled before yonr eyes. All those who are the subjects of tliis miracle l)elieve firmly that He whom ye, the nation, crucified fifty days ago through 3'our Sanhedrim is the Messiah. Him ye have dared to slay, as Avas permitted in the counsels of God, but He, as David's Son, and in fulfilment of a promise, has overcome death ; He is risen, and has endued us, the witnesses of His Resur- rection, with these gifts of the Spirit, as a guarantee of the truth." Then were fulfilled those words of the Prophet: " they shall look on Him whom they have pierced, and shall moiu-n for Him as for an only Son."^ Three thousand were at once baptized. / The first fair days of the young Church had begun. But the believers were still in a quite peculiar and expectant transition-state ; the Church, so to speak, was but half-born, the other half was still in the womb of the Synagogue. The followers of Jesus were under the guidance of the Apostles, but they continued to acknowledge the authorit}' of the chair of Moses in Jerusalem. God had not yet abolished the Synagogue ; the Sanhedrim still asserted fi rightful jurisdiction over the Jewish Church, and the believers submitted to it on all points but one. ' Zech. xii. 10. ST. PETER AND ST. PAUL. 73 where they *' must ol)cy God nither than man." They were still members of tlic great ])()litico- rehgious organisation of their people, and were will- ing to fulfil all the obligations of membership ; they resorted to the temple, as still being the one Sanc- tuary of the one God, they joined in the public solemnities and public prayer, but they also fre- quently met among themselves to hear the Apostles, to pray, and " to break bread," i.e., to celebrate the Communion of the Body and Blood of Christ. Their abiding inspiration, the example of Christ and the Apostles, and also the expectation of the approaching judgment on Jerusalem and Judaea, acted so power- fully, that the multitude of their own accord intro- duced a community of goods among themselves, so that every man regarded and used his private purse as what the brethren had a right to share, and many who had real estates sold them, that the proceeds might be applied by the Apostles to the common wants of all. This example, however, was not followed by any of the daughter Churches. "When Ananias and Sapphira, through their hypocrisy and avaricious attempt at deception, had made tlio first assault on the authority of the Apostles and the Holy Ghost ruling in the Church, St. Peter inflicted a ter- rible punishment upon them.^ The event of Pentecost, and its consequences, had > Acts V. 1—10. 74 THE FIRST AGE OF THE CHURCH. left the authorities in Jerusakim outwardly quiet and inactive. Many meantime were indignant or alarmed at the dangerous sect, which they thought to have trodden down like a worm at the death of its Founder, suddenly lifting its head again, and preach- ing the Resurrection of the Crucified One, while thrusting His death in the teeth of the nation as a great wickedness. Then followed the public healing of the lame man at the gate of the temple by St. Peter, and a second speech of the Apostle's, addressed this time to the crowd of worshippers assembled. It is not we, he told them, who have performed this cure ; it is Jesus, Avhom ye through ignorance have killed, in whose Name this man is made wholc.^ His summons, which followed, to turn to Jesus with penitent conversion, was interrupted by the soldiers of the temple guard sent from the priests and Sad- ducees, who seized him and his companion St. John. Peter declared before the Sanhedrim that there was no other name given whereby men could be saved, l)ut only the name of Jesus, and appealed against their prohibition to preach this Name to the higher will of God ; they could not but proclaim what they had seen and heard." This occurrence was again followed by a great increase of the new community, so that the number of its members had already ad- vanced to five thousand. A close bond of mutual ■ Acts Hi. 12— 2G. ^ Acts iv. 1 sqq. ST. PETER AND ST. PAUL. 75 love bound togctlier the daily growing society avIio were Avont to assemble in Solomon's Porcli, regarded by tradition as a relic of the old temple. They were looked upon by the people with a kind of shrinking awe/ The fame of the extraordinary events of Pen- tecost, and of the numerous healings which sur- rounded the path of the infant Chvu'ch, as of its Divine Founder, encircled them in public estimation with a halo which even their enemies for a time scrupled to touch. As St. Peter on all occasions took the precedence, acting and speaking first, as being the head of the young Church, on hin;i, too, the gift of healing chiefly rested. Already the sick were brought from the neighbouring towns, and the pres- sure on him was so great that they had to be placed on their beds in the streets, that only the shadow of the Apostle as he passed might fall upon them.^ The Apostles having been imprisoned anew, at the suggestion of the Sadducees in concert with the High Priest Annas, were miraculously set free and preached again innnediately in the temple. Then Gamaliel, a Pharisee of great reputation, advised in the high Council a wise and merciful policy of delay. It was best to see first what would come of the thing. This advice prevailed so far that the Sanhedrim dis- missed the Apostles after they had been punished with scourging, and again forbidden to preach Jesus. ' Acts V. 12, 13. - Acts V. la, 16. 'JO THE FIRST AGE OF THE CHURCH. With the principle of this order they did not comply, and now broke out the storm of a general and syste- matic persecution.^ Among the seven men who had been entrusted Avith the newlj'-established office of the diaconate, for the care of the poor, Stephen ranked first in power and in spiritual gifts. Himself a Hellenist, he had come into contact as a messenger of Christ with Hellenistic Jews from Italy, Cyrene, Egypt, Cilicia, and the coasts of Asia, and had exercised a powerful influence over them. His adversaries among these Hellenists accused liim before the Sanhedrim, bringing witnesses to prove that he had blasphemed the law and the temple ; that is, he had spoken of the approaching fall of the temple and the abolition or reformation of the ceremonial law by a Divine judg- inent. In his defence he drew a picture of the past history and Divine guidance of Israel, that he might exhibit to them, as in a mirror, their own conduct in that of their forefathers against the prophets sent from God, and at the same time point out how the preparatory course of God's counsels had found its destined end in the mission of the Messiah. But when he passed on to a fiery exhortation to repen- tance, and told them the same spirit of obstinate disobedience and faithlessness which their fathers showed ruled in them too, and had driven them to ' Acts V. 17—42. ST. PETER AND ST. PAUL. 77 betray and murder the Righteous One ; Avhen ho cried out in an ecstatic vision of tlie glory of Christ, " I see the heavens opened, and the Son of Man standing at the riglit hand of God," they treated this as a fresh blasphemy, and dragged him forth in wild tumult, without any formal sentence, to be stoned, according to the law of the Zealots. Thus died the first Mart}r, praying for his enemies after his Master's example.^ The ftivour they had before found \vith the people could now no longer protect any disciple of Christ ; when once the word "blasphemy" had gone forth," the Pharisees refrained all their old influence over the people, who were ready to give up the Chris- tians to their will, or even to help in executing punishment on them. The great persecution in Jerusalem dispersed most of the believers over the provinces of Judaea and Samaria, and even drove them further to Phoenicia, Cyprus, and Antioch ; that the Apostles, who were chiefly threatened, re- mained at Jerusalem, showed that they had received a special command of Christ to do so.' The Sama- ritans, that mongrel race, half Jew half Gentile, hated and shunned as unclean by the Jews, were the first to benefit by the dispersion of the Chris- tians ; their country was the first stage of a mission now beginning to overstep the limits of ' Acts vi., vii. - Acts viii. 1 ; xi. 19. 70 THE FIRST AGE OF THE CHURCH. Jewish nationality. The deacon, PhiHp, who bap- tized a foreign proselyte of the gate, the chamber- lain of the queen of Meroe, worked among them Avitli very happy results, and reaped the harvest which Christ Himself had sown earlier.^ Peter and John were sent by the Apostolic College to impart confirmation to those he baptized, through prayer and the laying on of hands, and with it the visible gifts of the Holy Ghost which then so often accompanied it. Without such a testimony the Jewish believers would have been very slow to understand that this bastard brother of the chosen people Avas called to enter the Church. The extraordinary effects of this communication of the Spirit led the Samaritan ma- gician, Simon, to imagine that the Apostles possessed a magical povrer, exercised through the laying on of hands, the use of which they could impart to others, and that they would sell the secret of it for money. St. Peter's threatening rebuke so terrified him that he besought them to pray to God for him.' But it must not be supposed that this was aiiy real conver- sion ; he played the part of a miracle-monger and head of a sect to the last. AVith the exception of its being received in Sa- maria, the Gospel as yet was only preached to the children of Abraham. There was no beginning: even made as yet as a fulfilment of the promises given ' John iv. 35-38. = Acts vlii. 14—24. ST. PETER AND ST. PAUL. 79 long before Christ that the heathen also were to enter into the kingdom of God, and of His own general command to the Apostles to teach and Ijaji- tize all peoples. It mnst have seemed to those who considered the events taking place in the bosom of Jndaism, as though the whole of that great move- ment which had originated with Christ were to bo confined Avithin the limits of Israel, and the impene- trable wall of partition which temporary custom, even more than the written law, had built up between the Jews and the rest of mankind, was to remain even for the disciples of Jesus. The Apostles knew, in a general way, God's decree as to the call of the Gentiles : but they were not clear as to its precise time or conditions. Were those Gentiles only to be received who were already " proselytes of righteousness," or those avIio had submitted to circumcision and the whole Jewish law ? The law of Moses had enjoined circumcision as a permanent and constantly binding obligation ; the uncircumcised was to be rooted out of the people of God. And the Apostles foresaw that to relax this condition by admitting him to connnunion among born Jews would certainly give the greatest offence, and