SERMONS AND ESSAYS OX THK APOSTOLICAL AGE BY ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY, M.A., FELLOW AND TUTOR OF UNIVERSITY COLLEGE. OXFORD, JOHN HENRY PARKER: AND 377, STRAND, LONDON. SOLD ALSO BY MACMILLAN AND CO., CAMBRIDGE. MDCC'CXLTII. OXFORD : PRINTED BY I. SHRIMPTON. P 11 E F A C E. THE Sermons contained in this volume were preached before the University of Oxford in the years 1846 and 1847, the four first in the office of Select Preacher, the two last on two occasional turns afforded by the kindness of friends. The Essays have been inserted in explanation or illus- tration of points on which it would have been in- appropriate to enlarge in spoken discourses. In the composition of the volume it is almost needless to say that I have derived great help not only from the works which have more or less treated of the same subject, but from those to whose intercourse and acquaintance, as well as to their actual criticism of these pages, I would here express my deep obligations, which I do not feel the less, because it is impossible more directly to acknowledge them. And, if there are fewer refer- ences than might naturally have been expected to the name of one to whom, though not living, this, as well as any similar work which I may be called to undertake, must in great measure be due, it is because I trust that I may be allowed to take this opportunity of vindicating, once for all, for the scholars of Arnold, the privilege and pleasure of using his words and adopting his thoughts without a2 IV PREFACE. the necessity of specifying in every instance the source from which they have been derived. It has been my object (as I have implied in the title of these Sermons and Essays) not to enter on the higher questions of Theology involved in <l the " Apostolical Doctrines" of the New Testament, ex- cept so far as they are implied in every subject of Christian study, but to confine myself strictly to the consideration of those characters and circum- stances which represent most fully " the Aposto- " lical Age," by exhibiting as far as possible the outward and local image of that which we usually contemplate in its inward and spiritual essence. To have entered on the wider field of the truths themselves which the Gospels and Epistles commu- nicate, or of the general principles of their inter- pretation and application to the affairs of men, would have required more thought and labour than under the circumstances it was possible to bestow ; and for the same reason, even within the narrow compass which I have assigned to myself, many questions necessarily remain untouched, important as some of them may be to the full understanding of the subject, and indefinite as some of my state- ments must appear by reason of their omission. Enough however will I trust be found of complete- ness both in the plan and in the subject, to justify a humbler selection, which, if it possesses far less general interest than would have attached to higher and more controverted points, was more easily brought within the limits imposed by the circum- V stances of the case, and in itself was naturally suggested by the peculiar studies and pursuits of the place. Such historical representations of the first age of Christianity, as I have here ventured to attempt, are so necessary to a right interpretation of many parts of the New Testament, as well as so instruc- tive in themselves, that there has been hardly any age of the Church in which they have not been more or less frequent. Cave's Lives of the Apostles and Butler's Lives of the Saints are familiar in- stances in which the individual human characters of the several Apostles have been exhibited at con- siderable length. And it is natural to expect that a branch of sacred criticism, to which so much atten- tion was paid under the manifold disadvantages of former times, should not be neglected now, amidst our many additional means of investigating and illustrating the events of past times, and at a time when the reasons for endeavouring to form a lively conception of the scenes of Scripture history have been certainly increased rather than diminished. The language indeed and the form of such works must vary with the wants felt by different ages of the Church ; and the requisitions of the nine- teenth century necessarily differ from those of the eighteenth, in which most of our existing histories of the Apostolic age were framed. Such changes are however incidental to every endeavour to ap- proximate the state of religious knowledge to that of the period in which we live ; and whether v PREFACE. criticism or translation be the mode in which they are effected, the defence prefixed to the Authorized Version of the Bible equally applies to either ; "It breaketh the window that it may let in " the light ; it breaketh the shell that we may eat " the kernel ; it putteth aside the curtain that we " may enter into the most holy place ; it removeth " the cover of the well that we may come by the " water." To bear a part in a work at once so inevitable and so important, is pointed out as the especial duty of those whose natural tastes and studies in- cline them in this direction ; and in so doing it seems a duty no less imperative to avail ourselves of such human means and appliances as God has placed within our reach, and as in any merely human studies we should think it disgraceful to neglect. Amongst these I need hardly say some of the chief are to be found in the labours of that great nation from which we should be loth to be- lieve that Theology alone had derived no light, or that whilst we eagerly turn to it in every other branch of study, we should close our eyes against it here. Accordingly in the following pages I have had frequent occasion to express my obligations to continental divines, though of course not render- ing myself responsible for their general views, any more, I may add, than in the case of similar ac- knowledgments which I have been glad to make to a very different school amongst ourselves. Until we have equalled the writers of Germany in their inde- PREFACE. Vll fatigable industry, their profound thought, their conscientious love of knowledge, we must still look to them for help ; and, even if we were as much superior to them in all other points as we are cer- tainly inferior to them in those just mentioned, I know not how we should be justified in rejecting with contempt the immense apparatus of learning and criticism which they have brought to bear on the Sacred Writings, why we should refuse the aid of the workmen of Tyre in building up the Temple of God at Jerusalem. At the same time it is clearly on our own resources that we must ultimately rely ; no mere imitation of foreign writers, even were they as perfect as in many respects they are exceptionable, can meet our own necessities ; it will not be from the rise of any German school in this country, even were it possible, but from such a union as the characters of the two nations so natu- rally invite, of the German spirit of research and love of truth with our own practical life and religi- ous activity, that the true antidote is to be