I 
 
U.LOWAY & PORTER, 
 
u 
 
 L^A- 
 
STUDIES CONTEIBUTED TO THE 
 "DUBLIN KEVIEW." 
 
STUDIES 
 
 CONTRIBUTED TO THE 
 
 "DUBLIN REVIEW 
 
 >> 
 
 BY THE LATE 
 
 Dk. J. E. GASQUET 
 
 With Introduction by 
 
 The Right Rev. J. C. HEDLEY, O.S.B. 
 
 Bishop of Newport. 
 
 Edited by 
 Dom. H. N. BIRT, O.S.B. 
 
 Westminster : 
 ART AND BOOK COMPANY 
 
 1904. 
 
Gr3 
 
A Tribute of 
 
 Affectionate Bemembrance. 
 
 C. G. 
 
 <:*» 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 The late Dr. Joseph Raymond Gasquet was a 
 physician in practice at Brighton. Those who 
 had the happiness of his acquaintance do not 
 need to be reminded of his genial and interesting 
 personality, his extraordinarily wide reading, his 
 professional sagacity and his Catholic zeal. But 
 few, even among his friends, will not be surprised 
 at the wideness of his sound and extensive learning, 
 evidences of which are found in the papers reprinted 
 in this volume. 
 
 From his earliest youth Dr. Gasquet had ex- 
 tended his studies beyond the limits of his pro- 
 fession. His intellectual temperament led him to 
 consider his Catholic faith as worthy of the best 
 and most strenuous efforts of his mind. As a 
 Catholic layman he felt that if he made himself 
 perfectly competent in the noble profession he had 
 chosen, he could make use of his expert knowledge 
 for the defence and support of religion. He also 
 felt that every Catholic layman had an interest in 
 
viii. Introduction 
 
 Church history, and even in theology. Studies of 
 this kind, even if they seemed to attract a man 
 from his special work, were pleasant and useful, 
 and they tended to lift up the intelligence to a 
 wider view of life and nature than we usually find 
 in professional men. These papers show how he 
 carried out these views. 
 
 The studies included in this volume may be divided 
 into three classes. First there are three or four 
 which treat of medical subjects in their relation 
 to religion, or perhaps more properly, of certain 
 religious matters in their connection with medical 
 science. The article entitled, • The Cures at 
 Lourdes," is a clear, learned and extremely tem- 
 perate statement of principles, facts and conclu- 
 sions. That on " Hypnotism " provides the priest 
 and the general reader with such preliminary 
 information on a burning subject as will enable them 
 to follow it up in its modern developments. There 
 is also an interesting study of the " Physiological 
 Psychology of St. Thomas," which shows an 
 acquaintance with the text of the Angelic Doctor, 
 and a grasp of his methods very unusual in priest 
 or layman. St. Thomas, who is always right in 
 Psychology, was never very far out even in Physi- 
 ology. It is here shown how well his analysis and 
 dissection of the human soul fits in with the best and 
 soundest conclusions of modern biological science. 
 
Introduction ix. 
 
 Dr. Gasquet assures his readers that he did not 
 undertake this " apologia " for the scholastic 
 psychology on account of any preconceived sense 
 of duty, but simply because he found in the course 
 of his reading that there was nowhere any state- 
 ment of the theory of " life " in its relation with 
 the observed facts of life, so scientific and adequate 
 as in the writings of Aristotle and St. Thomas. 
 Beyond all doubt this is true. 
 
 The second division of these reprints contains the 
 writer's excellent studies on Church History and 
 Apologetics. We have articles on the recently 
 discovered Didache, on the Teaching of the Apostles, 
 on the History of the Apostles' Creed, on Baptism, 
 on the Earliest Liturgies of the Mass, and on Bishop 
 Lightfoot's View of the Earliest Christian Ministry. 
 The paper on the Mass especially, which is made 
 up of three articles contributed to the Dublin 
 Review, is an admirable presentment of the best 
 and most recent Catholic and non-Catholic archaeo- 
 logical study. Without going so far as to say that 
 in these papers, which were first given to the light 
 ten or twenty years ago, readers will find the very 
 last word of science, it may safely be asserted that 
 they will never be found to be misleading. They 
 present a very large amount of research in a clear 
 and readable form. The writer seems to have had 
 no mean acquaintance with the Fathers, and to 
 
x. Introduction 
 
 have kept abreast of all that was important in 
 modern patristic literature, whether in England, 
 in France, or in Germany. 
 
 One or two miscellaneous papers complete the 
 volume. There is a statement in one of " The 
 present position of the arguments for the Existence 
 of God," which is remarkable for the new and 
 somewhat original turn which is there given to 
 the ontological proof, commonly called St. An- 
 selm's. This might well have been worked out 
 at greater length. 
 
 The primary interest of this volume will doubtless 
 lie in the picture which it gives of a fine, cultured, 
 and earnest Catholic intelligence. To the many 
 friends and admirers of the writer it will be a precious 
 and touching memorial. They will still think that 
 it does not exhaust all that he was capable of doing. 
 They will see in it the evidence of strong studies 
 and gradually maturing judgment ; but they will 
 continue to believe that, if health had not failed, 
 he would have taken a very high position as an 
 expert Catholic apologist. 
 
 It may be hoped that the writer's good example 
 will not be thrown away. In the controversies 
 in which religion is at present involved, what we 
 require above everything is what Dupanloup used 
 to call fortes etudes — strong studies. In scientific, 
 biblical and patristic discussion, no man is listened 
 
Introduction xi. 
 
 to who has not read, searched, noted, analysed, 
 and remembered. To qualify for taking part in 
 the modern battle, a man must begin young, he 
 must be put in the right way, and he must be 
 determined not to spare himself. It is only by 
 such means that one can attain that absolute, 
 first hand, accurate, and honest mental equip- 
 ment that will make a disputant felt in the wide 
 battle of talk that goes on in modern days. It 
 is consoling to see how many of the present genera- 
 tion of Catholics in this country, lay and clerical, 
 are really studying. But more students are still 
 wanted. This book should especially stimulate 
 our young laymen. There are not many men, 
 however busy, or taken up with professional pur- 
 suits, who cannot seriously study some branch 
 of Christian divinity or philosophy. A few men 
 of this kind would strongly influence their genera- 
 tion, and we might hope that there would appear, 
 not unfrequently, a commanding intelligence, who 
 would arrest the attention of the world by that 
 union of good science and strong faith which 
 might be realised more frequently were science 
 less insolent and faith more laborious. 
 
 ^ John Cuthbert Hedley, O.S.B. 
 
TO THE READER. 
 
 Joseph Raymond Gasquet, the author of the 
 studies reprinted in this volume, was the eldest 
 son of the late Raymond Gasquet, Esq., F.R.C.S., 
 a surgeon practising for many years of his life in 
 London. He was born on August 24, 1837, in the 
 metropolis, and after passing a short time at Oscott 
 College, received the main portion of his education 
 at the London University College School. Electing 
 to follow his father in the choice of a profession, he 
 took his medical degrees with distinction at the 
 University of London, and for some time practised 
 in Bayswater. During this period he was a con- 
 stant attendant at the newly-opened Church of St. 
 Mary of the Angels, where, being an enthusiastic 
 lover of Gregorian music, he regularly assisted in 
 the choir. During these years was formed a life- 
 long friendship with the late Cardinal Manning, 
 who frequently consulted him on literary matters 
 and always held his judgment and his extensive 
 scientific and theological knowledge in the highest 
 regard. It was at this time that he married a 
 daughter of Charles J. Manning, Esq., the Cardinal's 
 brother. 
 
 From early youth, acting upon the advice of the 
 late Canon Glennie, then head of the Hammersmith 
 Training College, he devoted his leisure to the 
 
xiv. To the Header 
 
 systematic study of philosophy and theology. As 
 the Bishop of Newport points out in his Intro- 
 duction, he was well read in patristic literature 
 generally, especially in the works of the early 
 Fathers of the Church, and he had an extensive 
 acquaintance with the early schoolmen. The 
 Summa of St. Thomas, and the same author's 
 Contra Gentiles he knew almost by heart. He 
 was induced by Cardinal Manning to join the 
 Metaphysical Society. Here, together with the 
 Cardinal, Dr. Ward, and Father Dalgairns, he 
 found himself thrown with such eminent men as 
 Dean Stanley, Sir William Gull, Dr. Andrew Clarke, 
 Mr. Gladstone, Lord Selborne, the late Duke of 
 Argyll, Tennyson, Ruskin, J. A. Froude, the Posi- 
 tivist Mr. Frederic Harrison, and the Unitarian 
 Dr. James Martineau. With many of these he 
 made friends and corresponded on philosophical 
 subjects. With Dr. Martineau in particular he 
 was in frequent communication, and that eminent 
 man formed a high opinion of Dr. Gasquet's 
 abilities, and greatly respected his judgment. Thus 
 he wrote on one occasion : " . . . Your gracious 
 words of encouragement and sympathy . . . are 
 welcome to me because I know their serious value, 
 and find in them the support of a judgment to 
 which I can look up." Further he refers to " your 
 excellent paper in the Dublin Review. I have read 
 it with great interest and very prevailing con- 
 currence, and am especially delighted with its 
 effective vindication of the Teleological argument " 
 (see p. 46 sqq. of this volume). At another time 
 Dr. Martineau wrote : "I greatly value your 
 approval, where you can give it ; and the oppor- 
 tunity of reconsidering my own judgments, when 
 
To the Header xv. 
 
 they are at variance with yours." Another member 
 wrote of Dr. Gasquet : " I much admired his clear 
 philosophical insight, which was much helped by 
 his exact physiological knowledge." 
 
 On the opening of St. George's Retreat, Burgess 
 Hill, in 1867, Dr. Gasquet gave up his general 
 practice, and devoted himself, as a specialist, to 
 the treatment of mental disease ; and to this he 
 kept to the end. 
 
 Although a busy life such as his was is little 
 conducive to literary pursuits, yet, in addition to 
 numerous papers on professional subjects published 
 in the Journal of Mental Science, and various 
 communications to the proceedings of the Brighton 
 and Sussex Medical Society, the articles he 
 from time to time contributed to the Dublin 
 Review attest the wide scope of his interests and 
 the extent and depth of his reading. The difficulty, 
 consequently, in editing this volume has been 
 mainly one of selection. The choice has been 
 confined to the pages of the Dublin Review ; and 
 only about half of Dr. Gasquet's papers there 
 published have here been put under contribution. 
 The guiding principle has been to show the catho- 
 licity of the author, not only as to faith, but as 
 to interests. Thus he may be studied as an 
 historian, a medical specialist, a metaphysician, but 
 above all as a Catholic apologist ; and it is this 
 corpus of ecclesiastico-archaeology which will be 
 found of special value, because being the work of 
 a layman, it may possibly appeal to a class which 
 looks with habitual suspicion at anything that 
 proceeds from a clerical source. More articles 
 might have followed those here reprinted or referred 
 to, had not increasing ill-health incapacitated Dr. 
 Gasquet almost entirely for literary work. During 
 
xvi. To the Beader 
 
 the last eight or nine years of his life he was a 
 great invalid, but bore with exemplary Christian 
 fortitude the sufferings to which he finally suc- 
 cumbed on August 13, 1902. He was buried in 
 the cemetery at Downside, near Bath. 
 
 A complete list of Dr. Gasquet's articles would 
 be of some value, but for various reasons it would 
 be practically impossible to compile one that would 
 be exhaustive. The following catalogue is, there- 
 fore, merely tentative. 
 
 It remains for me to record my thanks to the 
 Right Rev. Mgr. Canon Moves, D.D., the Editor 
 of the Dublin Beview, for the courteous permission 
 accorded by him to reprint these articles. 
 
 Henry Norbert Birt, O.S.B. 
 
 AETICLES, &c, BY THE LATE J. R. GASQUET. 
 
 (Not to be taken as exhaustive, but typical.) 
 
 Published separately — 
 
 Cardinal Manning : a biography. Catholic Truth Society, 
 
 1895. 
 The Cures at Lourdes (reprinted from the Dublin Beview). 
 
 Catholic Truth Society, 1895. 
 Madmen of the Greek Theatre (reprinted from the Journal 
 
 of Mental Science, 1874). 
 
 Encyclopedia Britannica — " Jenner." 
 
 CyclopcedAa of the Practice of Medicine (H. W. von Ziemssen), 
 1875, &c., 8vo. Section in vol. xiii. by H. Curschmann 
 (translated from the German). 
 
Articles, dec. xvii. 
 
 Journal of Mental Science — 
 
 Progressive Locomotor Ataxia. July, 1867. 
 
 Madmen of the Greek Theatre. April, July, October, 
 
 1872 ; January, April, July, 1873 ; January, April, 1874. 
 The Use of Analogy in the Study of Mental Disease, 
 
 April, 1876. 
 Italian Psychological Retrospect. April, 1879 ; January, 
 
 1880; January, 1881; January, 1884; January, 1887; 
 
 April, 1888; January, 1891. 
 On Atropine as a Sedative. April, 1882. 
 On Moral Insanity. April, 1882. 
 Some Mental Symptoms of Ordinary Brain Disease. 
 
 April, 1884. 
 
 Dublin Beview — 
 
 (See also Table of Contents, p. xix.) 
 Theories of Sensitive Perception. January, 1864. 
 — Authority of the Scholastic Philosophy. July, 1869. 
 Alcohol, its Action and Uses. April, 1879. 
 Recent Research on Nerves and Brain. April, 1880. 
 (And others). 
 The Month— 
 
 The Insane Catholic Poor. November, 1873. 
 Natural Science and the Real Presence. April, 1883. 
 
 Papers read before the " Metaphysical Society " (and after- 
 wards printed) — 
 
 Is Causation, or Power in Nature, a Reality, or a mere 
 Anthropomorphic Fancy ? December, 1879. 
 
 The Relation of Metaphysics to the Rest of Philosophy. 
 April, 1880. 
 
 Bevieius of Books (in the Dublin Beview) — 
 
 Martineau's Types of Ethical Theory. 
 — ^ Herbert Spencer's Principles of Sociology. 
 
 Von Gebbart und Harnack's Texte und Untersuchungen 
 
 zur Geschichte des AlchristUchen Literatur, Band V., 
 
 Heft 1. 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS. 
 
 I. Taine's French Eevolution 1 
 
 [October, 1882.] 
 
 II. The Present Position of the Arguments for the 
 
 Existence of God 34 
 
 [July, 1885.] 
 
 III. Teaching of the Twelve Apostles 57 
 
 [January, 1888.] 
 
 IV. The Apostles' Creed and the Rule of Faith. I. ... 79 
 
 [October, 1888.] 
 
 V. The Apostles' Creed and the Rule of Faith. II. 106 
 [April, 1889.] 
 
 VI. The Early History of the Mass. I ".. 129 
 
 [October, 1889.] 
 
 VII. The Early History of the Mass. II. ... ... 150 
 
 [April, 1890.] 
 
 VIII. The Early History of the Mass. Ill 173 
 
 [July, 1890.] 
 
 IX. Celebration of Mass in Ante-Nicene Times ... 198 
 
 [October, 1890.] 
 
 X. The Early History of Baptism and Confirmation 210 
 [January, 1895.] 
 
xx. Table of Contents 
 
 PAGK 
 
 XI. The Canon of the New Testament 227 
 
 [April, 1893.] 
 
 XII. Lightfoot's St. Ignatius and the Eoman Primacy 248 
 [April, 1887.] 
 
 XIII. Hypnotism 282 
 
 [April, 1891.] 
 
 XIV. The Cures at Lourdes 306 
 
 [October, 1894.] 
 
 XV. The Physiological Psychology of St. Thomas ... 329 
 [April, 1882.] 
 
STUDIES CONTRIBUTED 
 
 TO THE 
 
 "DUBLIN REVIEW." 
 
 TALNE'S FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 Les Origines de la France Contemporaine. Par H. Taine, 
 de l'Acad£mie Fran9aise. Onzi^me Edition. Paris. 
 1882. 
 
 One hundred years ago, the great historian of 
 that time paused in his study of the decline and 
 fall of ancient civilisation to inquire, with anxious 
 curiosity, whether Europe was threatened with a 
 repetition of those calamities which formerly 
 oppressed the arms and institutions of Rome. 
 After a survey of every possible source of danger, 
 and an admission that there might be fear from 
 some yet unknown barbarian tribe, he concluded 
 that men might confidently hope for the unin- 
 terrupted advance of the wealth, the happiness, 
 and perhaps the virtue, of the human race. We 
 all know how far the facts have answered to Gibbon's 
 confident forecast. Within ten years, one of the 
 most impartial observers of the Revolution replied : 
 " The Huns, the Heruli, the Vandals and the 
 Goths will not come from the North, or from 
 
2 ,•« \ : y ■ .*• : ' , ; *• ... stijpies 
 
 the Euxine : they are in our midst " ; and in 
 twenty years more these invaders had overrun the 
 whole continent of Europe and altered the future 
 history of the world. 
 
 Nor was Gibbon alone in his ignorance of what 
 was about to happen. In the very country where 
 these calamities broke out, and even after they 
 had begun, philosophers, statesmen, poets, and 
 men of the world were all agreed that the true 
 home of every virtue was to be found among those 
 lower classes who were then involving them in 
 one common ruin. Here and there only a solitary 
 preacher, accustomed to look beyond the horizon 
 of this world, importunately disturbed the chorus 
 of believers in the perfectibility of the human 
 race, by his denunciations of woe to a society 
 which was past recovery, and which was rushing 
 on to its destruction. He preached, indeed, to 
 deaf ears and to a faithless generation ; yet not 
 in vain, if we may learn not to reject the like warn- 
 ings. His prophecies were the hardly seen eddies, 
 betokening the swiftness of that mighty stream, 
 as it hurried towards the rapids ; or, like the voice 
 of Tiresias and Cassandra, they were the fore- 
 shadowings of the awful drama which was then 
 opening. For such in truth is the Great Revolu- 
 tion — not a play after the modern type, but a 
 tragedy like those of old Greece. Nothing is 
 wanting to the perfect resemblance — even the 
 unities of time and place, so dear to French play- 
 wrights, are observed, while the passions and the 
 very persons of the actors seem to us preter- 
 naturally overstrained. Above all, the plot and 
 motif are Greek. The scene opens upon an ancient 
 and brilliant Court, confident in its inheritance of 
 
TAINE'S FRENCH REVOLUTION 3 
 
 a thousand years, and, like (Edipus or Pentheus, 
 in its over- weening pride, rejecting the warnings 
 of the seers. Meanwhile we, the audience, know 
 that these forebodings will be more than fulfilled, 
 that already 
 
 v/3pi$ igavdova iicdpiraxTe (rrd^vv 
 arr}<; vdev 7rdy/c\avTov e^afici Oepos, 
 
 and that the end of the play will be horror and 
 ruin. This would be indeed enough to rouse our 
 keenest interest ; but there is more beyond. We 
 have seen the first, perhaps the second, day's play, 
 but the end is not yet come. The benches of the 
 theatre are filled with eager spectators ; but the 
 future is as dark to them as it was to their fathers, 
 and they know not how the Divine Author will 
 close his awful trilogy, and vindicate his ways with 
 men. What wonder, then, that the theme is 
 fascinating to all ? If men would be roused to 
 admiration of deeds of high emprise and lofty 
 virtue, or to loathing of violence and crime, here 
 they are in plenty and in their extremes ; or, if 
 more reflective, they would look into futurity, 
 and, perchance, try to guess at the next page of 
 the world's tale, they can only do so by studying 
 the causes of that great catastrophe, and seeing 
 if they are not still at work. With such sources 
 of deepest interest, what wonder if the French 
 Revolution continues to be one of the chief studies 
 of historians, each of whom, after his fashion, 
 describes its terrible course, and draws his own 
 moral therefrom. Hitherto, at any rate in France, 
 it has been found that writers have been too near 
 to the events they narrate to describe them with 
 
4 STUDIES 
 
 perfect impartiality. They may be great his- 
 torians in spite of this — de Tocqueville is no more 
 impartial than Tacitus or Thucydides — and their 
 account will probably gain in vigour and brilliancy 
 for being one-sided, but it can hardly be resorted 
 to by those who wish simply to acquire the most 
 accurate information on the subject. The time, 
 however, seems now to have come when the Revo- 
 lution can be examined sine ira et studio by a 
 Frenchman, who has apparently begun his investi- 
 gation with no preconceived political theories, but 
 with the single desire to discover the truth. For 
 such a writer M. Taine clearly is, and this single 
 merit seems to have ensured the great popularity 
 of his work in France, in spite of defects of style 
 and arrangement which would be fatal to any other 
 of his countrymen. His work, indeed, is very far 
 from attaining that perfection of order and form 
 at which Frenchmen, above all others, aim, and 
 which they most nearly reach. We are far from the 
 " facundia" and " lucidus or do " of de Tocqueville, 
 which made that great author's works such easy 
 reading, while they impressed his conclusions on 
 the memory. The reader, as well as the writer, 
 is oppressed in M. Taine's work by the multiplicity 
 of details, while these are not relieved by any 
 clear and lucid summary of the result of his investi- 
 gations. This, however, as he urges beforehand in 
 his defence, is precisely what he desired to do ; 
 he wished not to impose his conclusions upon his 
 readers, but to leave them to draw their own. 
 Another defect almost equally injures his book 
 as a work of art. We did not look here for the 
 flowery style of a Lamartine or a Chateaubriand 
 — we should have been sorry to be condemned to 
 
taine's feench bevolution 5 
 
 read it — but we might fairly expect that one of 
 the illustrious Forty of the French Academy would 
 do his best to sustain the classical character of 
 the language he has been selected to control. 
 Instead of this, his style is unconventional and 
 full of new and familiar words, hardly becoming 
 the dignity of the Muse of History ; while the 
 honest indignation with which the crimes of revo- 
 lutionary heroes inspire him somewhat loses its 
 effect in the long sentences of rather feminine 
 invective (and French is a very fertile language 
 for scolding) which he pours forth. But, when 
 we have remarked on these — after all very second- 
 ary — points we have little else but praise for the 
 work. Perhaps its greatest merit is its perfect 
 impartiality. We shall, perhaps, have occasion 
 presently to point out several matters in which 
 we believe M. Taine to be mistaken ; but, if so, 
 we do not doubt that he has fairly drawn what 
 seemed to him the correct inference from the facts 
 before him. Next, his enormous industry, and 
 the assistance he has received from the officials 
 of the National Library and Archives of France, 
 have enabled Mm to read a great mass of official 
 reports, accounts, letters, and statistics, from which 
 he has extracted so many interesting details, that 
 he is fully justified in claiming that " the History 
 of the Revolution had not previously been written." 
 He has thus succeeded in giving us a view of the 
 condition of all classes under the ancien regime 
 less vivid and picturesque, but more detailed and 
 more trustworthy, than those which Macaulay has 
 drawn for England in the seventeenth century. 
 
 But it is time for us to proceed to a more detailed 
 account of the book ; and in doing so, we propose 
 
6 STUDIES 
 
 only to dwell on those main features of the catas- 
 trophe which M. Taine has placed in a new or 
 stronger light, reserving, for a more detailed 
 separate examination, the account which he gives 
 of religion and of the Church in France. 
 
 The work — as yet incomplete — is divided into 
 three parts. In the first, the author describes all 
 those elements of the ancien regime which made 
 its ruin inevitable and imminent ; in the second, 
 he details the uncertain, contradictory, and suicidal 
 attempts to build up a new order of things upon 
 the remnants of that which was dying ; while in 
 the last part, he shows how a very small minority 
 of criminals and fanatics, by virtue of knowing 
 their object and being prepared to risk all for it, 
 conquered France and deluged it in blood. 
 
 In his study of the ancien regime, Taine confines 
 himself almost entirely to the social conditions 
 which led to the Revolution. He thereby avoids 
 clashing with de Tocqueville, whose account of the 
 political causes of the catastrophe is so admirable ; 
 yet the two are so intimately connected, that both 
 works should be read together by any one who 
 desires to have a complete view of pre-revolutionary 
 France. But as the state of a society is the 
 resultant of many causes, among which its govern- 
 ment is only one of the principal, we are brought 
 by our author a stage nearer to the Revolution 
 than we were before. 
 
 Probably the most striking example of the 
 retributive justice which despotism had worked 
 out for itself was to be found in the case of the 
 king. After Louis XIV. had ended the struggle 
 between the sovereign and the nobles, he set before 
 them, in place of any useful function in the State, 
 
TAINE'S FRENCH REVOLUTION 7 
 
 the position of mere ornaments of the most brilliant 
 Court ever known, as the highest object of their 
 ambition. This degradation was so eagerly accepted 
 by the aristocracy, that life became insupportable 
 to them away from the Court ; a sentence of 
 banishment was almost like death ; and (to take 
 a slight but characteristic instance) " it was a 
 matter of politeness to leave the royal presence 
 before another person, since he who came last 
 enjoyed the sight of the king longest." We will 
 not dwell upon the minute ceremonial prescribed 
 for the life of such a Court, or the five series of 
 persons who had the right of entree during the 
 course of his dressing when rising in the morning, 
 every detail of which was regulated by an inexorable 
 etiquette ; or the reverence paid even to his table 
 and his bed. It is enough to say that his whole 
 life had to be spent in public, surrounded by at 
 least one hundred of the nobility, and in the observ- 
 ance of a ceremonial from which he could only seek 
 some relief in the chase. Such a burden seemed 
 so intolerable to other sovereigns, that Frederick II. 
 used to say, were he king of France, his first act 
 would be to appoint some one else to officiate in 
 his place. A more serious drawback than the 
 tediousness of such a fife was the waste of time 
 and energy which it involved. Louis XV. could 
 spare at most one hour a day for business, and 
 it was thought a great proof of application that 
 Louis XVI. devoted three or four hours a day 
 to his Ministers or his Council, save on the many 
 days given up to hunting. Meanwhile the central- 
 ising tendency, which had been at work since the 
 Middle Ages, had (as M. de Tocqueville showed) 
 reached the height which still prevails ; and it 
 
8 STUDIES 
 
 would have needed the energy of a Frederick or 
 a Napoleon to have administered a despotism 
 which undertook all the functions of government 
 for twenty-five millions of men. It would be 
 strange, indeed, if a young, inexperienced king 
 had been able to do more than Louis XVI. ; to 
 introduce from time to time a few improvements, 
 to modify a few unimportant laws, while leaving 
 the chief abuses of government unaltered. This 
 inability is most strangely marked in the expendi- 
 ture of the royal household. The magnificence of 
 the Court could, of course, not be kept up without 
 a large staff of officers and servants, and we are 
 told that there were 4,000 persons on the civil 
 establishment of the king, and 9,000 to 10,000 on 
 his military establishment. In his personal expen- 
 diture Louis XVI. was economical, simple, and 
 even saving ; but he was accessible to the impor- 
 tunities of his courtiers, and, above all, to the 
 caprices of the queen. He distributed highly paid 
 sinecures and pensions without even any nominal 
 reason ; paid the debts of his courtiers and of his 
 family ; even his well-meant economies were half 
 measures, and often resulted in further waste. In 
 consequence of this inability to direct the whole 
 administration of the country from Versailles, and 
 of the constant changes in the king's advisers, 
 all the details of government continually varied. 
 The mode of taxation in particular was continually 
 changed, though it always fell on the same class ; 
 and laws, cruel and arbitrary in appearance, were 
 applied with extraordinary, though irregular, indul- 
 gence. De Tocqueville pointed out. the importance 
 of this factor, in leading to a contempt for all 
 government, and M. Taine supplies much corrobora- 
 
TAINE S FRENCH REVOLUTION 9 
 
 tive evidence for it. Meanwhile, the nation made 
 no allowance for the inevitable causes of failure 
 in the Government, which had undertaken every 
 administrative function, and was therefore held to 
 blame for all shortcomings by ill-natured, because 
 irresponsible, critics. 
 
 If such were the sources of ruin to the State 
 from the condition of the monarchy, the noblesse 
 was in as precarious a condition. Its privileges 
 and power had been originally essential for the 
 development of the nation; but the centralising 
 policy of the Crown had gradually withdrawn all 
 the real power (and with it much of the means of 
 doing good) and had only left the privileges, which 
 then became odious and harmful. In this case, too, 
 the tendency to become mere courtiers at Versailles 
 was the chief source of evil. With but few ad- 
 mirable exceptions, all the nobility who could afford 
 it became hangers-on at Court, and neglected their 
 estates and their tenantry. Taine calculates that 
 all the evils of an absentee proprietary, which 
 we have seen exemplified in Ireland, prevailed in 
 a much worse degree over one- third of France. 
 The contrast between an absentee and a resident 
 proprietor was most marked in the monastic estates, 
 of which the commendatory abbot's two-thirds 
 lay waste and fallow, so as to produce less than 
 the adjoining third allotted to the monks, usually 
 highly cultivated. Even the most wealthy nobles 
 were in debt or in difficulties, owing to the mal- 
 administration of their estates and their prodigal 
 extravagance ; they were therefore compelled to 
 exact all their dues pitilessly, even when these 
 were not already in the hands of usurers. In many 
 instances they had gradually parted with all their 
 
10 STUDIES 
 
 hereditary estates, and only retained their tolls 
 and profits from the use of the mill, bakehouse, 
 and the like. On the other hand, many of the 
 richest proprietors only visited the country in 
 order to hunt. For this purpose, over a great 
 part of France, and especially for thirty leagues 
 round Paris, deer and wolves, as well as lesser 
 game, were carefully preserved, to the ruin of 
 farming. The few grands seigneurs and more 
 numerous small proprietors, who resided on their 
 estates, though haughty towards the bourgeoisie, 
 were not village tyrants, but (as M. Taine shows) 
 kindly and charitable landlords, beloved by their 
 tenantry, though deprived by a jealous despotism 
 of any share in local government. 
 
 Under such influences it is hardly surprising 
 that the privileged classes should have striven to 
 avoid bearing any part of the burdens of the State. 
 In this respect the clergy were the greatest offenders : 
 having a corporate representation, they were enabled 
 to bargain with the king as to their share in taxa- 
 tion, to tax themselves (almost the whole being 
 paid by the inferior clergy), and finally, by an 
 ingenious arrangement of borrowing at the expense 
 of the State, in some years to receive money instead 
 of contributing to the revenue of the country. 
 The nobility had recourse, more shamelessly, to 
 every kind of private influence and solicitation in 
 order to avoid paying the small share of the imposts 
 to which they were liable. The bourgeoisie, in turn, 
 were only too ready to follow the example set by 
 their superiors, and where they had the control of 
 local taxation, endeavoured to raise it upon articles 
 of general consumption and not of luxury. 
 
 The aristocracy, being thus gathered from every 
 
TAINE'S FRENCH REVOLUTION 11 
 
 part of France to Paris and Versailles, relieved 
 from every duty, and living on the taxation of 
 the poor, incurred all the dangers to which such 
 a highly abnormal society is always liable. We 
 gladly omit the darker shades of the picture which 
 M. Taine rightly sets before us. A generally low 
 standard of morality and of all family ties has 
 unfortunately been a common curse of such an 
 idle and selfish caste. But the character of the 
 nation determined the special risks to which this 
 society was exposed. Frenchmen are too active 
 to sink contentedly into the mere sloth which 
 slowly rusts away an Italian or Spanish aristocracy ; 
 while their vanity and sociability led them to 
 occupy themselves with the only diversion within 
 their reach — the arts of social intercourse and 
 conversation. For this the good qualities and 
 defects of their mind alike fitted them, their lucidity 
 and quickness, no less than their want of applica- 
 tion and of depth. In this way was produced 
 the most enchanting and most seductive, yet most 
 fragile, society the world has ever known. The 
 lives of the nobility were passed in a succession 
 of fetes, in the exchange of mutual compliments 
 and of gaiety ; so that they were unable even to 
 conceive of the existence of suffering and poverty, 
 and when the moment of danger came, knew not 
 how to strike a blow in their own defence, and 
 could only die with dignity and grace. 
 
 This danger they had themselves introduced 
 and welcomed — they had nurtured and fondled 
 in their palaces the monster which was to devour 
 them all. In their ardour for conversational dis- 
 play, Frenchmen spared no subject, however 
 intricate and however sacred. The primary truths 
 
12 STUDIES 
 
 of natural and revealed religion, the moral govern- 
 ment of the world, the fundamental laws of ethics 
 and politics, had to be discussed every day, wittily 
 and intelligently, but with no time for their study, 
 before an audience keen-witted indeed, but most 
 impatient of aught that it could not seize without 
 effort. The result was what might have been 
 expected : since it is easier to have the appearance 
 of originality in denying than in defending estab- 
 lished truths, and much easier to gain a reputa- 
 tion for wit by ridiculing things sacred than those 
 which have no such associations. Infidelity had 
 made rapid strides even during the latter years 
 of the reign of Louis XIV., and of the seventeenth 
 century ; but now the flood-gates were thrown 
 open, and it infected the whole of society. It 
 is usual to ascribe the spread of free- thinking, 
 and hence of opinions dangerous to Church and 
 State, to Voltaire and the Encyclopaedists ; but 
 we are satisfied that M. Taine is right in saying 
 that they played a subordinate, though most 
 destructive, part. Voltaire, indeed, covered with 
 the slaver of his obscene yet unrivalled wit, every 
 hallowed thing, human and divine ; and his suc- 
 cessors continued the work which he had done 
 for revealed religion and established government, 
 applying it to the primary truths of natural religion 
 and morals, on which these must rest. Such 
 teaching was doubly grateful to a generation 
 which relished their wit, and welcomed their free- 
 dom from the trammels of morality ; but a merely 
 destructive philosophy cannot long satisfy even 
 the most superficial mind, still less can it supply 
 a motive and a basis for attacking the systems 
 which it criticises — it may discredit, but cannot 
 
TAINE'S FRENCH REVOLUTION 13 
 
 supplant them. For this purpose a positive system 
 was needed, and this was supplied by Rousseau, 
 who may be fairly called the prophet of the new 
 movement, and the apostle of the Revolution. 
 M. Taine is so convinced of this truth that he 
 devotes a considerable portion of this volume to 
 an analysis of the causes of Rousseau's paramount 
 influence over the latter half of the eighteenth 
 century, which we may briefly sum up thus. 
 
 Like all men who have ever gained an ascendancy 
 over their fellows, the secret of his power was, that 
 he was ready to impress on his audience, with an 
 ardent conviction of the importance of his mission, 
 the very truths, or half-truths, which they were 
 best prepared to hear. For this merit he was 
 forgiven all those grave moral faults which even 
 that indulgent age could not ignore ; and, though 
 an alien, a Protestant, and a plebeian, he became 
 the leader of thought in aristocratic and sometime 
 Catholic France. One proof of his widespread 
 influence must often have struck those who (like 
 the present writer) have been familiar with any 
 of the generation born before the Revolution : 
 the language even of religious men savoured of 
 Rousseau, just as so many persons now unwittingly 
 express themselves in terms derived from Spencer 
 or Mill. It may be admitted that Rousseau's 
 influence was not wholly evil. No man has more 
 earnestly pleaded for a belief in the moral govern- 
 ment of God, the immortality of the soul, and 
 the supremacy of the voice of conscience ; and 
 that these retained their hold on Frenchmen after 
 they had abandoned revelation must be to some 
 extent set down to his credit. He gained also by 
 heading and directing a reaction against the artificial 
 
14 STUDIES 
 
 life of the time, of which men were beginning to 
 be wearied. He dwelt earnestly on the happiness 
 of domestic life, and simple country pleasures, of 
 which he drew touching pictures, and thus roused 
 an interest in the poor to which the rich had long 
 been strangers. From this time the unbounded 
 confidence in the virtues of the peasantry grew 
 up, which survived even many of the early horrors 
 of the Revolution. This humanitarian tendency, 
 strengthened by the gentle and polished manners 
 of the time, was mistaken for weakness by the 
 people, who readily believed themselves to possess 
 all those virtues which their betters ascribed to 
 them. At the same time Rousseau's political 
 philosophy was excellently calculated to rouse 
 their discontent ; and in this respect his influence 
 was entirely evil. He found an open field for his 
 speculations on politics. The Church, since the 
 destruction of its true liberties by Louis XIV., 
 had ceased to put forward that ideal of a Christian 
 State, in which all members of the community 
 should have rights and duties, which its greatest 
 thinkers had derived from the Old Testament and 
 from Aristotle. It had acquiesced silently, if not 
 actively, in the theory of despotism put forth by 
 the king, now so roughly handled. 1 Instead of 
 building his science of politics upon the real neces- 
 sities of human nature, and the data supplied by 
 
 • De Tocqueville pointed out that the demands of the clergy 
 in 1789 for liberty were fully as enlightened as those of the 
 other two orders, and more feasible ; and that not a word was 
 to be found in them on " divine right." We have been told 
 that a preacher on one occasion developed, before Louis XVIII., 
 when in exile in London, the theory of government as laid 
 down by St. Thomas, to the natural indignation of his Court 
 at such an unseasonable and unheard-of admonition. 
 
TAINE's FRENCH REVOLUTION 15 
 
 existing societies, the sophist raised it in the clouds 
 upon an imaginary definition of man in the abstract, 
 from which he mathematically deduced all the 
 rights supposed to be absolutely inherent in each 
 individual. 
 
 Such a method was too well suited to the character 
 of the French mind to be neglected ; and it became 
 the fashion to string together platitudes on the 
 liberty, equality, and sovereignty of man, and to 
 express them in ideal constitutions, of which the 
 young Sismondi's attempt (Art. I., " Tous les 
 Francais seront vertueux." Art. II., " Tous les 
 Francais seront heureux") is scarcely a caricature. 
 For the aristocracy, of course, this was little more 
 than a speculative pastime, neither of the privi- 
 leged orders having at first any desire or intention 
 of leaving their vantage ground. But through the 
 whole of Louis XVI.'s reign the bourgeoisie had 
 made enormous progress in wealth, and in all 
 that cultivation which wealth brings with it. 
 Irritated at the line of demarcation which separated 
 them so sharply from the nobility, and which the 
 latter took care to let them feel, they eagerly 
 accepted the new doctrines, and, from having 
 previously demanded reform in details, now desired 
 fundamental changes. These subjects were dis- 
 cussed by all classes before the people, whom they 
 believed to be indifferent, but who were greedily 
 learning fragments of socialistic philosophy, and 
 applying it to their own case. And so deplorable 
 was that case that they may be excused for desir- 
 ing any change. This has long been known, but 
 it is one great merit of M. Taine's work to have 
 collected details. The most obvious injustice from 
 which they suffered was the incidence of taxation. 
 
16 STUDIES 
 
 It has been already stated that the clergy escaped 
 altogether, while the nobility contributed only 
 about one- tenth to the revenue of the country. 
 Most of the remainder fell upon the small farmer ; 
 and it is calculated that throughout France the 
 direct taxes came to 53 per cent, of his net income, 
 while in some parts the amount was greater still. 
 To this have to be added one-tenth for the poll- 
 tax, one-seventh each for the tithes and seignorial 
 dues, charges instead of the corvee, and local taxes, 
 leaving the proprietor only about one-third of 
 his income. Labourers were proportionately taxed 
 just as heavily, paying from eight to twenty francs 
 a year poll-tax. The mode of collection greatly 
 aggravated the evil, collectors being appointed 
 in each parish yearly, and held responsible for 
 the amount to be raised. They were almost 
 always uneducated persons, often labourers or 
 women, whom the loss of time and non-payment 
 constantly ruined. The amount levied was so 
 excessive, that every one feigned poverty, and 
 few parishes paid until they were forced to do so, 
 although the expenses thereby incurred greatly 
 added to their burdens. At the same time the 
 people were oppressed by an indirect taxation, 
 even more vexatious than the amount raised 
 directly. The worst tax was on salt, which had 
 the effect of increasing the price of that necessary 
 of life to thrice its present amount. Every one 
 was bound to purchase at least seven pounds 
 of salt each year, to be used only with food ; 
 and the constant attempts at evasion of the law, 
 in one way or another, led each year on an average 
 to 4,000 seizures, 3,400 imprisonments, and 500 
 sentences of degrees of severity ranging from whip- 
 
TAINE'S FRENCH REVOLUTION 17 
 
 ping to the galleys. The duties upon wine, again, 
 amounted to more than 30 per cent, of its value ; 
 while, like the other taxes, they were so clumsily 
 raised as to oppress equally the grower, the mer- 
 chant, and the consumer. This system of internal 
 taxation, and the arbitrary rules as to rotation 
 of crops, were far more fatal to the progress of 
 agriculture than the actual amount levied. During 
 the whole of the eighteenth century large tracts 
 of country gradually went out of cultivation, and 
 the remainder, farmed in the most primitive 
 manner, returned little more than half its present 
 yield. In ordinary years the peasantry, and the 
 lower classes in the towns, were able to procure 
 sufficient of the coarsest food to keep themselves 
 from absolute starvation ; but on the slightest 
 failure absolute famine broke out, relieved only 
 by the charity of a few rich proprietors and reli- 
 gious communities. Such famines, and the bread- 
 riots which they occasioned, became more and 
 more frequent in the thirty years preceding the 
 Revolution ; the food of the poor became worse, 
 so that they were often reduced to eat grass and 
 wild herbs. The general appearance of the ham- 
 lets and small country towns, the filth of the inhabi- 
 tants and of their dwellings, was the same (Taine 
 remarks) as in Ireland. It was to be expected 
 that vagrancy and mendicity would continually 
 increase, in spite of the severest penalties, so that 
 on an attempt to suppress them in 1764, 50,000 
 vagrants were collected and imprisoned in France. 
 Education, also, was at the lowest ebb. In most 
 villages, we are told by Turgot, no one could read ; 
 and it appears to be a fair sample of the state of 
 things, when we learn that near Toulouse there 
 2 
 
18 STUDIES 
 
 were only ten schools in fifty parishes. It was 
 before such a people, constantly brutalised by 
 want, and occasionally stung to madness by starva- 
 tion, that the privileged classes airily discussed 
 the fashionable politics of the day. How should 
 these poor folk not believe that virtue had taken 
 up its home among them ; how should they not 
 agree that all the evils of the time were due to 
 the existing state of society ; how not do their 
 best to establish the millennium of liberty and 
 equality by force % The army, the only means 
 of ensuring order in a country so disposed, was 
 drawn from the lowest classes of the poor ; it was 
 demoralised by defeats in the field, and constant 
 changes of discipline at home ; the pay, food, 
 and lodging were so miserable that discontent 
 had become general for some years before the 
 Revolution. By that time desertion had grown 
 so frequent, that 15,000 deserter soldiers in the 
 neighbourhood of Paris are said to have led the 
 rioters. 
 
 Such is a very inadequate summary of the pic- 
 ture which M. Taine draws of the social causes 
 of the Revolution. On looking back now we can 
 see that the catastrophe was inevitable, and that 
 the whole history of the ancien regime was merely 
 a prolonged suicide. The policy of Richelieu and 
 Louis XIV. had secretly and slowly, but therefore 
 the more surely, sapped the foundations of civic 
 virtue in France. It had divided in order to 
 rule, setting, not merely class against class, but 
 even the sections of each class at variance, so 
 that their selfishness, as well as their inexperience 
 of public life, made them quite unfit for self- 
 government. It had left untouched the forms 
 
taine's fkench revolution 19 
 
 and shadows of former institutions, but had built 
 up under their cover a perfectly centralised des- 
 potism. Such a system of centralisation seemed 
 the only conceivable method of government even 
 to the destroyers of the ancien regime, probably 
 because itself had rendered all other government 
 impossible ; so that even the Revolution only 
 completed the work of the old monarchy, and 
 the France of to-day is administered by the spirit 
 of the " Grand Monarque." It was De Tocque- 
 ville's merit to bring this point out most fully ; 
 and it will seem no paradox to any one who believes 
 that nations cannot, any more than individuals, 
 separate themselves from their past life, and must 
 retain the impress of those manifold conditions 
 which have gone to build up their character. 
 
 We have dwelt at such length upon M. Taine's 
 first volume, as being the most full of instruction 
 for us, that we have left but little room for noticing 
 his account of the progress of the Revolution. 
 We regret this the less, because, though equally 
 valuable as a collection of documentary evidence, 
 there is less that will be new to English readers. 
 Moreover, this part of the work suffers more than 
 the former by the comparative exclusion of political 
 facts from a narrative with which they are so 
 closely interwoven. We can only select some of 
 the most important points in these two latter 
 volumes. Our author has proved, with a mass 
 of evidence which can leave no doubt, that the 
 Revolution assumed, from the first moment of 
 its existence, the same destructive character which 
 it had throughout. Camille DesmOulins revealed 
 from the beginning the whole Jacobin programme ; 
 and the anarchical nature of the movement was 
 
20 STUDIES 
 
 recognised by the American Minister. This dis- 
 poses of the distinction drawn by many so-called 
 " Liberals " l in France, between the Revolution of 
 1789 and the Terror of 1792 ; both are but different 
 stages of the same process. And indeed nothing 
 else could be expected. The Constituent Assembly 
 was from the first singularly wanting in men of 
 practical experience, and the vast majority of 
 its members were disciples of Rousseau, believers 
 in the absolute virtue of a people whom they 
 attempted to govern by appeals to their emotions 
 and their sentiments. By forbidding its members 
 to become Ministers, it deprived them of the only 
 hope of their learning moderation from a sense 
 of responsibility. In order to seize upon the 
 Government, it at first suffered and afterwards 
 aroused rioting and disorder ; it thus inevitably 
 fell under the domination of the populace it had 
 invoked, whose centre was to be found at first in 
 the Palais Royal, and afterwards in the Jacobin 
 clubs. An organised band, receiving forty sous 
 a day for their services, filled the galleries and 
 approaches of the Chamber, hooted down the 
 Royalist members, and constantly threatened and 
 ill-treated them on leaving the Assembly. Money 
 for this, and for other purposes, was undoubtedly 
 found by the Duke of Orleans, who hoped to 
 succeed to the throne on Louis XVI.'s fall. Mean- 
 while the extreme reactionary party adopted the 
 foolish course in which they have always since 
 
 1 The word in this sense is never to be allowed to pass without 
 protest. As Burke said : " There may be some apprehension 
 from the very name of liberty, which, as it ought to be very dear 
 to us, in its worst abuses carries something seductive. It is 
 the abuse of the first and best of the objects which we cherish." 
 
21 
 
 persisted ; they encouraged the worst excesses of 
 the Revolutionists, hoping thereby to disgust the 
 nation with the more moderate Liberals ; and the 
 most suicidal measures — such as the " self-denying 
 ordinance," which declared members of the Con- 
 stituent Assembly ineligible for its successor — 
 were carried by their assistance. These were the 
 principal conditions which unfitted the central 
 authority for its task ; the local authorities, in 
 turn, were scarcely more capable. In the first 
 two years of the Revolution local government 
 fell mainly into the hands of the more cultivated 
 bourgeois, who, being like the members of the 
 National Assembly, philosophers of Rousseau's 
 school, were wholly incapable of restraining a 
 nation in the agonies of dissolution. A lower and 
 more unscrupulous class gradually became dominant 
 in most of the 40,000 municipal bodies which ruled 
 France ; and at last, the most powerful of them, 
 the Commune of Paris, laid hands upon the govern- 
 ment of the whole country. But, such is the force 
 of any established order, that universal confusion 
 did not at once prevail. M. Taine describes seven 
 successive " Jacqueries " as breaking out between 
 1789 and 1793, in the most capricious manner here 
 and there, and thus gradually changing the face 
 of the country ; this entirely coincides with what 
 the present writer formerly heard from those who 
 had been sufferers in the catastrophe. The course 
 of these emeutes was usually the same. The poorest 
 class were roused by some appeal to their cupidity 
 or their fears, and would take the lives and destroy 
 the property often of those to whom they were 
 most attached, or who had done the most for 
 them. Probably in the small country towns and 
 
22 STUDIES 
 
 villages some of the most atrocious crimes were 
 perpetrated under the influence of utterly irrational 
 fear, when men were literally mad with fright, 
 while the larger towns were seized upon by gangs 
 of criminals professing to be patriots. 
 
 M. Taine makes it perfectly clear that all this 
 violence was the work of a very small class. The 
 enormous majority of the people desired a moderate 
 constitutional government with a system of repre- 
 sentation and equal taxation ; above all, they 
 were sincerely attached to the king's person and 
 office. He estimates from several sources the 
 number of the populace who tyrannised over 
 Paris (and through Paris over France) at about 
 5,000 men and 2,000 women ; and the proportion 
 of Jacobins seems to have been equally small 
 throughout the country. But their strength lay 
 in this : that they, whether madmen, fanatics, 
 criminals, or all three combined, knew what they 
 aimed at, and would risk all for it ; while the 
 passive majority, trained to habits of submission, 
 hardly ventured to unite in their own defence, 
 and had no definite object. 
 
 Not the least service which M. Taine has ren- 
 dered to history is the complete and, we trust, 
 final destruction of the Girondin legend. Such 
 beliefs die hard ; but we hardly think any admira- 
 tion for the Girondin leaders can survive the 
 ridiculous light in which our author places them. 
 Their pedantic adherence to their theories, and 
 their absolute incapacity, thinly veiled by the 
 poorest declamation and fragments of second-hand 
 classical learning, were even more pernicious than 
 the wild excesses of the Jacobins, who used them 
 for their own purposes, and then crushed them. 
 
TAINE'S FRENCH REVOLUTION 23 
 
 In this matter, as in so many others, time has 
 justified the estimate which Burke's almost inspired 
 sagacity formed of the Girondists, whom later 
 writers have taken for men of understanding and 
 honour. Our author further shows that their 
 atheistical tenets made them more intolerant than 
 the Jacobins, not only towards Catholics, but 
 even towards all who professed any belief in the 
 existence of a God. 
 
 Two other points of importance are superabun- 
 dantly proved by M. Taine : that the war with 
 Germany and the September massacres were caused 
 by no accident or impulse, but by the deliberate 
 purpose of the extreme revolutionists, who wished 
 to seize upon the government, and to put " a river 
 of blood " between themselves and the past. How 
 well they knew the character of their countrymen, 
 the result proved. That centralisation which (as 
 we have seen) was the chief cause of the ruin of 
 the ancien regime saved France when she seemed 
 in the agonies of dissolution. The old monarchy 
 had so firmly welded together the provinces which 
 it had gradually absorbed, that the whole energy 
 of the nation was diverted to repel the invader. 
 In the presence of the enemy on French soil, no 
 question of internal government could divide 
 Frenchmen, and the Jacobins were left unmolested 
 to finish their work. But that the war, with all 
 its terrible consequences to France and to the 
 rest of Europe, was their doing, no one who has 
 read M. Taine's work can doubt. 
 
 Such is a very imperfect account of the points 
 which have struck us most forcibly in studying 
 this work. We have reserved for separate notice 
 our author's account of the Church and religion 
 
24 STUDIES 
 
 in France during the same period, so as to dwell 
 upon it in some detail. This appears to us the 
 more desirable, because, as far as we can learn, 
 no work upon this subject seems to have been 
 attempted of late years by the clergy or Catholic 
 laity of France. They appear to have been content 
 to leave the history of their predecessors to be 
 related by a bigoted admirer of the Jansenists, 1 
 who has stooped to every art which a partisan 
 writer can employ to defend his cause. We need 
 hardly say that M. Taine's spirit is very different. 
 We realise, indeed, from time to time, that he 
 unhappily has not the gift of faith — and nowhere 
 more obviously than when he relates, unmoved, 
 scandals which would rouse the indignation of 
 every Catholic — but none can doubt his perfect 
 fairness. The details scattered through his work 
 are full of interest, and we only regret our inability 
 to do more than scanty justice to them. The 
 collapse of the ecclesiastical regime in France is 
 even more dramatic in its suddenness and com- 
 pleteness than the fall of its secular government. 
 If ever Church were tempted to rely on her pride 
 of place and her many splendours, to forget the 
 true source of her power, and echo in her heart 
 the vain boast, " I am rich and wealthy and have 
 need of naught," that must have been the glorious 
 Church of France. Of the hundred and thirty-one 
 Sees into which she was divided, many dated back 
 to apostolic times, and she alone had survived 
 the barbarian floods which had destroyed all else 
 in France. To her the new lords of the country 
 
 1 Le Olerge de Quatre-vingt-neuf. Par Jean Wallon. Paris. 
 876. 
 
TAINE'S FRENCH REVOLUTION 25 
 
 owed, not merely religion, but the rudiments of 
 government and the arts of life ; and their piety 
 and gratitude had endowed her munificently. As 
 France grew into a nation, she had waxed with 
 its growth ; hers was the only lawful religion in 
 the country ; her king gloried in the title of Eldest 
 Son of the Church. She had been graced, too, 
 with more spiritual favours ; she had been the 
 fertile mother of saints and doctors ; the religious 
 life had flowered nowhere more luxuriantly than 
 on her soil. Nor had she failed from length of 
 years ; the brightness of noon-day had broken 
 forth again in her evening ; St. Vincent and St. 
 Francis were no unworthy successors of St. Hilary 
 and St. Bernard. And yet, as if by some apoca- 
 lyptic sign of the wrath of God, she was cast down 
 in one hour from her high estate, and ceased to 
 be. No wonder that such a portent should seem 
 terrible even to statesmen and men of the world. 
 De Tocqueville says : — 
 
 I have been surprised and almost alarmed, to find that 
 less than twenty years before Catholic worship was abol- 
 ished without resistance and the churches were profaned, 
 the plan sometimes adopted by the Government to learn 
 the population of a district was this — the cures supplied 
 the number of those who had made their Easter, who, 
 after the sick and children had been allowed for, made 
 up the whole population. 
 
 But when we come to look more clearly, we see 
 that her downfall might have been long predicted, 
 and that its causes had long been at work. The 
 most serious of these were, perhaps, her great 
 wealth and privileges, which might at first sight 
 have seemed her chief security. This wealth was 
 most unequally distributed. The average income 
 
2b STUDIES 
 
 of a bishop was £4,000 a year ; but in some instances, 
 such as Paris and Cambrai, it probably amounted to 
 thrice that sum, and considerably exceeded it in 
 the case of some very small dioceses. In the same 
 way, there were thirty- two abbeys of monks, where 
 the income of the abbot was from £2,000 to £10,000 
 a year, 1 and twenty-seven religious houses of 
 women, where the abbess received from £1,600 to 
 £8,000 yearly. It is to be remembered, that these 
 sums correspond to double the amount at the 
 present day ; and that a bishop might, and fre- 
 quently did, hold one of these great abbacies in 
 commendam. This latter abuse is too well known 
 for us to dwell upon it ; it was probably less 
 injurious than we might at first sight suppose, 
 since no one expected any ecclesiastical spirit from 
 an abbe commendataire. A much more serious 
 grievance was caused by the number of impro- 
 priators, clerical and lay, who received the tithes 
 upon which the cures should have depended for 
 their support. The sum which the cure received 
 from the impropriator (la portion congrue) was 
 miserably small, being only raised in the later 
 years of the monarchy to 750 francs a year, con- 
 siderably less than the smallest stipend at present ; 
 moreover, the holders of these livings being non- 
 resident, the presbyteries and churches became 
 dilapidated. This, and the unequal incidence of 
 taxation, to which we have before referred, divided 
 
 1 These large sums, it need not be said, were never touched 
 by any member of a religious community. They were appro- 
 priated to the " Abbot Commendatory," sometimes a minister, 
 sometimes a great secular ecclesiastic, and very often a young 
 member of the nobility, who had received the tonsure and 
 nothing more. 
 
taine 's feench be volution 27 
 
 the clergy of the second order from the prelates, 
 And, like all other classes in France, to borrow 
 De Tocqueville's subtle distinction, though not 
 free they were independent. Diocesan discipline 
 abounded in a multitude of exemptions, sub- 
 ordinate jurisdictions, and the like ; so that, for 
 example, in the diocese of Besancon, the arch- 
 bishop presented to less than 100 benefices out of 
 a total of 1,500. Under these circumstances, it 
 is not strange that the clergy should have acted 
 in opposition to the bishops in the early days of 
 the Assembly ; and their defection, it will be 
 remembered, was one of the turning points of the 
 Revolution. The state of the religious orders was 
 in some respects still less satisfactory. The non- 
 residence of their nominal superiors was necessarily 
 demoralising, and led to considerable laxity of 
 discipline. It says much for the power of the 
 religious life over even its most half-hearted and 
 indifferent followers, that, in spite of this laxity, 
 and the low state of general morality, there should 
 have been so few grave scandals in the monasteries 
 at that time. All writers on the subject admit 
 this ; and, as far as we can see, one case only (the 
 Bernardins of Grandselve) is referred to by authors 
 and admitted by them to be a " deplorable excep- 
 tion." At the same time, as M. Taine is careful 
 to point out, a very large proportion preserved 
 the fervour and strictness of true religious. This 
 was particularly the case with the nuns, who (with 
 the exception of a few houses of canonesses) were 
 living up to the spirit of their vocation. M. Taine 
 quotes their entreaties, which, as he says, are 
 " most earnest and touching," to be allowed to 
 remain in their convents, when the storm of the 
 
28 STUDIES 
 
 Revolution broke. One- third at least of the com- 
 munities of monks he considers to have been as 
 edifying ; and he quotes numerous instances of 
 self-denying and enlightened charity to the poor 
 even in the less strict monasteries. When their 
 suppression was proposed in 1789, petitions were 
 presented to the Assembly from all parts of France, 
 imploring that the religious of their own neigh- 
 bourhood — " the fathers of the poor " — should be 
 allowed to remain undisturbed. 
 
 The interference of the State, though probably 
 well meant, had been prejudicial to the religious 
 orders. In 1766 a mixed commission of bishops 
 and lawyers was appointed for their reform. With- 
 out consulting the Holy See, they suppressed more 
 than 1,500 of the smaller houses, abolished nine 
 orders entirely, and closed all houses with less 
 than sixteen members in towns, and twelve in the 
 country. The most serious step which they took 
 was to alter the age at which religious could be 
 professed, from that fixed by the Council of Trent, 
 to twenty-five for men and eighteen for women. 
 From that time the number of professions rapidly 
 diminished ; both seculars and regulars ascribing 
 the diminution to this rule, which, in spite of their 
 protests, was never abrogated. M. Taine is no 
 doubt right in supposing that, if the same policy 
 had been continued, the religious orders would 
 have decreased still more rapidly. It needed the 
 rude hand of the persecutor to make them revive : 
 " they will always spring up again, for they are 
 in the blood of every Catholic race." M. Taine 
 has taken much pains to ascertain the number of 
 religious in 1789 : and he calculates that there 
 must have been about 60,000 monks and 37,000 
 
taine's feench revolution 29 
 
 nuns ; while in 1866 they had already grown, 
 since the revival of religion in France, to 18,500 
 men and 86,300 women. 
 
 Finally, the episcopate had lost much of its 
 influence in the country. The bishops had long 
 been chosen from among the aristocracy, by a 
 rule which was never infringed save for one or 
 two eveches de laquais, and by the most distin- 
 guished merit. Living, therefore, at Court, grands 
 seigneurs by birth, education, and surroundings, it 
 would hardly have been conceivable that they 
 should not have yielded to the attractions of a 
 fascinating and luxurious society. It is rather to 
 their lasting honour, and that of the Church which 
 they governed, that so many of them should have 
 been distinguished for their piety and charity, 
 and that so few grave scandals can be alleged even 
 against the less exemplary. It was a proof that 
 they were not corrupted by wealth and luxury, 
 that, when evil days fell upon them, and they 
 had to choose between subscribing to a schismatical 
 constitution, or going into poverty and exile, they 
 accepted the latter without a murmur. M. Taine 
 speaks as if many of the bishops were unbelievers ; 
 but his authority for this statement is only a mot 
 of Champfort's, which is insufficient to bear such 
 an inference. As far as we can ascertain, there 
 were but three members of the episcopate — Jarente, 
 Brienne, and Talleyrand — against whom so heavy 
 a charge could fairly be brought. It is, however, 
 remarkable that Catholic nations have been always 
 more alienated from the faith by the sight of prodi- 
 gality and waste than by failure in faith or morals, 
 on the part of the clergy ; and it must be confessed 
 that the French bishops gave ample grounds for 
 complaint. 
 
30 STUDIES 
 
 Such were the dangers springing mainly from 
 the endowments of the Church ; there were others 
 no less serious connected with its relation to the 
 State as the established religion. In consequence 
 of the policy of Louis XIV., which checked as far 
 as possible all communication with the Holy See, 
 ecclesiastical questions came to be raised before 
 the civil courts, and particularly before the Parlia- 
 ment of Paris. That body, profoundly Jansenist 
 in its traditions, and full of the pedantic conceit 
 which was a note of the sect, had no doubt of its 
 competency to decide theological questions. The 
 whole of the latter part of Louis XV. 's reign was 
 disturbed by the constant appeals to the Parlia- 
 ment by religious and laymen, to whom the sacra- 
 ments had been refused by order of the bishops, 
 because they were " appellantists." The Par- 
 liament was rejoiced to have such an opportunity 
 of showing its sympathy with Jansenism or semi- 
 Jansenism. We are told that, within a few years, 
 the Archbishop of Paris was subjected to a heavy 
 fine ; the Bishop of Nantes twice had his goods 
 seized and sold by auction ; a letter of the Arch- 
 bishop and Bishops of the province of Auch was 
 burned by the hangman ; the Bishops of Troyes, 
 Aix, Montpellier, Orleans, were exiled. More than 
 all this, Paris witnessed the scandal of seeing the 
 tabernacle broken open by order of a court of 
 law, and the sacred Host carried under the pro- 
 tection of gendarmes to persons to whom the 
 clergy and bishop had refused communion. This 
 persecution was not ended until the king issued 
 an order in 1756 that the bishops alone should 
 decide as to the administration of the sacraments. 
 But the warfare of the Parliament with the Church 
 
taine's feench eevolution 31 
 
 was continued all through the century in other 
 ways. To take no other examples, we find it 
 forbidding the use of the offices of the Sacred 
 Heart, of St. Gregory VII., and (it will be scarcely 
 thought possible) of St. Vincent de Paul. 
 
 M. Taine does not notice these facts, but they 
 appear to us of considerable importance. They 
 must necessarily have accustomed men to see the 
 State overrule the Church, and prepared them for 
 the final act of tyranny which crushed the latter. 
 Such acts of usurpation were continued to the 
 end ; even under the religious government of 
 Louis XVI., in 1776, we find the bishopric and 
 chapter of Digne suppressed in spite of the pro- 
 tests of the persons concerned, and without any 
 reference to Rome. Our author has, however, 
 remarked upon the effect of the long-continued 
 Jansenist agitation (of which the Parliament was 
 the centre) as one factor in the discontent with 
 the Government. He fully recognises that the 
 three enemies of the Church — Gallicanism, Jan- 
 senism, and Free-thinking — worked together to 
 compass its ruin. This has been more clearly 
 brought out in the very valuable and impartial 
 history of " The Gallican Church and the Revo- 
 lution." M. Taine also admits the schismatical 
 character of the Civil Constitution, and the tyranny 
 of which the Assembly was guilty in imposing it 
 upon the clergy ; we call attention to both these 
 points, because they have been denied by Gallican 
 writers of the present day. 
 
 But, even with so many causes of weakness in 
 her own fold, and such relentless enemies without, 
 the Church of France was not all at once cast 
 down. There are few more interesting passages 
 
32 STUDIES 
 
 in M. Taine's work than those where he notes how 
 long the people, even of Paris, continued to be 
 earnestly attached to their religion. Thus we 
 learn that, as late as May, 1793, the Blessed Sacra- 
 ment was publicly carried through the streets to 
 the sick, and that every one knelt in the street, 
 men, women, and children running to adore. A 
 few weeks later, the reliquary of St. Leu was carried 
 in procession, and was received with the usual 
 respect, the guard even of one of the Jacobin 
 sections turning out in its honour. The " dames 
 de la Halle " soon after compelled the revolutionary 
 committee of St. Eustache to authorise another 
 procession which was attended with even more 
 devotion and fervour. These facts will appear the 
 more striking, when it is remembered that in less 
 than six months all Christian worship was abolished 
 in Paris, the Churches were profaned, and the 
 " Goddess of Reason " was crowned in Notre Dame. 
 And, if we come to later times than M. Taine 
 has studied, we find that whenever persecution 
 relaxed for a while, in 1795 and 1797, the faithful 
 flocked eagerly to the churches which were re- 
 opened, or to the chapels which were temporarily 
 used by the orthodox clergy. The more dis- 
 sembled and more enduring opposition of the 
 Directory to every form of Christian worship was 
 more effectual, since a generation grew up under 
 it without Catholic education and surroundings, 
 to whom religion was therefore not a necessity. 
 The important truth, that the Church has nothing 
 to fear from persecution, however severe, but 
 everything from the loss of the training of her 
 children, was never more strikingly illustrated than 
 in the great Revolution. 
 
TAINE'S FRENCH REVOLUTION 33 
 
 We have endeavoured to give some account of 
 the most important recent contribution to the 
 history of the French Revolution ; and to express, 
 however inadequately, the main impression we 
 have derived from the work. This will have been 
 seen to be that, far from being a sudden catastrophe, 
 it was one which had become inevitable by the 
 slow but silent operation of causes which had long 
 been at work. The ancient polity of France, like 
 some mighty monarch of the forest, primo nutat 
 casurus sub euro, or like some headland overhanging 
 the sea, toppled over in one moment ; but it had 
 long been undermined by secret decay. Those 
 who were overtaken by that great Revolution 
 could no more have checked it than they could 
 have arrested the convulsions of Nature ; but they 
 might have changed its character and made it 
 harmless or even beneficial. A more resolute king, 
 a more unselfish aristocracy, a more far-sighted 
 and patient people, would have used the energies 
 then set free to secure true liberty and good govern- 
 ment for France. The occasion was let pass never 
 more to return ; and they might fairly plead in 
 excuse that the calamity which was to overwhelm 
 them was beyond the experience of man. We 
 have now no such justification ; we have learned 
 from their fate how terrible are the forces which 
 are ever ready to overwhelm religion and civilisa- 
 tion — be it ours to meet them with every public 
 virtue, justice, unselfishness, timely concession, yet 
 equally timely resistance ; and the future is assured 
 to us. 
 
34 
 
 THE PRESENT POSITION OF THE 
 ARGUMENTS FOR THE EXISTENCE 
 OF GOD. ' 
 
 I need hardly protest that I have no intention 
 of attempting any complete, or even connected, 
 exposition of the proofs of the existence of God ; 
 for an adequate treatment of such an all-important 
 subject would of course require, not the few pages 
 of an article, but a volume. Nor is want of space 
 my only reason for not undertaking such an enter- 
 prise. Only extreme vanity or ignorance could 
 suppose that the whole subject had not been long 
 since threshed out, and that any new argument 
 remained to be discovered. I would indeed go 
 beyond this, and say, that to my own mind the 
 proofs have never been put in a clearer or more 
 satisfactory form than that delivered by pre- 
 Christian antiquity into the guardianship of the 
 Church, and enshrined in her philosophy. I believe 
 that modern objections, on the one hand, and the 
 kind of assistance we derive from science, on the 
 other, both lead us to follow more closely than 
 ever the exact lines of argument followed by St. 
 Thomas. At the same time, we have to express 
 these in modern language, so as to bring them 
 into contact with present thought ; and this is 
 the task I shall very fragmentarily and imperfectly 
 attempt. 
 
THE EXISTENCE OF GOD 35 
 
 If this paper should be read by persons unac- 
 customed to philosophical speculation, I fear they 
 will be disposed to think my arguments very feeble 
 and inadequate, and may even be shocked to see 
 how little I have to say on behalf of a conviction 
 which is the life and centre of their whole being. 
 Part of such apparent deficiency must be ascribed 
 to a want of clearness on my part in stating difficult 
 and abstract matters, of which I am very sensible. 
 But there is a further reason for disappointment, 
 which lies in the nature of the case, and which 
 it is important to remark. Cardinal Newman has 
 abundantly shown that the arguments producible 
 for any conviction are by no means proportioned 
 to the truth and importance of such conviction, 
 or to the intensity with which it is held by man- 
 kind. Indeed, paradoxical as it may seem, the 
 cogency and abundance of such arguments are 
 rather in an inverse ratio to the fundamental 
 importance and necessity of the conclusions they 
 enforce. What proof have we of the validity of 
 those ultimate laws of thought upon which our 
 very existence as reasonable beings depends ; or 
 of any external reality at all ; or of those general 
 principles of morality without which human society 
 could not exist ? Every one who has studied such 
 questions must at first have been disappointed 
 when he discovered how very little argument 
 could be adduced to prove any one of these uni- 
 versal convictions of mankind. Moreover, the 
 sense of inadequacy is increased, in this particular 
 case, by the character of the grounds on which 
 the existence of God is really held by each of us, 
 as distinguished from the arguments producible to 
 others. The sense of moral accountability and 
 
36 STUDIES 
 
 dependence constitutes an argument to the mind 
 of every man not " debauched by philosophy," 
 which lies outside the circle of reasoning as distinct 
 from reason. Still less can it approach what is 
 to the Christian, and even more to the Catholic, 
 immeasurably the strongest evidence of the divine 
 existence — the revelation of God in the face of 
 Christ Jesus ; His perpetual presence and mysterious 
 union with the Christian soul ; the indwelling of 
 the Holy Spirit, whereby we recognise our kinship 
 to our Divine Father — all these are beyond the 
 reach of argument, and illumine the believing 
 heart with a light beside which all earthly argu- 
 ments are dim indeed. 
 
 I. I need not consider at length the so-called 
 " ontological " proof that God exists. In the form 
 which St. Anselm first gave to it, it was rejected 
 by the whole School, 1 and substantially for the 
 same reasons which have induced Kant and all 
 since his time to abandon the Cartesian argument. 
 It is indeed obvious that from the mere analysis 
 of the idea of God we can extract no evidence of 
 His actual existence ; we obtain simply a hypo- 
 thetical proposition, that if He exists, He must 
 be a necessary being. We do not go outside the 
 circle of our own minds, or obtain any evidence 
 of the objective reality of the idea with which we 
 started. This seems so clear that I should not 
 have mentioned it, but that the argument is now 
 confounded with another (of more importance and 
 validity as it seems to me), which has been thereby 
 
 1 As far as I know, ^Egidius was the only Schoolman who 
 supported it. But Scotus, in one place at least (De Princ. 
 Rerum, cap. iv. No. 24), and St. Bonaventure, give it a qualified 
 support. 
 
THE EXISTENCE OF GOD 37 
 
 discredited. Thus both Principal Caird and Pro- 
 fessor Caird 
 
 regard this argument as pointing to the ultimate unity 
 of thought and being, which is the presupposition and 
 end of all knowledge. Taken in this sense, the argument 
 is but one example of the principle that abstract or imper- 
 fect conceptions of reality give rise to contradictions, and 
 so force us to put them in relation to the other concep- 
 tions which complement and complete them. 1 
 
 This language is somewhat vague and confused, 
 as might be expected of Hegelians ; but it seems 
 to point to a totally different argument. St. 
 Thomas urged, and to my mind with considerable 
 force, that all knowledge presupposes a correspond- 
 ence 2 between thought and reality, that there is 
 a primary basis and standard of thought, and that 
 we may therefore fairly conclude that there is a 
 like basis and source of reality. This is the third 
 argument for the existence of God in the Summa 
 contra Gentiles, the fourth in the Summa Theo- 
 logica ; and its repetition in the latter work shows 
 that St. Thomas's deliberate judgment was in 
 favour of its validity. He appears to have derived 
 it from the appeal to human reason, which runs 
 through all the works of St. Augustine, and which 
 Thomassinus has crystallised into one sentence of 
 his lucid and elegant Latin : " The primary and 
 highest principles of logic, and indeed of all the 
 arts and sciences on which the rest depend, are 
 so many eternal, unchanging, evident rules and 
 laws, which can only shine upon us by a light 
 
 1 Philosophy of Kant, p. 645. 
 
 2 It is well to note that he employs this word : Correspon- 
 dentia adaequatio rei et intellectus dicitur (i. Ver. 1). 
 
38 STUDIES 
 
 borrowed from the everlasting sun of truth." l St. 
 Anselm repeated the same argument more dis- 
 tinctly, 2 besides the one with which his name is 
 particularly associated. 
 