be a serious hindrance to the further spread of the faith among them. It needed a special Divine revelation to overcome their scruples and hesitation, and accordinglv one was given to St. Peter, who was 8o THE FIRST AGE OF THE CHURCH. destined, as head of the Churcli, to admit the first Gentiles. There ^Yere at that time many Gentiles everywhere who, in the eyes of the Jews, were half converts, like those earlier " proselytes of the gate," who were not required to observe the whole law, but only to abstain from certain heathen practices. These " God- fearing" Gentiles used to observe the hours of prayer in the temple, and attended the service at the Synagogues, but, being uncircumcised, were re- garded and treated by the Jews as unclean, and they would not eat or drink or hold any familiar intercourse with them. Such a half proselyte was the centurion Cornelius, who belonged to the Italian cohort quartered at Caisarea. He had already won the very highest character among the Israelites far and near by his unfeigned piety, which his whole family shared, and by his gentleness. This was the man chosen out by Divine Providence to be an ex- ample and evidence of the breaking down and entire removal of the partition-wall between different na- tions. And so, while Cornelius was warned by an ungel to send for St. Peter, the Apostle, too, was set free, by a special Divine interposition, from the notion sucked in from his youth — on which the sepa- ration of Jew and Gentile chiefly rested — that every uncircumcised man was unclean and all intercourse witli him defiling. For it was the law about food, ST. PETER AND ST. PAUi.. 8l which discriminated betAveen clean and unclean meats, that kept alive the aversion of the Jews for any intercourse with foreigners, who through tasting un- clean animals had themselves become unclean.^ Therefore, when Peter Avas hungr}', a sheet coming down from heaven was shown to him in vision full of clean and unclean animals, and when he hesitated to comply with the command, " Kill and eat," be- cause he had never eaten anything unclean, he was told that what God had cleansed ho must not treat as unclean ; and thus he learnt that the Supreme Lawgiver Himself, who had before marked out and given for food only certain kinds of animals now withdrew that distinction, and allowed all animals indifferently to be eaten. The further meaning of the vision was clear to him, when the messengers of Cornelius appeared directly afterwards, and so he had no scruple about accepting their invitation. When he found from the words of Cornelius how wonderfully the two A'isions fitted into each other, it became clear to him for the first time that God did not vouchsafe His grace only to the children of Abra ham, as he had hitherto believed Avith his country- men, but that among other nations, too, the fear of God and practical piety were pleasing to Him, and. ' So the Jew3 themselves explained the aim and operation of the - Mosaic law about meats. See Eleazer's speech, Euseb. Frcrj}. £v^ viii. 9. VOL. I. G 82 THE FIRST AGE OF THE CHURCH. itliat He was calling tliose who served Him, though mot Jews, to believe and enter His Church. And now followed an occurrence which could not but re- ni'SV'e the last lingering scruples of St. Peter's Jewish attendants ; God Himself showed that He had made these Gentiles members of Christ, independently of the ministry of the Apostle who was summoned for the purpose. For, before they were baptized and had received the laying on of hands, while they were listening to his words, the Holy Ghost came upon them, and they spoke with tongues and praised God. Thus was the same privilege accorded to the first fruits of the Gentiles, which had been the glory of the first fruits of Israel at Pentecost. They were at once baptized by St. Peter's direction ; and thus God had Himself reversed in some sense the usual order of His grace, by bestowing on the unbaptized the gifts of the Holy Ghost, to meet the popular error of the Jews that the promises were given only to them to the exclusion of the Gentiles, and to show that He had called these, too, to the faith and privi- leges of the New Testament.^ When the believers at Jerusalem received Peter with reproaches for iiaving associated and eaten with the uncircumcised, he justified himself by simply relating what had oc- curred, which showed clearly the immediate inter- position of God, and by reminding them of Christ's promise, that His followers should be baptized with ithe Holy Ghost, which was here fulfilled. ' Acts X. ST. PETER AND ST. PAUL. 8^ If the conversion of the Gentile family at Caisarea was an isohited event, a whole community of Gentile converts was founded at the same time in the Eastern capital of the Empire, which had also a great number of Jewish inhabitants, and thus the admission of the uncircumcised into the Church of Christ became a recognised procedure. The Cyprian and Cyrenaic Hellenists, driven out of Jerusalem by the persecution, preached Christ with great success to the Greeks of Antioch on the Orontes. Barnabas, of Cyprus, who was sent from Jerusalem to take charge of these first instalments of a Gentile Christian community, perceived that a wide field for work lay open there, and therefore fetched an assistant from Tarsus, whose marvellous greatness and importance in the world's history he himself did not yet conjecture. They worked together there for a year. Antioch, from the size of the city and the personal standing of the men who laboured there to build up the Chris- tian society, became the second Christian metropolis and Mother Church, which, consisting chiefly of Gentile converts, took its i)lace beside the Mother Church of Jerusalem, consisting wholly of Jewish converts. Here the name of Christian was first given to believers, probably by the Latin portion of the Gentile population, in derision.^ Meanwhile the Church had obtained through a ' Acts xi. 26. G 2 84 THE FIRST AGE OF THE CHURCH. miraculous call and conversion the man chosen above all to break down the partition wall between Jew and Gentile, and to bring the latter in a body into the new communion. A joung man of Tarsus, Saul bj name, had distinguished himself above all by his burning zeal against the disciples of Christ, and his unwearied energy in extirpating them. The son of a Pharisee, he had been educated at Jerusalem in the school of Gamaliel, the most learned and pious doctor of the Law of the day, and was firmly grounded in the prevalent doctrine about the approaching glo- rification of the Law and erection of the Kingdom of Israel. He had inherited from his father the im- portant and valuable privileges of Homan citizen- ship ; and, belonging as he did to a city which could even compete with Athens and Alexandria as a chief seat of Greek civilisation and science, Avas not unac- quainted with Greek literature, though it had done nothing to subdue the rigour of his Pharisaic zeal for the Law. Saul, as lie was called in Hebrew, or Paul after the Hellenistic form of his name, was a witness of the heroic resignation and magnanimous constancy with which St. Stephen had suffered death. And that event may have left a sting in his breast which afterwards contributed to his conversion, though for the time it only confirmed him in the conviction that a sect wliich produced such martyrs constituted a ST. PETER AND ST. PAUL. 85 grave danger to pure Judaism, distracted as it was otherwise from within and threatened more and more seriously from without, and that it mitst, therefore, be extirpated. He hastened to Damascus, whither many Christians had fled, with full powers from the High Priest, the president of the Sanhedrim, to superintend the imprisonment of the apostates. But in the persecutor of to-day was hidden the Apostle of to-morrow, as the generous fruit is hidden in its rough shell. When he was certain that the promised Deliverer of Israel, whom he with all his people was looking for, had already come, and come in the person of Jesus, then that stream of fiery zeal poured itself into the bed of the young Chin-ch ; that fulness of acquirements, that strength of mind and will, came over to the service of the cause he had hitherto hated and persecuted. This certainty he gained on his way to Damascus ; he suddenly heard the voice of the Lord and saw His countenance, and the favour granted during the forty days to the Apostles and disciples was also conferred on him ; the risen Jesus appeared to him, not, as to them, with shrouded majesty, but in the splendour and brightness of His glorified Humanity. To him alone was this sight vouchsafed, while his companions per- ceived, indeed, the light outshining the mid-day sun and heard the sound of a voice, but neither saw Jesus nor understood the words spoken. Saul, struck to 86 THE FIRST AGE OF THE CHURCH. the ground at the presence of the Lord, and then raised up again by His word, learnt now that he, the former persecutor, was ordained to preach and testify what he had hitherto denied and abhorred as blas- phemy. When the vision Avas over, he observed that he had lost his sight. He was led on by his attendants the little "svay still left to Damascus, and remained three days blind, eating and drinking nothing ; but his spiritual sight was all the keener in this night of his outward senses. The illusions which had before held captive this lofty and powerful spirit vanished now ; the prophetic passages of Scripture became clear to him, and the look of the dying Stephen rose before his soul. In those three days he lived whole years of penitence, and recognised himself as the chief of sinners ;^ the proud self-righteousness of the Pha- risee, which deemed itself blameless in obsennng all the externals of the Law, fell, like a hard crust, from his heart ; belief in Jesus, whose disciples he had compelled to blaspheme Him, entered and began at once to transform His whole consciousness. A be- liever at Damascus, named Ananias, to whom even the Jews bore testimony as a conscientious observer of the Law, had already been commanded in a vision to restore sight, by laying on of hands, to the enemy and threatening persecutor, whose mere name filled him with fear and anxiety, but who was even now ' 1 Tim. i. 15. Eph. iii. 8. ST. PETER AND ST. PAUL. Sj absorbed in prayer, and tlius showed that lie liad grown humble and obedient. As St. Peter and Cor- nelius had been prepared for their intercourse with eack other by similar visions, so, while Ananias received, this summons, Saul was instructed by a vision that Ananias would come and cure him of his blindness. And thus he was received into the bosom of the Church by baptism, and preached Jesus in the syna- gogue of the city.