sought for our intellectual dangers, and not for ours only, but, may we not also hope without any undue confidence ? for those of Germany no less. The particular point of view from which I have regarded the three chief Apostles as connected with the Apostolical age itself and with the subsequent fortunes of the Church, is too obvious not to have been oftn dwelt upon. As early as the twelfth century it was made the subject of an elaborate exposition by one of the greatest authorities of Vlll PREFACE. that period ; and it must be familiar to every student of the most recent works of modern theo- logy, whether treated historically, as by Neander, or devotionally, as in Chevalier Bunsen's Prussian Liturgy, or philosophically, as by Schelling in his Lectures on the Philosophy of Revelation. Such anticipations or exemplifications of large periods of history, whether in the events or the characters of a particular age, are unhappily liable to much fanciful exaggeration, such as in some French writers on this and kindred subjects is too palpable in spite of its ingenuity to need any detailed confutation. But the general principle of regarding individual cha- racters as representatives of large classes, and of tracing in all great changes, whether Divine or human, the natural stages of a beginning, middle, and end, will not be disputed. Above all it must be applicable to the Apostolical Age, of which the characters have always been admitted to be especially set forth for the examples of subsequent times, and in which, if in any period of the world's history, we might expect to find a summary of God's dealings with mankind, a likeness of those marked epochs with which we are familiar in the history of the Jewish people, and afterwards of the Christian Church. Of course there is a higher and more universal sense in which each of the Apostles is an example and a witness to all ages alike, and which can never allow the work of St. Peter to be superseded by that of St. Paul, nor the Epistles of St. Paul to "give way by subjection, no not for an PREFACE. IX 11 hour," to St. Peter and St. John. But this need not prevent us from receiving the subordinate les- sons which a closer investigation of the Apostolical age and its consequences seems intended to con- vey, and which it has been the chief object of this volume to exhibit both historically and in their practical application. Lastly, it must be remembered that these Ser- mons, as addressed to an Academical audience, and it may be added immediately after the close of the long theological struggle which for several pre- ceding years had agitated the University in an un- usual degree, necessarily contain allusions which perhaps will hardly be intelligible except to those for whom they were especially intended. I have thought it best however to leave them as they were delivered, in the belief that even for the general reader the application of the truths of Scripture to the wants of a particular class, would more effec- tually illustrate their real value, than the exhibition of them in a more abstract form. It was chiefly with a view to the younger gene- rations of my hearers that these Sermons were preached ; and it is in the hope that they may not find this volume altogether useless in their studies here and elsewhere that it is now published. And, if, in the representation of the lives and characters of the Apostles which it contains, there is anything to awaken in them a deeper sense of their peculiar responsibilities in this place a livelier perception of the truth and power inherent in the words and PREFACE. records of Scripture above all, a stronger belief in the possibility of a nobler end to all our recent ex- citements, than the Epicurean indifference which in many instances threatens to succeed to them, or than the controversies out of which they grew, I can truly say that its object will have been accom- plished. It is at least my humble trust that it con- tains nothing by which such aspirations or convic- tions can be retarded or destroyed. University College, Oxford, November 13, 1847. CONTENTS. SERMON I. THE THREE APOSTLES. Page Statement of the subject. The character and position of the Three Apostles, St. Peter, St. Paul, and St. John . . . 1 7 Necessity and advantage of such historical criticism, as applied to the characters of Scripture generally . . . . 8 1 Especially to those of the Apostolical age . . .10 1. As a part of the evidences of Christianity . . 11, 12 2. As a help in the study of the Apostolical writings . . 13 3. As a sanction of unity of spirit amidst diversity of forms . 14 20 4-. As a proof of their Divine mission . . . 20 24 5. As a practical example for all ages of the Church . . 25 30 ESSAY ON THE TRADITIONARY KNOWLEDGE OF THE APOSTOLIC AGE. Inadequacy of the traditions or of the criticism of the four first centu- ries as substitutes for a study of the New Testament itself . 31 34 1. Tradition of our Lord's discourses in Papias . . 35 2. Statement of our Lord's age in Irenaeus . . 36 3. Criticism of the Gospels by Eusebius . . .38 4. Statement of the gift of tongues in Chrysostom . . 35) 5. Chronology of St. Paul's Epistles in Chrysostom . . ib. 6. The interpretation of the Psalms in Chrysostom . . 40 Conclusion . 43 45 Xll CONTENTS. ESSAY ON THE APOSTOLICAL OFFICE, AND ITS RELATION TO THE OTHER INSTITUTIONS OF THE APOSTOLIC AGE. Page I. The essential characteristics of the office of the Apostles . 46 1. The appointment by Christ Himself . . .48 2. The gift of the Spirit . . . .50 II. The spiritual gifts of the Apostolical Church . . 52 Description of them in 1 Cor. xii. 28 ; Eph. iv. 7 : explained by Hooker .... . 53 55 (1.) As conferred upon the whole Church . . 55 (2.) As personal gifts, not official functions . . 56 5i) In themselves, peculiar to the Apostolical age, but by analogy, to be found in the sanctification of natural gifts . . 59 61 III. The outward offices of the Apostolical Church 1. The "Seven" ..... 62 2. The "elders" . . . . .63 3. The " bishops" and "deacons" . . . 65 70 Accidental union but essential distinction between the gifts and the offices . . . . . . 72, 73 Conclusion . 7477 SERMON II. ST. PETER. Difficulty of investigating the history of St. Peter I. His character in the Gospels .... 81 85 as the repi-esentative of the Galilean Apostles . 86 89 II. His character in the Acts, as founding the Church, and as receiving the first Gentile convert . . 90 94 III. His character in the Epistles an i in tradition, as retiring to make way for St. Paul . . . 94 101 IV. His character, as a model for analogous circumstances in subsequent ages . . . 101 10U ESSAY ON THE PROMISES TO PETER. I. The promise in Matt. xvi. 17 19. The context . . 111 117 1. The name of Peter . 117 2. The Rock of the Church . 118 3. The Keys of the Kingdom of Heaven . J24 4. The Binding and Loosing . . 1-6 Its fulfilment . . . . .129 132 CONTENTS. Xlll Page II. The promise in John xxi, 15, 23. The context ..... 133, 134 The Charge ... . 134139 The Warning . .139, 140 The Address to John . . . 140147 III. The promises in Luke v. 1 20; xxii. 31, 32. The context . . . . .147 And explanation ..... 