 But it had so far rather been implied than 
 explicitly stated, that such first principles in the 
 mind are derived from an external reality to which 
 they correspond, and, so far as I can learn, St. 
 Thomas first gave this development to the reasoning. 
 His argument differs from the earlier one in adding 
 the appeal to the gradations of human knowledge 
 as an evidence of the primary nature of its first 
 truths. The result of this appeal is to bring out 
 more plainly the objective value of the whole 
 process. As long as we speak only of the funda- 
 mental truths of human knowledge, of the uni- 
 versal and necessary bases of mathematics, logic, 
 or ethics, it may be plausibly objected that we are 
 dealing merely with abstractions of the mind. 
 But when we realise that these primary truths 
 are the starting points and standards of a pro- 
 cess of comparison which is an essential element 
 in all our knowledge, this objection loses its force. 
 We come to see that if there be any such correspond- 
 ence at all between thought and reality as is 
 implied in knowledge, there must be some primary 
 Being without, answering to the ultimate basis of 
 thought within. The latter is indeed in our own 
 minds merely an abstraction ; but it would be 
 untrue (thereby invalidating the whole process of 
 knowledge which rests on it) if it had not its corre- 
 lative in an actual reality without. 
 
 1 De Deo, i. cap. 23. 
 
 2 Monolog., cap. 66, 68. 
 
THE EXISTENCE OF GOD 39 
 
 This argument may be fairly named " psycho- 
 logical," to correspond to the terms " cosmological," 
 " teleological," and " ontological," applied to the 
 others. If we bear in mind the amount of authority 
 in its favour, especially the great names of St. 
 Augustine and St. Thomas, we can hardly fail to 
 think it has been subsequently neglected. The 
 strict Thomists, indeed, defended it against the 
 later sceptics among the Schoolmen, and it always 
 appears among their proofs of the existence of 
 God, down to Libera tore and Zigliara ; but they 
 merely repeat St. Thomas's own words, and attach 
 no particular importance to it. Tongiorgi omits 
 it altogether, while Palmieri and Caretti think 
 it may be considered a suasio, but not a per- 
 suasio. F. Kleutgen alone has dwelt strongly 
 upon it, especially in the Institutiones Theologicae, 
 which he unfortunately left unfinished. Several 
 causes have probably contributed to this compara- 
 tive neglect. The arguments for a first motor and 
 a designer of the world are so much more easily 
 stated, and so much more persuasive to non- 
 philosophical minds, that the psychological proof 
 has seemed superfluous ; also, the language of 
 the Vatican Council, enforcing St. Paul's teaching 
 that the Divine existence is to be demonstrated 
 per ea quae facta sunt, points at first sight in 
 the same direction. Finally, I suspect the proof 
 has suffered to some degree by being confused with 
 that upheld by St. Anselm and Descartes. I have 
 already, I hope, said enough to show that this 
 is not the case. I think it must be equally clear 
 that the argument lies strictly within the lines of 
 the teaching of the Apostle and the Vatican Coun- 
 cil. The laws of human thought are as much part 
 
40 STUDIES 
 
 of the creation as the laws of the physical universe ; 
 so that an argument based upon them will be 
 equally per ea quae facta sunt with those drawn 
 from efficient and final causes. And although it 
 perhaps cannot be stated so as to appeal to many 
 minds, there seem to have been some at every 
 time who have found it specially persuasive. 
 Cicero, Fenelon, Cudworth, and, above all, St. 
 Augustine, would echo Tertullian's words — " Ut 
 et naturae et Deo credas, crede animae." At the 
 present time, beyond all others, we cannot afford 
 to let any argument lie idle which has been found 
 to carry conviction to a whole class of minds, and 
 this is my excuse for having dwelt on it so fully. 
 
 II. The cosmological group of arguments, which 
 proceed from the phenomena of the universe, to 
 prove the existence of a first motor and efficient 
 cause, are so much better known than the psycho- 
 logical proof, that I need not recite them in their 
 ordinary shape. It is more important for my 
 purpose to dwell upon the objections that have 
 been raised to them. 
 
 The Associationist school urge that there is no 
 necessary connection between cause and effect, 
 but merely the association of antecedent and 
 consequent, and that hence no argument from 
 cause and effect justifies us in passing beyond 
 experience. Such an objection, if allowed, would 
 indeed overturn the cosmological argument for 
 Theism, but a great deal more would go with it 
 which the objectors would less like to lose. It 
 would equally invalidate all prevision, whether of 
 science or of e very-day business. We cannot take 
 a step in this life without the hypothesis of the 
 uniformity of Nature, which cannot possibly^ be 
 
THE EXISTENCE OF GOD 41 
 
 derived from experience : it is rather the condition 
 which makes experience possible. Nor can science 
 afford to admit that we have no knowledge of aught 
 beyond the ken of sense. The existence of the 
 luminiferous ether, for example, is universally 
 admitted ; yet it is known to us directly by none 
 of the senses, and indeed must possess properties 
 which differ widely from any object that we can 
 see, or hear, or handle. It would be interesting 
 to see the logical sieve which could allow the 
 existence of the luminiferous ether to pass, and 
 yet exclude the arguments for the existence of 
 God. In this, as in other kindred questions, the 
 Associationist view fails to satisfy the first criterion 
 of a philosophical hypothesis — it does not account 
 for all the facts. 
 
 It would be almost more plausible to say that 
 the law of causality is a merely logical one, and 
 of no objective validity ; that it is a " regulative," 
 not a " constitutive," law of our minds ; that the 
 colour is in the glass through which we look upon 
 the landscape, and not in the objects themselves. 
 It is indeed the masterpiece of scepticism to make 
 the very universality and necessity of a belief 
 testify to its being purely subjective. But the 
 supporters of this objection have omitted to remark 
 that the same testimony which affirms the law 
 of causality affirms at the same time, with equal 
 emphasis, its objective validity ; and that we have 
 no right to choose arbitrarily what we will accept 
 and what reject of the deliverance of consciousness. 
 There is no meaning in a law of causality unless as 
 applied to objects outside itself, and it cannot be 
 true in any intelligible sense unless it be true of 
 them. 
 
42 STUDIES 
 
 Thirdly, Kant and his followers have put for- 
 ward a much more specious difficulty. They 
 admit that the law of causality leads us to the 
 knowledge of a first cause and mover of the world ; 
 but they affirm that it only justifies us in asserting 
 the existence of a Supreme Being Who should be 
 a part of the universe — in their own language, an 
 " immanent," not a " transcendent," Deity. They 
 urge that to pass from the contingent to the 
 necessary, from the finite to the infinite, is a step 
 impossible to reason, a ^erd^aa^ efc aXko yevos, 
 which the mind cannot be made to take. This 
 objection completely evades the true meaning and 
 force of the cosmological argument. Its very point 
 is that the human mind is driven to take this 
 " salto mortale," which alone can land it on firm 
 ground. The universe is inconceivable and inex- 
 plicable, unless a Being is supposed to exist beyond 
 it : the contingent postulates the necessary, the 
 finite postulates the infinite. This may be best 
 shown, as it seems to me, by taking one case, the 
 need of a first cause of all movement or change ; 
 and by appealing, not to the ordinary experience 
 of life, but to science, in which that experience is 
 verified and set forth accurately. Modern science, 
 as is well known, takes a mechanical view of the 
 universe ; and the more completely we admit that 
 it is governed by the laws of mechanics, the more 
 clearly will it appear that we must affirm the 
 existence of a prime motor beyond the universe, 
 because outside the series of changes which are the 
 subject matter of physical science ; for there are 
 only two alternatives beside this, and both of them 
 are unacceptable to science. The first is, to deny 
 Newton's first law of motion, and so to pull down 
 
THE EXISTENCE OF GOD 43 
 
 about our ears the whole structure that has been 
 raised thereon. Some of our bolder Agnostics 
 have not shrunk from such a course. Professor 
 Tyndall, for instance, invited the British Associa- 
 tion in 1874 to abandon the definitions of matter 
 found in our text-books, and to look upon it as 
 " the dawn and potency of all the forms and 
 qualities of life." If these words have any mean- 
 ing, they obviously suggest that matter can change 
 itself. Moleschott more explicitly rejects the basis 
 of all physics. He says : l " One of the most 
 general characters of matter is to be able, under 
 favourable circumstances, to put itself in motion." 
 The great sophist of our time and country makes 
 a similar assumption the basis of his whole process 
 of evolution. He supposes this to start from the 
 absolutely homogeneous, which he proceeds to say 
 is unstable ; and he then treats this " instability 
 of the homogeneous " as if it could be an internal 
 principle of action. He has been led into this 
 confusion by forgetting that by true instability 
 physicists mean a state in which, equilibrium being 
 very delicate, a very slight external force is enough 
 to disturb it ; whereas his own hyopthesis debars 
 him from any force at all external to the universe. 2 
 It does not require much reflection to see that no 
 internal change whatever could take place in a 
 
 1 Krei8lauf des Lebens, Brief 17. I am indebted for this 
 quotation to M. E. Naville's Physique Moderne, an exceedingly 
 suggestive work. 
 
 2 I cannot forbear quoting Mr. Malcolm Guthrie's homely 
 remark in his very able Examination of Mr. Spencer's Theory 
 of Evolution : "A country friend of mine describes evolution as 
 ' a lump with a start in it.' The instability of the homogeneous 
 is ' the start.' " 
 
44 STUDIES 
 
 truly homogeneous universe, without violating the 
 first law of motion. 
 
 There is still a second alternative which is some- 
 times put forward — the series of causes and effects 
 might be infinite, and so we might never come to 
 a first cause at all. I will not here enlarge upon 
 the metaphysical difficulties involved in such an 
 hypothesis, which even Kant thought were for- 
 midable ; they may be found in most manuals of 
 philosophy. But I have to point out, in the first 
 place, that evolutionists at any rate are precluded 
 from resorting to it. Evolution being a process, 
 obviously implies a commencement at a definite, 
 however distant and unknown, point in the past. 
 If we suppose, for instance, the nebular hypothesis, 
 in its extremest form, to be true, we are all the 
 more constrained to believe that movement began 
 at some moment in time. How ? Either from 
 some cause in the matter itself, which is contrary 
 to the first law of motion ; or without any cause, 
 which would be to deny the basis of all science ; 
 or, finally, from some extraneous cause. We are 
 thus brought back finally to Aristotle's and St. 
 Thomas's " primum movens immobile." 
 
 It is also to be remarked that natural science 
 gives no countenance whatever to the hypothesis 
 of an infinite series of causes ; as far as it can bear 
 witness at all, its tendency is very strongly the 
 other way. The theory of heat most decidedly 
 points to a definite origin of the present state of 
 things at a certain and perhaps calculable date 
 in the past. It is true that we are not thereby 
 constrained to believe in creation at that assignable 
 date ; physical science alone will not take us so 
 far. It is open for any one who chooses to follow 
 
THE EXISTENCE OF GOD -45 
 
 Professor Clifford in denying creation ; but he will 
 have to admit that there was an absolute com- 
 mencement of the present state of things, and that 
 this was brought about by other than the now 
 visibly acting causes. 1 The present state of things 
 is in its nature finite ; as it must one day have an 
 end, so it must have had a beginning. Any hypo- 
 thesis, then, which assumes that the series of causa- 
 tion is infinite, must be purely imaginary, and can 
 derive no support from facts. 
 
 An argument akin to the cosmological proof of 
 the existence of God has been brought forward 
 by Lotze and his school. I derive my knowledge 
 of it mainly from Professor Bowne's Metaphysics, 
 an exceedingly able American work ; for Lotze's 
 own writings, though highly interesting and sug- 
 gestive, are hard to follow. His point is, that 
 none of the explanations given by philosophers 
 to account for the interaction of bodies are satis- 
 factory. The only tolerable view he takes to be 
 the existence of " a basal unity," which can render 
 the mutual relations of beings in the universe 
 possible. As he states it, the argument seems 
 to me hardly to escape the dangers of " occasion- 
 alism " on the one hand, or of pantheism on the 
 other. But I can believe that, once the existence 
 of a first cause is recognised, his continual action 
 in the universe throws a clear light upon the other- 
 wise obscure problem of interaction. In this way 
 Lotze's argument would legitimately confirm the 
 cosmological proof ; just as any scientific hypo- 
 
 1 Clifford's First and Last Catastrophe (in Lectures and Essays, 
 vol. i.). The whole subject is most fully stated by Professor 
 Tait {Recent Advances in Physical Science, p. 22), and Jevons 
 (Principles of Science, vol. ii., p. 439). 
 
46 STUDIES 
 
 thesis is strengthened when it is found to explain 
 indirectly other phenomena than those for which 
 it was originally designed. 
 
 III. A further question remains to be considered. 
 We have seen that no explanation can be given 
 of the existence and phenomena of the universe, 
 unless by supposing some cause and mover beside 
 it. But this is not sufficient ; we are in like manner 
 compelled to admit that the universe is unintelligible 
 and inexplicable, unless we admit that there is an 
 intelligence beside it. This brings me to the 
 teleological proof of theism. 
 
 It might at first sight have been supposed that 
 the purely mechanical view of physical science 
 which now prevails would have lessened the force 
 of an appeal to the evidences of design and adap- 
 tation in the universe. The reverse, however, is 
 the case. In the first place, the necessary laws 
 established by this conception of Nature have 
 non-suited all those appeals to " chance " which 
 were the favourite resource of the freethinkers of 
 a former age. But they do much more than this. 
 Force, acting according to necessary law, can of 
 itself determine nothing, but must work in given 
 circumstances and conditions, which may be called 
 the " arbitrary constants " of a system. Gravity, 
 for example, is compatible with rest, with move- 
 ment in a straight line, and with every possible 
 variety of orbital motion. Dr. Chalmers first 
 called attention to this in the first Bridgewater 
 Treatise. He remarked that the collocations of 
 the material world are at least as important as 
 the laws which objects obey, and that mere laws 
 would have afforded no security against a turbid 
 and disorderly chaos. This statement is so obvious 
 
THE EXISTENCE OF GOD 47 
 
 that I am not aware it has ever been called in 
 question. Mr. J. S. Mill admitted its truth ; and 
 it has been so clearly stated by Professor Huxley 
 that I venture to quote his words, though they 
 have often been reproduced before : — 
 
 The more purely a mechanist a speculator is [he says], 
 the more firmly does he assume a primordial molecular 
 arrangement, of which all the phenomena of the universe 
 are the consequences ; and the more completely is he 
 thereby at the mercy of the teleologist, who can always 
 defy him to prove that this primordial molecular arrange- 
 ment was not intended to evolve the phenomena of the 
 universe. 
 
 This compels us to suppose that the existing 
 collocations of matter are the results of other 
 collocations of matter antecedent to all the laws 
 of motion. In other words, the present condi- 
 tion of the universe is simply the consequence of 
 that original condition of its parts upon which the 
 mechanical laws first came into play. But that is 
 the same as saying that, if there be an order and 
 harmony now recognisable, it must be due to an 
 original order and harmony impressed upon the 
 system by some agent external because anterior 
 to it. Mr. H. Spencer, by one of his frequent 
 inconsistencies, recognises implicitly this truth. 
 When he comes to describe the so-called " homo- 
 geneous," which, as I have said, is the starting 
 point of his hypothesis of evolution, he is com- 
 pelled to assume that it is diffused matter, endowed 
 with all its present properties and moving slowly 
 through an ethereal medium. 
 
 I have just said, " if there be an order and har- 
 mony now recognisable " ; but I need scarcely 
 have stated the point hypothetically. There is, of 
 
48 STUDIES 
 
 course, a consensus among theists that the evidences 
 of design and adaptation are stronger now than 
 ever before, but we can fortunately appeal to wit- 
 nesses who cannot be suspected of partiality. In 
 the first place, biologists are compelled to assume 
 an end, object, and design in organic Nature, even 
 when, like Haeckel, they deny it. Still more 
 remarkable is it to find a considerable number of 
 thinkers assert the presence of an intelligence in 
 all Nature, although they do not admit that it 
 exists independently of the universe. Schopen- 
 hauer's connection with natural science was so 
 slight as to make him hardly worth quoting, but 
 he led the way to this doctrine of an " immanent " 
 intelligence in Nature. Hartmann is a Manichaean 
 pantheist, believing in the existence of two immanent 
 principles — one good and one evil — in the universe. 
 Theism, therefore, does not warp his mind ; yet 
 no Bridgewater Treatise contains more numerous 
 or more detailed examples of design than does 
 his Philosophy of the Unconscious. He is, in 
 particular, careful to point out that Darwin's 
 system is essentially teleological. The same has 
 been done by a much more powerful thinker than 
 Hartmann — the physiologist and philosopher, 
 Wundt, also, unfortunately, not a believer in God. 
 He points out that not merely are Darwin's laws 
 purely teleological in character, but that the teleo- 
 logical method of studying vital phenomena is 
 advancing in every department of biology. So 
 persuaded is he of this, that he " completely inverts 
 the view ordinarily taken of the relations between 
 body and mind. The psychical life is not a pro- 
 duct of the bodily organism, but the bodily organism 
 is a psychical creation in all that, by its purposive 
 
THE EXISTENCE OF GOD 49 
 
 power of self-regulation, gives it precedence over 
 complex inorganic bodies." 
 
 I need not therefore insist longer upon the exist- 
 ence of purpose, design, and adaptation in the 
 world. I am rather concerned to point out again 
 that the mechanical conception of the universe — 
 the universality and uniformity of the laws of 
 motion — compels us to suppose that these characters 
 were impressed upon Nature from its very com- 
 mencement, and therefore by an agent anterior 
 to it. The hypothesis of an intelligence forming 
 an integral part of the universe fails, and must be 
 replaced by that of an intelligent Being Who tran- 
 scends creation. It may indeed be objected, with 
 Kant, that we have no proof that the first cause 
 and mover of the universe is also its designer ; 
 that the lines of argument run up in different 
 directions and point to different beings. There is 
 probably a basis of truth in this objection, inasmuch 
 as the two arguments lead to different appropriate, 
 personalia, just as the psychological proof points 
 to a third. But it may be replied, in the first 
 place, that we are not justified in supposing the 
 existence of two supra-mundane beings when one 
 will suffice — " entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter 
 necessitatem." Moreover, any independent action, 
 either of the first motor or of the ordering intelli- 
 gence, would so limit the other process as to make 
 it an inadequate explanation of the phenomena 
 for which we have to account. The two must have 
 proceeded in perfect combination from the very 
 beginning, for the result to be a cosmos such as 
 we see it, and not a chaos. 
 
 The argument from design is so immeasurably 
 the most popular one ; it is so capable of abundant 
 
50 STUDIES 
 
 and interesting illustration, that some self-denial 
 is needed to abstain from developing it more fully ; 
 whereas my present purpose is not to present in 
 detail the arguments for the existence of God, 
 but to point out what I conceive to be the shape 
 in which they should at present be stated. In 
 this connection I shall perhaps be pardoned for 
 repeating that the argument for design is greatly 
 strengthened by the wide acceptance of the doctrine 
 of evolution. I have already remarked that Hart- 
 mann and Wundt recognise its teleological bearings, 
 which are (so far as I know) only disputed by Lange. 
 It has been lately pointed out in the Quarterly 
 Review, 1 that even such a prejudiced Agnostic as 
 Haeckel is obliged to use language implying design 
 when he writes as a naturalist. Besides these 
 unsuspected witnesses, the Duke of Argyll has 
 supplied ample evidence of the teleological character 
 of Darwin's theory in his Reign of Law and Unity 
 of Nature. I can here only mention two very 
 acute remarks made by Dr. Temple in his recently 
 published Bampton Lectures. 2 The first is, that 
 Paley's familiar argument is immeasurably strength- 
 ened thereby. We have now to account, not merely 
 for the existence of an ordinary watch, but of a 
 watch which should be capable of producing other 
 watches of gradually increasing perfection. The 
 second remark is, that the old argument from 
 design did not exclude the possibility of a multitude 
 of designers, but that evolution necessarily points 
 to a single intelligence. 
 
 1 Vol. cxlv., p. 52. 
 
 * The Relations between Religion and Science (being the 
 Bampton Lectures for 1884). 
 
THE EXISTENCE OF GOD 51 
 
 I have throughout the teleological argument 
 been dealing with evolution merely as an hypothesis, 
 and arguing ad hominem, without inquiring into 
 the precise sense in which it is true. I cannot but 
 regret, with Mr. Sully, 1 that this one word should 
 be used for such different hypotheses as the unfold- 
 ing of existence due only to its own inherent 
 necessity, and the development of a plan and order 
 impressed upon the universe by an intelligence. 
 I have argued that the former hypothesis is un- 
 tenable, and must be abandoned for the latter. 
 As the word " evolution " has obtained such an 
 unfortunate connotation, it would be better to 
 apply the term " development " to the unfolding 
 of a design in Nature, and call those who advo- 
 cate it " de velopmentalists , ' ' not ' ' evolutionists . " It 
 would be travelling beyond my present task to 
 determine the limits of such development ; this 
 is, I suppose, the only point that can be doubted ; 
 for that development, to some extent or other, 
 does take place, no one can question. 
 
 It may be thought from what I have said that 
 the evidences of design are drawn exclusively from 
 organic Nature. This is by no means the case, 
 though it is true they are more obvious where the 
 internal ends 2 of such design are before us in the 
 preservation and multiplication of organised beings. 
 
 1 Encycl. Britannica {Eighth Ed.), art. Evolution. 
 
 ■ Aristotle (p. 1075, a. 11) pointed out that the external and 
 internal ends (Ktx a3 P L(J 'H-* vov a-nd Ka & o.vt6) of the universe and 
 its parts were quite distinct, illustrating this by the example 
 of an army : " Totus enim or do universi est propter primum 
 moventem : ut, scilicet, explicetur in universo ordinato id quod 
 est in intellectu et voluntate primi agentis " (St. Thomas, xii., 
 Metaph., lect. 12). 
 
52 STUDIES 
 
 But my argument applies equally to what we call 
 inorganic Nature. The progress of physical science 
 has made it increasingly manifest that the pheno- 
 mena of non-living bodies must be traced to an 
 inconceivable complexity and yet stability in the 
 ultimate atoms of matter. Chemistry demands 
 that the atoms of each element should be endowed 
 with numerous properties, be all alike in these 
 properties, and unchangeable — that is, as Sir J. 
 Herschel remarks, " bear the stamp of manufac- 
 tured articles." Professor Clifford indeed objected 
 our very partial and uncertain knowledge of 
 chemistry to this argument for design. But he 
 thereby missed the point of the reasoning, which 
 is not dependent on this or that chemical theory. 
 It is simply a particular case of what I have said 
 before — that actual order and harmony (without 
 which the universe would be a chaos, not a cosmos) 
 is due to order and harmony impressed upon the 
 system in the very beginning. The same is to be 
 recognised in Laplace. When trying his hand at 
 philosophy, he rejected the doctrine of final causes ; 
 but when he speaks as an astronomer, he takes 
 into account the " intelligence supreme" which must 
 have so disposed matter as to produce the solar 
 and stellar systems. 
 
 The application of teleological principles has 
 been as fruitful a source of discovery in the realm 
 of inorganic Nature as in biology. The law of 
 parsimony was Copernicus's guide in the revolution 
 he effected in astronomy, and has frequently been 
 invoked by astronomers since ; the law of stability, 
 employed by Laplace, is also purely teleological. 
 
 It is remarkable that the ancient philosophers 
 argued for the intelligence that presides over the 
 
THE EXISTENCE OF GOD 53 
 
 universe from the fact that art imitates Nature, and 
 the argument is of course perfectly valid. 1 But 
 the instances of it are few and unimportant indeed, 
 compared with those of the reverse process. The 
 triumphs of modern science have been obtained 
 by considering the universe as if it had been a 
 work of human art, and applying to its study the 
 laws which govern human intelligence. The law 
 of parsimony (Natura iter brevissimum instituit), the 
 law of continuity (Natura non facit saltus), and the 
 like, are so many instances of this. 
 
 They may be all reduced to the general rule that the 
 laws of Nature must be considered as an unity estab- 
 lished by an intelligence. And in giving such laws this 
 intelligence must be supposed to have had regard to our 
 cognitive faculties, and to have made possible a system 
 of experience which is founded on the laws of Nature. 2 
 
 One serious difficulty yet remains. The prac- 
 tical value of these arguments for the existence 
 of God is much lessened by the contention, that 
 we can have no knowledge of a Being so infinitely 
 our superior beyond the bare fact of His existence. 
 The strength of this objection is derived from our 
 utter inadequacy to comprehend the Divine nature. 
 
 Dangerous it were for the feeble brain of man to wade 
 far into the doings of the Most High ; Whom, although 
 to know be life, and joy to make mention of His name. 
 
 1 " Ideo res naturales imitabiles sunt per artem, quia ab aliquo 
 principio intellectivo tota natura ordinatur ad finem suum : ut 
 sic opus naturae videatur opus intelligentiae, dum per determinata 
 media ad certos fines procedit, quod etiani in operando ars imitatur." 
 (St. Thomas, ii., Phys. 4.) 
 
 - Kant, Kritik d. Urtheilskr. Einleitung, 4, 5. 
 
54 STUDIES 
 
 yet our soundest knowledge is to know that we know 
 Him not as indeed He is, neither can know Him ; and our 
 safest eloquence concerning Him is our silence, when we 
 confess without confession that His glory is inexplicable, 
 His greatness above our capacity and reach. He is above, 
 and we upon earth ; therefore it behoveth our words to 
 be wary and few. 
 
 It would be impossible at the end of an article 
 to enter upon the consideration of such a difficult 
 subject, and I can therefore only remark upon its 
 connection with what I have already said. It will 
 be plain that the arguments which I have en- 
 deavoured to state would be entirely invalid unless 
 the ideas of truth, power, and intelligence were 
 used in the same sense in the conclusion as they 
 were in the premises ; or the syllogisms would be 
 vitiated by the ambiguity of their middle terms. 
 Either, therefore, the arguments prove nothing at 
 all, or they prove that the Divinity is powerful 
 and intelligent in a real sense of those words. 
 Even Kant can admit the force of this : — 
 
 If I say we are obliged to look upon the world as if 
 it were the work of the highest understanding and will, 
 I only say that, just as a watch, a ship, a regiment, are 
 related to the watchmaker, the ship-builder, the general, 
 so is this sensible world related to the unknown being. I 
 say it is unknown, for I only know it, not as it is in itself, 
 but in its relation to me — that is, to the world of which 
 I am part. 1 
 
 It would seem that any one who can go so far 
 cannot refuse to go into details, and to admit that 
 we have a real knowledge of the Divinity. As to 
 the application of the argument from analogy 
 
 1 Prolegomena, 57. 
 
THE EXISTENCE OF GOD 55 
 
 (the point which has been chiefly debated), it is 
 worth remarking that the greatest English meta- 
 physician adopted the teaching and even the lan- 
 guage of St. Thomas and Suarez. 1 Much of the 
 difficulty which men experience in this manner is 
 due to their being unable to realise that not man, 
 but God, is the intellectual centre of the universe ; 
 that the human reason and will are but copies of 
 a Divine original, and owe their power of knowing 
 Him, however imperfectly, to their likeness to the 
 Divinity. This seems to me the most satisfactory 
 point in the neo-Kantian English philosophy : with 
 much that is incomplete and inconsistent, such 
 writers as the late Professor T. H. Green have 
 done good service indeed by pointing out the 
 priority of the eternal consciousness, which must 
 have preceded our own to make our knowledge of 
 the universe possible. 
 
 Much will always remain dark and obscure to 
 us, partly because our feeble mental vision is 
 dazzled when we gaze upon the source of light ; 
 partly because words lag behind thought and 
 cumber it, when we turn to unwonted subjects. 
 ("0 quanto e corto 'I dire, e come fioco, al mio con- 
 cetto ! ") Yet we cannot complain of any failure 
 of reason, for indeed she has done us the highest 
 service of which she is capable when we have 
 learned from her that we have a Divine Author 
 and Creator, Whose offspring and likeness we are. 
 This is an ample basis and justification for our 
 reverence and fear and love ; beyond this point 
 reason passes into faith. But, compared with 
 
 Berkeley, Fourth Dialogue, §§ 20, 21. 
 
56 STUDIES 
 
 what we know to lie beyond our ken, how little 
 have we learned of the Godhead ! 
 
 Quis est iste tarn communis in vocibus, tarn longe in rebus ? 
 Quomodo, quern nostris loquimur verbis, in sua reconditus 
 majestate, nostros penitus et aspectus effugit, et affectus f 
 Dicimur amare, et Deus ; dicimur nosse, et Deus ; et multa 
 in hunc modum. Sed Deus amat ut caritas, novit ut Veritas, 
 sedet ut aequitas, dominatur ut majestas, regit ut prinei- 
 pium, tuetur ut salus, operatur ut virtus, revelat ut lux, 
 assistit ut pietas. 
 
57 
 
 THE "TEACHING OF THE TWELVE 
 APOSTLES." 
 
 Doctrina Duodecim Ayostolorum, Canones Apostolorum 
 Ecclesiastici, ac reliquae doctrinae de Duabus Viis 
 Expositiones veteres. Edidit F. X. Funk. Tu- 
 bingse: H. Laupp. 1887. 
 
 In the year 1873, Bryennios (who became sub- 
 sequently the Greek Metropolitan of Nicomedia) 
 discovered a manuscript of considerable value in 
 the Jerusalem Monastery at Constantinople, where 
 he was professor. The library in which it was 
 found had not been unknown to the learned of 
 Western Europe ; yet it had hitherto concealed 
 the most important addition which has been made 
 in modern times to the very scanty literature of 
 early Christianity. The volume in question yielded, 
 amongst other matters of interest, the complete 
 text of St. Clement's Epistle. But Bryennios also 
 recognised in the title of another tract which it 
 contained — " Teaching of the Twelve Apostles " 
 (AcBaxn tcov 8a)8e/ca WrnrocrroXcov) — a work placed 
 by early writers only just below the canonical 
 books of Scripture, and long believed to be lost to 
 the world. By a singular coincidence, Krawutsky, 
 a Catholic scholar, had, almost at the same time, 
 succeeded in reconstructing a great part of the 
 work from the later compilations which had bor- 
 rowed from it. In 1883, Bryennios introduced his 
 
58 STUDIES 
 
 discovery to the world, accompanying it with 
 learned notes and prolegomena ; and it may be 
 safely said that no work has in our days received 
 so much attention from theological students. Nine- 
 teen editions, or translations, have been published 
 in Europe and America, while the articles and 
 essays which have been written upon it can hardly 
 be numbered. Some of the questions it raises, and 
 its bearing on the religious controversies of our 
 own time, claim the attention of Catholic readers, 
 independently of its interest as a very early monu- 
 ment of primitive Christianity. We are, there- 
 fore, glad to have the opportunity of reviewing 
 the edition before us, which has been lately pub- 
 lished by the learned successor of Hefele in the 
 Catholic faculty of Tubingen. Those who are 
 acquainted with his scholarly edition of the Apos- 
 tolic Fathers, will know that they may look for a 
 high standard of excellence in the present volume ; 
 and they will not be disappointed. We cannot 
 do better, upon the whole, than take him as our 
 guide, in giving the general reader some idea of 
 the probable date and origin of the work, and its 
 bearing upon the religious controversies of to-day. 
 A book that is classed by Eusebius with the Apoca- 
 lypse, and by St. Athanasius with the Deutero- 
 canonical books of Scripture, must in any case be 
 very ancient. Its date may be more nearly ascer- 
 tained by comparing it with the Shepherd of Hermas, 
 and the so-called Epistle of Barnabas. It is almost 
 certainly quoted by the former ; as to Barnabas, 
 a comparison shows that the " Teaching " is the 
 original work from which the Epistle has borrowed 
 largely. Even Harnack, the most strenuous and 
 able defender of the priority of Barnabas, has 
 
" TEACHING OF THE TWELVE APOSTLES " 59 
 
 recently admitted that both are alike derived from 
 a Jewish manual. This would give about a.d. 
 120 as the latest date at which the Didache could 
 have been published, and for any further informa- 
 tion we are reduced to the very uncertain indica- 
 tions of internal evidence. For reasons which will 
 presently appear, Catholics and High Church 
 Anglicans have, on the whole, inclined to as early 
 a date as possible, while Lutherans and Dissenters 
 have put it later. We shall be safe in following 
 our editor, who fixes no more precise date than 
 the latter half of the first century. It is commonly 
 assigned to Egypt, but Funk considers it to have 
 been written in Palestine, from the special mention 
 of Pharisees, and a reference to corn grown on 
 the mountains. 
 
 Dr. Taylor, in his very interesting lectures at 
 the Royal Institution, first argued in favour of 
 the Jewish origin of the book, and the same idea 
 has been put forward in an able article in the 
 Church Quarterly Review (April, 1887) to account 
 for many of the difficulties which it raises. But 
 the passages that savour of Judaism may be more 
 plausibly explained by supposing the author to 
 have been a converted Jew, using the language 
 familiar to those around him, while there are many 
 references to St. Matthew's Gospel and to other 
 parts of the New Testament which could only 
 come from a Christian. The purpose of the work 
 is catechetical and practical, the first part at any 
 rate answering to St. Athanasius's description, that 
 it was used for the instruction of catechumens, 
 while the remainder is not put forward with any 
 appearance of completeness. 
 
 We will now proceed to give a brief analysis of 
 
60 STUDIES 
 
 the work as a whole, and then dwell in detail upon 
 the points which have excited most attention and 
 controversy. Those of our readers who wish to 
 study it more carefully will find every facility for 
 doing so in the excellent edition with the Latin 
 version now before us, and in the English transla- 
 tions, of which several have appeared in the last 
 few years. 
 
 The work opens with the words : " There are 
 two ways, one of life, the other of death " ; a 
 figure used frequently in the Old Testament, 1 and 
 adopted by our Lord and the Apostles, so that 
 the very phrase, " the way " (j 6S6?) was em- 
 ployed by St. Luke 2 as a name for the Christian 
 religion. The way of life is then shortly defined 
 to be the two-fold precept of charity, the golden 
 rule being expressed negatively (" what things 
 soever thou desirest not be done unto thee, do 
 thou not unto another "). Then follow, as far as 
 the end of the fourth chapter, the details of the 
 precept of charity, and next a brief but vivid 
 description of the " way of death," reminding one 
 of St. Paul's account in the first chapter of the 
 Epistle to the Romans ; there is also a short expla- 
 nation that all the precepts are not universally 
 binding. It would appear, from the opening words 
 of the seventh chapter (" say first all this, and 
 baptise . . . ."), that this first part of the 
 work was an abridgment of the moral teaching 
 of Christianity for the use of catechumens. The 
 form of the sacrament of baptism is given in the 
 
 1 E.g., Pa. i. 1 ; Ps. cxviii. ; Jerem. xxi. 8. 
 
 - Tn Acts ix., xxii., xxiv. ; cf. 2 Pet. ii. 5 ; 1 John i. 5- 
 
" TEACHING OF THE TWELVE APOSTLES " 61 
 
 words of St. Matthew (xxviii. 19). 1 Running water 
 is to be used if possible, and cold water in prefer- 
 ence to warm. If sufficient water is not available 
 for immersion, it is to be poured on the head thrice, 
 this being by far the earliest and most certain 
 testimony to baptism by aspersion or affusion. 
 These minute directions and the general command 
 to baptise are also a sufficient evidence that lay 
 baptism was, at least sometimes, permissible. The 
 person to be baptised, and the minister of the 
 sacrament, are both to be fasting, the former for 
 two days ; those who assist are also to fast if 
 possible. There are to be two fast-days in each 
 week, " not with the hypocrites (i.e., Pharisees), 
 for they fast on Monday and Thursday, but do 
 you fast on Wednesday and Friday." Nor are 
 the faithful to pray like the hypocrites, but the 
 Lord's Prayer is to be said thrice each day. This 
 ends with the Doxology, which, being repeated 
 after two other prayers in this book, evidently 
 did not form part of the original Pater Noster. 
 The three hours of prayer in the day are no doubt 
 the third, sixth, and ninth hours, so frequently 
 mentioned in the Acts and by early Christian 
 writers. The account of the Eucharist, which 
 comes next, is the most obscure part of the book. 
 It will be enough to say that in our opinion it 
 was intended for the use of the faithful, not of the 
 ministers. This will account for its consisting only 
 of two prayers, one to be said in connection with 
 the Chalice, the other with the Host ; 2 a prayer 
 
 1 But the expression, " to be baptised in the name of Christ," 
 is also given as equivalent. 
 
 1 7repl tov K\d<r/j.a.Tos : a word not used in this sense elsewhere. 
 The prayers were probably said before consecration ; such is, 
 at least, the opinion of our editor, and of Bickell, a considerable 
 authority. 
 
62 STUDIES 
 
 follows for use after the Agape, 1 if not after the 
 communion. 
 
 The Liturgy had evidently been already fixed ; 
 for a discretionary power was reserved to a class 
 not hitherto mentioned — the Prophets — to offer 
 what prayers they will. 2 Some surprise has been 
 expressed at the omission of the words of institu- 
 tion ; but it was hardly possible we should find 
 them in an elementary treatise when they are 
 omitted even in liturgies of much later date. 3 
 The greatest difficulty in this section is the inverse 
 order in which the Sacred Elements are spoken 
 of. There is, so far as we know, no other instance 
 in which the Chalice is spoken of before the Host ; 4 
 and we can only suppose there has been accidental 
 misplacement. 
 
 The " Teaching " next passes on to describe the 
 different grades in the Church ; but this is prefaced 
 by a very important caution, almost identical with 
 the language of St. John and St. Paul, that the 
 very first requisite to be looked for in a new teacher 
 is conformity with doctrine already known to be 
 revealed. 
 
 1 fMera rb £fATr\r](r9rjvai. 
 
 2 Prof. Funk compares this with a similar power he under- 
 stands St. Justin (Apolog. i. 67) allows to the bishop. The 
 meaning of the words referred to is at least doubtful. (Cf. 
 Otto's note, in loc.) It seems to us more probable that St. Paul's 
 warning to those who possessed the gift of tongues is a closer 
 parallel (1 Cor. xiv. 16) — eVei 4av ivXoyfjs rco iryev/xari, 6 avairKr^poiv 
 rbu t6jtov rov Ididorov ir&s ipei rb ajj.T]V £ir\ rfj cry ivxc-piO'Tia. 
 
 3 Hammond : Antient Liturgies, p. 59. 
 
 4 The following note was pencilled by J. R. G. into the copy 
 of the article from which this is edited, " I trusted to my editor. 
 But see 1 Cor. x. 16 and 21." This modifies the whole sentence 
 as left in the text. 
 
"teaching of the twelve apostles" 63 
 
 Whosoever shall come and teach you all that hath 
 been said so far, receive ye him ; but if the same teacher 
 turn away, and teach another doctrine, so as to destroy 
 the former, hearken not unto him. 
 
 This is followed by instructions how the apostles 
 and prophets are to be received, " according to 
 the command of the Gospel." x We are told that 
 every " apostle is to be received as the Lord " ; 
 but that he is only to stay one day, or at most 
 two ; " if he stay three days, he is a false prophet " ; 
 again, " if he asks for money, he is a false prophet." 
 
 The manner in which prophets are to be received 
 is described in more detail. Every one known to 
 be a prophet is not to be proved when he " speaks 
 in the spirit." 2 There are certain tests, however, 
 to which those who speak in the spirit must corre- 
 spond, before they can be received as true prophets. 
 They may be known by their fruits ; even though 
 they teach the truth, if they do not practice what 
 they teach, they are false prophets. Especially 
 any attempt to obtain money or food for them- 
 selves condemns them. 
 
 All strangers who " come in the name of the 
 Lord " are to be hospitably received ; if they are 
 travellers, they are to be helped as far as possible, 
 but are not to tarry longer than two, or at most 
 three, days. But if such an one wish to stay, 
 and is an artisan, " let him work and eat." If 
 he know no handicraft, he is to be judiciously 
 
 1 Apparently referring to such passages as Matt. x. 5, 12 ; 
 or Luc. ix. 1-6. This seems a parallel to St. Paul's language in 
 1 Cor. xiv. 37, concerning the Charismata. 
 
 2 Cf. 1 Cor. xii. 3 ; Apoc. i. 10, iv. 2, &c. 
 
64 STUDIES 
 
 provided for, " so that no Christian may live among 
 you idle." 
 
 Every true prophet, wishing to remain in any 
 place, is to be supported ; the firstfruits of all 
 the produce of the earth are to be given to the 
 prophets — " for they are your high priests." So, 
 too, the teachers (of whom we now hear for the 
 first time) are worthy of their living ; if there be 
 no prophet to support, the firstfruits are to be 
 given to the poor. 
 
 The author of the " Teaching " next passes to 
 the subject of public worship ; and his words are 
 of sufficient importance for us to transcribe the 
 whole passage : — 
 
 On each Lord's Day meet together, break bread, and 
 give thanks ; first confessing yonr trespasses, in order that 
 your sacrifice may be clean. Let any one that hath a 
 difference with his comrade not join you until they are 
 reconciled, so that your sacrifice be not defiled ; for this 
 is the sacrifice that hath been spoken of by the Lord ; 
 in every place and time to " offer a clean sacrifice ; because 
 I am a great King, saith the Lord, and My name is won- 
 derful among the nations." Elect, therefore, for your- 
 selves bishops and deacons worthy of the Lord .... 
 for they too minister unto you the ministry of the prophets 
 and teachers. Contemn them not, for they are the men 
 honoured among you, together with the prophets and 
 teachers. 
 
 Then follows an exhortation to fraternal correc- 
 tion ; and the work ends with a warning to be 
 always ready, for the troubles of the latter days, 
 and the coming of the Lord, are at hand. 
 
 Even those who have no further acquaintance 
 with the " Teaching " than this brief analysis, 
 which is all we are able to give, will notice the 
 
"teaching of the twelve apostles" 65 
 
 new and unexpected light it throws upon the 
 different ecclesiastical grades in the primitive 
 Church. Presbyters are not mentioned at all, 
 eiri(TK07roi and hiaicovoL being the only two sacred 
 orders spoken of with which we are familiar. 
 This might have been anticipated in a document 
 contemporaneous with the earliest Apostolic 
 Fathers. But no one was prepared for the promin- 
 ence given to apostles, prophets, and teachers, 
 which is, on any hypothesis, remarkable. As 
 might have been expected, attempts have been 
 made to harmonise their position with every reli- 
 gious system of the present day. The most impor- 
 tant of these attempts, in consequence of the 
 learning and ingenuity of its author, is that of 
 Professor Harnack. He had embraced eagerly the 
 theory of the Christian ministry put forward by 
 Dr. Hatch in the Bampton Lectures for 1880. 
 Starting from the names of the different Christian 
 ministers, Dr. Hatch showed, with great learning, 
 that eirio-KOTTos was a title given to the presiding 
 officer of many heathen charitable associations. 
 He next passed to St. Justin's account of the 
 reception of alms by the bishop in the Christian 
 assemblies, and argued that the bishop was origin- 
 ally the administrative officer of the community, 
 presiding over the deacons, and that his conducting 
 the services followed thereon. The term presbyter, 
 on the contrary, he admitted, is of Jewish origin ; 
 the elders being chiefly concerned with the exercise 
 of discipline. Professor Harnack laid even greater 
 stress upon the essential difference, and almost 
 opposition, between the presbyters and the " epis- 
 copo-diaconal organisation." Until the Didache 
 was published he could not account, to his own 
 5 
 
66 STUDIES 
 
 satisfaction, for the prominent part taken by the 
 bishop in public worship. He then concluded that 
 there were originally two kinds of ministry in the 
 primitive Church — viz., apostles, prophets, and 
 teachers, who taught, preached, and conducted 
 public worship ; and bishops, deacons, and pres- 
 byters, whose functions were administrative. By 
 degrees, he supposed, the bishops drew to them- 
 selves the spiritual functions of the former class 
 of ministers ; and " the apostolic succession took 
 the place of the Charismata." 
 
 Catholicism [he says] is right in supposing that all the 
 essential elements of its ecclesiastical order pre-existed in 
 germ in the apostolic age ; but it is a fiction to trace 
 the combination of these elements as far back as that 
 period. This combination is the root of the matter, and 
 Protestantism is right, as against Catholicism, in affirming 
 the independent authority of " the ministry of the Word " 
 not derived from men. 
 
 To this Lutheran conception of the Christian 
 ministry, Harnack has since added subsidiary 
 hypotheses, of which the most interesting is an 
 account of the origin of the Lectorate, 1 which 
 he endeavours to show is lineally derived from 
 the Charisma of teaching. It is a great advantage 
 to have these views advocated with such learning 
 and ability, which call our attention to details of 
 primitive Christianity we might otherwise have 
 overlooked. But we may fairly say our greatest 
 gain is to find that even Harnack cannot establish 
 the thesis he sets himself to prove. The very 
 starting point of Dr. Hatch's theory may be at 
 
 1 Texte und Untersuchungen. Gesch. der Altchrist. Literatur, 
 von O. von Gebhardt und A. Harnack. Bd. ii., Heft. 5. 1886. 
 
the least pronounced unproved. A not unfriendly 
 critic has pointed out 1 that there is very little 
 evidence indeed of the use of the term liriGKoiroi 
 for the administrators of the funds of heathen 
 societies ; and even that little points to their 
 having been overseers of persons, rather than of 
 works. But were the theory fully proved, it would 
 argue nothing as to the Christian use of the word. 
 'Attoo-toXo? was used by the Jews for those who 
 brought the tithes and other dues up to Jerusalem, 
 but no one thinks of this as an argument against 
 the spiritual office of the Apostles. The word 
 iirlo-KOTros occurs so frequently in the Septuagint 
 that it is far more likely to have been derived 
 from the Old Testament than from heathen use ; 
 and this probability becomes almost a certainty 
 when we find St. Clement and St. Irenaeus expressly 
 deriving it from Isaias. But, indeed, we may go 
 much farther, and point out that in the New Tes- 
 tament itself the word eiriaKoiro^ has an un- 
 doubtedly spiritual connotation when it is applied 
 by St. Peter to the Father, 3 and when St. Paul 
 defines the office of bishops to be the government 
 of the Church. We are inclined to think Professor 
 Salmon's language is not too severe 4 when he 
 accuses Dr. Hatch of excluding the light which 
 the New Testament throws upon this subject, and 
 adds : " This is just what one does when one wants 
 to exhibit fancy pictures with a magic lantern." 
 Thus, to take another instance, the sharp distinc- 
 
 1 Dr. Sanday, Expositor, Feb., 1887. 
 
 2 Caimet, in 2 Cor. viii. 23. 
 
 3 1 Pet. ii. 25 ; c/. 1 Clem. 1. 3. 
 
 4 Expositor, July, 1887. 
 
68 STUDIES 
 
 tion this thesis demands between bishops and 
 deacons on the one hand, and presbyters on the 
 other, is entirely opposed to such passages as Acts 
 xx. 17 and 28 ; and Tit. i. 5 and 7. It is true 
 and interesting to remark, as Harnack points out, 
 that the qualifications required of bishops and 
 deacons in the pastoral epistles are much more 
 alike than those expected of presbyters ; but this 
 is at least as well accounted for by the less violent 
 supposition that the two former orders alone were 
 concerned in the actual government of the faithful. 
 Nor does the Didache itself give any support to 
 the view, beyond proving that the prophets of 
 whom it speaks at least sometimes conducted 
 public worship. That they did not always do so 
 is clear from the First Epistle to the Corinthians, 
 where St. Paul contemplates the case of women 
 prophesying, yet distinctly bids them be silent in 
 church. And the Didache itself, in spite of its 
 brevity, bears unequivocal testimony of the same 
 kind. It shows that there were communities in 
 which there was, even then, no prophet ; the 
 faithful being directed in that case to give their 
 alms to the poor. And in another passage, which 
 we have also quoted above, after stating the pre- 
 cept binding the faithful to assist at the Sacrifice 
 on the Lord's Day, the author adds, " Elect there- 
 fore for yourselves bishops and deacons," thereby 
 showing what, in his opinion, as in that of St. 
 Clement, 1 was the chief function of these persons. 
 The rapid disappearance of apostles, prophets, and 
 teachers, as special grades in the Church, and the 
 total absence of any evidence of such a struggle 
 
 1 1 Cor. xliv. 4. 
 
" TEACHING OF THE TWELVE APOSTLES " 69 
 
 as must have taken place if they had been sup- 
 pressed, are extremely strong objections to Har- 
 nack's view. 
 
 So far we are in complete agreement with Angli- 
 can writers on this subject, and we gladly acknow- 
 ledge the learning and skill with which they have 
 handled it. 1 They hardly seem to us, however, to 
 have realised the full importance and bearing of 
 the condition of things which the Didache reveals. 
 The reason is not far to seek. Dr. Sanday remarks 
 that " in some respects the Nonconformist com- 
 munities of our time furnish a closer parallel to 
 the primitive state of things than an Established 
 Church can possibly do." It is highly charac- 
 teristic of the mental attitude of our countrymen, 
 that Dr. Sanday should never have turned his 
 eyes to that Church, which is at once the greatest 
 establishment and the largest missionary body in 
 the world. Had he done so, some of the resem- 
 blances between the Catholic Church and the 
 community for which the Didache was composed 
 lie so much on the surface, that he could hardly 
 have failed to notice them. We are not aware, 
 for instance, that any other Christian religious 
 body sends out its missionaries in a state of volun- 
 tary poverty, and dependent upon alms, like the 
 apostles and prophets in the book before us. 2 
 So, too, it is fully admitted by Anglicans that the 
 
 1 We would refer our readers particularly to an able article 
 in the Church Quarterly Review for April, 1887, for the High 
 Church Anglican treatment of the question. 
 
 2 The link between these and our own missionaries is supplied 
 by the interesting account given by Eusebius (H. E. y iii. 37) of 
 the " Evangelists," who distributed their goods to the poor 
 and led a missionary life. 
 
70 STUDIES 
 
 apostles, prophets, and teachers of the Didache 
 were endowed with special Charismata, or gratiae 
 gratis datae, direct miraculous gifts of the Holy 
 Spirit. It would indeed have been impossible to 
 interpret otherwise the precise language of the 
 Epistle to the Ephesians and the First to the 
 Corinthians. But they go on to argue that the 
 supreme power of the apostles and prophets is 
 preserved in an episcopate, which, to do it justice, 
 would be the first to repudiate the possession of 
 any such gift. 
 
 The Catholic Church, on the contrary, claims 
 that the Apostolic Charisma is continued in the 
 successor of St. Peter, and is shared by the epis- 
 copate in communion with him. Nor can any one 
 say that this pretension is of recent origin. As 
 soon as Gnostic and Marcionite pressure compelled 
 Catholics to define and analyse the grounds of 
 their faith, they felt the necessity of proving that 
 it had been preserved unaltered ; and this proof 
 could only be based upon a living testimony. St. 
 Polycarp had thought it enough to appeal to the 
 continuity of tradition in the Church. 1 But, when 
 the need for something more precise arose, St. 
 Irenaeus and Tertullian showed no hesitation in 
 saying where the guardianship of such tradition 
 lay. They narrowed their argument to this, that 
 the communities guaranteed the inviolability of 
 the apostolic deposit, because there was in them 
 an " or do episcoporum ab initio decurrens." St. 
 Irenaeus in particular, as is well known, connected 
 this descent from the apostles with the gift of 
 
 1 Eusebius, H. E., iv. 2 : fxiav xhi fi6ut]y rdvrr)v aKt]deiav Krjpi^as 
 viro tuiv airo(Tr6\u)v irapei\7j(pcva.i, r^)v virh rrjs ^KK\rj<rlas irapatieSouevriv. 
 
71 
 
 infallibility — the " Charisma veritatis certum" 1 
 which he expressly derived from St. Paul's account 
 of the Apostolic Charisma. 2 It was enough for 
 his purpose to trace a lineal descent from the 
 Apostles in one case — selecting the Bishops of 
 Rome as the principal Church in the world. His 
 well-known testimony on this subject has been 
 so often disputed that it may be as well to quote 
 Harnack's opinion of it : — 
 
 St. Irenseus [he concludes] must have intended to say 
 that, as a matter of fact within his ken, the faith of the 
 Roman community was held to be the decisive rule, and 
 that many communities had recourse to Rome to obtain 
 recognition. 
 
 It is not surprising, therefore, to find Harnack 
 considers that the first explicit claim to the Apos- 
 tolical succession was made by the Bishops of 
 Rome. This is all the more remarkable, because 
 it is clear that the antipope Hippolytus was at 
 one with his opponent St. CaUistus in claiming 
 the Apostolic character. 3 But there is sufficient 
 evidence that the claim is a much earlier one. 
 St. Clement's language is grammatically ambiguous 
 (tt]v Xeirovpyiav avT&v), i. 44, 2), but his argu- 
 ment requires that those of whom he speaks should 
 
 1 We have not the original Greek of this phrase ; but it may 
 be conjectured from the description of the creed as kolvS>v r^s 
 aArjdtias aK\tvT]s (i. 9, 4). 
 
 2 " Paulus docens ait : Posuit Deus in Ecclesia primo apos- 
 tolos, secundo prophetas, tertio doctores. Ubi igitur charismata 
 Domini posita sunt, ibi discere oportet veritatem, apud quos est 
 ea quae est ab Apostolis successio " (iv. 33, 8). 
 
 8 Philc-8, Praef. and ix. 11, 12. Tertullian did not venture 
 to deny that the " doctrina apostolorum " was inherent in 
 St. Callistus's office, but only denied him the " potestasP His 
 mocking address to Callistus as " Apostolice " is very remarkable. 
 
72 STUDIES 
 
 be successors of the Apostles. Hegesippus's cata- 
 logue of the Roman Pontiffs, and the importance 
 he attached to it, would be inexplicable unless, 
 like St. Irenseus, he considered the truth was 
 preserved by their descent from St. Peter. When, 
 therefore, we assert that the Charisma veritatis 
 certum resides in the Apostolic See, and is the same 
 gift as the Charisma of the Apostolate, we are but 
 repeating the thoughts and language of the 
 Catholics of the second century, and especially of 
 St. Irenaeus. 
 
 The prophets form a class, in St. Paul's enumera- 
 tion so often referred to, below the Apostles, but 
 above the possessors of the Charismata. 1 Their 
 real character, and the nature of the special grace 
 with which they were endowed, are more easily 
 gathered from the numerous passages in which 
 mention is made of them in the New Testament, 
 than from the scanty notices in the Didache ; 
 though the discovery of that work has called atten- 
 tion to much that had previously passed unnoticed. 
 In the first place, it is clear that the gift of prophecy 
 was not limited to either sex, or to any age. 2 The 
 daughters of Philip are specially mentioned, and 
 St. Paul incidentally speaks of women prophesying. 3 
 In one of the few glimpses of an infant community 
 we find that there were in Antioch prophets and 
 teachers, who are enumerated ; the arrangement 
 of the conjunctions (as Harnack points out) making 
 it probable that Barnabas, Simon, and Lucius were 
 
 1 1 Cor. xii. 28. Harnack rightly lays stress upon the irpanov, 
 fievrepov and rplrov ; and upon the e7retra, which separates 
 them from all others mentioned. 
 
 2 Acts ii. 17, 18. 
 
 3 1 Cor. xi. 5. 
 
"TEACHING OF THE TWELVE APOSTLES " 73 
 
 the prophets, Manahen and Saul the teachers. We 
 find prophets sometimes foretelling future events, 
 sometimes (as Judas and Silas, Acts xv. 32) address- 
 ing words of exhortation to their brethren. The 
 more abundant notices of the prophets in St. 
 Paul's Epistles give us the same general idea of 
 their office. In that to the Ephesians (iii. 6, 7) 
 we find that the calling of the Gentiles has been 
 made known to them in the Spirit. From the 
 First Epistle to the Corinthians (chap, xiv.) we find 
 that they spoke unto men edification, exhortation, 
 and comfort ; that they edified the Church ; that 
 they spoke by two or three, the rest discerning ; 
 prophesying one by one, so that all might learn 
 and be comforted. If any unbeliever entered the 
 assembly, the secrets of his heart were made known, 
 and he was reproved by all. St. Timothy's calling 
 had, in like manner, been manifested by prophecy. 
 There is no suggestion in the New Testament 
 that this gift should cease after the first establish- 
 ment of the Church ; and we find in ecclesiastical 
 history unmistakeable proofs of its continuance. 
 It is true that the word " prophet " was very soon 
 restricted to the prophets of the Old Testament ; 
 but the term " prophetic charisma " is often used ; 
 and we find the clearest affirmation of the exist- 
 ence of this gift in St. Irenseus and St. Justin. 
 The latter in particular says that the gift of the 
 Holy Spirit, which had been bestowed on the 
 prophets of the Old Law, ceased whilst our Lord 
 was on earth, and was given again after His ascen- 
 sion. In proof of this statement he points to both 
 men and women possessing the gift. 1 Origen, in 
 
 1 Apol. cc. 82 and 88. 
 
74 STUDIES 
 
 like manner, speaks of the vestiges still remain- 
 ing, in his t me, of the descent of the Holy Ghost, 
 referring evidently to this and the other gratiae 
 gratis datae. 1 But our fullest and most interest- 
 ing information comes from Eusebius. Quadratus, 
 apparently the bishop of that name, is spoken of, 
 as well as one Ammias, as having the prophetic 
 Charisma. But the account of Montanism is 
 most instructive. This sect was only possible, he 
 says, because there were still in different Churches 
 very many " wonderful effects of the divine Char- 
 isma " {irapaZo^oiroilai rov Oeiov %aplo'fiaTO$). The 
 orthodox writers, whose fragments Eusebius has 
 preserved for us, argued against Mont anus, Maxi- 
 milla, and their followers with every weapon at 
 their command. They pointed out that Montanus, 
 a recent convert, had worked himself into a frenzy ; 
 that the matter of his prophecies was opposed to 
 tradition and the teaching of the Church ; that 
 his own life and those of his followers were un- 
 worthy of true prophets (noticing particularly their 
 avarice, which, it will be remembered, the Didache 
 mentions as a test) ; they had taught the dissolu- 
 tion of marriage, and instituted fasts without 
 authority ; 2 their predictions did not come true. 
 But no one objects that the spirit of prophecy 
 had ceased in the Church, which would have been 
 a decisive argument to use. On the contrary, it 
 
 1 Ant, Gels. i. 46 and vii. 8. 
 
 - Dr. Salmon compares this with the institution of the feasts 
 of Corpus Christi and the Sacred Heart at the instigation of 
 women ! It is to be hoped he has no idea with how much 
 care and precaution the Church moves in such cases, and how 
 far she is from allowing even the greatest saints to institute 
 feasts on their own authority. 
 
''TEACHING OF THE TWELVE APOSTLES " 75 
 
 is objected by the Catholic Alcibiades that Montanus 
 and Maximilla are the last of their race of prophets, 
 whereas " the Apostle lays down, that the pro- 
 phetic Charisma must remain in all the Church 
 until the perfect ' Advent.' " We have dwelt 
 upon this, because the present tendency is to look 
 upon Montanism as a revival, and a return to 
 primitive Christianity ; whereas it professed to 
 have received a new revelation. It is at any rate 
 decisive as to the belief in the early Church in 
 the continued manifestation of the prophetic gift ; 
 a belief which has been handed down as part of 
 the ordinary theology of the Church. 1 But it is 
 probably true that the excesses of Montanism led 
 to the disuse of the word " prophecy " for the gifts 
 of discernment of hearts, spiritual exhortation and 
 consolation, which, as we have seen, made up the 
 prophetic Charisma in the New Testament. In 
 this sense it has not ceased, and never shall cease, 
 in the Catholic Church until the second Advent. 
 The mantle of Silas fell upon St. Francis of Sales ; 
 the spirit that rested on the daughters of Philip 
 dwelt in St. Catherine of Siena and St. Teresa. 
 The glimpse given us in the Didache of the infant 
 Church is full of interest and value. But it is 
 so only because we recognise the same spiritual 
 lineaments that grace her full stature ; the main 
 difference being the greater abundance of those 
 gifts in earlier times. At any rate, we who claim 
 for the Church a permanent indwelling of the 
 prophetic spirit, subject to the supreme authority 
 
 1 St. Thomas expressly says : " Singulis temporibus non 
 defuerunt aliqui prophetiae spiritum habentes, non quidem ad 
 novam doctrinam fidei promovendam, sed ad humanorum actuum 
 directionem " (2a. 2se., qu. 174, art. 5). 
 
76 STUDIES 
 
 of the Apostolate, are prima facie, the true heirs 
 of St. Irenseus and St. Justin. 
 
 The description of the Holy Eucharist as a 
 sacrifice, which we have quoted in full, is a still 
 more important testimony of the Didache to the 
 Catholic faith. It will be noticed that the word 
 sacrifice (Ovaia) is twice repeated ; moreover, the 
 pronoun referring it to the sacrifice foretold by 
 Malachias is also in the feminine (avrrj yap ianv 
 7] pi?0€L<ra). The whole account derives still 
 greater significance from its close resemblance to 
 the well-known passages in St. Justin. In both we 
 find two accounts of the Holy Eucharist treating 
 separately of its ordinary celebration, and of the 
 Sunday Liturgy ; l both quote the prediction of 
 Malachias (St. Justin, it is true, in another work), 
 both tell us that the term Eucharist was already 
 applied to the sacred elements. It therefore makes 
 it all the more certain that St. Justin was expressing 
 the recognised teaching of the Church ; the date 
 of which is carried back at latest to the end of the 
 first century — very far from Hofling's view, current 
 among Protestants, that St. Cyprian was the first 
 Father who knew anything of a Christian sacrifice. 
 Harnack has recognised this with his usual frank- 
 ness. He says : — 2 
 
 The conception of the Lord's Supper as a sacrificial 
 action is found clearly in the Didache, in Ignatius, and 
 above all in Justin. Clement of Rome also assumes it, 
 
 1 Apolog. caps. 66 and 67. Is it not possible that the two 
 Liturgies in the Apostolic Constitutions (in Books ii. and viii.) 
 are connected with this seeming repetition in these earliest 
 accounts of the Holy Eucharist ; and that they all point to 
 a primitive two-fold form of the Liturgy ? 
 
 * Dogmengeschichte, Bd. i. s. 152. 
 
" TEACHING OF THE TWELVE APOSTLES " 77 
 
 since he compares the bishops and deacons with the priests 
 and Levites of the old law, and points out that their chief 
 
 function Was trpo<r<p4p€iv tcj Sapa. 
 
 This is not the place to discuss the sacrificial 
 nature of the Holy Eucharist and the character of 
 the Christian priesthood. It may be supposed that 
 all that vast learning and ability can bring against 
 the Catholic doctrine, is to be found in Dr. Light- 
 foot's Essay on the Christian Ministry. If so, it 
 is strange how little this comes to. He objects 
 that the Pastoral Epistles are silent on the matter ; 
 whereas St. Paul's very first care (1 Tim. ii. 1) 
 is to direct public worship, in words which signified 
 to Origen the several parts of the Liturgy. So, 
 too, he accumulates evidence from the Scripture 
 and Fathers, of the spiritual priesthood of all 
 Christians, and the sacrifices they offer. This is 
 but to waste time, as long as phrases are quoted 
 which are taken verbatim, or equivalently, from 
 the Old Testament ; and would therefore be as 
 fatal to a Jewish priesthood. 1 The Christian 
 Church, in union with its head, is a priestly race, 
 and its every supernatural act is a sacrifice, in 
 a far more real sense than was the case under the 
 older covenant ; but that is no more incompatible 
 with the existence of a sacrifice and a priesthood 
 strictly so called, in the one dispensation than in 
 the other. It is significant that no one more 
 strongly emphasises these facts than St. Justin 
 
 1 It is satisfactory to find this recognised by Protestants, 
 in the following sentence (Expositor, 1885) : " The text (1 Pet. 
 iii. 9) is used by polemical text-mongers as if overthrowing the 
 Roman theory of an official hierarchy. They would probably 
 be surprised to find that it comes from the law of Moses 
 (Exod. xix. 6)." 
 
78 STUDIES 
 
 and Tertullian, who also most clearly urged the 
 sacrificial character of the Holy Eucharist. 
 
 This unequivocal testimony of the Didache to 
 the Catholic faith is doubly precious to us, because 
 it touches the Blessed Sacrament. Nothing more 
 completely demonstrates to us the continuity of 
 the Church of to-day with that built up on the 
 apostles and prophets, than to find that the sun 
 and centre of our own religious life was the source 
 of light and devotion to the Christians of the 
 earliest times. The manner in which the Blessed 
 Sacrament is used to prove the resurrection of 
 the body and other doctrines, the loving expres- 
 sions concerning it which fall from the pen of St. 
 Ignatius — above all, the reverent silence which, 
 even in the face of persecution, sheltered the 
 heavenly mystery from heathen derision and scorn ; 
 these things move a Catholic, as no other details 
 of primitive Christianity can do. They teach him 
 to realise, what indeed he knew before, though the 
 details were hidden from his view, that he and the 
 disciples of the Apostles have knelt at the very 
 same altar, and that the Church of the Fathers is 
 the home of the children of God. 
 
79 
 
 THE APOSTLES' CREED AND THE 
 RULE OF EAITH. 
 
 1. Lehre und Gebet in den drei ersten Jahrhunderten. Von 
 
 Dr. F. Probst. Tubingen. 1871. 
 
 2. Bibliothek der Symbole und Glaubensregeln der Alten- 
 
 kirche. Von Dr. A. Hahn. 2 Ausgabe. Von Dr. 
 G. L. Hahn. Breslau. 1877. 
 
 3. Quellen zur Geschichte des Tauf symbols und der Glau- 
 
 bensregel. Von. Dr. C. P. Caspari. 3 Bande. 
 Christiania. 1866-75. 
 
 4. The Nicene and Apostles* Creeds : their Literary History. 
 
 By C. A. Swainson, D.D., &c. London : J. Murray. 
 1875. 
 
 There is no testimony to the continuity of the 
 Catholic Church, and to its lineal descent from 
 the Apostles, comparable to that Creed which we 
 learned in infancy next after the Lord's Prayer, 
 and have since recited day by day. If this con- 
 stant use did not blunt our perception, we could 
 not fail to be impressed with the fact, that the 
 earliest extant statement of the faith is the watch- 
 word of the Church in our own time. The Divine 
 Office has grown and expanded in the course of 
 ages into the splendours of the Breviary ; the 
 Liturgy itself has undergone the changes which 
 the altered discipline of the Church required ; but 
 
80 STUDIES 
 
 we not merely hold the same faith, we confess it 
 in the same language, as did our forefathers of 
 the Church of Rome in the times of heathen perse- 
 cution. Hidden amid the darkness which shrouds 
 so many details of the infant Church, the apostolic 
 origin of the Creed has ever been a firm tradition 
 of the faithful ; who for that very reason have 
 made but little inquiry into the documentary 
 proofs of its antiquity. The Maurists, indeed, 
 have inseparably connected their name with this 
 as with every other department of Patristic litera- 
 ture, and Dom Touttee's excursus, in the Benedictine 
 edition of St. Cyril of Jerusalem, is still one of 
 the chief authorities on the subject. Besides this, 
 I only know of one Catholic work on the creed — 
 Meyers' De Symboli Apostolici titulo origine et 
 auctoritate (Treves, 1849). But, providentially, the 
 work which Catholics have not thought necessary 
 has been taken up earnestly by Anglicans and 
 Lutherans. For, wonderful as it must seem when 
 we reflect that our Creed of to-day has come to 
 us from the earliest ages of Christianity, it is far 
 more portentous that those who separated from 
 the Church of Rome at the Reformation should 
 have carried with them a symbol, which comes 
 to them only from that Church. They had to seek 
 a historical basis for the Creed, and much was 
 written on the subject, the best known work being 
 of course that of Pearson. In the last generation 
 Professor Hahn, of Breslau, published a collection 
 of all the Symbols of the early Church, which, in 
 the new edition brought out by his son, is the 
 most convenient work for reference. But the most 
 exhaustive treatise is that of Professor Caspari, of 
 Christiania, who in the nine years 1866-75 ran- 
 
THE APOSTLES' CREED AND RULE OF FAITH 81 
 
 sacked every library in Europe for unnoticed 
 passages bearing on the Creed, collected all those 
 from the early Fathers in which it is referred to, 
 and critically examined the whole. This is now, 
 and will probably long remain, the chief authority 
 on the Creed ; and it is hardly possible to do more 
 than to verify and weigh anew the mass of informa- 
 tion it contains. Unfortunately it is ill-arranged, 
 exceeding even the licence allowed to German 
 professors. The reader loses himself in excur- 
 suses and notes of prodigious length, interesting 
 indeed, but digressions from the main point, which 
 is to be found in the notes to the third volume. 
 The principal service I can hope to perform, is to 
 bring his conclusions before my readers in an 
 endurable order and bulk. Had Professor Cas- 
 pari's work not been so considerable as to dwarf 
 all others, I should have had more frequent occa- 
 sion to quote Dr. Heurtley's Harmonia Symbolica, 
 of which I can only here acknowledge the learning 
 and judicial character. Dr. Swainson's volume is 
 one of greater bulk and pretensions, but not, as 
 I venture to think, of more value. It contains 
 the results of much original study of manuscripts, 
 particularly bearing on the history of the Athanasian 
 Creed, which are of permanent interest, but it is 
 marred by gratuitous innuendoes against those who 
 differ from him, such as his assurances that he, 
 at least, " will not lie for God," and the severity of 
 his remarks upon Cardinal Newman and the other 
 editors of the Oxford Library of the Fathers, for 
 errors, which, if they exist at all, are trivial indeed 
 compared to those which we shall see he has himself 
 committed. 
 
 These are the principal authorities on which I 
 
 6 
 
82 STUDIES 
 
 shall rely. We meet, however, with a difficulty at 
 the outset, which has to be resolved before we can 
 proceed further in our study of the subject. In 
 the earliest Christian writers we find no Creed given 
 us literally and entirely, this being only what we 
 might expect, since later Fathers unanimously 
 declared that it was not to be committed to writing, 
 but handed down as an unwritten watchword. 
 This is, of course, a hindrance to our obtaining any 
 evidence of the primitive form of the Creed. But 
 the difficulty is much increased by finding that St. 
 Irenseus, Tertullian, Origen, and others often refer 
 to a collection of doctrines, following the same 
 general order and covering the same ground as the 
 Baptismal Symbol, which they term the " Rule of 
 Faith, or of the Truth," "The Preaching of 
 the Apostles, or of the Church." We have, then, 
 first to determine whether this is the same as 
 the Creed and, if not, what is the relation between 
 them. For this purpose we cannot do better than 
 follow the guidance of Probst, the chief modern 
 Catholic authority in all departments of Ante- 
 Nicene Christian history. His view is briefly this : 
 the whole Apostolic College agreed upon a common 
 basis and order for their teaching, a doctrina tradita, 
 which they handed down to their successors as a 
 summary of the defined and publicly recognised 
 teaching of the Church. As such, it was known 
 to the early Fathers as the Rule of Faith, or of 
 the Truth, and is found in them with a remarkable 
 agreement in the matter, though with slight verbal 
 differences. This teaching of the Church was 
 summarised in her two most important formu- 
 laries : the Canon of the Liturgy and the Baptismal 
 Creed. To go into the matter in detail, we must 
 
THE APOSTLES' CREED AND RULE OF FAITH 83 
 
 begin with the New Testament. We find in the 
 Acts, in the sermons of St. Peter and St. Paul, 1 
 several expositions of Christian doctrine, all remark- 
 ably alike, and covering the same ground as the 
 Creed. This similarity arose, no doubt, from the re- 
 quirements which the Apostles had to meet. They 
 had to testify to the Jews the Godhead, public 
 life, death, and resurrection of our Lord, with their 
 consequences — the resurrection and judgment of 
 all mankind ; and to these doctrines, when preach- 
 ing to the heathen, St. Paul had to prefix that 
 God was the creator of heaven and earth. The 
 similarity between these discourses extends, how- 
 ever, to the language and turn of the sentences, 
 as will to some extent appear when I presently 
 compare the Creed with the New Testament, and 
 as can be more completely seen by reading them 
 together ; and this fact suggests that there must 
 have been an agreement among the Apostles as to 
 the form as well as the matter of their teaching. 
 The same conclusion follows from a study of the 
 several descriptions of the public teaching of the 
 Church in the New Testament and Apostolic 
 Fathers. Perhaps the most interesting is con- 
 nected with the word Kr/pv^ and its derivatives. 
 It was evidently adopted from the Septuagint in 
 order to claim for Christian teachers the infallibility 
 belonging to the inspired prophets of the Old Law. 
 St. Paul significantly connects the act of preaching 
 with being sent, and in his own case laid the Gospel 
 which he preached privately before the heads of 
 the Church in Jerusalem (Rom. x. 14, 15 ; Gal. 
 ii. 2). K?}/ovf, again, is twice used by him in a 
 manner which implies that it had acquired a definite 
 
 : Acts ii., iii., iv., x., xvii. 
 