^ Not for long however — that the Jews at Damascus,, where they had full power against an apostate from their own ranks, would not have tolerated. Saul did not return to Jerusalem, but went into Arabia," either that part of the Arabian desert which stretches to the Gardens of Damascus, or into Arabia Petrfea touching on Syria and Egypt, not to preach there^ but to prepare in solitary intercourse with God for the duties of his future life, to obtain through con- verse with his o-lorified Iledeemer that fitness for the Apostolate which the other Apostles had gained from their converse with Christ on earth. Even the Lord Himself, after His baptism and before entering on His ministry, had been driven by the Spirit into the- wilderness. When Saul afler a short absence reap- peared in Damascus, the Jews sought to kill him. They had won over the governor under King Aretas- who then ruled the city, and he gave orders to arrest » Acts ix. 1—22. ■ Gal. i. 17. 58 THE FIRST AGE OF THE CUURCH. liim, while they watched the gates that the hated re- negade might not escape. But the IjcHevers let him down over the walls by night in a basket. And now, in the third year after his conversion^ he went for the first time to Jerusalem.^ St. Paul himself insisted afterwards on tlie fact that he had not after his miraculous enlightening submitted to human influence or to human trial and approval, and had on that account not gone sooner to Jerusalem, because, being under the per- sonal teaching and guidance of the glorified Jesus, he had no need of such aid, or of any earthly attesta- tion." His gospel, as ho had received it immediately from God, left no room for doubt or for correction or addition from men, not even from the Apostles themselves. What took him now to Jerusalem was the desire to become better acquainted with the first and chiefest of them, whom Christ Himself had made the shepherd of His flock, and to hold converse with him. It was the Cyprian Barnabas who intro- Actsxi. 27-30. PO THE FIRST AGE OF THE CHURCH. when St. Paul came the second time to Jerusalem (a.d. 44), they had again a king of their own, Herod Agrippa, grandson of Herod the Great, who might be regarded as belonging to their nation, for he had the blood of tlie old Hasmoneans in his veins. He wished to solve the difficult problem of at once mak- ing himself popular with his people, and standing well with the Roman authorities ; and therefore he, too, kept the High Priests strictly dependent on him by frequent changes, but gave over the believers to the hatred of priests and people. Again was the Easter season the time selected for the execution of punishment ; James, the son of Zebedee and brother of John, was the first martyr among the Apostles ; Peter was kept in prison, that his death might servo as a welcome spectacle at the close of the festival. But he was set free at night by an angel, and showed himself to the assemblage of believers who were pray- ing for him in Mary's house and were seized with joyful astonishment, bade them inform James the son of Alphrous and the rest of the brethren of his release, and immediately left Jerusalem, where from this time St. James alone remained, as bishop of the community. The Church, however, was soon de- livered from the enmity of Herod by a death which, from its terrible circumstances, appeared to the believers a judgment of God on the persecutor.^ ' Acts xii. 1—23. ST. PETER AND ST. PAUL. 9 1 Several years liad now elapsed since St. Paul's conversion, yet he never took more tlian a sulDordi- nate position in the Church, and in the rank of those engaged in the ministry. The enlightened prophets and teachers who were then in the Church at Antioch are named in the Acts of the Apostles ; first Barnabas, then Simeon Niger, Lucius of Cj'rene, Manaen, foster brother of Herod the tetrarch, and lastly, Saul. It was some time after his return from his second journey to Jerusalem with St. Barnabas that he was first raised, together with him, to the Apos- tolic office, according to previous announcement. While the persons just named were keeping a fast and discharging their priestly functions, the Divine command went forth, either by the mouth of one of the -prophets present, or by an inspiration of several^ to separate Barnabas and Saul for the work to whicli the Lord had called them ; and this was done by prayer and the laying on of hands. This was no conferring of Apostleship on their part ; the Apostles themselves had received no power from Christ to do that. Both the vocation to the Apostolate and its bestowal could only come direct from God. Li the election of St. Matthias, the only matter dealt with v>'as the filling up the complete number of the Twelve which had been so appointed and fixed by Christ.^ Nor can we say that Saul and Barnabas were called ' Matt. xix. 28. 92 THE FIRST AGE OF THE CHURCH. to a new and hitherto non-existent kind of Apostolate, that of the Gentiles ; for there was no such division of Apostolic action for Jews and Gentiles, and the new Apostles themselves always turned first to the Jews. The most probable account to be given of the matter is this : — Barnabas and Saul were appointed to fill up two vacant places in the Apostolic College, one caused by the sword of Herod in the execution of James, son of Zebedee, the other by James, son of Alphffius, being withdrawn from the peculiar work of an Apostle, without of course losing the dignity, through his position as Bishop of Jerusalem, after all the other Apostles had left the city to carry the preaching of the gospel into more distant lands. And thus, by the entrance of Saul and Barnabas into their body, the number of those exercising the Apostolic mission was restored to its normal con- dition of Twelve. That St. Barnabas in particular was made an Apostle in just as strict a sense of the word as St. Paul, is a matter there can be no mis- take about. St. Paul places him with himself on a par with the other Apostles.^ St. Luke never gives St. Paul alone the title of Apostle, but always with St. Barnabas, and that first after the ordination at Antioch, which so far constitutes a turning-point in his narrative that, whereas before it he always men- tions Barnabas first, afterwards he mentions Paul « 1 Cor. ix. 5, 6. ST. PETER AND ST. PAUL. 93 first.^ The Greek no less than the Western Church honours St. Barnabas as an Apostle, and St. Jerome reckons him and St. Paul as the thirteenth and four- teenth Apostles. And thus the Apostolic College has always consisted of Twelve only at a time, but of fourteen men successively ;" and therefore the Apoca- lypse knows only of Twelve Apostles as foundation stones of the walls of the holy City.^ Since the call to the Apostolate must come imme- diately from God, St. Paul received his appointment to preach the Gospel to the Gentiles in another appearance and revelation of Christ, vouchsafed to him in an ecstasy in the temple during his second visit to the Jewish capital, and in this Apostolate St. Barnabas was united to him through a manifestation of the Divine will at Antioch. Hence he appeals, as against the objections of the Galatians, to the direct bestowal of his Apostolic office by God, and its conse- quent equality to that of the rest ; he was to preach his gospel without having learnt it from any one, without asking any one first and getting his consent. If he sought out the Apostle Peter during his short stay in Jerusalem, that was only to show honour to his primacy, not to receive instruction from him, which he needed not, or power and mission, which he ' Acts xi. 30 ; xiii. 43, 46, 50 ; xv. 35. ^ [Or rather of fifteen, reckoning Judas. — Tr.] ' Apoc. xxi. 14. 94 THE FIRST AGE OF THE CHURCH. already i)ossessed/ St. Paul and St. Barnabas though specially called to the Gentile Apostolate, always recognised the prior right of the Jews by preaching Christ first to them on their journeys. The Synagogues were the places where St. Paul appeared, theVather since anumber of " God-fearing" Gentiles, proselytes of the gate, were always among their members, who formed the bridge whereby Christ^s message might reach the unbelieving Gen- tiles also." In the year 45, immediately after entering on their ' Apostleship, St. Paul and St. Barnabas undertook a first missionary journey to Cyprus and the Southern provinces of Asia Minor, which had great results.^ But on their return to Antioch the quarrel with the Judaizers broke out, which henceforth through all the Apostolic age was the sorest trial of the infant Church and the grand difficulty especially which St. Paul had to contend with. The conduct of both Apostles in inviting Gentiles at once to enter the Jewish Chris- tian community, without any regard to law, defile- ment, or separation, was something shocking and intolerable to the great body of Jews as then minded. The sons of Abraham and their lofty privileges would be swallowed up, as it were, at no distant period by the mass of Gentile believers. This anxiety was felt » Gal. i. 1.5—10. - Acts xiii. 5, 14. ' Acts xiii., xiv. ST. PETER AND ST. PAUL. 95 above all in Jerusalem, whore the temple and Levitical service were constantly before men's eyes. The affair of Cornelius was an isolated case, an ex- ception to the rule, acquiesced in as having received the seal of Divine approval through the miraculous outpouring of the gifts of the Spirit on those Gen- tiles ; but now that communities were being formed consisting wholly or chiefly of Gentile converts, the greatness of the danger was conspicuous. And certain "false brethren, who had crept in secretly," appeared at Antioch, intending to force the yoke of the Mosaic law on the new converts. The Ceremonial Law had its stronghold and the guarantee of its continuance in the existence of the Jewish polity. So long as this and the temple stood, it was idle to think of abolishing the law ; or at least its abolition could only have come about through a general and simultaneous entrance of the Jewish nation, as Avell its lower as its higher classes, into the Church. For the ceremonial was also a civil law ; the Jew was bound to its observance not only as an individual, but above all as a member of the state and nation ; nor was there any command of the Lord to the individual believer to separate from his people and its Church and State organisation. Moreover, in Judwa and Galilee it was impossible to do so without emigrating. But even the Jews of the Dispersion alwavs resrarded themselves as members of the Com- 9<5 ' THE FIRST AGE OF THE CHURCH. monwealth wliicli had its seat and centre at Jeru- salem, and sent their contributions thitlier. Thus it was not left to the caprice of believers in Juda3a ■whether they would observe the ceremonial law or not, but was for them a necessity. Meanwhile, until the counsel of God was more broadly and clearly developed, they remained in the fullest sense Is- raelites, only distinguished in the one point of their believing that Messiah had already come, but wil- lingly conforming in