148151 The application of the promises to subsequent times . 152, 153 SERMON III. ST. PAUL. Preparation for the appearance of St. Paul . ... 159 161 I. His character . . . 162165 II. His mission ..... 165170 III. Use of his example and teaching in subsequent times . 170 172 1. As a sanction of freedom and comprehensiveness . 172 175 2. As a sanction of Gentile studies . . . 175 178 3. As a sanction of secular pursuits . . . 178 180 4. As declaring the power of faith . . . 180 188 ESSAY ON THE JUDAIZERS OF THE APOSTOLICAL AGE. The heresies of the Apostolical age* universal in principle, but Judaic in form . 190 192 FIRST PERIOD. Circumcision their watchword Their wide diffusion . Their hostility to St. Paul Their efforts in Palestine, Asia Minor, and Greece And at Rome . 195197 197 201 206 208 SECOND PERIOD. Revolutionary character of the heresies of this period Greatness of the danger . Its form Jewish . Its chief seat Ephesus, and the Asiatic Churches The ascetic and superstitious form of these heresies The licentious and revolutionary form . THIRD PERIOD. The Ebionites Cerinthus 211 212 213 214 216 218 235 237 XIV CONTENTS. SERMON IV. ST. JOHN. Page General character ..... 241 I. Earlier period Boanerges the Apocalypse . . 24-5 II. Later period the Apostle of Love the Gospel and Epistles . . . . .249 III. Use of his example and teaching in subsequent times . 258 ESSAY ON THE TRADITIONS RESPECTING ST. JOHN. I. Tradition of St. John's immortality . . . 277 II. Traditional traits of St. John's character . . 278 1. The young robber of Ephesus . . ib. 2. Cerinthus and the batht .... 279 3. The commencement of the Gospel . . . 281 4. The farewell address . . . . ib. 5. The huntsman ..... ib. III. Traditions of St. John's Jewish customs . . . 283 1. His austerities . . . * .. ib. 2. The pontifical diadem . . . ib. 3. The observation of the Jewish passover . . 287 IV. Traditions of St. John's residence at Ephesus and of his ex- treme age ... . 288 SERMON V. SUPPLEMENT TO SERMON II. THE EPISTLE OF ST. JAMES. I. Local authority and traditional character of St. James the Just . 298 V II. The Epistle of St. James .... 300 1. Its circumstances .... 302 2. Its object . . . . . 304 3. Its general character . . . .311 4. Its practical lessons . . . .315 THE TRADITIONS OF ST. JAMES THE JUST, AS NARRATED BY HEGESIPPUS. History of Hegesippus . . . . gjg 1. Position of St. James in the Church of Jerusalem . 325 2. His austerities ..... 326 3. His names ..... 330 4. His death .... 333 CONTENTS. XV SERMON VI. SUPPLEMENT TO SERMON III. THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. Page I. The object and occasion of the Epistle . . 340 II. The lessons to be derived from it . . . . 353 1. As written in a period of transition . . . 355 2. As addressed to sufferers . . . 358 4. As the sanction of systematic study . . . 360 ESSAY ON THE DIVISIONS IN THE CORINTHIAN CHURCH. I. The factions at Corinth . . . . 368 II. The Clementines . . 373 SERMON I. THE THREE APOSTLES. MARK ix. 2. Jesm taketh with him Peter, and James, and John, and leadeth them up into an high mountain apart by themselves. No one can doubt that in order to have the key of SERM. the whole revelation of God, we must turn to the - Life, the Teaching, the Person of Jesus Christ. There alone is contained that knowledge which He Himself has told us is no less than life eternal. There alone are to be found the facts, on which, however variously explained, Christianity is founded. There is the original outline of God's will respecting us, which fully to unfold, explain, and apply, is the highest task to which any teacher or student of theology can aspire. But without touching on this higher question, there is another, which, though subordinate, is closely allied with it, and which, arising as it does out of the very structure of the Christian Scrip- tures, is not, I trust, unsuited to the present time or place : viz. What were the human media through which that Divine life, and those Divine truths, were in the first instance communicated to man ? Is the intervening atmosphere, as some would tell us, an indistinct haze, in which all particular shapes are 2 THE THREE APOSTLES. SERM. wholly lost to us? or can we, through the mist I of ages can we, through the drifting clouds of Jewish or Gentile opinion can we, through the brightness which surrounds Him who was the express Image of God, discern any distinction of individual form and feature to tell us what were the human influences which first intercepted the rays of that Divine glory what the human characters which received themselves, or caught for others, the first impression of that Divine countenance? It surely is not presumptuous to say that we can. It was, we may well "believe, not without meaning, that as the Twelve were separated from the multitude, so the Three were separated from the Twelve, to be with their Master " apart by themselves," on the mount and in the garden, in His glory and in His suffering : <c Simon 8 , whom He surnamed the Rock, and James and John, whom He surnamed the Sons of Thunder." Of these, one, indeed, is presented to our view to be almost immediately withdrawn from it. Of James we know hardly any thing, save his sudden and early removal by the sword of Herod's exe- cutioner. But in his place, whether we ascribe it to change or design in the providential laws of the world, there arose one, who, though not of the ori- ginal Twelve, was " yet not behind the very chiefest of the Apostles" in labours, in miracles, or in the closest communion with his risen Lord. To James succeeded Paul, and from that time no less surely a Markiii. 16, 17. THE THREE APOSTLES. than the earliest disciples waited on the lips of the SERM. first Three as they descended from the holy mount, : may we fix our gaze on the Three of the later period PETER, PAUL, and JOHN. It is, indeed, no passing fancy which rises before us in the image of that scene, which, even in its outward form, has been so indelibly impressed upon our minds by that well-known representation of it, with which Christian art has made us familiar. To that Divine teaching, which, as I have said before, is truly the essence of revelation, far re- moved above all earthly influences whatsoever to that Divine Form "whose face did shine as the sun, and whose raiment was exceeding white as snow, so as no fuller on earth can white them" we may still, each one for ourselves, recur, with- out any human interposition, to know the one original object of our Christian faith. But in tracing its gradual descent into that world of sin and misery below, where the disciples are ever- more vainly striving to cast out the evil spirit which vexes and destroys the children of men in in- vestigating its actual historical application to the existing circumstances of the world, it is some- thing to remember that these Three, and these alone, exhaust all the influences which were at work in the intermediate conflict of the apostolical age ; that these Three, and these alone, intervene be- tween us and Christ. If the various forms of evil, which throw their shadows over the Gospel