84 STUDIES 
 
 connotation at the time the Pastoral Epistles were 
 written (1 Tim. i. 7 ; 2 Tim. i. 11). There is still 
 more evidence that the word /crjpvy/jLa gradually 
 obtained a technical sense, in St. Paul and the 
 early Christian writers, for the denned and official 
 teaching of the Church. This is inevitably obscured 
 in the Latin and other versions, where praedicatio, 
 " preaching," has to do duty for the act of preach- 
 ing as well as for the things preached, the matter 
 of the doctrines taught by the Apostles. Probst 
 avoids this ambiguity by using the word "Kerygma" 
 wherever it is possible to do so. When this is done, 
 the significance of the word comes out in such 
 passages as — " the foolishness of the Kerygma " 
 (1 Cor. i. 21); "that through me the Kerygma 
 might be fully proclaimed " (2 Tim. iv. 17) ; " the 
 Kerygma wherewith I was intrusted " (Tit. i. 3). 
 But the most remarkable passage for our purpose 
 is 1 Cor. xv., in which it has sometimes been thought 
 that the Apostle was quoting the Creed. It would 
 take too long, in what is only the introduction to 
 my subject, to show in detail that his appeal is 
 really to the defined and universally received 
 teaching of the Church. But I think this will be 
 clear to every one who carefully reads the whole 
 passage. I will only call attention to the unusual 
 emphasis of v. 1 ; the appeal to a common teach- 
 ing in "whether it be I or they," of v. 11 ; and 
 the correlation between this teaching and the belief 
 of the faithful in vv. 11 and 14. It will also be 
 noticed that St. Paul reminds the Corinthians, not 
 merely of what they had been taught, but of the 
 language employed. 1 In St. Irenaeus, and in the 
 
 1 rivi hSycp evr\yye\LadjX7]v vfuv .... ctre oZv iybo, efre e/celvoj 
 (the other Apostles) ovtws K-ripvaaofxev. 
 
THE APOSTLES' CEEED AND BULE OF FAITH 85 
 
 precious fragments of the early Christian writers 
 preserved for us by Eusebius, 1 we find the word 
 constantly used in the same sense, the most remark- 
 able instance for us being where he quotes St. 
 Irenaeus as saying that the tradition of the Apostles 
 and the Kerygma of the truth had reached the 
 Christians of his time by the apostolic succession 
 of the Bishops of Rome. 2 The amplest evidence 
 of the use of the term is to be found in Origen. 
 In the preface to his treatise De Principiis, his 
 object is to show that, beyond the doctrines which 
 must be held as of faith, there are large fields 
 open to theological speculation. He begins by 
 saying (sect. 2) : " Let the Kerygma of the Church, 3 
 delivered by the order of succession from the 
 Apostles, be observed " ; also that the Apostles 
 delivered " most openly " to the faithful what 
 they considered necessary to be believed, going 
 on to enumerate (sects. 4-10) the doctrines thus 
 publicly taught in the same order as the Creed does. 
 The word " deposit " used by St. Paul for the 
 same body of doctrines is not employed by the 
 early Fathers ; but Tertullian explicitly recognises 
 its meaning to be, not an " occultum evangelium" 
 but the public teaching of the Church. 4 On the 
 other hand, they — St. Irenaeus, Tertullian and Nova- 
 tian — use a term for the Kerygma which we do 
 not find in Scripture : tcav&v tj/s aXrjOeias. Regula 
 
 1 H. E. iii. 27 ; iv. 22 ; v. 28, and in many other places. 
 
 2 t?7 aurij Ta£et, ical ttj avTrj 5m5ox?7> V t* " 7r ^ ) T & v o-ttocttSXuiv 
 TrapaHSo-is, KaX rt r?]S aXrjdeias K^pvy/J.a, Kar^UTT]Key els Tj/J-as (v. 6). 
 
 3 This, in the fragments preserved by Pamphilus (in Titum), 
 is called the " regula pietatis " and " Ecclesiastica regula" 
 
 4 Praesc. Haer. 25. 
 
86 STUDIES 
 
 fidei, or veritatis. 1 But on comparing the passages 
 I refer to, it will be seen that the same thing is 
 intended by all these different phrases. 2 Another 
 interesting example of the same is to be found in 
 St. Irenseus, who (iii. 3, 3) points out that St. 
 Clement's Epistle to the Corinthians has the 
 Kerygma for its framework, while that Pontiff 
 himself begins by appealing to " the glorious and 
 venerable rule of our tradition." 3 We seem here 
 to have got at the origin of the term " Rule " as 
 applied to the teaching of the Church. 
 
 The Rule of Faith, which thus originated in the 
 apostolic preaching, impressed itself on the most 
 solemn act of worship, the Holy Sacrifice. This is 
 most obvious in the earliest extant form of the 
 Liturgy, found in the Apostolic Constitutions* 
 but it can still be discerned in the Mass we use 
 to-day. In the Clementine Liturgy the celebrant 
 recites, in the long preface, the blessings of creation 
 and government of the universe, next commemo- 
 rates the Son as Redeemer, the Words of Institu- 
 tion being inserted after the mention of His Passion 
 and Death, and then speaks of the Holy Spirit. 
 The similarity is too great to be accidental, and 
 
 1 St. Irenseus, i. 10, 1 ; iii. 4, 2 ; iv. 33, 7. Tertull. Vel. 
 Virg. 1 ; Praesc. Haer. 13 ; Contra Praxeam, 2. Novatian 
 de Tim. 7. 
 
 3 St. Irenseus expressly calls his Rule of Faith, rovro rb 
 Knpvy/xa (i. 10, 2). 
 
 3 e\6co/j.€v £tt\ rbv ivtcAej] Ka\ (Tefxvbv rijs irapadocrews tj/jluv nav6va 
 (vii. 2). 
 
 4 See Probst, Liturgie, and Bickell, Messe und Pascha. The 
 lately recovered passages of St. Clement contain so many co- 
 incidences with the Clementine Liturgy, as materially to 
 strengthen their argument. The Liturgy itself may be most 
 conveniently studied in Hammond's Antient Liturgies. 
 
THE APOSTLES' CREED AND RULE OF FAITH 87 
 
 shows that the Eucharistic prayer traversed the 
 whole extent of revealed truth to find material 
 for thanksgiving and praise. 
 
 The connection between the Rule of Faith and 
 the Baptismal Symbol is, naturally, much more 
 intimate. It is, indeed, so close that Anglican 
 divines have generally followed Bingham in sup- 
 posing that the term " Rule of Faith " is merely 
 a synonym for the Creed ; and among Catholics, 
 Denzinger, if we may judge from his Enchiridion, 
 is of the same opinion. The arguments adduced 
 by Probst and Canon Swainson are, however, I 
 think, conclusive that the two are not identical. 
 Dom Massuet recognised a distinction between 
 them in St. Irenaeus, 1 whose language would be 
 the strongest basis for the other opinion. They 
 are clearly distinguished by Clement of Alexandria, 
 and even more explicitly by St. Cyprian, who first 
 applied the term Symbolum to the Creed, while 
 he calls the Rule of Faith Lex. 2 Later, St. Cyril 
 of Jerusalem and St. Isidore are decisive witnesses 
 to the same. 
 
 I think it will also be seen that St. Paul in one 
 passage 3 intends to distinguish the " form " or 
 formulary " of sound words," which had been 
 learned from himself, by word of mouth, from 
 the " good deposit," which was to be preserved by 
 the Holy Spirit that dwelt in himself and in 
 
 1 Or iii. 3, 1. 
 
 - Ep. lxix. 7 ; Ed. Hartel. Firmilian's use of the word 
 (lxxv. 11) seems, however, to imply that Symbolum was even 
 then the generally received term for the Baptismal Creed. 
 
 3 2 Tim. i. 13, 14. The absence of articles before viroTvicaxriv 
 and uyicuuSvTwu \6ya>v suggests that the phrase had already 
 acquired a technical meaning. 
 
88 STUDIES 
 
 Timothy. The Rule of Faith, as St. Irenseus says/ 
 was committed to the Bishop ; while the Creed 
 was intended for the laity ; hence it did not con- 
 tain the more strictly theological portions of the 
 former, which were directed against heresy. 
 
 The chief object of the Symbol, besides the 
 instruction of the faithful, was to serve as a pass- 
 word, whereby they might recognise each other ; 
 great pains were therefore taken to preserve its 
 precise language, and to teach it secretly just 
 before baptism ; 2 while the Rule of Faith varied 
 in its expressions, and was delivered openly. 
 
 Probst points out another difference, which is 
 not without interest : the Rule of Faith consisted 
 of two members, the Third Person of the Blessed 
 Trinity being mentioned (as in the apostolic ser- 
 mons) after our Lord's ascension, the account then 
 returning to the second coming ; while in the 
 Creed, from its connection with baptism, the Holy 
 Ghost is the subject of a separate article. This is, 
 however, not so absolute as he represents it to be. 
 
 But the distinction between the Creed and the 
 Rule of Faith must not be too strongly pressed. 
 For, in the first place, the different instances of 
 the latter which have reached us have so many 
 features of resemblance to each other and to the 
 Creed as to suggest that this was a compendium 
 of the public teaching of the Church, from which 
 it was derived, compiled for the use of the faithful 
 in that public profession of faith which had to 
 
 1 IV. 26, 4. 
 
 2 St. Cyril, for instance, bids the competentes whom he is 
 instructing to learn the Creed which he repeats to them, " word 
 for word " ; " having a care, that no catechumen should over- 
 hear what has been delivered to you." 
 
THE APOSTLES' CREED AND RULE OF FAITH 89 
 
 be made by the newly baptised from the earliest 
 times. 1 Secondly, the early Eastern creeds, as 
 far as we know them, were ampler in language, 
 more variable in expression, and therefore much 
 more like the Rule of Faith, than the Symbol of 
 the great Church of the West. Probably this 
 variability — designed to meet heresies as they 
 arose 2 — was the chief reason why the Creed of 
 Nicsea so easily took the place of them all, even 
 before the Council of Ephesus directed that no 
 other should be used at baptism. A few Oriental 
 symbols are, however, extant, independent of 
 Nicene influence ; for instance, the formularies 
 put forward by Arius and Eunomius, the Creed 
 of the Council of Antioch which ordained Gregory 
 to take the place of St. Athanasius, that which 
 Dom Touttee extracted from the Catecheses of 
 St. Cyril, and the Symbol recited by Charisius 
 before the Fathers at Ephesus. These are enough 
 to show that the Ante-Nicene creeds of the East 
 were more like the Roman Symbol than those 
 drawn up in the councils. We shall presently use 
 them, in the same way as the Rule of Faith, to 
 prove the great antiquity of the Apostles' Creed. 
 The Western Symbol, on the contrary, owes its 
 continuous existence to the zeal with which its 
 literal identity was preserved. Of this there is 
 
 1 The " profession " (6/j.o\oyia) made on the occasion when 
 St. Timothy " was called to eternal life " can hardly have 
 been any other than this. So, too, St. Justin (Apol. 61) speaks 
 of the person to be baptised expressing his belief and assent 
 (tov TrcTreiiTfMeuov Kal crvyKarareOeifxeuov). 
 
 - In the West there was less tendency to modify even the 
 Rule of Faith to meet new heresies. (See Tertullian Adv. 
 Hermog. cap i.) 
 
90 STUDIES 
 
 abundant evidence. St. Ambrose tells us that in 
 his day " Rome kept ever uninjured the Symbol 
 of the Apostles " ; and Rufinus, that " in other 
 Churches some additions are found, but in the 
 Church of the city of Rome this is not the case." 1 
 The Creed was asserted by the same witnesses to 
 be derived from the Apostles, but not by them 
 alone. St. Leo and Cassian, and a host of later 
 writers, testify to the universal belief of the West, 
 which indeed found expression in the very term, 
 " Apostles' Creed." The word avfi^oXov being 
 not unnaturally thought in the West to mean 
 something made up of many contributions, it came 
 to be supposed that each Apostle had contributed 
 an article ; and this in its turn developed into 
 the well-known legend that assigns each article to 
 its supposed author. 2 There is a striking parallel 
 to this in the East, in the Rule of Faith as described 
 in the Apostolical Constitutions* which shows the 
 universality of this belief as early as the third 
 century. But the apostolical origin of the Creed 
 was asserted nowhere else than in Rome ; not 
 even, as Dom Touttee remarks, in the Church of 
 Jerusalem, where we should most of all expect to 
 find such a tradition. Its constant prevalence, 
 therefore, in the Church of Rome, and nowhere 
 else, is a strong antecedent probability of its truth ; 
 but for detailed evidence we must look further. 
 Our first step must clearly be to ascertain what 
 
 1 St. Ambrose, Ep. i. ad Siric. Rufinus, Expos. Symboli. 
 cap. iii. As Probst remarks, we may accept the latter s testi- 
 mony to the fact, without endorsing his reason, that it is because 
 heresy was unknown in Rome. 
 
 2 Pseudo-Aug. Serm. 240 (Hahn, sect. 46). 
 
 3 VII. 4. 
 
THE APOSTLES' CEEED AND RULE OF FAITH 91 
 
 are the wording and date of the earliest Creed 
 that has reached us. I have already remarked on 
 the extreme importance which was attached to 
 its not being written, but kept from non-Catholics -, 1 
 Rufinus and St. Jerome are witnesses to this as 
 well as St. Cyril. It is therefore remarkable that 
 we find a complete example of the Creed as early 
 as the fourth century. This is preserved in the 
 treatise of Rufinus, to which I have several times 
 referred. It will be most convenient to start from 
 this ; first trace the Creed upwards as far as possible 
 and then see how it came into its present state. 
 The Creed of Rufinus runs as follows : — 
 
 Credo in Deum Patrem omnipotentem, et in Christum 
 Iesum, unicum filium eius, dominum nostrum. Qui natus 
 est de spiritu sancto ex Maria Virgine, crucifixus sub Pontio 
 Pilate et sepultus, tertia die resurrexit a mortuis, ascendit 
 in coelos, sedet ad dexteram Patrw, inde venturus est, iudicare 
 vivos et mortuos. Et in spiritum sanctum, sanctam eccle- 
 siam, remissionem peccatorum, carnis resurrectionem. 
 
 This is identical, in all but a few trivial details, with 
 the Symbols of the churches of Milan (as recorded 
 for us by SS. Ambrose and Augustine 2 ), of Turin 
 (as supplied by St. Maximus), and of Ravenna. 3 
 
 Our next step carries us back some fifty years, 
 to an interesting episode of ecclesiastical history. 
 
 1 This was the reason why the Creed was called Symbolum, 
 a "tessera" or watchword. It is remarkable this Greek word 
 was not so employed in the East (unless Firmilian's letter be 
 an instance) ; iricrris being used instead. 
 
 - So at least Caspari and Hahn, following Cardinal Mai, 
 who discovered this MS. of St. Ambrose. Denzinger ascribes 
 it to St. Maximus. 
 
 3 Et Maria Virgine appears to be the Roman form, instead 
 of ex, as we shall see later. 
 
92 STUDIES 
 
 Marcellus, Bishop of Ancyra in Galatia, was accused 
 of heresy, and was deposed from his See by a 
 Council held in Constantinople in 337 or 338. He, 
 with several other bishops, went to Rome to appeal 
 to Pope Julius, who, " in virtue of the prerogative 
 of the Church of Rome," and " because the care 
 of all belonged to him on account of the dignity of 
 his See," 1 restored Marcellus to his bishopric. St. 
 Epiphanius has preserved for us the letter which 
 he addressed to the Pope in his justification before 
 leaving Rome after a fifteen months' stay there. 
 This is a statement of the faith he had received 
 from the Church in baptism, " and had learned 
 from the Holy Scriptures, and from his forefathers 
 in the faith." The main point on which he had 
 to dwell was his belief concerning the Second Person 
 of the Blessed Trinity. This he supports by quota- 
 tions from Scripture, and in the course of his argu- 
 ment introduces the Creed, saying, " I believe, 
 therefore, in God Almighty," and the rest, as 
 follows : Tlio-revas €t? deov iravTOKparopa' ical els 
 
 XpLGTOV ^\t)(TOVV, TOV ViOV OLVTOV TOV fjLOVOyeVTJ, TOV 
 
 Kvpuov rjfjicov, rbv <y6W7]0evra i/c irvevjxaTos ayiov ical 
 Mapias TTJ? irapdevov, rov eVl UovtIov TIiXcltov 
 crravpcoOivra ical ra^evra, ical rfj Tpirr) rjfjbepa ava- 
 aravTa etc rwv veicpcov, dva/3dvTa els tovs ovpavovs, ical 
 KaOrjjjLevov ev Se^ca rov iraTpos, odev epyerai Kplvetv 
 Zcovra? teal ve/cpovs' ical els to dytov irvevpa, dylav 
 eiacXqaiav, afyeatv dfjuapncov, crapicbs dvdo~Tao~Lv, ^corjv 
 dioaviov. 
 
 It will be seen that this is identical with the 
 Symbol of Rufinus in all respects but the omission 
 
 1 are TrpovS/xia rrjs iv Y<ajxr) iKKkrjfftas ixovcrrjs (Soc. H. E. ii. 13). 
 rcou ir&vroiv KTjdffiovias avT<$ rpo(T'qK.6vi7ris 8ia ri]v a^iav rov Qpbvov 
 (Sozom. H. E. iii. 8). 
 
THE APOSTLES' CEEED AND EULE OF FAITH 93 
 
 of the word " Father," and the insertion of the 
 last article. These two peculiarities have been the 
 only basis for several hypotheses concerning this 
 Creed. Swainson supposed it to be Marcellus's own 
 composition ; but the similarity to the Roman 
 Creed is so complete as to make this highly im- 
 probable. Moreover, Marcellus's object being to 
 establish his orthodoxy, the very worst course 
 he could adopt would be to put forward a creed 
 of his own, and the best to profess the Symbol 
 which the Roman Church held in such veneration. 
 Lequien and Meyers, more weighty authorities, 
 looked upon it as a translation, by Marcellus him- 
 self, of the Roman Creed. I cannot here follow 
 the minute examination — spreading over fifty pages 
 of his work — in which Caspari shows that this is 
 opposed to all the internal evidence of language 
 and order of words. It will be sufficient to remark 
 that there could have been no reason for a fresh 
 translation. A creed must have existed for the 
 use of the Greek-speaking Christians of that city. 
 Nor is the original letter likely to have been written 
 by Marcellus in Latin, and translated by St. 
 Epiphanius ; for the Pope, we know, was acquainted 
 with Greek, while there is no evidence that Mar- 
 cellus knew Latin, a rare accomplishment among 
 the Oriental bishops at that time. It is much more 
 natural to conclude that the two variations are due 
 to an error of the copyist, especially since the 
 extant MSS, of this part of the " Panarion " are 
 derived from only one source, and that we have 
 here the Symbol used by the Greek Christians of 
 Rome in the fourth century. This is further proved 
 by a coincidence which is of particular interest to us 
 in England. There is in the library of the British 
 
94 STUDIES 
 
 Museum a MS. (Cott. MSS. Galba A. xviii.) called 
 " The Psalter of iEthelstane," at the end of which, 
 in a collection of collects and miscellaneous prayers, 
 are a Litany, the Lord's Prayer, the Sanctus, and 
 the Creed in Greek, but written in Anglo-Saxon 
 characters. This volume, as Heurtley and Caspari 
 have shown, must have been written in the ninth 
 century, and have been used for liturgical purposes. 
 Considering the absolute conformity of the Anglo- 
 Saxon Church to that of Rome, we are justified 
 in supposing that the Creed must have been brought 
 from Rome, and one is inclined to think that it 
 was introduced by Archbishop Theodore of Tarsus, 
 or Abbot Hadrian, into England. However this 
 may be, we have here a creed identical in all but 
 trifling points with that of Marcellus, except that 
 it has the word " Father " and omits the last 
 clause. It therefore corresponds completely with 
 the Symbol of Rufinus. Whether the Greek or 
 the Latin form of this Creed is the original, or 
 whether both date back to the earliest times, is 
 not clear. There are Grsecisms in the Latin Creed 
 and Latinisms in the Greek one, 1 but neither 
 sufficiently distinct to prove translation. And if 
 we look at the general conditions of primitive 
 Christianity in Rome, we shall not find much 
 more to help us to a positive conclusion. No 
 doubt the Greek-speaking Christians preponderated 
 there for a considerable time. Besides the evi- 
 dences of catacomb inscriptions, we find the few 
 traces of public worship show that it was carried 
 
 1 rrj rplrr) Tjfiepq. before avaardvra is a Latinism ; while the 
 use of the infinitive iudicare is a Grsecism, though one not 
 without parallels in the classics and in Tertullian. 
 
THE APOSTLES' CEEED AND RULE OF FAITH 95 
 
 on in Greek. But there are, at the same time, 
 signs that Latin was also used by the Roman 
 Christians ; such as the Latinisms of St. Mark's 
 Gospel, the use of the word statio by the Greek 
 Hermas, and the early date (before 170) of the 
 Latin translation of his work. We should, there- 
 fore, think it probable that two versions of the 
 Creed, a Greek and a Latin one, have existed side 
 by side from very early times. This is confirmed 
 by an examination of the Rules of Faith. One 
 at least in Tertullian 1 (a Roman Christian by 
 baptism) is connected with the Greek Symbol ; 
 while that of Novatian seems to be based on a 
 Latin creed. 
 
 In seeking evidence of the antiquity of the 
 Roman Creed we first naturally turn to the accounts 
 of the Rule of Faith given by the early Fathers. 
 For although, as I have shown above, they are not 
 identical with the Creed, yet they are closely con- 
 nected with it, and in several instances we are in 
 doubt which is being referred to by the writer. 
 Thus St. Irenaeus speaks of " the immovable Rule 
 of Faith which the Catholic has received by bap- 
 tism " ; 2 and St. Justin apparently refers to the 
 Creed in at least three places, as he is treating of 
 exorcisms, for which it was very early employed. 3 
 But there is quite sufficient evidence in Tertullian 
 
 1 Virg. Vel. i. The articles describing our Lord's life are 
 all expressed by participles, as in the Greek ; " natum ex 
 Maria virgine, crucifizum svb Pontio Pilato, tertia die resus- 
 citatum a mortuis" &c. 
 
 1 Cont. Haer. i. 9, 4. 6 kolv&v rrjs aKrjdelas attKivlis, ov dia rov 
 fiaiTTi(Tfxaros etA^^e ; which is presently spoken of as y vwb rrjs 
 iKK\y}<rias K"qpv(T<T0jx4vr] a\f)94ia. 
 
 3 See Dial. 1. 85, 126 and 132, with Otto's valuable notes. 
 
96 STUDIES 
 
 alone that a Creed had been in existence for a 
 considerable time in his day, that it had been 
 communicated as a password by the Roman Church 
 to that of Africa, and that it was essentially, at any 
 rate, the same as the Creed of Rufinus. To prove 
 the sufficiency of tradition, he says, many things 
 are done in the Church without any warrant in 
 Scripture, but in virtue of a " consuetudo inveterata " 
 and he takes, as an example, baptism, in which the 
 Christian answers " something more than the Lord 
 directed in the Gospel." 1 This tells us of a bap- 
 tismal Creed containing something more than the 
 profession of belief in the Three Persons of the 
 Blessed Trinity. Elsewhere we are told the can- 
 didate for baptism professed " the law of the faith," 
 one of the synonyms for the Rule of the Faith. 2 
 From other passages it is clear that the baptismal 
 profession included our Lord's birth, passion, and 
 resurrection, and a belief in Holy Church. 3 In a 
 still more formal manner, he tells us that the Church 
 of Rome had a password in common with the Church 
 of Africa ; and that this began with a profession 
 of belief in the Creator, went on to the Incarnation, 
 and ended with the resurrection of the flesh. 4 We 
 have thus identified, from Tertullian's account of 
 
 1 " Ter mergitamur, amplius aliquid respondentes quam 
 Dominus in Evangelio determinavit" (Cor. Mil. 35). The anti- 
 quity of the consuetudo may he estimated from the date of 
 this treatise, which is put at latest at a.d. 203. 
 
 2 De Spectac. 4, compared with Virg. Vel. 1, and Praesc. 
 Haer. 14. 
 
 3 De Bapt. 6 and 13. 
 
 4 " Videamus quid (Romana Ecclesia) didicerit, quid docuerit, 
 quid cum Africanis ecclesiis contesserarit. Unum Deum novit, 
 creatorem universitatis, et Christum Iesum ex Virgine Maria, 
 filium Dei Creatoris, et carnis resurrectionem " (Praesc. Haer. 36). 
 
THE APOSTLES' CREED AND RULE OF FAITH 97 
 
 the Creed as distinguished from the Rule of Faith, 
 the Roman Symbol of Rufinus with that current 
 in Tertullian's time ; and, putting the date of 
 his works at the beginning of the third century, 
 we may safely say the same Creed must have been 
 recognised at least as much as fifty years earlier. 
 
 Having got so far, we may now call in the various 
 accounts which have been left us of the Rule of 
 Faith, and compare the Creed with them. For 
 St. Irenseus, Tertullian, St. Justin and Origen agree 
 so closely in their manner of stating the Kerygma, 
 that we cannot doubt they had some common 
 formula before them all ; and that this must have 
 corresponded very nearly to the Symbol of the 
 Church of Rome. 
 
 I am not able, nor is it necessary, to give all 
 these in detail, for any one who wishes to study 
 the subject can easily verify my statement, but 
 I must point out the differences between them and 
 the Roman Creed. 
 
 In the first place, it is remarkable that we do 
 not find in the accounts of the Rule of Faith any 
 mention of the Church or of the forgiveness of 
 sins ; but there can be no doubt Caspari correctly 
 ascribes the omission to these two articles not 
 being required for the purpose for which the Rule 
 was generally quoted — that of refuting the Gnostics. 
 This is confirmed by St. Cyprian, in the next age, 
 mentioning these very clauses, as soon as they 
 were needed to oppose heresy. 1 
 
 1 The " Interrogate Baptismi " of the Novatians, and there- 
 fore of the Catholic Church before that schism, contained the 
 question : " Gredis remissionem peccatorum et vitam aeternam 
 per sanctam Ecclesiam ? " (Ep. 69.) 
 
98 STUDIES 
 
 On the other hand, there are certain points 
 omitted in the Apostles' Creed, as we have it in 
 its early form, which are found in the other Creeds 
 and Rules of Faith ; and these are of great import- 
 ance, as enabling us to fix approximately the age 
 of the Roman Symbol. 
 
 For it is easy to see how additions should have 
 been made to the statement of Christian doctrine 
 or to its abbreviation, the Baptismal Creed ; while 
 it is quite inconceivable that an article once incor- 
 porated by the Church's teachers in either of these 
 should be omitted, especially when the heresy 
 which it contradicted was actively dangerous to 
 the faith of Catholics. Thus, it is very striking 
 that we do not find the word eva, unum, before 
 Deum and Iesum Christum, in the Roman Creed. 
 The first unum is found in every one of the Oriental 
 Creeds, and in all the accounts of the Rule of Faith, 
 without exception ; the second in all save the 
 Apostolic Constitutions and the Antiochene Sym- 
 bol. Now, the Church in Rome was greatly 
 troubled by heretics between the years 140 and 
 167, and it would have been specially important 
 to have retained the affirmation of the unity of 
 God against the Gnostics, had it already existed 
 in the Creed used there. We may, therefore, 
 safely conclude that these two words were added 
 in other Churches to exclude Gnosticism ; that the 
 Roman Creed was earlier than such additions, and 
 therefore more ancient than the middle of the 
 second century. The same applies to the absence 
 of the article Creator em coeli et terrae. The Father 
 must have been defined to be the Creator at a 
 very early date ; for this is found, with emphasis, 
 in Hermas, in St. Justin, and the other apologists ; 
 
THE APOSTLES' CEEED AND RULE OF FAITH 99 
 
 in the versions of the Rule of Faith given by St. 
 Irenaeus, Tertullian, Origen, and the Apostolic 
 Constitutions, as well as in all the Oriental Bap- 
 tismal Creeds. It is, of course, evident that it 
 must have been one of the first articles of faith 
 proposed to the heathen, as in St. Paul's sermon 
 at Athens : " Deus qui fecit mundum et omnia 
 quae in eo sunt " (Acts xvii. 24). 
 
 This, again, carries our Symbol back before 
 the rise of Gnosticism in the middle of the second 
 century. 
 
 The absence of Gatholicam as an attribute of 
 the Church is a less decisive proof of the antiquity 
 of the Roman Creed, but tells in the same direc- 
 tion. The first instance of its use in a technical 
 sense 1 is in the Muratorian Canon, about a.d. 
 170, and very soon after we find it used in con- 
 troversy with the Montanists, and by Clement of 
 Alexandria ; by the middle of the third century 
 it became general. This omission, then, dates the 
 Roman Creed before the rise of Montanism. Vitam 
 aeternam is found in St. Irenaeus's and Origen's 
 account of the Rule of Faith ; 2 and, in one shape 
 or another, in all the extant Eastern Creeds of 
 the fourth and fifth centuries. 
 
 Again, a clause connecting the Holy Ghost with 
 the prophets was part of the Kerygma as known 
 
 1 Lightfoot appears to me to prove that St. Ignatius {Smyrn. 
 9) does not employ the word technically. Its use in the letter 
 of the Church of Smyrna (a.d. 169) is well known. It is most 
 remarkable that St. Irenseus, to whom the catholicity of the 
 Church was such an important dogma, should never have the 
 word ; but perhaps communes ecclesiasticos, the name given 
 by the Valentinians to the orthodox (ii. 15, 2), may have been 
 a translation of this. 
 
 2 Adv. Haer. i. 10, 1 ; De Princ. Praef. 5. 
 
100 STUDIES 
 
 to St. Justin, St. Irenaeus, and Origen, and is found 
 in St. Cyril's Creed, in that in the Apostolic Con- 
 stitutions, and in many later ones. It can be traced 
 back, of course, to St. Peter and St. Clement ; x and 
 could not have been omitted from the Roman 
 Creed after the spread of Marcionism. 
 
 I believe, indeed, that a claim to even higher 
 antiquity might be made on this ground alone. 
 Let it be remembered that from before the middle 
 of the second century, Rome was the place to 
 which heretics chiefly flocked, some to make prose- 
 lytes in the capital of the world, others more boldly 
 striving to gain the ear of the Popes, and to make 
 the Holy See their accomplice. Some of them at 
 least had been Catholics, two even members of 
 the Roman presbytery. Heretics and Catholics 
 alike appealed to the identity of their teaching 
 with that of the Apostles ; thus St. Poly carp 
 brought many heretics into the Church by assert- 
 ing that he only taught what he had received from 
 the Apostles and delivered to the Church ; while 
 the followers of Artemon argued that all the early 
 Christians, and the Apostles themselves, taught as 
 they did, and that the Holy See had only fallen 
 into error after the time of St. Victor. The bap- 
 tismal profession was watched with special care, as 
 we know that tampering with it was one of the 
 principal charges brought against Novatian, 2 hence 
 in such surroundings it is inconceivable that a 
 new Symbol could have been recently introduced 
 
 1 2 Pet. i. 21 ; 1 Clem. xlv. 2, et passim. St. Justin, Apol. 
 61 ; St. Iren. i. 10, 1 ; Orig. De Princ. 5. St. Justin treats it 
 as part of the baptismal profession. 
 
 2 Euseb. H. E. iv. 12 ; v. 28 ; viii. 8. 
 
THE APOSTLES' CREED ANET RULE OF FAITH lOl 
 
 into the Church, or altered afterwards, without 
 provoking challenge and criticism. How could 
 Tertullian have appealed to the Rule of Faith, 
 " which had anticipated all heresies " ; or how 
 could he have refrained from pointing his bitter 
 invective, when he left the Church, with some 
 mention of what would have been such a damning 
 fact? 
 
 Such an acknowledgment of the Roman Creed, 
 by friend and foe alike, surely implies an antiquity 
 of at least fifty years, and carries us back to the 
 end of the first century, and to sub-apostolic times. 
 
 We shall be led to the same conclusion if we com- 
 pare the Creed with the New Testament and the 
 earliest Christian writings which are left to us. 
 It is, of course, in absolute agreement with Holy 
 Scripture in substance ; but its language is not 
 borrowed from it, as is the case with the later 
 Creeds, after the Canon of Scripture had been 
 established. Its modes of expression rather run 
 parallel to the New Testament, and where they 
 differ, as they do in some remarkable particulars, 
 the Creed coincides with the language of the 
 earliest Apostolic Fathers ; who also, as is well 
 known, do not use the precise words of the New 
 Testament so frequently as the writers of the 
 next age. 
 
 I. For instance, omnipotente?n, iravroKparopa, 
 though common in the Old Testament, is confined 
 in the New almost exclusively 1 to the Apocalypse, 
 in which it is frequently used, being especially 
 attributed to the Father. 2 It is equally connected 
 
 1 For 2 Cor. vi. 18, refers directly to the Old Testament. 
 
 2 For instance, xix. 7 ; xxi. 22. So, too, St. Justin often 
 uses the word, and especially connects it with the Father (Dial. 
 136). 
 
102 STUDIES 
 
 with the First Person of the Trinity in St. Clement, 
 who often uses the word ; but does not, I think, 
 occur in other Apostolic Fathers. 
 
 II. The construction credere in aliquem is prac- 
 tically unknown to any of the New Testament 
 writers except St. Paul and St. John, the former 
 of whom uses it not uncommonly and the latter 
 frequently. 
 
 III. The word Odirrco, sepelio, is not mentioned 
 in any of the accounts of our Lord's death, except 
 (the exception is notable) 1 Cor. xv. 4, where, as 
 we have seen, St. Paul appears to be quoting from 
 the Rule of Faith. 
 
 IV. Resurrexit a mortuis is to be found at the 
 end of St. Paul's sermon at Athens, where we may 
 suppose, as I have pointed out before, that he was 
 following the lines of the Kerygma. 
 
 V. Ascendit in caelos, eZ<? tovs ovpavovs. The 
 singular is read in every passage in which the 
 ascension is spoken of in the New Testament ; * I 
 do not notice it in any of the Apostolic Fathers. 
 St. Justin has the singular. 
 
 VI. iv Seljca tov irarpo^ is read in Marcellus's 
 Creed, following the universal rule of the Epistles, 
 while in the Synoptic Gospels i/c is used. 
 
 VII. Sanctam Ecclesiam. The adjective does not 
 occur as applied to the Church in Holy Scripture, 
 though we have it spoken of as " sanctified," and 
 the faithful are called " saints." It is very com- 
 mon in the Apostolic Fathers, 2 and still commoner 
 in the next age. 
 
 1 But see Acts ii. 34 (where David is spoken of), and Eph. 
 iv. 10. 
 
 2 Bam. 14 ; St. Ign. Trail. Inscr. ; Mart. Pol. Inscr. The 
 adjective does not come in St. Clement. I may note in passing 
 
THE APOSTLES' CEEED AND RULE OF FAITH 103 
 
 VIII. But the most remarkable verbal pecu- 
 liarity of the Creed is the phrase carnis resur- 
 rectionem. In Scripture we always find the 
 resurrection said to be from, or of, the dead ; 
 and whenever the corporeal resurrection is men- 
 tioned, it is the body, and not the flesh, that is 
 said to rise again. The language of the Creed, 
 therefore, here departs from that of the New 
 Testament. But we find an instance of the same 
 in the Epistle of St. Clement, 1 who quotes Job xix. 
 26, substituting crdpi; for hepfia, which is the text 
 of the Septuagint he follows elsewhere. We are 
 reminded of the parallel manner in which St. 
 Ignatius emphasises the reality of our Lord's 
 Body against the Docetists by the frequent use 
 of the word " flesh " applied to it. It can hardly 
 be doubted that the word is chosen in the Creed 
 for the like purpose, to exclude disbelief in the 
 reality of the bodily resurrection. This was a 
 heresy current in the second century, but which 
 existed in Corinth in St. Paul's day. 2 So that 
 this divergence from the letter of Scripture, which 
 at first sight might seem adverse to the antiquity 
 of the Roman Creed, is, as Caspari acutely points 
 out, really in its favour. Whether he is also 
 correct in believing that the Creed was brought 
 from Asia Minor to Rome in sub-apostolic times, 
 
 that Harnack points out that the holiness of the Church was 
 connected as early as Hegesippus (Euseb. H. E. iv. 22) with 
 purity of doctrine. 
 
 1 Cap. xxvi. 3. 
 
 2 1 Cor. xv. 12-56 ; Tatian, Theophilus, the so-called second 
 letter of St. Clement, St. Justin, are further but later witnesses 
 to the importance which the heresy had in the second century. 
 So, too, Hermas (Sim. v. 7) ; jSAeVe /*?/ avafif iirl rr\v KapSiav <rov, 
 tt\v <rdpna crov ravrrju (pdaprfyv %ivai> 
 
104 STUDIES 
 
 I cannot say. There appears to me no ground 
 for conjecturing this rather than its independent 
 composition in Rome, or (as the old legend has it) 
 before the separation of the Apostolic College. 
 If I hazard an opinion, it is to remark upon its 
 likeness to the thoughts and language of St. Clement, 
 and to suggest that its form may, in part at least, 
 be due to that great Pontiff, " in whose ears was 
 still ringing the Kerygma of the Apostles," and 
 " who delivered the tradition he had lately received 
 from them," 1 
 
 I have now traced the Apostles' Creed to the 
 highest point which the evidence known to me 
 enables us to reach, and have next to show how 
 it grew into its present shape. But for this, and 
 for the further question, whether the primitive 
 Christians derived its authority from Scripture or 
 from the Church, I should need more space than 
 I can now give ; and I therefore hope to deal with 
 them in another paper. 
 
 Meanwhile, it will be seen that the main result 
 of an inquiry that I fear I have rendered wearisome 
 is to prove that the Apostles' Creed, as we now 
 have it, is slightly altered and expanded from the 
 Baptismal Symbol of the Church of Rome in the 
 middle of the second century, which in all proba- 
 bility is more ancient still, and goes back to the 
 immediate successors of the Apostles. I can find, 
 then, nothing in modern research to contradict, 
 and much to confirm, the constant tradition of 
 the Church, embodied finally in the Tridentine 
 Catechism, that the Roman Creed is of apostolic 
 origin. I wish I could at the same time have 
 
 1 St. Iren. iii. 3, 3. 
 
THE APOSTLES' CEEED AND KULE OF FAITH 105 
 
 imparted to my readers the luminous manner in 
 which the continuity of the Catholic belief stands 
 revealed on reading the original documents of 
 primitive Christianity. This is a pleasure that 
 amply over-pays the labour of Patristic study : 
 it is to have conversed oneself with the children 
 of the Apostles, and heard from them the lessons 
 which they had so lately learned from the Son of 
 God Himself. 
 
106 
 
 THE APOSTLES' CREED AND THE 
 RULE OF FAITH. 
 
 II. 
 
 In the preceding paper I gave an account of 
 the evidence which proves, with a very high degree 
 of probability, that the Apostles' Creed can be 
 traced to sub-apostolic times. I there started 
 with the Creed as we find it in Rufinus and Mar- 
 cellus of Ancyra ; and this differed in a few par- 
 ticulars from the Creed as we now use it. I now 
 propose to examine, as far as I can, the additions 
 which have brought it into its present shape ; 
 an inquiry which, if less important than the early 
 history of the symbol, yet has some points of 
 considerable interest. How these additions came 
 to be incorporated into a Creed which had been 
 so jealously preserved from any alteration is a 
 question we may more profitably consider after 
 going through them in detail. But we can at 
 once remark two conditions in the Church of the 
 fourth and following centuries which would be 
 likely to permit of such changes. The extension of 
 the Roman Symbol to the churches of the West, 
 where its verbal identity was less minutely guarded, 
 must have inevitably led to many slight variations 
 in the wording of a formula which was still handed 
 
THE APOSTLES' CREED AND RULE OF FAITH 107 
 
 down by word of mouth and not by writing. At 
 the same time, the multiplication of symbols in 
 the East during the great Arian controversy, and 
 their employment as tests instead of mere watch- 
 words, led to a selection everywhere of such local 
 variations as were found to define the faith more 
 explicitly than the original Roman Creed. 
 
 1. The first clause which has been added is 
 Creator em coeli et terrae. I need not remark that 
 this was part of the Apostolic preaching and of 
 the Rule of Faith from the beginning. From one 
 passage in Tertullian (Virg. Vet. i) it seems as if 
 mundi conditorem was found in the African Creed 
 in his day ; but the first unequivocal evidences 
 of the clause being found in any Symbol come 
 from the East, where its occurrence in the Creed 
 of St. Cyril, in the Apostolical Constitutions, 1 and in 
 the so-called liturgy of James, implies its general 
 reception before the Council of Nicsea. We next 
 find the equivalent phrase, universorum conditorem 
 regem saeculorum, immortalem et invisibilem, in a 
 creed expounded by St. Augustine 2 and St. Ful- 
 gentius, and in one ascribed by Caspari to the 
 Sardinian church and to Lucifer of Cagliari. It 
 first appears in its present shape in a sermon 
 probably by St. Caesarius of Aries, 3 showing that 
 it was current in Southern Gaul at the end of the 
 fifth century. It is, indeed, not in the Creed of 
 Faustus of Riez, of about the same time and place ; 
 
 1 VII. 41. 
 
 2 Serm. 215. This reads like a paraphrase, but Denzinger 
 first showed conclusively that it is part of the text of the creed 
 St. Augustine was explaining. 
 
 3 Serm. suppos. St. Aug. No. 242. 
 
108 STUDIES 
 
 but other omissions in the same document make 
 this less remarkable, and its presence later is so 
 uniform as to make further details unnecessary. 
 It is only noteworthy that in the Bangor (Irish) 
 Antiphonary in the Ambrosian Library, we meet 
 with the variant invisibilem, omnium creaturarum 
 visibilium et invisibilium conditorem. 
 
 This evidence seems to prove that the clause 
 existed equivalently from a very early period in 
 the Eastern and African Churches, and that its 
 present form and adoption into the Roman Creed 
 is probably due to the influence of the Nicene 
 Symbol. 
 
 2. Natus est de Spiritu Sancto et virgine Maria 
 seems to have been the original form of the Roman 
 Creed ; we so find it in Marcellus, in one of St. 
 Augustine's sermons, and even as late as St. Leo's 
 letter to Flavian. But elsewhere in Italy the 
 ordinary form was ex Maria virgine, which appears 
 from Tertullian, SS. Augustine and Fulgentius, to 
 have been also the use of the Church of Africa. 
 Early evidence in the East is scanty, but points 
 to the same variation ; thus Origen must have 
 had et in his Creed, and it is found also in the sym- 
 bol of Salamis, and probably in that followed by 
 St. Cyril (Hahn, Nos. 67, 62) ; but the commoner 
 Oriental form must have been equivalent to ex 
 Maria Virgine. St. Augustine (Enchir. xii.) pointed 
 out that the ordinary clause might be misinter- 
 preted ; and no doubt this led to the various 
 attempts to improve it which we afterwards meet 
 with. Such are Natus de virgine Maria per Spiritum 
 Sanctum (in the Gallican Sacramentary at Bobbio) ; 
 Natus de Spiritu Sancto ex utero Mariae virginis 
 (Mozarabic Liturgy). The present shape of the 
 
THE APOSTLES' CKEED AND RULE OF FAITH 109 
 
 clause first occurs in a Homily by Faustus, a monk 
 of Lerins, who was afterwards Bishop of Riez in 
 Provence in 462. 
 
 3. Mortuus is first certainly found in the Creed 
 of Aquileia, as expounded by St. Nicetas, which 
 otherwise differs in several particulars from the 
 Roman Symbol ; perhaps it also occurs in an 
 African Creed explained by St. Augustine. 1 It 
 forms part of the apostolic Kerygma used by 
 St. Paul in 1 Cor. xv. 4, and of the Rule of Faith 
 as stated by St. Ignatius, St. Justin, Origen, and 
 Tertullian, 2 but not of those given by St. Irenaeus. 
 It is found in a few Oriental creeds, orthodox and 
 semi-Arian, but cannot have been general in the 
 East, nor have been introduced into the Roman 
 creed from their influence. 
 
 4. Descendit ad inferos. This clause has a more 
 remarkable history than any of the other additions 
 to the creed. Not to refer to any other proof 
 from Scripture, which would not be to the present 
 purpose, it formed part of the Apostolic preaching 
 in Acts ii. 31. It is found in the apocryphal but 
 early account of Thaddaeus's preaching to Abgarus, 
 translated from the Syriac by Eusebius. 3 It is 
 testified to by St. Justin, St. Irenseus, Origen, and 
 Tertullian, but is in none of these authors treated 
 as part of the Rule of Faith. 4 Its first appearance 
 
 1 Serm. in Redd. Symboli, 215. 
 
 ? Trail, ix. ; Dial. 85 ; Princ. i. 4 ; adv. Prax. 2. 
 
 3 H. E. i. 13. But it is not in the longer apocryphal Acta 
 of Thaddseus published by Tischendorf. Its development in 
 the Gospel of Nicodemus is too well known to need more than 
 mention. 
 
 4 Dial. 72 ; Gont. Haer. v. 31, I. ; Huet in Origen, iv. 135, 
 and the passages there quoted ; Tert. de An. 5 and 55. 
 
110 STUDIES 
 
 in any creed extant is in what is called the fourth 
 Sirmian formulary. This was a symbol drawn up 
 in Latin at Sirmium by Mark of Arethusa, one of 
 Constantius's court bishops. The Emperor, in the 
 pursuance of his merely secular policy, wished a 
 creed to be submitted to the assembled bishops at 
 Rimini and Seleucia, which should obtain as many 
 subscriptions as possible, Catholic, Arian, and semi- 
 Arian, and so supersede the Nicene Confession. It 
 is singular that this very doctrine of the descent 
 into hell was pressed by the orthodox against 
 Arius and his followers who (like Apollinaris later) 
 denied the existence of our Lord's human soul. 1 
 It seems as if this insertion was a concession to 
 the Catholics, perhaps also to the semi-Arians, 
 with the design of obtaining their more ready 
 acceptance of an heretical creed. We find in this 
 formula another example of the same intention, 
 in the many titles of honour which it ascribes to 
 the Son, in the hope that " Consubstantial " might 
 perhaps be thought superfluous. All mention of 
 our Lord's burial is omitted ; the clause running 
 thus in the Greek translation, which alone remains 
 — " Who died, and went down into the lower world, 
 and ordered things therein ; whom the doorkeepers 
 of Hades, shuddering, beheld, and He arose again 
 
 the third day " 2 It is quite conceivable 
 
 that an Arian might, without much insincerity, 
 
 1 So St. Athanasius frequently in the Contra Apolinarium, 
 e.g., 'Apelos capita ^6vr\v irpbs airoKpvtpijv rrjs dedrrjros 6/J.oAoyei .... 
 riju tou iraOovs i/Sr/criv, na\ tV e£ aoov avacrraaiv ttj OedrrjTi irpocrdyeiv 
 to\m (ii. 3 ; Tom. i. p. 942). 
 
 2 . . . . airodavovra ital els tc\ Karaxd6via /caTeA0<Wa, ital tc\ e/c€?<re 
 oiKovofi'ficravTa ' tv irvAcaphi qdov \Z6vres ecppi^av • kc\i avacncivTa k.t.K. 
 —(Socrates, H. E. ii. 37).' 
 
THE APOSTLES' CREED AND EULE OF FAITH 111 
 
 have accepted this as merely equivalent to a con- 
 fession of our Lord's burial, and as no admission 
 that he had a human soul. As a matter of fact, 
 we know that a belief in the doctrine was not con- 
 fined to those who accepted the Nicene definition 
 — for instance, the interpolator of the Ignatian 
 letters, who seems to have been an Arian or an 
 Apollinarian, went out of his way to insert it. 1 
 St. Cyril dwelt upon it at length in his Catechetical 
 Lectures (xiv. 17, 18, 19) ; the account of our 
 Lord's reception by the just reading like the well- 
 known passage in the Gospel of Nicodemus. Still, 
 this is sufficient, as Grabe pointed out, 2 to show 
 that the clause cannot have been inserted, as 
 Pearson thought, against the Arians ; though 
 Grabe' s own viewj that it was directed against the 
 Marcionites and Gnostics, is devoid of all founda- 
 tion. This creed having been accepted by the 
 unorthodox bishops of Rimini, the Arian leaders 
 carried it to Nike, a town in Thrace, where they 
 caused it to be subscribed by a small packed Synod, 
 so that from the similarity of name it might pass 
 for that of Nicsea. Our clause, however, is ex- 
 pressed rather differently from the Sirmian creed, 
 running thus : " Dead and buried, and who 
 descended into the under world, before whom 
 Hades itself trembled." 3 The same symbol was 
 repeated, with only trivial alterations, at an 
 Homoian Council held at Constantinople in 360, 
 and there accepted, among others, by Ulfilas, the 
 apostle of the Goths. 4 But the clause does not 
 
 1 Troll, ix. 4. 
 
 2 Note 13 on Bull's Judicium Ecc. Cath. 
 
 3 Theodoret, ii. 21. 
 
 4 Socrates, H. E. ii. 41. 
 
112 STUDIES 
 
 occur in any of the synodical or personal professions 
 of faith, orthodox and the contrary, which were 
 so numerous in the East at that time. Its absence 
 is most remarkable from the creed subscribed at 
 Seleucia, since that Council was called at the same 
 time as the one at Rimini. This appears to me 
 to strengthen the presumption that it was proposed 
 at the latter place because it was already received 
 in some parts of Italy. The language used tells 
 in the same direction, ra KaraxOovia being evi- 
 dently the Greek version of inferna (see Phil. ii. 8) ; 
 and descendit ad inferna is the form in which it 
 first appears in the Western creeds. We thus find 
 it, according to Rufinus, in the Creed of Aquileia 
 thirty or forty years later, and towards the end 
 of the century in Africa and Southern Gaul, if 
 we may trust Caspari's ascription of two creeds 
 to Vigilius of Thapsus and St. Csesarius respectively. 
 Such a wide diffusion seems to prove that the 
 clause must have formed part of many Western 
 symbols for a considerable time. Next it is found 
 as the creed of the Spanish and Gallic churches ; 
 in St. Ildephonsus and the Gallican Sacrament ary 
 published by Mabillon ; finally, in the creed as 
 given by Amalarius of Treves. The present form 
 descendit ad inferos occurs first in the Irish Bangor 
 Antiphonary, and was no doubt generally accepted 
 as expressing the doctrine that our Lord had 
 descended to deliver the souls in Limbus. 
 
 5. The original form of the article sedet ad dex- 
 ter am Dei Patris omnipotentis was, as we have 
 seen, sedet ad dexteram Patris. The additions do 
 not occur in any Oriental symbol ; we find Dei 
 added first in one of St. Augustine's expositions 
 of the African Creed, and next in the Spanish 
 
THE APOSTLES' CREED AND RULE OF FAITH 113 
 
 Creeds of St. Ildephonsus and the Mozarabic 
 Liturgy. Patris omnipotentis seems to have been 
 the earliest Gallic form ; and the coalescence of 
 the two, producing our clause as it now stands, 
 is found in Faustus of Riez and the Irish service- 
 books. I may remark that both these words were 
 absent from what seems to have been the earliest 
 form of the Athanasian Creed (Hahn, sect. 81). 
 
 6. I have said something in my previous article 
 of the omission of the attribute Catholicam from 
 the primitive form of the Roman Creed. It must 
 evidently have been contained in many Oriental 
 symbols before the Nicene Council ; for we find it 
 in the second formula of Arius, and in the creeds 
 of the predecessor of St. Athanasius, and of St. 
 Cyril of Jerusalem. After Nicaea it becomes an 
 ordinary part of the Eastern symbols. In the 
 West it appears later ; in St. Ildephonsus, Faustus 
 of Riez, and the Irish and Gallic service-books. In 
 the Bangor Antiphonary the variant sanctam esse 
 Ecclesiam Catholicam occurs. 
 
 7. Sanctorum communionem is not found in any 
 of the early creeds. As far as I can trace, it is 
 first seen in the sermon ascribed to St. Caesarius, 
 to which I have several times referred ; after that 
 in Faustus of Riez, and in the Mozarabic and 
 Gallo-Irish liturgies. There can be no doubt Pear- 
 son was right in pointing out the stress that was 
 laid by early writers upon the unity between the 
 Church militant and the Church triumphant, as 
 one of the principal reasons for the insertion of 
 this article ; besides the passages he quotes, the 
 language of the sixth Council of Toledo — Omnis 
 ecclesia collocata iam in regno coelesti et degens in 
 saeculo praesenti — is worth remarking for its clear- 
 
 8 
 
114 STUDIES 
 
 ness. We may conclude, from a sermon of Faustus 
 of Riez, 1 that this article was employed, if not 
 introduced into the Creed to condemn the heresy 
 of Vigilantius, who had recently opposed the cultus 
 of the Saints, on the ground that they were not 
 yet united to Christ in Heaven. Faustus's words 
 are : " Ut transeamus ad sanctorum communionem. 
 Illos hie sententia ista confundit, qui sanctorum et 
 amicorum Dei cineres non in honore debere esse 
 blasphemant, qui beatorum martyrum gloriosam me- 
 moriam sacrorum reverentia monumentorum colen- 
 dam esse non credunt." But it seems to me that 
 a further reason may possibly have led to its intro- 
 duction in the first instance, and that it was only 
 later used to meet the errors of Vigilantius. In 
 the African Creed, as far back as St. Cyprian, we 
 find the later articles ran thus : Credo remissionem 
 peccatorum et vitam aeternam per sanctam ecclesiam, 
 thus expressing, with great distinctness, that the 
 Church was the means of sanctification, and its 
 members were consequently holy. 2 From one of 
 Tertullian's accounts of the Creed or of the Rule 
 of Faith 3 it seems as if this peculiarity existed 
 in his day ; and St. Fulgentius witnesses 4 that 
 the same form of the last articles of the Creed 
 
 1 In Caspari ; Quellen, iv. 273, and quoted by Harnack, 
 Dogmengeschichte, ii. 450. 
 
 2 St. Cyp. Ep. 67, 7 ; 70, 2 ; ed Hartel : " Voce sua ipsi 
 confitentur, remissionem peccatorum non dari nisi per sanctam 
 ecclesiam posse. . . . intelligimus, remissionem peccatorum 
 nonnisi in ecclesia dari, apud haereticos autem, ubi ecclesia non 
 sit, non posse peccata dimitti^ 
 
 3 Yirg. Vel. i. . . . iudicare vivos et mortuos, per carnis 
 etiam resurrectionemP 
 
 4 Contra Fab. x. 
 
THE APOSTLES' CBEED AND RULE OF FAITH 115 
 
 was used in Africa two centuries after St. Cyprian. 
 I need not do more than remind the reader that 
 this last aspect of the communion of saints is so 
 strongly emphasised by St. Paul's using the very 
 word " saint " as synonymous with " Christian " ; 
 and that in the Epistle to the Hebrews both grounds 
 for the article are brought together (xii. 22-24). 1 
 
 8. Vitam aeternam. We know from St. Jerome, 
 as well as from Rufinus and the other authorities 
 formerly quoted, that the primitive Roman Creed 
 did not contain this article. But its equivalent 
 must obviously have been included in the Apostolic 
 Kerygma, and, indeed, is in one passage of Scrip- 
 ture associated with the resurrection of the dead 
 as one of the elementary truths of Christianity. 2 
 It is in the Rule of Faith as stated by St. Irenaeus, 
 Tertullian, and Origen ; and must have been the 
 last clause in, at any rate, some Oriental creeds, 
 as it is found in St. Cyril's and that of Antioch 
 (Hahn, 62-63). But the more usual form in 
 the East was ^oorjv tov /juiWovros aiwvos, which 
 occurs as early as the second formulary of Arius, 
 and the Apostolical Constitutions ; then in the 
 Creed of Salamis, which is the source of the Nicene 
 symbol we now use. This was probably a modifi- 
 cation of the original article to meet the errors 
 of Marcellus of Ancyra, against whom another 
 clause of the same creed is directed : "of whose 
 kingdom there shall be no end." 
 
 1 See the remarkably "distinct language of the earliest Apos- 
 tolic Father, St. Clement, on justification, and the remission of 
 sins through the prayers of the " saints " (xxx. i. ; lvi. i. ; 
 lvii. i.). 
 
 2 Heb. vi. 1, 2 . . . . rov rrjs apxv s rov Xpiarov \6yov .... 
 6en4\ioy .... avacrdo'ews vskowv, Kal Kpl/xaros aiwpiov. 
 
116 STUDIES 
 
 But the addition to the Apostles' Creed did not 
 come from the East. It had been current in 
 Africa in St. Cyprian's day, as we see from the 
 passages I have just quoted for another purpose ; 
 it is found in the sermon of St. Augustine's to 
 which I have before referred as giving an African 
 Creed, 1 also in St. Fulgentius. In Italy it is first 
 met with in a sermon of St. Nicetas (Hahn, 25), 
 which shows that it was part of the Creed of Aqui- 
 leia in the middle of the fifth century. After that 
 it is common, is in the Spanish and Gallic service- 
 books, in Faustus of Riez, and the Creed of Treves. 
 
 I have endeavoured to relate, very inadequately, 
 the history of the several additions to the original 
 Roman Creed. On comparing them it will be seen 
 that one only — descendit ad inferos — can have 
 been introduced from the East, and even that was 
 probably already used in Italy, though the actual 
 form of the article, Creator em coeli et terrae — was 
 probably taken from the Oriental symbols. Almost 
 all the changes and additions are first traceable 
 to Africa ; they are next found in Southern Gaul 
 and Spain. It is in accordance with this that 
 the first example of a creed, which corresponds in 
 all respects but one with that we now use, comes to 
 us from Gaul. It is found in a work by Pirminius, 
 a monk who lived in France and Germany in the 
 middle of the eighth century. We are left to 
 conjecture how the various alterations and addi- 
 tions came to be combined in one symbol. But 
 there can be little doubt it was due to the desire 
 for liturgical uniformity which prevailed in Gaul, 
 
 1 No. 215. The form here is resurrectionem carnis et vitam 
 aeternam per sanctam ecclesiam. 
 
THE APOSTLES' CREED AND RULE OF FAITH 117 
 
 as we learn from the Synods of Vannes (461), 
 Agde (506), and Epaone (517), for this would lead 
 to a comparison of the various creeds current, and 
 to a selection of the best points in each. How 
 the Creed so shaped came to receive universal 
 acceptance in the West there is also no direct 
 evidence to show. Canon Swainson laid stress on 
 its having grown up in Gaul, and ascribed its 
 currency merely to Charlemagne's influence. But 
 other non-Catholic authors — Dr. Heurtley, Prof. 
 Lumby, 1 and Harnack 2 — are far more likely to be 
 right in supposing that the approval of the Holy 
 See must have preceded the general reception of 
 the Creed. It is incredible that the Bishops of 
 Italy should have accepted a Gallic creed, unless 
 under the authority of Rome, and the same may be 
 said of the Church of England, which had in 747, 
 at the second Council of Clovesho, prescribed strict 
 conformity to the Roman rite. Nor is it incon- 
 sistent with what we otherwise know that a creed 
 current in France should have been authorised 
 by the Pope ; we know that in the same manner 
 the Gallican replaced the Roman Psalter, and the 
 Gloria in Excelsis came into the Mass. There is 
 sufficient evidence of Charlemagne's zeal in matters 
 doctrinal and liturgical to warrant us in supposing 
 
 1 History of the Creeds, chap. iii. I am glad here to acknow- 
 ledge the learning, fairness, and judicial character of this work, 
 which had until recently escaped my notice. It is unfor- 
 tunate that the author should either have been unacquainted 
 with Caspari's labours, or not have availed himself of them, and 
 that that portion, at any rate, of the work which deals with 
 the Apostles' Creed should be practically out of date. 
 
 2 Dogmengesch., ii. p. 299. " Rome, and through Rome, 
 the West, finally received the Gallo-Frankish form of the 
 Apostles' Creed." 
 
118 STUDIES 
 
 that this revised version of the Creed was brought 
 before the Pope by his authority. There would 
 be the less difficulty in its reception, since several 
 of the changes were already current in Italy, and 
 all would be recognised as improvements. The 
 wide extent of Charlemagne's empire would soon 
 cause the Creed to be rapidly accepted throughout 
 Western Christendom, though older forms would 
 linger for a time in countries which lay, like England 
 and Ireland, beyond the direct influence of the 
 Empire. The latest change was the substitution 
 of inferos for inferna in the fifth article. Pir- 
 minius's Creed retained the latter word, but inferos 
 is already found in some psalters of the ninth 
 century. Such is the later history of the Apostles' 
 Creed, and it is remarkably consistent with what 
 we learned before of its origin. The great symbol 
 of the West grew into being and completeness with 
 the spontaneous unconsciousness of some living 
 organism. Or rather, it is the ev^fiov o-To/ua 
 <j>povTi$o<; ; the language that our Mother, the Church, 
 puts into our mouths at the moment of our spiritual 
 birth. The creeds produced during the era of the 
 great Oriental Councils are in the sharpest contrast 
 to this. Questions of some difficulty arise concern- 
 ing them, but their history abounds in documents, 
 and they are obviously the result of much thought 
 and analysis, designed to express the truth with 
 the utmost accuracy, and to exclude heresy as 
 distinctly as possible. Each is alike a function 
 of the Church, but the one is a direct expression 
 of her belief, the other, the carefully defined state- 
 ment of the same. In this difference of character 
 is to be found the reason for a difference of treat- 
 ment, which has sometimes proved a stumbling- 
 block to non-Catholics. 
 
THE APOSTLES' CREED AND RULE OF FAITH 119 
 
 The nature of this confusion comes out so clearly 
 in Dr. Swainson's work, and the subject is of such 
 importance, that it is worth while to consider his 
 statements in detail. He begins by making an 
 admission of vital importance : that the Rule of 
 Faith, on which the Creed was based and to which 
 it ran parallel, was a collection of unwritten doc- 
 trine, handed down by oral tradition, and inde- 
 pendent of Scripture. To quote his own words : 
 " That there was a doctrina tradita, a traditionary 
 teaching of the Church, delivered in the first 
 instance vivd voce, and independently of the writings 
 of the Apostles, no one can question." l No student, 
 indeed, of the monuments of primitive Christianity, 
 could come to any other conclusion. I have recited 
 much of the evidence for it in my account of the 
 Kerygma and the Rule of Faith, and will therefore 
 here only mention a few points which bear more 
 particularly on tradition. The great storehouse of 
 information as to the mind of the Church in the 
 second century, in this as in most other questions, 
 is St. Irenaeus. He tells us that St. Clement received 
 the Rule of Faith from the Apostles, and that it 
 and the Apostolic tradition were handed down to 
 his own times by the Church of Rome by means 
 of the apostolic succession of its bishops. 2 Those 
 who had received this succession were the proper 
 custodians of the faith and interpreters of Scrip- 
 ture. Most remarkable of all, the authority of 
 tradition was so fully established, that even the 
 early heretics did not venture to deny it. As 
 Franzelin points out, 3 both Gnostics and Catholics 
 
 1 Op. cit. p. 26. 
 
 2 III. 3. 3 ; iv. 26, 5, and 33, 8. 
 
 3 De Trad, et Script., cap. 2, thes. viii. 
 
120 STUDIES 
 
 alike appealed to tradition, the former maintaining 
 that it was a secret inheritance of their own, the 
 latter that it was in the public guardianship of 
 the successors of the Apostles. This is the basis 
 of St. Irenseus's argument, and it comes out as 
 strongly in his disciple Tertullian. 1 When Mar- 
 cion claimed the right to interpret Scripture inde- 
 pendently of tradition, Tertullian at once recog- 
 nised that such a licence was as fatal to any certainty 
 in faith as the claim to erase from the Canon all such 
 books and passages as did not suit his purpose. 2 
 The precious fragments of early writers embedded 
 in the History of Eusebius bear the same witness 
 to the authority of tradition. Thus the author of 
 a work against Artemon calls it " the mind of the 
 Church, the rule of the primitive faith," and Papias 
 considered he would not gain so much from what 
 he found in the books as from what came from 
 living and enduring speech. 3 I need not multiply 
 quotations, as it is satisfactory to find Canon 
 Swainson in agreement with us as to the indepen- 
 dent existence and authority of tradition in the 
 
 1 Praescr. Haer., especially cap. 25 ; so too Origen, " Ilia 
 sola credenda est Veritas quae in nullo ab ecclesiastica et apostolica 
 discordat traditione." De Princ. Praef. 2. 
 
 2 " Tantum veritati obstrepit adulter sensus, quantum et 
 corruptor stilus. . . . Ergo non ad Scripturas provocandum 
 est, in quibus aut nulla aut incerta victoria est, aut parum certa 
 
 . ordo rerum desiderabat, illud prius proponi, quibus 
 competat fides ipsa, cuius sint Scripturae, a quo et per quos et 
 quando et quibus sit tradita disciplina qua fvunt Christiani, ubi enim 
 apparuerit esse veritatem disciplinae et fidei Christianae, illic 
 erit Veritas Scripturarum et expositionum et omnium traditionum 
 Christianorum." Praescr. Haer. 17-19. 
 
 3 to €KK\r)<na<rTiKbj' (ppowfifia, mffrews apxaias ko.v&v (v. 28). Ou 
 yap ra e/c rav j8tj8Aio>j/ rocrovrov fie axpeheiu inre\dfJil3auov, offov ra irapa 
 (ctKTTjs (pwvrjs Kai /xevovo-rjs (iii. 39). 
 
THE APOSTLES' CREED AND RULE OF FAITH 121 
 
 primitive Church. We may take it for granted 
 (though he does not appear to say so) that he 
 considered the Apostles' Creed, like the Rule of 
 Faith, to have been a part of the unwritten teach- 
 ing of the Roman Church. 
 
 But he goes on to affirm that as soon as any 
 question arose which was not explicitly decided 
 by the Rule of Faith the Fathers appealed to 
 Scripture as the only test ; and consequently that 
 the creeds of the era of the Councils were based 
 upon Scripture alone. It is natural to ask when 
 we find the first evidence in ecclesiastical history 
 of such a change. The first distinct example of 
 an appeal to Scripture only is at the rise of the 
 Arian heresy, but with this remarkable charac- 
 teristic, that it is the Arians and Eusebians who 
 did this, their loudest and most plausible com- 
 plaint being that the orthodox had introduced a 
 word — " homoousion " — consubstantial — not found 
 in the Bible. 
 
 Those who had been the cause of the introduction of a 
 term not to be found in Holy Writ [says Professor Lumby] 1 
 were, as might have been expected, loudest in their outcry 
 against it, and for a century or more their language was 
 constantly that of the Sirmian Synod, that all mention of 
 substance should be omitted from a profession of faith, 
 as it was an expression which none could understand, 
 and was not to be found in the Scriptures. 
 
 Fortunately, Canon Swainson has not contented 
 himself with general assertions, he goes into par- 
 ticulars, and, in many instances, quotes at length 
 the passages on which he relies — a practice which, 
 as he says, is convenient for those who wish to 
 
 1 Op. cit. p. 41. 
 
122 STUDIES 
 
 test his statements. The examination of a few 
 of these will, I think, be sufficient and not unin- 
 teresting. Thus, he tells us that the Council of 
 Carthage, reported by St. Cyprian, 1 "appealed 
 to Scripture as the one authority when tradition 
 failed." There is, of course, a sense in which this 
 proposition is perfectly true ; but, true or false, 
 it is not what they said : " We should revert to 
 the divine original, and to the evangelic and apos- 
 tolic traditions." 
 
 Again, the Council of Antioch based its condemna- 
 tion of Paul of Samosata, according to our author, 
 upon Scripture. But if their letter be read it will 
 be found to begin by affirming, " the faith which 
 they had received from the beginning .... 
 as it has been kept in the Catholic Holy Church 
 even unto this day, being proclaimed by continuous 
 succession from those blessed apostles," after which 
 exordium passages of Scripture are quoted. 
 
 In the same way, the reader is told that Lucian 
 the Martyr, and Alexander, the predecessor of St. 
 Athanasius, based their arguments on Scripture ; 
 the truth being that they respectively begin by 
 saying, " We believe, as the Apostolic Church 
 teaches," and " in accordance with the evangelic 
 and apostolic tradition." 
 
 St. Augustine, again, is said to have taught 
 that the contents of the Creed are simply extracted 
 from the sacred writings, but the passage quoted 
 in support of this assertion explicitly says (Serm. 
 214) the contents of the Creed are to be found 
 " in Sanctis scripturis et in ecclesiasticis sermonibus." 
 
 Such habitual inaccuracy, to use no harder 
 
 1 Ep. lxxiv. 10. 
 
THE APOSTLES' CEEED AND EULE OF FAITH 123 
 
 word, will prepare the reader for still more sur- 
 prising statements. The climax is probably reached 
 in the following passage : " The treatises of Augus- 
 tine on the Descent into Hell, and of Basil on the 
 Holy Ghost, are the best examples of appeal to 
 Scripture only in support of the doctrine of the 
 Church, as is the principle of the Church of Eng- 
 land." The reference to St. Augustine is soon 
 disposed of. I suppose it to mean either Ep. 
 164 or 187, probably the former. Both of these 
 are professedly only expositions of a difficult 
 passage of Scripture, put forward as his personal 
 opinion, and with no suggestion whatever that 
 Scripture is the sole Rule of Faith. Any Catholic 
 commentator on the Bible might, with equal reason, 
 be claimed as an adherent of the Anglican doctrine. 
 The reference to St. Basil is more instructive. 
 What strange fatality led Dr. Swainson to cite this 
 Father, and above all his book on the Holy Ghost, 
 I cannot guess. This treatise has always been 
 regarded by Catholics as one of the strongest 
 Patristic testimonies to the authority of tradition ; 
 and it is not too much to say that no Catholic 
 writing at the present day could use clearer or 
 more emphatic language on the subject. A few 
 of the more decisive passages are all that I can 
 give here. The faithful are distinctly told (in 
 cap. ix.) that the Church's use and reception of 
 words in Scripture is the true test of their mean- 
 ing. With this the conduct of heretics is contrasted 
 (cap. x.) who " are striving to shake the solidity 
 of the Christian faith, by levelling to the ground 
 and effacing the apostolic tradition. Wherefore, 
 like bond- fide creditors forsooth, they call loudly 
 for proofs from the Scriptures, dismissing the 
 
124 STUDIES 
 
 unwritten testimony of the Fathers as of no worth." 
 Again — " Of the public and private doctrines of 
 the Church, some are derived religiously from 
 the written teaching, and others from the tradi- 
 tion from the Apostles which has been delivered 
 to us, but both have equal force unto godliness." l 
 In order to ascertain the sense of crvv in the Bible, 
 he appeals to tradition, saying (cap. xxix.), " I take 
 it to be an Apostolic command to abide also by 
 the unwritten traditions," quoting 1 Cor. xi. 3, 
 and 2 Thess. ii. 14. Lastly, in reference to the 
 particular point with which we are concerned — 
 the origin of the Creed — St. Basil's language is 
 not uncertain. He says : " Time would fail me 
 to enumerate the unwritten mysteries of the 
 Church. I leave the rest ; the very confession of 
 the faith in Father, Son and Holy Ghost. From 
 what Scriptures do we derive it ? " 2 
 
 This brief examination of Canon Swainson's 
 statements is enough to show they cannot be 
 trusted. He would have done better to take the 
 advice of the Maurist editors of St. Basil, not to 
 select the authority of the Church and tradition 
 as his battlefield, since defeat is fatal, and every 
 circumstance favours his opponent. 3 A learned 
 German Protestant, who is encumbered with no 
 theories, has lately given a much fairer apprecia- 
 
 1 Twv iv rfj 'EKKAycria 7re(pv\ayfx4ya}v $oy[x6.Toov na\ Kr]pvyfxdrwv, ra 
 /xev 4k rrjs iyypd<pov SidafficaXias e%Ojuej/, to. 5e e« rrjs twv ' Atto(Tt6\u}u 
 TrapaB6(Teoos SiaSoOevra yj/mv^ iv fxvffriqplcf TrapeSe^dfieOa • airep afi(p6repa 
 ttjv avrrju laxvv e^et irpbs tt\v ev<re&4iav (cap. xxvii. 1). 
 
 2 €7riA.enJ/ei /xe r) Tj/nepa, ra &ypa<pa rrjs 'EKKXrjcrias ixvcnr)pia Styyovfxe- 
 vov. 'Eco r&Wa ' avrrjv Se rrjv ofioXoyiav rr\s iriffrecos els Harepa /ecu 
 'tibv Kal ayiop Tlvevjxa, e/c iroi&v ypajXfA.drcavJixojJi.ev (cap. xxvii. 1). 
 