all other respects to the existing order of the law. The Apostles on their side did not venture to do anything M'hicli might impede the grand vocation of the whole nation to become pillars and instruments of the religion of Messiah — a vocation not yet defini- tively rejected, nor had the interval permitted for accepting it yet expired. They did not venture to introduce or abolish anything at the risk of need- lessly repelling the great body of the Jews, and were bound to sustain carefully all the fibres by which the Christian community was attached to the great Jewish national Church and State. They accordingly continued to observe the law themselves, and tolerated and approved its observance in the Jewish Christian communities. But the Christian zealots for the law who came from Jerusalem to Antioch declared to the Gentile con- verts : " Unless you are circumcised, you cannot be ST. PETER AND ST. PAUL. 97 saved. "^ This Avas going be3^oncl even the prevalent Jewish view of the period, for there was a hirge body of " Proselytes of the gate " who were not reqnired to keen the ceremonial law. But had it been announced in the name of the Synagogue that there was no sal- vation without being circumcised, of course no Gen- tile would have become a proselyte of this kind ; he would either have remained a Heathen or become a " Proselyte of righteousness ;" but this latter class was comparatively a small one. Only a few zealots among the Jews considered circumcision absolutely indispensable, like that Eleazer who represented to "King Izates of Adiabene the danger to his soul of not being circumcised, while the Jewish merchant Ananias had dissuaded him from circumcision, be- cause he could please God without it.^ The view of these Pharisee converts was that not only belief in Christ as the promised Messiah but also observance of the ritual law was a condition of salvation, that Ohrist had come for the very purpose of confirming the law and enlarcjino: the circle of its adherents, and that since His kino;dom had begun the time of patience and forbearance with '' God-fearing " Gen- tiles was over ; so that whoever would be saved must become a full citizen of Israel strengthciie I by the addition and incorporation of Gentile converts. Here, then, was a very grave practical difficulty. • Acts XV. 1. - Joseph. Arch. xxii. 2, 5. \0\.. I. II 98 THE FIRST AGE OF THE CHURCH. It was ]iot easy to see how a brotherly relationship and healthy intercourse of common life could grow up between Gentile and Jewish Christians, the cir- cumcised and uncircumcised. For the strict cere- monialist would not eat and drink with the uncircum- cised ; the law of meats prevented him. This, in fact, was a knot which could not really bo untied or cut, except l^y the direct intervention of Divine Providence. Meanwhile, as the claims of the two parties could not be thoroughly reconciled, some temporary accommodation had to be devised. Paul and Barnabas, therefore, with certain others, including Titus, a learned Greek who had joined St. Paul, went to Jerusalem commissioned by the Church at Antioch to get this difficult question settled. It was St. Paul's third journey to the capital since his conversion, and fourteen years after it. He has given us an account of it in his Epistle to the Galatians, but only so far as regards the recognition of his Apostolate and preaching of the Gospel by the chief Apostles there. When repre- senting himself to the Galatians, in proof of his Apostolic authority, as being under the immediate guidance and enlightenment of the Lord, he refers this journey to a special revelation. It was resolved on St. Peter's proposal, in an assembly where he and St. James were present together with the presbyters of the Church, that the burden of circumcision ST. PETER AND ST. PAUL. 99 and the law should not be laid on Gentile converts. But in order to facilitate a real fusion of Jewp and Gentiles in the Church, the latter were to abstain from certain things peculiarly repulsive to the Jews, viz., from sharing in Heathen sacrificial feasts, and eatiny; blood or the flesh of strano-led animals. The Apostles felt the more bound to require the observance of these restrictions, as it was a matter causinfii; offence to the Jews and making Cliristianitv appear to them a religion beset with Heathen abomi- nations. It was thought necessary in Jerusalem to add the prohibition of " fornication," because im- purity and sins of the flesh were so common and so little regarded among the Heathen that much of this sort might also survive among converts from Heathenism.! St. Paul had communicated to the three leading Apostles at a private interview his manner of pro- cedure in preaching to the Gentiles, probably before the public meeting ; not, as he says, to gain instruc- tion from them — for he did what he did by Divine inspiration — but to gain the confirmation and sanc- tion of their authority. He had already successfully- resisted the demands of the Christian Pharisees that his attendant, Titus, a converted Greek, should be circumcised. The x\postlcs had nothing to object tc • Acts. XV. 1—29. Gal. ii. 1-10. H 2 100 THE FIRST AGE OF THE CHURCH. St. Paul's conduct and teaching, ■which they found all jierfectly regular, and made a brotherly covenant with hiui, acknowledging that, as Peter had been prepared and blessed by God for the work of con- verting tlie Jews, so Paul was a chosen instrument for winning the Gentiles. They agreed, therefore, to work according to a mutual iinderstanding, Peter, James and John devoting themselves princijially to preaching the Gospel to the circumcised, while Paul and Barnabas worked as Apostles of the Gentiles.^ But this did not hinder St. Paul from labouring with unwearied zeal to win his countrymen to faith in Christ, or withdraw St. Peter and St. John from preaching to the Gentiles when opportunity offered. All communities already founded, or now growing up beyond the limits of Ju(Uv:i, were composed of both Jews and Gentiles, so that every Apostle who did not remain in Judaia, like St. James, must attend to both. At the same time whatever communities St. Paul and St. Barnabas might found were to be connected with the Church at Jerusalem, and testify their relation to it as daughters by sending contributions for the poor there. The worst was thus averted, and the Christian lii)orty of Gentile converts secured ; but the main difficulty remained unsolved, and was i)uri)osely not touched upon at t!ie Council. It was tacitly assumed ' G ,1. ii. 1—0. ST. PETER AND ST. PAUL. 101 that the Jewish Christians and the Apostles tliem- selves would continue to observe the law. But how was a real Church connnunion to come about while the Israelite held a converted and baptized Greek for an unclean beino;, with whom it was defilement to eat and drink ? Without doubt the Apostles intended the requirements of the Jewish laws to yield here to the higher duties of Christian brotherly love, and the better claims of membership in the body of the Church. In Juda3a, where the Christian societies were purely Jewish, there was no opportunity for exhibltin<^ this in practice; but soon after the Apos- tolic Council St. Peter had an opportunity of doinoj so while staying at Antioch with St. Paul and St. Barnabas. In that city, where the Jewish law was not the law of the land, he had no scruple about "living as a Gentile;" i.e., associating at table and in domestic life with Gentiles, until some Jewish Christians arrived there from St. James's comnumion at Jerusalem. And then, to avoid offending them and damaging his influence among the Jews of Pales- tine, he thought it right to withdraw from eating with Gentile converts. All the Jewish Christians at Antioch — St. Barnabas among them — followed his example.^ This was no violation of the rule laid down by the Council, for the whole question was lefb unsettled there, and whoever disregarded this part of ' Gal. ii. 11—14. 102 THE FIRST AGE OF THE CHURCH. the law was, in the eyes of all Jews, a complete breaker of the law. St. Peter, therefore, might well think that, being compelled to choose between the Gren tiles and the Jews, he had better take the lesser evil of the two. As St. Paul says, he feared those of the circumcision. This was no want of moral courage, of which he had given abundant proof in more than once upbraiding all Jerusalem and its rulers witl: their sin against the Lord, in opening the Church's gates to the first Gentile family, and in being the first at the Council to recognise Gentile liberties. But he remembered that the Jewish Chris- tians of Palestine belonged to the Jewish civil polity, still existing, though dependent on Rome, and based entirely on the Mosaic law ; he knew that law, — social, ritual, and political, — to be the law of the land, from which Christians could not withdraw themselves while continuing to be citizens and re- sidents in the country. He had rightly preferred regard for his Gentile brethren to observance of the law while living at Antioch beyond the jurisdiction of the Jewish state. But the arrival of Jewish Chris- tians from Jerusalem placed him in a dilemma be- tween opposite duties and relations, his old duty to his fellow-countrymen, converted chiefly by him, and bound by, the law of separation, and his- new duty to brethren gained over by others. As the shepherd appointed by Christ for the whole flock, lie ST. PETER AND ST. PAUL. 1 03 belonged to both, but he had hitherto been peculiarly the Apostle of Israel, and was not willing to give up his labours in Jerusalem and Judaea ; he wished especially to preserve his authority and influence where born Jews predominated. He had, indeed, already broken through the partition wall by the baptism of Cornelius, and maintained his right to do so against the scruples of others ; but then he could appeal to the fire baptism and miraculous gifts of the Spirit, whereby God Himself attested that the Gentiles were no more unclean or inferior to Jewish believers. No such event had occurred at Antloch. But St. Peter had himself declared at the Council that the ritual law was a yoke neither the Jews nor their fathers had been able to bear ; he had first, as St. Paul said, " thovigh a Jew, lived as a Gentile," yet he now assumed an attitude Avhich, from his position in the Church, amounted to putting on Gen- tile converts a moral compulsion to submit to the yoke of the law. For if he, the pillar of legitimate unity chosen by Christ as shepherd of the flock, showed by his actions that he held the uncircumcised unclean, their persons and their meats defiling, they could only infer that to be admitted to communion with the Head of the Church, they must sacrifice the liberty guaranteed to them by the Council and adopt the Jewish lavr. That was intolerable to St. Paul as Apostle of the Gentiles and preacher of 104 THE FIRST AGE OF THE CHURCH. Evangelical freedom, and lie thought, too, how the Pharisee zealots who wanted to impose the whole law on Gentiles would abuse this example of the cliief Apostle. He openly and sharply censured St. Peter for building up again what he had pulled down, and, after he had already by his conduct absolved Jewish Christians from the absolute obligation of the law, act- ing now from fear of men against his better judgment ; that was " hypocrisy."