history, are marked out B 2 THE THREE APOSTLES. SERM. by the mere fact of their contact with Jesus the j * - Christ, for our especial warning, it is no less true that in those who were the especial instruments of His purposes we may see the various forms of good- ness which God has marked out for our especial imitation. If even in common history a thousand men are truly said to die to make up one hero if in every part of Scripture it is clear that the promi- nent characters represent to us vast classes of human thought which without them would have no expression then most emphatically is this the case with the three great Fathers of the whole Christian world. If, in short, it may be said, without irre- verence, that the character and life of our Lord Himself determined once for all the whole charac- ter of Christianity for all future ages then, al- though in a far lower degree, it may be said that the several forms and stages through which Christianity has passed, have been exemplified to us in the cha- racters of St. Peter, St. Paul, and St. John. Each of the Three has his distinct place in the first formation of the early Church. Peter is the Founder, Paul the Propagator, John the Finisher Peter the Apostle of the rising dawn, Paul of the noon in its heat and in its clearness, John the sunset -first in the stormy sunset of the Apoca- lypse, then in the calm brightness of the Gospel and Epistles of his old age. Each is the centre round which the floating elements of thought and action the scattered writings of the sacred canon the wild distortions of them in the heretical sects THE THREE APOSTLES. 5 clustered and crystallized. The whole world of s E R M. Jewish Christians leaned upon St. Peter, as the - whole world of Gentile converts leaned upon St. Paul, and the whole body of mixed believers turned, after the fall of Jerusalem, to the sole surviving Apostle at Ephesus. Each was connected with the sole authentic records of the life of Christ ; what- ever may be the explanation in detail of the origin of the twin Gospels of St. Matthew and St. Mark, there can be little doubt that it was St. Peter's dis- ciples, who first received the representation which is preserved to us in the Prophet and Lawgiver ac- cording to St. Matthew, the human Friend according to St. Mark : whatever may be the account of the compilation of the Gospel and Acts of St. Luke, we need not hesitate to recognise in them St. Paul's view, first, of the Suffering Victim, then of the In- visible Guide of the universal Church ; whatever may have been the immediate objects of the Gospel of St. John, we at once acknowledge that we there have the complete image of the Word made flesh, which the early Church naturally believed could have proceeded from none but the beloved disciple. Each has borne his part in the unfolding of the Divine economy. Peter, the Apostle of courageous and confident hope, Paul of faith, John of love; Peter, of power and action ; Paul of thought and wisdom ; John, of feeling and of goodness ; Peter clings to the recollections of the older world, that is passed or passing away : Paul plunges into the con- flicts of the present : John, whether as prophet, 6 THE THREE APOSTLES. SERM. evangelist, or teacher, fixes his gaze on the in- - visible and the future : Peter gave to Christianity its first outward historical form ; Paul its inward and spiritual freedom ; John, that Divine end and object in which form and spirit harmonize. And what wonder is it, that as in epochs far less momentous, in characters far less impressive, the germs of future destiny have been discovered, so here subsequent ages have delighted to recog v nise in each that peculiar type and form of the Christian faith which was to them most congenial ? What wonder that the whole of Christian Europe through those early struggles which can hardly fail to recall to our minds the times of the Jewish covenant, reposed with such unshaken con- fidence on the name of Peter ? that in the gradual rising of a freer spirit, the gradual opening of a wider sphere, theologians and statesmen, nations and individuals, were enkindled with new life by the words of Paul? that in these our latter days, all thoughtful minds, whether in search of evidence from Christian history, of comfort from Christian truth, of instruction from Christian holiness, are turning by a natural instinct to the writings of the last Apostle, who left the historical record in his Gospel of the things which he saw and heard, and taught us that God is Spirit, and that God is Love? What I have said is not inconsistent with the existence of the other spheres of influence in the apostolical age, which will at once occur to many of us. Not to speak of modes of thought external THE THREE APOSTLES. but still congenial to the first beginning of the SERM. Christian society not to lay stress on the long- - cherished veneration for the teaching of John the Baptist I will name two individuals who might seem at first sight to hold almost divided sway with the three great Apostles, and who certainly are, next to them, the two chief centres of interest ; I mean, James the Just, and Apollos. But though they require a distinct mention in any complete analysis of the apostolical age, it is obvious that their sphere was too limited and temporary, and their position too subordinate, to interfere with the general truth of the absolute and unrivalled supremacy of one or other of the three Apostles. Thus with re- gard to James b , it is indeed impossible to mistake the tone of authority and the independent character which belongs to his Epistle, or the commanding position, which, according to Josephus and Hege- sippus, no less than the Acts, he occupied amongst the Jews and Jewish Christians of Palestine. Still, though from this point of view he was regarded and may by us be regarded in the position in which he is on one occasion placed by St. Paul as the very chiefest pillar of the early Church, yet from a higher and more general point of view, he is absorbed in the similar but wider sphere of Peter, the one great Apo- stle of the Circumcision. And though Apollos d was so "eloquent" in Alexandrian wisdom, and "so mighty in the Jewish Scriptures" that he was placed by the l) See Sermon on the Epistle of St. James. c Gal. ii. 9. d Acts xviii. 24; 1 Cor. i. 12; iii. 22. 8 THE THREE APOSTLES. SERM. Corinthian factions on a level even with Paul and Cephas, and though modern criticism has found it difficult to refuse him at least a share in that great Epistle, of unknown origin 6 , which forms so remark- able a link between the writings of Paul and John, yet the few hints which we possess of his life and character, amply justify the usual belief which for all practical purposes has merged his career in that of the Apostle of the Gentiles. Such is the general view which must always have been present more or less to every careful reader of the New Testament, but which has only been brought out in its full distinctness by the increased study and observation of later years. It is indeed the pecu- liar privilege of an age like ours, that in propor- tion as it recedes from the events of the past by lapse of time, it is enabled in thought and imagi- nation to reproduce them with a vividness which to previous ages was wholly unknown. If criticism destroys much, it creates more. If it cuts away some grounds from our faith, it re-constructs out of the chasm others incomparably more secure. If the sea of doubt has advanced along one part of our coast, it has proportionably receded from another. If it has been maintained that " infidelity is" in some respects "in a more hopeful position" towards Christianity than heretofore, its ancient strong- holds have been absolutely destroyed. If Christians of the fourth century still enjoyed something like a living recollection of the first, it would be easy to 6 See Sermon on the Epistle to the Hebrews. THE THREE APOSTLES. 