 3 Praef. sect. vi. 1. 
 
THE APOSTLES' CEEED AND RULE OF FAITH 125 
 
 tion of the facts as they come out in ecclesiastical 
 history. Professor Harnack says 1 : — 
 
 The revolution which is characterised by the isolation 
 of Scripture, its separation from the authority of eccle- 
 siastical tradition, and the destruction of the latter, first 
 began in the sixteenth century In anti- 
 quity, on the contrary, the bond between Scripture and 
 the maternal organisation of the Church was in no way 
 
 severed everything in the Church was 
 
 held to be Apostolic, and the guidance of the Church by 
 the Holy Ghost preserved this Apostolic element from 
 any change. 
 
 Harnack goes on, indeed, to point out some 
 ambiguities which he considers due to the stress 
 laid at the same time on the independent authority 
 of Scripture, and remarks that there is a difference 
 in this matter between different schools in the 
 Church of the fourth and fifth centuries : — 
 
 The Orientals, most of all the Antiochenes, but also 
 Cyril of Jerusalem, held more exclusively to Scripture, 
 the Alexandrines and Cappadocians adhered more decidedly 
 to tradition. At any rate, the difference is very obvious 
 on comparing Theodoret with Cyril of Alexandria. 
 
 It is not possible to reply to this point without 
 a much less superficial knowledge of the Fathers 
 of that period than I possess. It is enough here 
 to remark that the Antiochene school, as a whole, 
 gave birth to the heresies of that time, which 
 does not commend its method to those who believe 
 the cause of orthodoxy was more consistently 
 served by the Fathers of Alexandria and Cappa- 
 docia. St. Cyril of Jerusalem must be taken 
 separately. His well-known association with the 
 
 1 Dogmengeschichte, vol. ii., p. 84. 
 
126 STUDIES 
 
 semi-Arian party might have explained some 
 uncertainty in dealing with our subject ; but I 
 think it will be seen that, on the contrary, his 
 language is remarkably clear and precise. The 
 following sentences are from that one of his cate- 
 chetical Sermons which immediately preceded his 
 delivery of the symbol to the catechumens : — 
 
 Receive and keep that Creed only which is now de- 
 livered to thee by the Church, and is fortified 1 from all 
 Scripture. For, since all cannot read the Scriptures, but 
 some are hindered by ignorance, others by want of leisure, 
 we receive the whole doctrine of the Faith in these few 
 
 articles Now, hearing it word for word, 
 
 remember the Creed, and at the proper time receive the 
 confirmation (or comparison, trvtrrdurw) of each point 
 it contains from the Divine writings. For the Creed 
 was not drawn up as it pleased men, but the most needful 
 points chosen out of all Scripture make up the one teach- 
 ing of the Faith. 2 
 
 Two propositions come out very plainly from 
 this account : (1) The whole contents of the Creed 
 are to be found in Holy Writ ; and (2) the passages 
 necessary to be believed are not left to individual 
 selection, but are chosen and proposed as credenda 
 by the Church. Dr. Swainson's attention has, 
 perhaps not unnaturally, been attracted only to 
 the former ; and much of his confusion is due to 
 not recognising that both were taught by St. Cyril 
 as well as by the Church before and after his day. 
 A few examples will prove this. Origen lays down 
 
 1 No one would suspect Dean Church of the least conscious 
 bias, but his rendering of u>xvpojM€vr) as " established," in the 
 Oxford Library of the Fathers, conveys a stronger meaning than 
 the original at any rate demands. 
 
 2 Catech., v. 12. 
 
THE APOSTLES' CREED AND RULE OF FAITH 127 
 
 that the Kerygma of the Church contains nothing 
 which is not to be found in Scripture ; but he 
 also asserts — " Ilia sola credenda est Veritas, quae 
 in nullo ab ecclesiastica et apostolica discordat tra- 
 ditione " (de Princ. Praef. 2). St. Augustine has 
 written abundantly, as everyone knows, on the 
 place of tradition and the authority of the Church ; 
 yet he also says explicitly — " In eis, quae in Scrip- 
 turis posita sunt, inveniuntur ilia omnia quae con- 
 tinent fidem, moresque vivendi, spem scilicet atque 
 caritatem " [de Doct. Christ, cix.) ; while he sums 
 up both these elements, which together make up 
 the Rule of Faith, by saying : " Consulat regulam 
 fidei, quam ex Scripturarum planioribus locis et 
 Ecclesiae auctoritate percepit " (de Doct. Christ, iii.). 
 Marcellus of Ancyra — to take only one more 
 example, — says in the apology to Pope Julius to 
 which I have before referred, that he " both learned 
 his Creed " (from the Church at his baptism. Cas- 
 pari, iii. p. 30) " and was taught it from the Holy 
 Scriptures." Canon Swainson expresses his satis- 
 faction (apparently not unmixed with surprise) 
 that St. Thomas considered the contents of the 
 Creed were taken from the Scriptures, and not 
 added to them. It would probably have seemed 
 to him still more remarkable that such a zealous 
 controversialist as Bellarmine should have held 
 the same opinion, which is so general that the 
 phrase compendium Scripturarum is an ordinary 
 term for the Creeds. 1 It must be plain on con- 
 sideration, even to any non-Catholic, that there 
 is no contradiction between the two propositions 
 which have been always held by the Church. On 
 
 1 Franzelin, de Trad, et Script, p. 228. 
 
128 STUDIES 
 
 the one hand she maintains that there is nothing 
 in any of the creeds that she puts forth which is 
 not to be found in Scripture, either equivalently 
 as in the Apostles' Creed, or textually, as in the 
 later symbols. On the other hand she asserts, 
 with at least as much warrant from antiquity, 
 that the choice of the subjects to be included in 
 a profession of faith can be made by no human 
 authority, but that she selects them, and teaches 
 their true meaning by the ministers of her divine 
 prerogative. This is the true issue between our- 
 selves and all who are without the Church — whether 
 the Spirit of God is still in the world, teaching us 
 infallibly and bestowing upon us the gift of faith. 
 We in the twentieth 1 century can but repeat the 
 language of the second : — 
 
 If the Apostles had not left the Scriptures to us, ought 
 we not to follow the order of tradition, which they de- 
 livered to those to whom they committed the churches ? 
 This ordinance many barbarian races accept, who believe 
 in Christ, having salvation written in their hearts by the 
 Spirit, and diligently keeping the primitive tradition. 
 
 . . . For where the Church is there too is the Spirit 
 of God, and where the Spirit of God there is the Church, 
 and every grace ; now the Spirit is truth. 2 
 
 1 This was, of course, nineteenth as originally written. 
 
 2 St. Irenseus iii., 4, 1 ; 24, 1. 
 
129 
 
 THE EARLY HISTORY OF THE MASS. 
 
 I. 
 
 1. Messe und Pascha. Von Prof. Dr. G. Bickell. Mainz. 
 
 1872. 
 
 2. Liturgie der drei ersten christlichen Jahrhunderte. Prof. 
 
 Dr. F. Probst. Tubingen. 1870. 
 
 3. Liturgies Eastern and Western. By C. E. Hammond. 
 
 M.A., Lecturer at Exeter College. Oxford : The 
 Clarendon Press. 1878. 
 
 4. The Greek Liturgies, chiefly from Original Authorities. 
 
 Edited by C. A. Swainson, D.D., Lady Margaret's 
 Reader in Divinity, Cambridge. At the University 
 Press, Cambridge. 1884. 
 
 I endeavoured lately, in the Dublin Review, 
 to give an account of the bearing of modern 
 research on the early history of the Catholic Rule 
 of Faith and of the Apostles' Creed. No subject 
 could be more important, for it is the groundwork 
 of our belief ; but I now venture to approach one 
 incomparably more sacred. The chastisement of 
 Oza is a terrible warning which must be ever in 
 the minds of those who would touch the Ark of 
 the Covenant, even to support it, with uncon- 
 secrated hands ; while the origin of the Christian 
 Liturgy is withdrawn from a rash and curious 
 scrutiny, not merely by its own sanctity, but also 
 by the obscurity in which it would seem to have 
 been providentially veiled. Like that mysterious 
 9 
 
130 STUDIES 
 
 type of the Christian priesthood, whom the Church 
 commemorates in the most solemn moment of 
 the Mass, the Liturgy comes before us, as Mel- 
 chisedec appears in Holy Writ, with no visible 
 parentage nor beginning of days, so that these 
 can only be traced by careful and laborious investi- 
 gation. The chief work in this direction has, of 
 course, been done by Catholic scholars in the past 
 — Bona, Le Brun, Muratori, and Mabillon being 
 only a few of the most eminent among liturgiolo- 
 gists. The most important recent authors, too, 
 are Catholics ; Bickell and Probst, whose names 
 I have placed at the head of this article, are ad- 
 mitted by all to be the chief authorities on the 
 subject in our generation. Besides these, it is a 
 special pleasure to welcome so many Anglican 
 High Churchmen as fellow-labourers with us in 
 this field. I shall have occasion to point out 
 details in which they seem to me mistaken, for 
 I think the exigencies of their position have led 
 them to strain the documentary evidence for a 
 primitive Liturgy beyond what it will bear. I 
 therefore all the more gladly acknowledge their 
 zeal and industry, and the valuable additions they 
 have made to our knowledge of the Liturgy. These 
 have been insufficiently known to Catholics, and 
 one of my principal objects is to direct attention to 
 their labours. The earliest and most important 
 of these works is probably Sir W. Palmer's Origines 
 Liturgicae ; next to it we may reckon Archdeacon 
 Freeman's Principles of Divine Service and Scuda- 
 more's Notitia Eucharistica, though both these 
 latter suffer from the disadvantage of attempting 
 to show the primitive character of the Anglican 
 service. A like drawback diminishes the value of 
 
THE EARLY HISTORY OF THE MASS 131 
 
 Dr. Neale's liturgical writings ; he entertained too 
 strong an opinion of the antiquity of the extant 
 Greek Liturgies, and overlooked facts which were 
 adverse to his theory. 
 
 Perhaps the most valuable work done by Angli- 
 cans has been the preparation of texts in a form 
 convenient for study. Dr. Neale's editions of the 
 Eastern Liturgies, in Greek and in English, are 
 well known. Mr. Hammond has laid all students 
 of liturgiology under even greater obligations by 
 his handy and inexpensive volume which has been 
 published by the Clarendon Press, and which con- 
 tains all the offices which had to be sought before 
 in many rare and costly works. The first critical 
 edition of the Eastern Liturgies comes to us from 
 the sister university of Cambridge, which has 
 published Dr. Swainson's careful reconstruction of 
 the text of the Oriental Liturgies, based upon a 
 complete collation of all the Greek MSS. known 
 to exist. 
 
 The field thus opened and rendered accessible 
 to every student is far too extensive for these 
 pages, and for the patience of the general reader, 
 even if I possessed the learning and the leisure 
 needed for treating it properly. I purpose merely 
 to point out the main conclusions to which the 
 study of the Liturgy has led, and the directions 
 which further inquiry must take. It will be seen 
 from what I shall say that fresh discoveries, and 
 those of a very interesting character, will probably 
 reward the investigator who starts with a know- 
 ledge of the present state of liturgiology. For 
 instance, it is almost certain that a minute examina- 
 tion of the early Fathers would yield many more 
 liturgical allusions than even Probst's careful 
 
132 STUDIES 
 
 search disclosed. Again, recent discoveries have 
 introduced a fresh series of liturgical problems. 
 Thus the newly recovered portions of St. Clement 
 of Rome's letter seem to bear such testimony to 
 the primitive existence of the liturgy of St. Mark, 
 and also that of the Church of Rome, as to call 
 for a fresh examination of the great Alexandrian 
 writers. In a less degree the Didache raises some 
 fresh questions, several of which I have already 
 noticed in these pages. 
 
 It is obvious that any inquiry into the early 
 history of the Holy Sacrifice must start from its 
 original institution at the Last Supper. I believe 
 the only important attempt which has been made 
 to show the connection between the two is due 
 to Professor Bickell, the learned Catholic Orientalist 
 of Innsbruck. It is contained in the pamphlet I 
 have referred to in the heading of this article, 
 and has been further developed in several papers 
 in a German Catholic periodical (Zeitschrift flir 
 kath. Theol., 1880). His suggestions have been 
 received with marked interest and assent by 
 Anglicans, such as Mr. Hammond and Mr. Field, 
 the learned author of The Apostolical Liturgy and 
 the Epistle to the Hebrews ; but, so far as I know, 
 they have attracted no notice from Catholics in 
 this country. It is particularly unfortunate that 
 Dr. Edersheim, the only Englishman perhaps who 
 was qualified to express an independent opinion 
 on Bickell' s work, should have only mentioned 
 it in a manner which shows he cannot have read it. 1 
 
 Professor Bickell begins by dividing the Mass 
 into two naturally distinct parts — the Anaphora, 
 
 1 The Life and Times of the Messiah, vol. ii., p. 510. 
 
THE EARLY HISTORY OF THE MASS 133 
 
 or sacrificial office proper, and the pro-anaphoral 
 or preparatory service. This division is not quite 
 the same as that between the " Missa Catechu- 
 menorum " and " Missa Fidelium," which was due 
 to the discipline of the Early Church : since the Ana- 
 phora begins with the Preface, while the " Missa 
 Fidelium " commences at the Offertory. He derives 
 the earlier part of the Liturgy from the Sabbath- 
 morning service of the Synagogue ; and the Ana- 
 phora from the Paschal ritual of the Jewish Church. 
 Beginning with the latter, I omit designedly all 
 the perplexing questions that may be raised as 
 to our Lord's having eaten the Passover at the 
 Last Supper ; for, whether it was or was not the 
 legal Pasch, our Lord Himself spoke of it as " this 
 Passover," and it must therefore have been closely 
 connected with the Paschal service. I must give 
 Bickell's account of this at some length, which I 
 the less regret, as I believe there is no such descrip- 
 tion of it accessible to English readers. He gives 
 first his reasons for asserting that the Paschal 
 ritual, as given in the Talmud, represents faith- 
 fully that followed in our Lord's day, excepting 
 a few points which can be readily discerned. The 
 chief external argument on which he relies is, 
 that the schools of Shammai and Hillel had already 
 begun to dispute about details in the second cen- 
 tury ; while the very complexity of the ritual 
 in the Mishna is an internal evidence of its anti- 
 quity. It is to be remembered that the Paschal 
 lamb was a true sacrifice ; it was slain in the 
 Temple, its blood was sprinkled by the priest on 
 the altar, and part was burned there. As these 
 conditions could not be fulfilled after the destruc- 
 tion of the Temple, an essential change was made 
 
134 STUDIES 
 
 in the ceremony, which I shall mention as I pro- 
 ceed. The meal began by each guest filling his 
 cup with wine, which, in the case of this as of all 
 the following cups, was mixed with water. A 
 prayer named the " Kiddush " was then recited : 
 this thanks God for the institution of all holy 
 seasons, particularly of the Passover ; also for 
 having preserved those present until that hour. 
 The cup was then drunk, and hands were washed 
 for the first time. Before the destruction of the 
 Temple, the Paschal viands were next brought 
 in ; now they are on the table from the beginning. 
 In place of the Paschal lamb a third unleavened 
 bread is now taken, besides the two previously 
 used ; this is broken in half, and one of the halves 
 is reserved, being therefore called the " Afikoman," 
 to be eaten at the end of the repast instead of the 
 lamb. Dr. Edersheim suggests that our Lord 
 anticipated what was to be the rule after the 
 destruction of the Temple ; and that the " Afiko- 
 man " was the bread which he consecrated. We 
 should expect some mention of this departure 
 from the established order of the Passover in the 
 Gospels if this had been done by our Lord ; instead 
 of which the absence of an article before the word 
 aprov in St. Mark, and probably also in St. 
 Matthew, implies that no special bread was used 
 for the Holy Eucharist. However this may be, 
 I cannot forbear pointing out how significant it 
 is that the Jews should have chosen bread as the 
 symbol to take the place of the Paschal lamb. 
 One would be glad to know whether this was a 
 rule introduced during the Babylonian Captivity ; 
 but I am not aware of any information on the 
 subject. 
 
THE EAELY HISTORY OF THE MASS 135 
 
 After several ceremonies of minor importance, 
 the table was removed, and the second cup was 
 mixed. The youngest person present then asked : 
 " Why is this night different from all other nights ? " 
 The master of the house answered by reciting Deut. 
 vi. 21 : " We were bondmen of Pharao in Egypt, 
 and the Lord brought us out with a strong hand." 
 From this as a text, he proceeded to describe the 
 history of the Jewish people, from the call of 
 Abraham to the delivery from bondage, dwelling 
 in detail on the plagues of Egypt, and the blessings 
 conferred on the people of God. This commemora- 
 tion, called the " Haggada," was considered to be 
 commanded in several passages of the law j 1 there 
 can therefore be little doubt that it was observed 
 by our Lord. The table was then set back in its 
 place, and the symbolical meaning of the viands 
 explained. The cup was elevated, while a short 
 thanksgiving was said, after which the first part 
 of the " Hallel " was sung, 2 and the cup was drunk. 
 
 The master of the house then washed his hands 
 again, took one of the unleavened breads, broke 
 it (a rite which seems to have been peculiar to 
 the Paschal supper), placed it under the whole 
 one, elevated both, pronounced the ordinary bless- 
 ing said over bread at meals, ate a portion of both 
 
 1 Exod. xii. 26, xiii. 6 ; Deut. vi. 20. It may seem remark- 
 able that there is no direct mention of this touching ceremony 
 in the New Testament accounts of the Last Supper. Indirectly, 
 however, it is twice referred to in St. Paul's narrative of the 
 commemorative Sacrifice of the New Law. The emphatic 
 phrase, ds r-fjv e>7?j/ avdfj.vr)<riv — "for my memorial" — points to 
 a memorial which was not of Christ ; and KaTayyeXere is the 
 literal translation of the Hebrew word " Haggada." 
 
 1 Ps. cxii.-cxiii. 8, Laudate pueri and In exitu to Non nobis. 
 I use throughout the Septuagint- Vulgate arrangement. 
 
136 STUDIES 
 
 the whole and the broken bread, and passed them 
 to the guests. The bitter herbs, " Chagigah," and 
 Paschal lamb were then eaten, followed by the 
 usual supper, the last food partaken of being a 
 portion of the lamb, in place of which the reserved 
 bread is now eaten. 
 
 The hands were now washed again, and the 
 third cup was mixed ; over it was said the grace 
 after meals, containing two thanksgivings for food 
 and all other benefits. After grace this cup was 
 drunk. 
 
 The fourth cup was mixed, and the second part 
 of the " Hallel " (Ps. cxiii. 9 to cxvii., Non nobis 
 to Confitemini Domino) recited : probably followed 
 by a benediction. Then was said what is called 
 the " Great Hallel " (Ps. cxxxv., Confitemini 
 Domino), followed by a long hymn of praise and 
 thanksgiving ; the blessing over the wine was 
 said, and the fourth cup was drunk. Grace was 
 not said after this cup, as it was not considered 
 part of the meal, but a benediction was pronounced, 
 in which God was thanked for the fruit of the vine 
 and the gift of the promised land. A fifth cup 
 is spoken of by some later authors, but not by 
 the Talmud. 
 
 This very brief sketch of the Paschal ritual 
 will enable us to appreciate Dr. BickelPs view 
 as to the relation between it and the Mass. The 
 principal question is : when was the Holy Eucharist 
 consecrated, whether during or after the meal, 
 and if the former, at what point in the repast ? 
 The general opinion of the older Catholic com- 
 mentators has been that the Host was consecrated 
 during the supper, and the Chalice after ; St. 
 Thomas, for instance, gives a mystical reason for 
 
THE EARLY HISTORY OF THE MASS 137 
 
 this separation between the two consecrations. 1 
 This supposition was based on the words, " as 
 they were eating " (iaBiovrcov avrcov) in St. 
 Matthew's and St. Mark's accounts. This note 
 of time is, however, not sufficient for us to rely 
 on, as is plain from its being also used for the 
 prophecy of the betrayal, which St. Luke puts 
 later. St. Luke and St. Paul have no note of 
 time for the consecration of the Host, but they 
 fix that of the Chalice after supper ; and, as Father 
 Coleridge argues, it is hardly conceivable that the 
 two consecrations should have been separated. 
 It is therefore much more probable that the Host 
 was also consecrated after the supper, as indeed 
 the highest patristic authority asserts. 2 The lan- 
 guage of St. Luke and St. Paul might apply either 
 to the third or fourth cup taken at the Paschal 
 ceremony ; though strictly speaking the former 
 formed part of the supper. The general tendency 
 has been to connect it with the third cup ; Schegg 
 and Haneberg, for instance, among Catholics, and 
 Edersheim among non-Catholics, expressly saying 
 so. The only ground for this is, that the Rabbis 
 called this cup " the cup of blessing," the phrase 
 used by St. Paul for the Chalice. The expression, 
 however, seems merely to have meant the cup 
 taken at the grace after meals, was used for any 
 cup that was drunk with thanksgiving, and was 
 
 1 Christus corpus suum tradidit inter coenam, sed sanguinem 
 suum dedit expresse post coenam. Cujus ratio est, quia corpus 
 Christi repraesentat mysterium incarnationis, quae facta est legali- 
 bus observantiis adhuc statum habentibus ; sed sanguis in Sacra- 
 mento directe repraesentat passionem, per quam est effusus, et per 
 quam sunt terminata omnia legaHar (1 Cor. xi. lect. 6.) 
 
 2 St. Jerome, lib. iv. in Matih. cap. 26. 
 
138 STUDIES 
 
 even employed metaphorically : l so that no argu- 
 ment can be based upon it. Bickell, on the con- 
 trary, urges that the third cup was part of the 
 supper, and, indeed, was common to all ordinary 
 meals, while the fourth was peculiar to the Passover. 
 It was therefore more likely to have been employed 
 by our Lord, and it conforms more closely to the 
 words " after supper " in St. Luke and St. Paul. 
 Dr. BickelPs explanation of the order of the insti- 
 tution starts from this. He points out that at 
 the ordinary Paschal meal each guest drank from 
 his own cup, and that on filling the fourth cup 
 our Lord must have said, " Drink ye all of this," 
 and " Take this and divide it among yourselves," 
 as a necessary preparation for passing round the 
 cup He was about to consecrate. On looking back 
 to the account given above of the Paschal ritual, 
 it will be seen that part of the " Hallel " was recited 
 after the fourth cup was rilled. Bickell supposes 
 that the Preface of the Mass is the slightly modified 
 form of the last Psalm (cxvii.) of this series. The 
 resemblance is seen to be greater when we learn 
 from the Talmudic commentaries on the Psalm 
 the manner in which it was recited. In each of 
 the first four verses the first half was said by the 
 celebrant, the second half by the assistants. These 
 correspond to the versicles and responses which 
 precede the Preface ; the body of which answers 
 in turn to the next twenty verses, which were 
 said alternately. The twenty-fifth and twenty- 
 sixth verses were again broken up like the first 
 four ; it will be remarked that they contain the 
 " Hosanna " and " Benedictus," in which the con- 
 gregation join after the Preface. The remaining 
 
 1 Ps. cxvi. 3 ; Smith's Bible Dictionary, s.v. Passover. 
 
THE EARLY HISTORY OF THE MASS 139 
 
 verses were recited alternately, like the central 
 portion. After a short prayer, this was followed 
 by the " Great Hallel " (Ps. cxxxv.), the first half 
 of each verse being recited by the celebrant, and 
 the burden, " for His mercy endureth for ever," 
 repeated by the assistants. This corresponds to 
 the commemoration of the work of redemption 
 which follows the Preface in the Clementine and 
 other ancient Liturgies, the redemption taking 
 the place of the delivery from Egypt. On arriving 
 at verse twenty-five ("Who giveth food to all flesh"), 
 Bickell suggests that our Lord stopped, consecrated 
 the Host and Chalice, broke the former first into 
 halves, then into portions for distribution, and 
 passed round the Chalice. 
 
 The Babylonian Gemara, a very early authority, 
 states that Psalm xxiii. (Dominus regit me) was 
 sung after the " Great Hallel." Its appropriate- 
 ness after Communion makes it probable that 
 this was the hymn mentioned by the first two 
 Evangelists as sung by our Lord and the Apostles 
 before they went out to the Mount of Olives. 
 
 We will now go back to the earlier part of the 
 Mass, which, as I have said, Bickell derives from 
 the Sabbath-morning service of the Synagogue. 
 This part of the Mass has, for reasons which will 
 by and by appear, undergone more change than 
 the Canon. The general reader will, however, 
 obtain a sufficiently accurate notion of the primi- 
 tive form of this part of the Roman Liturgy for 
 purposes of comparison, from the Good Friday 
 Mass of the Pre-sanctified, as far as the Adoration 
 of the Cross. 1 The Sabbath-morning service con- 
 
 1 This earliest form of the Roman Mass is really closer to 
 the Synagogal service than the Oriental Liturgies that Bickell 
 
140 STUDIES 
 
 sis ted of four parts, of which we have only to 
 consider the last and most important. It began 
 with a varying lesson from the Pentateuch, followed 
 by another from the Prophets. The Christian 
 Church inserted a psalm after each lesson, and 
 some portion of our Lord's life, at first orally, 
 then by a reading from the Gospels ; the sermon 
 followed in the Jewish as in the Christian service. * 
 After the sermon came a series of prayers termed 
 the " Shacharith. " These corresponded very 
 closely with the intercessory prayers that follow 
 the Gospel on Good Friday. The several petitions 
 were " bidden " in the Synagogue by a precentor, 
 as in the Christian Church by a deacon. The 
 Shacharith began with prayer for the whole 
 Jewish people, for their rulers, and for the Rabbis ; 
 then went on to intercede for the congregation 
 and its members, for those who had built syna- 
 gogues or brought gifts for religious purposes ; 
 then for the sick ; and for the Sovereign. Lastly, 
 there was a commemoration of the martyrs and 
 a prayer for the dead. This was followed by part 
 of the prayer called the " Shemoneh Esreh," or 
 Eighteen Benedictions, of which only the first 
 three and the last two were used on Sabbaths. 
 The parallelism between the contents of the 
 Shacharith and the Good Friday intercessory 
 prayers will be obvious. A still more distinct 
 
 chooses for comparison, though there are points of difference 
 winch I shall note as I proceed. 
 
 1 There is an interesting description of this part of the Jewish 
 service in Acts xiii. 14, 15. St. Paul and his companions had 
 sat down in the Synagogue on a Sabbath, and, " after the read- 
 ing of the Law and the Prophets," the rulers sent to ask them 
 to address the congregation. 
 
THE EARLY HISTORY OF THE MASS 141 
 
 connection can be established between one of 
 them and the Sabbath portion of the " Shemoneh 
 Esreh," which has been shown independently of 
 Dr. Bickell, and seems to me a crucial test of the 
 correctness of his theory. Since he wrote, the 
 liturgical passage in St. Clement of Rome's letter 
 has been recovered, and Dr. Lightfoot 1 at once 
 pointed out its connection with this Jewish prayer 
 on the one hand and with the petitions in the 
 Liturgy of St. Mark on the other. I shall here- 
 after show that these portions of the Alexandrian 
 Liturgy are the Good Friday prayers to which I 
 have been referring, and that there is good reason 
 for believing they were used by the Church of 
 Rome at least as early as Tertullian. 2 
 
 After the third benediction of the " Shemoneh 
 Esreh " was inserted a prayer named the " Ke- 
 dusha," which is strikingly like the conclusion of 
 the Preface and the Sanctus. The precentor said, 
 " May we hallow Thy Name on earth as it is 
 hallowed in heaven ; as it hath been written by 
 Thy prophets, the one cried out to the other and 
 said." The congregation responded, " Holy, holy, 
 holy, is the Lord Sabaoth, the whole earth is full 
 of His majesty." It will be remarked that this 
 does not correspond in place to the Preface, which 
 we have connected above with Psalm cxvii. ; but 
 its present position in the Jewish service is also 
 incongruous, occurring as it does in the middle 
 of the Benedictions. It is therefore not unreason- 
 
 1 St. Clement of Rome. Appendix, p. 461. 
 
 2 The prayer which corresponds to the " Shemoneh Esreh" 
 is that for all necessities (" cunctis mundum purget erroribns"), 
 and what would be otherwise anomalous in its occurrence 
 here is fully accounted for by its origin. 
 
142 STUDIES 
 
 able to suppose it originally came later in the 
 Sabbath-morning office. Before the last petition 
 of the " Shemoneh Esreh," if a priest was present 
 he pronounced the Aaronic benediction with up- 
 lifted and outstretched hands over the congrega- 
 tion. The Christian priesthood on succeeding to 
 the Jewish used originally the same form here, 
 as we find in the earliest account extant, 1 which 
 puts the Aaronic benediction at this point of the 
 Liturgy. It was soon replaced in the East by 
 2 Cor. xiii. 13, or an equivalent form, while in 
 the Roman and Alexandrian Masses the sacerdotal 
 blessing is put after the Communion. 
 
 The last prayer of the " Shemoneh Esreh " is 
 a petition for peace ; and in all liturgies except 
 the Roman the celebrant's benediction is followed 
 by the prayer for peace and the " Pax." 
 
 I have now brought down the comparison between 
 the Jewish and Christian services as far as the 
 Anaphora, from which it will be remembered I 
 started, to compare this latter part of the Mass 
 with the Paschal Liturgy. My account of Dr. 
 Bickell's attempt to trace the origin of the Mass 
 in the services of the Jewish Church has been 
 necessarily so abridged as to be inadequate. I 
 can only hope that any one who looks upon it 
 sceptically, as I did at first, will follow the details 
 in the author's own writings, where the evidence 
 will be found much more convincingly stated than 
 I have been able to do within my limits. It may 
 appear antecedently very improbable that the Mass 
 should have been derived from two separate Jewish 
 offices. But it is to be borne in mind, that the 
 
 1 Constit. Apost., ii. 57. 
 
THE EARLY HISTORY OF THE MASS 143 
 
 distinction between the two parts of the Liturgy, 
 still discernible enough, particularly in a Pontifical 
 Mass, was much more marked in early ages. 
 There is even reason to believe that in Egypt 
 the introductory part was used on certain days as 
 a separate service. The theory does not account 
 for the " Sursum Corda," which is found in every 
 Liturgy, and which we must therefore suppose 
 to be primitive ; and several passages, such as 
 the " Sanctus," need transposition ; but with 
 these exceptions it seems to fulfil all that can be 
 looked for in an hypothesis which is to connect 
 the Mass with the ritual used in the time of our 
 Lord. As far as I know only one other sugges- 
 tion has been made on this subject. Archdeacon 
 Freeman supposed that the Last Supper was not 
 a Paschal meal, but one on the previous evening ; 
 and he derived the whole Liturgy from the syna- 
 gogal Sabbath-eve service, which is said on Friday 
 evening after the office for the day is finished, 
 combined with a domestic rite the same evening, 
 which commemorates the Passover at the ordinary 
 meal. The resemblance is, however, more remote, 
 and the whole is based, not on the Talmud and 
 other- ancient authorities, but upon a modern 
 Jewish prayer-book, in which prayers originally 
 public may have been diverted to private use. 
 
 I now turn to another branch of my subject, 
 to inquire what traces of a liturgical service are 
 to be found in the New Testament. It is hardly 
 fanciful to suppose that, in the first mention of 
 the meetings of Christians for prayer after the 
 day of Pentecost, we have a distinct enumeration 
 of the several parts of the Liturgy. In Acts ii. 
 42, we are told that they were persevering " in 
 
144 STUDIES 
 
 the teaching of the Apostles, and the communion ; 
 in the breaking of the bread and the prayers." 
 This, which appears to be the connection of the 
 words in the best-established texts, separates the 
 service into two parts, the preparatory service, 
 consisting of the Apostolic teaching and the Agape 
 (for so apparently we must understand rfj 
 Koivwvia) ; and the breaking of the Eucharistic 
 bread with its attendant prayers. It is to be 
 remarked also that the articles 1 imply a series 
 of acts which St. Luke knew would be recognised 
 by his readers. Probably the Mass was said 
 daily, though the " day by day " of verse 46 may 
 possibly refer to the attendance in the Temple 
 only, and not to " the breaking bread at home." 
 In the phrase " praising God " of verse 47, we have 
 the first indication of the Eucharistic character of 
 the rite. 
 
 It would be too great a digression to consider 
 the gradual omission of the Agape, which lingered 
 in the African Church as late as St. Augustine's 
 day on Maundy Thursday. It will be interesting 
 to us to remark that the last instance of its per- 
 mission is in England, where St. Gregory (Epistolae 
 ii. 76) allowed it on the feast of the dedication 
 of a church. 
 
 That the oral teaching of the Apostles was soon 
 replaced by the reading of their Epistles, is clear 
 from St. Paul's directions less than twenty years 
 later (1 Thess. v. 27 ; Col. iv. 16). We also find 
 him enjoining public reading as one of the chief 
 duties of a bishop ; the Apocalypse is professedly 
 
 1 %<rav Trpoo-Kaprepovi/res rrj 8i8axp tG>v aTroarrSAcov, /cot ri) noivoovia ; 
 7 7} KAdVei rov ftprov nal rats irpoaevx^s. 
 
THE EAELY HISTOKT OF THE MASS 145 
 
 intended for public reading, and at the end a 
 blessing is invoked on the reader and the hearers 
 of the prophecy. As Christians usually — if not 
 always — assembled to celebrate the Holy Eucharist, 
 we must suppose, with Bona, that such readings 
 formed part of the service. We are confirmed in 
 this belief by the benedictions, which occur so 
 frequently in the Epistles. These are Eucharistic 
 in character, and, as Freeman points out, are 
 often preceded by two other liturgical formulae — 
 the words of peace, and the kiss of peace — always 
 in the order in which they occur in the Liturgies. 
 Probst points out that most probably the out- 
 pourings of the Charismata of tongues and pro- 
 phecy took the place, upon occasion, of the lessons 
 from the Old Testament and the Apostolic letters. 
 If this be so we may gather some interesting details 
 concerning the first part of the Mass from the 
 rules laid down by St. Paul for the Charismata 
 (1 Cor. xiv.). Unbelievers were allowed to be 
 present (v. 16), the congregation sat during this 
 part of the service (v. 30), there were only two or 
 three lessons (vv. 27, 29). 
 
 In like manner we get glimpses from the Epistles 
 of other parts of the Liturgy. The Eucharistic 
 prayer seems to be referred to, with the people's 
 response, when St. Paul says, " through Him is 
 the Amen unto the Glory of God through us " 
 (2 Cor. i. 20). He orders intercessory prayer for 
 rulers and all in authority, and on the other occa- 
 sions commends himself to the prayers of the 
 faithful. The men of the congregation were to 
 pray with outstretched hands (1 Tim. ii. 8), as 
 is still directed by the deacon at the consecration 
 in the Liturgy of St. Mark ; they were to have 
 10 
 
146 STUDIES 
 
 their heads uncovered, while women were to be 
 veiled (1 Cor. xi.). The kiss of peace is described 
 in the earliest Epistle (1 Thess. v. 25, 26), and 
 placed after the prayer, this being its liturgical 
 position in the time of St. Justin. 
 
 For an account of the external ceremonial of 
 the Mass we must turn to the Apocalypse. The 
 description of heaven in the fourth chapter of 
 that book corresponds in so many points with 
 the celebration of the Holy Sacrifice, that we 
 cannot suppose the resemblance to be accidental. 
 The faithful, at any rate, of a hundred years later, 
 when they heard this passage read in church, 
 would recognise all the chief features of the Mass 
 at which they were going to assist. The bishop, 
 seated on his throne at the end of the church, 
 in the midst of his twenty-four white-robed pres- 
 byters ; the lamps burning before the divine 
 presence ; the chant of the Sanctum begun by the 
 mysterious living creatures, and taken up by the 
 elders ; the Eucharistic praises for the blessings 
 of creation and redemption, were all common to 
 the figure before them, and the reality beyond 
 their sight. If any doubt had remained in their 
 minds, the descent into their midst of the central 
 figure, the Lamb, " standing as it were slain," 
 showed that the type and the antitype were 
 identical. It is, indeed, certain that much of the 
 ritual was moulded on this description ; but unless 
 the ceremonies described already existed in the 
 Christian service, their significance would have 
 been lost upon the disciples of St. John. 
 
 One other point has to be considered, under 
 the head of the relation of the liturgy to the New 
 Testament. There are a certain number of passages 
 
THE EAELY HISTORY OF THE MASS 147 
 
 which are verbally the same in the Epistles and 
 in the Liturgies. Dr. J. M. Neale argued, with 
 much learning, that in all such cases the latter 
 are the source from which St. Paul is quoting ; 
 and he has been followed in this opinion by Mr. 
 Moultrie and other Anglican writers. It is, of 
 course, not antecedently impossible ; for it is 
 well known that in several places St. Paul quotes 
 hymns and prayers, so that if a Liturgy had been 
 already drawn up in a fixed shape we should expect 
 to find such traces of it. The direct evidence in 
 favour of this view is, however, exceedingly scanty, 
 and quite inadequate to overcome the improba- 
 bility, that a fixed Liturgy should have existed 
 before the Pauline Epistles were written. Dr. 
 Neale relies mainly on the quotation in 1 Cor. ii. 
 9 ; a passage, any way, of acknowledged difficulty. 
 In the Epistle the quotation begins with a rela- 
 tive, a, which has no grammatical antecedent ; 
 whereas in the Liturgy of St. James it occurs 
 in the prayer of the Great Oblation, regularly 
 connected with the immediately preceding word, 
 ScDprjfjLara. This is practically the only ground 
 for supposing that the Apostle is quoting the 
 Liturgy, for the other arguments adduced are 
 answers to objections either made or anticipated. 
 To most critics the very smoothness of connec- 
 tion, as the passage stands in the Liturgy, would 
 be a reason for thinking it the later form, on 
 the well-known principle, "ardua lectio praestat 
 faciliori" Beyond this, however, it is so abun- 
 dantly clear that the Greek Liturgies as we have 
 them now have undergone considerable and 
 repeated alterations, that a verbal point of this 
 
148 STUDIES 
 
 kind is of no value. 1 Probst has already pointed 
 out that this quotation is used by several of the 
 Eastern Liturgies, in different parts of the service, 
 as referring to the Blessed Sacrament ; just as 
 St. Justin took Isaias xxxiii. 13-19, to refer to 
 our Lord's presence in the Holy Eucharist. 2 Mr. 
 Field has enlarged the scope of Dr. Neale's argu- 
 ment, and presented it in a form with which we 
 shall be in less disagreement. While rejecting 
 what he very justly calls Dr. Neale's " most unfor- 
 tunate corollary," that in parallel passages St. 
 Paul quotes the Liturgy, and not vice versa, he 
 urges that the Epistles and the Apostolic Liturgy 
 must have been written under the influence of 
 the same ideas, and by persons familiar with the 
 same language, derived from Old Testament and 
 current Jewish literature. As a principle, this 
 will be easily admitted ; but there is much in Mr. 
 Field's application of it which I cannot accept. 
 For instance, the ninth chapter of the Epistle to 
 the Hebrews is closely parallel to the Prayer of 
 the Veil in the Liturgy of St. James ; but it by 
 no means follows that the latter is the original 
 
 1 The following is a striking example of what I mean. Dr. 
 Neale relied upon the 7jfuy in the sentence, " us His Apostles 
 and disciples," just before the words of institution, to prove 
 the antiquity of the Liturgy of St. James. Dr. Swainson 
 has, however, shown conclusively that this word is a sixteenth 
 century interpolation. 
 
 2 " It is clear that he is speaking in this prophecy of the 
 bread which our Christ directed us to consecrate .... 
 and of the cup which He directed us to consecrate with giving 
 
 of thanks And that we shall see this very king 
 
 in glory the same prophecy shows " (Dialogues c. 70). Origen's 
 application of Matth. xi. 25, to the Blessed Sacrament is an 
 even closer parallel. 
 
THE EARLY HISTORY OF THE MASS 149 
 
 which the Apostle was imitating : the converse 
 is far more probable. 
 
 The only positive evidence in the New Testa- 
 ment — St. Paul's language to the Corinthians 
 (1 Cor. xi. 23, 34) — points away from any hypo- 
 thesis of a fixed written Liturgy at that time, 
 and implies that both the general principles of 
 the Holy Sacrifice and the details of its celebration 
 were communicated orally by the Apostles to the 
 communities they founded, and supplemented as 
 need arose. The same conclusion follows irre- 
 sistibly from the local differences in detail, which 
 we find at a very early period ; for instance, between 
 the Church of Alexandria and the other Orientals. 
 The general framework was everywhere the same, 
 and many of the details were identical. But there 
 was sufficient variation in lesser points to make 
 it incredible that the Apostles should have delivered 
 to their disciples a Liturgy complete in all par- 
 ticulars and unalterable. It is, on the contrary, 
 the fact that the Eucharistic service, both in the 
 East and the West, underwent many more changes 
 in the first few centuries than have been made 
 since. The same Spirit which inspired the Apostles 
 has never ceased to suggest to their successors 
 the fittest means of honouring the Holy Sacrifice ; 
 so that every period has left its trace in the great 
 central act of worship — the Mass. We, the for- 
 tunate heirs of all the ages, worship in a temple 
 of which the foundations were laid under the 
 older covenant, and which has been enriched by 
 the piety and loving care of each succeeding genera- 
 tion. I shall endeavour to show, in a subsequent 
 paper, how these changes produced the Mass as 
 we now have it. 
 
150 
 
 THE EARLY HISTORY OF THE MASS. 
 
 * II. 
 
 I have already endeavoured to give an account 
 of the manner in which the Liturgy was probably 
 derived from the Jewish services. I was anxious 
 to state Professor BickelPs view with a fulness 
 which may have seemed unnecessary, because, so 
 far as I know, he has been the first among Catholics 
 to suggest a definite hypothesis whereby the frame- 
 work of the Mass could be connected with sources 
 anterior to Christianity. There has always been a 
 tradition in the Church, as SS. Jerome and Gregory 
 Nazianzen, 1 for instance, bear witness, that the 
 Christian Church derived its services from the 
 Synagogue. But the great liturgiologists of former 
 times were deterred from further inquiry by a 
 belief which I must consider before I can proceed 
 further. They held that in the earliest ages of 
 the Church there was no definite Liturgy beyond 
 the words of Institution and the Lord's Prayer, 
 which, they thought, were alone used whenever 
 stress of persecution or other circumstances made 
 it expedient to shorten the Mass as much as possible. 
 It is only due to the authority of these illustrious 
 scholars that this opinion should be carefully 
 
 1 S. Hieron. Ep. ad Evag. 85 ; S. Greg. Naz. Horn, in Pentec. 
 
THE EABLY HISTORY OF THE MASS 151 
 
 examined. It was based, so far as I can see, solely 
 upon the supposed authority of St. Gregory the 
 Great. In a passage which has been much dis- 
 puted he has been generally thought to say that 
 the Apostles were wont to use the Lord's Prayer 
 only at the offering of the sacrifice. 1 
 
 It is, however, equally possible grammatically, 
 as Probst points out, to connect " oblaiionis " 
 with " orationem" taking the two words together 
 as equivalent to our " Canon," and in opposition 
 to the " oratio dominica." As St. Gregory's object 
 was to direct " orationem dominicam mox post 
 canonem did" this construction would be much 
 more consistent, and removes all difficulty. If St. 
 Gregory's language admitted of no such simple 
 interpretation, we should be driven, with Le Brun, 
 respectfully to put aside his authority for this 
 historical statement, for it is hardly possible he 
 should have been unaware that several of his 
 predecessors had explicitly affirmed the Apostolic 
 origin of parts of the Liturgy. The same conclu- 
 sion follows as certainly from all that we know 
 of early liturgical history. I have already remarked 
 upon St. Paul's language to the Corinthians, as 
 showing that he delivered to his disciples, not 
 merely the formula of consecration, but also such 
 liturgical details as he thought needful ; and a 
 hundred years later- St. Justin states that the 
 
 1 " Orationem vero dominicam idcirco mox post precem dicimus, 
 quia mo8 apostolorum fuit, ut ad ipsam solummodo orationem 
 oblationis hostiam consecrarent ; et valde mihi inconveniens 
 visum est, ut precem, quam scholasticus composuerat, super obla- 
 tionem diceremus, et ipsam traditionem, quam redemptor noster 
 composuit, super eius corpus et sanguinem taceremus. Sed et 
 dominica oratio apud Oraecos ab omni populo dicitur, apud nos 
 vero a solo sacerdote^ — Ep. ad Joan. Syr. 1, 9 ; Ep. 12. 
 
152 STUDIES 
 
 Liturgy had been handed down to the faithful of 
 his own time from the Apostles. 1 Again, the 
 agreement of all Liturgies, not merely in their 
 general character, but also in many details, must 
 point to a common origin, which can hardly be 
 other than the Apostles themselves. 2 Finally, the 
 recovery of the lost passages of St. Clement's 
 Epistle has revealed so much that is even verbally 
 identical with the Alexandrian Liturgy as to lead 
 to the belief that the Pontiff was quoting the text 
 of the Mass. Even such a cautious scholar as 
 Dr. Lightfoot was satisfied that in St. Clement's 
 time — the end of the first century — there must 
 have been already not only a definite framework, 
 but more or less uniformity in the substance and 
 very language of the Liturgical petitions. 
 
 We may, then, safely assume that the main 
 substance of the Liturgy was delivered, and 
 delivered orally, by the Apostles to their disciples ; 
 the next question will naturally be : if there is 
 any evidence, how long it continued unwritten. 
 Le Brun supposed that it was handed down by 
 word of mouth alone until the fifth century ; but 
 the passages on which he based this opinion — 
 and Dr. Lightfoot could not add to their number 
 — are all susceptible of different interpretations. 
 St. Justin speaks of the bishop as pronouncing 
 
 1 " We Christians have learned the divine 
 
 worship through the Apostles of Jesus, from the law and the 
 word which have gone forth from Jerusalem." — Dial. cap. 110. 
 See, too, Tertullian, de Corona Militis, 3 and 4. 
 
 2 Such details are : the Lessons and the Gospel ; the " Sursum 
 Corda" the Preface, the Consecration ; the "Unde et memores"; 
 the Intercession for the Living and the Dead ; the Lord's 
 Prayer ; and the Fraction. 
 
THE EAELY HISTORY OF THE MASS 153 
 
 the Liturgical prayers oarj Svvajm avrco, a phrase 
 which may refer merely to fervency of supplica- 
 tion, and occurs also in a written Liturgy. Ter- 
 tullian, when he said u ut quisque de Scripturis 
 Sanctis, vel de proprio ingenio, provocatur in 
 medium canere," was evidently not speaking of 
 the celebrant, and apparently not of the strictly 
 liturgical part of the service ; and St. Basil points 
 out that the Liturgy has its warrant in tradition, 
 as distinguished from Scripture. 1 On the con- 
 trary, Celsus stated that he had seen the " bar- 
 barous books " of the Christian priests " with 
 daemonic names and portentous expressions " ; 
 and Origen's reply seems to show that this must 
 refer to liturgical books, and not merely to the 
 diptychs, as has been supposed. 2 
 
 However this may be, it is clear that definite 
 liturgical formulae must have existed in the second 
 century. Much of the evidence for this will appear 
 from what I shall have to say hereafter, so that I 
 will here only mention two points which will not 
 recur. The irofjurai /cat v^ivot of St. Justin, the 
 irpoo-ra'xPeicraL evyai* of Origen, can only be sup- 
 posed to mean set forms ; and this is completely 
 proved by finding the closest identity, not merely 
 in substance, but even in expression, between the 
 Liturgies and the liturgical allusions in these and 
 
 1 To these passages might now be added the permission 
 in the Didache (xi. 7) for the prophets to " give thanks 
 as much as they would " — evxapio-rw oaa 64\ou<riv. This 
 obscure phrase seems to me to refer to the outpourings of the 
 Charismata, which I have before remarked probably took the 
 place of the Lessons in the primitive Church upon occasion. 
 But the concession of such a liberty shows that there was even 
 then a liturgical order binding on the faithful. 
 
 2 Contra Celsum, vi. 40. 
 
154 STUDIES 
 
 others of the early Fathers. Again, St. Irenseus 
 and Tertullian could not have blamed the Gnostics 
 for corrupting the Liturgy if a text did not already 
 exist. 
 
 At the same time, it is not to be thought that 
 the Liturgy was looked upon as fixed and unchange- 
 able. A large amount of discretion in modifying 
 details was clearly in the hands of every bishop, 
 and was exercised — to mention no less illustrious 
 names — by such great Pontiffs as St. Leo and St. 
 Gregory in Rome, and St. Basil and St. Cyril of 
 Alexandria in the East. The circumstances of 
 the early Church, differing much in various places, 
 are a sufficient explanation of this liberty, which 
 probably existed from the beginning, since the 
 very earliest testimonies we have to the Liturgies 
 imply that there were already local differences. 
 Thus the account in St. Justin corresponds most 
 closely to the Clementine Liturgy ; the charac- 
 teristic features of the Roman Mass may be recog- 
 nised in Tertullian ; and Probst has shown that 
 some of the chief peculiarities of the Alexandrine 
 rite are to be found in Clement and Origen. Sir 
 W. Palmer has very justly remarked that this 
 twofold aspect of the Liturgy — identity of general 
 characters and divergence in details — is the strongest 
 proof of its Apostolic antiquity. " The uniformity 
 between these Liturgies, as extant in the fourth 
 or fifth century, is such as bespeaks a common 
 origin. Their diversity is such as to prove the 
 remoteness of the period at which they were 
 originated." 1 
 
 The local conditions that produced particular 
 
 1 Orig. Liturg., vol. i, p. 80. 
 
THE EARLY HISTORY OF THE MASS 155 
 
 liturgical developments cannot, however, now be 
 estimated. Fortunately, we are able to form a 
 better judgment of those much more important 
 general influences which have moulded the Litur- 
 gies into their present shapes ; and some account 
 of these is necessary to any understanding of our 
 subject. 
 
 1. The disciplines arcani. The early Church, as 
 is well known, kept from the heathen, as far as 
 possible, the knowledge of those mysteries of the 
 Faith which were likely to be misunderstood ; 
 and only imparted them even to inquirers who 
 were fitted for their reception by the intellectual 
 and moral training of the catechumenate. This 
 reserve applied more urgently to the Holy Eucharist 
 than to any other part of Christian belief or prac- 
 tice. Around it had gathered the most senseless 
 and revolting heathen accusations, of hidden orgies 
 and Thyestean banquets ; and it is wonderful to 
 note how the Christians hardly ever attempted 
 more than a simple denial of the atrocities with 
 which they were charged. Nothing can account 
 for their silence, save the knowledge that the 
 miracle wrought on Christian altars would have 
 been unintelligible to the Pagan mind, and would 
 have been received with blasphemous incredulity. 
 Even when St. Justin broke through the rule, we 
 can see that his account of the Holy Sacrifice, 
 though intelligible to us, can have given his non- 
 Christian readers no information as to the essential 
 character of that mystery. Archdeacon Freeman, 
 then, is quite right in assuming that the discipline/, 
 arcani must have played an important part in 
 shaping the Liturgy. But the instances he sug- 
 gests are conjectural, for there is no evidence that 
 
156 STUDIES 
 
 the entrance of the elements or the Lord's Prayer 
 have been moved from the beginning of the ser- 
 vice to their present positions. But in one respect 
 the law of reserve, and the catechumenal discipline 
 which was connected with it, have left a deeper 
 mark upon the Mass than any other ecclesiastical 
 conditions. I mean, of course, the dismissal of the 
 catechumens after the sermon and before the 
 sacrificial part of the service began ; whence the 
 division of every ancient Liturgy into the " Missa 
 Catechumenorum " and " Missa Fidelium." 
 
 2. The penitential discipline of the early Church 
 had the same effect. As is well known, those who 
 were sentenced to public penance had to leave the 
 church after the catechumens and before the 
 " Missa Fidelium," with the exception of the 
 ^vo-TcLvTes, or " Consistentes," who were allowed to 
 assist at the whole of Mass, though not admitted 
 to communion. One Liturgy still in use — that of 
 St. Chrysostom — retains the form of dismissal of 
 the catechumens ; and we learn from St. Gregory 
 and St. Ambrose that in their time, in Rome and 
 Milan, 1 the deacon proclaimed " qui non com- 
 municatis excite." Happily, a Liturgy is extant, 
 though not in use, which shows how the discipline 
 of the Church was carried out ; and I can imagine 
 nothing more calculated to impress on our minds 
 the awfulness of those holy mysteries which are 
 now unveiled to us all. In the Liturgy called the 
 Clementine, which we may on other grounds sup- 
 pose to be the most ancient, 2 we have the rubrics 
 
 1 Dial, ii. 23. 
 
 2 The publication of the eighth book of the Apostolical 
 Constitutions, which contains this Liturgy, is put by Drey 
 
THE EARLY HISTORY OF THE MASS 157 
 
 of a Mass when the discipline of the early Church 
 was in full vigour. According to this, four classes 
 were excluded from assisting at the Holy Sacrifice 
 — the catechumens ; the energumens, or possessed ; 
 the " competentes," (f>Q)Ti%6/j,€voi,, who had finished 
 their course of instruction and were awaiting bap- 
 tism ; and the penitents. Over each of these 
 classes in turn the deacon pronounced a bid- 
 ding-prayer calling upon the faithful for their 
 intercession, the people answering, " Kyrie eleison " ; 
 they were desired to bow their heads while the cele- 
 brant pronounced a prayer over them, and then left 
 the church. The prayer over the penitents will 
 give some idea of this very beautiful part of the 
 service : — 
 
 " Almighty eternal God, Lord of the Universe, 
 Creator and Governor of all things, who didst 
 through Christ design man to be the ornament 
 of the world, and gavest him an innate law and 
 a written one, that he might live as is reasonable 
 according to Thy precepts, and granted him when 
 he had sinned Thine Own goodness as a ground 
 for repentance : look down on those that have 
 bowed their souls and bodies to Thee, for Thou 
 wiliest not the death of the sinner, but his repent- 
 ance, that he may be converted from his evil way 
 and live. Thou that didst receive the repentance 
 of the Ninivites ; Thou that wiliest all men to be 
 
 at the beginning of the fourth century, but the documents it 
 embodies are doubtless much older. I will here only notice 
 the striking similarity between the prayer over the energumens, 
 presently referred to, and St. Justin's language on Possession. 
 It seems impossible to resist Mr. Moultrie's conclusion, that 
 the prayer must have been known to that Father in the middle 
 of the second century. 
 
158 STUDIES 
 
 saved, and to come to the knowledge of the truth ; 
 Thou that didst with a fatherly heart receive, 
 because of his repentance, the son that had wasted 
 his substance riotously ; do Thou Thyself even 
 now receive the penitence of Thy suppliants ; 
 since there is no man that sinneth not before Thee, 
 for if Thou, O Lord, shalt mark iniquities, Lord 
 who shall abide it ? because with Thee there is 
 mercy. And restore them to Thy Holy Church 
 in their former repute and honour, through Christ 
 our God and Saviour, through Whom," &c. 
 
 The Kyrie eleison before the Gloria of our present 
 Mass seems to me a vestige, directly or indirectly 
 through the Alexandrian Mass, of these prayers. 
 St. Gregory speaks of the Kyrie as in use before 
 his time ; it was prescribed in Gaul early in the 
 sixth century ; and there is a tradition that 
 St. Silvester introduced it from the East. In the 
 Alexandrian Liturgy there are nine Kyrie eleison, 
 divided equally by three prayers which are clearly 
 of later date than the Council of Chalcedon. 
 
 3. The relaxation of the discipline of the Church 
 — catechumenal and penitential — probably began 
 soon after persecution ceased, though it was com- 
 pletely effected at different times in various parts 
 of Christendom. 1 
 
 The disuse of the prayer over the catechumens 
 and penitents left a void which was filled in the 
 Roman Mass by the Gloria in Excelsis, and by the 
 Collects, of which such a wealth is found in the 
 earliest sources. 
 
 1 Innocent I. speaks of the penitential discipline as long 
 obsolete even in his time ; and it is not found even in the oldest 
 Sacramentaries (Funk : in Wetzer and Welte's KircherUexicon, 
 s.v. Bussdisciplin). 
 
THE EAELY HISTORY OF THE MASS 159 
 
 4. The gradual development of the festivals of 
 the ecclesiastical year led, in the West, to the 
 multiplication of variables to commemorate the 
 several mysteries celebrated, the special Prefaces 
 and additions to the Communicantes — at first so 
 numerous — being designed for this purpose. There 
 are indications of variations on different days at 
 a very early period. The different accounts of 
 the Liturgy in the Didache and St. Justin are 
 probably thus explained ; and we find in Origen 
 that in his day the Scripture was not read through 
 in order, a lesson from Leviticus following one 
 from Isaias. 
 
 5. Finally, the separation between the East and 
 West, which began with Constantine, caused further 
 divergence between the Liturgies. The supremacy 
 of the Holy See led to the gradual substitution 
 of the Roman rite for the Hispano-Gallican, the 
 other great Liturgy of the West. It is well known 
 that the latter survives only in the Mozarabic ser- 
 vices which have been perpetuated by the care 
 of Cardinal Ximenes at Toledo. The Gallican rite 
 has been suppressed ever since the ninth century, 
 but it left behind considerable traces in the Uses 
 of mediaeval England, France and Germany, which 
 were Roman with peculiarities of Hispano-Gallic 
 origin. At the same time the Gallican Liturgy 
 reacted to a less extent on the Roman, some even 
 of the later additions to the Roman Mass being 
 derived from that source. In the East the political 
 supremacy of Constantinople, and its theological 
 orthodoxy at the time of the great heresies bearing 
 on the Incarnation, gave it an ascendency over 
 the rest of the Orthodox Church, so that all the 
 Liturgies were modified by conformity with the 
 
160 STUDIES 
 
 Constantinopolitan. Their earlier forms can, how- 
 ever, be in great part traced by comparing the 
 rites which the Nestorians on the one hand and 
 the Monophysites on the other took with them 
 when they left the Church. 
 
 Such are the chief conditions which have pro- 
 duced the Liturgies as we now find them. A very 
 summary account of them, with their several 
 characteristics, which I borrow mainly from Mr. 
 Hammond's valuable text-book, will be necessary 
 to make the relations of the Roman Mass to them 
 intelligible. 
 
 The Oriental Liturgies, in the first place, are 
 distinguished from Western ones by having no 
 variable parts except the lections and subordinate 
 hymns. The Eastern ones may be divided into 
 the following groups, the distinctive mark chosen 
 by liturgiologists being the position of the Inter- 
 cession for the Living and the Dead : — 
 
 1. In the West Syrian group this is placed after 
 the Invocation of the Holy Ghost, which in the 
 Eastern Liturgies follows the words of Institution. 
 The earliest Liturgy known of this type is called 
 the " Greek St. James," which seems to be descended 
 from the Clementine, noticed above, with several 
 changes to bring it into conformity with the rite 
 of Constantinople. It has in turn been the parent 
 on the one hand, of the numerous Liturgies used 
 by the Syrian Jacobites, and, on the other, of the 
 Liturgy of St. Basil, which there is some ground 
 for connecting with that saint. 
 
 Later modifications of the same Liturgy are the 
 Armenian and that named after St. Chrysostom. 
 The latter is the usual Mass of the Greek Church, 
 the Liturgy of St. Basil being said on the Sundays 
 
THE EARLY HISTORY OF THE MASS 161 
 
 in Lent and a few other days. This group corre- 
 sponds roughly in its original extent with the 
 Patriarchate of Jerusalem. 
 
 2. The East Syrian family seems to have grown 
 up in the Patriarchate of Antioch ; it is now used 
 only by the Nestorians. The Malabar Liturgy, 
 used by the Christians of St. Thomas in India 
 until the Portuguese conquest, belongs to this 
 family, the distinguishing mark of which is the 
 position of the Intercession between the words of 
 Institution and the Invocation of the Holy Ghost. 
 
 3. The Alexandrian group is marked by the 
 prominent place assigned to the deacon in the 
 Office, and the position of the Intercession in the 
 middle of the Preface. The earliest extant docu- 
 ment of this family is the Greek Liturgy known 
 as "St. Mark's," which has evidently been modi- 
 fied under the influence of Constantinople, and 
 represents the rite followed by the few orthodox 
 Christians who remained in Egypt after the 
 Monophy sites broke off from the Church. The 
 Liturgies which these took with them, and still 
 u?e, enable us to form a clear idea of what was the 
 Alexandrian norm at the time of the Council of 
 Chalcedon in the middle of the fifth century. 
 These Liturgies are : two used by the Copts, 
 St. Basil's and St. Cyril's, and the Ethiopic, which 
 is the Mass of the Monophy sites of Abyssinia. 
 
 Turning to the Western Liturgies, the most 
 striking peculiarity of the Hispano-Gallic family 
 is the precise opposite of the Oriental Liturgies — 
 the great abundance of variable elements. Not 
 only do the Collects and Prefaces change with 
 every holiday, but the greater part of the prayers 
 corresponding to our Canon vary also. In other 
 11 
 
162 STUDIES 
 
 respects its affinities are with the Eastern Litur- 
 gies rather than with the Roman ; for example, 
 the Kiss of Peace comes before the Anaphora ; 
 there are " Preces " like the Deacon's Litany of 
 the Orientals ; and the exclamation " Sancta 
 Sanctis " comes after the consecration. The origin 
 of this Liturgy is still rather a crux to liturgiolo- 
 gists. Since Sir W. Palmer's researches, it has 
 been generally believed in this country that it is 
 derived from a type which prevailed in Asia Minor 
 before the Council of Laodicea in the fourth cen- 
 tury. The Abbe Duchesne, 1 however, takes a 
 different view. He urges that the very highly 
 developed character of the Hispano-Gallic rite 
 points to its importation from the East at a much 
 later date than the first or second century ; and 
 that the Church of Lyons had not, after that time, 
 the ascendency in Gaul which would be required 
 to account for the wide diffusion of the rite. He 
 prefers to think it was introduced directly into 
 Milan from the East by the Arianising Bishop 
 Auxentius about the middle of the fourth century, 
 and spread thence over Gaul and Spain. As far 
 as I can judge with my much more limited know- 
 ledge, I am unable to follow him in this. I can 
 hardly doubt that the Liturgy was sufficiently 
 developed in its main structure in the time of St. 
 Irenseus to allow of its transference from Asia 
 
 1 Origines du Cvlte chretien (Paris : Thorin), chap. iii. This 
 learned work has appeared since I began to write on this 
 subject, or I should have had frequent occasion to refer to 
 it. It is devoted to describing the Western Liturgies from 
 the fourth to the ninth century, and the production of the 
 present Mass by their fusion. I cannot too warmly recommend 
 it to all who wish for more than the very brief account which 
 is all I have been able to give of this stage of Liturgical evolution. 
 
THE EAELY HISTOEY OF THE MASS 163 
 
 Minor to Gaul, as a tradition of great antiquity 1 
 asserted. On the other hand, it is exceedingly 
 improbable that a Liturgy could have been brought 
 in so late, and under such unsatisfactory auspices, 
 and have supplanted those which had then been 
 long in possession of the West. It is, however, 
 very likely that some of the details of this rite 
 may have been so imported from the East ; it is 
 certainly difficult to account for them otherwise. 
 
 Finally, the Roman Liturgy is distinguished 
 from all others by the separation of the Inter- 
 cession into two parts, the Prayer for the Living 
 being said before the Consecration, and that for 
 the Dead after it. This is also the only Liturgy 
 which puts the Pax after the Consecration. The 
 Mass of the ancient Church of Africa was doubtless 
 closely allied to that of Rome. There has been 
 more doubt concerning the Ambrosian Liturgy ; 
 but the general opinion is that it was an early 
 offshoot of the Roman, with a few traces of Oriental 
 and Gallican influences. 
 
 Many of the Liturgies I have briefly mentioned 
 are now obsolete, and our knowledge of them is 
 based upon one or two manuscripts only. More- 
 
 1 I refer, of course, to the fragment of an Irish MS. in Spel- 
 man's Concilia, i., p. 177, assigned by that antiquary to the 
 date 681 or 682. As the extract which Palmer gives suppresses 
 the first part, in which the early prevalence of the Roman rite 
 in Southern Gaul is stated, I give a longer quotation : " B. 
 Trofimus Ep. Arelatensis, et S. Photinus martyr, discipulus 
 S. Petri in Gallia, sicut et refert Iosephus et Eusebius, cursum 
 
 Romanum in Galliis tradiderunt B. Ireneum 
 
 Clemens ordinavit ; hoc in libro ipsius S. Irenei repperies. ... 
 Ioannes Evangelista primum cursum Gallorum cantavit ; inde 
 postea B. Polycarpus discipulus S. Ioannis ; inde postea Ireneus 
 qui fuit Episcopus Lugdunensis, tertius ipse ipsum cursum 
 decantavit in Galleis." 
 
164 STUDIES 
 
 over, the development even of those which are 
 still in use, such as the Roman in the West, and 
 St. Chrysostom's in the East, can only be studied 
 by going back to the earliest documents which 
 have preserved them. In the case of the Roman 
 Liturgy these have been rendered accessible and 
 edited critically by the great scholars of past 
 generations, from Thomasius to Daniel, though 
 it is more than probable that a fresh collation 
 of the original texts would yield results of interest 
 and importance. But the Greek Liturgies have, 
 strangely enough, never been examined critically 
 since their first publication in the sixteenth and 
 seventeenth centuries until Dr. Swainson took them 
 in hand. His edition demands, and would well 
 repay, a detailed notice ; I can here only give the 
 shortest summary of the results of his careful 
 and competent labours. 
 
 It is clear that many more changes have been 
 made in the course of time in even the oldest 
 Liturgies extant than had been generally suspected. 
 " We must look to the Anaphora in each, com- 
 mencing with the Apostolic Benediction and end- 
 ing with the Lord's Prayer, as containing the 
 only ancient parts of the service." 1 The earlier 
 part of the Mass, of course, in each instance, con- 
 tains much of great antiquity ; but so many changes 
 of position and so many additions have been made 
 that no part is to be regarded as ancient without 
 independent evidence. Thus, the Greek St. James, 
 which has been looked upon as the most primitive 
 rite by many scholars, is (according to Dr. Swain- 
 son) not older in its present form than the seventh 
 
 1 Swainson' s Greek Liturgies , p. xlii. 
 
THE EARLY HISTORY OF THE MASS 165 
 
 century, and is clearly much indebted to other 
 Liturgies. 1 Again, the growth of the Liturgies of 
 St. Basil and St. Chrysostom may be to a great 
 extent traced, the pro-Anaphoral parts having 
 been combined and recast between the eighth and 
 eleventh centuries ; and we are also informed 
 that the preparatory prayers are considerably later 
 still. We also learn that the name of St. John 
 Chrysostom was in the earliest MS. given only to 
 two of the prayers in this Liturgy, whence it must 
 have spread to the whole. It will not be thought 
 that I refer to this evidence of the changes which 
 time has wrought in the Oriental Liturgies as 
 derogating in the least from the value of these 
 venerable rites. Immobility in the public worship 
 of the Church, as in every other matter, is only 
 a sign of death, and the beauty of the Liturgy 
 is enhanced by traces of the piety of successive 
 generations. Yet Dr. Swainson's results are of 
 great importance as showing that the verbal anti- 
 quity of the Eastern Liturgies cannot be pressed. 
 The belief that considerable portions of them are 
 word for word the same as in the days of the 
 Apostles appeals with seductive force to the imagina- 
 tion, and has also, I fear, been exaggerated in order 
 to suggest by implication that the Roman Mass is 
 less primitive ; but it will not bear examination. 
 
 I now turn to the history of the Roman Mass 
 alone, and it will be convenient that I should first 
 give a short account of the oldest documents con- 
 taining it, to which I shall frequently need to refer. 
 
 1 Thus, I have already mentioned that the rifuv in the Com- 
 memoration of the Institution, which Dr. Neale regarded as 
 denoting the authorship of an Apostle for St. James, turns out 
 to be a very late addition. 
 
166 STUDIES 
 
 1. The most ancient is a Sacramentary dis- 
 covered by Blanchini at Verona, and attributed 
 by him to St. Leo the Great ; but most authorities 
 differ from him, and ascribe it, with Muratori and 
 the Ballerini, to an unknown Roman ecclesiastic 
 of the time of Felix III. (483). It contains only 
 variable parts of the Mass — Collects, Prefaces, 
 Post-Communions, and Benedictions — and is, un- 
 fortunately, mutilated, beginning with April. The 
 very disorder and incompleteness of the collection 
 is a strong proof of its antiquity, and that it must 
 have been compiled before any order had been 
 introduced into these parts of the Mass. 
 
 2. The Gelasian Sacramentary is derived from 
 the comparison of various MSS. published by 
 Cardinal Thomasius and Gerbert, which date from 
 the eighth to the tenth century. There seems no 
 reasonable doubt that the greater part of the 
 Canon and variables they contain are the recen- 
 sion of Pope Gelasius (492), who, as we know 
 independently, revised the Liturgy. 1 This collec- 
 tion is much more orderly in its arrangement than 
 the preceding one ; it contains two Collects for 
 every Sunday, and a large number of special Pre- 
 faces and additions to the Canon. M. Duchesne 
 points out that Thomasius's MS. must have been 
 brought into France about the seventh century, 
 that it contains many Gallican peculiarities, and 
 probably belonged originally to the celebrated 
 Abbey of St. Denis. 
 
 3. St. Gregory the Great, at the end of the 
 
 1 Anastasius says of him, " Fecit sacramentorum praefationes 
 et orationes cauto sermone" ; and Walafridus, " Preces tarn a 
 se quam ab aliis compositas dicitur ordinasse." 
 
THE EARLY HISTORY OF THE MASS 167 
 
 sixth century, revised the Liturgy — " multa sub- 
 trahens, pauca convertens, nonnulla superadjiciens " 
 (Joan. Diac.) — and practically reduced the Canon 
 of the Mass to its present form, making the last 
 addition to it (" diesque nostros . . . numerari") 
 and placing the Pater noster immediately after the 
 Canon. He omitted most of the special Prefaces 
 and additions to the Canon given in the earlier 
 Sacramentaries, reduced the number of Collects 
 to one, and rearranged them all. M. Duchesne 
 gives reasons for believing that the Gregorian 
 Sacramentary, as it has reached us, dates from 
 the time of Hadrian I. (about 790), to whom 
 Charlemagne applied for the Roman Mass, which 
 he wished to introduce into his empire. 
 
 In order to arrive at some idea of the Mass in 
 its earliest form, we had best start from it as we 
 have it now, and note all the additions of any 
 importance that have been made, with their sources 
 and dates. We shall find that the chief altera- 
 tions that took place in the later Middle Ages 
 were the gradual addition of prayers, which can 
 be traced back for many centuries in France and 
 Germany, though they were at first only local and 
 optional. The latest are the Gospel of St. John, 
 at the end of the Mass, and the Psalm Judica, at 
 the beginning, both of which were introduced into 
 the Roman Missal at the revision of St. Pius V. 
 But the former had been for some time recited 
 in many dioceses ; and the latter is found in many 
 mediaeval Missals, being probably derived from 
 the Gallican Liturgy. It was generally recited as 
 the celebrant went from the sacristy to the altar, 
 but was recommended by Innocent III. to be said 
 as at present. The Domine non sum dignus is 
 
168 STUDIES 
 
 of about the same date ; it is found in at least 
 one mediaeval Missal, but was not in general use 
 until the end of the sixteenth century. It must, 
 however, have been recognised as an appropriate 
 prayer before Communion from very early times, 
 for it is recommended as such by Origen. 1 The 
 three prayers after the Agnus Dei are all ancient, 
 but did not come into general use until the end 
 of the Middle Ages. The third prayer {Perceptio 
 corporis Tui) is probably the oldest ; it alone is 
 found in the Good Friday Mass, and it is closely 
 similar to the prayer before Communion in almost 
 all the Oriental Liturgies. 
 
 The Confiteor was inserted at the beginning of 
 Mass in the eleventh century. There is, however, 
 reason to suppose that a confession was made 
 by the priest before the Offertory at least as early 
 as St. Augustine's day, and it would seem from 
 the Didache to have formed part of the Liturgy in 
 sub-apostolic times. 
 