^ We are not told the reply ; but there was no lasting quarrel, for in the thing itself both Apostles were agreed. St. Paul never thought of urging Jews in general, especially those in Palestine, to renounce the law altogether, of requiring them, e.g., not to circumcise their children; he acknow- ledged that they must keep it as long as the present State and Church organization of the Jewish people lasted. The great separation was not }'et come, the Jew who believed in Christ remained a member of his nation and shared its duties, as also its rio-hts and privileges. When the key-stone which held all together was broken to pieces, when the national sanctuary of the temple was destroyed by a higher interposition, then the links of the chain would be severed and the converted son of Abraham would belong only to the Church, and no more to his people and to the Synagogue. St. Paul himself, therefore, felt no hesitation about observing the law, when it ' Gal. ii. 14. ST. PETER AND ST. PAUL. T05 did not come into collision with the higher duties of his Apostolate and his position towards the Gentile Christians, as when he had St. Timothy, the son of a Jewish mother and Greek father, circumcised, and bore the charges of a Nazarite vow/ He was only zealous against it when it was substituted for faith in Christ, and had a value given it in the conscience, as the means of man's justification before God, and when, as was only possible from this false stand- point, its yoke was to be laid on the necks of Gentile Christians. Such an attempt he thought was in- volved indirectly in St. Peter's behaviour. On the other hand, St. Peter and St. Barnabas thought they had full freedom of conscience to observe or neglect the ritual law as a thing indifferent in itself, and in the impossibility of doing justice to both parties they believed that they ought to give the preference to their countrymen. This can be more naturally and easily justified in St. Peter than in Barnabas the Cypriote. For he saw in converted Israel the germ of the Church, to which the Gentile Christians belonged only as guests arrived later, and to their good all other considerations must yield; he knew that nothing could be more prejudicial to the success of his work in Jerusalem and Judaia than his being known to have broken through the fence which guarded the ritual purit}' of Judaism. • Acts xvi. 3 ; xxi. 23—26. 106 THE FIRST AGE OF THE CHURCH. This dispute appears to have led to a temporary separation hetween St. Paul and St. Barnabas, for •when the latter wanted to take his kinsman, Mark, with him on the missionary journey arranged already between them, St. Paul opposed it because he had previously left them in Pamphyliu from love of ease.^ The fact of St. Mark, who w^as intimately allied to St. Peter, having followed his example and that of St. Barnabas, in separating from the Gentile Chris- tians, may have helped to form St. Paul's decision. On this account the two Apostles of the Gentiles, who had hitherto worked in union, parted. Bar- nabas went with St. Mark to his native Cyprus ; St. Paul, accompanied by Silas, entered on his second great missionary journey. He visited the communities in Syria, Cicilia, and Lycaonia, took up the young Timothy in Lystra, and soon afterwards, as appears from the changed tone of the narrative, must have also been joined by the Evangelist St. Luke. St. Paul, who at Jerusalem had refused the requisition of the legal zealots to get Titus circum- cised, on the other hand induced Timothy to undergo the rite ;^ for he wished to make use of him for preaching the Gospel in the Synagogues and Jewish houses. From this period the other Apostles for a long time retire into the background, and nothing is known to us of their operations. St. Paul is now the ' Acts XV. 36—41. - Acts svi. 3. ST. PETER AND ST. PAUL. 1 07 leading person whose history, ixp to his imprisonment at Rome, forms the subject of the second part of St. Luke's narrative. After staying a long Avhile in Galatia, St. Paul, being warned in a dream, went over with his throe companions from Troas to Macedonia, and thus the Gospel for the first time touched the soil of Europe. In spite of the ill-treatment they suffered he founded flourishing communities at Philippi, Thessalonica, and Beroea; the first of these he named afterwards his joy and his crown. ^ In Thessalonica ho was allowed to preach Jesus for three weeks in the Syna- gogue, but at last the Jews stirred up the multitude against him, and when the Jews at Beroea showed more readiness to receive him, he was soon turned out from thence, too, in an uproar organized by Jews who came over from Thessalonica. The believers made him fly to Athens.' There, among a light- minded people, and surrounded by the highest artistic splendour of the Heathen world, he did not find a favourable soil ; Epicureans and Stoics mocked him and his crucified Nazarene ; some called him a babbler, others scornfully thought he wanted to in- troduce two new gods, Jesus and the Resurrection. Meanwhile his speech on the Areopagus was not without effect, where he alluded to an altar erected to the " unknown God," in order to proclaim to the > Phil. i. 3—8 ; iv. 1. ' Acts xvii. 1—15. I08 THE FIRST AGE OF THE CHURCH. Athenians this nameless, and as yet to them mi- known, God. Some persons were converted, and among them Dionysins the Areopagite, first bishop of Athens. He found a more productive field opened to him in the wealthy and luxurious commercial city of Co- rinth, where he stayed a year and a half living on his earnings as a carpet-maker in the house of the Jew Aquila, one of his own trade, which he had, accord- ing to the Jewish custom, learnt Avith his studies. A numerous community was the result of his preach- ings. In Corinth, as elsewhere, he turned first to the Jews and the proselytes belonging to their Syna- gogue ; but he met with violent opposition from the majority. He, therefore, turned his back on the Synagogue, and held his meetings in the neighbour- ing house of a proselyte, Justus. His successes were great among the Gentiles, especially the lower classes; and the director of the Synagogue, Crispus, was him- self converted with his whole family. It was in vain that the Jews brought him before the tribunal of the pro-consul, Gallio, as a troubler of their religion. They were driven away. During his first stay at Corinth St. Paul wrote his first Epistle, that to the Thessalonians, about the year 52 ; and soon afterwards a second, full of desire to see them again. St. Timothy, Avho had been sent thither from Athens, had brought back a favourable ST. PETER AM) ST. PAUL. 109 report, on the whole, of their condition ; their firm- ness in the ftiith nnder severe trials was already spoken of for and wide. St. Paul said they were models for the believers in Macedonia and Achaia ; their Church constitution was already in order; they had presbyters, and spiritual ^ifts, especially that of prophecy, were not wanting. But a dark side of tlie picture is, that the imagination of Christians there had fixed itself eagerly on the notion of the near approach of Christ's second coming ; they thought this return of the Lord to accomplish His kingdom on earth was close at hand, and this expectation dominated their whole attitude of mind and kept other Christian trutlis in the background. The con- sequence was that not a few, giving themselves over to visionary anticipations, relinquished or neglected the business of their calling, and frittered away their energies in idleness or in l>usying tlieinselves without any definite aim.^ The Apostle attacked this error by representing to them in his First Epistle that the time of the Second Advent could not be fixed, for the Lord would come unexpectedly, as a thief in tlie night, but for tlie stdvation of the watchful. He, at the same time, contradicted the notion that at the Second Coming the dead would bo worse off than those alive. Meanwhile, in Tliessalonica itself, a forged letter ' 1 Thess. iv. 10, 11. i Tlicss. ii^ 8-12. no THE FIRST AGE OF THE CHURCH. of St. Paul's had been circulated to confirm this ex- pectation ;i and he therefore took pains in his Second Epistle to bring them back to a quiet and sensible state of mind, bj pointing to certain signs which must precede the Second Coming of Christ. As he here referred to declarations he had made before by word of mouth, so his expressions in this Epistle are partly only dark hints, for he himself felt the hope recur to him that he might yet live to see the second appearance of Christ. But later on he wrote to the Philippians, that he desired to die in order to be with Christ." After a stay of a year and a half St. Paul left Corinth, the greatest and most flourishing of the communities he had founded. He wished to perform a vow by bringing an offering to Jerusalem, for which reason he shaved his head at the harbour of Cenchrea, after the Jewish manner in such cases." His road took him to the flourishing commercial city of Ephesus, with its numerous Jewish popula- tion, who would gladly have detained him, but he wished to be at Jerusalem for the approaching feast on account of his vow ; and he seems this time to have soon taken his departure, after a short stay and » 2 Tbess. ii. 2 C:'. ; iii. 17. 2 Phil. i. 23 Cf. 1 Tbe^s. iv. IC, 17. ' Acts xviii. 18. No one who iinderstaiuls St. Luke's manner of speaking in the Acts can possibly reftr the -words in question to Aquila. ST. PETER AND ST. PAUL. Ill hasty salutation of the Church. But when he had visited Antioch and the previously converted Gala- tian communities, he returned for a longer stay at Ephesus. Not only was one of the most important Christian communities established there, principally by his means, but from this centre, which, from its commercial connections, offered abundant opportu- nities of intercourse, he propagated Christianity in other parts of Asia Minor, partly in person, partly through his assistants. The Alexandrian Jew, Apollos, an eloquent man and well versed in the Scriptures, had already been at Ephesus before St. Paul ; but he had only been in- structed by St. John's disciples, and knew nothing of Christian baptism as distinct from that of John, though he preached Jesus as the Messiah. After receiving fuller instruction from St. Paul's friends, Aquila and Priscilla, he went to Corinth with letters of introduction, taught there with great success, and returned from thence to Ephesus in company with St. Paul.