9 prove, that of facts so remarkable as the object and SERM. plan of the several Gospels, the chronology of the - Epistles, the gift of tongues, and many similar points, even Eusebius and Chrysostom knew far less than we do f . If Christians of the fourteenth century reposed with confidence on the genuineness of the so called Apostolical Constitutions, and the elaborate forgery ascribed to Dionysius the Areopa- gite, it was still reserved for Christians of the nineteenth century to discern in those remains of the apostolical age which increased inquiry has but doubly confirmed to us, whole scenes, characters, and institutions, which were to our forefathers as if they had never existed at all. Nor let us shrink from making use of this, God's especial gift to us, from a fear lest by so doing we should think less reverently of those whom God has chosen out to communicate His will to men. " I was afraid and hid thy talent in the earth/' was the speech of the unfaithful servant. " Stand up, for I also am a man," was the speech of the first Apostle to one who would have worshipped him. Creation is not set aside, because God has allowed us to discover the general laws by which the world was brought into existence ; still less is revelation resolved, as some would say, into " a merely human process," because we are able to trace the human or the natu- ral agencies through which it has been conveyed. It has been remarked not less wisely than boldly, f See Essay on The Traditionary Knowledge of the Aposto- lical Age. 10 THE THREE APOSTLES. SERM. that of the five causes assigned by Gibbon for the rapid advance of Christianity, there is not one which need not be gladly admitted by the sincerest believer, if only he understands them rightly. And this remark is obviously of equal force if extended from the later propagation of the faith to its earlier formation. The Patriarchs were not less truly the friends of God, because in their outward lives we see a faithful likeness of the usages of an Arab chief. Moses did not less receive the law from God, because he was a man " mighty in words and deeds, and learned in all the wisdom of the Egyp- tians 8 ." The Judges were not less truly raised up by God, because their name and functions were the counterpart of the magistrates of their Phoenician neighbours. The Kings were not less truly the anointed of the Lord, because their office was actually suggested by the practice "of all the nations round about." The Prophets were not less certainly inspired by God, because the vision of Messiah's kingdom presented itself to them in the earthly images of their age and country. And in like manner the Apostles of Christ were not less the heaven-sent Lawgivers of the Christian world for ever, because they spoke the language, and breathed the atmosphere, and represented the feelings of a time which is past away. " What God hath joined let no man put asunder." Let us contemplate them not merely as lifeless instruments, or empty shadows, but as " men of like passions with our- s Acts vii. 22. THE THREE APOSTLES. 11 selves," and we shall not be the less, but the more SERM. able to enter into the higher truth, that while Paul - planted and Apollos watered, it was God that gave the increase ; that how different soever were their individual gifts, it was the self-same Spirit working in each of them severally as He would. It will be my endeavour then from time to time to lay before you the most striking results at which those have arrived who have most studied the sub- ject; to describe in succession the historical posi- tion of each of the three Apostles, to inquire what were the natural faculties or feelings with which each was endowed, what the various lines of think- ing and of acting which converged in each, what the peculiar work to which each was called in the Church of God. But before I descend into details it may be well to insist on some practical advantages which flow from a consideration of the subject not in its parts but as a whole. I. Viewing the Apostles in their purely human, historical, individual characters, it is on the low- est ground most valuable as a matter of Christian evidence. A distinct image of any one part of the rise of the Christian religion, however insignificant that part may be in itself, does much to confirm the strictly historical character of the whole narrative ; even though it be no more than the details of a shipwreck on the Mediterranean sea, it is some- thing to feel certain that here at least is a plain matter of fact which cannot be disputed, here at THE THREE APOSTLES. SERM. least we have a firm footing where we may pause for a moment to overlook the surrounding country. Much more if this same impression can be extended to the lives of those who were, according to all accounts, the chief instruments in the work. Once let us fix in our minds, by whatever means, the fact that Peter, Paul, and John, exercised as real an influence over the Roman empire in the age of Nero and of Trajan, as Socrates over the age of Pericles, and Aristotle over the age of Alexander, and it will then be hard, even to the extreme of difficulty, to find a reason for abandoning our faith in Christ crucified and Christ risen. It is not, God be thanked, the whole evidence for the Divine origin of our Faith, it is at most but half of it. If, as it has been h well said, the two great proofs which contain all that we need, are "Christi- anity and Christendom/' the intrinsic excellence of the truth itself, and the wonderful effects which that truth has produced, it is obvious that, whilst the second only of these is exemplified in the lives of the Apostles, the first and greatest is to be sought in no lower region than in the life and teaching of Christ Himself. If it be difficult by any mere human explanation to account for the characters of those by whom Christianity was first preached, it is still more difficult to account by any ordinary cir- cumstances for all that relates to Him whom they preached. But short of this, whatever evidence we can hope to have from the sudden change in the h Coleridge's Remains. THE THREE APOSTLES. 