 There were no fixed prayers at the Offertory 
 until the twelfth century, the priest before then 
 making the offering in silence, with the exception 
 of the Oratio super oblata, or Secret. Those now 
 contained in the Missal were derived from the 
 Hispano-Gallic rite, the Offerimus and In spiritu 
 from the Gallican, the Suscipe and Veni sanctifi- 
 cator apparently directly from the Mozarabic. The 
 last is particularly interesting, as containing the 
 Invocation of the Holy Ghost ; it originally con- 
 tained the words Sancte Spiritus, and even in Le 
 Brun's time the Veni sancte Spiritus, reple tuorum 
 corda or the Veni Creator was recited in its stead 
 in some churches in France. 
 
 1 Horn. vi. in Evang. 
 
THE EAELY HISTORY OF THE MASS 169 
 
 The two prayers after Communion were also 
 added in the Middle Ages, though somewhat earlier 
 than the Offertory prayers. They first occur as 
 Post-Communions in the Missale Gothicum of the 
 eighth century. 
 
 About the same time the latter part of the Orate 
 fratres was added by way of explanation, the 
 request for the prayers of the people being older. 
 Other responses were made in various places, such 
 as Spiritus sanctus superveniet in te, et virtus Altis- 
 simi obumbrabit tibi (also used in Greek Liturgies), 
 or Memor sit Dominus sacrificii tui. 
 
 The Agnus Dei is considerably more ancient, 
 having been introduced by Sergius I. in 680 ; 
 but the ending dona nobis pacem is later, having 
 been brought in, according to Innocent III., at a 
 time of special trouble in the Church. The use 
 of the Gloria in excelsis on Sundays and holy-days 
 by priests must be also mediaeval, since the Gre- 
 gorian Sacramentary only permits this to bishops, 
 others saying it on Easter Sunday only. 1 
 
 If John the Deacon's authority, three hundred 
 years later, is to be accepted, St. Gregory drew up 
 the Introits, Offertories, and Communions very 
 much as we have them now, being abridgments of 
 the Psalms originally sung by the choir on the 
 entrance into the Church, while the gifts were being 
 placed on the altar, and while Communion was 
 being given. I shall return to these later ; mean- 
 while it may be remarked that we have one sur- 
 vival of the long Offertory in the Mass for the Dead, 
 
 ! The rubric " Sic dicitur etiam in Missis B.V.Mr which 
 has given rise to inquiry, is to exclude the mediaeval additions 
 to the Gloria in Masses " de Beato." 
 
170 STUDIES 
 
 where probably it was retained because the custom 
 of offering lingered longer than in other Masses. 
 The principal change concerning the Introit, Offer- 
 tory, and Communion during the period we are 
 now studying was that the celebrant came to recite 
 these parts of the service, which were at first choral ; 
 I suppose the custom began with private Masses, 
 and extended thence to all. It may be well to 
 remark that liturgiologists believe the " Or emus " 
 before the Offertory did not originally belong to 
 that prayer, but to one before the unveiling of the 
 chalice, still preserved as the " oratio super sin- 
 donem " in the Ambrosian rite. The Creed was 
 first brought into the Mass in the West by the 
 third Council of Toledo in 589, whence it spread 
 into France and Germany to exclude the Adoptionist 
 heresy in the eighth century. It occupies the same 
 position in the Oriental Liturgies as in our Mass ; 
 but the Mozarabic rite puts it after the Consecra- 
 tion, and during the Fraction. 
 
 We can now form a tolerably accurate concep- 
 tion of the Ordinary of the Mass as it must have 
 been in St. Gregory's day. A Psalm, or part of one, 
 was sung by the choir on the entrance of the cele- 
 brant, who then said the Collect. The Epistle 
 followed, separated from the Gospel by a Psalm, 
 represented by our Gradual or Tract ; and after 
 the Gospel came the sermon, and the withdrawal 
 of those who had no right to assist at the Holy 
 Sacrifice. The choir sung a Psalm while the faith- 
 ful brought their offering, the celebrant making 
 the oblation in silence, and ending with the Secret. 
 Then came the Preface and Canon, as at present, 
 followed by the Lord's Prayer, the Fraction, and 
 the Kiss of Peace. The celebrant and faithful then 
 
THE EARLY HISTORY OF THE MASS 171 
 
 received Communion, a Psalm being sung mean- 
 while ; and the Mass was concluded by a variable 
 Post-Communion and a " Benedictio super populum" 
 It will be remarked that none of the alterations 
 and additions I have enumerated affect the Canon. 
 This most important part of the Mass remains 
 now word for word the same as it was when St. 
 Gregory revised it 1,300 years ago. Two changes 
 have, indeed, been made since then, but neither 
 has affected the verbal identity of the Canon in 
 all that time. The first is, the addition of the 
 Elevation, after the Consecration, as a protest 
 against the heresy of Berengarius in France in the 
 eleventh century. The Elevation of the Greek 
 Liturgies appears to correspond more to what has 
 been called the " lesser elevation " at the end of 
 the Canon. The other change is at the conclusion 
 of the Canon. It seems from the Gelasian Sacra- 
 mentary that the words Per quern haec omnia 
 . . . . praestas nobis were originally the end 
 of a Benediction of the new fruits of the spring. 
 Many mediaeval Missals, too, direct that bread, oil, 
 and other things should be blessed at this part of 
 the Mass, so that the custom of doing so must have 
 long prevailed. This appears to give the original 
 meaning of the words haec omnia bona and creas, 
 though there is no doubt that — as Le Brun urges — 
 they are now very fitly applied to the Blessed 
 Sacrament. Even these exceptions, it will be seen, 
 do not touch the words of the Canon, which remains 
 the same now as when it left the hands of St. 
 Gregory. Nothing further would be needed to 
 justify the measured language of the Council of 
 Trent. It was there laid down (Sess. xxii. cap. 4) 
 that " the Church instituted the holy Canon of the 
 
172 STUDIES 
 
 Mass many centuries ago," and that " it consists 
 of the very words of our Lord, of the traditions of 
 the Apostles, and of the devout institutions of holy 
 Pontiffs." We can now, however, trace the main 
 order and structure of the Roman Liturgy, and 
 even part of its language, to a much earlier period ; 
 and this is what I propose to do next. 
 
173 
 
 
 THE EARLY HISTORY OF THE MASS. 
 
 III. 
 
 The greatest change made in the Holy Sacrifice 
 during the centuries immediately preceding St. 
 Gregory, was the introduction of the variable 
 parts of the Mass known as Collects, Secrets, Post- 
 Communions and Prefaces. These last, indeed, 
 became so numerous in the earlier Sacramentaries, 
 that St. Gregory dealt with them in the same way 
 as St. Pius V. treated the Sequences and other 
 mediaeval additions to the Missal ; only a few 
 were retained, as examples of what had once been 
 so frequent. It is not easy to determine when, 
 and under what influences, these parts of the 
 Mass had their origin. Their profusion in the 
 Gelasian Sacramentary — which, after supplying Col- 
 lects to many of the post-Gregorian additions to 
 the Missal, still contains many of great beauty 
 that are unused — implies that they were not of 
 recent introduction when that work was com- 
 piled. The same is true of the earlier Leonine 
 Sacramentary, though here the irregularity of 
 their number and arrangement shows that we 
 have got nearer to their first employment in the 
 Mass. Many of the Collects and Prefaces so 
 closely resemble the thoughts and the terse anti- 
 thetical style of St. Leo, that we can hardly be 
 wrong in ascribing them to that great Pontiff. 
 
174 STUDIES 
 
 The alternative, that they were extracted from 
 his works, would hardly survive an examination 
 of the parallel passages collected by Muratori 
 and the Ballerini — an examination which might 
 easily be extended. Moreover, the stress laid 
 in so many of them on the necessity of divine 
 grace points to a time when Pelagianism was rife. 
 Contemporaneously with St. Leo, we find the 
 fourth Council of Carthage speaking of Collects 
 as in use, and the Council of Milevi (416) prohibit- 
 ing those which had not been approved. To go 
 farther back, M. Duchesne points out that some 
 of the Gelasian variables refer to the influence 
 of the anchorites in Rome in the time of SS. 
 Damasus and Siricius. Nor will Sala's statement 
 appear incredible, that some of the prayers, espe- 
 cially for baptism, must date from a time when 
 paganism was still prevalent, and must therefore 
 go back as far as SS. Silvester and Julius in the 
 fourth century. There are distinct traces of prayers 
 like our Collects at a much earlier period, such 
 as this passage in St. Irenseus : " Lord, God of 
 Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob and Israel, 
 who art the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ ; 
 God Who, out of the abundance of Thy mercy, 
 hast been pleased that we should know Thee, 
 Who didst make heaven and earth, governest 
 all things, art the only true God, above Whom 
 there is none other, grant, through our Lord Jesus 
 Christ, that the Holy Ghost too may govern us " 
 (iii. 6, 4). St. Fulgentius testifies that the prayers 
 ended in his day in Africa with the same words 
 we now employ. 1 
 
 1 " In orationibu8 sacerdotum per Dominum nostrum J. C, 
 qui tecum vivit et regnat in unitate Spiritus Sancti, per universal 
 
THE EARLY HISTOEY OF THE MASS 175 
 
 There is good reason, then, for believing that 
 prayers of this kind have been used in the Western 
 Church from a very early period ; we have next 
 to inquire under what influences they became part 
 of the Roman Mass. Palmer conjectured that 
 they were due to the example of the Church of 
 Alexandria. He pointed out that Cassian describes 
 such prayers as said by the monks in Egypt ; 
 these are, however, connected in Cassian's account 
 with the Office rather than with the Liturgy. He 
 also noticed the close resemblance between our 
 Collects and certain prayers in the Coptic St. 
 Basil. The latter, however, are not variable, so 
 that the analogy fails in an essential particular. 
 Nor will any Oriental rite furnish us with parallels 
 to the special Prefaces and additions to the Canon 
 that have also to be accounted for. All of these 
 are to be found in the Hispano-Gallic Liturgies ; 
 and (assuming the antiquity of this Liturgy) I 
 would therefore rather look to it for the influence 
 which introduced the variables into the Roman 
 rite. The position of the Collect seems to point 
 to the Spanish Mass, in which the Gloria expands 
 into a special termination for each feast. 
 
 We are able to date more satisfactorily the 
 introduction of the psalm at the Introit, since 
 it is ascribed to St. Celestine (421-430). We 
 learn from St. Augustine that at the same time 
 selections from the psalms were first sung in Africa : 
 " sive ante oblationem, sive cum distribueretur populo 
 id quod fuisset oblatum" (Retract ii. 11). Here 
 
 paene Africae regiones dicer e Catkolica consuevit Ecclesia^ (Ad 
 Ferrand.) Tertullian's language (Apol. 21) seems to imply 
 that a similar form was used in his time. 
 
176 STUDIES 
 
 an Eastern, and in particular an Alexandrian, 
 influence is more obvious. We find in the works 
 of the so-called Areopagite an account of the 
 Alexandrian Mass in the fourth century, 1 from 
 which it appears that a psalm was " almost always " 
 sung before the lessons, and another at the un- 
 veiling of the Elements, which corresponded to 
 our Offertory. From the Apostolical Constitutions 
 and St. Jerome, we learn that in the East the 
 33rd Psalm was sung during the Communion, 
 being no doubt selected on account of the verse, 
 " Taste and see that the Lord is sweet," which 
 is so often referred to the Blessed Sacrament by 
 early Christian writers. 
 
 The psalms after each lesson, from which our 
 Gradual and Tract are derived, have been in use 
 for a much longer period. I mentioned in my 
 first paper that they were chanted in the Jewish 
 Synagogal service ; they seem to be referred to 
 by Tertullian, and they are described in the earlier 
 account of the Liturgy in the Apostolical Consti- 
 tutions (ii. 57). The prayers for the catechu- 
 mens, energumens, and penitents, before their 
 exclusion from the sacred mysteries, must have 
 been omitted from the Roman Mass about the 
 same time as the Introits and Offertories were 
 introduced. I have already said that this part 
 of the Liturgy is extant only in the so-called 
 Clementine Liturgy of the Apostolical Constitutions 
 (viii. 6-9) ; but we have evidence that it must at 
 one time have been contained in the Roman Mass. 
 Tertullian tells us 2 that the sermon was followed 
 
 1 Eccl. Hier., cap. 3, ss. 2, 3. 
 
 2 Apol. 39. 
 
THE EARLY HISTORY OF THE MASS 177 
 
 by " exhortationes , castigationes, et censura divina" 
 these terms being respectively applicable to the 
 prayers over the catechumens, the possessed, 
 and the penitents. It must have been retained 
 in Rome as late as Sozomen. That historian 
 was much impressed by the fervour of the peni- 
 tents, who " cast themselves on the ground groan- 
 ing and lamenting. The bishop, weeping, comes 
 forward to meet them, prostrates himself with 
 them, and the whole congregation sheds tears. 
 Then the bishop, rising up himself, raises those 
 who are prostrate, dismissing them with a prayer 
 suitable for repentant sinners." 1 
 
 In St. Gregory's days so much at least of the 
 ancient discipline was preserved that the deacon 
 proclaimed, " If any one does not communicate, 
 let him depart " 2 ; just as in the Ethiopic Liturgy 
 even now the deacon says, Qui non communicatis 
 exite. Abundant evidence is to be found in St. 
 Justin of these prayers, but I cannot appeal to 
 him for proof of their existence in the Roman 
 Mass, because there is so much doubt whether 
 he describes the ordinary Liturgy of the Church 
 of Rome at all. 
 
 This part of the Mass has passed away, leaving 
 no trace in our present service ; that which fol- 
 lowed it in the primitive Liturgies has fortunately 
 been preserved for us. After the exclusion of 
 those who were deemed unfit to assist at the holy 
 
 1 H. E. vii. 16. Compare with this the vivid picture in 
 Tertullian's De Pudicitia, where the penitents implore the 
 intercession of the faithful, and the Pope is moved to indulgence 
 by their united prayers. 
 
 2 Dial. ii. 23. 
 
 12 
 
178 STUDIES 
 
 sacrifice, a series of prayers followed in which 
 all present joined, which were therefore called 
 the " Prayers of the Faithful." 1 
 
 It seems to be generally admitted that these 
 are represented in our Missal by the prayers which 
 on Good Friday follow the Passion, and precede 
 the Adoration of the Cross. M. Duchesne, the 
 latest Catholic writer on this subject, points out 
 that these occupy the exact place of the Prayers 
 of the Faithful, and that nothing in them is so 
 characteristic of Good Friday as to have caused 
 their special insertion on that day. It is infinitely 
 more likely that in this, as in many other respects, 
 the Good Friday Mass is the only survival of an 
 earlier stage of the Liturgy. M. Duchesne thinks 
 the Oremus at the Offertory is the last remains 
 of this part of the Office in our present Mass. 
 
 It is strange that, so far as I know, no one has 
 examined these prayers critically with a view 
 to determine their age and original character. 
 If I now do so only as far as they concern my 
 present subject, it is in the hope that some one 
 may be induced to study, more completely than I 
 have done, this very interesting part of the service. 
 
 It will be at once remarked that the Good Friday 
 prayers, consist of two series : bidding - prayers 
 which precede the Flectamus genua, and Collects, 
 which follow the Levate. The latter may, I believe, 
 be set aside at once as much later in date than 
 the former. Their style shows that they come 
 from the same hands as the collects of the Sacra- 
 
 e7T6iTO aviffrdficOa Koivij Trdvres Kal ivxks irefiirofiw. 
 
 We all stand up together and pray," St. Justin, Apol. 67. 
 
THE EAELY HISTOBY OF THE MASS 179 
 
 mentaries ; they have no analogues in the Oriental 
 Liturgies ; and so far as my reading goes, they 
 are quoted by no writer of antiquity. The bid- 
 ding-prayers, on the contrary, are referred to 
 sufficiently often and clearly to establish their 
 existence at an early period. Thus St. Celestine 
 (about 432) says : " Praesules .... tota 
 secum ecclesia congemiscente postulant et precantur 
 . . . . ut idololatrae ab impietatis suae liberentur 
 error ibus, ut Iudaeis ablato cordis velamine lux 
 veritatis appareat y ut haeretici catholicae fidei per- 
 ceptione resipiscant, ut schismatici spiritum redivivae 
 caritatis accipiant, ut lapsis poenitentiae remedia 
 conferantur, ut denique catechumenis ad regenera- 
 tionis sacramenta perductis coelestis misericordiae 
 aula reseretur ." 
 
 I think, too, there can be no doubt that St. 
 Augustine refers to the same prayers when he 
 says : " Quando audis sacerdotem Dei ad altar e 
 exhortantem populum Dei orare pro incredulis ut 
 eos Deus convertat ad fidem, et pro Catechumenis 
 
 et pro fidelibus " ; and the prayers 
 
 are described by him elsewhere as " Obsecrationes 
 quas facimus in celebratione sacramentonim, ante- 
 quam illud quod est in Domini mensa incipiat bene- 
 dici. m St. Optatus quotes the bidding-prayer for 
 the Church ; 2 and Arnobius evidently alludes to 
 the general tenor of them all. 3 Lastly, Tertul- 
 lian refers to them in general terms, 4 and, as 
 we shall presently see, reproduces great part of 
 
 1 Ep. 107 vel 217, ad Vitalem ; Ep. 149 ; so, too, Ambro- 
 siaster, de Sac. iv. 4. 
 
 2 Contra Parmen. ii., p. 40. 
 
 3 Adv. Nat. p. 171 ed. Reifferschied. ' Apol. 39. 
 
180 STUDIES 
 
 one of them at the end of his treatise on prayer. 
 An examination of the grammar and phraseology 
 of these bidding-prayers adds greatly to the evi- 
 dence for their antiquity. They are not grammati- 
 cally correct, but are composed in the " lingua latina 
 vulgaris," in which such solecisms as infirmantibus , 
 elegit eum in ordine episcopatus, and diaconibus 
 abound. 1 The irregular form for diaconis is, of 
 course, common in St. Cyprian, as well as in later 
 writers ; but the other instances I have given 
 cannot be matched in his works. The like are, 
 however, to be found in the pseudo-Cyprianic 
 works, which are for the most part of Roman 
 authorship, and in the letters of the Roman clergy 
 and confessors to St. Cyprian during the vacancy 
 of the see before the election of St. Cornelius. 
 (Epp. 30 & 31, ed. Hartel.) 2 
 
 The language and phraseology of these same 
 documents supply so many parallels to the Good 
 Friday prayers, that it cannot be doubtful that 
 the latter were used in Rome in the earlier half 
 of the third century. For instance, the two Roman 
 letters, and they only, in enumerating the several 
 orders in the Church, mention confessors in the 
 same way the Good Friday prayers do : Conlatione 
 consiliorum facta cum episcopis presbyteris dia- 
 conibus confessor ibus par iter et stantibus laicis. 
 (Ep. 30, 5 ; 31, 6.) 3 
 
 1 Levate is probably not to be construed with corpora veatra, 
 understood as Duchesne suggests, but as a reflective verb, like 
 the well-known verse in Virgil ; Sese attollens cubitoque innixa 
 levavit. 
 
 2 Infirmo is, however, only to be found much later in the 
 active, according to Ronsch (itala und Vulgata). 
 
 3 Menardus supposed, on the strength of two inconclusive 
 conciliar canons, that the word confessor here was equivalent 
 
THE EARLY HISTORY OF THE MASS 181 
 
 Mater Ecclesia, lavacrum regenerationis, ianua 
 misericordiae, aures praecordiorum, are all phrases 
 that will be found in the pseudo-Cyprianic works — 
 the first, indeed, in St. Cyprian. The most notable, 
 because the most frequently recurring phrase, 
 Deus et Dominus noster, seems to be a protest 
 against the Gnostic heresies, whence the impor- 
 tance attached to it by St. Irenaeus and Tertul- 
 lian j 1 it, therefore, points to the end of the second 
 century. 
 
 These parallels have been noted on a very hasty 
 examination of the early Latin ecclesiastical writers. 
 I have no doubt they might be greatly multiplied 
 by a search, particularly among the catacomb 
 inscriptions, which I have not been able even 
 to look through ; but as they stand they are no 
 doubt enough to show that the bidding-prayers 
 were used in Rome in the third century. Much 
 of the evidence I have adduced, indeed, comes from 
 Africa ; but it is admitted that Rome bestowed 
 her creed and ritual, with her faith, on that 
 country ; 2 and that the Roman and African 
 Liturgies were identical. There is a close simi- 
 larity in general character and contents between 
 
 to cantor ; while Duchesne remarks that it is often used for 
 the ascetae in the fourth and fifth centuries. The passages 
 I have quoted above, however, seem to fix its meaning to those 
 who had confessed the Faith, and therefore held a special grade 
 in the Church. (Cf. Hippolytus Can. Ar. 6, and St. Cyprian 
 Ep. 34.) 
 
 1 Adv. Haer. iii. 6-8 ; Adv. Hermog. 1-3. See, too, Novatian's 
 rfe Trinitate and Ruinart Acta S. Vine. vi. The phrase is also 
 found repeatedly in the De Pascha computus, a Roman tract 
 of date 243. 
 
 2 " Videamus quid (Roma) didicerit, quid docuerit, quid cum 
 
 Africanis quoque ecclesiis contesserarit Inde . 
 
 euchari8tia pascit" — Tertullian : Praescr. Haer. 36. 
 
182 STUDIES 
 
 these prayers and the Prayers of the Faithful, 
 which, in slightly varying shapes, are to be found 
 in every Oriental liturgy. But Archdeacon Free- 
 man was, so far as I know, the first to point out 
 that many parts of the bidding-prayers are to 
 be found, in the same words, in the Commemo- 
 ration of the living and the dead which is inter- 
 polated in the Preface of the Greek Alexandrian 
 Mass. He thought this was their earlier form, 
 and that they were changed from an intercession 
 by the celebrant into bidding-prayers by the deacon 
 when they were adopted in Rome. This, how- 
 ever, is impossible. Not only do the other two 
 ancient Eastern rites (the Liturgies of St. Clement 
 and St. James) give them as the Roman Good 
 Friday Mass does, but the Coptic form of the 
 Alexandrian Liturgy also puts them into the mouth 
 of the deacon as invitations to the faithful to pray. 
 No doubt the Roman form of these prayers under- 
 went frequent minor alterations in those early 
 ages when the liturgical formulae were not con- 
 sidered unchangeable ; but they bear much fewer 
 internal traces of change than the intercession 
 in the Liturgy of St. Mark, which has only reached 
 us in two corrupt manuscripts. As an instance 
 of change in the Good Friday prayers, I may 
 mention the prayer for the Emperor, which is 
 evidently later than the rest. The original prayer 
 for the Sovereign seems to be now fused with 
 the first prayer — that for the Church ; for in 
 the Alexandrian rite the words subiiciantur Mi 
 barbaras gentes . . . . ut vitam tranquillam 
 et placidam ducamus in omni pietate, form part 
 of the prayer for the King, and the reference to 
 1 Tim. ii. 2 shows that this was their original appli- 
 
THE EARLY HISTORY OF THE MASS 183 
 
 cation. But there can hardly be any reasonable 
 doubt that these prayers in their general character 
 are apostolic in origin, being lineally descended 
 from the Jewish bidding-prayers called the " Shac- 
 harith," which I briefly described in my first paper. 
 They occurred in the Sabbath morning service, 
 as in the Mass, after the lessons and the sermon, 
 and they were bidding-prayers chanted by a 
 precentor, to which the congregation responded 
 Amen. 1 
 
 In the case of one of the prayers — that for special 
 necessities — we can now fill up the gap between 
 the origin of Christianity and the third century. 
 It will be seen by the parallel extracts which I 
 subjoin, that many of the petitions in this prayer 
 are to be found at the end of Tertullian's De Ora- 
 tione, so that we can hardly doubt he had it in 
 his mind when he wrote. But the same phrases 
 also occur in the Alexandrian Liturgy, and they 
 are again found in that portion of the Epistle 
 of St. Clement which was recovered in 1875. Dr. 
 Lightfoot pointed this out at the time, and re- 
 marked that " the coincidences are far too numerous 
 and close to be accidental." It will hardly be 
 thought that the liturgy borrowed these expres- 
 sions from St. Clement ; and it is far more probable 
 that:., both took them from one common source. 
 This Dr. Lightfoot found in the " Shemoneh 
 Esreh," or " Eighteen Benedictions " ; but he 
 
 1 The prayer for the Sovereign, which I take from Bickell, 
 will give an idea of their character. " May He, Who giveth 
 victory to kings, bless, preserve, maintain, support, exalt, and 
 make great our glorious ruler N. N. ; may He put into his 
 heart and into the hearts of all his councillors and generals 
 to do good to us and to all Israel ; let us say : Amen." 
 
184 STUDIES 
 
 was apparently unaware that Bickell had already 
 shown that these were inserted at this point of 
 the Jewish synagogal service. We have then 
 converging evidence sufficient, to prove that this 
 bidding prayer is derived from a Jewish source ; 
 and to strengthen greatly Lightfoot's suggestion, 
 that St. Clement was quoting liturgical prayers, 
 which were already — at the end of the first cen- 
 tury — assuming a definite shape in the Roman 
 Church. I need not here dwell upon all the points 
 which are suggested by the following parallels ; 
 I will only remark that Tertullian seems to have 
 been acquainted with a longer form of this prayer 
 than the one we have in our present Missal, and 
 one which contained the first point, not found 
 in St. Clement or the Alexandrian Liturgy. 
 
 1. The Shemoneh Esreh. (Lightfoot.) — "Thou 
 bringest the dead to life. Thou supportest them 
 that fall, and healest the sick, and loosest them 
 that are in bonds." 
 
 2. St. Clement of Rome (Cap. lix.). — rovs tv 
 6\tyei rjfjicov <ra)aov, tovs TreTTTayKoras eyeipov, 7ov<? 
 aaOevel? Xaaau, T0O9 ifkavw/JLevov? rov Xaov aov 
 GTriGTpe'tyov, ^opraaov rov? Treivwvras, \vrpcoa-ai rods 
 heafjLiovs rjjicov, i^avdarrjaov rovs aadevovvras, irapa- 
 Kakeaov tovs oXcyoyjrv^ovvras. 
 
 3. Alexandrian Liturgy (Greek from St. 
 Mark's: Latin from St. Cyril's). — igeXov rovs iv 
 ay ay /ecus, lapsos erige, vevoaTj/coras taaai, irenrXav- 
 rffievovs eirlaTpe'tyov, esurientes satia, Xvrpcoa-at 
 Seoyuof 9 i^avdarrjaov rovs aadevovvras, oXcyoyfrv^ovv- 
 ra<; irapaKaXeaov. 
 
 4. Tertullian. {De Oratione, cap. 39). — . . . . 
 " Defunctorum animas ab ipso mortis itinevo- 
 care, debiles reformare, aegros remediare .... 
 
THE EAKLY HISTORY OF THE MASS 185 
 
 claustra carceris aperire, vincula innocentium sol- 
 vere .... pusillanimos consolatur, peregri- 
 nantes deducit, fluctus mitigat .... lapsos 
 erigit, cadentes suspendit, stantes continet." 
 
 5. Roman Liturgy. (Feria vi. in Parasceve.) 
 — .... "Morbos auferat, famem depellat, 
 aperiat carceres, vincula dissolvat, peregrinanti- 
 bus reditum, infirmantibus sanitatem, naviganti- 
 bus portum salutis indulgeat." 
 
 I do not know of any evidence showing when 
 and under what influence these prayers were 
 omitted from the ordinary Mass and restricted 
 to Good Friday (the Gregorian Sacramentary 
 directs them to be said also on the Wednesday 
 in Holy Week). They appear to have been still 
 in use in the time of St. Augustine and St. Celes- 
 tine, and to have been provided with Collects 
 about the time of St. Leo. Previous to that there 
 was an interval for silent prayer after Flectamus 
 genua, ended by Levate. 1 We shall probably 
 not be wrong in supposing that they were omitted 
 from the Roman Mass under the influence of the 
 other great Liturgy of the West. There seem 
 to have been no prayers of the faithful in the 
 Hispano-Gallie Mass, and as variable Collects 
 and Secrets came into use they would be less 
 required. 
 
 The only other point in the pro-anaphoral part 
 of the Mass which need detain us is the lessons 
 from Scripture. 
 
 We have seen that in the Synagogue two passages 
 were read, one from the law and the other from 
 
 1 Menardus, note 242. Post paululum elicit, Levate {Sac. 
 0ela8.). 
 
186 STUDIES 
 
 the prophets ; and that the Christian Church 
 added to these readings from the Epistles and 
 Gospels. All of these are represented in the Good 
 Friday Mass, the Passion being the lesson from 
 the New Testament. But from a very early 
 period the number of lessons was reduced on many 
 days to one, either from the Old or New Testa- 
 ment, the older custom being retained on certain 
 days. 1 
 
 When we turn to the more solemn part of the 
 Mass — the Preface and Canon — we are met at 
 once by a great obstacle to further research. The 
 discipline of the Church prevented its being made 
 known to the uninitiated, so that we find at most 
 allusions and references, instead of the tolerably 
 numerous quotations which have enabled me to 
 trace the history of the earlier parts of the Liturgy. 
 A good deal can, however, be done, as will be 
 seen, and more interesting results still probably 
 await greater patience and skill than I have been 
 able to give to the task. 
 
 The earliest quotation of any notable portion of 
 the Canon of the Mass is to be found in the treatise 
 De Sacramentis , which is included among the works 
 of St. Ambrose, though certainly not written by 
 that Father. It must date from about the end of 
 the fourth century, since, on the one hand, St. 
 Ambrose is quoted, and, on the other, paganism 
 is spoken of as still flourishing. Duchesne con- 
 
 1 This appears from St. Augustine, Serm. 45 and 176, and 
 from St. Justin, who expressly says : " The memoirs of the 
 Apostles or the writings of the Prophets are read." Not remark- 
 ing the " or," Palmer and Swainson believed they had detected 
 a discrepancy between the account in St. Justin and the Roman 
 Mass which does not exist. 
 
THE EARLY HISTORY OF THE MASS 187 
 
 jectures that it was written in some town of 
 Northern Italy — perhaps Ravenna — where Roman 
 and Milanese influences were combined. In this 
 work all the Canon is quoted, with a few unimpor- 
 tant differences, from Quam oblationem to the 
 words summus sacerdos tuns Melchisedech after 
 the Consecration. 
 
 But, though we are not able to adduce any 
 direct proof of the identity of the present Canon 
 with that used at an earlier date than this work, 
 we have a good deal of indirect evidence on dif- 
 ferent lines which proves a higher antiquity. 
 
 Thus we have Roman Pontiffs of the fifth and 
 sixth centuries asserting that it is of apostolical 
 origin. 
 
 St. Vigilius (538) speaks in this way of the Canon, 
 distinguishing it from the " capitula et preces " 
 (the variable Communicantes) which have been 
 added for certain feasts. He sent the Roman 
 Ordinary of the Mass to Pr of u turns, with the 
 Paschal proper as a sample of the additions which 
 might be made at the discretion of the latter. 
 More than a hundred years earlier we find St. 
 Innocent claiming an apostolical origin for the 
 Roman Mass, mentioning at the same time its 
 two most distinctive peculiarities — the recital of 
 the offerers' names in the Canon, and the position 
 of the Pax after the Lord's Prayer. This brings 
 us within the time when the great schism was 
 still active, which had divided the Christians of 
 Rome for two centuries. It is not conceivable 
 that the apostolical origin of the Roman Liturgy 
 could have been asserted by the Popes, if the 
 Novatians were able to point to a different rite, 
 which they had taken with them when they left 
 the Church in the middle of the third century. 
 
188 STUDIES 
 
 Sir W. Palmer brought forward another very 
 strong argument for the antiquity of, at least, 
 the general order and structure of the Roman 
 Mass. The Liturgy of the Church of Africa is 
 sufficiently known to us, from the references in 
 the great writers of that Church, to enable us to 
 say it was practically identical with the Roman. 
 We must, therefore, suppose it was brought from 
 Rome at the first introduction of Christianity 
 into that country, since it could not have originated 
 independently, or have been imposed later without 
 some evidence of such a change. In like manner, 
 the Ambrosian rite has differed from the Roman 
 since the fifth century, yet in the opinion, I believe, 
 of all liturgiologists save Duchesne, it is of Roman 
 origin. Here, again, the entire absence of any 
 history of a later introduction leads us to believe 
 that the first missionaries took their Liturgy with 
 them from Rome, when they evangelised Northern 
 Italy. If this argument is accepted, we can carry 
 up the chief characteristics of our present Mass 
 to very early, probably sub-apostolic, times. 
 
 Another argument of the same kind has not, 
 I think, been sufficiently considered. The simi- 
 larity between the Roman and Alexandrian Litur- 
 gies has been recognised by many authorities, 
 and is, indeed, obvious on any comparison. 1 Both 
 appear to have begun with a threefold repetition 
 of the Kyrie eleison, interposed between prayers 
 which have been omitted from the Roman Mass ; 2 
 
 1 Encore ne serait-il pas impossible de ramener le type gallican 
 au type syrien ; et de conjecturer que 1' usage d'Alexandrie derive 
 pour une certaine mesure de celui de Rome. (Duchesne : 
 Origines du Gulte chrdtien, p. 55.) 
 
 2 See St. Gregory, Ep. ix. 12. 
 
THE EARLY HISTORY OF THE MASS 189 
 
 and in both the solemn Benediction of the celebrant 
 was given at the end of the Mass, instead of before 
 the Preface, as in the Oriental rites. Both seem 
 to have had originally two intercessory prayers ; 
 the prayer of the faithful before the Preface, and 
 the commemoration made by the celebrant during 
 the Canon ; and this is probably the reason why 
 we now find the latter intercalated in such a 
 singular manner in the Alexandrian Preface. 1 
 
 Still more remarkable, as showing a common 
 origin, are the passages which are verbally the 
 same in both Liturgies. I have already mentioned 
 that many parts of the prayers of the faithful 
 are the same, and for these I will refer the reader 
 to a comparison of the originals. But, besides 
 these, we find portions of the Roman Canon which 
 are word for word identical with prayers in the 
 Alexandrian Liturgy, so that we cannot doubt 
 of the common origin of at any rate the following 
 prayers : — 
 
 1. Roman. — " lube haec perferri per mantis sancti 
 
 Angeli tui, in sublime altar e tuum 
 
 Digneris accepta habere, sicut accepta habere dig- 
 natus es munera pueri tui iusti Abel, sacrificium 
 
 patriarchae nostri Abrahae Partem ali- 
 
 quam et societatem donare digneris cum Sanctis 
 
 2. Alexandrian. — rcov irpoa^epovrcov .... t«9 
 Trpocrcfyopd? irpocrSe^ai 6 #€o? et? to .... hrovpdviov 
 .... gov OvGiao-rrjpiov, et? ra fieyedv tcjv ovpavwv, 
 8ca T779 dp%ayy€\i/cri<$ gov Xeirovpylas .... irpooSe^ai 
 
 1 " Huius interpositionis exemplum, et si in Oriente rarissimus, 
 subministrat tamen Canon Latinus, qui eadem ferme capitula sed 
 brevissime perstringit" (Renaudot, i. p. 360.) 
 
190 STUDIES 
 
 . . . . &>9 irpo<Tۤe%w ra Scopa rov Bitcdiov <rov "A/3e\, 
 rrjv Overlay rov ircurpo^ tj/jlwv y A/3pad/j, .... So? 
 fjfuv fieplBa icai tcXrjpov e^eLV fiera iravreov rwv dylcov 
 crov. . . . 
 
 The first two of these passages occur in a prayer 
 over the offerings ; the last immediately precedes 
 them, but, like the nobis quoque peccatoribus , 
 follows the reading of the Diptychs of the dead. 
 
 It is difficult to believe that either of these 
 two great patriarchal Churches borrowed these 
 prayers from the other ; x and still more difficult 
 to account thus for the many coincidences between 
 the two liturgies in thought but not in language. 
 It is more natural to suppose that the Church 
 of Alexandria received its Liturgy from Rome 
 at the hands of the Evangelist who founded it. 
 This would appear to follow from the account 
 given by Eusebius of St. Mark's mission to Alexan- 
 dria by St. Peter, when he took with him the 
 Gospel which the former had approved for public 
 (and therefore liturgical) use in Church. 2 The 
 later Greek ecclesiastical historians recognised the 
 antiquity of the tradition which connected the 
 liturgical customs of Rome and Alexandria ; 3 
 but I have only met with one testimony to St. 
 Mark as their common source. The curious Irish 
 fragment which I have already quoted as deriving 
 the Gallican Liturgy from St. John, is equally 
 explicit in ascribing the Roman and Alexandrian 
 
 1 The last extract is found, as a quotation from the Liturgy, 
 in Origen (In Hierem. torn. Hi. p. 217), and therefore, if there 
 has been any borrowing, it must have been Rome that derived 
 it from Alexandria. 
 
 2 H. E. ii. 15, 16, Kvpaxrai r-fjv ypa<p-i\v els €vrev£iv rciis £iac\r)(rlais. 
 
 3 Socrates, v. 22 ; Sozomen, vii. 19. 
 
THE EARLY HISTORY OF THE MASS 191 
 
 Liturgies to St. Mark. 1 Though the account is 
 confused and inaccurate, it may be cited — valeat 
 quantum — as the witness of the author, probably 
 a Scoto-Irish monk, to the tradition of a school 
 where learning had lingered longer than elsewhere 
 in the West. He says : " B. Marcus Evangelista, 
 sicut refert Iosephus et Eusebius in quarto libro, 
 totam Aegyptum et Italiam praedicavit sicut unam 
 
 ecclesiam Tanta fuit sua praedicatio 
 
 unita, et postea Evangelium ex ore Petri Apostoli 
 edidit." 2 
 
 Without laying any stress on this authority, 
 it seems as if we must look to St. Peter as the 
 most likely common source of these two liturgies. 
 This conclusion is greatly strengthened by recall- 
 ing the coincidences I have noted above between 
 St. Clement's Epistle and the Alexandrian and 
 Roman prayers of the faithful, coincidences which 
 are not to be traced in any other liturgy. It 
 is natural to suppose with Dr. Lightfoot that 
 when St. Clement wrote the letter, of which the 
 very beautiful passage referred to is the climax, 
 the Liturgy of the Church of Rome was already 
 assuming a fixed form. The language of the Pontiff, 
 in calling the Corinthians to prayer, " runs into 
 those antithetical forms and measured cadences 
 which his ministrations in church had rendered 
 habitual with him." 3 
 
 1 This MS. was not traced by Haddan and Stubbs, but is in 
 the British Museum (Cotton MSS. Nero A. ii.), and has been 
 fully described by Mr. (now Sir Edward) Maunde Thompson. It 
 is probably not so old as Spelman thought, but dates at latest 
 from the end of the eighth century. 
 
 - I cannot here enter on an explanation of the blunder which 
 brings in Josephus and the fourth book of Eusebius. 
 
 ■ St. Clement of Rome, Appendix, pp. 269 sqq. 
 
192 STUDIES 
 
 I therefore think it may be asserted that the 
 Roman Mass may be traced to sub-apostolic 
 times, and even to St. Peter himself, through 
 his disciples, St. Mark and St. Clement. But 
 it must not be thought that the Canon has come 
 down to us from those early days without altera- 
 tion. Its identity is like that of some living being, 
 not inconsistent with change and renewal of many 
 of its parts, provided the original form and pur- 
 pose are preserved. 
 
 It is, to begin with, admitted that the language 
 current among the first Roman Christians was 
 Greek, and that their public worship must have 
 been originally in that tongue. But it is uncertain 
 when, and in what circumstances, Latin came 
 to be employed. Comely, the latest Catholic 
 writer I can find who has treated this subject, 
 holds that Greek alone must have been used in 
 Rome for the two first centuries, Latin being 
 first required for the use of the Church in Africa ; 
 he might have added for that of Northern Italy 
 also. There are reasons, which I gave in a former 
 article on the Creed, which lead me to think Latin 
 was probably used at an earlier period than the 
 third century in Rome, at any rate in some con- 
 gregations, the two languages being used simul- 
 taneously in different churches ; so at least I 
 understand a passage of Origen. 1 
 
 The cause which most probably led to the general 
 adoption of Latin in Rome, seems to me to be the 
 great schism, which began with Hippolytus, and 
 
 1 xpowTat eV raisivxaLS . . . . di u\v 'EWfyes 'E^tjvikois, di 
 Se 'Paifiaiot 'Pa^iSt/coTs, Kai ovrus tKacrTos Kara ttjv kavrov SidheKTOv 
 evx*Tat t<£ 0ecj}, ko,i ufive? avrbu m SiWtcu. (Contra Gels., viii. 37.) 
 
THE EARLY HISTORY OF THE MASS 193 
 
 was consummated by Novatian. The schismatics 
 were, on the whole, the aristocratic and literary 
 class of Christians in Rome, while I have referred 
 above to the uncultivated style of the letters 
 of the Roman clergy who elected St. Cornelius, 
 and of other Roman documents of that time. 
 The constant communication between Rome and 
 proconsular Africa must have been another in- 
 fluence acting in the same direction. Both of 
 these seem to me more plausible suggestions than 
 Mr. Hammond's, that the confusion produced by 
 the great plague may have caused the change. 
 
 We may suppose from what has just been said 
 that the earliest Latin text of the Canon must 
 have borne traces of its Greek origin, 1 and must 
 have been written in the same " lingua vulgaris " 
 as the Good Friday prayers, unless, indeed, the 
 African Mass was from the first more polished, 
 and was adopted in Rome. 
 
 There can be little doubt that these characters 
 have been removed from the Mass, as we have 
 it now, by the recensions it must have undergone 
 as the Catholics of Rome increased in numbers 
 and culture. Some of the phrases, by their anti- 
 thetical rhythm, suggest the authorship of St. 
 Leo ; and a tradition asserts that he added the 
 clause sanctum sacrificium, immaculatam hostiam. 
 It has been suggested by Anglican writers that 
 he broke up the original Liturgy of the Roman 
 Church, incorporating many fragments of it in 
 the Secrets which he composed ; but there is 
 
 1 I only remark two Grsecisms in the present Canon, ex hoc 
 and postquam coenatum est ; both are in the account of the Insti- 
 tution, and in the text of the Itala as read by St. Cyprian. 
 
 13 
 
194 STUDIES 
 
 no evidence of this, and all that I have adduced 
 in favour of the antiquity of the Roman Mass 
 is against it. Nor need I here consider the inge- 
 nious theories of Probst and Bickell, each of whom 
 suggests a different rearrangement of the Canon 
 in its primitive order; for the reasons they offer 
 are too purely conjectural to detain us. It is 
 more necessary to dwell on the signs which the 
 Canon still exhibits of extreme antiquity, in spite 
 of the many alterations it must have undergone. 
 One of the most remarkable is its independence 
 of the letter of Scripture. Thus the account of 
 the Institution in every other Liturgy has been 
 more or less closely based upon St. Paul's lan- 
 guage, beginning in each case with " the night 
 He was betrayed " instead of the Roman " the 
 day before He suffered." 1 In like manner all 
 the other Liturgies end the account of the Institu- 
 tion by 1 Cor. xi. 26 ; while the Roman has " As 
 often as ye do these things, ye shall do them in 
 remembrance of Me." So, too, in all other litur- 
 gies the additions to the words of Institution are 
 (with one remarkable exception) obtained by 
 combining the different Scriptural accounts ; but 
 in the Roman Mass we find elevatis oculis in coelum ; 
 aeterni, and mysterium fidei, which do not occur 
 in the New Testament. The last of these phrases 
 has been assigned by some to St. Leo ; there can, 
 however, be no doubt that it is far more ancient, 
 for it is found also in the Clementine Liturgy, 
 which has come down to us unaltered from the 
 
 1 The Alexandrian Liturgies (Greek St. Mark and Coptic 
 St. Cyril) go on to commemorate the Passion and Death of our 
 Lord in a manner which leads one to suppose they must have 
 formerly begun like the Roman. 
 
THE EARLY HISTORY OF THE MASS 195 
 
 fourth century. But the words are there placed 
 earlier in the account, the passage running thus : 
 " . . . . gave to His disciples, saying, ' This 
 is the mystery of the new covenant ; take, eat ' 
 . . . . " and this position must be due to a 
 transposition, made when the original precise 
 meaning of the words had been lost. I do not 
 lay stress on Mr. Field's argument 1 that the " mys- 
 tery of the faith " in 1 Tim. iii. 9 is contrasted 
 with " much wine," though the point is remark- 
 able. But two reasons come out clearly in the 
 early Christian writers why the words should 
 be applied to the consecration of the Chalice and 
 not to that of the Host. 2 In the first place, the 
 separate consecration of the blood of our Lord is, 
 as St. Justin would have said, a pvaT^piov rr\<; 
 eKKkrjaLa^, a symbolical act, intended to be the 
 sign of His death. And, secondly, almost all 
 the early Fathers attribute a special importance 
 to the prophecy that Juda should " wash his 
 garments in wine, and his clothes in the blood 
 of grapes " (Gen. xlix. 11), as referring to the form 
 in which the Precious Blood should be presented 
 to men." 3 
 
 Another instance in which the Canon shows 
 
 1 The Apostolical Liturgy and the Epistle to the Hebrews, p. 595. 
 
 2 " In consecratione corporis Christi non repraesentatur nisi 
 passionis substantia ; sed in consecratione sanguinis reprae- 
 sentatur passionis mysterium ; non enim a corpore Christi 
 sanguis eius seorsum fuit nisi per passionemP (St. Thomas in 
 4 Sent. Dist. viii. qu. 2.) 
 
 3 So, for example, St. Cyprian (Ep. lxiii. 6) " quando sanguis 
 uvae dicitur t quid aliud quatn calicis dominici sanguis osten- 
 ditur ? " See, too, Tertullian, adv. Marc. iv. 40, and the passages 
 from St. Justin, Origen and Clement Alex., adduced by Dr. 
 Taylor in The Theology of the Didache. 
 
196 STUDIES 
 
 its independence of the text of Scripture, is the 
 order of the Apostles in the Communicantes. As is 
 well known, we have four arrangements of the 
 Apostolic College in the New Testament ; that in 
 the Mass does not conform to any one of these. 
 It differs from them, not merely by the omission 
 of the traitor, and the insertion of St. Paul with 
 St. Peter ; but also by bringing up SS. Thomas 
 and James above Philip, Bartholomew, and 
 Matthew, in other respects following the order 
 of St. Luke's Gospel. 
 
 Other evidences of a remote antiquity are the 
 coincidences which are numerous between the 
 Canon and such early writers as Tertullian and 
 St. Irenaeus. Probst has collected many of these ; 
 and I therefore need not burden the reader with 
 more than a few of the most remarkable. The 
 catalogue of the three first Roman Pontiffs in 
 the Communicantes is that presented to us by 
 the earliest witnesses — Hegesippus and St. Irenaeus 
 — from which, as is well known, later writers 
 departed. 
 
 Offerimus Tibi de Tuis donis et datis seems to 
 be directed against the Gnostics, as in St. Ire- 
 naeus's Offerimus ei quae sunt eius (iv. 18, 4) ; so, 
 too, the same Father repeats the synonyms dona, 
 munera, sacrificia (iv. 19, 1), like the Missal. 
 Finally, locus refrigerii, lucis et pads is to be met 
 with repeatedly. Refrigerium is used for the 
 state of the blessed after death, most often by 
 Tertullian ; locus refrigerii comes twice in St. 
 Irenaeus ; and the somnus pads is frequent in 
 catacomb inscriptions. And we get the two words 
 — light and refreshment — used together in the 
 
THE EARLY HISTORY OF THE MASS 197 
 
 Letter of the Roman clergy to St. Cyprian, which 
 I have before had occasion to quote. 1 
 
 Much remains unsaid, which I should be glad 
 to relate, and which would interest, I believe, 
 many readers. But I am too conscious that I 
 have not been able to avoid being tedious, to 
 dwell any longer on details which, after all, are 
 only of secondary importance. I hope I have 
 at least attained my chief objects : to point out 
 the direction which modern research has taken, 
 and the road by which further advance is to be 
 made. In a final article I hope to sum up the 
 results obtained ; and to compare them with 
 the only contemporary account we have of Mass 
 in Rome in the second century. 
 
 1 " Paravit Deus refrigeria, sed paravit etiam aeterna sup- 
 plicia ; paravit inaccessibilem lucem, sed paravit etiam . . . . 
 vastam aeternamque caliginem" (St. Cyp. Ep. xxx. 7.) 
 
198 
 
 CELEBRATION OF MASS IN ANTE- 
 NICENE TIMES. 
 
 I am only too conscious that the details on 
 which I have been obliged to dwell have obscured 
 the main point which I desired to bring out in 
 this series of papers, and it therefore seems to me 
 necessary to sum up the results at which I have 
 arrived, in a description of the Mass as it must 
 have been celebrated in Ante-Nicene times. 
 
 Let the reader, then, imagine that the bishop, 
 with his attendant twenty-four presbyters and 
 seven deacons, has made his preparation privately, 
 either in the church, or more probably before 
 entering. The service began by the reading of 
 one or two lessons, a psalm being sung between 
 each ; after these came the Gospel. This was 
 followed by the sermon — a practical exposition of 
 the portions of the Scripture which had just been 
 read. As long as the early discipline of the Church 
 prevailed, the catechumens, penitents, and all who 
 were not privileged to assist at the holy mysteries, 
 were next excluded. The principal deacon now 
 bade the faithful rise, and called on them to pray 
 for the intentions which he successively announced : 
 for the whole Church, for the Pope and all its 
 ministers, for the Sovereign, for all necessities, for 
 catechumens, heretics, Jews, and heathen, the 
 faithful kneeling after each bidding-prayer and 
 
THE MASS IN ANTE-NICENE TIMES 199 
 
 praying for a while in secret. Then the celebrant 
 saluted the congregation, and said the Sursum 
 Corda, which was answered as now, by Habemus 
 ad Dominum (St. Cyprian, de Or. Dom. 31). He 
 sang the Eucharistic Preface — the " Super panem 
 gratiarum actio" ending with the Sanctus, in which 
 the whole congregation, at any rate as early as 
 the middle of the second century, 1 joined. 
 
 The Canon, which followed, must, as I have shown, 
 have been to a great extent identical with that 
 now used. The faithful joined silently (" sine 
 monitore" Tert., Apol. 30), and with outstretched 
 hands, in the intercession of the celebrant, the 
 silence being broken by the deacon publishing 
 before the consecration the names of those offer- 
 ing ; 2 and probably after the consecration the 
 names of the departed who were specially com- 
 memorated. The Canon ended then, as now, with 
 the Amen, signifying the union of the faithful 
 with the celebrant, which is particularly referred 
 to by St. Paul, St. Justin, and Tertullian. 3 Until 
 St. Gregory's revision, the fraction of the Host 
 and the commixture followed the Canon imme- 
 diately, as is still the case in the Ambrosian rite. 
 The Lord's Prayer was preceded by the same 
 prefatory sentence as now, as we may conclude 
 
 1 See Tertullian De Orat. iii., and St. Saturus's vision of 
 heaven in Ruinart, Pass. SS. Perp. et Felicit. xii. We may sup- 
 pose that the word Hosanna had passed into liturgical use by 
 the time St. Mark wrote his Gospel, since, contrary to his usual 
 custom, he does not translate it. 
 
 ■ St. Jerome has preserved for us an account which shows 
 how readily abuses must have grown out of this custom : 
 " Tantum offert ilia ; tantum Me pollicitus est. . . . placent 
 sibi ad plausum populi." {In Ezech. 16.) 
 
 3 1 Cor. xiv. 16 ; 1 Apol. 67 ; ds Spectac. 25. 
 
200 STUDIES 
 
 from St. Cyprian and St. Jerome ; x and was 
 followed by the " Embolismus," or prayer against 
 all evil, into which the last clause expands. There 
 must have been a prayer in immediate preparation 
 for communion, corresponding to the " oratio 
 inclinationis " of all the early liturgies, and repre- 
 sented by the " Perceptio corporis tui " of our 
 Mass. The celebrant then received himself and 
 gave communion to the ministers and congrega- 
 tion, the thirty-third Psalm being meanwhile sung. 
 This was apparently followed by a post-communion, 
 like the " Quod ore sumpsimus" and the Mass 
 ended with the celebrant's benediction. 
 
 It may be interesting to note some details con- 
 nected with the administration of Holy Com- 
 munion. The deacons assisted in the distribution 
 of both the Body and Blood of our Lord ; and 
 they set apart the particles needed for the absent 
 and for the faithful to receive in their own homes, 
 as well as those reserved for the sick. The faithful 
 stood to receive, the sacred particle being placed 
 in the right hand of the men ; women received 
 it on the dominicale — a linen cloth. Minute direc- 
 tions are given by the Fathers for its reception, 2 
 and the utmost care enjoined lest any portion 
 should fall. At the end of the fourth century, 
 in Italy and Africa, the celebrant said, in giving 
 Communion, " Corpus Christi" and " Sanguis 
 Christi," to which the communicant answered 
 
 1 " Inter sua salutaria monita et praecepta divina. . . . 
 etiam orandi formam ipse dedit." (de Or. Dom. 2.) 
 
 2 See especially St. Cyril Jer. : Cat. Myst. xxiii. 5, and Dom 
 Touttee's notes. 
 
THE MASS IN ANTE-NICENE TIMES 201 
 
 Amen. 1 By St. Gregory's day the form had become 
 almost the same as now : " Corpiis Domini nostri 
 conservet animam tuam." 2 Eusebius has fortunately 
 preserved a passage in one of St. Cornelius's letters 
 denouncing Novatian, which I quote in full, not 
 merely because it shows how Communion was 
 administered in the middle of the third century, 
 but also because it testifies to the intense belief 
 in the Real Presence which caused Novatian to 
 act as he did. It reads more like an episode in 
 some mediaeval history than one from the Church 
 of the catacombs : — 
 
 After he had made the oblation, and divided a part 
 for each, when he gives it to the communicants, instead 
 of the usual blessing, he constrains the unfortunate man, 
 holding with both his hands the hands of the communi- 
 cant, and releasing them not until the communicants have 
 sworn as follows (for I will use his own words) : " Swear 
 to me, on the Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, 
 that you will never leave me, and turn to Cornelius." 
 And the wretched man does not receive until he has first 
 cursed himself thus. And he who takes this bread, instead 
 of saying the " Amen," says, " I will never more return 
 to Cornelius." 3 
 
 Communicants were carefully instructed by St. 
 Cyril of Jerusalem how they were to hold out 
 their hands, " making the left hand a throne for 
 the right, which is about to receive the King, 
 and hollowing the palm, receive the body of Christ 
 while answering the Amen." The piety of the 
 
 1 Pseudo-Ambrose IV. de Sacram. 5 ; S. Aug. Serm. 272, 
 and contra Faust, 12. In Alexandria the corresponding phrase 
 was aw/iia ayiov. 
 
 2 Vita S. Gregorii a Joan. Diac. 
 
 3 Hist. Eccl. vi. 43. 
 
202 STUDIES 
 
 faithful led to various devout practices, such as 
 applying the Sacred Host to their eyes before 
 receiving, and signing their lips with the sign of 
 the Cross, immediately after taking the Precious 
 Blood, 1 practices which were commended by the 
 Greek Fathers from Origen to Theodoret, but 
 which were liable to abuses that led to their pro- 
 hibition in the West. 
 
 The amount of ceremony with which the Holy 
 Sacrifice was offered must have varied from a 
 very early period according to opportunity. The 
 few scattered references which bear on this sub- 
 ject in Origen show that the pomp and ceremonial 
 with which a High Mass was celebrated in his 
 day must have been considerable. And we have 
 a more detailed account of a High Mass in Egypt 
 at the beginning of the fourth century, in the works 
 of the so-called Areopagite, which with a very few 
 modifications might serve as a description of a 
 Pontifical High Mass at the present day. On the 
 other hand, it will be remembered, I quoted an 
 opinion of the older liturgiologists that, under 
 stress of persecution, the Holy Sacrifice was offered 
 in the early ages with merely the words of Insti- 
 tution and the Lord's Prayer. This view was 
 based upon several passages in the Fathers which 
 at least show that a form of the Liturgy with less 
 ceremonial, corresponding to our Low Mass, must 
 have existed ; and there are others which imply 
 the same, such as Tertullian's belief that St. Paul 
 (Acts xxvii. 35) said Mass on board ship. 
 
 There is, at any rate, good ground for supposing 
 
 1 See other instances in Dom Touttee's Admon. Praev. to 
 St. Cyr. Jer. : Cat. Myst. xxxiii. 
 
THE MASS IN ANTE-NICENE TIMES 203 
 
 that the ordinary Sunday Liturgy differed at a 
 very early time from that used on other occasions. 
 The Didache gives two accounts of the Liturgy ; 
 one apparently referring to the First Communion 
 of a convert, and the other being the Sunday Mass. 
 St. Justin follows the lines of this treatise in this 
 matter as in so many others ; and his description 
 is the more valuable because it is the sole in- 
 stance when a Christian writer broke through 
 the " discipline of reserve," and endeavoured to 
 give an account of the great act of Christian wor- 
 ship to the heathen. In the sixty-fifth chapter of 
 the Apology which he addressed to the Emperor 
 Antoninus Pius, before the middle of the second cen- 
 tury, he describes the Sacrament of Baptism, and 
 then says that the newly baptised Christian is led 
 to the assembly of the brethren. In the account 
 which follows we can distinctly recognise the 
 prayer of the faithful, the kiss of peace, the obla- 
 tion by the bishop (6 irpoearm) of the bread and 
 wine mixed with water. Then came the Preface, 
 in which the celebrant " sends up praise and glory 
 to the Father of all things in the name of the Son 
 and of the Holy Ghost, and makes thanksgiving 
 at length for having been deemed worthy to receive 
 these things from Him." The faithful responded 
 Amen at the end of the Eucharistic prayer (Canon), 
 after which the deacons distributed to all present 
 the bread and wine and water, over which thanks 
 had been given, and took away a portion for the 
 absent. In the next chapter, St. Justin explains 
 that the word " Eucharist " was already used for 
 the consecrated elements ; and that none were 
 allowed to receive them, save those who had been 
 baptised and lived according to our Lord's precepts. 
 
204 STUDIES 
 
 For it was not received as common bread and wine, 
 but as the Body and Blood of Jesus incarnate, 
 changed by the words of prayer which came from 
 Him, as He took on Himself flesh and blood by 
 the Word of God. 1 The words used in consecra- 
 tion are next given, as the words of Institution : 
 " Do this in My remembrance ; this is My Body " ; 
 and " this is My Blood." 
 
 In chapter sixty-seven, St. Justin describes the 
 Sunday Mass as follows : — 
 
 On the day which is called the Sun's, there is an assembly 
 of all, whether they live in the towns or the country. As 
 much is read of the memoirs of the Apostles, or writings 
 of the Prophets, as time will allow. When the reader 
 has finished, the president (6 irpoearrus) exhorts and urges 
 us by a discourse to imitate the excellent things (that 
 have just, been read). Next we all stand up together 
 and offer prayers. And, as we have said before (cap. 65), 
 bread, and wine, and water are brought forward, and the 
 president offers up both prayers and thanksgivings to 
 the best of his power, to which the people testify their 
 assent by saying Amen. The elements for which thanks 
 have been given ( T a>v ivxapta-r-ndevTcay) are distributed to 
 all and partaken of by them, and sent by the deacons 
 to the absent. 
 
 The chief points in the early Mass, as I have 
 described it above, will be easily recognised in 
 this account. The reading of Scripture, the ser- 
 mon, the prayers of the faithful, the Eucharistic 
 and intercessory Preface and Canon, and the 
 Communion, are very distinct. In two respects, 
 however, it differs from the Roman Mass as we 
 have hitherto dealt with it, so as to lead us to 
 
 1 The sentence in which this is expressed is long and involved ; 
 but there can be no doubt as to its meaning. 
 
THE MASS IN ANTE-NICENE TIMES 205 
 
 believe that either St. Justin is describing some 
 other rite, or the Liturgy of Rome must have 
 been altered after his time. There are plausible 
 reasons for choosing the former of these alterna- 
 tives. St. Justin was a native of Syria, and it 
 is therefore not improbable that he may have 
 frequented some church of his own nation where 
 the Syrian rite was followed, such peculiar uses 
 having been always permitted and even encouraged 
 in Rome. This is the more likely, because there 
 are so many coincidences in his works with the 
 language and thoughts of the Clementine Liturgy 
 in the Apostolic Constitutions, as to show that he 
 must have been familiar with the early form of the 
 Syrian rite from which that Liturgy is derived. 
 
 On the other hand, Cardinal Wiseman, amid 
 that wealth of learning which may be found in 
 Fabiola, points out that St. Justin, in his Acts, 
 is made to say that he only knew one Christian 
 assembly in Rome, " the house of one Martin at 
 the Timothine bath." This appears to have been 
 the house of Pudens, and if so, the rite used must 
 have been the Roman, and the Trpoearm was 
 the Bishop of Rome. 1 If this alternative is 
 accepted, two changes must apparently have been 
 made in the Mass since St. Justin wrote, in the 
 middle of the second century. In the first place, 
 it will be noticed that he speaks of the Preface 
 as a thanksgiving " at great length " (eVt tto\v) ; 
 which description, taken with the indication of 
 its contents, seems to correspond with the long 
 
 1 Probst remarks, in another connection, that there is some 
 reason to suppose Trpoecrrds was ordinarily used only of the 
 Pope by early Christian writers. 
 
206 STUDIES 
 
 Preface of the Clementine Liturgy rather than 
 with the short ordinary Preface of the Roman 
 Mass. I have observed no such evidence of 
 familiarity with the Clementine Preface in other 
 early Roman writers as would decide this point. 
 A priori, it seems more probable that a long Pre- 
 face — itself derived from the " Great Hallel " of 
 the Jewish Paschal service — should have been 
 shortened, than that a short one should have been 
 expanded into the shape which it now presents. 
 
 The position of the " Pax " is one of the points 
 in which the Roman Liturgy differs from all others ; 
 and St. Justin only follows the rule in placing it 
 before the Canon of the Mass. It is, however, 
 remarkable that he does not mention it at all in 
 his account of the ordinary Sunday Mass, and in the 
 description in chapter sixty-five, the kiss of peace 
 may be specially connected with the reception of the 
 newly baptised convert. We are, therefore, not 
 able to conclude decidedly from this passage 
 whether the Pax occupied the same position at 
 St. Justin's day in the Roman Mass as in the others. 
 Even in them its place does not seem to have been 
 at an early period fixed. If anything can be 
 argued from 1 Thess. v. 25, 26, it must originally 
 have preceded the Preface, and followed the prayers 
 of the faithful ; and this is its position in the 
 passage before us, in Origen, and in the Clementine 
 Liturgy. On the other hand, the account of the 
 Mass in the second book of the Apostolical Consti- 
 tutions puts it before the prayer of the faithful, 
 and immediately after the exclusion of the cate- 
 chumens. Probably such a change may have been 
 made to facilitate that mutual recognition which 
 was relied upon as the surest means of excluding 
 
THE MASS IN ANTE-NICENE TIMES 207 
 
 those who had no right to assist at the Holy Sacri- 
 fice ; and it is possible that a like alteration was 
 made in Rome to keep from Communion the 
 heretics who abounded there in the second century, 
 and who mixed so freely with the faithful. By the 
 fourth century, at any rate, we know from SS. 
 Augustine, Jerome, and Innocent I., that the Pax 
 occupied its present place in the Mass. Tertullian 
 is commonly quoted as proving that it had the 
 same position two hundred years earlier ; but his 
 rhetorical language is ambiguous. 1 
 
 With this contemporary account of the Mass 
 in the second century, I may fitly close this series 
 of papers. They have run to a greater length 
 than I contemplated when I began them ; for I 
 found that, to show the antiquity of the Roman 
 Mass, I had to go into details which must have 
 been wearisome. Lest in following these the 
 general purpose should be missed, I may briefly 
 recapitulate what may be considered as established, 
 as distinguished from what is doubtful or unproved. 
 I believe I have shown that : — 
 
 1. All liturgies are found to agree more closely 
 the farther they are traced back. Thus our Good 
 Friday service and the Greek St. James are much 
 more alike than their lineal descendants, the Roman 
 Mass and the Liturgy of Constantinople of the 
 present day. 
 
 2. The points in which all Liturgies agree must 
 
 1 De Or at. 14. " Quale sacrificium est a quo sine Pace 
 preceditur ?" looks like a Pax at the end of Mass. But "quae 
 oratio cum divortio sancti osculi Integra ? Quern Domino officium 
 facientem impedit Pax ? " suggests rather a kiss of peace in close 
 connection with the prayer of the faithful, and before the Canon. 
 He distinctly proves that the Pax was not given on Good Friday. 
 
208 STUDIES 
 
 have been derived from some common source, and 
 no other can be suggested than the teaching of 
 the Apostles, who, while allowing much latitude 
 in details, must have prescribed everywhere uni- 
 formity in the general structure and character of 
 the service. 
 
 3. The following are the points in which all 
 early liturgies are agreed, differing from each 
 other only in their order and in the language in 
 which they are expressed : the reading of Scrip- 
 ture, the prayer of the faithful, the kiss of peace, 
 the Preface preceded by the Sursum corda and 
 followed by the Sanctus, the commemoration by 
 the celebrant of the living and the dead, the recital 
 of the institution of the Holy Eucharist with the 
 words of consecration, the commemoration of our 
 Lord's passion and death, the Pater Noster, the 
 Communion with its preparation and thanksgiving. 
 
 4. All but one of these features of the Liturgy 
 are preserved in the Roman Mass of to-day — the 
 prayer of the faithful being found only in the 
 Mass of the Presanctified. As to its contents, 
 therefore, our present Mass is of apostolic origin. 
 
 5. The general arrangement and structure of the 
 Roman Mass, and even some of its language, can 
 be traced, with a high degree of probability, to 
 St. Clement, and even to St. Peter. 
 
 6. The Canon of the Mass must have undergone 
 changes of uncertain extent during the first two 
 centuries after apostolic times. By the beginning 
 of the fourth century it must have existed in very 
 nearly its present shape (pseudo- Ambrose) ; and 
 the few alterations which St. Gregory the Great 
 made in it, left it, thirteen hundred years ago, 
 the same as we have it now. 
 
THE MASS IN ANTE-NICENE TIMES 209 
 
 It may appear strange to some of my readers 
 that I have made no attempt to show the decisive 
 bearing of the facts and inferences I have brought 
 forward on the controversies which have been 
 raised concerning the Holy Sacrifice since the 
 sixteenth century. A sentence of the great litur- 
 giologist, Renaudot, which Mr. Hammond has very 
 justly chosen as the motto for his book, will best 
 express my reason for thinking it utterly vain to 
 point a controversial moral : " Hence shines out 
 clearly that likeness of prayers and rites which 
 confirms the ancient doctrine of the whole Church 
 concerning the Eucharist." Those who cannot see 
 for themselves that all ancient liturgies, orthodox 
 and heretical, are based upon the sacrificial character 
 of the Holy Eucharist, and our Lord's Real Pres- 
 ence therein, are beyond the reach of arguments 
 from liturgical details. But there is still stronger 
 reason for silence. In studying the history of the 
 Mass, we find ourselves, as it were, in some ancient, 
 vast cathedral, where the Holy Sacrifice has been 
 offered since the day of Pentecost. It would be 
 unendurable that the discordant murmurs of unbelief 
 and doubt should be allowed to break in upon the 
 hymns of thanksgiving and praise, which the Church 
 has unceasingly offered with that Sacrifice on the 
 altar on high before the Throne of God. 
 
 14 
 
210 
 
 THE EARLY HISTORY OF BAPTISM 
 AND CONFIRMATION. 
 
 1. Sakramemte unci Sakramentalien. Von Dr. F. Probst. 
 
 Tubingen. 1872. 
 
 2. Les Origines du Culte Chretien. Par L'Abbe L. 
 
 Duchesne. Paris. 1889. 
 
 The history of the two sacraments of initiation 
 into the Christian life is only secondary in import- 
 ance to that of the Holy Sacrament of the Altar. 
 Indeed, from a merely historical point of view 
 their history has this advantage, that the changes 
 made during the last fourteen centuries in the 
 administration of Baptism and Confirmation have 
 been even fewer than those in the Mass itself. 
 The rites attending those two sacraments carry 
 us back, therefore, directly to the days of the infant 
 Church ; and we can easily picture to ourselves 
 the impressive scene, when, on the eve of Easter 
 or Pentecost, the catechumens went through the 
 final ceremonies prescribed for their initiation, 
 renounced Satan and all his works, and professed 
 their acceptance of the doctrines and practices of 
 that religious body, which, though small and 
 despised, was beginning already to leaven the 
 world. 
 
 The subject has naturally attracted less study 
 than has been devoted to the Liturgy proper, but 
 
HISTOKY OF BAPTISM AND CONFIRMATION 211 
 
 modern authorities are not wanting. The work 
 of Probst, which stands at the head of this article, 
 has left little more for his successors to do than 
 the task of filling in details, and of adding a few 
 points which had escaped him, or which have 
 become known since his time. The work suffers 
 to some extent by its being strictly limited to the 
 first three centuries ; for the ante-Nicene history 
 of these sacraments is hardly intelligible, apart 
 from the ritual development of the period imme- 
 diately following. Happily, M. Duchesne's 1 excellent 
 book takes up the subject at the fourth century, 
 from which point onwards no better guide could 
 be desired. Of older writers, Dom Martene is 
 perhaps the most useful ; and almost all our in- 
 formation is, of course, derived from the Fathers, 
 and from the invaluable notes of the great Bene- 
 dictine editors, especially those on St. Ambrose 
 and St. Jerome, above all from Dom Toutee's 
 commentaries on St. Cyril of Jerusalem. Among 
 Anglican writers, Dr. Mason, whose recent work 
 I shall have occasion to refer to, 2 merits high 
 praise for his candour and learning. I should be 
 going out of my way were I to discuss his main 
 thesis, which is, that Baptism and Confirmation 
 form but one sacrament, but that each has its 
 specific effect, which in the case of Confirmation 
 is the indwelling of the Holy Ghost. This is, of 
 course, a nearer approach to Catholic doctrine 
 than the ordinary Anglican view, which Dr. Mason 
 rightly says is not to be found in the primitive 
 
 1 Now Mgr. Duch'esne. 
 
 3 The Relation of Confirmation to Baptism in the Western 
 Church. By Dr. A. Mason. 
 
212 STUDIES 
 
 Church ; but it is open to like historical objec- 
 tions, besides the obvious difficulty of conceiving 
 a sacrament which should be single, and yet double 
 in all that constitutes a sacrament. 
 
 It does not seem that much light it to be thrown 
 on the details of these two sacraments by an 
 examination of the ceremonies used by the Jews. 
 Schiirer and others, indeed, have supposed that 
 the so-called baptism of the proselytes served as 
 a precedent for St. John ; but this rite is most 
 probably later than the fall of Jerusalem, as it 
 is not mentioned by Philo, Josephus, or the Tal- 
 mud. 1 The Baptist is much more likely to have 
 followed the example of the frequent washings 
 prescribed by the old Law, and multiplied by the 
 Pharisees. In like manner, the laying on of hands, 
 anointing with oil, and the use of unguents, were 
 customs familiar to the Jews, and were, for that 
 reason, raised by our Lord to the office of con- 
 veying and symbolising the moral and spiritual 
 gifts His Apostles were to impart. It is important 
 at the present day to bear in mind the very obvious 
 truth, that Christianity had its origin in a nation 
 where these external practices were habitual, and 
 that they were adopted by our Lord for His Own 
 and His disciples' use. By practically leaving the 
 New Testament out of account, a modern school, of 
 which Dr. Hatch has been the most influential 
 member in England, has been able to gain credence 
 for the view that all such rites are of heathen 
 origin and due to the influence of Greek thought 
 and practice on the early Church. If, however, 
 the New Testament and the ecclesiastical history 
 
 1 See Schanz on Matth. iii. 6. 
 
HISTORY OF BAPTISM AND CONFIRMATION 213 
 
 of the first three centuries are studied together, 
 they will be recognised as parts of one organic 
 whole, and either will be found to throw much 
 light on what is obscure in the other. 
 
 There are, as is well known, two forms for bap- 
 tism in the Roman Ritual, that used for the 
 baptism of adults differing considerably in its 
 ceremonies from that of infants. The latter is, 
 however, almost entirely an abridgment of the 
 former, which alone I shall examine here. On 
 close study, its internal evidence strongly sug- 
 gests that it has been condensed, and that the 
 prayers and ceremonies which now immediately 
 precede baptism must originally have been spread 
 over a much longer time. Thus the three renuncia- 
 tions of the devil and his works, and the three 
 interrogations as to the faith, occur twice, at the 
 beginning and just before baptism. The candidate 
 is made to repeat the Lord's Prayer thrice ; and 
 after each recital the godparent is bidden to make 
 the sign of the cross on the candidate's forehead. 
 The language of some of the prayers and exorcisms 
 points in the same direction ; for instance, it is 
 said that the candidate in huius seculi nocte vagatur 
 incertus et dubius, and ut idoneus efficiatur accedere 
 ad gratiam baptismi, percepta medicina. 
 