^ In that city the Apostle found twelve disciples who had only received St. John's baptism, and knew nothing of the communication of the Holy Ghost and His gifts ; he had them baptized, and con- firmed them by the laying on of hands, on Avhich they at once spoke with tongues and prophesied.^ ' Acts xvii!. 24—28. I Cor. i. 12 ' Acts xix. 1 — 7. 112 THE FIRST AGE OF THE CHURCH. Here, too, St. Paul was obliged after awliile to withdraw from the public Synagogue, and retire with his Christians into the private synagogue of Tyrannus. His personal presence, his teaching, the cures which here especially he worked on large num- bers of the sick and the demoniacs, — all this created a great sensation at Ephesus, and it was increased by a remarkable occurrence which took ])lace. Some Jewish exorcists, sons of the chief Rabbi Sceva, thought they could produce similar effects by using the name which St. Paul invoked, Avithout any belief in Jesus. So they applied to a demoniac the formula, " I adjure thee by Jesus, whom Paul preaches." But they wei'e insulted and severely handled by the demoniac and obliged to fl}' from the house. On this many conjurors and magicians were converted, and burnt their magical books. Tliis became a serious matter for those who made their livelihood from the service of the gods, and Deme- trius, who had a manufactory in which little silver images for the famous temple of Artemis were made, succeeded in exciting a popular uproar by the cry, " Great is Artemis of the Ephesians," in the hope of destroying St. Paul and his companions, or at least expelHng them from the city ; but it was appeased by the skilful address of the town clerk. ^ From Epliesus St. Paul A\rote two important ' Acts xix. 8 — 41. ST. PINTER AND ST. PAUL. iig Epistles, — that to the Galatians, and the First to the Corintliiaiis. The coninuuiities he had founded in Galatia, chiefly of Gentile Christians but jxirtly also of converted Jews, had been hitely led astray by Judaizing teachers, so suddenly and so completel}- that it seemed to the Apostle like an enchantment.' These false guides recommended the Galatians to submit to circumcision, and to adopt several other usages of the Jewish law, and many followed their advice. It has been thought strange that there is no a])peal made in this Epistle to the decision of the Council at Jerusalem. But the Galatian Christians knew that decision well enough : St. Paul himself had brought it there. They knew that no one had any right to make their keeping the law a condition of entering the Church or remaining in it, that to lay circumcision and the law on their necks as a com- pulsory yoke was forbidden. Nor do their false teachers appear to have meddled with this decision ; they were not such zealots as those at Jerusalem, for they did not themselves keep the whole law or require its observance from the Christians tlici-e, and they did not, like those at Jerusalem, threaten eternal damnation even to those who refused circum- cision. Their chief ground was rather, according to St. Paul's own account, that they wished thereby ' Gal. iii. 1. VOL. I. J 114 THE FIRST AGE OF THE CHURCH. to avert the persecutions of the Jews who were still powerful through the strength of their national and religious organization, and to gain for the defence- less and unrecognised Christians the secure footing afforded by the Roman laws to Judaism.^ For, as St. Jerome observes, all the circumcised, even if Christians, were treated as Jews by the Heathen, while the uncircumcised Christians were equally per- secuted by Jew and Heathen.' These men accord- ingly recommended circumcision and observance of certain legal usages, partly for the sake of security, partly on religious grounds. They appealed to the example of the chief Apostles in Judaea, who con- tinued to observe the law themselves and make others observe it, which they certainly would not have done, had they not believed they were thereby offering an acceptable service to God. As the Jews of that day generally said to the Heathen : " It is enough for salvation to abjure the worship of the gods and be- come a proselyte of the gate, but of course it is better and more pleasing to God to be circumcised and become a proselyte of righteousness and member ■of the chosen people," — so could the Galatian Ju- daizers represent the usages of the law which they recommended to believers, as a higher stage, as some- thing peculiarly meritorious and salutary. At the same time, these Judaizers made light of St. Paul's 1 Gal. vi. 12, 13. ' Hieron. in Gal. ii. 10. ST. PETER AND ST. PAUL. ll$ Apostolic office ; lie liad not received his mission through the ordinary call from Christ Himself, he had not lived in the company of Jesus on earth, but had gained his first knowledge of the Gospel afterwards from the real Apostles ; these last, Peter, James and John, continued to observe the ritual law, and he, with his teaching got second-hand, could not have the saine authority as the original great Apostles. To this St. Paul opposed himself with an energy and sharpness not to be found in any other Epistle. While unwillingly denouncing their fickleness, he protests that if an angel from heaven preached to them another doctrine he should be accursed ; he shows by an account of his conversion and after- life that he had received his Gospel and his mission directly from Christ, and not from men, that he had become a master without having ever been a learner, but that his doctrine was constantly recognised by the most influential Apostles as essentially one with their own. The remainder of this Epistle is occupied in pointing out that the Galatians were fools for Avishing to exchange their Gospel liberty for the bon- dage of the law, and he reminds them of their own experience, that they had received their spiritual gifts, not through observance of the law but through faith. About this time, whether before or after the Epistle to the Galatians is uncertain, St. Paul Avrote i2 Il6 THE FIRST AGE OF THE CHURCH. his First Epistle to the Corinthians. While the former is addressed to a small community in an out- of-the-way little town in the interior of Asia Minor^ the Church of Corinth was one set on a candlestick, in one of the most important cities of the old Avorldy a great commercial centre, and point of contact be- tween East and West, where believers from other lands were constantly coming and going. The evils to be combated here were also of a peculiar kind. The most conspicuous and mischievous of them was the encroachment of party spirit ; some wanted to be Paulites, others followers of Apollos, who had ap- peared as a teacher in Corinth ; while others again, probably Jewish Christians, gave themselves out for disciples of Peter, either because he had really been in Corinth, or because foreign Jewish Christian tea- chers had come there, and gained adherents by using his name. And lastly, there were some from Pales- tine who in opposition to these three parties pro- fessed to wish to hold to Christ only, Avhom they had known personally.^ There was no question here of doctrinal differences, or the Apostle would have ex- pressly named and combated them ; but ho treats these party watch-words merely as marking a defec- tive sense of Church unity. St. Paul and Apollos were intimate friends, but the disciples of the latter • 1 Cor. i. 12. ST. PETER AND ST. PAUL. 117 prided themselves on the elevuted form of teaching of one who Avas a master of Alexandrian pliilosophy and Scripture interpretation, and looked contemptu- ously on St. Paul's simple and unadorned preaching of the Cross of Christ. Meanwhile, these attempts to form particular schools had not gone to the length of any open rupture of Church communion. St. Paul therefore had to combat the excessive value of human wisdom and philosophical specula- tions, partly with reference to the disciples of Apollos, partly to ward off errors sprung from Greek philo- sophy which threatened to become naturalized at Corinth. It was necessary to defend the doctrine of the Resurrection against those Christians who denied the actual resurrection of the body, and explained the doctrine figuratively of the spiritual awakening of men through faith ;^ and, in a city where the prevalent fashion made temptations to sins of the flesh so powerful, a general warning was needed against this error also and the evil consequences of a fiilse liberty, for the Corinthian Christians were tolerating an incestuous man in their community. Lastly, they had to be reminded that it Avas unseemly for Christians to bring their litigations before the Heathen magistracy. And here St. Paul examined v/ith special care the > 1 Cor. XV. 12 sqq. Il8 7 HE FIRST AGE OF THE CHURCH. question, how believers were to conduct themselves in the whole matter of partaking in sacrificial ban- quets and eating meats offered to idols. The Council of Jerusalem had forbidden this participation in general, but many difficulties arose in the application of the rule. Sacrificial banquets were often held in private houses as well as in the temples, and it was frequently impossible to know, in dining with a Heathen acquaintance, whether the meat put before you was of a sacrificed animal or not. It was hardly possible again to avoid buying such meat, for it was brought daily to the market. The Corinthians had asked about this, and the brief requirement of the Jerusalem Synod to abstain from things offered to idols, without any more precise definition, did not supply an answer. Strict Jewish Christians could extend it to cases which, from the nature of the thing, seemed to be left free to Gentile converts. St. Paul therefore did not appeal to it. He declared eating sacrificial meat, when bought in the market, or put before Christians at a Gentile banquet, without any mention of what it was, to be indifferent in itself; but he desired Gentile Christians to refrain from using this liberty where there was danger of giving offence to their weaker brethren, the Jewish Christians, or leading them into sin. And he warned them against taking any formal part in a sacrificial ST. PETER AND ST. PAUL. II9 banquet, for that always brought those who ato into communion with the demons to whom the Gentiles sacrificed.