13 whole course of the civilized world, from the com- SERM. plete transformation of human characters, from the - necessity of supposing an adequate cause, and an adequate object, for the display of energies almost if not altogether unparalleled all this is brought before us in its most palpable form in proportion as we can conceive to ourselves the historical existence of the Apostles. II. Again, when we reflect how all of the Three, though absent from us in the body, are present in their Epistles, constantly read in our churches, constantly before us in our Bibles, we surely should understand them better in proportion as we realized to ourselves not merely the sense of each particular passage, but something of the central idea, something of the peculiar characteris- tics, something of the living image, of the Galilean fishermen, and the Pharisee of Tarsus, and the aged Apostle of Ephesus. We should feel the contrast between the colour which even their minds received from the influences of their age and country, and the absolute elevation above them all of Him who is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever ; between the distinctness of individual character in each of them, and the total absence of any merely human pecu- liarities in the life and character of Him, in whom dwelt all the fulness of the Godhead bodily. We should, in proportion as we realized those spheres of thought of which each of them was a centre, learn to perceive what is universal and eternal in their writings, and what is local and temporary 14 THE THREE APOSTLES. SERM. to distinguish the principles of Christian truth and duty which were then laid down once and for ever, from the particular modes of their application, which vary with every age and country, the parti- cular forms and institutions which for the most part never have been reproduced in any subsequent time, and probably never can be. III. Once more, the compatibility of great varieties in forms, characters and views, with the closest unity of spirit, is a topic which has been of late times much insisted on, and which all history, no less than our own daily experience, concurs in teaching us. But there is nothing, whether in the revelations of God, or the wisdom of man, which brings this lesson home to us with such irresistible force, as the simple fact, thoroughly understood, that the most perfect of all truth was imparted to the world not in one uniform code, at one single moment of time, but by a gradual process lasting through more than half a century, and by the agency of men in natural character and disposition the most opposite that it is possible for the human mind to conceive. It might have pleased the Most High to have illumi- nated the understandings of all His Apostles in an equal degree by one single lightning flash on the day of Pentecost. It might have been so ordered, that every other voice should have been hushed, and that one Gospel and one Epistle alone should have spoken to us from the general silence. It is by thus conceiving what might have been, that we can best understand what has been. Not to THE THREE APOSTLES. 15 dwell now on the successive stages in the pro- SERM. gress of each, which will best appear hereafter, let ' us bring once for all before our minds the contrast which divides one from the other. It is in their writings, of course, that this contrast is most vividly seen. In the case of St. Peter, indeed, the contrast is rather in action than in word between his Epistles and those of St. Paul, there is, from distinct reasons which will best be explained in another connexion, a greater likeness than could naturally have been anticipated between the two Apostles, who in their actual lives stood at the two opposite poles of the apostolical age, whom the conflicting factions of the time endeavoured to represent as rival teachers, of whom " one withstood the other to the face because he was to be blamed." But if we bear in mind this complete antithesis between their practical spheres, and if we further remember that it is the Epistle of St. James which expresses most strongly in writ- ing the peculiar views of what may without offence be termed the school of St. Peter, then it is not too much to say that never in any age of the world have there been employed in the same time and country, and for one common cause, styles of thought and language so radically distinct as those which appear in the works of these three Apostles : that in no comparison of cotemporary works, whether in ancient or in modern literature, is it so impossible to mistake the style of one author for that of another, as it would be to confound the severe and prophet-like warnings of St. James with 16 THE THREE APOSTLES. SERM. the impassioned appeals and complicated argu- ~ ments of St. Paul, or either of them with the simple aphorisms and intuitive perceptions of St. John. Whatever, in short, is the difference between action and thought, between a mind building itself up on the past, and a mind embracing and communicating to others a flood of new and startling ideas, is the difference between St. Peter and St. James on the one hand, and St. Paul on the other ; whatever is the difference between those two great philosophers, who may emphatically be said to have divided between them the two great schools of human thought and speculationsuch , if wemay without irreverence adopt an analogy long since suggested by one of our own theologians 1 ; such, in kind, and in its leading fea- tures, is the difference between St. Paul and St. John. Such is the fact in its general outline, and now what should be our inference from it ? I might point out, were this a congregation which needed to be told, or had not others already explained it in part from this place, how triumphant a testimony is borne to the divinity of Gospel truth by the distinct and in- dependent characters of " the Gospel witnesses 14 ." I might dwell on the impression which is left upon us not only of the truth and the Divine origin, bat of the inexhaustible greatness of Christianity, when we see " the many mansions" of our Father's house thus opening in succession before us ; when we reflect on the vast amount of wisdom and holiness 1 Coleridge's Table Talk, p. 89, 95. k Newman's Sermons, vol. ii. Serm. xvii. The Gospel Witnesses. THE THTIEE APOSTLES. 