 The history of the administration of the sacra- 
 ment entirely confirms this view. The earliest 
 examples of baptism in the Acts, indeed, show us 
 that it was often conferred without more pre- 
 liminary instruction or preparation than was 
 needed to elicit an act of faith in our Lord and 
 of desire to be baptised. But in most of these 
 cases there was no time for detailed instruction, 
 and sometimes (as in the first reception of Gentile 
 
214 STUDIES 
 
 converts into the Church) the extraordinary gifts 
 of the Holy Spirit took the place of further train- 
 ing. But we also find instances — such as the 
 gradual instruction of Apollos — which show that 
 time, when available, was taken before baptising 
 converts ; and the " catechisers " of Gal. vi. 6, 
 and " pedagogues " of 1 Cor. iv. 15, imply that 
 St. Paul had at least made considerable way 
 towards the establishment of the catechumenate. 
 The education of intending converts would clearly 
 run on one of two lines, according as they started 
 from Judaism or heathenism ; and hence common 
 schemes of instruction would become convenient, 
 if not necessary. The Didache fortunately supplies 
 us with evidence of such a scheme, in its simplest, 
 and probably earliest, form. The first six chapters 
 of that work are made up of precepts and pro- 
 hibitions, chiefly moral, based on the love of God 
 and one's neighbour, which we are expressly told 
 were to be taught to candidates for baptism. 1 
 This seems to have been mainly, if not exclusively, 
 intended for converts from Judaism, who were 
 already sufficiently acquainted with the funda- 
 mental doctrine of the unity of God, and with the 
 Decalogue. But those who approached the Church 
 from heathenism — who soon became the great 
 majority of all converts- had much more to unlearn 
 and to learn before they could be received. It is 
 clear, even from the account given by St. Justin, 
 and yet more from Clement and Tertullian, that 
 the catechumens first learned those truths of 
 natural religion and morality which heathenism 
 
 1 BaTrriffare ravra iravTCt irpoenrSi/res (Did. 7, 1). 
 
HISTORY OF BAPTISM AND CONFIRMATION 215 
 
 had confused and obscured ; and then were in- 
 structed in the mysteries of revealed religion. 1 
 
 Origen tells us, what we should naturally expect, 
 that an inquiry was first made as to the probable 
 sincerity of the candidate for further instruction, 
 and also into such of his circumstances, whether a 
 slave, soldier, married or single, &c, as might be 
 a difficulty in the way of his reception. If the 
 result of this inquiry was satisfactory, the candi- 
 dates were admitted into the catechumenate, in 
 which they were usually kept about three years. 
 Apparently the admission to the catechumenate 
 was marked by an explicit profession of desire on 
 the part of the inquirer to be received into the 
 Church, made to the Bishop or his delegate, who 
 made the sign of the cross on the candidate's 
 forehead. Tertullian's language 2 suggests that the 
 opening words of our present baptismal service 
 date at least from his day ; and that they are the 
 remains of the ceremony of reception into the 
 catechumenate. The catechumens were then in- 
 structed in the elementary truths of natural and 
 revealed religion, the general lines of the Rule of 
 Faith being followed, and they were also carefully 
 trained in the vast difference between the Christian 
 and heathen standards of morality. Clement's 
 Paedagogus gives a good idea of the profound and 
 detailed practical education which a Pagan needed 
 
 1 So much, I think, is certain from Probst's detailed account 
 (Lehre und Gebet, pp. 79-182), although Prof. Funk has shown 
 that there is not sufficient evidence that the catechumens were 
 formally divided into two or three classes, as Probst and others 
 had supposed. 
 
 1 M Norint petere salutem, ut petenti dedisse videaris" (Bapt. 
 18.) 
 
216 STUDIES 
 
 before reception into the Church of Christ ; and 
 this is no doubt the explanation of what may 
 seem to us the long time during which the cate- 
 chumens were detained under instruction and 
 observation. They were probably not allowed to 
 go further until they professed their readiness and 
 ability to take up the responsibilities of a Christian 
 life, and to bear the yoke of the Gospel. 1 
 
 We learn from Tertullian that the proximate 
 preparation for baptism lasted forty days, occupy- 
 ing, therefore, the time of Lent, if — as was the 
 rule — the sacrament was conferred at Easter. 
 During this period the catechumens were more 
 fully instructed in the mysteries of the faith, and 
 probably to some extent in the nature of the sacra- 
 ments they were so soon about to receive ; they 
 also learned by heart the baptismal Creed and 
 the Lord's Prayer. Probst remarks that in the 
 Testimonia of St. Cyprian we apparently have a 
 specimen of part of the catechetical course of 
 dogmatic instruction ; while the character of the 
 practical teaching of prayer is exemplified in the 
 commentaries on the Paler noster which Origen, 
 Tertullian, and St. Cyprian have left us. 
 
 These forty days of immediate preparation for 
 the sacraments were rendered still more solemn 
 by the religious practices and ceremonies which 
 were assigned to them. In the East, we are told 
 by an author of the second century, 2 that " fast- 
 ings, supplications, prayers with outstretched hands, 
 
 1 Didache, 6 ; St. Justin, Apol. 1. 61. 
 
 2 Excerpta Theodoti, 88. 
 
HISTOKY OF BAPTISM AND CONFIRMATION 217 
 
 and genuflexions precede baptism " ; while Ter- 
 tullian uses the same language in the West. 1 
 
 On examining these in detail, we shall find that 
 the ceremonies of this stage of the catechumenate 
 constitute almost entirely the pre-baptismal part 
 of our present Ritual. 
 
 In the Church of Africa — and therefore, we may 
 safely conclude, in that of Rome — the beginning 
 of this period was marked by a formal renunciation 
 of the devil, of his pomps and his works. This 
 was distinct from the renunciation which imme- 
 diately preceded baptism, though it was made in 
 the same words : Tertullian 2 expressly mentions 
 the repetition, which, as I have remarked above, 
 is to be found in the baptism of adults at the present 
 day. 
 
 This first renunciation was made, not in the 
 baptistery, but in the church, 3 in the presence of 
 the Bishop who placed his hand on the head of 
 the candidate and exorcised him. 4 
 
 This renunciation almost everywhere had the 
 form of answers to questions, as at present. The 
 only exception was apparently the Church of 
 Syria, especially in Jerusalem, where the neophyte, 
 turning to the West, " the region of darkness," 
 addressed the devil as present, and with out- 
 
 1 " Ingressuros baptismum orationibus crebris ieiuniis genicula- 
 tionibus et pervigiliis orare oportet, et cum confessione omnium 
 retro delietorum." (De Bapt. 20.) 
 
 - Cor. Mil. 3 ; de Spectac. 13. 
 
 3 So St. Justin, Apol. i. 61 ; and Tertullian, " aliquanto prius 
 in ecclesia sub antistitis manu contestamur nos renuntiasse diabolo 
 et pompae et angelis eiusT {Cor. Mil. 3.) 
 
 4 " Per manus inpositionem in exorcismo." (Cone. Carthag. 
 vii., and Gone. Illib. Can. xxxix.) 
 
218 STUDIES 
 
 stretched hands said : "I renounce thee, Satan." 1 
 The word " pomp," common from the earliest 
 period to the East and West, carries us back to 
 a time when the danger of indirect idolatry spread 
 over almost every detail of daily life. 2 
 
 The renouncement of Satan was followed by a 
 short profession of faith, which also was in the 
 shape of answers to questions, everywhere but in 
 Syria. This form was that adopted by the Roman 
 law in all solemn contracts, and must have been 
 used for the engagements entered into at baptism 
 from the earliest times. One cannot lay stress 
 on the interrogation of the Eunuch by Philip 
 (Acts viii. 37), because of the uncertainty of the 
 text ; but there can be no reasonable doubt that 
 the iir6pcorr]fjia of 1 Peter iii. 21, refers to the 
 interrogation at baptism, and it is highly probable 
 that the ofioXoyia of 1 Tim. vi. 12, does so also. :j 
 In the next century there is sufficient evidence 
 that the custom was general throughout the entire 
 Church, 4 and at any rate by the third century 
 the form had been long fixed ; 5 and was the same 
 
 1 St. Cyr. Hier. Cat. Myst. i. 2 ; Const. Apost. vii. 41. 
 
 2 " The pomp of the devil is the folly of theatres and hippo- 
 dromes and hunts and all such vanity." (Cyr. Hier, loc. cit. ; 
 Tertullian de Spectac, 24.) 
 
 3 The tenses point to some definite occasion when this con- 
 fession was made, and that it was when the disciple was called 
 to eternal life ; therefore to his baptism, and not to ordination, as 
 has been supposed. 
 
 4 Dionysius of Alexandria (Eusebius, H. E. vii. 9) ; Ter- 
 tullian de Pud. 9, and Res. cum., 48 ; Origen in Exod. horn, 
 v. 1. 
 
 5 " Usitate et legitima interrogationis verba." (Firmilian in 
 Cyp. Opera, ed. Hartel, p. 818.) 
 
HISTORY OP BAPTISM AND CONFIRMATION 219 
 
 as the one used now. 1 It included, besides a 
 profession of faith in the Blessed Trinity, an act 
 of faith in the sacrament of baptism. In Jeru- 
 salem, the candidate turned to the East, and said : 
 " I believe in the Father, and in the Son, and in 
 the Holy Ghost, and in one baptism of penance." 2 
 
 The forty days thus begun were employed in 
 instructing the convert more fully, and especially 
 in impressing on him the enormity of sin, and in 
 training him for the Christian life. Fasting and 
 other bodily mortifications occupied a prominent 
 place. We have seen these mentioned by Theo- 
 dotus and Tertullian, but there are much earlier 
 evidences of the former ; the Didache and St. 
 Justin, agreeing in this as in so many points, tell 
 us that at any rate early in the second century 
 those who assisted at a baptism fasted as well as 
 the convert. 3 
 
 Another important preparation for baptism was 
 confession. This is mentioned by Tertullian, but 
 his language has been generally thought to refer 
 to a general self-accusation — such as that in the 
 Mass, or at Prime or Compline — and not to a 
 specific confession of sins. But I think with 
 Probst that it is impossible to read Tertullian' s 
 words with care, and to doubt that he intended 
 the latter. The confession he speaks of was a 
 secret, not a public, one ; and the shame of making 
 it was part of the satisfaction for sin. 4 Somewhat 
 
 1 St. Cyprian, p. 768. The closing words of cap. 61 of St. 
 Justin's Apology suggest a formula like our own. 
 
 2 St. Cyr. Hier. Cat. Myst. i. 9 ; Const. Apost. loc. cit. 
 
 3 Didache, vii. 4 ; Apol. i. 61 ; see also Clem. Recog., in. 
 67 ; vii. 37. 
 
 1 " Nobis gratulandum est si non publice confitemur iniqui- 
 tates aut turpitudines nostras ; simul enim satisfacimus de 
 
220 STUDIES 
 
 later, in the East we find evidence of the same 1 
 in various places. Tertullian refers to Matth. iii. 6, 
 as a precedent ; he seems therefore to have believed 
 that the confession made before John's baptism was 
 also a specific one, as indeed the plural " sins " 
 would naturally, but not certainly, imply. He does 
 not notice the closer parallel of Acts xix. 8, where 
 the confession was apparently a specific one, and 
 made by persons who believed, but were not yet 
 baptised. A little later still, we find confession 
 before baptism usual in St. Ambrose's day in 
 Milan. 2 Frequent prayer in the penitential posi- 
 tion of kneeling was enjoined ; and the candi- 
 dates were repeatedly examined to ascertain if 
 they were fit subjects for receiving the sacraments. 
 The " scrutinia " were held everywhere, but with 
 most solemnity in Rome, where they were repeated 
 seven times during Lent. 3 The most important of 
 them was on the Wednesday of the fourth week 
 in Lent, when the Lord's Prayer and the Creed 
 were solemnly delivered to the catechumens. This 
 day, called in apertione aurium, is still characterised 
 in the Roman Missal by the beautiful Ferial Mass 
 of the day, all of which refers to the sacrament 
 about to be conferred. The usage differed in 
 details in different churches of the West ; for 
 instance, it appears from several passages of St. 
 
 pristinis conflictatione carnis et spiritus, et de subsecuturis temp- 
 tationibus munimenta praestruimus" (De Bapt. 20.) 
 
 1 Cyr. Hier. Cat. Myst. i. 5 and ii. ; Eusebius, Vita Const. 
 iv. 61 ; Socrates, H. E. v. 17. 
 
 2 In Lucam, lib. 6 ; see, too, the author of the De Sacra- 
 mentis, iii. 2. 
 
 3 Martene tells us that the Churches of Laon and Vienne still 
 retained the " scrutinia " when he wrote. 
 
HISTORY OF BAPTISM AND CONFIRMATION 221 
 
 Augustine that in Africa the Lord's Prayer and 
 the Creed were repeated by the candidate after 
 some days' interval, so as to ensure their being 
 perfectly remembered. I suppose this was origin- 
 ally the Roman custom also, and that this was 
 the source of the repetition of the Pater nosier in 
 the present baptism of adults. We learn from 
 several authors that special attention was paid 
 in Rome to the verbal accuracy of the Creed, 
 which the catechumens recited from a raised 
 platform. 1 
 
 Having learned the Creed and the Lord's Prayer, 
 the convert passed into the class of the competentes, 
 and his name was given in for baptism, if this 
 had not been done at the beginning of Lent ; for 
 the practice evidently varied. 2 
 
 The choice of a " Christian " name must have 
 been common in the East at a very early period ; 3 
 and must have been required to take the place of 
 names derived from heathen mythology, which 
 would be abhorrent to Christians. With this was 
 connected the institution of sponsors or godparents, 
 first explicitly mentioned by Tertullian, 4 although 
 the custom must have existed before his time. 5 
 
 Corresponding with these preparations on the 
 part of the catechumen, a series of ceremonies 
 
 1 St. Aug. Gonf. viii. 2. 
 
 - De Sacram, iii. 2. 
 
 3 Clem. Recog. iii. 67 ; Dionysius of Alexandria in Eusebius, 
 H. E. vii. 25 ; and the case of the martyrs of Palestine. 
 
 * De Bapt, 19. 
 
 3 Hippolytus (ix. 15) tells us that the Elchasaites had seven 
 sponsors who undertook that the neophyte should lead a moral 
 and religious life. According to the Areopagite, the avaS6xos 
 assisted in the instruction of the candidate. (Cael. Hier. 2.) 
 
222 STUDIES 
 
 were prescribed for the ministers of the sacrament. 
 I have already mentioned that the period of im- 
 mediate preparation for baptism began with an 
 exorcism and reconciliation of the convert, marked 
 by the Bishop's laying hands on the candidates, 
 and making the sign of the cross on their foreheads. 
 Similar rites and exorcisms were frequently repeated 
 during Lent at the " scrutinia" ; and are the origin 
 of those in the pre-baptismal part of our present 
 service. Some of these were accompanied, as now, 
 with insufflation and exsufflation, of which there 
 is abundant evidence in the Eastern Church j 1 
 and which was called a " consuetudo antiqua," by 
 St. Augustine in the West. 2 
 
 Touching the nose and ears with saliva seems 
 to have been a Western custom of rather later 
 date ; at any rate, the earliest evidence I find of 
 it is in St. Ambrose, 3 in whose day the same words 
 seem to have been used as at present. 
 
 The use of salt is not certainly mentioned until 
 later still ; for a passage which has been relied 
 on in Origen 4 is probably allegorical ; and a 
 reference of the date of St. Cyprian and two 
 passages in St. Augustine are also doubtful. 5 
 
 1 $v(rri<r4is re ical avTupvo-rjcreis (Greg. Naz.) ; Kal ifKpvarjOijs, Kal 
 4iropKt(r6fjs (Cyr. Hier.). 
 
 2 De Nupt. et Cone. ii. 29; de Symbolo, i. 6; see, too, Ter- 
 tullian, Apol. 23. 
 
 8 De My st. 1. The Benedictine editors of St. Ambrose date 
 this treatise about 387. The author of the De Sacramentis i. 1, 
 puts this as the first of all the baptismal ceremonies ; but also 
 mentions a touching of the eyes at the time of admission to 
 the competentes. This diversity leads one to suppose the rite 
 must have been already one of some antiquity. 
 
 4 " Non es aqua lota in salutem, nee sale salita^ {Horn. 6, 
 in Ezeeh. 6.) 
 
 5 Cone. Carth. viii. 8; Confess. 11; Cat. Rud. 26. 
 
HISTORY OF BAPTISM AND CONFIRMATION 223 
 
 Excluding these, we find it expressly mentioned 
 first in the letter on baptism of Joannes Diaconus 
 to Senarius, 1 written about 512 ; and then by St. 
 Isidore about a century later. 
 
 While these ceremonies were apparently intro- 
 duced, others were omitted, such as the washing 
 of the feet, at one time general, but prohibited 
 by the 48th Canon of Elvira, probably because a 
 sacramental efficacy had become erroneously at- 
 tached to it. 2 
 
 In Rome, and in most other parts of the West, 
 these preliminary ceremonies were performed in 
 the church, where the catechumens assisted at 
 the earlier part of the Liturgy, which during Lent 
 seems to have been specially designed for their 
 instruction ; while in Milan and a few Oriental 
 Churches the baptistery was used for the purpose. 3 
 
 It is clear from St. Justin's language that a 
 special baptistery was in use by the middle of the 
 second century ; and it was everywhere employed 
 for the rites immediately preceding baptism. These 
 began on Holy Saturday morning by reading the 
 " Prophecies," which summed up all the instruc- 
 tion that had been given as to the dealings of 
 God with mankind under the dispensations that 
 had prepared the way for Christianity. Then 
 followed the anointing with oil ; a ceremony 
 which has had a remarkable history. The earliest 
 evidence for it is almost entirely found in writings 
 of an heretical, or at least a doubtful, character ; 
 
 1 Migne, P. L. lix. p. 399. 
 
 2 See de Mysteriis, 6, and the notes to de Sacram. iii. 1. 
 
 3 The details may be found in Dom Toutee's Diss. 2, cap. 5, 
 on St. Cyril. 
 
224 STUDIES 
 
 such as the apocryphal Acts of the Apostles, the 
 practice of certain Gnostic sects mentioned by St. 
 Irena?us, and the Clementines. 1 Dr. Hatch, fol- 
 lowing Renan, infers from this that anointing was 
 derived from the influence of non-Christian, Oriental, 
 ideas. 2 
 
 He omits, however, to take into account that 
 the symbolical use of oil was familiar to the Jews, 
 and was sanctioned by our Lord and the Apostles ; 
 so that we need not look beyond the New Testa- 
 ment for examples of Christian anointing. And 
 it is hardly conceivable that a custom of Gnostic 
 origin should have attained such importance in 
 the Church in the next and the following centuries, 
 when orthodox writers agree in putting the pre- 
 baptismal anointing almost on a level with baptism 
 itself and with confirmation. 3 It is far more likely 
 that the heretics took with them this ceremony 
 with others when they left the Catholic Church. 
 
 It will be observed that all the authorities I 
 quote are Oriental, and that there is no such 
 early evidence of anointing in the West ; indeed, 
 the silence of Tertullian and St. Cyprian, and an 
 incidental remark of St. Optatus, seem to prove 
 that it was not in use, at least in Africa, in their 
 time. But it must at any rate have been cus- 
 tomary in Rome and Gaul before the fifth century, 
 
 1 Acta Matthaeae et Thomae, ed. Teschendorf, pp. 186, 213 ; 
 Adv. Haer, i. 21, iii. ; Recog. iii. 67 ; and the third letter of 
 Clement. 
 
 2 Hibbert Lectures, 1888, p. 308. 
 
 3 Const. Apost. iii. 15 ; vii. 22, 42 ; St. Cyr. Hier. Gat. Myst. 
 ii. 3 ; St. Joan. Chrys. Horn. 6 in Col. ; Cael. Hier. 2 ; Theodoret 
 in Cant. ; qu. 137 ad Orthod. among the works of St. Justin ; 
 and Can. Hippolyti, xix. 9, 10. 
 
HISTORY OF BAPTISM AND CONFIRMATION 225 
 
 for a reply either of Siricius or Innocent I. to cer- 
 tain bishops of the latter country shows it must 
 by then have been established ; l and there is 
 abundant evidence of it later in the Latin Church. 
 The symbolical meaning of this anointing is variously 
 stated : Hofling is too absolute in saying that in 
 the East a positive grace is assigned to it, while 
 in the West its effect was considered as negative. 
 The commonest view is that expressed by St. 
 John Chrysostom, that the catechumen is " anointed 
 like the athletes before they go into the stadium." 
 The unction was followed by a repetition of the 
 renunciations which had been pronounced at the 
 beginning of Lent ; 2 after which the font was 
 blessed, this being mentioned in the Apostolic 
 Constitutions, by SS. Cyril and Basil, in the East, 
 and by St. Ambrose and the author of the de Sacra- 
 mentis in Italy ; the Areopagite is the first to 
 speak of the addition of chrism to the blessed 
 water. But it is impossible to read Tertullian's 
 treatise on baptism 3 without recognising the 
 identity of thought, and even of language, with 
 the present Blessing of the Font on Holy Saturday ; 
 and one is inclined to believe that TertuUian was 
 amplifying a ritual already existing, rather than 
 to suppose that the Church adopted the words of 
 
 1 Canones ad Gallos, 11, in Coustant. The text is hopelessly 
 corrupt ; but it is clear that the Pope lays down it is immaterial 
 when the " oleum exorcisatum " is used, provided it be before 
 baptism. See, too, de Sacramentis, i. 2. 
 
 2 " Aquam adituri ibidem sed et aliquanto prius in eccleaia 
 sub antistitis manu contestamur nos renuntiasse diabolo et pompae 
 et angelis eius." (Tertullian, Cor. Mil. 3, and Spectac, 4 ; de 
 Sacramentis, i. 2 ; and de Mysteriis, 2.) 
 
 3 Especially caps. 2-5 and 9. 
 
 15 
 
226 STUDIES 
 
 that author. In either case it carries us back to 
 the second century. 
 
 The catechumen's clothes were now entirely put 
 off, if, as in the East, that had not been already 
 done before the anointing ; even rings were taken 
 off, and he went down into the font and was im- 
 mersed thrice. 1 A single immersion seems to have 
 been introduced in Spain to emphasise the unity 
 of the Godhead, and was first distinctly permitted 
 by St. Gregory the Great. Baptism by immersion 
 is still prescribed by the Ritual where it is the 
 custom, and was undoubtedly the rule in the early 
 ages of the Church. But the validity of affusion 
 has of late years received a very unexpected primi- 
 tive witness in the Didache, and was evidently 
 employed in the " clinical " baptism of the sick. 
 
 I have now reached a point at which it is con- 
 venient to break off, since the subject cannot be 
 dealt with in one article, even in the very imper- 
 fect way which is all I have been able to attempt. 
 I hope to be able to take it up on some subsequent 
 occasion, to complete the history of baptism, and 
 to give an account of confirmation. 2 
 
 1 Tertullian, de Bapt. 13, and adv. Prax. 26. 
 
 a It is a subject of deep regret that growing infirmity pre- 
 vented the realisation of this hope. The research displayed in 
 this and foregoing articles would have resulted in further valu- 
 able archaeological and historical disquisitions. But it was not 
 to be.— H. N. B. 
 
227 
 
 THE CANON OF THE NEW- 
 TESTAMENT. 
 
 1. Histoire du Canon du Nouveau Testament. Par L'Abbe 
 
 A. Loisy ; Lecons Professees a Vficole Supe'rieure de 
 Th&ologie de Paris, 1890-91. Paris : Maisonneuve. 
 1891. 
 
 2. Introductio Generalis in Utriusque Testamenti Libras 
 
 Sacros. Auctore R. Cornely, S.J. Paris : Lethiel- 
 leux. 1889. 
 
 3. History of the Canon of the New Testament. By B. F. 
 
 Westcott (Bishop of Durham). Cambridge. 1855. 
 
 4. History of the Canon of the Holy Scriptures in the Chris- 
 
 tian Church. By Prof. E. Reuss ; translated by 
 D. Hunter, B.D. Edinburgh: Hunter. 1891. 
 
 5. Geschichte des Neutestamentlichen Kanons. Von Th. 
 
 Zahn. Erlangen: Deichert. 1888-91. 
 
 It is a commonplace to observe that the vast 
 mass of detail which has been accumulated by 
 the intellectual activity of the last hundred years 
 has oppressed every department of human know- 
 ledge. It becomes daily more difficult to discern 
 the bearing of facts that lie so thick on every 
 side ; to see the forest because of the trees. The 
 disadvantages of this are obvious and generally 
 recognised ; one counterbalancing gain is less 
 noticed, yet is of much importance. The collec- 
 tion of facts, the tendency of which is unknown, 
 
228 STUDIES 
 
 excludes at least the influence of prejudice, and 
 insensibly rectifies conclusions which had been 
 based on one-sided grounds. This result has, as 
 we should expect, been most marked in the pro- 
 gress of religious controversy. Points that had 
 been hotly contested since the Reformation, have 
 been implicitly or explicitly abandoned by non- 
 Catholics, so that new issues have been substituted 
 for old ones, often without the change being per- 
 ceived by either party to the controversy. One of 
 the most important of these disputed questions 
 is the position occupied by Scripture in the primi- 
 tive Church. The subject has been approached 
 not dogmatically, but from the historical side, and 
 in answer to the question, in what circumstances, 
 and at what time, did the collection of books known 
 to us as the New Testament come to be recognised 
 as inspired. This question arose out of the attack 
 on the authenticity and inspiration of Holy Scrip- 
 ture which has continued throughout the last cen- 
 tury. Catholics, who have been less directly 
 interested than orthodox Protestants, have good 
 reason to be grateful to the latter for the zeal, 
 ability, and learning with which the attack has 
 been met. To mention only the chief among many 
 excellent works — Dr. Westcott's volume was an 
 effective reply to the objections of the Tubingen 
 school in its earlier phases. The author of Super- 
 natural Religion will have done the permanent 
 service of eliciting from Dr. Lightfoot the essays 
 in which he finally disposed of the pretensions of 
 that work, and from Dr. Sanday a valuable con- 
 tribution to the same subject. More recently Dr. 
 Salmon's Introduction to the Study of the New Testa- 
 ment has summed up the evidence for the orthodox 
 
THE CANON OF THE NEW TESTAMENT 229 
 
 position so vigorously, that his work might be 
 warmly recommended to Catholic students, if one 
 did not feel that praise from such a quarter would 
 do violence to his aggressive Protestantism. In 
 Germany the amount of work done has been much 
 greater even than here, and its results diverge 
 more widely from the opinions formerly current 
 among non-Catholics. The ground was broken by 
 Credner, in his History of the Canon, which is too 
 well known to need more than mention. Since 
 then it is impossible to enumerate more than the 
 chief writers on the subject — Hilgenfeld, Holtz- 
 mann, Zahn, and Lipsius. Reuss's volume is of 
 value as containing the most outspoken account 
 of the bearing which the history of the Canon 
 must have on the Protestant Rule of Faith . Finally, 
 Harnack in his Dogmengeschichte, and in some of 
 his lesser works, has written much on the subject, 
 so that we are able to profit by his fertility of 
 suggestion and abundant knowledge of the litera- 
 ture of the early Church. It may be said generally 
 of all these writers, that they tend to minimise 
 the evidence for the early reception of the canonical 
 books of the New Testament. I must, of course, 
 not be taken as agreeing with them, if I confine 
 myself strictly to my subject, and do not turn 
 aside to traverse or qualify many of the statements 
 I quote. Such a tendency is an inevitable reaction 
 from the views as to the self-sufficiency of Scrip- 
 ture, formerly current among non-Catholics, and 
 now seen to be untenable. My object is to establish, 
 by the testimony of those outside the Church, that 
 the history of the reception of the New Testament 
 by the Christians of the two first centuries is con- 
 sistent with the Catholic teaching as to the rela- 
 
230 STUDIES 
 
 tion between Scripture and the authority of the 
 Church, and inconsistent with all other opinions. 
 We shall find, to use Professor Reuss's words, 
 " the Catholic Church has remained faithful to its 
 principle down to our own time." 1 It is hardly 
 necessary for me to specify what that principle is. 
 The Church teaches that she alone is the supreme 
 judge of the meaning of Scripture and the norm 
 by which all interpretation is to be tested. Further, 
 she claims to decide what is, or is not, Scripture ; 
 not as thereby conferring any inspiration on the 
 books thus canonised, but as declaring them to 
 be inspired. In the exercise of this power, she 
 has added from time to time in the past to the 
 Canon of Scripture such books as she judges to 
 be inspired, and reserves the authority to do so 
 in the future. Her judgment that certain books 
 are inspired has been expressed, either by explicit 
 teaching, or by authorising them to be read in 
 public worship. 2 
 
 The theory which Luther attempted to set up 
 in place of the Catholic doctrine is more complicated. 
 If I rightly understand it, he claimed, not merely 
 to interpret Scripture, but also to determine, by 
 a subjective test, what books are inspired, by 
 finding in them the doctrine of justification by 
 faith only. The application of this test led him 
 to consider some books — though inspired — of less 
 value than others ; and to reject the Epistle to 
 the Hebrews, and those of St. James and St. Jude. 
 But there was at the same time a tendency in his 
 own mind, and still more in the minds of his 
 
 1 P. 77. 
 
 2 Franzelin, De Script. Sac. Thesis xv. 
 
THE CANON OF THE NEW TESTAMENT 231 
 
 followers, to seek for an objective basis for the 
 books of Scripture, which was found in their uni- 
 versal acceptance by Christians. This was clearly 
 expressed by Brentius in the Confessio Wirtem- 
 bergica (1551): " Sacram Scripturam vocamus eos 
 libros canonicos V. et N. Testamenti, de quorum 
 auctoritate in Ecclesia nunquam dubitatum est." 1 
 Such a definition would not have included the 
 Second Epistle of St. Peter, which was, nevertheless, 
 accepted by Lutherans ; but with this exception 
 the two statements are not mutually incompatible. 
 
 Those who framed the Anglican Articles were 
 less successful in escaping from ambiguity. In 
 the Articles of 1552 nothing is said of the books 
 included under the title of Holy Scripture. The 
 omission was supplied in 1562 by borrowing from 
 the Wurtemburg Confession just quoted, and 
 declaring that " in the name of the Holy Scripture 
 we do understand those canonical books of the 
 Old and New Testament, of whose authority there 
 was never any doubt in the Church." No list was 
 given, but the Church of England did not follow 
 Luther in rejecting the " antilegomena " of the 
 New Testament, as this general principle would 
 have required. Dr. Westcott's statement, there- 
 fore, that " the teaching of the Church of England 
 as to the Canon of the New Testament is not 
 removed beyond all question," is so far within 
 the truth as to be almost ironical. 
 
 The so-called " Reformed Churches " derived a 
 more consistent test of the Canon from the relent- 
 
 1 The best collection of Protestant Confessions on this sub- 
 ject is to be found in Professor Charteris's valuable work, 
 Canonicity, pp. 36 sqq. 
 
232 STUDIES 
 
 lessly logical mind of Calvin. In the Confession 
 which he and De Chaudieu drew up, he put the 
 consent of the Church in the second place, and 
 appealed chiefly to " the testimony and internal 
 persuasion of the Holy Ghost, who makes us dis- 
 cern ' Scripture ' from the other ecclesiastical 
 books." The same line is taken by all the later 
 Calvinist symbols ; of which the Westminster 
 Confession may be taken as the clearest instance. 1 
 Barclay, the apologist of the Society of Friends, 
 helped probably by his Catholic training, drew 
 the inconvenient conclusion that the true Rule of 
 Faith was — not Scripture, as the earlier Reformers 
 had asserted, but — the subjective testimony of the 
 Spirit to each individual believer. He consequently 
 urged that this was the only test of the canonicity 
 of any book of Scripture ; that, if it was rejected, 
 men must return to Rome, and accept the infalli- 
 bility of the Church — " let any one find a middle 
 course if he can." 2 
 
 These were the chief views as to the origin of 
 the Canon of Scripture put forward when sys- 
 tematic historical investigation was in its infancy. 
 We will now proceed to inquire which of these 
 doctrines was held in the early Church, during the 
 time when the Canon was being formed ; and how 
 far the opinions of orthodox and sceptics outside 
 the Church have been affected by their mutual 
 controversies. 
 
 1 " Notwithstanding " the other evidences that Scripture 
 is the Word of God, " our full persuasion and assurance of 
 the infallible truth and divine authority thereof is from the 
 inward work of the Holy Spirit, bearing witness by and with 
 the word in our hearts " (Art. V.). 
 
 2 See the whole remarkable passage quoted in Mohler's 
 Symbolism, p. 388. ' 
 
THE CANON OF THE NEW TESTAMENT 233 
 
 Among Anglicans, the chief result has been a 
 clearer recognition of the importance of the Church 
 as the witness to the canonicity of the books of 
 the New Testament. Dr. Westcott frequently in- 
 sists on this truth. 
 
 He says, for instance : — 
 
 The strength of negative criticism lies in ignoring the 
 existence of a Christian society from the Apostolic age, 
 strong in discipline, clear in faith, and jealous of innova- 
 tion. It is then to the Church, as a " witness and keeper 
 of Holy Writ," that we must look both for the formation 
 and the proof of the Canon. The written rule of Chris- 
 tendom must rest finally on the general confession of the 
 Church, and not on the independent opinions of its mem- 
 bers. It is impossible to insist on this too frequently or 
 too earnestly. 1 
 
 Moreover, he fully admits, with that candour 
 for which he is so conspicuous, 2 that the primitive 
 Church did not consider its office limited to being 
 a witness and keeper of Scripture. 
 
 The successors of the Apostles did not, we admit, recog- 
 nise that the written histories of the Lord, and the scat- 
 tered Epistles of his first disciples, would form a sure and 
 sufficient source and test of doctrine when the current 
 tradition had grown indistinct or corrupt. 3 
 
 Dr. Salmon, too, urges very forcibly that the 
 existence from the beginning of a Christian Church 
 is proof enough that the New Testament did not 
 
 1 History of the Canon of the New Testament, p. 15. 
 
 2 The following example of Dr. Westcott' s candour is worth 
 repeating here, though it has no connection with my present 
 subject : " There is something mournful in the silent, shadowy 
 line of the Roman Pontiffs during the first three centuries. They 
 seem only to be heard when they claim the powers which their 
 successors gained." (Introd. to Gospels, p. 396.) 
 
 3 P. 65. 
 
234 STUDIES 
 
 originate in the haphazard way supposed by Renan. 
 But he appreciates more fully than the Bishop of 
 Durham, that any authority which should be a 
 real witness to Scripture must be supreme. 
 
 The supreme authority in the Church [he says] is that 
 which brings Apostles to its bar, tests their writings, and 
 assigns to some the attribute of inspiration which it denies 
 to others (if it be correct to say that the Apostles were 
 not always inspired). But what that authority is I do not 
 know. 1 
 
 He appears to relieve himself from the difficulty 
 by suggesting the analogy of general opinion in 
 matters of literary taste which has ruled that 
 Shakespeare is a greater poet than Beaumont 
 and Fletcher. 
 
 The older non-Catholic view of the New Testa- 
 ment has been affected in another way by modern 
 criticism. Both orthodox and sceptical critics have 
 been led to the conclusion that the three Synoptic 
 Gospels show unmistakable signs of being depen- 
 dent upon a Gospel, oral or written, which had 
 taken a very definite shape before any of them 
 had been put together. I will only mention one 
 point in connection with this very interesting 
 subject. Dr. Salmon gives reasons for supposing 
 that the parts of the narrative common to all three 
 evangelists were derived from a written source ; 
 while the sayings of our Lord — which, though sub- 
 stantially identical, differ in detail — probably 
 reached them as part of an oral tradition. He 
 points out further that the matter common to the 
 three first Gospels (Dr. E. Abbott's " triple tradi- 
 tion ") belongs only to our Lord's Galilean ministry, 
 
 1 Appendix, p. 9. 
 
THE CANON OF THE NEW TESTAMENT 235 
 
 which few persons would be qualified to relate. 
 An examination of the common matter leads him 
 to think that the most probable witness to all this 
 part of our Lord's life is St. Peter, whom he there- 
 fore believes to have been the author of the common 
 basis of the three first Gospels. 1 
 
 Nor are evidences wanting to show that Anglican 
 theologians will be carried still farther from their 
 old positions, as they become more familiar with 
 the results of recent German investigation. For 
 instance, the learned Bampton Lecturer for 1890 
 seems to have adopted Reuss's teaching as to the 
 origin of the New Testament, without realising 
 that it is inconsistent with the ordinary Anglican 
 view concerning the relations of tradition and 
 Scripture. A few quotations will suffice : — 
 
 In the Apostolic age there is no traceable idea of any 
 
 new collection of writings for the use of the Church 
 
 There is no suggestion that our Lord directed His disciples 
 
 to write The terms used in the history of 
 
 the promulgation of the Gospel and the foundation of 
 the Church never include the idea of writing, and they 
 express every cognate idea so fully that they must be 
 
 taken to exclude it It does not appear that 
 
 any one of the writers of the New Testament thought 
 of his writing as one which would become of general use 
 in the Church, or would be read apart from the oral teach- 
 ing which had been already communicated, and which 
 formed the substance of the " faith once delivered to 
 the saints." 2 
 
 The first three chapters of Reuss's work, to 
 which the Archdeacon refers, contain the amplest 
 
 1 Lecture 9. 
 
 2 Archdeacon Watkins's Modem Criticism and the Fourth 
 Gospel, pp. 140, 141. 
 
236 STUDIES 
 
 proof of all these statements. When, leaving 
 apostolic times, the learned Strassburg professor 
 comes to consider the origin of the Canon, he goes 
 still farther. He says with perfect frankness that 
 " the Catholic Church has remained faithful to 
 its principle down to our own time " ; and quotes 
 St. Irenaeus and Tertullian in proof of this, especially 
 relying on the numerous well-known passages in 
 the de Praescriptione Haereticorum. He might have 
 alleged the whole treatise, for its very title — the 
 Demurrer against Heretics — shows the author's 
 object is to point out that heretics have to over- 
 come a preliminary objection before issue can be 
 joined with them, and their arguments heard. No 
 appeal by them to Scripture should be admitted, 
 nor should any argument based thereon be allowed. 
 The only question to be discussed with them is, 
 to whom has the teaching of the faith been delivered ; 
 where this is found, there also will be the truth of 
 the Scriptures and of their interpretation ; an 
 argument based on Scripture can only lead to loss 
 of temper or to confusion. 1 
 
 Reuss might have strengthened his case by 
 appealing to the great Alexandrines, Clement and 
 Origen, but as he says — 
 
 1 " Ergo non ad Scripturas provocandum est, nee in his con- 
 stituendum certamen quibus aut nulla aut incerta victoria, 
 solum disputandum est cui competat fides ipsa ; a quo et per 
 quos et quibus sit tradita disciplina qua fiunt Christiani ? ubi 
 enim apparuerit esse veritatem disciplinae et fidei, illic erit Veritas 
 Scripturarum et expositionum, et omnium traditionum." (Cap. 
 16.) As Dr. Westcott relies on this passage to show that the 
 primitive tradition was merely hermeneutic, it is as well to 
 note that Tertullian expressly says the truth of the Scripture, 
 as well as of its interpretation, is dependent on the authority 
 of the teaching body. So, too, St. Irenseus, IV., 33-8 ; rather 
 a fuller statement of the same. 
 
THE CANON OF THE NEW TESTAMENT 237 
 
 It is needless to multiply quotations on this point. 
 The Protestant opposition of the sixteenth century of 
 itself testifies that Catholicism remained only too faithful 
 in its attachment to this principle of subordinating Scrip- 
 ture to tradition, and only too logically pushed it to all 
 its consequences. 
 
 Like other writers of the same school, Reuss has 
 remarked that the heresies of the second century 
 had another somewhat opposed result ; they 
 increased the veneration in which the Scriptures 
 were held in the Church. But, after dwelling on 
 this, he repeats that Irenseus and Tertullian, the 
 representatives of Catholicism, affirm the collec- 
 tive and equal value of Scripture and Tradition, 
 adding, "It is therefore by a singular delusion 
 that certain modern authors transform these fathers 
 into Protestant theologians." 
 
 Reuss's volume may be said to give the principal 
 results of the criticism of the Tubingen school as 
 far as it bore upon the history of the New Testa- 
 ment Canon ; and I might, instead of him, have 
 quoted Hilgenfeld as an authority for the same 
 statements. A new direction was given to this, 
 as to so many other historical questions, by Har- 
 nack. The principal advance made by him was 
 his endeavouring to distinguish, more accurately 
 than had before been done, the circumstances in 
 which the Canon grew up, and the reasons which 
 determined the choice of certain books as canonical 
 and the exclusion of others. 
 
 As to the former of these points, he urges that 
 the collection and canonisation of the books which 
 make up the New Testament were necessary results 
 of the struggles with the Gnostics and Marcion. 
 Not only did the heretical appeal to the apostolical 
 
238 STUDIES 
 
 writings compel Catholics to take these, as it were, 
 out of their opponents' hands, they had also to 
 guard against mutilations and alterations of the 
 text, which were not uncommon. Montanism 
 made it still more urgent that there should be a 
 clear line drawn between the inspired Christian 
 writings and those which could lay claim to no 
 such authority. The essence of this heresy in its 
 early stage was the belief in the prophecies of 
 Montanus, Priscilla, and Maximilla, and the asser- 
 tion that these constituted a secondary and final 
 revelation : to which the Church replied by declar- 
 ing that the epoch of revelation was closed, and 
 that the Holy Spirit had only been given in fulness 
 and without measure to the Apostles. The con- 
 flict led in another way to the formation of the 
 Canon. Doubts were thrown on the authority of 
 certain books alleged by either side in the con- 
 troversy ; and we find that ecclesiastical councils 
 decided the question. 1 
 
 Beyond this Harnack considers the early his- 
 tory of the Canon involved in obscurity, until it 
 suddenly breaks upon us as generally accepted in 
 the well-known fragments of Melito and the Mura- 
 torian Canon. This very obscurity is due to the 
 acceptance of the books composing the New Testa- 
 ment being based merely on the authority of the 
 Church, without regard to the individuals who may 
 have been instrumental in selecting them. Clement, 
 Origen, St. Irenaeus, Tertullian, did not mention 
 
 1 Gp. Tertullian, de Pud. cap. 10, where he says that the 
 Shepherd of Hernias " ab omni concilio ecclesiarum etiam ves- 
 trarum inter apocrypha et falsa iudicaretur" And again, cap. 20, 
 " receptior apud ecclesias epistola Bamabae (Hebrews) illo apo- 
 crypho Pastor e moechorum." 
 
THE CANON OF THE NEW TESTAMENT 239 
 
 who made the collection, but received it simply as 
 delivered to them by the Church ; and later, St. 
 Augustine spoke only generally of the " Sancti et 
 docti homines qui examinare talia pot er ant" 1 
 
 One point, however, Harnack regards as certain. 
 The Catholic communities, to meet the needs of 
 the time, canonised those works which on the ground 
 of tradition they held to be apostolical in origin, 
 and chose that recension of the text which was 
 followed in the public services of the Church. In 
 any doubtful case one test, he says, was looked 
 on as of primary importance ; nothing was admitted 
 as inspired which was adverse to the Rule of Faith 
 — that is, to the Catholic doctrine as expounded 
 by the legitimate pastors of the Church. 2 A frag- 
 ment happily preserved for us by Eusebius 3 shows 
 us the practical application of this principle. 
 Serapion, a bishop of Antioch about the end of 
 the second century, found the people of Rhossos 
 in Cilicia had in use a gospel ascribed to St. Peter. 
 After a cursory inspection he submitted it to be 
 publicly read, but withdrew that permission on 
 finding it contained matter contrary to the Catholic 
 faith. Harnack's conclusion is that when the 
 Canon was being formed the essential test whether 
 a book belonged to it was not an historical but a 
 dogmatic one ; not whether it had been written by 
 an Apostle, but whether it conformed to the teach- 
 ing of the Church. This view was traversed not 
 altogether unsuccessfully by Professor Overbeck, 
 
 1 Cont. Faustum, xxii. 79. 
 
 - He refers for the fullest proof of this to Tertwllian, Praescr. 
 Haer., 37 sqq. 
 3 H. E. y vi. 12. 
 
240 STUDIES 
 
 of Basel. 1 He admitted, indeed, that the Catho- 
 licity of the contents of any book had been always 
 a condition necessary for its reception into the 
 Canon ; but he urged that the primary requisite 
 was its apostolic authorship. In support of this 
 he appealed with great force to the history of the 
 inclusion of the Epistle to the Hebrews in the 
 Canon ; but he laid even more stress on the canonical 
 character of the Epistle to Philemon. He quoted 
 the statement of St. Jerome that many early writers 
 had denied the inspiration of the latter epistle, 
 because it was not written with a view to instruc- 
 tion ; but in spite of this it was received as canonical, 
 because written by St. Paul. 2 
 
 In his later works Harnack practically accepts 
 Overbeck's criticisms, with some exceptions on 
 which I need not dwell here. I only want to draw 
 attention to this point : the controversy led both 
 the disputants to consider the relation in the early 
 Church of Scripture to the Rule of Faith, and both 
 were agreed that the teaching of the Church was 
 held to be the norm and test of Scripture, and not 
 conversely. In his History of Dogma, Harnack 
 draws out in a series of " Antitheses " the some- 
 what opposed results which he conceived were due 
 to the establishment of the Canon. Most of these 
 are not to my present point ; and it would not be 
 possible to accept them without considerable qualifi- 
 
 1 Zur Geschichte des Kanons. Chemnitz. 1880. 
 
 2 Praef. in Ep. ad Philemonem, Opp. vii. 742 sq. The whole 
 passage is of great interest in its bearing on the history of 
 inspiration. St. Jerome does not say who the " plerique veteres " 
 were ; as far as my own reading goes, I have only met with 
 the opinion in Origen (in Joan, i. 5). ; 
 
THE CANON OF THE NEW TESTAMENT 241 
 
 cation. But the last gives a sufficiently good idea 
 of their tendency to be quoted in full : — 
 
 To the Church alone belonged the Apostolical writings, 
 because she alone preserved the Apostolical teaching in 
 the Rule of Faith. This was explained to heretics, and, 
 on principle, no argument with them was based on Scrip- 
 ture, or on the sense of passages of Scripture. But in 
 domestic questions Scripture was the final and completely 
 independent appeal, against which even an ancient tradi- 
 tion was of no avail. 
 
 Harnack's account of the formation of the New 
 Testament has met with a severe critic in Pro- 
 fessor Zahn, who, in the course of his exhaustive 
 work on the Canon, has been led to differ from 
 some of Harnack's conclusions. The discussion 
 has been conducted at a length, and with a warmth 
 which would hardly be possible out of Germany. 1 
 
 I have not followed all its details, nor would they 
 bear on our present subject. Where they differ, 
 it will be found that Zahn is more orthodox than 
 his opponent, putting the existence of a collected 
 New Testament farther back than Harnack does. 
 He traces " the roots of the New Testament to 
 the first generation of Christians," though he agrees 
 that there was a gradual development in the venera- 
 tion in which the sacred writings were held, until 
 by the end of the second century they had attained 
 the position they have ever since occupied. Much 
 of the difference between the two writers is due 
 to a different estimate of the same facts ; both, 
 for instance, admit the impulse given to the forma- 
 
 1 Those who desire to follow the controversy will find it in 
 Harnack's Das N. Testament um das Jahr 200, and in Zahn's 
 Bemerkungen zu Ad. Harnack's Prufung ; and a review of the 
 whole in Theol. Studien und Kritiken, 1, 1891. 
 
 16 
 
242 STUDIES 
 
 tion of a Catholic Canon by Marcion's attempt at 
 mutilation ; but Zahn urges that the production 
 of this new Canon is a proof that a Catholic one 
 already existed. Again, Harnack asserted that 
 the books composing the New Testament under- 
 went considerable alteration about the time they 
 were declared canonical ; while Zahn has shown 
 good reason for believing that no such wholesale 
 revision has taken place, and that we have the 
 New Testament substantially as it was in the hands 
 of the Apostolic Fathers. But these are only points 
 of detail ; the two authors differ most in the direc- 
 tions where they have looked for evidences of the 
 Canon. Harnack dwelt particularly on the formal 
 reception of the sacred books by some local council 
 or bishop, after — it is to be supposed — examination 
 of its contents and of the evidence for its Apostolic 
 origin. He attached less than due importance to 
 the informal reception of these works by their 
 being publicly read in the Church services. Zahn 
 has the advantage of calling attention to the 
 omission, and of pointing out that this indirect 
 canonisation carries the evidence for the New 
 Testament farther back than formal decisions 
 would do. The disputants have each laid too 
 exclusive a stress on one of the two ways in which, 
 it will be remembered, I set out by saying the 
 Catholic Church has canonised the books com- 
 posing the New Testament. It would be nearer 
 the truth to say, that these two methods belong 
 to different stages in the history of the Canon. 
 In the earlier period which preceded explicit defini- 
 tion, a position of special honour and authority 
 was given to the writings of the Apostles by their 
 public use in the Liturgy. When dealing with 
 
THE CANON OF THE NEW TESTAMENT 243 
 
 this stage of its history, M. Loisy very ably points 
 out how significant it is that the Church should 
 not have formulated a definite Canon, in opposition 
 to the Gnostics on the one hand, who added a 
 flood of apocryphal writings to the New Testament, 
 or to Marcion on the other hand, who mutilated it 
 wholesale. Reuss has suggested that this shows 
 the pastors of the Church did not yet distinctly 
 believe that the books composing the New Testa- 
 ment were divinely inspired. This view is, how- 
 ever, inconsistent, as Zahn has shown at length, 
 with the references to the New Testament in the 
 early Fathers ; and it is inconceivable that books 
 to which no special character attached should have 
 been suddenly put on a level with the Old Testa- 
 ment by the orthodox writers throughout the 
 whole Church. 1 The true solution has been put 
 by M. Loisy with conspicuous ability. Christians 
 believed from the beginning that the Apostles were 
 endowed with the fulness of the Holy Ghost in 
 an extraordinary and special degree. 2 But they 
 had not yet explicitly realised that the inspiration 
 of what the Apostles wrote in the execution of 
 their pastoral office was a necessary effect of the 
 Apostolic charisma, and they consequently did 
 not at first speak of their works as inspired. In 
 this the primitive Church did but follow the example 
 of the Apostles themselves. No express claim to 
 the inspiration of their writings is put forth by 
 
 1 The " suddenness with which the New Testament conies 
 on us in Melito, Irenaeus, and Tertullian," is a puzzle to Har- 
 nack, and a serious objection to his theory. 
 
 2 S. Clem. Rom., 1, 43 and 47 ; S. Ignat. ad Rom., iv. 3 ; 
 Polyc, 3 ; Novatian de Trin., 29. 
 
244 STUDIES 
 
 any of the authors of the New Testament, with 
 one exception. That exception — the Apocalypse 
 — was at once put on a level with the prophecies 
 of the Old Testament. Moreover, time was required 
 for the spread throughout the Church of books 
 primarily addressed to individuals and to local 
 communities, even in an age when intercommunica- 
 tion was greater than it has ever been since until 
 our own day. Reuss's explanation being there- 
 fore incorrect, the fact remains, that to the first 
 attacks of heresy on the New Testament the Church 
 did not oppose a formally defined Canon, but her 
 own living authority. " The question of the mutual 
 relations of Scripture and Tradition was thus 
 resolved in fact, the first assault of error having 
 shown the necessity, not for a book, but for an 
 authority teaching the truth." 1 
 
 The second stage, of inquiry and formal decision, 
 began in the Church after the rise of Montanism. 
 That heresy, as I have said, called attention to 
 the limits of written revelation, and led Catholics 
 to perceive more clearly than before that this 
 must be confined to works written by the Apostles 
 themselves, or composed under their immediate 
 authority. Hence followed a sharper distinction 
 between canonical and non-canonical books ; of 
 which the principal result was the exclusion of 
 the Shepherd of Hermas. This singular work was 
 acceptable to neither party ; the Montanists 
 rejected it on account of its laxity, while the 
 Catholics could not defend with any warmth a 
 collection of visions, very like those put forward 
 by their opponents, and undoubtedly later than 
 
 1 Op. cit., p. 80. 
 
THE CANON OF THE NEW TESTAMENT 245 
 
 the Apostolic age. 1 The doubts thrown on the 
 Epistle to the Hebrews were apparently due to a 
 similar tendency. Where Catholics came less closely 
 in contact with Montanism, as in Alexandria, 
 the line of demarcation between inspired Scripture 
 and other primitive religious works was less sharply 
 drawn. This is most conspicuous in Clement, as 
 Harnack points out ; but it may also be noticed 
 in Origen. 2 This writer was the first person of 
 great ability who had been led to study the Canon 
 of the New Testament, and had the advantage 
 of comparing the opinions current in the East 
 with those held in Rome. The test, whether any 
 book was canonical or not, is for him, as for all 
 the primitive Church, not his own judgment con- 
 cerning it, nor its intrinsic character, but its recog- 
 nition by the universal Church. 3 Indeed, in his 
 great theological work he enumerates the inspira- 
 tion and interpretation of Scripture among the 
 subjects which come to us on the authority of the 
 Church. 4 
 
 I have now reached the limit of my inquiry. 
 All are agreed that by the time of Origen and 
 Tertullian, at latest, the New Testament, in the 
 same sense as we now have it, had been constituted. 
 Its outline, indeed, was not perfectly distinct, some 
 books were not received throughout the whole 
 
 1 This, M. Loisy's suggestion, is by far the most plausible 
 explanation of the discredit into which Hermas gradually fell. 
 
 * It has not, however, been sufficiently remarked, that both 
 these Fathers often only express their own private opinion 
 when they speak of any non-canonical work as inspired. 
 
 3 This is very clearly brought out by Hilgenfeld in Der Kanon 
 tend die Kritih des N. Test., p. 47. 
 
 4 De Princip. 1, cap. 8. 
 
246 STUDIES 
 
 Church, and their claims were handled with a 
 freedom that might surprise us, did we not bear 
 in mind that the Church had issued no definition 
 concerning them. Pending her decision there was 
 not only full liberty to weigh the evidence for and 
 against the canonicity of any given book ; but it 
 was clearly desirable that this should be discussed 
 by those who were competent to do so. Such 
 criticisms as those of Julius Africanus, Origen, 
 and Dionysius of Alexandria, were the natural 
 preludes to authoritative definition. 
 
 An attempt to decide the limits of the Canon 
 merely by an appeal to history was made in the 
 next century by the person of all others best qualified 
 to do so, had the enterprise been possible. The 
 confusion in which Eusebius left the question was 
 due, as M. Loisy very acutely points out, to his 
 endeavouring to give an answer by history alone 
 to a question which is, partly at least, theological. 
 What Eusebius failed to do can never be accom- 
 plished by those who have not before them a tithe 
 of the evidence which was in his hands. 
 
 My object has been a much more simple and 
 more feasible one. The relation of Scripture to 
 the rest of Tradition, and of both to the teaching 
 authority of the Church, is admitted by all to be 
 the crucial point of difference between Catholics 
 and non-Catholics. It seemed, then, worth while 
 to inquire which view was held by Christians 
 during the time when the Canon of the New Testa- 
 ment was being formed ; and what principles 
 guided them in selecting some books and excluding 
 others. My very brief survey will have shown 
 that a great amount of information has been accu- 
 mulated by writers outside the Church, to whose 
 
THE CANON OF THE NEW TESTAMENT 247 
 
 learning and honesty we are very greatly indebted. 
 The result of their testimony is that, tried by 
 this test, the Christians of the first two centuries 
 were undoubtedly Catholics. It would be interest- 
 ing to carry the history of the subject down to 
 the rise of Protestantism and to the Council of 
 Trent ; but I shall not regret I cannot do so here, 
 if I send those who wish to pursue the subject to 
 M. Loisy's excellent work, which deals with it 
 very fully. 
 
248 
 
 LIGHTFOOT'S ST. IGNATIUS AND THE 
 ROMAN PRIMACY. 
 
 The Apostolic Fathers. Part II.: "St. Ignatius"; "St. 
 Polycarp." By J. B. Lightfoot, D.D., D.C.L., Bishop 
 of Durham. Two Volumes. London : Macmillan 
 and Co. 1885. 
 
 The least observant student must be forcibly 
 struck in passing from the New Testament to the 
 works of the Apostolic Fathers, with the contrast 
 between the inspired and the uninspired writings. 
 Even if we try to consider both from their merely 
 human side, the difference in clearness of expres- 
 sion and literary power is so enormous, that it is 
 impossible to believe it undesigned by Providence. 
 The pathetic simplicity of the Gospels, and the 
 eloquent pen of St. Paul, were indeed divine instru- 
 ments of great power in the conversion of the 
 world. But, to show that God had chosen the 
 foolish things of this world to confound the wise, 
 the Apostles were succeeded by at least two genera- 
 tions more profoundly indifferent to literary fame 
 than any that have come after them. The hus- 
 bandmen were so few, and the harvest so great, 
 that they had no leisure to write, and would have 
 made St. Cyprian's words their own : " Non 
 magna loquimur, sed vivimusP Moreover, as one 
 of their number has told us, they were happy in 
 
ST. IGNATIUS AND THE ROMAN PRIMACY 249 
 
 hearing those speak who had been taught by the 
 Divine Master Himself by the Sea of Galilee, or in 
 the Holy City, and rightly thought that " the 
 knowledge gained from books could not be of such 
 service as that which flowed from the living and 
 enduring voice." Yet, however, natural their silence 
 and however providential as establishing the divine 
 origin of Christianity, it is none the less a serious 
 loss to their heirs. And, even of the scanty litera- 
 ture of those times, that has come down to us, 
 so much is anonymous, of doubtful authenticity, 
 or clearly supposititious, that all the known writings 
 of the immediate successors of the Apostles could 
 be readily contained in one small volume. It will 
 be seen at once how this scantiness makes it diffi- 
 cult and unsafe to appeal to their testimony. Above 
 all, it encourages the " fallacy of silence " — the 
 assumption that whatever is not mentioned in 
 these works was then not believed, or non-existent. 
 This opinion is patent as soon as pointed out, 
 and is recognised by all ; but it is so tempting 
 to all who are concerned in denying the Apostolic 
 origin of Catholic doctrine and practices, that it 
 is worth while to give a popular illustration ; others 
 will occur in the course of this article. Protestants 
 and Catholics alike know that our three great 
 English Cardinals 1 have been constant defenders 
 of the faith, and that there is perhaps no Catholic 
 teaching which could not be found in their pages. 
 Yet it would be very easy to extract at random 
 fragments from their works which would make a 
 volume larger than the Opera Patrum Apostoli- 
 corum, and yet leave whole provinces of Catholic 
 
 1 I.e., Cardinals Wiseman, Manning, and Newman. 
 
250 STUDIES 
 
 dogma and discipline unmentioned. The result is, 
 that the first ages of Christianity are a debateable 
 area, and as it were a hunting-ground, in which 
 each one finds what he has gone to seek. To the 
 Anglican they reflect the ideal of the Church of 
 England as he understands it ; to the Presbyterian, 
 a congregational system ; while to French and 
 German Rationalists it is the home of figments, 
 strange and monstrous as those which people the 
 outer regions of media? val charts and travels. We 
 may be glad these last admit that, when the dark- 
 ness lifts, and Origen, Tertullian and Cyprian give 
 us light enough to recognise Christianity, it already 
 has the distinctive features of the Catholic Church. 
 Harnack, to whose works we shall have repeated 
 occasion to refer, for instance, says : — 
 
 Kenan has clearly seen that the history of dogma has 
 only two periods, and that the alterations which Chris- 
 tianity has lived through since the formation of the Catholic 
 Church bear no appreciable ratio to the changes which 
 it experienced before that Church was established. He 
 only puts the date of that establishment too early in the 
 following passage : " Si nous comyarons le Christianisme, 
 tel qu'U existait vers Van 180, au Christianisme du IV me et 
 Yme siecles, au Christianisme du moyen dge, au Chris- 
 tianisme de nos jours, nous trouvons qu'en realite il s'est 
 augmente de tres peu de chose dans les siecles qui ont suivis." 
 
 The admission is important enough — indeed, in 
 any other department of history it would probably 
 suffice to command general assent. But it only 
 limits the province of the Catholic apologist, and 
 directs his attention to the ecclesiastical history 
 of the first two centuries as the central position 
 in the battle-field. Happily, we can recognise most 
 fully the learning, diligence, and desire for perfect 
 
ST. IGNATIUS AND THE ROMAN PRIMACY 251 
 
 fairness of all our chief opponents, even where, 
 alas ! they are led furthest astray by some ante- 
 cedent fallacy, or some misconception of the very 
 nature of revealed truth. 
 
 Among such honoured opponents Dr. Lightfoot 
 has long held one of the highest places. His com- 
 mentaries on several of St. Paul's Epistles, and 
 his answer to the author of Supernatural Religion, 
 are well known to all students. He has also pub- 
 lished a critical edition of St. Clement of Rome. 
 In the present work he gives us the result of many 
 years' study, all the more valuable because he 
 has modified the opinions with which he started. 
 If, as we have heard, it has delayed the publication 
 of his commentary on the Ephesians, our gain is 
 not unmixed, though this latter volume, we hope, 
 may now soon be accessible to us. A great part 
 of his present work was written before the end of 
 1878. He was then appointed to the bishopric 
 of Durham, and his leisure has been too scanty 
 to allow of rapid progress. Every student will 
 sympathise with his regret that " for weeks, and 
 sometimes for months together, I have not found 
 time to write a single line " ; all do not know at 
 the cost of how great self-denial his work has been 
 at last accomplished. It has no doubt gained by 
 the opportunities of reconsideration and revision 
 which this delay has given, though we doubt 
 whether the general arrangement has not suffered 
 from such constant interruption. A very com- 
 petent judge has said that it "is the most learned 
 and careful patristic monograph which has appeared 
 in the present century " ; and all will agree that 
 it exhausts its subject, and scarcely allows of the 
 possibility of a future editor. Catholics in par- 
 
252 STUDIES 
 
 ticular owe him a debt of gratitude for so abun- 
 dantly vindicating a Father, whose letters, as we 
 shall presently show, are one of their most precious 
 inheritances. Independently of their matter, the 
 history of St. Ignatius' s Epistles is of sufficient 
 general interest to call for a short account of them. 
 When literature first began to dawn in the Middle 
 Ages, seventeen epistles, attributed to St. Ignatius, 
 were in circulation in Western Europe. Four of 
 these, purporting to be a correspondence between 
 our Saint and the Blessed Virgin and St. John, 
 were soon recognised to be clumsy forgeries. Dr. 
 Lightfoot is careful to clear St. Bernard of the 
 charge of having thought them genuine. The 
 remaining thirteen were at first naturally accepted, 
 but by degrees it was discovered that Eusebius 
 knew only seven letters ; that the quotations in 
 that author and Theodoret diverged greatly from 
 the text, and that many of the references to early 
 Christian history were gross anachronisms and 
 blunders. At the time of the Reformation another 
 influence came into play ; the support given by 
 the Epistles, as then known, to the supremacy of 
 the Holy See and to episcopacy, led writers to 
 support or deny them, according to their theological 
 doctrines. Catholics generally (with the notable 
 exception of Petavius) accepted them ; Protestants 
 did not deny a nucleus, but excised whatever did 
 not suit their several views. The way in which 
 the shorter text was next discovered is peculiarly 
 interesting to the English reader. Ussher, the 
 learned Protestant Archbishop of Armagh, observed 
 that the quotations from St. Ignatius in three 
 English writers (Robert Grosse teste, the Bishop of 
 Lincoln, and two Franciscans, John Tyssington 
 
ST. IGNATIUS AND THE EOMAN PEIMACY 253 
 
 and William Wodeforde), while agreeing exactly 
 with the quotations in Eusebius and Theodoret, 
 differed considerably from the " Long Recension " 
 hitherto known. He, therefore, looked for a more 
 correct text in the English libraries ; and his 
 search was rewarded by the discovery of two Latin 
 MSS., which he published in 1644. The original 
 Greek was published two years later by Isaac 
 Voss, except the Epistle to the Romans, which 
 was first brought out by Ruinart in 1689. The 
 discovery of the Vossian text brought no relief 
 to the Presbyterian divines, who had always ad- 
 mitted a genuine nucleus, but excised all the passages 
 testifying to episcopacy. The most learned of these 
 objectors (Daille) was answered by Pearson, as it 
 was generally agreed finally, and the controversy 
 slept for near two hundred years. But in 1845 
 Cureton published a Syriac version, which con- 
 tained only three epistles and a fragment of a 
 fourth, all in a shorter form than the Vossian 
 recension. He contended that he had now dis- 
 covered the primitive text, of which the Vossian 
 letters were an expansion ; and he was at once 
 answered by his brother Canon of Westminster, 
 Wordsworth, who characteristically asserted that 
 the Syriac was " a miserable epitome made by an 
 Eutychian heretic." At first the current of opinion 
 turned in favour of Cureton's view, the Catholic 
 critics, Hefele and Denzinger, being in a minority 
 in opposing it ; but it has gradually come to be 
 seen that there existed an early Syriac version of 
 the whole thirteen letters (both Vossian and 
 spurious), and that the quotations in early writers 
 are from the Vossian recension ; and it is now 
 generally admitted that Cureton's text is merely 
 
254 STUDIES 
 
 an abbreviation. Hefele, Alzog, and others con- 
 sidered that it was drawn up with an ascetical aim 
 by some Syrian monk ; Lightfoot is more probably 
 correct in supposing the selections made due to 
 no fixed principle, but to be mainly accidental. 
 It is not so easy to know who composed the addi- 
 tional letters and interpolations of the " Long 
 Recension," and with what object. But a number 
 of circumstances converge in pointing to the middle 
 of the fourth century as their date, Cardinal New- 
 man's critical sagacity having anticipated the 
 results of later inquiry. He considers the writer 
 to have been an Arian, an opinion which Lightfoot 
 endorses so far as to suppose his policy was intended 
 to reconcile Arianism and Catholicism. Funk, the 
 latest Catholic editor, argues (not we think quite 
 satisfactorily) that he was an Apollinarian. The 
 forger must have been greatly indebted to the 
 Apostolic Constitutions, if he was not indeed the 
 author or editor of that work, as Ussher and Harnack 
 suppose. 
 
 We may, then, take it for granted that the 
 Vossian recension is the original form of the Igna- 
 tian letters ; and the next question is, have we 
 sufficient proof of their authenticity ? The chief 
 evidence is the epistle of St. Poly carp to the 
 Philippians, which refers to them by name, and 
 this is in turn vouched for by St. Irenseus, and 
 further identified by Eusebius and other witnesses. 
 This is so adequate, that Professor Harnack, whose 
 competence is undoubted, and whose religious 
 system makes it inconvenient for him to receive 
 the letters, admits it to be " testimony as strong 
 to the genuineness of the epistles as any that can 
 
ST. IGNATIUS AND THE EOMAN PRIMACY 255 
 
 be conceived of ." ! We need not, therefore, weary 
 our readers with an analysis of the mass of cor- 
 roborative proof which Bishop Lightfoot's great 
 learning has enabled him to collect, though cumula- 
 tively it is strong confirmation. He also shows 
 that the circumstances of his condemnation, his 
 journey to Rome, and death, are not difficulties 
 (as has often been objected), but support the 
 genuineness of his account. A prisoner of no 
 public importance, but merely one of the many 
 provincial convicts sent to Rome for the wild- 
 beast shows, would be contemptuously allowed 
 just such freedom of intercourse with those who 
 chose to bribe his guards, as the Saint was. Lucian's 
 account of Peregrinus would prove this, even if he 
 did not intend a caricature of St. Ignatius, as Light- 
 foot, with Baur and Renan, suppose. 
 
 Our Saint's appeal to the Romans, not to prevent 
 his martyrdom, is a strong argument for the genuine- 
 ness, and even for the date, of his epistles. In the 
 early part of Trajan's reign there were Christians 
 enough in high places in Rome to have obtained 
 his pardon ; twenty years earlier, or twenty years 
 later, such could not have been found. We cannot 
 enter upon the other reasons which induce Dr. 
 Lightfoot to follow Eusebius and St. Jerome in 
 assigning the martyrdom to some time in the reign 
 of Trajan (100-118). Harnack argues for a date 
 later than 130, but without any external proba- 
 bility that we can discover, merely because of 
 the difficulties he finds in reconciling the earlier 
 time with his own theories of doctrine and Church 
 discipline. With this exception, no serious attempt 
 
 1 The Expositor, sec. 3, vol. iii., p. 11. 
 
256 STUDIES 
 
 has been made, we believe, to shake Dr. Lightfoot's 
 conclusions ; 1 so that we may safely proceed to 
 treat these letters as the writings of a saint, and 
 a bishop, on his way to martyrdom, in the first 
 quarter of the second century. Their personal 
 interest is unique, and, if we may say so, dramatic. 
 We are not gradually prepared for the beautiful 
 character they reveal to us, nor privileged to 
 witness his advance in holiness, until he was at 
 length worthy of his crown. We have reason to 
 believe that he had been a heathen in early life, 
 but had " found mercy " and at his baptism had 
 taken the name " Theophoros," to keep constantly 
 before his mind his union with God. As to the 
 rest, he comes before us, like Melchisedec, out of 
 the darkness " into the darkness," for one moment 
 only in the light of day. Yet so vivid and dis- 
 tinct are the features of his personality, as revealed 
 to us in the few weeks of his journey from Antioch 
 to his end in Rome, that we have a less intimate 
 knowledge of many saints whose whole life has 
 been before the world. His desire for martyrdom 
 appealed most strongly, of course, to the Church 
 of the times of persecution. The pathetic letter 
 to the Romans, in which he pleads not to be 
 deprived of his crown, became (as Bishop Light- 
 foot says) " a sort of martyr's manual." Its 
 
 1 We say this, although we have received for review The 
 Ignatian Epistles entirely Spurious, by Dr. Killen, Principal 
 of the Presbyterian Faculty in Ireland. His language is flippant 
 and often discourteous to one whose services in interpreting 
 St. Paul's Epistles should have commanded his respect ; his 
 competence may be gauged by his ascribing the Ignatian letters 
 to St. Callistus ; and the weakness of his case is shown by the 
 number of gratuitous hypotheses which he has to substitute for 
 Dr. Lightfoot's supported conclusions. 
 
ST. IGNATIUS AND THE BOMAN PRIMACY 257 
 
 influence can be traced in all the earliest authentic 
 records of martyrdom, and it must have helped 
 unnumbered souls to endure even fiercer torments. 
 One sentence above all, " I am the wheat of God, 
 and am ground by the teeth of beasts, that I may 
 be found the pure bread of Christ," has had an 
 attraction for the faithful in every age, such as no 
 other uninspired language possesses. It is quoted 
 by the earliest Fathers ; is handed down to us 
 as his characteristic sentence in his life in the 
 Divine Office ; above all, is chosen, with an exqui- 
 site sense of fitness, for the " Communion " in the 
 Mass of his feast. 1 Many other phrases, less 
 commonly known, burn with as intense a desire 
 for suffering and death. To quote only a few : 
 " My birth-pangs are at hand ; pardon me, brethren ; 
 do not hinder me from living. Pardon me ; what 
 is expedient for me I know ; now I begin to be a 
 disciple." And, even more touchingly in another 
 epistle (Smyrn. iv. 2) : " Near the sword, near 
 unto God ; surrounded by beasts, surrounded by 
 God." At the same time there is the humble fear : 
 " I love indeed to suffer, but know not if I be 
 worthy " (Trail, iv. 2). " Being in bonds for 
 Christ's sake I fear the more, as yet imperfect ; 
 but your prayer unto God shall perfect me, that 
 I may obtain the lot which hath been granted 
 me in mercy " (Philad. v. 1). His earnest desire 
 for death is but the most striking instance of that 
 ardent love for his incarnate Lord which is the 
 
 1 We do not remark that Dr. Lightfoot notices anywhere 
 the very beautiful Mass for St. Ignatius' s Day in the Roman 
 Missal ; and, therefore, fear he has not the pleasure of being 
 acquainted with it. 
 