^ The news which Titus hud lirought the Apostle about the reception and consequences of the First mdueed him to send a Second Epistle to the Co- rinthians (after he had meanwhile been over Troas and Macedonia), which is a running personal apo- logy of himself and his office, interspersed, however, with a great many admonitions. The intrusion of the Judaizing false teachers compelled him take this course ; they represented him as a man who had usurped the Apostolate on his own authority, who was changeable and unreliable, at one time defiant, at another despondent, and not deserving the confidence of the community in his vain self- exaltation." Against this St. Paul urged that the national privileges on which those "superlative Apostles"'' prided them- selves belonged also to him, that he had done, striven, and suffered much more for God's cause than those dark and deceitful men, who falsely gave themselves out for Apostles. He reminded them of the special proofs of Divine power, visions and revelations, which had been o;iven him in a state of ecstatic ele- ' 1 Cor. X. 14—32. - 2 Cor. i. 17 ; iii. 1 sqq. ; x. 1 sqq. ; xi. 1 sqq. ^ Tuv bzssp Xiav d-aoffToXuv. I20 THE FIRST AGE OF THE CHURCH. ration ; and he, therefore, required of the Corinthians a full recognition of his Apostolic authority.^ He also earnestly recommended a contribution for the poor Christians in Jerusalem." St. Paul had already extended his labours as far as Illyria, on the coast of the Adriatic Sea, when he again went into Greece, and paid another visit of three months to Corinth and its neighbourhood. His Epistle to the Roman Christians was written at this time, and he is able to boast of having preached the Gospel and secured its acceptance all round from Jerusalem to Illyria.' He had often felt a wish to visit the Cliristlans in Rome, but had always ab- stained from doing so on his principle of not choosing a Church already founded by an Apostle as the field of his energies, not, as he says, building on another man's foundation. But though he had not himself been at Rome, he had many friends and followers there, among them Aquila and Priscilla. And so he wrote, for the first time, to a community not per- sonally known to him. The Church there must already have been in a flourishing state, and its faith in Christ was spoken of through the whole world,* as St. Paul says ; though it consisted, of course, of a mixed body of Gentile and Jewish Christians, there were no parties and hostile principles at work, even ' 2 Cor. xi., xii. - Cor. viii. 1 sqq. 3 Kom. XV. 19. ■• Rom. i. 8. ST. PETER AND ST. PAUL. 121 if the difficulties of a complete fusion of Jewish and Gentile believers were felt there as elsewhere. Tlie chief hindrances, however, were overcome Avhen St. Paul wrote this Epistle ; he testifies to the Romans that they are full of goodness, filled with all know- ledge, and able to admonish one another/ He warns them not against the actual but the possible danger of being misled by false doctrine. Ho had already spent more than twenty years in Apostolic labours when he composed this document, the fullest and ripest fruit of his spirit, the chief record of his theology. He had already in his Second Epistle to the Corinthans spoken of himself, in the full con- sciousness of his dignity and the triumphs he had won, as of a victorious general and mighty conqueror, before whose arms all errors fall like fortresses before a stornn'ng brigade, to whom all high things bow down, who takes captive all under the obedience of Christ.^ He had in the main finished his work in the Eastern half of the Roman Empire, and he now turned his eyes to the West. He wanted to go to Spain and visit Rome on the way, but not till he had first brought the proceeds of a collection with his own hands to the Jewish capital, in order that the tie which connected the Western Church with the Mother Church of Jerusalem might not be loosened, > Rom. XV. 14. ' 2 Cor. x. 3—5. 132 THE FIRST AGE OF THE CHURCH. and his true affection for his countrymen and brethren of the circumcision might be known there. Jews and Gentiles have no I'ight to reproacli one another ; sin rules universally on both sides, over the Jews in consequence of their own law ; all are want- ing in righteousness before Grod, which cannot be gained through the works of the law in the broadest sense, but only through giving one's self up in faith to Christ, who as the Second Adam gives far more to those who believe on Him than they have lost through the first Adam. But a great part of the Jewish people reject this salvation. They hold fast to the law, as the way of salvation, in proud, self- willed obduracy and enmity against Christ. While some of them walk in the true path of salvation, the great mass of the nation seems as if it lay under a sentence of rejection from God, but at the last God will make good the promises given to His people. These are the leading ideas of this profouiid and out- spoken Epistle, so rich in contrasts, in decisive and startling passages, and in out-pourings of sorrowful love towards the writer's blinded people. And now, in spite of many warnings, St. Paul carried out his resolution of paying a fifth visit to Jerusalem, this time as the bearer of a contribution for the Church. From Philippi, where he met St. Luke, he went to Troas, and found there the three companions who were to accoin])any him, one of ST. PETER AND ST. PAUL. whom Avas Timotlieus. At Miletus he bade a last farewell to the presbyters of the communities on the coasts of Asia, commended to their care the Chiu'ches entrusted to them, and prophesied to them the near approach of false teachers, who would arise from among themselves. He knew well that, as he here said, bonds and affliction awaited him ; Agabus, too, told him this in Cffisarea.^ At Pentecost (of 58 or 59 A.D.) he came, probably after five years absence, to Jerusalem. He gave an account of the results of his apostolic labours to the Bishop James and the assembled presbyters. On this St. James advised him, as there were many thousand converted Is- raelites who were all zealous adherents of the law, to do an act which would dispel the suspicion that he was a despiser of the ordinances of his nation and taught his countrymen to neglect them ; namely, to associate himself in a Nazarite vow with four poor members of the Christian community by paying the costs of the offerino;. Findino; himself here in the very central seat of the law, where all, Jews and Christians alike, observed it, and where it controlled all public arrangements, as no sign had yet been given from God for breaking up the old edifice, St. Paul had no scruple in following this advice and appearing in the temple to make an offering. Not » Acts XX. 17—38 ; xxi. 11. J 24 THE FIRST AGE OF THE CHURCH. long before Agrippa, on coming from Rome to take possession of the throne, liad adopted the same means to gain the favour of the Jews -} and the Apostle himself had laid it down as his principle to become a Jew to the Jews in order to win them, and had already performed a vow in Jerusalem.^ Scarcely had St. Paul set foot in the temple when the Jews of Asia Minor, who knew him, raised an outcry against the man who ever)'wherc taught against the people, the law, and the temple, which he had now come to desecrate. For he had been seen with the Greek Trophinius, one of his companions, and was supposed to have brought him into the temple. Tiie Roman temple guard snatched him from the hands of the raving multitude, and he tried to change their feelings by a speech delivered from the steps of the castle of Antonia, and a narration of his past life. They listened quietly till he mentioned the mission to the Gentiles imparted to him in the temple. Then the storm broke oiit ; a Jew could bear anything rather than the notion that the uncir- cumcised Gentiles should bo made equal with the sons of Abraham. They cried out that such a wretch must be made away with fi-om the earth. St. Paul appealed to his rights as a Roman citizen, against ' Joseph. Arch. xvii. 6, 1. - 1 Cor. vii. 17 — 19 ; ix. 20. ST. PETER AND ST. PAUL. 125 the design of the Roman commander to extort a confession hy torture. When brought before the Sanhedrim, lie skilfully threw a firebrand into the mixed assembly of Pharisees and Sadducees, by putting forward his Pharisaic descent and education and his belief in the Resurrection, as the cause of his persecution by the Sadducees, to whom the High Priest himself inclined. He cou.ld truly say that his whole teaching was based on the resurrection of Christ and the future resurrection of all believers, especially as the first persecution of Christians pro- ceeded from the Sadducee party who predominated in the Synagogue. An angry contention between the two parties was the consequence, and some Pha- risees took the Apostle's side as an innocent and orthodox man, granting even the truth of the alleged vision. Set free for this time he was sent by the commander Lysias, who wished to save him from a murderous plot of forty Jews against his life, to Cajsarea to the procurator Felix, under a strong guard. There, after a few days, the High Priest Ananias made his appearance, with other members of the Sanhedrim as accusers, but neither Felix nor his successor Festus was Avilling to condemn him or give him up to the Jews. So he remained two years at Ca3sarea in prison, not choosing to ransom himself with money. He vainly sought to touch or to shako 126 THE FIRST AGE OF THE CHURCH. King Agrippa, Festus's guest. But as he had ap- pealed to Cassar he was to be sent, still as a prisoner, to Rome. In the spring of 61 St. Paul landed on the coast of Italy. The Roman Christians went to meet him as far as Tres Tabernaj, and then was fulfilled his long cherished desire to work in the capital of the world, and the promise given him in a night vision at Jeru- salem, that he should bear witness of the Lord also in Rome. He was allowed to live in a private house with a soldier chained to him, and so spent two years in Rome, closely guarded, but free to receive visits and preach Christ.^ Early in the first year he sent for the principal men among the Jews there, think- ing that hostile reports had probably reached them from Jerusalem. They assured him that they had heard nothing about him, but knew the Nazarene sect was everywhere spoken against. Here, too, his teaching had its usual result of leading them to mock liim, and he hurled one word at them bitterer than death ; " This salvation of God is sent to the Gentiles, and they will hear it." What caused the Apostle's long detention was the delay of his accusers, who did not reach Rome till later, or perhaps allowed their charges to drop through non-appearance. If they really appeared, ' Acts xxviii, 30, 31. ST. PETER AND ST. PAUL. 127 tliey would have to support three charges against him — of exciting disturbance and party spirit among the Jews of the whole Empire, of being a ringleader of the Nazarenes, and of seeking to profane the temple — by numerous witnesses collected from various provinces. And as the Emperor Nero was in the habit of trying persons accused of several offences only at intervals, and taking each charge separately, that, too, would protract the process for a long time. But that it would end in acquittal might be seen from the conduct of Felix and Festus. Meanwhile St. Paul maintained through his messengers a con- stant intercourse with the Churches he had founded all over the Empire, and even with those he had not himself founded or visited in person. Many of his oldest and most faithful adherents surrounded him in Rome. St. Luke, St. Timothy, Tychicus, Demas, who afterwards left him, and St. Mark, who had caused the former separation between him and St. Barnabas, were there and ministered to him. Two Macedonians, Aristarchus, and Epaphras of Colossaj, were his fellow-prisoners.