17 which might be gathered, and which has been SERM. gathered from the representation of Christianity by each of the Three singly ; and yet beyond them all, the impression to be produced by the harmony and comparison of all the Three together. But perhaps the most practical and obvious result is that to which I alluded before the solemn, I might almost say the awful, sanction, thus given, to the union of the most various tempers, thoughts and views, within the pale of our Christian sympathy. When we look steadily at this fact, not accidentally connected with the Sacred Canon, but engrained into its very inmost substance not one out of a hundred insignificant events of an ordinary age, but standing in the very foremost ground of the most critical epoch in the history of the human race it seems impossible to explain away its im- portance, as though it belonged to a generation of men with whom we have no concern. However difficult it may be in many cases to pass from the circumstances of the apostolical age to those of our own, in this case at least there is no such insur- mountable difference between them, as need de- prive us of the lesson which is read to us by this divergence of the Apostles from each other. We must remember that, if we look upon their diversities of style, and thought, and action, as trivial, their cotemporaries, as will appear more clearly after- wards, often looked upon them as matters of life and death that if our difficulties are aggravated by the co-existence of all manner of schools and c 18 THE THREE APOSTLES. SERM. opinions, which in former ages existed separately, - this was more especially the case in the first century than in any other age except our own that if long familiarity has habituated us to the amalgamation of their several writings and views, there was a time when the Churches of St. James knew nothing of the Churches of St. Paul that nearly a whole gene- ration passed away before either of them received the Gospel and Epistles of St. John that the very highest truths concerning God and man are ex- pressed by each of the Three in terms not merely dissimilar, but absolutely opposed, to the other. It will not be thought for a moment that these ap- parent differences are real contradictions : nor again, that the mere co-existence of different views in itself constitutes real unity. It is certainly not enough to dwell on the divergence of the apostolical writings, unless we dwell also on the still higher and essential harmony to which this divergence leads it is not enough to be tolerant of the various forms of good- ness and truth, unless we strive to unite them in ourselves, as they are combined for our instruction in the volume of the New Testament it is not enough that our sympathies should be wide, unless they be deep and strong not enough to know the breadth and length of Christianity, unless we also know its height and depth ; whilst in one sense it is most true that different ages, nations, and in- dividuals may range themselves under one or other of the three Apostles, there is yet a higher sense in which no less truly every age, nation, and individual THE THREE APOSTLES. 19 must belong to all the three alike; whilst in one SERM. sense Paul, and Apollos, and Cephas, and John are - all distinct, in a higher sense they are all one, " for we are Christ's, and Christ is God's 1 ." Still, whether we look at their differences or their unity, the practical lesson for us is the same. If there be any who are perplexed by the divisions of opinion which exist amongst us, it surely must be a consoling thought that no greater burden is laid upon us than was laid upon the Apostles and their followers. If there be any to whom the many noble qualities which emerge on all sides out of the midst of these divisions inspire the longing and suggest the thought of a happier and a better union than we have known for many centuries, it is surely a hopeful reflection that some such union was fore- shadowed to us in the spring time of the Christian society. If there be a communion amongst us, which, whether by the overruling providence of God, or the jarring passions of men, or the national character of our countrymen, has had the power of uniting within its pale more dissimilar elements than any other communion in the world if its institutions and its forms of worship be such as of necessity to afford a refuge to those who shrink from rushing into either of the two extremes between which Christendom is at present divided if it thereby holds out a means of Christian unity which we cannot lose without at the same time violating its fundamental principles then 1 1 Cor. iii. 22, 23. c2 20 THE THREE APOSTLES. SERM. such a communion, whatever may be its general - character, and however far unlike in this or other respects it may be to the Church of the fifth or of the fifteenth century, is at least in this respect not wholly unlike to the Church of the aposto- lical age. IV. I have hitherto spoken of the Apostles as men of those points which they have not in distinction from, but in common with, the men of other times and of ordinary circumstances. We must now turn to them as Apostles to that more solemn and sacred character with which our natural feeling almost instinctively invests them and this the more lest the very vividness of the historical image which rises before us should tempt us to neglect the general effect of the whole scene, in overcharging the picture of each individual figure. I have spoken of them, and shall have occasion again to speak of them, in the phraseology which we employ to de- scribe the great men of common history, as swayed by the influences, representing the feelings, and directing the revolutions of their age and I have done so, and shall continue to do so, because I know no other language which can adequately express the transcendent interest, the heroic gran- deur of all that belongs to that more than second birthday of the world's history. But if one word which I have uttered, or may utter, calls up an image of merely intellectual greatness, or throws into the shade for one moment the Divine power, without which the highest Apostle felt himself to THE THREE APOSTLES. 21 be as nothing, I would once for all remind you that SERM. such an expression is not more certainly incon- - sistent with our common religious feeling, than it is with the whole idea of the Apostles' characters that it is no mere transient impulse of devotion, but the strictest truth of fact, which calls upon us to join in that great thanksgiving which was, if I may so say, the natural expression of Him who saw from first to last the full consequences of the new element which in them was first and most fully ex- emplified : " I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because Thou hast hidden these things from the wise and prudent and hast revealed them unto babes 111 ." It was not only that the reli- gion which the Apostles preached was new, but that their very appearance was also new in itself not only that they were " full welling fountain- heads of change" but that when we have tracked these changes up to their source, we find ourselves on a level hitherto wholly unknown to us on a mountain-ridge which not only overtops, but coun- ter sects, all those other ranges which determine the configuration of the moral surface of the world. It was not by intellectual power, like the philo- sophers of Greece, nor by arms and statesmanship, like the conquerors of Rome, nor by the influence of a sacerdotal order like the priestly castes of India or of Egypt, nor even by the patriotic zeal and unshaken endurance of their own Jewish ances- tors, that the supremacy of the Apostles was esta- m Matt. xi. 25. 