 17 
 
258 STUDIES 
 
 motive of every word and act. And it is especially 
 interesting for us to remark, how that love takes 
 the form most familiar to the modern Church, 
 and pours forth its worship and devotion before 
 every detail of the Sacred Humanity. We can 
 conceive no saint of later times uniting himself 
 more heartily with the devotion to the Sacred 
 Heart, to the Precious Blood, to the Five Wounds 
 of our Lord, which are counted a reproach to 
 Catholics to-day, than this disciple of the Apostles. 
 The same is no doubt true of the saints of every 
 time. Even the stately language of St. Clement 
 seems to bend, when he bids the Corinthians " look 
 intently on the Blood of Christ, and see how precious 
 unto God His Father is His Blood, which hath been 
 shed for our salvation, and brought the grace of 
 repentance to the whole world .... For the 
 love He bore us, the Lord Jesus Christ gave His 
 blood for us, His flesh for our flesh, His soul for 
 our soul " (vii. 4 ; xlix. 6). But the works of all 
 the earlier writers were written under circum- 
 stances, of various kinds, which checked the spon- 
 taneous expression of their piety. In St. Ignatius's 
 letters alone we seem privileged to hear the out- 
 pourings of a soul before that mystery of divine 
 condescension, which was the sun and centre of the 
 Catholic spiritual life, then as now. 
 
 The word " passion " was ever on his lips. In 
 Christ's passion is involved the peace of one Church, 
 and the joy of another. Unto His passion the penitent 
 sinner must return ; from His passion the false heretic 
 dissents ; into His passion all men must die ; His passion 
 the saint himself strives to imitate ; the blood of His 
 passion" purines the water of baptism ; the tree of the 
 passion is the stock from which the Church has sprung; 
 
ST. IGNATIUS AND THE EOMAN PEIMACY 259 
 
 the passion is a special feature which distinguishes the 
 Gospel. 1 
 
 The body and blood of our Lord are the source 
 of his most moving appeals, and are used to signify 
 the essential elements of the life of grace. " Re- 
 generate yourselves in faith, which is the flesh 
 of the Lord, and in charity, which is the blood 
 of Jesus Christ." " I desire the bread of God, 
 which is the flesh of Christ, Who is of David's 
 seed ; and I desire for drink His blood, which is 
 charity incorruptible." He does not even hesitate 
 to speak of " the blood of God," and " the passion 
 of God," thus using language which, in the case 
 of the Sacred Heart, has been made a reproach 
 to Catholics by some who have not realised the 
 doctrine of the Incarnation, nor the testimony of 
 Scripture and antiquity. We have seen, in the 
 last sentence quoted, the Holy Eucharist is the 
 form in which his thoughts of our Lord's incarnate 
 body and blood naturally flow. But his assertion 
 of the Real Presence is not to be gathered only 
 from such indirect evidence. He has supplied the 
 Church with one of her most beautiful thoughts, 
 when he urges the Ephesians to continue in the 
 breaking of that " one bread, which is the medicine 
 of immortality, the antidote against dying." 2 
 Again, speaking of the DocetaB, he says : " These 
 abstain from the Eucharist and from prayer, 
 because they confess not that the Eucharist is 
 the flesh of our Saviour Jesus Christ, which suffered 
 
 1 Lightfoot : Note on Ephes. Inscr. 
 
 2 Jacobson compares the immortalitatis alimonia, of the Post- 
 Communion of the twenty-first Sunday after Pentecost. 
 
260 STUDIES 
 
 for our sins, and which the Father by His mercy 
 raised again." Here Dr. Lightfoot appears to us 
 to have somewhat missed the point. St. Ignatius 
 is not employing the Blessed Sacrament as an 
 argument for the reality of our Lord's natural 
 body, though of course it might be so used ; he 
 is rather pointing out the practical results of the 
 heresy which denied that reality. But, either 
 way, the sentence would be devoid of all mean- 
 ing, unless written by one who believed in the 
 Real Presence, and assumed his hearers' belief 
 also. 1 In the one case, mere bread and wine 
 would correspond more closely to an apparent 
 than to a real body ; in the other case, there could 
 be no reason why the Doceta? should not join in 
 receiving it. This is strengthened by his presently 
 adding the necessity of priestly consecration, for 
 the valid celebration of the Holy Eucharist. " Let 
 that Eucharist be considered valid (fteftaia) 
 which is celebrated under the Bishop, or by one 
 to whom he hath committed it." The whole 
 spiritual life is summed up in " having Jesus Christ 
 in you " ; in being xP l<jrT0 $<>P 01 * faith is the 
 flesh of Christ, charity His blood. The most 
 distinctively Christian virtue is put upon its true 
 foundation, in the sentence : "If any one is able 
 to remain in virgin purity, to the honour of the 
 Lord's flesh, let him remain also in humility " ; 
 which implies that a life of chastity was highly 
 esteemed, and was already the subject of a vow. 
 
 1 This is pressed by Mohler and Freppel. It will hardly be 
 believed that an Anglican divine, Wotton (if Jacobson's note 
 is to be trusted), considered that the last clause of the sentence 
 we have quoted was a denial of the Real Presence, and affirmed 
 merely an action of grace upon the soul of the recipient. 
 
ST. IGNATIUS AND THE ROMAN PEIMACY 261 
 
 In another sentence, of acknowledged difficulty, 
 St. Ignatius seems to recognise some, widows in 
 outward condition, but virgins in the sight of God. 
 To a mind thus penetrated with the reality and 
 the results of the Incarnation, the prevailing 
 heresy of that day must have been peculiarly 
 hateful. The only trace that Docetism has left 
 behind it is in the decisive testimony of St. Ignatius 
 to the identity of doctrine and devotion in the 
 primitive and the modern Church. The test to 
 which he appeals is characteristic of that early 
 age, and very instructive for our own. The tra- 
 dition of the Apostolic Churches is not set forth 
 to discriminate truth from falsehood, as in the 
 time of St. Irenseus, nor is Scripture quoted, as 
 in later writers ; but the living voice of the Church 
 in its pastors is a sufficient rule of faith. St. 
 Ignatius is, above all others, the great Doctor of 
 the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy ; he asserts constantly 
 and urgently, with every variety of argument and 
 metaphor, the claims of the episcopacy to the 
 obedience of the faithful. The Bishop presides 
 in the place of God, the Presbyters in the place 
 of the council of Apostles, and the deacons are 
 entrusted with the ministry of Jesus Christ. 
 
 I cried out with a loud voice, with the voice of God, 
 unto them to whom I spake ; attach yourselves to the 
 Bishop and the presbytery and the deacons. ... He 
 is my witness, for whom I am hound, that I have not 
 learned this from man's flesh ; but the Spirit proclaimed 
 this : without the Bishop do nothing. All that are God's 
 and Jesus Christ's, the same are with the Bishops. Whoso 
 seeth the Bishop to be silent, let him fear him the more ; 
 for we must every way receive him whom the master of 
 the house sendeth to govern his family as the sender 
 
262 STUDIES 
 
 himself. Clearly, then, we must look upon the Bishop as 
 upon the Lord Himself. 
 
 Such are a few examples, taken almost at ran- 
 dom, from the passages on the ecclesiastical 
 hierarchy of which all the letters, save one, are 
 full. It is the more interesting and satisfactory 
 to us that Bishop Lightfoot should have edited 
 St. Ignatius, because a learned treatise in one of 
 his other works 1 implied what we may without 
 offence call a " low " view of the episcopacy, as 
 well as a denial of the sacerdotal character of the 
 priesthood. The latter subject is outside of our 
 present province ; and for the same reason we are 
 compelled to put aside the question of the Apostolic 
 succession in the episcopate, hoping to be able to 
 return to both on some future occasion. In that 
 which now more immediately concerns us, we are 
 glad to be in greater agreement than we were with 
 the former work. Dr. Lightfoot now, indeed, 
 complains that a meaning has been put upon his 
 language which he did not intend, and we hope, 
 therefore, we may have misunderstood him. He 
 says that he is in substantial agreement with 
 Cardinal Newman's language 2 on this very subject ; 
 thus appearing to accept the Apostolic origin of 
 the episcopate, and only questioning the time at 
 which it became localised. We are quite prepared 
 to grant that jurisdiction may very possibly — 
 nay, probably — have been surrendered by the 
 Apostles at different periods, according to the 
 
 1 The Excursus on the Christian Ministry, and note on 
 Phil. i. I., in the Commentary on the Philippians. 
 
 2 Note on The Theology of the Seven Epistles of Ignatius ; in 
 Essays, vol. i., p. 251. 
 
ST. IGNATIUS AND THE ROMAN PRIMACY 263 
 
 respective needs of the places where they conse- 
 crated bishops. But we cannot admit the argu- 
 ment from confusing order and jurisdiction, a 
 fallacy which runs through the present remarks 
 on the episcopate, as well as the Essay on the Chris- 
 tian Ministry ; and we will therefore very briefly 
 state our reasons for not being convinced by his 
 arguments. Dr. Lightfoot's admissions are these ; 
 
 (1) The Episcopate was clearly established in 
 Jerusalem ; and this is all the more remarkable, 
 if St. James was not an Apostle. (2) The Pastoral 
 Epistles show that Timothy and Titus exercised 
 episcopal functions in Ephesus and Crete, by the 
 appointment of St. Paul. (3) Episcopacy was 
 firmly and widely established, especially in Asia 
 Minor, early in the second century, and therefore 
 under the influence of St. John. " If the evidence 
 for its extension in the regions east of the iEgean 
 at the epoch be resisted, I am at a loss to under- 
 stand what single fact relating to the history of 
 the Christian Church during the first half of the 
 second century can be regarded as established." 
 These statements appear to us to concede all that 
 is necessary in the way of historical evidence, to 
 prove the origin of the episcopal order. But each 
 of them is subject to certain qualifications. (1) As 
 to St. James's position in Jerusalem, Dr. Light- 
 foot remarks that on three occasions the Apostles 
 and the Presbyters of that city alone are men- 
 tioned. It will be seen that in these three cases 
 (Acts xv. 4, 23 ; xvi. 4) the matter treated of is 
 not a diocesan one, but concerns the whole Church. 
 This is surely an exception which proves the rule. 
 
 (2) He considers that SS. Timothy and Titus were 
 not appointed to fixed sees, but were " apostolic 
 
264 STUDIES 
 
 delegates," whose position was transitory and whose 
 office was drawing to a close when St. Paul wrote. 
 But of the only passages to which he refers, two 
 (1 Tim. i. 3 ; Tit. i. 5) merely prove that their 
 jurisdiction was derived from the Apostle ; one 
 (1 Tim. iii. 14) that St. Paul himself hoped shortly 
 to visit Timothy ; while the other three (2 Tim. 
 iv. 9, 21 ; Tit. iii. 12) are to recall them "ad limina 
 Apostolorum" for the Apostle's own comfort, and 
 to give an account of their stewardship. (3) There 
 is some amount of evidence that episcopacy was 
 less completely established in other parts of the 
 Church than in Asia Minor or Palestine. Much 
 of this evidence is purely negative, due to our very 
 scanty knowledge of early Church history, and is 
 merely one of the " fallacies of silence " to which 
 we referred above. The positive indications are 
 very slight indeed. Rome we shall deal with 
 presently in connection with the primacy. St. 
 Clement's letter to the Corinthians makes mention 
 of no bishop ; but the circumstances under which 
 it was written imply that the See (as we should 
 now say) was vacant. His language with regard 
 to Apollo — " a man approved by the Apostles "* 
 — taken in connection with 1 Cor. iii. 22, can leave 
 little doubt that Apollo exercised episcopal juris- 
 diction there ; and Dr. Lightfoot himself remarks 
 that fifty years later Primus was Bishop of Corinth, 
 and had been preceded by several others. In 
 Philippi, St. Paul salutes only the " bishops and 
 deacons " ; St. Polycarp only the " presbyters and 
 deacons." Yet the former commends to his " true 
 
 1 irpo<reK\idriTe avSpl SeSo/ctfcacr^eV^ irap airoffroXois, cap. 47. 
 
ST. IGNATIUS AND THE ROMAN PEIMACY 265 
 
 yoke-fellow " a duty which at least implies juris- 
 diction. 1 And in the time of the latter it is scarcely 
 conceivable that Philippi should be an exception 
 to the episcopal government around. Zahn sug- 
 gests that the See was probably vacant ; Rothe, 2 
 that remonstrance and exhortation, such as St. 
 Polycarp's letter contains, could be suitably con- 
 veyed only to his subordinates in the ecclesiastical 
 hierarchy. Besides the particular answers to 
 objections, there is one general one. The words 
 iiriaKoiTo^ and ir pea ftm epos were only two out of a 
 large number of terms used in the New Testament 
 and the Apostolic Fathers for bishops and priests 
 (it is convenient in English to follow Dr. Lightfoot, 
 and use these two words, the " sacerdotes primi 
 ordinis et secundi" respectively). Until the time, 
 at least, of St. Irenaeus, they are only employed 
 in their modern precise sense by St. Ignatius ; 
 all other writers rather using them to signify the 
 office, than the order of the persons spoken of. 
 'E7rt<7 veo7ro? is usually applied to those who have 
 cure of souls, or ordinary jurisdiction, Trpeaftvrepos 
 being used when no such quality is referred to, 
 or when the honour in which they are to be held 
 is brought specially forward. 3 By the time of 
 St. Irenseus eiriaKoiros had become so far re- 
 stricted to bishops, that he was compelled to 
 
 1 Phil, iv., 3. 
 
 2 Anfdnge d. Chr. Kirche, p. 410. 
 
 3 We are, of course, aware that various opinions have been 
 current among theologians concerning the use of these terms. 
 The one stated above is the most generally held, is substan- 
 tially the same as Dr. Lightfoot' s, and appears to follow of 
 necessity from the use made by the Council of Trent of Acts 
 xx., 28. 
 
266 STUDIES 
 
 paraphrase Acts xx. 17. 1 We are, of course, far 
 from denying that this rapid change of language 
 did not correspond to a real change of ecclesiastical 
 conditions. It is very probable, as Petavius, and 
 many other theologians have held, that the number 
 of persons having episcopal powers and ordinary 
 jurisdiction was in some places very large. Even 
 St. Ignatius expected the bishop to know all that 
 passed in his community, and to be acquainted 
 with each member of it by name. Our only con- 
 tention is, that the episcopate was not " formed 
 out of the presbyterate by elevation," as Dr. 
 Lightfoot thinks ; the reverse would be a closer 
 expression of the facts. The history of the New 
 Testament and of the first two centuries, as he 
 has summed up the facts, seems to us only explicable 
 on the hypothesis that both these orders were 
 originally instituted separately by the Apostles, 
 the exercise of jurisdiction being long reserved to 
 the episcopal order, and only gradually com- 
 municated to priests. Every other view is open 
 to the crushing objection that men, who do not 
 readily submit even to an authority which they 
 know to be divine, could never have been per- 
 suaded to accept it as a novelty without a protest, 
 of which there is no trace. 
 
 St. Ignatius looked to another test of the living 
 voice of the Church, beyond its expression through 
 its pastors. He most urgently enforces the unity 
 of the Church throughout the whole world. He 
 bids St. Polycarp " have a care for the unity, than 
 which nothing is better." And to others he says : 
 
 1 The translation of the Vulgate, majores natu ecclesiae, is 
 apparently another example of this. 
 
ST. IGNATIUS AND THE EOMAN PElMACY 267 
 
 " All that shall repent and turn to the unity of 
 the Church, they too shall be God's." An earnest 
 warning is given against schism, independently of 
 false doctrine : "Be not deceived, my brethren, 
 if any man follow one who makes a schism 
 (cr/ci&vTi), he doth not inherit the Kingdom of God ; 
 if any one walk in another doctrine, he consenteth 
 not to the Passion." This Church is of universal 
 extension, for " the bishops who are at the ends 
 of the earth are in the mind of Jesus Christ." The 
 Church Universal is therefore distinguished by 
 him from each individual church of which it is 
 made up, and the word " Catholic " is first employed 
 to designate it. " Where the bishop is, there let 
 the multitude be ; just as where Christ is, there 
 is the Church Catholic." 1 
 
 The parallel between the particular churches and 
 the Church Universal — the microcosms and the 
 macrocosm — implies a visible head of the whole, 
 as well as of each diocese ; and our Saint leaves 
 us in no doubt where that head is to be found. 
 The most celebrated of all his letters is addressed 
 to the Romans ; its testimony has often been 
 quoted, not always correctly, and it will be interest- 
 ing to see how Dr. Lightfoot deals with it. The 
 inscription of the letter is to " the Church that 
 hath found mercy .... that hath been 
 beloved and been enlightened (7re(f)0)TLcr/jbevrj) by 
 the will of Him Who willeth all things, that are 
 according to the love of Jesus Christ." Then 
 
 1 Smym. viii., 2. This sentence has been urged as an objec- 
 tion to the genuineness of the Epistles. Bishop Lightfoot 
 shows, by parallel passages, that, in the sense given above, it 
 involves no anachronism. 
 
268 STUDIES 
 
 follows a sentence of which the meaning has been 
 much debated — r/ri? 7rpo/cd07)Tai iv to7tg> ^coplov 
 'Vod/jLaLCDv — the main question being whether the 
 verb is to be taken absolutely 1 or in connec- 
 tion with the words that follow. Catholics have 
 naturally inclined to the former alternative, Pro- 
 testants to the latter. Dr. Lightfoot takes a 
 middle course ; translating with us — " who hath 
 the presidency in the place of the region of the 
 Romans," but explaining that " the latter words 
 probably describe the limits over which the su- 
 premacy or jurisdiction " extends. He rejects the 
 various suggestions which Bunsen, Zahn, Pearson, 
 and others have made, but thinks ". iv f Pa>//# would 
 have been more natural to describe merely the 
 locality of a presiding See." This we venture to 
 doubt. The Roman Church is more often de- 
 scribed by Eusebius and his authorities as r\ tcov 
 'Vcofiaiwv eKKkricna than in any other manner. 
 The latter part of the sentence has difficulties on 
 any hypothesis, but we fully agree that two? 
 is pleonastic (Syriasm), and that the whole means 
 " in the country of the Romans." This is probably 
 simply equivalent to "in Rome," and is merely 
 an attempt to express the size of Rome, just as 
 we use the prepositions " in " and " at " for large 
 and small towns respectively, in such phrases as 
 " to stay in London, to live at York." We are 
 the less disposed to disagree with Dr. Lightfoot 
 here, because he admits that these words assign 
 a primacy of rank to the Church of Rome, which 
 is all we contend for. 
 
 1 As in Magnes. vi. 1, where the same word is used of the 
 presidency of a bishop over his clergy. 
 
ST. IGNATIUS AND THE ROMAN PRIMACY 269 
 
 We presently come to the still more impor- 
 tant phrase, irpoKaO^fievv tt}? dydir^ ; and here 
 again Bishop Lightfoot adopts an interpretation 
 approaching more nearly to the Catholic than other 
 Protestant editors have done. He admits that 
 there is a reference to the previous sentence, which 
 he takes it to explain : " The Church of Rome, 
 as it is first in rank, is first also in love." This 
 is akin to the ordinary non-Catholic translation, 
 " pre-eminent in charity " ; referring merely to 
 the abundant almsgiving for which the Roman 
 Church was distinguished. We are sorry that so 
 great a scholar has not noticed the grammatical 
 objections — surely worth considering — which Catho- 
 lics have made to this interpretation. To be pre- 
 eminent in any quality, such as charity, would 
 naturally be expressed by ev dydirr) or Kara rrjv 
 dyd7rrjv, rather than by the genitive. The 
 " genitive of relation," as grammarians say, 
 " follows all verbs signifying authority or pre- 
 eminence " (Donaldson) ; and is used of the thing 
 governed. This is the only construction admitted 
 in such lexicons as Stephanus, Liddell and Scott, 
 &c, each of which give parallel instances from 
 Plato, Euripides and many later writers. 1 Nor is 
 there any difficulty in supplying a suitable mean- 
 ing for dydirv in this place. In four other passages 
 St. Ignatius uses the word, as Pearson and Jacobson 
 
 1 There is, therefore, no reason for Jacobson' s mild sneer 
 at Bishop's Hefele's quotation from the Byzantine writers. 
 The former quotes, curiously, a sentence in which Cureton uncon- 
 sciously paraphrases aydir/js by iv aydirr), thus confirming what 
 we have advanced above. 
 
270 STUDIES 
 
 themselves allow, for the Church. 1 It is true that 
 our present editor objects to any such use of 
 aydiTT] as an anachronism, and contends that 
 " charity is intended in each case." No doubt ; 
 but its repetition so frequently in formulae of 
 salutation surely suggests very strongly that more 
 is meant, and that a^airt) was used by our Saint 
 in a secondary sense for the union of charity /car 
 igoxnv* the Church. This peculiar use of the 
 word has its parallel in the use of ?) 686s in the 
 Acts. 2 The phrase will thus mean, without any 
 violence to the grammar, " presiding over the 
 Church." 
 
 After this, there is no detail of the Epistle to 
 the Romans in which we are at issue with Dr. 
 Lightfoot ; for we fully agree that the words, " ye 
 have taught others " (cap. hi. 1), refer only to 
 the example set to other Christians by the endur- 
 ance of persecution. He makes much of the fact 
 that there is no mention of the Bishop of Rome 
 in the whole epistle, connecting it with a view 
 on which we shall presently dwell, that the Bishop 
 was of less importance in Rome than in the East. 
 The silence of St. Ignatius is undoubted, and is 
 very remarkable ; but there are good reasons for 
 not accepting his editor's reason for it. Bishop 
 Lightfoot admits that Rome was under episcopal 
 government then, and we have seen that St. 
 
 1 7} ayaTrr] ~2,iAvpv<Lib}v kcli 'Ecpealow (Trail, xiii. 1), r) hyairq to>v 
 aSeA^wz/ (Smyrn. xiii. 1, and Philad. xi. 2) ; and, most remark- 
 ably of all, 7] ay&irr) rcov iitK\r}<nu)v (Rom. ix. 3). 
 
 2 It may be noted that Professor Harnack concedes the 
 point, by the happy translation which cannot be expressed in 
 English, " die Vorsteherin, set es nun in dem Liebesbunde, oder 
 bei den Liebeswei'ke." 
 
ST. IGNATIUS AND THE EOMAN PRIMACY 271 
 
 Ignatius classes " the Bishops at the ends of the 
 earth " with those he has known in Asia Minor. 
 We cannot then doubt that, had he thought the 
 Romans under-estimated the episcopal office, he 
 would have remonstrated earnestly with them, as 
 he did with the Magnesians in the same case. 
 Cardinal Newman's explanation is far more 
 probable ; "he does not refer to the Bishop, or 
 take him (as it were) under his wing." His eccle- 
 siastical superior was the one Bishop whom he 
 could not thus commend to his readers without 
 impertinence. Instead of exhorting the Romans, 
 as he does the other Churches, he says : "I make 
 no commands to you, as though I were Peter and 
 Paul." His object in writing was to entreat the 
 Romans not to prevent his martyrdom ; and the 
 power to do so would He in the hands of the influen- 
 tial laity. To call in their Bishop to control them 
 would be to put him in an utterly false position, 
 if he were what we believe he was ; and St. Igna- 
 tius's silence is, on our hypothesis, most naturally 
 accounted for. 
 
 We remarked just now that Dr. Lightfoot admits 
 a primacy, however qualified, of the Roman Church, 
 while minimising the authority of its Bishop. It 
 was necessary that he should take some such 
 position, considering recent advances in patristic 
 discovery. We think Cardinal Newman some- 
 where speculates on what would happen if our 
 modern non-Catholics came suddenly in contact 
 with a Saint of the primitive Church, as to which 
 they theorise so readily. Something of the kind 
 has really happened of late years. Up to the 
 year 1875 the only copy known of the letter of 
 St. Clement of Rome to the Corinthians (con- 
 tained in the celebrated Alexandrine Codex in 
 
272 STUDIES 
 
 the British Museum) had a considerable gap, where 
 one sheet had been lost. Bryennios, the Greek 
 Metropolitan of Nicomedia, then discovered, in a 
 library at Constantinople, a MS. which, besides 
 other valuable matter, contained St. Clement's 
 Epistle entire ; and by a singular coincidence, a 
 Syriac translation of the whole was acquired by 
 the University of Cambridge in the next year. 
 These additional passages of this earliest Apostolic 
 Father are so important to Catholics, and yet, 
 we believe, so entirely unnoticed by them in this 
 country, that no apology is needed for bringing 
 them before our readers. Before their discovery, 
 St. Clement's letter was, indeed, a strong argu- 
 ment for the primacy of the Holy See. Let the 
 circumstances in which it was written be carefully 
 remarked. St. John was yet alive, and many 
 disciples of the Apostles must have been still living 
 in Corinth, when a revolt against the constituted 
 ecclesiastical authorities took place. There is no 
 reason to suppose that the Corinthians appealed 
 to Rome ; but St. Clement wrote in the name of 
 the Roman Church to point out the gravity of the 
 offence, and to call for submission. He begins by 
 explaining the reasons for his delay in noticing 
 this trouble thus : " By reason of the sudden 
 and repeated calamities which are befalling us, 
 brethren, we consider that we have been somewhat 
 tardy in giving heed to the matters of dispute 
 that have arisen among you, dearly beloved, and 
 to the detestable and unholy sedition .... 
 which a few headstrong and self-willed persons 
 have kindled." 1 This is surely the language of 
 
 1 I. 1. We quote throughout Dr. Lightfoot's translation. 
 The calamities were probably the persecution under Domitian, 
 and the revolution which closed that Emperor's reign. 
 
ST. IGNATIUS AND THE ROMAN PRIMACY 273 
 
 an authority on which there daily pressed anxiety 
 for all the Churches ; and the whole Epistle con- 
 tinues in the same tone. The Corinthians are 
 called upon to be " obedient unto the excellent 
 and glorious will " of God, to " fall down before 
 the Master and entreat Him with tears," to " let the 
 flock of Christ be at peace with its duly appointed 
 presbyters." Most urgently of all, they are bid to 
 make intercession for their transgressing brethren, 
 " that they may yield not unto us, but unto the 
 will of God." It would seem difficult to evade 
 the force of this language, or to suppose it could 
 be addressed by one sister-church to another. 
 But a much more explicit claim to authority is 
 made in the recently discovered passages. The 
 Corinthians are warned that, " if certain persons 
 should be disobedient unto the words spoken by 
 Him (God) through us, let them understand that 
 they will entangle themselves in no slight trans- 
 gression and danger ; but we shall be guiltless of 
 this sin." And again : " Receive our counsel, 
 and ye shall have no occasion of regret." Finally : 
 " Ye will give us great joy and gladness, if ye 
 render obedience unto the things written by us, 
 through the Holy Spirit." 1 
 
 It is a strong testimony to Dr. Lightfoot's desire 
 to be perfectly fair that, upon the first publication 
 of the lost passages of St. Clement he should have 
 called attention to the " urgent and almost imperious 
 
 1 59, 1 ; 58, 2 ; 63, 2. We do not lay stress upon the claims 
 to " know the irpotrrdy/xaTa koll SiKaici/xara, rov &eov" and to 
 possess " the kw^v r?]s TrapatiS&ecos while the sister churches need 
 instruction." Harnack has rightly urged their importance, but 
 they need developing, and we prefer to keep to what is on the 
 surface. 
 
 18 
 
274 STUDIES 
 
 tones which the Romans adopt in addressing their 
 Corinthian brethren during the closing years of 
 the first century." 1 He describes the letter as 
 " the first step towards Papal aggression," and we 
 need not say that we agree with him — only it is 
 clearly a step that takes us all the way. Leo 
 XIII. has not claimed, and cannot claim, more 
 than is here laid down, in the first Papal document 
 on record, in the assertion " God speaks through 
 us" and "we write by the Holy Ghost." The 
 one difference between the Catholic Church and 
 all religious bodies external to it, is that we affirm 
 and they deny, the presence of the Holy Ghost, 
 teaching the world through the See of St. Peter ; 
 and St. Clement leaves us in no doubt which side 
 he takes in the controversy. Indeed, as writing 
 during the lifetime of an Apostle, he makes a 
 stronger claim to Divine assistance than would 
 be possible for any later Pope. Dr. Lightfoot 
 raises, however, one objection, which it is due to 
 him that we should consider. He fully admits 
 the primacy of Rome, but urges that it is a primacy 
 not of the episcopate, but of the Church. " The 
 substitution of the Bishop of Rome for the Church 
 of Rome," he tells us, "is an all-important point. 
 The later Roman theory supposes that the Church 
 of Rome derives all its authority from the Bishop 
 of Rome, as the successor of St. Peter. History 
 inverts this relation, and shows that, as a matter 
 of fact, the power of the Bishop of Rome was built 
 upon the power of the Church of Rome." The 
 same distinction is urged, more bluntly, by Pro- 
 
 St. Clement of Rome, pp. 253 sqq. 
 
ST. IGNATIUS AND THE EOMAN PEIMACY 275 
 
 fessor Harnack, who, in his recent work, 1 after 
 collecting all the ante-Nicene evidences of the 
 primacy of Rome, concludes : " The two proposi- 
 tions, ' Ecclesia Romana semper habuit primatum, y 
 and ' Catholic is fundamentally the same as Roman 
 Catholic,' are gross fictions, if devised in honour 
 of any of the occupiers of the Roman See ; but 
 if transferred to the community of the capital of 
 the world, they contain a truth, of which the non- 
 recognition is equivalent to renouncing any attempt 
 to understand the Catholicising and unifying of 
 the Church." 2 
 
 Our chief difficulty with this objection is, that 
 we scarcely see in what its importance consists. 
 
 1 Dogmengeschichte, vol. i., pp. 360 sqq. 
 
 ■ In the remarkable excursus (Katholisch und Romisch) of 
 which this is the last sentence, Harnack accepts the Catholic 
 interpretation of the passages in SS. Clement, Ignatius, and 
 Irenseus bearing on the supremacy of Rome. He also gives 
 such reasons as the following : — 
 
 (1) The Roman Church alone had a definite baptismal formula, 
 which was proposed as the Apostolic rule of faith as early as 
 180. It was therefore acknowledged to be alone able to discern 
 with precision true from false doctrine. 
 
 (2) The New Testament canon is first recognisable in the 
 Roman Church and only later in others. The shape and arrange- 
 ment of the canon is also Roman. 
 
 (3) The first list of Bishops is to be traced to Rome, in other 
 communities there is none earlier than the reign of Elagabalus. 
 
 (4) The idea of Apostolical succession was first employed by 
 the Bishops of Rome. This is all the more remarkable because 
 the " monarchical episcopate " was first consolidated in Asia 
 Minor. 
 
 (5) Tho Oriental Churches referred the most important ques- 
 tions as to the organisation of the Church for decision to the 
 Roman Bishops. 
 
 (6) Callixtus's " excesses " were opposed by the three great 
 theologians of his time — Tertullian, Hippolytus, Origen— on the 
 very ground that they were unheard-of novelties ; yet within a 
 few decennia all other churches had followed in the same direc- 
 tion. 
 
276 STUDIES 
 
 Dr. Lightfoot is an Episcopalian, and admits that 
 episcopal government is Apostolic in its origin, 
 therefore apparently of divine institution. If so, 
 the Bishop is appointed by God to govern each 
 diocese ; he is the executive power, and every 
 step taken in the name of the Church must be 
 taken by him. Moreover, as matter of history, 
 the history of the Roman Church is the history 
 of the Roman Pontiffs. Except for the shadowy 
 personality of Hermas, we can recall no Roman 
 Christian of the slightest importance save the 
 Popes, until we come to Hippolytus. It is quite 
 true that we have no pontifical act of theirs pre- 
 served until we come to St. Victor ; but the same 
 " fallacy of silence " would prove that many later 
 Pontiffs did not consider themselves infallible. 
 But we have as much incidental proof of their 
 importance as we could reasonably expect. Euse- 
 bius had no inducement to magnify the office of 
 the Roman Pontiff, nor did he write with that 
 object. But the extreme care which he took to 
 give the list of Bishops of Rome argues that to 
 his informants — Hegesippus and Irenseus — the 
 matter was one of great importance. The former 
 speaks of drawing up a list (BiaSoxrjv eirorfo-a/iriv) 
 of their succession as being one of his principal 
 objects in Rome ; the latter ends his catalogue of 
 the Popes down to St. Elentherius by adding : 
 " By the same order and succession both the 
 tradition from the Apostles in the Church and 
 the preaching of the truth, have come down to 
 
 1 rrj auTT? TCt|et, nhi rfj cWj? hiadoxv V T€ &*& tuv airoiTTSXwv iv 
 ttj iKKK-qaia irapctcWts, /col rb ttjs a\ri9eias K^ptry/ta KaT-f)VTr)Kev iis 
 Tjfids, Hist. EccL v. 6. 
 
ST. IGNATIUS AND THE EOMAN PEIMACY 277 
 
 So, too, the Church of Lyons, being desirous of 
 the peace of the Church, wrote in defence of the 
 Montanists, to their brethren in Asia and Phrygia, 
 where these most abounded ; " but above all (ov 
 Imtjv aXka kcll) to Eleutherius, the then Bishop 
 of Rome." Dr. Lightfoot quotes St. Polycarp's 
 visit to Rome in the time of St. Anicetus, and 
 their conference as to various unimportant matters, 
 as well as the observance of Easter. On this 
 Harnack remarks : " Anicetus did not go to the 
 aged Polycarp, but he to Anicetus." We need 
 not refer to any cases later than St. Victor, because 
 he is admitted to have been " a bishop of autocratic 
 pretensions." 
 
 The only positive reasons assigned for " surmising 
 (it comes to no more) that the Bishops of Rome 
 were not at the time raised so far above their 
 presbyters as in the churches of the East," are the 
 following : First, the silence of St. Ignatius in 
 his letter to the Romans. We have given reasons 
 above for supposing this to be rather a testimony 
 to the primacy of the Roman Pontiff. Next, the 
 fact that both St. Clement's letter, and one after- 
 wards written by St. Soter to the Corinthians, 
 were addressed in the name of the Church of Rome, 
 not of the Bishops themselves. As to the latter 
 case there can be no serious question. St. Soter 
 had simply sent the proceeds of a collection made 
 in Rome for the benefit of the distressed Corin- 
 thians. Their bishop, in his reply, which was 
 addressed to Soter, acknowledges suitably the 
 assistance, and makes special mention of the 
 charity with which St. Soter had " comforted 
 their brethren who had approached him, like a 
 
278 STUDIES 
 
 loving father comforts his children, by kindly 
 words." x 
 
 St. Clement's letter suggests some points of 
 more interest. In the first place, no one doubts 
 that it was " drawn up by him in the name of 
 the Roman Church " ; 2 while at the same time 
 the language of St. Irenseus, as well as of the epistle 
 itself, implies that it was a letter in which the 
 Church of Rome took part. There is nothing in 
 this inconsistent with the personal authority of 
 St. Clement, any more than the form of the sy nodical 
 letter in Acts xv., 23, is inconsistent with the 
 authority of the Apostles. It would appear to 
 have been the custom of the early Pontiffs to 
 decide nothing of importance without assembling 
 the presbyters of Rome ; as St. Victor and St. 
 Cornelius did, 3 certainly with no idea of aban- 
 doning their own authority. Dr. Lightfoot appeals 
 to the Shepherd of Hermas, as agreeing with his 
 own " very modest estimate of St. Clement's 
 dignity." We might ask, in reply to what matter 
 of discipline, or of doctrine, save the possibility 
 of repentance, does that obscure series of allegories 
 testify ? But the writer goes out of his usual 
 course to mention St. Clement, and to refer to 
 his relations to the Church bevond Rome. 4 And 
 
 1 iiricncSTrcf) T<p r6re SwTTjpi Trpo<T(poovov<Ta .... \6yois [xaKaptois 
 rovs aviovras a8e\<pbvs &s retcva Trarfyp (piXSaropyos napaKaXwv. — 
 Euseb. H. E. iv. 23. 
 
 2 H\v €K irpocrdiirov rrjs '"Pccfxaiccv £nK\T)(rias rfj KopivBiow Sierviruxraro. 
 — Euseb. H. E. iii. 38. 
 
 3 Euseb. H. E. v. 23 ; vii. 43. 
 
 4 " Clement shall send the book (containing this revelation) 
 to the cities abroad, for this charge is committed unto him." — 
 Vis. ii. 4, 3. 
 
ST. IGNATIUS AND THE ROMAN PRIMACY 279 
 
 if (as seems probable) he lived at a later period, 
 and merely borrowed the name of Clement, as he 
 did that of Hermas. it is all the greater evidence 
 of the relation of St. Clement to the Christian 
 world. But there is more explicit proof of the 
 eminent position of St. Clement, and of the source 
 where it was derived, in a quarter which has not 
 been sufficiently noticed. Among other arguments 
 for episcopacy, Dr. Lightfoot very justly lays 
 much stress upon the Clementine Homilies, a 
 religious romance written some time during the 
 second century, adding that their divergence from 
 Catholic doctrine makes their agreement here all 
 the more remarkable. Now, prefixed to these 
 Homilies are two letters, one purporting to be 
 from St. Peter to St. James, with which we have 
 no more now to do, the other supposed to be 
 written by St. Clement to St. James. This must 
 have been written some time during the latter 
 half of the second century ; it is well known as 
 the origin of the false Decretals. Its relation to 
 the Clementine Homilies is uncertain ; but it was 
 apparently written to serve as a preface to this 
 or some similar forgery. Dr. Lightfoot will not 
 object to our quoting it in favour of the Primacy, 
 as he has done with the Homilies for Episcopacy. 
 The case is indeed a much stronger one, for the 
 whole Clementine cycle is designed to establish an 
 Oriental Primacy in Jerusalem, and is therefore 
 an unwilling witness to Rome. The letter relates 
 how Peter, " who had been defined to be the 
 foundation of the Church .... the first of 
 the Apostles," foreknew his death, and appointed 
 St. Clement as his successor, the following passages 
 being selected from his long address to the people 
 
280 STUDIES 
 
 on the occasion : "I entrust to him my seat of 
 teaching." " I give over to him the authority of 
 binding and loosing, so that all he ordains on earth 
 may be decreed in heaven." " Hear ye him, then, 
 as knowing that whatsoever grieves him who pre- 
 sides over the truth, 1 sins against Christ " (cap. 2). 
 . . . . " Do you, beloved brethren, and fellow- 
 servants, obey the president of truth in all things, 
 knowing this, that whoso grieves him receives not 
 Christ, Whose seat he holds." Who can doubt that 
 the author of this letter was compelled to give the 
 attributes " Vicar of Christ," and " President of 
 the Truth," to St. Peter's most illustrious suc- 
 cessor, so as to colour his story with some sem- 
 blance of probability ? Let it be noted that we 
 have nearly contemporaneous evidence that the 
 Popes claimed their power as successors of St. 
 Peter, in the frantic invective of Tertullian. We 
 here have the corresponding admission, also from 
 a hostile witness, that this claim was acknowledged 
 in the East. What Dr. Lightfoot calls " the later 
 Roman theory " can be thus traced back at least 
 as far as the middle of the second century. 
 
 We have dwelt at length upon the points where 
 we unhappily differ from Dr. Lightfoot ; so much 
 was due to him, as well as to the doctrines we 
 were defending. Even here we are indebted to 
 him for much assistance ; and we have given no 
 idea of the wealth of learning which has been 
 lavished upon this work. It is no small lesson in 
 
 1 rhv rrjs a\7]6eias irpoKade^Sfieuov. Dr. Lightfoot has noticed 
 the remarkable parallel which this presents to St. Ignatius' s 
 TrpoKad-fi/jLevT) tt/s ayaTrrjs. It appears to us to strengthen materially 
 the interpretation we have given of that passage. 
 
ST. IGNATIUS AND THE EOMAN PRIMACY 281 
 
 this age of hurry and distraction to find any man 
 content to give so much labour, out of a busy 
 life, to illustrate one book. Our hearty desire is, 
 that the Saint, on whose behalf he has undertaken 
 this labour of love, may obtain for him a fitting 
 reward. 
 
282 
 
 HYPNOTISM. 
 
 It may appear superfluous to add one more to 
 the numerous articles on hypnotism which have 
 been contributed to the reviews and magazines 
 during recent years. Most of these, however, 
 have aimed — not unnaturally — at describing the 
 marvellous phenomena of hypnotism, rather than 
 at examining the results with care, or suggest- 
 ing any explanation of them. There are great 
 differences of opinion among hypnotists as to 
 nearly all the facts observed, and the inferences 
 to be drawn from them ; so that it seems to me 
 that I shall be doing a service if I attempt to com- 
 pare the various statements made, more carefully 
 than has been done in the popular articles on the 
 subject. Such an examination is a necessary pre- 
 liminary to considering the moral and social bearings 
 of hypnotism ; very grave questions on which I 
 have no intention of intruding, but for which I 
 trust the material I have brought together may be 
 of service. It is needful that I should trace shortly 
 the history of the subject, in order to show the 
 parentage of the two schools, to the one or the 
 other of which hypnotists belong. Hypnotism has 
 had a strange history everywhere, but most of all 
 in this country. Having been long the toy of 
 conjurers and quacks, " animal magnetism " — as 
 it was then called — had the chance of serious study 
 
HYPNOTISM 283 
 
 fifty years ago by one of the leading physicians of 
 London. His unavoidable mistakes, and still more 
 his eager credulity, gave a handle to the professional 
 bigotry or jealousy of his critics which they were 
 not slow to seize, and Elliotson was condemned to 
 untimely ruin and oblivion. But the investigation 
 which he began was continued in a more sober 
 spirit by a surgeon of Manchester, Mr. Braid, who 
 confined himself to the study of such phenomena 
 as he could verify by physical observation and 
 experiment, using the term hypnotism to mark 
 the new direction he had given to the subject, and 
 not to prejudge the nature of the agent he was 
 investigating. It has been allowed by all who have 
 followed him that the right method of studying 
 the subject dates from Braid. But, whether from 
 the example of Elliotson' s fate, or some other 
 reason, Braid's researches never attracted in this 
 country the interest that might have been expected, 
 and, indeed, remained practically unknown, save 
 for the mention of them by Dr. Carpenter. Hyp- 
 notism did not become a recognised branch of 
 scientific study until it was taken up by one of the 
 greatest of modern physicians, Professor Charcot, 
 of Paris, in 1878. His confessed eminence, com- 
 plete knowledge of allied conditions, and mar- 
 vellous descriptive powers, enabled him to carry 
 the day, but not without a severe struggle ; and 
 I have seldom been more interested than when 
 hearing him describe his anxiety, while he still 
 doubted whether hypnotism might not even prove 
 fatal to his professional reputation. The result of 
 his labours has been the establishment of the 
 largest school for the study of hypnotism at the 
 Salpetriere Hospital in Paris, and to him we owe 
 
284 STUDIES 
 
 the interest which has been awakened in Germany, 
 Italy, and even in England. But he had been 
 preceded in the study of hypnotism in France by 
 a medical man at Nancy, Dr. Liebeault, who as 
 long ago as 1866 published a short work on the 
 subject. His observations, however, remained un- 
 noticed, until eighteen years later they were brought 
 forward by Bernheim, a professor in the same town, 
 since which time his teaching has been well known 
 to the scientific world. Charcot and Liebeault 
 studying these phenomena independently, have 
 been led to different conclusions, and have thus 
 founded the rival schools of Paris and Nancy, to 
 which it will be so often necessary to refer. In 
 spite of all the ardour and industry which has been 
 displayed, much will be seen to be uncertain, much 
 remains unexplored, and still more is imperfectly 
 understood. But, in what is proved beyond the 
 possibility of doubt, and admitted on all hands as 
 certain, there is so much which has the most 
 important bearing on human responsibility, as to 
 interest, and even alarm, those who seriously 
 consider it. The psychological results of hypnotism, 
 though inferior in practical interest to its moral 
 and social consequences, suggest many problems 
 of importance which open out new fields for study. 
 It will be seen as I proceed that the difference 
 between the two schools of hypnotisers is, to a 
 great degree, due to an ambiguous use of the word 
 hypnotism. It would, therefore, be most logical 
 to begin with the various definitions of the word ; 
 but this we are not in a position to do until some 
 account has been given of the process and the 
 means by which it is carried out. First, as to 
 the means employed. Charcot's school teaches 
 
HYPNOTISM 285 
 
 that the ordinary and most certain way of hyp- 
 notising subjects is by using physical agencies of 
 various kinds, but all agree in this, that they 
 stimulate monotonously the nervous system. Such 
 are the " magnetic passes " of the old mesmerists, 
 causing the subject to look steadily at some bright 
 object, slight electrical currents, or gentle friction, 
 or the impression may be made on the hearing by 
 means of a monster tuning-fork, a gong, &c. Richet 
 relates the case of a woman who fell into the hyp- 
 notic state at each stroke of the kettle-drum at 
 a concert, and apparently many of the instances 
 of catalepsy during a thunderstorm are to be 
 accounted for in the same way. On the other 
 hand, the school of Nancy hold that hypnotism 
 is produced by suggestion, and that these means 
 which I have just enumerated act simply by putting 
 the subject into a condition of expectancy and con- 
 fident belief. The first part of this statement is 
 undoubtedly true. Long before the recent develop- 
 ment of hypnotism, the Abbe Faria was wont in 
 Paris to mesmerise persons by merely placing them 
 in a chair and saying imperiously Dormez ; and 
 Braid also remarked that mere belief in the power 
 of the operator was enough for the purpose. There 
 is abundant evidence to the same effect since ; 
 the most striking instance being that of persons 
 hypnotised at a distance from the operator, and 
 at a moment chosen by him, which has been done 
 not merely to excitable French girls, but to German 
 medical students, and to others whose cases have 
 been recorded in general periodicals. But Dr. 
 Liebeault's followers seem to go too far when 
 they deny that the manoeuvres described are not 
 the most certain and dependable means of pro- 
 
286 STUDIES 
 
 ducing hypnotism. It will be sufficient to appeal 
 to Father Kircher's old experiment, in which a 
 cock is hypnotised by holding his beak against a 
 chalk line, to prove that these means act where 
 there can be no expectancy on the part of the 
 subject. Still less can it be said that " the whole 
 thing is mere fancy," as English so-called common- 
 sense is apt too roughly to assume. The contrary 
 is shown conclusively by experiments, not only on 
 animals, but on persons in sound, natural sleep, 
 whom Berger and Gscheidlen have repeatedly 
 hypnotised, no appeal to the imagination being 
 then possible. 
 
 The proportion of persons susceptible of hyp- 
 notism is so very differently estimated by various 
 authorities — ranging from 10 to 95 per cent. — 
 that it would evidently be unprofitable to go into 
 the question so stated. It is more important to 
 consider whether the susceptibility can be con- 
 nected with any known peculiarities of the subjects. 
 It is, in the first place, certain that mere general 
 excitability is not a necessary, or even a favourable, 
 condition. Some of the most remarkable results 
 have been obtained by Heidenhain and Hensen 
 in phlegmatic German medical students. Nor have 
 we any immunity in this country : the rash and 
 unjustifiable experiments of " electro-biologists " 
 are sufficient to prove this ; and some of the most 
 interesting observations on the results of hyp- 
 notism were made by Mr. E. Gurney on a healthy 
 young baker in Brighton. Indeed, paradoxical as 
 it may seem, quiet, unemotional people are generally 
 more easily hypnotised than excitable ones. The 
 chief requisite is the power of fixing the attention ; 
 and for this reason very young children, idiots, 
 
HYPNOTISM 287 
 
 and most insane persons cannot be influenced. 
 The susceptibility is greatly increased by practice. 
 Richet, for example, tells us of a girl with whom 
 he entirely failed the first time, the second time 
 he hypnotised her in ten minutes, the third time 
 in five ; after that a look or a word of command 
 acted instantaneously. The fact is abundantly 
 proved, and of great practical importance. The 
 Paris school teach that hypnotism can only be 
 successfully produced in persons of the hysterical 
 temperament ; and, indeed, they go so far as to 
 say that true hypnotism {la grande hypnose) is 
 merely a manifestation of hysteria. They qualify 
 this statement, however, by two additions, which 
 it is important to note. The term hysterical tem- 
 perament is used to denote, not the condition 
 popularly so called, but certain symptoms recog- 
 nisable only by a physician, and compatible with 
 apparent good health. They also admit that 
 incomplete hypnotic states may sometimes be 
 produced in non-hysterical subjects. Very different 
 is the teaching of the school of Nancy ; in their 
 view healthy persons are the more readily influenced, 
 and hysteria is rather an obstacle to hypnotism. 
 This contradiction is connected with an equally 
 opposed way of looking at the phenomena of hyp- 
 notism. Charcot's school consider it to be a 
 diseased condition, closely allied to hysteria, if 
 not merely one of the manifestations of that pro- 
 tean disease, and characterised by three forms or 
 stages, through which every complete access, so 
 to speak, must pass. Each of these stages presents 
 well-marked bodily symptoms, which have been 
 studied with great care, it being thought that in 
 these a security had been found against simulation. 
 
288 STUDIES 
 
 In the condition they term Lethargy, the subject 
 lies as if asleep and apparently unconscious, though 
 he is sometimes able to say afterwards what has 
 been done to him. Pressure on the nerves and 
 muscles produces contractions which, from their 
 character and extent, are supposed to be the surest 
 guarantee against fraud. When the patient is 
 made to pass into Catalepsy, the muscular condi- 
 tion is quite different. He can be placed in any 
 attitude, and will retain it, no matter how un- 
 natural or contorted, for a period far beyond what 
 would be possible to voluntary effort. The mental 
 state is very remarkable. The subject is incapable 
 of any spontaneous action, and is reduced to the 
 state of a living marionette or automaton, reacting 
 simply to external impressions. For instance, if 
 the limbs be placed in an attitude corresponding 
 to any state of mind, such as pugilism, veneration, 
 prayer, or the like, the features at once assume 
 the expression appropriate to that state, the most 
 perfect tableaux vivants, resembling Michael Angelo's 
 or Da Vinci's drawings, being produced. But the 
 attitudes thus caused gradually fade away, leaving 
 only the impassive mask of catalepsy ; and there 
 is no speculation in those features which had just 
 been animated by the perfect semblance of horror, 
 love, anger, or devotion. Or the cataleptic may 
 be made to perform such simple acts as tapping 
 with the foot, twirling the thumbs, &c, and will 
 then continue them for some time with mono- 
 tonous regularity. There is usually no recollection 
 of what has occurred during catalepsy. In the 
 third stage, Somnambulism, the muscles are in a 
 state of increased irritability, which it would seem 
 impossible to simulate. The skin is usually in- 
 
HYPNOTISM 289 
 
 sensible, but the other senses are active, hearing 
 in particular being very acute ; and many instances 
 of supposed clairvoyance are evidently due to this 
 acuteness. The state of the mind is even more 
 strange than in catalepsy. As long as the subject 
 is not acted upon from without, the mind appears 
 to be a perfect blank, but the subject can be readily 
 communicated with, and receives unhesitatingly 
 every suggestion made to him by his hypnotiser, 
 whose puppet he becomes. This is the condition 
 in which he is deceived as to the properties of 
 substances given him to taste or to handle, which 
 are the stock experiments of popular " electro- 
 biologists." Hallucinations of any kind may be 
 suggested, and are perceived with all the senses, 
 or, if it be preferred, with one eye or ear only. 
 Or, some person, object, or part of an object, may 
 be blotted out from the subject's perception, or 
 he may be allowed to see only one object ; for 
 instance, one horse only in a crowded street. More 
 strictly mental effects may be suggested. The 
 memory of individual persons or things may be 
 obliterated, or the belief of the subject in his own 
 personality may be changed, and he be made to 
 believe he is a rabbit, an actress, a soldier, &c, 
 acting according to such belief with unquestioning 
 faith. Or the personality remaining, the opinions 
 may be altered, an ardent Bonapartist being con- 
 verted into a Republican. I will not dwell now 
 on the question, whether there are any limits to 
 this power of suggestion, as I shall have to return 
 to that later. 
 
 This is an exceedingly brief account of the 
 phenomena of hypnotism, according to the school 
 founded by Charcot. Nothing could be more 
 19 
 
290 STUDIES 
 
 definite than the three stages I have described, 
 and no other disease has been studied with more 
 enthusiasm, energy, and attention. After saying 
 so much, it will appear confounding to add that 
 the account given by the Nancy hypnotisers is 
 entirely different. According to M. Liebeault and 
 his followers, the hypnotic state is not a diseased 
 condition at all. They believe the fundamental 
 condition is one closely akin to ordinary sleep, 
 produced by the suggestion of the operator and 
 the conviction of the subject. The chief difference 
 from ordinary sleep is, that the subject remains in 
 close relation to the hypnotiser, so that his thoughts 
 and acts are controlled by the latter. This school 
 has also arranged the symptoms of hypnotism in 
 several stages ; but they may all be reduced to 
 three — somnolence, light sleep and profound sleep, 
 which last corresponds to the Paris somnam- 
 bulism (Forel). They hold that, as a rule, the 
 last stage, with all its consequences, is only reached 
 after repeated trials, the " suggestibility " of the 
 subject rapidly increasing with habit. 
 
 Neither of these parties seems at present dis- 
 posed to yield to the other ; but there can be no 
 doubt that the opinion of foreigners generally, 
 and lately even of some distinguished Parisian 
 physicians, inclines very decidedly to the Nancy 
 explanation. This has, above all, the great advan- 
 tage that it accounts for the phenomena observed 
 by its opponents, as well as for those collected 
 on its own behalf. It will be remembered that 
 the Salpetriere school experiments exclusively upon 
 hysterical persons, who are alone, it teaches, 
 amenable to the hypnotic influence. But every 
 physician is only too well aware of the marvellous 
 
HYPNOTISM • 291 
 
 power that hysterical women have to counterfeit 
 disease, and of the almost incredible skill, patience, 
 and fortitude which they will employ to simulate 
 any malady that they find renders them objects 
 of interest and attention. When to this is added 
 the force of suggestion inherent in the process of 
 hypnotism, it does not seem at all unlikely that 
 the Paris operators themselves produce, by uncon- 
 scious suggestion, the phenomena they study. 
 Probably phenomena corresponding to the three 
 stages of Charcot occurred in the first case or two 
 observed by that illustrious physician, and suffi- 
 cient care was not thereupon taken to exclude 
 the possibility of unintentional suggestion, of which 
 the importance was then unknown. The slightest 
 hint of manner or word would be sufficient to let 
 the hysterical subjects know what was expected 
 of them, and repeated experiment would but 
 confirm the result of the earliest observations. 
 Most operators outside the Salpetriere school have 
 had the same experience as one of the late t writers 
 on the subject, the distinguished Parisian, M. 
 Dejerine. He says : — 
 
 I have never yet been able to observe the Salpetriere 
 phenomena in subjects who had never been previously 
 hypnotised, although I have sought for them on each occa- 
 sion with great care, while avoiding the possibility of 
 suggestion. ... On the other hand, in several of 
 these cases I have obtained, by suggestion, all the stages 
 described above, and produced the complete type of " la 
 grande hypnose" sometimes from the beginning, and after 
 a very few trials. ... In a word, the subjects repro- 
 duced at will, either the type of the school of the Salpetriere, 
 or the type of the school of Nancy. In other terms, I 
 have never obtained anything which was spontaneous, 
 
292 STUDIES 
 
 or personal, so to speak, to the subject under experiment, 
 nothing which in my judgment was not due to suggestion. 1 
 
 Whichever of these two ways of looking at the 
 facts that hypnotism has revealed be accepted, 
 these clearly call for some explanation which shall 
 connect them with the other phenomena of mental 
 life. There are difficulties in the way of every 
 hypothesis that can be suggested ; the one that 
 has received the most general assent is due to 
 Professor Heidenhain. He pointed out that all 
 the physical means employed ior hypnotising are 
 slight monotonous stimuli of the sensory nerves, 
 and he supposed — what seems very probable — 
 that the highest nervous centres in the brain are 
 thereby exhausted, and so rendered incapable of 
 their ordinary functions. Now these centres, as 
 I have pointed out in the Dublin Review, 2 are 
 inhibitory or controlling. They limit or check 
 all irregular action of the lower centres, and are 
 thus the necessary condition of the faculty of 
 attention, and thereby of all higher thought. 
 By the temporary disablement of these highest 
 centres the subject, then, would become unable 
 to direct the course of his thoughts, and would 
 unresistingly receive all suggestions that reached 
 him from without. He would lose (as we all do 
 in dreams) that power of comparison with the 
 other data of his mind, which alone enables any 
 of us to judge of the truth or falsity of any state- 
 ment or perception that may be presented to our 
 consciousness. Hypnotism, on this theory, differs 
 
 1 Medecine Moderne, January 25, 1891. 
 
 2 The Physiological Psychology of St. Thomas, April, 1882, 
 p. 355. (See pp. 345-346 of this volume.) 
 
HYPNOTISM 293 
 
 from natural sleep chiefly by the power of sugges- 
 tion which the operator acquires over his subject ; 
 and we are thus landed once more in the view 
 taken by the Nancy school. 
 
 I will not here dwell upon the theoretical and 
 purely psychological results of hypnotism. It has 
 been aptly called " a vivisection of the mind," 
 and the industry and skill with which it has been 
 used for the purpose of psychological research 
 have led to some very interesting and unforeseen 
 results. I will only remark on one of them, which 
 indeed includes them all. Hypnotism strongly con- 
 firms the view of modern science, that much of 
 our mental life is unconscious and ordinarily 
 unknown to us. Since Descartes' revolt from 
 scholasticism, it has been held by psychologists 
 that our mental life reached no further than our 
 consciousness directly showed us ; and that the 
 world of thought within — as the ancients thought 
 of the world without — was measured by our un- 
 aided faculties. The opposite doctrine is expressed 
 — inappropriately enough — by the phrase " uncon- 
 scious cerebration." On this view, the mind of 
 each of us is an unknown territory, lying in dark- 
 ness unexplored, save where our voluntarily directed 
 consciousness casts a narrow ray of light, or where 
 some more urgent perception or memory rises out 
 of the gloom. Catholic philosophers will welcome 
 the reversal of one of Descartes' errors, against 
 which their predecessors had protested in vain. 
 And the practical bearing of such a conception, 
 if grave and serious, is at least wholesome and 
 bsacing. Our sense of responsibility is greatly 
 quickened when we realise that we have to shape 
 our course in life across a much wider field than 
 
294 STUDIES 
 
 we had previously suspected, and that, without 
 quitting the confines of our own minds, we can 
 range from the highest to the lowest places. The 
 peculiar horror of hypnotism is that we have been 
 taught that this power of self-direction may abdi- 
 cate, and that our organisms — nay, our very minds 
 themselves — may become nothing but elaborate 
 puppets in a stranger's hands. Most of us will 
 agree that such a possibility, if it be true, is more 
 horrible than any legend of Oriental superstition 
 or mediaeval witchcraft ; and we shall anxiously 
 inquire how far our fears are grounded in fact. 
 The answer is not quite reassuring. The power 
 of suggestion does not merely apply to hallucina- 
 tions, opinions, and beliefs ; acts of any kind can 
 be suggested to the subject, and may be performed 
 by him with unresisting obedience. Many of the 
 experiments of this kind that have been tried 
 have been recorded in the articles that have appeared 
 on hypnotism in the periodicals. The reader is 
 therefore probably familiar with instances where 
 subjects have been ordered to shoot or poison 
 their dearest relatives, and have obeyed implicitly 
 as far as lay in their power. The acts suggested 
 are performed with all the accuracy of a machine, 
 and yet often with more skill and fearlessness 
 than the subject normally possesses. For instance, 
 Fere tells us that he has given the order that a 
 certain point on a card should be pierced with a 
 penknife, and the act has been performed with a 
 precision which would only be possible normally 
 after minute measurement. It is impossible to 
 refrain from Fere's reflection that a criminal act 
 would have been executed with the same accuracy. 
 There is no limit to the character of the suggestions 
 
HYPNOTISM 295 
 
 which may be acted upon ; they may be absurd, 
 immoral, criminal, and dangerous or injurious to 
 the subject himself. They may be remembered 
 after the hypnotic stage has ceased ; but it only 
 needs the command of the operator to ensure 
 absolute oblivion, or the belief that the suggestion 
 comes from an innocent person. If this were all 
 it would be serious enough ; but what is more 
 marvellous and more terrible remains to be told. 
 Any of these suggestions may be made, which are 
 to take effect after the subject has passed out of 
 the hypnotic sleep, and is apparently in his or 
 her usual condition. Nor is this power limited 
 to the time immediately following hypnotism ; 
 the suggestions may be timed to come off and have 
 been performed with unfailing punctuality at a 
 distant period (suggestions a longue echeance). 
 There are numerous instances in which the interval 
 between the hypnotism and the fulfilment of the 
 act suggested has been several weeks ; in one care- 
 fully recorded case an act commanded on August 2 
 was performed on the following 2nd of October ; 
 and in another, equally authentic, an hallucination 
 appeared 172 days after it had been suggested. 
 Or the patient may be commanded to fall into 
 the hypnotic sleep ; the cases in which persons 
 have been mesmerised at a distance, or by means 
 of an amulet, come under this category, whereby 
 some of the most wonderful effects of the mesmeric 
 power are explained. The power of influencing 
 the mind after the hypnotic sleep is over has been 
 employed in a more satisfactory manner. Habits 
 of intoxication have been combated by French 
 and Swiss physicians, and, by an English clergy- 
 man, by suggesting a dislike to alcohol, with some 
 
296 STUDIES 
 
 success, and other habits will occur to the ex- 
 perienced which might be treated in the same 
 manner. Its use has been proposed in education, 
 and one case has been recorded of an idle boy who, 
 being hypnotised and told to work, applied himself 
 to his lessons, and could only escape from the 
 necessity of so doing by refusing to be hypnotised 
 again ! For all these commands only operate for 
 a time, and if the hypnotism is not repeated in a 
 week or two the influence of the last seance wears 
 out. A more obvious application of hypnotic sug- 
 gestion is in the treatment of many diseases, which 
 has been carried out on a large scale at Nancy, 
 and with undoubted success in the case of many 
 nervous diseases. 
 
 It is exceedingly difficult to offer any satisfac- 
 tory explanation of post-hypnotic suggestions, 
 especially those a longue echeance. I think M. 
 Delbceuf's the only plausible one. He found that, 
 if the subject be roused before such suggested acts 
 or hallucinations are completed, there is a con- 
 fused remembrance of them, as of a dream ; while 
 if they be finished they are not remembered. 1 
 This leads him to suppose that the subject is for 
 the time being thrown into a state of hypnotic 
 trance, during which the suggestion takes effect. 
 
 We now come to consider whether there are any 
 limits to a power which seems at first sight bound- 
 less, for good or ill as the operator may choose. 
 It is generally admitted that all the more difficult 
 and complicated suggestions, especially post-hyp- 
 notic ones a longue echeance, are usually not to 
 
 1 It is fair to say that Mr. Gurney thought this due to some 
 peculiarity in M. Delbceuf s subjects. 
 
HYPNOTISM 297 
 
 be obtained from a subject at first, but require 
 practice, and, as it were, gradual training. This 
 is, however, not always the case. M. Dejerine, 
 for instance, in the paper I have already quoted, 
 says that he has observed two young men, who 
 had never been hypnotised, in whom he could 
 produce all the more complicated phenomena by 
 simple suggestion. And there is a well-known 
 case where a vagrant, named Castellan, in 1865, 
 hypnotised a young girl in Provence, and used 
 the influence he thus acquired over her to make her 
 leave at once her father's house and live with him, 
 though she looked on him with fear and loathing. 
 
 The mind of the subject introduces still more 
 important limits to the power of the operator. 
 For when I said that the former is an automaton 
 in the hands of the hypnotiser, I must not be taken 
 to mean that his or her faculties are entirely 
 abolished for the time being. We see this in the 
 ingenuity often displayed in selecting means for 
 carrying out some end which has been determined 
 beforehand by the operator. Thus a woman has 
 had recourse to cajolery and ingenious excuses 
 to induce a supposed victim to drink what she 
 thinks to be a poisoned draught. Such subjects 
 carry out the Calvinist view of free-will, believing 
 themselves to be free, whereas they are simply 
 executing the mandates of a will other than their 
 own. The Nancy school believe that this is true 
 of all subjects — that in the end none can escape 
 the influence of suggestion, and that opposition 
 can always be overborne by stronger pressure 
 on the part of the operator, or removed by gradual 
 training and practice. On the contrary, the Sal- 
 petriere school have gradually come to the con- 
 
298 STUDIES 
 
 elusion that the power of resistance to suggestions, 
 though weakened, is not entirely lost. They appeal 
 to numerous instances in which a subject has refused 
 to perform an act which is opposed to his or her 
 conscience, habits, or even inclinations. It is true 
 that such resistance can often be overcome by 
 persistence on the part of the operator, and his 
 ascendency grows with habit, but a margin of 
 independence remains. Thus a woman, on being 
 told to steal, refuses, either from moral motives 
 or for fear of detection ; or another, on being 
 ordered to murder some one, replies, " Why should 
 I ? He has done me no harm." In such a case 
 persistence brings on an attack of hysteria, and 
 ends the seance. Indeed, the Paris school go 
 farther, and say that they believe the apparently 
 criminal suggestions made only succeed because 
 in their inmost hearts the subjects know that 
 these are never seriously intended to be carried 
 out ; that they know the stabbing is only to be 
 done with a paper-knife, the pistol is not loaded 
 with ball, or the supposed arsenic is really sugar. 
 It would require a much more extended and prac- 
 tical knowledge of the facts than I possess to 
 decide between these two statements. But, look- 
 ing on the question as an outsider, I remark chiefly 
 these two points : On the one hand, many of the 
 independent observers who follow the Nancy school 
 in other respects, consider that in this they exag- 
 gerate the power of suggestion. On the other 
 hand, it is hard to believe that all the apparent 
 resistance and final consent to some act which 
 revolts the moral sense or the inclinations is mere 
 acting. Perhaps we shall do best to suspend our 
 judgment, and meanwhile to hold that at any 
 
HYPNOTISM 299 
 
 rate only a very small proportion of hypnotised 
 subjects lose all power of resistance. It is unfor- 
 tunate that there* should be this conflict of opinion 
 concerning the most important practical question 
 of all, but the doubt will probably not greatly 
 affect either way a decision as to the lawfulness 
 of hypnotism in any given case. 
 
 Even this very slight sketch of hypnotism will 
 be enough to show what a light it throws on some 
 of the most obscure recesses of human life. I will 
 only remark in passing on its analogies to the 
 preternatural phenomena, possession, obsession, and 
 the like ; this is not the place, nor am I the person, 
 to dwell on them farther. 
 
 The power of hypnotic suggestion shades away 
 into the influence that strong minds have to carry 
 away weaker ones ; an influence that has long 
 been recognised, both as regards individuals and 
 masses of men. And, on another side, the fatality 
 with which hallucinations and acts can be suggested 
 to hypnotised subjects, their latency in the mind 
 until aroused, and the oppression which subjects 
 feel until the act is performed, all bear a striking 
 resemblance to the irresistible impulses and fixed 
 ideas which are sometimes met with in persons 
 of otherwise sound mind. 
 
 The foregoing is a very brief account of the 
 views at present entertained as to the nature 
 and power of hypnotism. The practical questions 
 raised by the existence of such an influence are, 
 as will be seen on reflection, of the gravest im- 
 portance. Some o: them concern the administra- 
 tion of justice, and these may be studied by all 
 who desire in the exhaustive work of M. Gilles de 
 
300 STUDIES 
 
 la Tourette, 1 which is recognised as the chief 
 authority on the subject. It has to be borne in 
 mind that the author belongs to the Paris school, 
 and allowance has to be made for this, but his 
 views as to the nature of hypnotism do not affect 
 the value of the collected instances in which this 
 has in one way or another come before the French 
 tribunals. The point that has been most fre- 
 quently raised is the obvious one : the possibility 
 of the commission of criminal assaults during the 
 hypnotic stupor, or as the result of suggestion in 
 somnambulism. This is complicated by the diffi- 
 culty of excluding simulation or false accusations, 
 which are so common in such cases, so that some 
 of the most intricate problems may be brought 
 in this way before a court of justice. The forensic 
 bearing of post-hypnotic suggestion is, at first 
 sight, more alarming. To take only a few instances : 
 subjects have been made to sign cheques for large 
 amounts, or give receipts for money they have 
 never had, as results of suggestions during som- 
 nambulism. Or, again, the subornation of testi- 
 mony has been suggested experimentally in France 
 with complete success. A theft has been suggested 
 to a woman, and at the same time she has been 
 supplied with a story which would cast the blame 
 on some one else. After committing the theft, 
 she has been brought before a sham " Juge d'lnstruc- 
 tion," to whom she has accurately repeated the 
 story prepared for her. The same end might be 
 even more ingeniously attained, if, instead of mere 
 false witness, an hallucination were suggested which 
 
 1 L'Hypnotisme et les ttats analogues au 'point de vue medico- 
 I'gal. 2me Edition. Paris. 1889. 
 
HYPNOTISM 301 
 
 should lead the subject to believe that he had seen 
 an innocent person commit, or had himself com- 
 mitted, some crime. Finally, M. Binet has thought 
 it by no means unlikely that criminals may here- 
 after employ the fearlessness and dexterity of 
 somnambulists by hypnotising one of their number 
 when any difficult feat has to be executed. 
 
 It is comforting to find that M. de la Tourette 
 considers the risks to society from the criminal 
 applications of hypnotism are much less than we 
 might at first sight expect. As a disciple of M. 
 Charcot, he believes that suggestions can be always 
 rejected by the moral sense or fear of the subject. 
 He also points out that it would be practically 
 impossible for an operator to hypnotise any one 
 repeatedly — as is ordinarily required to gain an 
 influence over the subject — without the knowledge 
 of other persons, who could prove the relation 
 between the two. The subornation of false wit- 
 ness would probably be easily exposed on cross- 
 examination, by showing that the subject could 
 not go beyond the lesson he had been taught by 
 the hypnotiser. Even the greatest danger of all 
 — the commission of criminal assaults during 
 lethargy — is to some extent lessened by the fact 
 that subjects often remember what has passed 
 during that condition, though they may have 
 been powerless, and to all appearance unconscious. 
 
 The legal responsibility of persons hypnotised 
 has received much attention from French and 
 Italian jurists. Some have thought that they 
 should be treated as wholly or partially irre- 
 sponsible ; but the majority hold that they should 
 fall under the legal provisions made for criminal 
 lunatics. They urge that one who can be readily 
 
302 STUDIES 
 
 hypnotised, and accepts suggestions when in that 
 state, is a permanent danger to society, because 
 he can be so easily utilised for criminal purposes ; 
 and that the fear of punishment would make him 
 refuse to be operated upon. Further, it seems 
 reasonable that any one who allowed himself to 
 be hypnotised, knowing the probable consequences, 
 should be held responsible before the law, as much 
 as one who commits a crime when intoxicated. 
 