^ He wrote three Epistles about the same time — the short one to Philemon in behalf of his faithless and runaway slave, that to the Colossians, and that to the Ephesians. The Church at Colossa3 in Phrygia had » Col. 1, 7 ; iv. T, 10, 14. Philip, i. 1. Eph. vi. 21. riiilem. 23, 24. 128 THE FIRST AGE OF THE CHURCH. not been founded by St. Paul, nor as yet visited by him. But he had learnt from its founder, Epaphras, who was now in Rome, that the faith of Christians there was in danger from false teachers, forerunners of the great Gnostic movement of the second cen- tury, who joined to Gnostic principles a zeal for the Jewish law, especially its new moons and festivals. They taught abstinence from flesh and wine, cau- tioned men against defilement from touching or tasting unclean things, and boasting of a higher tra- ditionary wisdom maintained with a show of humility, that God was incomprehensible and out of reach, and must therefore be worshipped through intermediate beings, angels or higher spirits.^ Tychicus, who was the bearer of this Epistle, had also another short document to deliver, composed by the Apostle afterwards. It is inscribed to the Ephesians, but as the writer says nothing of his earlier labours for more than a year in Ephesus, and there are no personal allusions to members of that community, nor is even the name of Ephesus found in the older manuscripts, it clearly had a more general scope, and was a circular addressed to the Churches on the Asiatic coast, in whose assemblies it was to be read, though St. Paul had Ephesus chiefly in his eye." The close similarity in the turn ' Col. ii. IG — 23. ^ Tertull. c. Marc. v. 11. Basil, c. Eviiom.].2o\. 0pp. Ed. Garon. ST. PETER AND ST. PAUL. 129 of thought shows this Epistle to liave been written at the same time with that to the Colossians. It con- tains first a short abstract of Pauline doctrine, chiefly in the indirect form of a thanksgiving, special pro- minence being assigned to the abolition of the Mosaic law, which implied the removal of separation be- tween Jew and Gentile. The writer speaks of the fulness of grace given to them and the antithesis of their former Gentile life to their present one, of the unity of the Church where Gentiles are united Avith believing Israel in one temple of God, and of the exalted office God had conferred specially on him of calling the Gentile world into the Church. The second part includes a number of moral instructions and exhortations. ThePhilippian Church, the first St. Paul had founded in Europe, had sent him a contribution by Ejiaphro- ditus, to support him in his imprisonment. Their messenger brought so favourable a report of tlieir state, that in his letter of thanks he coukl praise them more highly than any other community. The whole Epistle accordingly is written in a tone of joyful exultation, and is pre-eminently an outpouring of Avarm and hearty affection for them. Here there were no internal divisions, but he thought it needful to warn them against his Jewish opponents and the false teachers who penetrated everywhere, and to show that he shared all the privileges boasted of by VOL. I. K T30 THE FIRST AGE OF THE CHURCH. the false brethren of the circumcision who depreciated him. It is the tradition of the whole ancient Church that St. Paul was released from prison, and, after working as an Apostle for two or three years more^ was put to death in the Neronian persecution in the year 67. In recent times this release and second imprisonment have been sharply contested, and it has- been assumed that the first imprisonment only ended with his death. But there is conclusive evidence- of the truth of the old tradition. When the book of Acts, written by St. Paul's attendant, after thfr fullest and most detailed acount of his journey and arrival at Rome, suddenly closes with the statement that he remained two whole years at Rome under a military guard, this implies that Avith the two years his imprisonment ended. And it must have ended, either by his death or his release ; clearly not by his death, for it would be inconceivable that St. Luke, who devotes the Avhole second part of his book to the biography of St. Paul, should not have added the coping-stone so gloriously crowning his hero's work. On the other hand, his silence as to what followed the tAYO years' imprisonment is perfectly natural, for he was no longer the Apostle's companion, and he wrote his narrative before the 3'ear 67, and therefore could not mention his death. St. Paul's release at that time is quite probable in itself, for the Jews, as Felix and ST. PETER AND ST. PAUL. Igi Festus liatl already perceived, were obviously in no position to convict him of any capital crime accordin<^ to Roman law : nor is it probable that a Roman citi- zen would be kept not two, but four years in prison without any trial. There is not a single witness in Christian antiquity to contradict tlie positive testimony of St. Clement, the Muratorian Canon, Eusebius, St. Chrysostoin,, and St. Jerome.^ St. Clement, the Apostle's con- temporary and disciple, says in his letter from Romc^ to Corinth, that St. Paul had preached the Gospel in East and West, and taught the whole world {i. e. the whole Roman world) righteousness, had gone to the extreme boundaries of the West, borne testimony before rulers, or suffered martyrdom, and thus been taken out of the world.^ Here is a distinct geogra- phical statement, and a writer in Rome cannot have understood Rome by the hmits of the West. St. Clement had already mentioned generally St. Paul's having preached in the West, but he wishes to add something still greater, in order to bring out more conspicuously the all-embracing heroic energy of the Apostle, namely, that he had gone to the extremest limits of the West,'' certainly meaning one of the » Euseb. ii. 22. Chrys. in 2 Tim. iv. 20. Ilieron. Catal. Script. ^ Clem. Rom. i. 5. 3 'Wieseler's noiion of translating ro TipiJ^a rrii 0\jGiM; " the Rulers^ of Rome" would hardly deserve a refutation i( Schaff (GeA-cA/c/^^e cfe»*- apost. Kirche, p. 348) had not adopted it, and translated " he appeared k2 132 THE FIRST AGE OF THE CHURCH. western provinces of tlie Empire. The author of the Muratoriaii Canon, dating between 165 and 175, expressly asserts tliat this was Spain. ^ To tin's is added the weighty testimony of the Pastoral Epistles, which Ciin only be got rid of by the purely novel assumption of their being spin'ious ; for they cannot be placed either before or during the first imprison ment without doing violence to the statements of fact contained in thorn, and they ])rove that St. Paul after that imprisonment visited Ephesus, Crete, Macedonia, and Nicopolis, and was then a second time imprisoned at Rome." before the highest authority of the AVest ;" but it is a pure assumption that rspiJj% anywhere nipans (his. In tlie pa.s-age (]uo'ed Zd/tcov d ava-^v^ag dsoi BporoTg vs/jt/ouo", a^jairwy 7Sp[j! iy^ovng auToi. (Eur. Supl. 61G — 618) rip/Ma mt-ans tlie gojil or end (cf sufferings), not highest power, as Schiiff imDgme-*. So in r'spHiOL ffurrip.'rxg, Soph. CEd. Col. 725, Eur. Oresi. 13\3 (mefam snhifis). No uei-rht can be attached to the circuinsiance that there is no tradition in Sp.'iin of any Church founded there by St. Paul. W^e know almost nothing of the hist'iry of the Spanish Chiin-h for the first three centuries ; two mar- tyrs of a later da'e, tlie deposition of two liisliojs in the third century nientioned in St. Cyprian's letters, and the canons of the Sytiod of Klvira — thiit is all. The traai'ion of the Spanish Church reaches no further back than the third icntury ; no Sjianish Christians wrote any- thing before tlie end ■ f (lie I'diirth. ' ' Sicuti et (Liicas) seniota |)a-sione Petri evidenter declarat seu (^or et) ])ri.f- ctione Pa>ili ah urhe ad Siianinm proliciscenlis." Cf. Wieseler ill den theol. Stndien, IRof!, i . 1(15. The author here infers from the omission of these two o cunenies, St. Peter's death and St. Paul's Spadsh journey, that St. Lnke laily records what took pluce in his own presence. He thus |)uts hoth facts in the same category of cer- tainty. ' 1 Tim. 1. 3 ; 2 Tim. i. 17. Tit. i. 5 ; iii. 12. ST. PETER AND ST. PAUL. 133 St. Paul's three Pastoral Epistles were written within a few months of each other ; they correspond in style, in matter, and in their account of the con- dition of the Church, and are essentially different in these points from the rest of his Epistles. All at- tempts to separate them in date have failed and must fail. A longer period, of about five ^^ears, must have elapsed between his Epistle to the Phili])pians, the last during his first imprisonment, and the first to St. Timothy, and it is most likely that this and the Epistle to St. Titus were written shortly before his last arrival in Rome. Ho had found Jewish pro- selytes in Spain to whom he could preach the Gospel in all the towns on the coast from Tarraco to Cadiz. From Spain he seems to have gone to Ephesus about the year 6(), where he found heretical teachers busy at work, the forerunners and first founders of Gnos- ticism. He did not, however, stay there long but hastened to other regions. The foreboding that he had but a short time to work, joined with the sense of bodily weakness and old age — several years earlier in his Epistle to the Philippians he had called him- self an old man — drove him restlessly from place to place, to found as many new communities as possible, or visit and confirm for the last time those already founded. Thus he came first to Macedonia, then to Crete.^ From Macedonia he sent his first Epistle 1 1 Tim. i. 3. Tit. '. 5. 134 THE FIRST AGE OF THE CHURCH. to liis l^eloved disciple Timothy, of whom he had before said that he did tlie Lord's work hke himself.^ This Epistle was to advise him as to the active ad- ministration of his episcopal office at Ephesus, and especially the appointment of Church ministers, and to put him in a condition to oppose the Judaizing Gnostic teachers at Ephesus Avith the Apostle's au- thority, and with gi-eater success. Soon afterwards St. Paul went by Ephesus to Crete, where, as many expressions in his Epistle to Titus indicate, he found Christian communities already founded, which had likewise been disturbed by false teachers, and had very little fixed organisa- tion. He left behind him there his companion and