 All who have had any experience of hypnotism 
 are agreed in condemning the public exhibitions 
 of electro-biology, mesmerism, animal magnetism, 
 or whatever else they may be called. They are 
 attended with considerable danger to the health 
 and reason of the unfortunate persons experimented 
 on by those who are, for the most part, quite unable 
 to judge of the powerful nature of the agent they 
 are employing, and whose only object is to produce 
 startling and violent results. Even spectators who 
 have only assisted at these brutalising exhibitions 
 have been known to suffer from the impression 
 made upon them ; and others have received more 
 permanent injury from the attempts to experiment 
 at home which have been suggested by witnessing 
 the results of a public seance. Such exhibitions 
 are already prohibited in Italy, Austria, and, I 
 believe, in Germany and Belgium. Until the same 
 is done here, it seems to me the duty of all to abstain 
 from countenancing by their presence such de- 
 moralising performances. It is also, I think, 
 almost unanimously held by experts that hypnotism 
 should not be employed, even by those qualified 
 to use it with as little risk as possible, without 
 some adequate reason, for mere purposes of study 
 or idle curiosity. Beyond this point, the strongest 
 
HYPNOTISM 303 
 
 differences of opinion exist. These were brought 
 out very decidedly by the discussion on hypnotism 
 which took place during the meeting of the British 
 Medical Association held at Birmingham in 1890. 
 Dr. Norman Kerr, who opened the discussion in 
 an impassioned and somewhat rhetorical speech, 
 contended that hypnotism was a morbid condition 
 which should in no circumstances be produced ; 
 that its abuse was inseparable from its use, so that 
 the results were always injurious ; and that even 
 when it succeeded in checking habits of intoxica- 
 tion, it did so by substituting a " teetotal drunken- 
 ness," which was far worse. I do not perceive that 
 any facts were brought forward in support of this 
 unsparing condemnation, which was based on 
 general and abstract grounds. The sense of the 
 meeting was adverse to Dr. Kerr's contention, 
 and a committee of investigation was appointed 
 to study the whole subject. I have no desire to 
 go beyond the scope of my present article, and 
 to do more than endeavour to supply moralists 
 with materials for coming to a conclusion on this 
 subject ; but I will add a few practical suggestions 
 which will at any rate minimise the dangers of 
 hypnotism, supposing the practice be considered 
 lawful. The patient should be made to understand 
 fully that it is a natural process, but one of a delicate 
 character, which requires the same precautions as 
 most other powerful methods of treatment. The 
 operator should always be a trained hypnotiser, 
 and a third party should always be present. It 
 i3 important, that before awakening the subject, 
 he should be told not to allow himself to be hyp- 
 notised by anyone else, as this suggestion makes 
 it very difficult for any other unauthorised person 
 
304 STUDIES 
 
 to hypnotise him, in case the attempt should ever 
 be made. A sufficient interval should be inter- 
 posed between each seance to prevent the forma- 
 tion of a habit of seeking to be hypnotised without 
 good reason. This craving for a repetition of the 
 process ; the increased facility with which a sub- 
 ject can be affected ; and a dependence, full of 
 risk, of the patient upon the operator, are the 
 principal dangers that would have to be guarded 
 against. If the practice is ever permitted, most 
 of these points have been very clearly and satis- 
 factorily dealt with by the Abbe Trotin, a Professor 
 in the Theological Faculty of Lille, in a pamphlet 
 which was noticed in the Dublin Review when 
 it appeared. 1 I would refer any reader who wishes 
 to see the subject treated from a theological stand- 
 point to its pages, and will only here add that the 
 author is decidedly of opinion that hypnotism, 
 under suitable precautions, is lawful. 
 
 The above account of hypnotism has been neces- 
 sarily a very incomplete one. I have brought 
 forward only what seem to me the most important 
 points, and have set aside a large mass of very 
 interesting detail. I trust I have at any rate 
 expressed with sufficient clearness the general 
 impression which a study of the subject has left 
 on my own mind. This is in the main a reassuring 
 one. At first sight the dangers of hypnotism seem 
 so great that the temptation is to exaggerate 
 them ; but further consideration reduces them 
 to human proportions, and teaches us they may 
 be controlled. In almost all, if not in all, cases, 
 
 1 Etude Morale sur U Hypnotisme. Lille, 1888. Dublin, 
 Review, July, 1888, p. 222. j 
 
HYPNOTISM 305 
 
 the free-will of man remains a fortress impregnable 
 to this as to every other external agency, unless 
 the gate be opened by consent to the process, or 
 a feeble resistance be offered by the will to sugges- 
 tions after an entrance has been effected. 
 
 20 
 
306 
 
 THE CURBS AT LOURDES. 
 
 One of the most striking characteristics of an 
 age which prides itself on eliminating the super- 
 natural from the world, and on relying upon science 
 alone, is the steady increase in the recoveries that 
 take place at Lourdes, and in the attention they 
 attract. During the last thirty-six years the 
 number of sick who visit that shrine has come 
 by degrees to be counted by thousands annually, 
 while more than 150 medical men went there 
 last year (1893) to study the results for themselves. 
 It is not the least part of the irony of events that 
 it is the very progress of science which has made 
 pilgrimages on such a large scale possible, and 
 also has provided means for testing the recoveries 
 satisfactorily. Side by side with the increased 
 number of alleged cures a more systematic and 
 detailed examination of them has grown up, so 
 that the subject can now be studied by the physi- 
 cian in the same manner as any other branch of 
 medicine. All that could be said after a careful 
 study of the Annates de Lourdes may be seen in 
 an able and thoughtful article by Dr. Mackey in 
 the number of the Dublin Review for October, 
 1880, and the credit is his of having preceded 
 other Catholic medical men in England, where 
 they so long hesitated to follow him. There were 
 good reasons for this delay, if I may judge of others 
 
THE CURES AT LOURDES 307 
 
 by my own case. Lourdes was known to us almost 
 entirely by the work of M. Lasserre, which, in 
 spite of its brilliant literary qualities, or perhaps 
 because of them, was not calculated to satisfy a 
 physician. The cases reported from time to time 
 in the religious journals, and those which reached 
 us on hearsay evidence, were hardly more con- 
 vincing, and did no more than cause us to suspend 
 our judgment. This state of mind ended, for me 
 at any rate, with the publication of Dr. Boissarie's 
 first book. 1 I then realised for the first time 
 that there was a large mass of medical testimony 
 bearing on the cures, which was available for 
 further study, and seemed to demand it. Among 
 the cases so recorded some seemed to me explicable 
 by the action of the mind on the body ; but others 
 appeared to be wholly out of the ordinary course 
 of Nature, and yet supported by testimony which 
 would be deemed sufficient to establish any im- 
 probable, but not impossible, event. I will presently 
 give two or three instances of the class of cases I 
 refer to, and will only now remark that the number 
 might be easily increased by quoting from the 
 work in question. One doubt, however, and that 
 a grave one, still remained in my mind. One of 
 the hardest lessons that we all learn in life is not 
 to trust to the fairest appearances without careful 
 and personal examination. It might be, I thought, 
 that the love of the marvellous which carries almost 
 everyone away into inaccuracy and exaggeration, 
 had acted with special force on masses of men 
 stirred by religious enthusiasm, and that the fervid 
 imagination of the South had perhaps clothed its 
 
 • Lourdes : Histoire Mtdicale. Paris : Lecoffre, 1891. 
 
808 STUDIES 
 
 beliefs in the semblance of a scientific method 
 which might vanish on a nearer scrutiny. My 
 suspicions were enough to make me desire to see 
 the wonders of Lourdes for myself, and to judge 
 on the spot of the way in which the cures are 
 examined and recorded. It seems to me that the 
 testimony of a medical witness, who is at least 
 independent, will be interesting to those who wish 
 for further information ; and this is my reason 
 for appearing perhaps too exclusively occupied with 
 my own experiences and impressions. I make 
 no apology to the general reader for the medical 
 details into which I shall enter, for they are the 
 very essence of the subject. 
 
 The following are examples of the cases which 
 on perusal seemed to me to be outside the ordinary 
 course of Nature, and yet supported by abundant 
 testimony : — 
 
 Case 1. — Peter de Rudder, an outdoor servant at 
 Jabekke, a village between Bruges and Ostend, had both 
 bones of his left leg broken by the fall of a tree. The 
 fracture was a compound comminuted one, three inches 
 below the knee ; it did not unite, though treated by six 
 medical men successively. The wound at the seat of the 
 fracture, and a deep ulcer on the dorsum of the foot, 
 remained open ; the patient kept his bed for a year, 
 and then dragged himself about on crutches. This state 
 of things lasted for rather more than eight years, when 
 he went on a pilgrimage to the Lourdes shrine at Oosstaker, 
 where, on April 7, 1875, he recovered completely and 
 instantaneously while in prayer before the statue. Such 
 was his own account at the time, confirmed by a statement 
 signed by the burgomaster of fc the commune, and eleven 
 
THE CURES AT LOURDES 309 
 
 of the principal inhabitants, within a week of the occur- 
 rence. The whole evidence in this case was gone over 
 carefully last year by Dr. Royer, of Lens St. Remy, accom- 
 panied by a sceptic. He found that de Rudder's ordinary 
 medical attendants were both dead ; but one Dr. van 
 Hoestenberghe, who lives in the neighbourhood, had been 
 told by his deceased colleagues that they looked upon the 
 case as hopeless, and he had himself examined the injury. 
 He saw a deep ulceration in the upper third of the leg, 
 at the bottom of which could be seen the fractured ends 
 of the bones, separated by an interval of about an inch. 
 The limb was movable in every direction, the only limit 
 being the resistance of the soft tissues. The last time 
 the doctor saw the limb was two or three months before 
 the recovery, and he deemed it impossible that a fracture 
 of such long standing and gravity could have healed com- 
 pletely during that time. That no change had taken place 
 during the interval seems to be established by the fol- 
 lowing testimony. Two persons saw the leg, one nine, 
 the other seven, days before the date of the alleged cure, 
 and three persons saw him dress the wound the evening 
 before, when he bent the leg so as to make the fractured 
 ends of the bones project. A ticket porter, who assisted 
 in helping him into the train on his way to Oosstaker, 
 deposed to having seen the leg hanging loose and evidently 
 broken, and to his returning in the evening without crutches 
 and unassisted. De Rudder himself confirmed the account 
 he had formerly given of the suddenness and completeness 
 of his cure, adding some curious details, such as that 
 at first his feet were too tender for him to wear shoes. 
 Dr. Royer examined the limb carefully, and found two 
 cicatrices in the places where the sores had been, and 
 a depression of the crest of the tibia at the seat of the 
 fracture, but no shortening, no thickening, and not the 
 least lameness. I have dwelt on this case at some length, 
 though much of the evidence has been omitted, not only 
 because it is a very remarkable one, but also in the hope 
 that some English surgeon may be induced to investigate 
 
310 STUDIES 
 
 it independently. De Rudder lives between Bruges and 
 Ostend, so near our shores that it would be almost as 
 easy and as cheap to subject this alleged miracle to cross- 
 examination, as to ridicule or reject it without inquiry. 
 If it is disproved it will be an interesting psychological 
 question how de Rudder succeeded in persuading himself 
 and his neighbours, who were by no means all devout 
 Catholics, that he had been so marvellously cured. Dr. 
 Hoestenberghe, of Stalhille, whom I have mentioned above, 
 offers to accompany de Rudder to either Bruges or Ostend 
 if it is inconvenient for any medical man to go to Jabbeke. 
 
 Case 2. — Marie Lemarchand came to Lourdes with a 
 certificate from Dr. La Neele, of Caen, stating that she 
 was suffering from phthisis, and also from lupus of the 
 right cheek, lips, and part of the mucous membrane of 
 the mouth. Dr. d'Hombres stated that he saw her 
 waiting for her turn to go into the bath, and that he was 
 struck with the particularly repulsive appearance of her 
 face, which was suppurating profusely. He was shortly 
 after called by one of the baigneuses to see the patient, 
 when he found a fresh, red cicatrix covered by a freshly- 
 formed epidermis where the ulceration had been before. 
 Dr. La Neele writes to Dr. Boissarie that on her return 
 home the skin gradually assumed a healthy aspect, and 
 that the pulmonary evidences of disease had disappeared, 
 leaving the patient perfectly well. 
 
 Case 3. — Amelie Chagnon suffered from caries of the 
 second left metatarsal bone with a sinus which freely sup- 
 purated. This had gradually become worse during four 
 years, until removal of the bone appeared to be the only 
 course to take ; for the last year there had also been stru- 
 mous disease of the left knee-joint. Both these condi- 
 tions were certified to by her medical attendants, Dr, 
 Dupont, of Poitiers, and Dr. Gaillard, of Parthenay. She 
 went to Lourdes with the national pilgrimage in 1889 ; but 
 returned without any improvement. Dr. Dupont states 
 that he saw her the day before her second* visit in August, 
 1891, and found her no better than usualA She was bathed 
 
THE CUBES AT LOURDES 311 
 
 at Lourdes, at first with no result ; at her urgent entreaty 
 she was put back into the bath, when she felt violent pains 
 in the foot, and was aware that she was healed. Six 
 ladies were in the bathroom at the time ; one of them — 
 a Mdme. de la Saliniere — states that she distinctly saw the 
 sore on the foot before the second immersion, and that 
 after the bath its place was taken by a recent but perfect 
 scar. At the Bureau des Constatations immediately after- 
 wards, nothing could be detected wrong with the limb, 
 except this newly formed cicatrix ; and a few days later 
 her own medical attendants certified to her complete 
 recovery. 
 
 Case 4. — In 1887, Dr. Boissarie saw a woman waiting 
 to bathe her child, a boy of twelve, who had been blind 
 for two years ; he had well-marked interstitial keratitis, 
 and a specific history. After bathing, the boy suddenly 
 and completely recovered his sight, and on examination, 
 Dr. Boissarie found only a few spots and a little cloudiness 
 of the cornea remaining. 
 
 II. 
 
 To come to my own experience, I spent May 
 of the year 1894 at Lourdes, and believe that I 
 could not have visited it at a time more favourable 
 for observing all its different aspects. During the 
 first part of the month there were few pilgrimages ; 
 while on Whit-Monday there was a pilgrimage of 
 5,000 Basque men, but with no invalids. In 
 the last ten days of the month there were two 
 large pilgrimages, with many sick, from Belgium 
 and Lyons ; and I then had occasion to see 
 the Bureau des Constatations Medicates at work, 
 and the way in which the cases are observed and 
 recorded. The number of sick in these two bodies, 
 60 Belgians and 200 Lyonese, was of course small 
 compared with the vast gatherings in August and 
 
312 STUDIES 
 
 September ; but for that very reason it was much 
 easier to observe individuals and the pilgrims as 
 a body. I found on my arrival that Dr. Boissarie 
 was not there, that he spends most of his time 
 at his home, at Sarlat in the Dordogne, and only 
 visits Lourdes when the number of sick expected 
 calls for his presence. During his absence the 
 medical bureau is closed, and no plan is provided 
 for recording the recoveries that may take place ; 
 though I suppose the clergy would take down 
 such particulars as might be brought under their 
 notice, which could be afterwards examined at 
 leisure. This may seem strange ; but it is in accord 
 with the other characteristics of Lourdes. The 
 complete absence of any attempt to interfere with 
 the spontaneous devotion of each visitor to the 
 shrine was the feature which impressed me most 
 strongly from the first, and is one of the greatest 
 charms of the place. In ordinary times no attempt 
 is made to lead or direct the prayers of those who 
 are at the Grotto, who are left undisturbed save 
 by the birds singing above, and the rushing torrent 
 hard by. Even during the pilgrimages, though 
 processions, public prayers, and discourses are pro- 
 vided in abundance, every one is perfectly free 
 to attend these or not, as he may prefer, and in 
 any case there is much spare time at his disposal. 
 Miracles, too, fall there into a secondary place, 
 and do not occupy the importance they necessarily 
 assume when they are being exclusively studied. 
 They are, indeed, most eagerly looked for by the 
 pilgrims and other bystanders, and there are the 
 heartiest rejoicings when they are thought to occur. 
 But the ecclesiastical authorities do not take the 
 notice of them I should have expected, and on 
 
THE CURES AT LOURDES 313 
 
 the whole rather decline to discuss them, leaving 
 their consideration to the medical men in the 
 Bureau, if it is at work. 
 
 During the pilgrimages when this Bureau des 
 Constatations Medicates is open, it very much 
 resembles an out-patients' department in a hos- 
 pital. There is a public room of fair size, but 
 often insufficient for the number of persons it 
 has to contain ; and other small rooms are pro- 
 vided for the private examination of such cases 
 as may require it. The bureau is under the 
 authority and control of Dr. Boissarie ; and I 
 may say at once that I do not think a man better 
 qualified for the post could have been found. 
 After a successful career as a student in Paris, 
 he was recalled by his father to practise in his 
 native province ; and he appears to me to have 
 profited to the full by the valuable training a 
 country practitioner's life can afford. Before 
 making his acquaintance I had, as I have said, 
 some not unnatural suspicions that he might be 
 too credulous and enthusiastic ; but they were 
 soon dissipated on my coming to know him. I 
 found I had to do with a cautious, hard-headed 
 practitioner, with an excellent knowledge of his 
 profession. Above all, I was most favourably 
 impressed by his desire for the fullest publicity, 
 and by his evidently sincere wish that the alleged 
 cures, and the method of investigation, should be 
 independently studied by any medical visitor. 
 For instance, he asked me to take hi i place at 
 the bureau on the first day it was opened, when 
 he was kept to the hou^e by illness, although he 
 then knew me only as a Catholic medical man, 
 who wished to satisfy himself by personal observa- 
 
314 STUDIES 
 
 tion. He welcomed most cordially the ten or 
 twelve of our confreres who came to the bureau 
 during the week it was opened ; objections, often 
 vigorously pressed, were always welcomed, and 
 suggestions for the further study of interesting 
 cases were invited. The only thing that appeared 
 to annoy him was the refusal of some to remain 
 long enough to observe for themselves. The records 
 consist of notes taken at the time under the dicta- 
 tion of Dr. Boissarie, or occasionally of some other 
 medical man. Every one is perfectly free to inspect 
 these case-books, and to make independent notes 
 and inquiries. I remarked in particular a physi- 
 cian from Montpelier, who was by no means con- 
 vinced, and whose criticisms were always to the 
 point, able, and trenchant ; he received every 
 assistance and even encouragement to take copious 
 notes for a paper he intended to read before some 
 medical society. 
 
 I have dwelt upon my impressions of Lourdes 
 and its personnel, because to my mind they are 
 incompatible with the suspicions I had before my 
 visit. It may be thought that the course taken 
 by the clergy and Dr. Boissarie with me and other 
 confreres is part of a policy designed to throw 
 us off our guard, and so to deceive us more easily. 
 Such an idea is absurd to one who. like myself, 
 has carefully watched during five weeks what 
 passed. But supposing it to be true, it would 
 be an easier and more agreeable duty to hoist 
 the deceivers with their own petard, to use their 
 professed desire for publicity and free investiga- 
 tion, so as to show where the fraud lies, or at least 
 where the fallacy comes in. Until this is done, 
 it will only be fair and reasonable to suppose Dr, 
 
THE CUBES AT LOURDES 315 
 
 Boissarie is sincere in constantly repeating his 
 desire for the closest and most independent examina- 
 tion, provided that it is conducted carefully and 
 impartially. " These questions," as he said lately, 
 " are extremely difficult. In order to understand 
 them it is necessary to free one's mind from all 
 preconceived opinions, and to ground one's judg- 
 ment on serious and long-continued observation, 
 and not on fugitive impressions hastily collected, 
 which cannot be tested." 1 
 
 III. 
 
 I have already said that one of the things which 
 impressed me most at Lourdes was the absence 
 of any attempt to excite or rouse the pilgrims ; 
 corresponding to this is another remarkable charac- 
 teristic. During the whole of my stay there I 
 did not observe any of those manifestations of 
 hysteria which I should almost have expected, nor 
 any hypnotic phenomena, though I looked closely 
 for both. I cannot, of course, answer for what 
 may have been witnessed by others ; I can only 
 say that such occurrences must be rare, as I re- 
 mained at Lourdes longer than most people do, 
 and visited the shrine under all its aspects and 
 at all times of the day and always found the wor- 
 shippers quietly devout, and at any rate externally 
 calm. Much of this tranquillity is no doubt due 
 to the systematic injunction of silence and to the 
 discouragement of gesticulations and contortions ; 
 for I have elsewhere shown that these bodity 
 movements seem to be the principal agents in 
 
 1 AnncUes de Lov.rdea. Juki, 1894. 
 
316 STUDIES 
 
 making religious excitement run on into epidemic 
 hysteria or insanity. The most solemn ceremony 
 of all is when the Blessed Sacrament is carried in 
 procession between the ranks of the sick, while the 
 words are chanted which, the Gospels record, 
 were addressed by the blind, the halt and the 
 infirm to our Lord when He was on earth. Nothing 
 can be more stimulating to the religious mind ; 
 but the appeal is an internal one and the very 
 Presence commands silence and stillness. 
 
 There is unquestionably excitement enough among 
 the bystanders when a miraculous cure is supposed 
 to have taken place ; but as far as my own observa- 
 tion, and the report of persons who appear to me 
 trustworthy, go, it does not run on into anything 
 morbid. I believe the principal force that keeps 
 the emotions of the pilgrims under control is a 
 moral one. Though much is made, of course, of 
 the supernatural cures that are said to occur, 
 they occupy at Lourdes a secondary place, to an 
 extent which it is difficult for any one who has 
 not been there to realise. Moral and spiritual 
 blessings are sought far more earnestly and more 
 generally than the healing of bodily infirmities. 
 Numerous instances are related of persons who 
 have gone to Lourdes to obtain their cure, but 
 who when there have ceased to ask for it, and 
 either offered their prayers for the relief of others 
 whom they thought in greater need, or sought 
 for resignation to bear their own sufferings. In 
 the same way, one hears there of persons who 
 have been healed, as they have thought miracu- 
 lously, and who have ever after lived in dread 
 of the increased responsibilities incurred by the 
 renewal of health and strength. The influence of 
 
THE CUBES AT LOUEDES 317 
 
 such an atmosphere as this is likely to set bounds 
 even to the craving for life and health which is 
 so deeply rooted in us all. This is a summary 
 of my impressions of the conditions in which the 
 pilgrims are placed at Lourdes ; I can now pass 
 on to describe the practical working of the Bureau 
 des Constatations Medicates. During the great 
 solemnities of August and September, when several 
 thousand sick are brought to Lourdes, it is open 
 from early in the morning until late at night ; 
 but during my visit there were only 260 invalids, 
 and the working hours were from ten to four or 
 five. Several different classes of patients came 
 to the bureau during that time. There were a 
 few cases of persons who came to seek advice 
 before visiting the shrine ; I remarked especially 
 a lady suffering from the results of emotional 
 overstrain, who was handed over to me, and who 
 speedily improved on being encouraged and advised 
 to avoid excitement. Some came to be examined 
 and have a note of their case taken before going 
 to the Grotto ; these were for the most part isolated 
 pilgrims : those who belong to the organised pil- 
 grimages having to be furnished with medical cer- 
 tificates before leaving home. A few, more seriously 
 ill or more nervous than the rest, came to ask if 
 they might safely bathe in the piscines. There 
 were some sad cases where the patients had per- 
 suaded themselves that they were better, or even 
 cured, but where we had to tell them that their 
 condition was so far unchanged. Among these I 
 remember a poor woman with an extensive sar- 
 coma of the face, and — as might be expected — two 
 cases of advanced phthisis with all the hopeful- 
 ness common in that disease. 
 
318 STUDIES 
 
 But in the great majority of cases that came 
 for examination after visiting the shrine, there 
 was decided improvement, and often complete 
 recovery. Excluding for the moment a few cases 
 to which I will return presently, the improvement 
 was not more than could conceivably be produced 
 by the action of the mind on the body. These 
 patients might be divided into two classes ; in 
 one of which the symptoms were purely neurotic, 
 and where complete recovery was the rule ; and 
 another category of persons in whom examination 
 easily detected the persistence of organic disease, 
 but whose general condition was greatly improved. 
 Of the first class — the simply nervous cases — the 
 most numerous examples that I saw were what is 
 called hysterical 1 paraplegia and paralysis. 
 
 Such cases appear to me decidedly more common 
 in hospitals on the Continent than in this country, 
 partly perhaps because there are no workhouse 
 infirmaries to receive them, but mainly, I think, 
 because the conditions of life are harder there 
 than with us. The number of such cases that 
 go to Lourdes and the proportion that recover 
 there cannot be ascertained, for the reasons I 
 have given above, but both are considerable, if 
 I may judge from my own experience. I noted 
 seven such cases which recovered, during the first 
 part of my stay there, when the medical bureau 
 was not open, and when the number of pilgrims 
 was small. One of them, indeed, had been cer- 
 
 1 I am compelled to use this word with extreme reluctance ; 
 for since the SalpStriere school has so completely changed 
 the connotation of the term hysteria, it has become even more 
 ambiguous than it was formerly. 
 
THE CUKES AT LOURDES 319 
 
 tified by her physician, a German, to be suffering 
 from " Riickenmarks - schwindsucht " (locomotor 
 ataxia), but her account of herself to me seemed 
 to prove that the case was an hysterica] one. I 
 was particularly struck, in these bad hysterical 
 cases, with the immediate recovery, not merely of 
 the power of movement, but also of the general 
 condition ; patients being at once restored to all 
 the appearances of perfect health, to which they 
 had long been strangers. The two following cases, 
 which appear to belong to this class, are worth 
 quoting in detail, both because of their intrinsic 
 interest, and because they are samples of the rich 
 clinical material that comes before the observer at 
 Lourdes : — 
 
 Case 5. — A male, 35 years of age, one of the Belgian 
 pilgrims, a painter, had suffered from plumbism for nearly 
 five years. The paralysis affected his lower limbs as well 
 as the upper, and he also had anaesthesia and loss of 
 smell and of taste. He was at first treated by Dr. Houze, 
 in the Hopital St. Jean at Brussels. Two years ago he 
 was sent to Paris to be treated by M. Charcot, who twice 
 tried to hypnotise him, but failed. On his return to 
 Brussels, he was again treated in the hospital there, and 
 some improvement was effected ; but the extensors of 
 both hands were still completely paralysed, the wrists 
 dropped, and the arms could not be raised. After bath- 
 ing at Lourdes on May 17, the left hand and arm recovered 
 power, and the right limb followed on the 20th, only a 
 little weakness remaining. 
 
 The immediate recovery of this patient after such a long 
 course of fruitless treatment is in any case most remarkable ; 
 but the symptoms of anaesthesia would no doubt be set 
 down to " hysteria," which Charcot and others have 
 shown to be an occasional result of plumbism. If so, 
 it .would in my judgment be impossible to say decidedly 
 
320 STUDIES 
 
 that the cure exceeded the conceivable influence of the 
 mind on the body. 
 
 Case 6. — A single pilgrim, a male, 66 years of age, 
 fell from a hay-stack nine months ago and dislocated his 
 left humerus forwards. The dislocation was not reduced, 
 and was followed by paralysis of the flexors of the hand, 
 apparently due to pressure on the median nerve. The 
 loss of power was completely removed, the dislocation 
 being unaffected on bathing the hand at the Grotto on 
 May 22. Here, again, it seems to me it might be said that 
 the immediate effect of the pressure had passed off, and 
 that the paralysis that was cured was purely psychical 
 in character. 
 
 The second class of these cases, in which, the 
 local disease remaining unaffected, the general 
 state greatly improved, were in my experience 
 fewer than those I have just described. Most of 
 those I saw were instances of osteo-arthritis, a 
 fact not without interest considering the neurotic 
 affinities of the disease. But when we have said 
 that these recoveries do not exceed the possible 
 influence of the mind on the body, their medical 
 interest is by no means exhausted. To say there 
 is nothing remarkable about them, and that they 
 are simply instances of suggestion carried out on 
 a large scale, is merely to provoke the retort : 
 " Why, then, do you not treat your own patients 
 with equal success ? " It must be clear to the 
 most superficial observer that the conditions of 
 suggestion — if suggestion there is — at Lourdes, 
 differ very considerably from those which prevail 
 in the cliniques of Nancy or Paris. There is no 
 evidence of hypnotic manifestations among the 
 pilgrims ; and the number of cures of the various 
 neuroses at different times are in no direct ratio 
 
THE CUKES AT LOUEDES 321 
 
 to the amount of religious excitement, there being 
 often none during the great pilgrimages and pro- 
 cessions. Whatever suggestion there may be must 
 come from within, and even so, must differ notably 
 from the more common kinds of " auto-suggestion,' * 
 to use the barbarous word which has been coined 
 for the purpose. Thus there can be no certain 
 anticipation of cure on the part of the patients, 
 for all are aware that recovery is the exception, 
 not the rule. It is a matter of every-day experience 
 at Lourdes that many who arrive with the most 
 confident belief that they will be healed derive 
 no benefit there ; while there are sufficient instances 
 — Dr. Boissarie records a very striking one — where 
 persons were cured who had no hope whatever. 
 The truth appears to me to be, that suggestion 
 is potent in the cure of disease, in proportion, 
 not to its directness and imperiousness, but to 
 its forming a part of the normal mental life of 
 the individual. The former kind of suggestion is 
 like a foreign body, which may compel the living 
 tissues to yield to its impact, but cannot restore 
 health, which must be due to the physiological 
 reaction of the organism. For the same reason, 
 I believe that cure by suggestion is less frequent 
 among the puppets of the Charite and the Sal- 
 petriere, than among the patients treated by the 
 simpler process employed at Nancy ; and that it 
 is most real and complete when wrought by the 
 ordinary moral influence of the physician. The 
 wonders worked by this last means will be never 
 fully known, " carent quia vate sacro" but they 
 have more elements of permanence about them 
 than those produced by formal hypnotic suggestion. 
 I do not, however, myself think this is the whole 
 
 21 
 
322 STUDIES 
 
 account of the matter. I believe that contact 
 with the supernatural, not only at Lourdes, but 
 in every place where men call for the help of their 
 Creator, may produce much greater effects than 
 ordinary suggestion or auto-suggestion can accom- 
 plish. Such effects would be produced through 
 the influence of the mind on the body ; and no 
 argument could be based on individual cases, 
 each of which might be paralleled among instances 
 admittedly natural. But if the environment of 
 patients visiting Lourdes be borne in mind, it will 
 appear very improbable that the kind and degree 
 of suggestion existing there should produce so 
 many complete and permanent cures, even of 
 purely nervous ailments. Nor will this seem ante- 
 cedently unlikely to theists, who will be prepared 
 to admit that prayer has a superhuman efficacy 
 to change and renew the moral and spiritual nature 
 of man. Those who grant so much will hardly 
 think it unreasonable to believe that such an 
 action may sometimes overflow into the body, 
 which they know to be so intimately connected 
 with the mind. 
 
 IV. 
 
 The great majority of the cures I witnessed at 
 Lourdes were evidently, in one way or another, 
 due to the influence of the mind on the body ; 
 but I saw a few instances which, if they stand the 
 test of further inquiry, I cannot ascribe to any 
 natural agency. I am not writing a formal work 
 on Lourdes ; so that I need not enter into such 
 abstract questions as the limits of the possible 
 influence of the nervous system in healing instan- 
 
THE CURES AT LOURDES 323 
 
 taneously abscesses, wounds, and other organic 
 maladies. I should have done so with great reluc- 
 tance, because we have not the light of actual 
 experience to guide us. Even Professor Charcot, 
 when he looked for cures parallel to those recorded 
 at Lourdes, found none in his own vast clinique, 
 but had to go back a hundred and fifty years to 
 the tomb of the Jansenist deacon Paris. For- 
 tunately I need only relate what I have seen, and 
 leave my readers to draw their own conclusions ; 
 but before doing so I must describe shortly the 
 way in which the more remarkable cases are studied 
 and tested. All invalids visiting the shrine are 
 requested to bring with them certificates from 
 their ordinary medical attendants; these being 
 obligatory for all who join one of the organised 
 pilgrimages, who also have to bring with them 
 some evidence of their respectability and general 
 antecedents. These certificates are taken as prima 
 facie proof of the state of the patients ; but no 
 one who has experience in such matters will be 
 surprised to learn that they are often very short, 
 wanting in clearness, and inadequate. When a 
 case of recovery is observed which seems to call 
 for further examination, the certifying medical 
 men are written to for further details, and the 
 case is published in the Annates as an apparent 
 cure. Objections have been raised against this 
 latter step ; but I think, with Dr. Boissarie, that 
 the best means of arriving at the truth in matters 
 of fact is by the fullest publicity. In support of 
 this, he is able to quote instances where their 
 publication led to withdrawal on the part of the 
 medical men, or to such other explanations as 
 removed them from the category of the marvellous. 
 
324 STUDIES 
 
 Seventy cases which recovered were reserved for 
 study in 1893, out of which number twenty at 
 most are likely to be thought sufficiently established ; 
 and these again will be subjected to a further 
 inquiry after two or three years, in order to see 
 if recovery is permanent ; a precaution especially 
 necessary to phthisis, epilepsy, and other diseases 
 that naturally run an irregular course. It will be 
 understood that the following cases have not yet 
 had their past history completely investigated ; 
 I have suggested the principal directions which 
 that inquiry will take. 
 
 Case 7. — A female, aged 35, a Lyons pilgrim. She has 
 had caries of the left femur for two years ; two incisions 
 have been made, together eleven inches long, through 
 which diseased bone was removed. Three drainage tubes 
 were put in, the suppuration was profuse, and the patient 
 was unable to walk, being carried about Lourdes on a 
 stretcher. During her third bath she experienced severe 
 pain, the drainage-tubes fell out, and the wound healed 
 over ; she was able to walk to the bureau, though still 
 lame. On examination the wound was found to be com- 
 pletely closed, though the cicatrix looked quite recent. 
 The patient and her companion produced bandages which 
 were soiled by free suppuration, which they said had been 
 taken off just before the bath. Here inquiry will have 
 to be made of the medical men who attended her, as to 
 what was the precise state of the wound when last seen 
 at Lyons. 
 
 Case 8. — A female, aged 45, also a Lyons pilgrim, brought 
 two certificates from two hospital surgeons at Villefranche, 
 stating that she was suffering from organic disease of 
 the hip- joint. For the last eighteen months she has worn 
 an elaborate support, by the help of which she has been 
 able to walk, but with great difficulty. On May 17, 
 after the bath, she was able to walk easily, though stiffly, 
 
THE CURES AT LOURDES 325 
 
 without the support, to the bureau, where we could dis- 
 cover no sign of disease. This patient, who had been a 
 hospital nurse, had no appearance of being hysterical, 
 but cases of supposed joint disease are always suspicious. 
 Tt will therefore be necessary to make a very close examina- 
 tion of the grounds on which the certifying medical men 
 based their diagnosis. 
 
 Cases 9 and 10 are both instances of recovery from 
 blindness, certified to by the medical attendants, but with 
 insufficient details. One was sympathetic ophthalmia, the 
 right eye having been previously destroyed by injury, 
 the other had been apparently glaucoma, for which 
 double iridectomy had been performed without success. 
 Both suddenly recovered their sight while at the grotto, 
 and on coming to the bureau were able to read without 
 difficulty. The left eye in the second patient was much 
 smaller than the right. 
 
 Case 11. — Jean de Brower, 29, of Oudenarde, in Belgium, 
 fell from a ladder on his abdomen thirteen years ago ; he 
 was very ill for some time with severe pain and vomit- 
 ing, and never completely recovered. Three years since 
 he had pleurisy and haemoptysis, and sixteen months ago 
 the abdominal symptoms became aggravated ; there has 
 been ever since much pain and tenderness, considerable 
 distension, vomiting, constipation alternating with diar- 
 rhoea, and occasional melaena. He was treated by the 
 physicians of the hospital at Oudenarde, who certify his 
 case to be one of tubercular peritonitis, his local symp- 
 toms and general condition meanwhile growing steadily 
 worse. He was brought from Belgium to Lourdes in a 
 bed in the guard's van, being judged too ill to travel in 
 the ordinary way, but he suffered so much and was so 
 weak that the doctor who accompanied the Belgian pil- 
 grimage expected him to die on the road. On his arrival at 
 Lourdes I saw him carried into the hospital on a stretcher, 
 and remarked to a bystander that in England it would be 
 thought criminal to bring patients apparently moribund 
 on such a long journey. On the afternoon of the next 
 day — May 17 — he was taken down to the baths, but the 
 
326 STUDIES 
 
 attendants refused to bathe him. and merely sponged his 
 abdomen with the water. He immediately felt very severe 
 pain, which, however, only lasted a short time ; he wished 
 to walk, but was not allowed to do so. Shortly after 
 he was taken to the bureau, where he was examined by 
 Dr. Boissarie and two other medical men, who found his 
 abdomen soft, free from pain and tenderness, and so 
 much smaller, that his drawers, which before fitted him. 
 were now 30 centimetres (11*81 inches) too large for him 
 in girth. His general weakness and the long disuse of 
 his legs still made walking very difficult to him ; he was 
 accordingly carried back to the hospital, where he made 
 a large meal of soup, meat and bread, which gave him no 
 trouble. When I saw him, on the 19th, there was no sign 
 of illness about him, except some uncertainty of gait, 
 and even this had passed away before he left Lourdes 
 on the 22nd, when he seemed perfectly well. The diagnosis 
 of chronic peritonitis, ordinary or tubercular, is usually 
 easy ; and the history given of this patient entirely sup- 
 ports the opinion of the physicians who had attended him. 
 We have to remember, on the other hand, that abdominal 
 diseases are almost proverbially difficult ; and that " phan- 
 tom tumours," in particular (I do not know if they have 
 ever been seen in a male), deceive even the elect. The 
 evidence in this case requires, therefore, to be completed 
 by full details from Oudenarde. 1 
 
 1 This paper was republished in pamphlet form in 1895, 
 by the Catholic Truth Society. That reprint contained the 
 following additional note on this remarkable case : " The 
 Annates de Lourdes for November, 1894, which has appeared 
 since the above was written, gives an account of some further 
 inquiries into this case. A description is given of the physical 
 signs and symptoms of de Brower's illness by the physician who 
 attended him before his recovery, which leaves no room for 
 doubt, in my judgment, that he suffered from tubercular 
 disease of the lungs and peritoneum. He has remained per- 
 fectly well since his return home on June 4 ; and beyond some 
 trifling peculiarities of respiration and pulse, there has been 
 nothing to indicate that he had had such a serious illness. 
 
THE CURES AT LOURDES 327 
 
 The above cases give, I believe, a very good 
 general idea of the questions that are raised at 
 Lourdes by some of the recoveries, and of the 
 way in which they are investigated. The results 
 of such examination in many other instances may 
 be seen in Dr. Boissarie's second book — Lourdes 
 depuis 1858 jusqu'a nos jours — published in the 
 spring of 1894. The principal difficulty arises from 
 the scantiness of the information furnished by the 
 patients' medical attendants, often indifferent or 
 hostile ; and most of the various remedies suggested 
 for this do not seem to me satisfactory. For 
 instance, it has been suggested that photographs 
 of every patient should be taken before visiting the 
 shrine ; and to some extent this has been done ; 
 I saw some well-executed photographs of ulcers 
 brought by Belgian pilgrims. But the province of 
 photography in such matters is a limited one ; and 
 the identification of the photographs of persons 
 cured would depend on testimony which might be 
 impugned — who is to prove to an inquirer that 
 a photograph of an ulcer of the leg, for example, 
 really belonged to a person who is alleged to be 
 healed ? Again, it is often said that every patient 
 should be examined on arrival at Lourdes by a 
 medical committee. This would not merely be 
 impossible when there are many pilgrims, but the 
 testimony of physicians connected with the shrine 
 might be thought partial and open to some not 
 unnatural suspicion. The recent decision of the 
 Societe de St. Luc to appoint a medical committee 
 to examine the sick who join the August pilgrimage 
 from Paris, seems a step more in the right direction. 
 It also seems to me that something might be done 
 by devising a form of certificate which should be 
 
328 STUDIES 
 
 supplied to the medical attendants, and which 
 would require the principal symptoms, past and 
 present, as well as the diagnosis based upon them. 
 It is interesting to observe that most of the pre- 
 cautions on which visitors have insisted before 
 they would accept any cure as supernatural will 
 be found to have been realised in one or another 
 of the cases recorded. For instance, it is often 
 said that a case to be satisfactory should have 
 been seen by an independent medical man imme- 
 diately before recovery. Case 2, quoted above, 
 is one in which this condition was fulfilled. In 
 Case 3, again, the cure was witnessed by several 
 non-professional persons, as M. Zola appears to 
 prefer ; while Case 4 meets the wishes of those 
 who think that Dr. Boissarie should have seen a 
 case before as well as after recovery. This, how- 
 ever, is by the way ; the only point I desire to 
 press is that I believe I have made out a case for 
 inquiry on the part of those who can afford the 
 time. Very probably they will see nothing that 
 clearly transcends the power of Nature. Miracles 
 are not worked to order ; and if they were, it is 
 always possible to take refuge in the unknown, 
 or to ask for further evidence. But at least every 
 unprejudiced visitor will see much that is very 
 well worth seeing ; and may be sure of a cordial 
 welcome, and every facility for studying the 
 material that will be so abundantly provided for 
 him. 
 
329 
 
 THE PHYSIOLOGICAL PSYCHOLOGY 
 OF ST. THOMAS. 
 
 Sancti Thomze Aquinatis Opera Omnia. 25 Vols. Parmse. 
 1852-71. 
 
 In a former number of the Dublin Review I gave 
 a very general account of the direction which the 
 study of the nervous system, and particularly of 
 the brain, has recently taken. 1 Besides the interest 
 which the subject must have in itself for every 
 thoughtful mind, I had the further object of enabling 
 my readers to judge of my accuracy, when I pro- 
 ceeded to show that the psychology of Aristotle, 
 as stated by St. Thomas, is in substantial agree- 
 ment with the conclusions of modern science, which 
 I shall now undertake. I do so the more readily, 
 because I was myself led to adopt the Thomist 
 philosophy, not from any preconceived idea of its 
 authority, but from finding it had so completely 
 anticipated, in all its main outlines, the methods 
 and inferences of physiology. I was struck with 
 the contrast between this and the modern schemes 
 of philosophy, which seemed to have no special 
 relation to physical science even when they were 
 not contradicted thereby. 
 
 In the first place the Thomist philosophy has 
 always prominently asserted the intimate connec- 
 
 1 April, 1880 : Recent Research on Nerves and Brain. 
 
330 STUDIES 
 
 tion between physiology and psychology. In the- 
 earlier half of this century the French " spiritualist " 
 school made this one of their chief objections to 
 scholasticism ; l now the pendulum of human 
 thought has swung in the opposite direction, and 
 we have to protest even more earnestly against 
 the study of the mind being swamped in that of its 
 material instrument. 
 
 And although Aristotle and, to a less extent, 
 his scholastic followers, were even ludicrously 
 mistaken as to many physiological details, their 
 grasp of the general principles of biology was sin- 
 gularly clear and satisfactory. For example : the 
 theory of evolution, as based upon the differentia- 
 tion of parts, was well known and lucidly stated 
 by St. Thomas, who traces it back to Plato ; and 
 if Aristotle and his school rejected the Darwinian 
 theory, as crudely stated by Empedocles, it was for 
 reasons identical with those which have weighed 
 in modern times with such biologists as Asa Gray 
 and Kolliker. 
 
 Moreover, the founder of the Peripatetic school 
 and its chief reviver in Europe had both fortunately 
 that habit of mind which can only be developed 
 by the practical study of natural science. It is 
 well known that the insatiable curiosity of Aristotle 
 led him to dissect every available animal, and to 
 base upon his dissections a natural scheme of 
 zoological classification. The labours of Albert the 
 Great have been less heard of, yet they have been 
 described by a modern zoologist of note ; 2 and 
 there can be no doubt that he practically studied 
 
 1 See Sanseverino, Dynamilogia, p. 317. 
 
 2 Pouchet, Les Sciences Naturelles au Moyen Age. 
 
PHYSIOLOGICAL PSYCHOLOGY OF ST. THOMAS 331 
 
 natural history with the industry and thorough- 
 ness of a German. I have only read his zoological 
 works very cursorily, but I remember noticing that 
 he speaks of dissecting the eyes of a mole, the 
 central nervous system of many animals, and the 
 heart of some rare cetacean which had been sent 
 him from the North, besides undertaking journeys 
 to study such natural phenomena as the growth 
 of rare trees or the disappearance of rivers. Under 
 such training St. Thomas was in no danger of 
 ignoring the first claims of natural science and its 
 bearing on philosophy. 
 
 It is still more important that there was no 
 such difference in the Peripatetic school between 
 the methods of studying mental and bodily pheno- 
 mena as has prevailed since the revolution of 
 Descartes. It is well known that the Comtists, 
 and in England Dr. Maudsley, have protested 
 against the mode of interrogating consciousness 
 proposed by Locke and Mill, and followed by most 
 psychologists. In so doing they are unknowingly 
 returning to the method clearly laid down by 
 Aristotle and St. Thomas — namely, that the objects 
 of thought must be studied before mental acts, and 
 these again before the faculties of the mind can 
 be investigated. 1 In the Peripatetic scheme, 
 indeed, biology and psychology are parts of the 
 same science, as treating of the ^f%*?>> or anima, 
 a word which cannot be expressed by any English 
 equivalent. "If we translate it ' vital principle,' 
 it is this, but a great deal besides ; if ' mind,' 
 we leave out as much at one end as the former 
 
 1 Prius oportebit determinare de obiectis quam de actibus, et de 
 actibus prius quam de potentiis (2 De An., lect. 6, and la qu* 84 
 art. 1 ; 10 Ver. art. 9). 
 
332 STUDIES 
 
 translation did at the other." 1 Aristotle's concep- 
 tion of the nature of life is, however, so completely 
 implied in all the rest of his psychology that I 
 must attempt some statement of it in modern 
 language, and it will then appear to be entirely 
 compatible with the present state of science. 
 
 It will be obvious on reflection that any 
 rational explanation of the nature of life in 
 general is only to be sought for in some higher 
 generalisation, which shall connect the phenomena 
 of the inanimate world with those of living 
 beings. It is the peculiar merit of Aristotle's 
 theory to observe this primary condition of the 
 problem, which (so far as I know) has been 
 ordinarily disregarded by other philosophers. 
 Like the earlier physical philosophers of Greece, 
 he was met at the outset of his study of Nature 
 with the difficulty of reconciling the ceaseless 
 change of the material universe with that funda- 
 mental unity and permanence which can be 
 discerned in it. This difficult}'- would be the 
 more pressing to him, because he was more 
 profoundly convinced than his predecessors of 
 the order, regularity, and law which govern the 
 world. 
 
 He was led to the conclusion that there must 
 be in all material objects two principles — a passive 
 undetermined substratum, and an active deter- 
 mining cause of equilibrium or change ; and these 
 he termed v\rj and etBos, which we translate Matter 
 and Form. 
 
 Many attempts have been made in the later 
 
 1 Grant, Ethics of Aristotle, vol. i., p. 236. 
 
PHYSIOLOGICAL PSYCHOLOGY OF ST. THOMAS 333 
 
 history of philosophy to replace this view of Nature 
 by one of greater simplicity, and to account for all 
 the phenomena by the assumption either of forces 
 or atoms alone. But as soon as details have to 
 be considered it is always found necessary to amend 
 both these hypotheses by assuming in the one case 
 that the forces are localised, and in the other that 
 the atoms are heterogeneous. 1 It will be observed 
 that these qualifications reintroduce the dualism 
 which is sought to be avoided ; and the inadequacy 
 of both dynamism and atomism thus revealed 
 comes out more fully on further examination. This 
 has been done by Dr. Martineau ; and it will be 
 difficult, if not impossible, for any one who follows 
 his profound and subtle examination of the subject 
 to avoid his conclusion. He says that " inasmuch 
 as both matter and force are intellectual data, 
 involved respectively in the principle of objectivity 
 and in that of causality, neither can be substituted 
 for the other. For ages each has been struggling 
 to end the divided sway ; but the rival, though 
 often driven from the front, has always founded 
 at last an impregnable retreat, whence its rights 
 return to recognition when the usurping rage is 
 past." 2 It will hardly be necessary for me to say 
 that these two principles are assumed in the Peri- 
 patetic philosophy to be absolutely inseparable, 
 and to be distinguishable, not by any physical or 
 chemical analysis, but by that necessity of our 
 minds which refers diverse phenomena to different 
 
 1 Professor Birks (Modern Physical Fatalism, cap. ix.) has given 
 a summary of the principal theories advocated, which will bear 
 out this statement. 
 
 2 Modern Materialism, Contemporary Review, February, 1876. 
 
334 STUDIES 
 
 sources. Thus we seem compelled to ascribe the 
 shape, size and movements of the atoms which 
 make up elementary bodies to some cause other 
 than that which determines their extension. This 
 distinction is even more obvious in the case of 
 chemical compounds, where there must be some 
 immanent power, building up the atoms into 
 molecules, and maintaining them in what must 
 often be a very complex equilibrium. When 
 we come to the simplest animal bodies, we 
 find that the manifold compounds of carbon of 
 which they consist have still more urgent need of 
 some co-ordinating and maintaining principle. 
 This, stripped of scholastic language, is the func- 
 tion of Aristotle's tyvxy> St. Thomas's anima, and 
 so far as I am aware, it is a view of life in no point 
 incompatible with modern science. On the con- 
 trary, it would be easy to multiply quotations 
 such as the following from Professor Tait, which 
 entirely coincide with it : " It seems from the 
 observations of physiologists .... that the 
 vital force, if there be such, is not a force which does 
 work, but merely directs, as it were, the other 
 natural forces how to apply their energies. . . . 
 The labourers are the physical forces and the over- 
 seer the vital force." 
 
 Those who followed the controversy as to the 
 nature of life, some years ago, between Professor 
 Huxley and Dr. Lionel Beale, will observe that 
 the Thomist view lies between them. The defini- 
 tion of life given by the former — the correlation 
 of physical forces — requires, by a mental necessity, 
 the existence of some co-ordinating unity ; but 
 Dr. Beale exceeded the bounds of proof in supposing 
 that this unity must be an entity distinct from 
 the organism. 
 
PHYSIOLOGICAL PSYCHOLOGY OF ST. THOMAS 335 
 
 Several important consequences follow from this 
 view of the nature of the vital principle which I 
 have been endeavouring to state. I may mention 
 one, as a singular illustration of what I said above, 
 that St. Thomas's grasp of general biological prin- 
 ciples is correct, even when he is at fault as to the 
 particular facts before him. He taught that the 
 anima could be divided, by the division of the 
 body, in all animals that were sufficiently elemen- 
 tary to live without a variety of organs. He chose 
 as his example the division of insects and worms, 
 in which the segments appear to live when 
 separated : this we know is an error, the first 
 true instance of the kind having been discovered 
 by Trembley in the last century. 1 
 
 Another corollary of this conception of the vital 
 principle is that there can be but one in every living 
 animal, and that the nutrition and growth of the 
 body therefore depend upon it, as well as those 
 highest operations of the mind, which in their 
 scope transcend the organism. 
 
 This was a point of considerable importance in 
 St. Thomas's day, as it supplied a refutation of 
 the Averroist doctrine then so widely spread that 
 there was only one intellect common to all mankind. 
 St. Thomas, therefore, laid much stress upon it ; 
 and it is interesting to remark that it has been 
 explicitly adopted by several physiologists, such as 
 
 1 F. Lepidi, the latest Thomist commentator, seems hardly to 
 have apprehended his master's teaching on this point ; so I 
 quote one of several decisive passages : " Ideo non quaelibet 
 pars animalis est animal, sicut quaelibet pars ignis est ignis, quia 
 omnes operationes ignis salvantur in qualibet parte eius, non 
 autem omnes operationes animalis salvantur in qualibet parte eius, 
 maxime in animalibus perfectis." — De Anima, X. ad 7 m . 
 
336 STUDIES 
 
 Dr. Carpenter and Mr. G. H. Lewes, the latter of 
 whom says that Aristotle in this " stands at the 
 point of view now generally occupied by the most 
 advanced thinkers," referring specially to Mr. J. IX 
 Morell as an example. 
 
 Although the connection between the soul and 
 the body was so decidedly held by the Peripatetics 
 to be an immediate one — both being looked upon 
 as inseparable constituents of one whole — St. 
 Thomas was not inconsistent in teaching that in 
 action they were connected by some intermediary. 1 
 Here, again, he would have the unanimous assent of 
 physiologists, who would all agree (whatever views 
 they entertain as to the nature of consciousness) 
 that its immediate relations to the body, in sensa- 
 tion and motion, are all correlated to the discharge 
 of nerve-force. In this matter, indeed, the new 
 physiology is more consistent with the immateriality 
 of the soul than was the old. The Scholastics 
 believed that the immediate servant of the mind 
 was some Trvorj, or spiritus — attenuated, yet still 
 material. This was consistent with the general 
 Peripatetic doctrine of aWouojcrL*; (or change in the 
 accidental conditions of a substance), which is the 
 weakest point in their scheme of physics. Mr. 
 Herbert Spencer points out 2 that the discovery of 
 insensible motion has enabled even materialist 
 philosophers to realise that mind has no direct 
 kinship with matter, but only with the undulations 
 of imponderable substance. 
 
 In one other fundamental question as to the 
 
 1 " Anima unitur corpori vt forma sine medio, ut motor autcm 
 per medium." — De Anima, art. 9. 
 
 2 Principles of Psychology, cap. 10. 
 
PHYSIOLOGICAL PSYCHOLOGY OF ST. THOMAS 337 
 
 nature of the mind modern science has given its 
 verdict in favour of the scholastic doctrine, and 
 against the tendency of psychology since Descartes. 
 That philosopher, as is well known, was believed 
 to have made a great discovery in asserting that 
 the essence of the soul is thought, so that the realm 
 of psychology would be simply conterminous with 
 that of consciousness ; and in this he was followed 
 by the philosophers of the eighteenth century, with 
 the single exception of Leibnitz. The Scholastics 
 of that time, from Goudin to Roselli, objected 
 that a large part of our Jives is passed in a state 
 of unconsciousness ; but they laid no stress upon the 
 more fatal objection, that mental processes, often 
 of a very complex kind, must frequently be gone 
 through without any trace of consciousness. This 
 has been abundantly illustrated by modern physio- 
 logists, some of whose observations I have noted 
 in another article : and I need now only refer to 
 Dr. Carpenter's doctrine of " unconscious cerebra- 
 tion," as it is so well known in England. The 
 result of their study of this subject has been to 
 show that Descartes' doctrine of the nature of mind 
 is inconsistent with the present state of science ; 
 and this has been expressly pointed out by M. 
 Bibot, who has devoted such particular attention 
 to physiological psychology. 1 It is interesting to 
 note that the parallel Cartesian doctrine of the 
 nature of matter is likewise rejected by physicists. 2 
 
 1 UHtriditf, part iii., cap. 1. 
 
 2 " This error runs through every part of Descartes' great work. 
 
 . We shall find it more conducive to material progress 
 to recognise, with Newton, the ideas of time and space as dis- 
 tinct, at least in thought, from that of the material system." — 
 Clerk Maxwell, Matter and Motion, p. 18. 
 
 22 
 
338 STUDIES 
 
 I now pass from considering the nature of the 
 vital principle in general to some of the details in 
 which the Thomist philosophy harmonises with 
 modern science. 
 
 As to the nature of the physiological process in 
 sensation, Sir W. Hamilton found (I think hyper- 
 critically) that Aristotle's language was ambiguous. 
 I think he would have no such difficulty with his 
 mediaeval followers, who are perfectly clear in 
 asserting that it is of the nature of alter alio, under 
 which they would have included electrical and 
 chemical changes, and all other forms of molecular 
 (as distinguished from molar) movements. 1 These 
 changes in the nervous system were called by the 
 schoolmen species sensihiles, and have been much 
 derided by late philosophers ; but are obviously 
 necessary intermediaries between the impressions 
 made upon the sense and sensation. These were 
 not looked upon by the schoolmen any more than 
 by men of science to-day, as images of the reality 
 without, but as means by which that is known — 
 *' species sensibilis non est id quod sentitur, sed id 
 quo sentitur." 2 Physiologists, in common with all 
 men who are not " debauched by philosophy," are 
 agreed on this matter, and I have no excuse for 
 dwelling on a distinction, of which the importance 
 
 1 " Non est intelligendum, quod huiusmodi motus sit localis, 
 quasi quorumdam corporum defluentium a re visa ad oculum ; 
 sed secundum alterationem quae est motus ad formam." — De Sensu 
 et Sensato, lect. 5. 
 
 1 Scotus (Quodlib. xiv.) puts the point clearly: " Aliquid 
 esse medium cognoscendi potest intelligi dupliciter. Uno modo 
 quod sit medium cognitum, sic quod per ipsum cognoscatur aliud^ 
 sicut cognoscitur conclusio per principium ; alio modo quod non 
 sit medium cognitum, sed ratio cognoscendi solum, sicut species 
 sensibilis in sensu est ratio sentiendi." $ 
 
PHYSIOLOGICAL PSYCHOLOGY OF ST. THOMAS 339 
 
 to philosophy since Descartes can hardly be exag- 
 gerated. Its neglect was the main cause of that 
 confusion of thought which issued in the idealism 
 of Berkeley, and of which the climax was reached 
 by Sir W. Hamilton, who (to the astonishment 
 of Grote and Mill) rejected the teaching of his 
 predecessors as repugnant to common sense, and 
 yet himself asserted that we see, not external 
 objects, but the rays of light in contact with the 
 retina. 
 
 The scholastic teaching as to the internal senses 
 is one of the most remarkable anticipations of 
 modern science. Its essential point is the assertion 
 that the sensory impressions derived from without 
 are, in all the higher animals and in man, further 
 elaborated by a series of mental processes, distinct 
 from mere sensation, but equally connected with 
 the action of the nerve-centres. Beyond this 
 general statement, there was much divergence 
 among the followers of Aristotle, owing to the frag- 
 mentary character of his psychological treatises. 
 St. Thomas classified these mental processes into two 
 stages, according as they are concerned with data, 
 either immediately furnished by the external senses, 
 or only implied and suggested by them, which 
 were termed respectively the sensus communis, and 
 aestimcttiva ; with each of these he associated a 
 distinct faculty and organ of memory, that con- 
 nected with the sensus communis being named 
 imapnatio, or phanlctsia, the other memoria. 
 
 This mode of looking at the higher sensory pheno- 
 mena had, as it seems to me, several very important 
 advantages over the classifications that have since 
 prevailed. In the first place (what has most 
 immediate connection with physiology) an attempt 
 
840 STUDIES 
 
 was made to localise each of these internal senses 
 in different parts of the brain. This was based 
 upon the vivisections of Galen, 1 which led him 
 and his followers to suppose that the cavities in 
 the brain, called the " ventricles," were the recep- 
 tacles of that itvot) which, as I have said before, 
 was supposed to be the vehicle of sensation and 
 motion. It is hardly possible now to repress a 
 smile at what seems such a ludicrous mistake ; 
 but the principle followed was a sound one, and in 
 remarkable contrast to the endeavours made by 
 phrenologists to localise their ill-assorted groups of 
 faculties. 
 
 The sensus communis has indeed been expressly 
 assigned a seat by Luys, Meynert, and others, in 
 the optic thalamus, a mass of grey matter at the 
 base of the brain, where the various sensory nerves 
 appear to converge. Physiologists do not generally 
 admit this, but are inclined to hold that the 
 sensorium commune is constituted by the close con- 
 nection of the cells, in the surface of the central 
 hemispheres devoted to sensory functions. Some 
 very remarkable observations on this subject have 
 recently been made by Ferrier and Tamburini, 
 which promise that eventually the seat of this 
 faculty may be fixed with considerable precision. 
 The only attempt at cerebral localisation made by 
 the mediaeval philosophers from which physio- 
 logists would decidedly dissent in principle is their 
 looking for a separate site for the imaginatio and 
 memoria, distinct from that of the senses of which 
 they merely preserve the results. This was 
 probably connected with the mistaken belief that 
 
 1 Hipp, et Platonis Dec, vii. 3. 
 
PHYSIOLOGICAL PSYCHOLOGY OF ST. THOMAS 341 
 
 sensation was connected with some movement of 
 the irvorj or " vital spirit." which I have before 
 alluded to, and which would need some place for 
 its preservation. Modern science is agreed in 
 teaching that every act of sensation makes some 
 enduring change in the nerve-cells concerned, which 
 registers indelibly what has occurred, and which 
 represents by association its original cause. Yet 
 a modern writer on the functions of the brain — 
 Munk — teaches that the seat of the memory of 
 visual impressions differs from the seat of visual 
 impressions themselves. 
 
 By the comparison of the data thus collected in 
 the sensor ium commune, Aristotle and his school 
 taught that five precepts, or qualities of body, 
 were learned. These he enumerated as Magnitude, 
 Figure, Motion, Rest and Number, which was 
 probably only intended as a provisional classifica- 
 tion ; the whole of his psychological treatises 
 being very fragmentary and incomplete. St. 
 Thomas subjected these common objects of sense 
 alaOnra kolvcl 1 to a further analysis, and (as Sir 
 W. Hamilton 2 pointed out) was the first to show 
 that they are all modifications of Extension. This 
 suggests that it is interesting to notice what was 
 St. Thomas's opinion on the question, so much 
 debated since Berkeley's time by psychologists, 
 and recently by German physiologists, as to the 
 way in which we acquire our knowledge of exten- 
 sion. It is plain from such passages as the following. 
 
 1 He is careful to point out that these are not the products of 
 the 8en8tis communis, seeing that the memory of past sensations 
 would also be required (2 JDe An., lect. 13). 
 
 ■ Note D on Reid, p. 829. 
 
342 STUDIES 
 
 which might easily be multiplied, that he derives 
 it from the comparison of the data of touch and 
 sight : "Si esset solus sensus visus, cum ipse 
 color is tantum sit, et color et magnitudo se conse- 
 quantur, inter colorem non possemus distinguere et 
 magnitudinem, sed viderentur esse idem. Sed quia 
 magnitudo sentiiur alio sensu quam visu, color 
 autem non, hoc ipsum nobis manifestat quod aliud 
 est color et magnitudo." 1 There is room in this 
 theory, at any rate, for the results of either the 
 nativist or empiricist views (and St. Thomas ap- 
 pears to incline towards the latter) whenever that 
 very interesting controversy shall be settled. 
 
 The higher category of sensory faculties was 
 only vaguely indicated by Aristotle, and first 
 defined by Avicenna, to whom, or rather to whose 
 Latin translators, the barbarous terms " aestimatio" 
 and " aestimativa " are due. 2 He pointed out that 
 a large number of the properties of surrounding 
 objects recognised by animals, are only indirectly 
 known by means of the external senses. In spite 
 of much interesting matter in Albert the Great, 
 St. Thomas, and Scotus, the account given by the 
 schoolmen of aestimatio and memoria is more unsatis- 
 factory than that of the other senses. But under 
 the equivalent term " instinct," modern science 
 still confounds some of the most disparate pheno- 
 
 1 2, De An., lect. 1. 
 
 ■ Albertus Magnus {Mem. et Bern., cap. i., tr. 1). — It is un- 
 fortunate for the fame of this great Arabian physician and 
 philosopher that he should have been so completely over- 
 shadowed by his bolder follower Averroes. Even through the 
 medium of barbarous Latin versions, a highly imaginative 
 and poetical mind can be discerned, in great contrast to the 
 philosophers of his age. 
 
PHYSIOLOGICAL PSYCHOLOGY OF ST. THOMAS 343 
 
 mena of animal psychology ; and this is the main 
 reason why greater progress has not been made 
 in their study. This is not the place for details ; 
 but it becomes clear, on examination, that many 
 of the most seemingly intelligent actions of animals 
 are " automatic," or mechanical, being provided 
 for by the structures I have described in another 
 article, 1 and being the results of the unconscious 
 experience either of the individual or of the race. 
 This side of the subject has been so ably elucidated 
 by Professor Mivart 2 that any one who desires 
 further information may be referred to his paper. 
 But there are some cases of animal instinct, which, 
 as the Duke of Argyll has argued — and I have 
 seen no reply to his arguments — cannot be thus 
 explained. He points out the difficulty of supposing 
 that many actions could have been originated by 
 animals, which we never see disposed to try a fresh 
 career, or to do anything new. And it if be sup- 
 posed they did so originally, and that what was 
 once a result of inference is now a result of habit 
 (instinct being on this view " lapsed intelligence ") 
 then the faculties of animals must originally have 
 been much superior to what they are at the present 
 day — a singular exception to the doctrine of evolu- 
 tion. Moreover, some of these acts (such as 
 feigning death when captured and leading an 
 enemy away from the neighbourhood of the nest) 
 would be positively prejudicial in the struggle for 
 existence, unless performed very perfectly ; they 
 
 1 Cf. Dublin Review, January, 1864 ; Theories of Sensitive 
 Perception. 
 
 - Contemporary Review, April, 1875. 
 Ibid,, November, 1880. 
 
344 STUDIES 
 
 can therefore hardly have grown up by gradual 
 development. 
 
 In such cases we may trace the germ and anticipa- 
 tion of reason ; and this is a subject to which 
 St. Thomas several times recurs. In like manner 
 he traces the anticipation and rudiments of the 
 human will in that conative faculty common to 
 men and beasts, which the schoolmen termed 
 irascibilis (Aristotle's Ov/nyrc/cbv, as distinguished 
 from iwidvfiTjTucbv). With that desire of filling 
 up the apparent gaps in the series of creation which 
 has struck modern critics as a prominent feature 
 in St. Thomas, he several times dwells on this 
 subject, and as it is one of particular importance 
 at the present day, I may be excused for quoting 
 at some length from one of his less known works : — 
 
 Vis imaginatwa competit animae sensibili secundum 
 propriam rationem ; sed vis aestimativa ineU animae 
 sensibili secundum quod participat aliquid rationis ; unde 
 ratione huius aestimativae dicuntur animalia quamdam 
 prudentiam habere, sicut ovis fugit lapum, cuius inimi- 
 citiam nunquam sensit ; et similiter ex parte appetitivae. 
 Nam, quod animal appetat id quod est delectabile secundum 
 sensum (quod ad concupiscibile pertinet), est secundum 
 propriam rationem sensibilis animae ; sed quod, relicto 
 delectabili, appetat victoriam quam consequitur cum 
 dolore (quod ad irascibilem pertinet), competit ei secun- 
 dum quod attingit aliqualiter appetitum superiorem ; 
 unde irascibilis est propinquior rationi et voluntati quam 
 concupiscibilis. ] 
 
 These internal senses, as well as the corresponding 
 active faculties, are, according to the Aristotelian 
 view, as entirely dependent on the nerve-centres 
 
 1 25 Ver. art. 2. 
 
PHYSIOLOGICAL PSYCHOLOGY OF ST. THOMAS 345 
 
 and connected with them as the external senses 
 are, This is true alike of men and of the lower 
 animals ; but there are certain differences between 
 the human and animal functions, which Aristotle 
 suggests and St. Thomas brings into stronger 
 relief. While in the lower animals all these come 
 and go, their presence and prevalence one over 
 another being determined by external influences 
 and varied bodily states alone, in man they can be 
 controlled and directed towards any object that 
 the individual may desire. This distinction is 
 most obvious in the case of the aestimatio, the 
 results of which are attained in man, not usually 
 by a natural instinct, but by comparison and infer- 
 ence from the results of the other senses : so, too, 
 memory is in man developed into the power of 
 recollection. 1 
 
 It will be remarked that there is one common 
 requisite for the higher development of these 
 faculties, and that is that there shall be a 
 power of concentration on one subject, and exclu- 
 sion of all others from consciousness. I may quote 
 the words of Mr. Grote, in his Aristotle, to show 
 that this was the Peripatetic view, as understood 
 by one to whom its physiological interest was 
 probably unknown : " The noetic process," he 
 says, "is an arrest of all sensory mental move- 
 ment, a detention of the fugitive thoughts, a sub- 
 sidence from perturbation, so that the attention 
 dwells steadily on the same matter." 
 
 It may be remembered that in a previous paper 
 I dwelt on the power that the higher nerve-centres 
 possess to prevent or check the action of ganglia 
 
 1 See especially De Anima, qu. 13. 
 
346 STUDIES 
 
 lower than themselves. This " inhibitory " power 
 would seem to be the necessary physiological 
 condition of attention, and therefore of all higher 
 thought ; and the teaching of Bain and Ferrier 
 seems so far fully justified that the functions of 
 the highest nerve-centres are inhibitory. 
 
 At the same time there is something more to 
 be said. Dr. Maudsley (whose real genius leads 
 him, here and elsewhere, beyond the limits of the 
 mere physiological school) makes the important 
 remark that attention (which this inhibitory power 
 serves) has a positive as well as a negative side 
 — " the force which we mean by attention being 
 rather a vis a fronts attracting consciousness, than 
 a vis a tergo driving it." Be this as it may, if these 
 inhibitory nerve-centres are the highest discoverable 
 by physiology, we must admit that they are governed 
 by some higher force, superior, consequently, to 
 all bodily function. The only alternative would 
 be to believe in an infinite series of nerve-centres, 
 alternately inhibitory and originating, resembling 
 rather the dreams of an Indian cosmogony than the 
 sober conclusions of a science. This brings us to the 
 limits of physiological psychology, its final testimony 
 being in favour of the existence of human powers 
 which are beyond its direct ken. 
 
 It would be beyond my province to describe and 
 justify the Thomist division of the intelligence 
 into the intellecius possibilis, and intellectus agens — 
 or faculty of abstraction — a distinction which has 
 been ridiculed in St. Thomas, but which Balmez 
 showed has been revived by Kant. 
 
 This faculty of abstraction, which Dr. Maudsley 
 admits is peculiar to man, was held by Aristotle 
 to owe its power to some special infusion of that 
 
PHYSIOLOGICAL PSYCHOLOGY OF ST. THOMAS 347 
 
 supramundane force which was so remarkable a 
 factor in his conception of the universe. Without 
 admitting anything of this kind, St. Thomas taught 
 that the intellectus agens is enlightened by a power 
 superior to human reason. We have seen him recog- 
 nise an analogous power directing'animal instincts, 
 and theologians would tell us that he saw the 
 necessity for a similar assistance for suprahuman 
 intelligences. 
 
 There is one point of great importance connected 
 with the faculty of abstraction, on which I may 
 dwell. According to St. Thomas, the sole materials 
 on which the intellectus agens has to work are the 
 elaborated results of the internal senses, the " general 
 images " of modern, or phantasmata of mediaeval 
 philosophers. 1 This is expressed in the common 
 axiom of the schools : " Intellectus non intelligit 
 nisi per conversionem ad phantasmata" These 
 general images, or " phantasms " are needed, 
 according to St. Thomas and his master, for the 
 material of every intellectual act ; being employed 
 as symbols even in the most abstract thought, 
 and in recurring to intellectual concepts already 
 formed. He states his opinion most precisely 
 thus : " Propria operatio intellectus hominis in 
 corpore est intelligere intelligibilia in phantas- 
 matibus." 2 These statements will be doubted by 
 no one who has even a superficial acquaintance 
 
 1 Both are ill-chosen names, because they erroneously suggest 
 that they are exclusively derived from sight, and most akin to 
 seen objects. The term schemata employed in Germany,* is 
 preferable.'] ^« f l| j ijfcgj j -^ :. 
 
 2 See for the fullest statement of this, 3 Dc An. sect. 12 and 
 15 ; and Mem. et Rem., sect 2. 
 
348 STUDIES 
 
 with the Thomist philosophy ; they are brought 
 perhaps into the strongest relief by the objections 
 which the Scotists afterwards raised. 
 
 It is hardly necessary that I should guard against 
 misconception, by pointing out that St. Thomas is 
 very far from supposing that any result, however 
 elaborate, of mere sensory activity can ever be 
 a sufficient cause of intellectual knowledge, of 
 which it can only be said to supply the material. 1 
 This, however, is not my present point. I wish 
 to lay stress upon St. Thomas's teaching that 
 sensorial always accompanies intellectual activity, 
 because it coincides with the evidence supplied by 
 physiology that the higher cerebral functions are 
 called into play during all intellectual labour. 
 
 For instance, the manifold proofs of increased 
 tissue-change in the brain during hard mental 
 work are sufficiently accounted for on the Thomist 
 hypothesis, not to require a materialist theory for 
 their explanation. 
 
 Besides his belief in the correlation between the 
 brain and the intelligence, St. Thomas also affirms 
 in the strongest manner, that the passions (love, fear, 
 hatred, anger and the like) are affections of the 
 body as well as of the mind. Aristotle had indeed 
 taught as expressly that they are affections of both 
 parts of that wonderful compound (tov o-Kevaarov) 
 man ; but the detailed account of them in the 
 Summa enters far more fully into their relations 
 with bodily conditions. Indeed, it is singular that 
 Spinoza's description of the passions, which has 
 
 1 Non potest diet quod sensibilis cognitio sit totalis et perfecta 
 causa intellectualis cognitionis, sed quod sit quodammodo materia 
 causae (l a qu. 84, art. 6.) 
 
PHYSIOLOGICAL PSYCHOLOGY OF ST. THOMAS 349 
 
 been praised by modern physiologists, is a very 
 fragmentary echo of the Thomist description, 
 which reached him through Descartes. 
 
 In like manner St. Thomas has, more fully even 
 than Aristotle, allowed for the influence of abnormal 
 bodily conditions on moral responsibility ; so that 
 all those relations between mind and body which 
 have been so minutely studied of late would readily 
 find their place in his philosophy. 
 
 The author of a modern work on this subject, 
 Professor Calderwood, thus expresses the result of 
 his investigations : " Man possesses a higher order 
 of life than the physical, yet in entire harmony with 
 his physical organism, and so governing it, that the 
 two constitute a unity of being." It will be seen 
 that this sentence corresponds precisely to the 
 sketch of St. Thomas's teaching on this cardinal 
 point of psychology, which is all I have been able 
 to give. The latter has, however, the scientific 
 merits of clearness, precision and analogy with the 
 laws of inorganic being, to an extent unknown in 
 any modern view of the subject. 
 
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