22 THE THREE APOSTLES. SKRM. blished. It was by the transforming energy of - simple goodness, devoted, with a child -like faith, through a whole life to the service of God and man. Paul indeed, in one sense, stands apart from the others ; but even in him the change effected by his conversion was so powerful, the intellectual was so completely merged in the moral greatness of his character, that he is only an apparent exception. And of the other two, I will only say that one main cause of our difficulty in entering into their writings, lies in the difficulty of realizing to ourselves the style and language of men suddenly called from the lowest and most uneducated stations to speak on the loftiest subjects which can exercise the mind of man. They stand the first and greatest in that long- protracted warfare, in which the weak things of the world have confounded the things that were mighty in which the palaces of Nero gave way before the unlettered slaves who herded in the Roman cata- combs in which the kings and philosophers of Europe have been instructed by the peasant from the plough, the workshop, and the mine. And again, great beyond expression as was the revolution in which the Apostles bore their part, and great as that part was, there is still a truth in the common feeling which teaches us to look upon them as instruments, rather than as -actors, as un- consciously impelled, rather than as consciously di- recting its course. They enkindle others because there is burning within themselves a fire which will not suffer them to rest : " we cannot but speak the THE THREE APOSTLES. 23 things which we have seen and heard;" " necessity SERM. is laid upon me, yea woe is me if I preach not the ~ Gospel";" however high they rise, there is some- thing higher still behind, to which their words, their miracles, their lives, point with a constant witness. If they were not something besides the heroes and great men of other ages, great men and heroes they were not ; exalt their human influence to the utmost, and still if there was not a mightier than any human agency at work, a greater than any human interest at stake we have not solved the difficulty of their existence, their lives no less than their writings will become -unmeaning and impotent. It is this which brings us to the great question, What was the one common, the one peculiar ele- ment which raised Peter, Paul, and John, so high above all others which raised the Twelve above the rest, and the Three above the Twelve which made them in short not merely teachers, philoso- phers, philanthropists, missionaries, prophets but Apostles? What was the faculty, or feeling, or fact, on which their gifts, their miracles, their writings, their inspiration, were based? It was this, that they had seen, and known, and felt, not merely by the outward senses, but through the work- ing of the Spirit of God in their inmost spirits, the life and death and rising again of Jesus Christ . n Acts iv. 20; 1 Cor. ix. 16. See Essay on the Apostolical Office. 24 THE THttEE APOSTLES. SERM. What the vision of the Lord of Hosts with the - seraphim in the Temple had been to Isaiah, what the vision of the whirlwind, and the chariot, and the cherubim, had been to Ezekiel on the banks of the river Chebar ; that, the sight, the impression, the intercourse of our Lord had been to the Apostles. Deny this, and their whole history is one inexplicable riddle. Grant this, and almost every difficulty is fully accounted for. " He shall receive of Mine, and shall shew it unto you p ," was our Lord's own descrip- tion of the promised Comforter. " To have been a witness of the resurrection q " is the one test of Apostleship so often insisted upon by St. Peter. "Have I not seen the Lord Jesus r ?" is the answer of St. Paul to those who would have questioned his authority. "That which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, which our hands have handled, that which we have seen and heard, declare we unto you 8 ," is St. John's commendation to the readers of his Gospel and Epistle. That Divine Presence was felt to be ever with them ; that eye of love ever upon them ; that voice of wisdom ever sounding in their ears ; the recollections of that Divine Teacher re- pelled, as by instinct, shade after shade of supersti- tion and harshness and untruth ; the communion with that Divine Friend drew their hearts heaven- P John xvi. 14. i Acts ii. 22; iii. 15; v. 32 ; 1 Pet. v. 1. r 1 Cor. ix. 1. s i Johni. 1. THE THREE APOSTLES. 25 ward, where He sate at the right hand of God : SERM. they, beyond all others, " reflecting (fcaroTrTpi&fjievoi) - as in a glass the glory of their Lord, were changed into His likeness from glory into glory*." V. And now we can enter at once on that in which their characters both as men and as Apostles converge, the eternal lesson of their example. " Be ye followers of me even as I am of Christ Jesus," are words which, if what I have said be true, should ever rise to our minds when the life of an Apostle is brought before us. So said not the older prophets ; they were signs, oracles, preachers, but not of necessity examples. It was the charac- teristic privilege of the Apostles that their lives, like that of their Divine Master, though in lower degree, cannot be known and felt without being imitated. Prophets, psalmists, evangelists, miracles, preachers, rulers, all these may pass away from the Christian Church, but Apostles never. The first burst of early devotion, the first impression of the Word made flesh, are indeed gone. In that the Apo- stles must stand alone : in that no later age can claim the slightest share. But the spirit t That this is the true rendering of the passage (2 Cor. iii. 18) seems certain from the context. "We Christians and Apostles, not as Moses with a veil on his face, but with unveiled faces (avaKfKa- Xv/n/xeVw Trpoo-toTTQ)) reflecting the glory of Christ, as Moses reflected the glory of the Lord, are changed into His likeness, and so are constantly commending ourselves to you not by concealment, but by openness ; not in proportion as our lives are less known, but in proportion as they are more known." The word itself is am- biguous. 26 THE THREE APOSTLES. SERM. of their example that new wonder which the - world saw for the first time in their lives that which alone is the imperishable part of an Apo- stle's office the devotion of their whole ener- gies for the love of Christ, to the moral and spiri- tual good of man this, the especial creation of Christianity, has lasted with it ; this Divine suc- cession has endured consecrated not by man, or through man, but by God Himself not expiring, as some have fondly deemed, with the primitive Church, nor with the saints of the Middle Ages, nor with the Puritans of the seventeenth century but to be revived in every place and in every time, and in every station of life, so long as we believe in the continuance of God's grace, and the freedom of man's will. Therefore it is no abrupt transition, if from a subject in itself so great and wide, our thoughts should turn to our own sphere of duties here, to you, my younger hearers, for whose sake especially I am called to this place. Even were the atmosphere of your present lives ten times more uncongenial than it is to the exercise of the highest moral and religious gifts, still it cannot be useless for you to feel what they are in others : it cannot be indifferent whether you dis- regard or treasure up, whether you admire, or whether you treat with no concern, the examples of apostolical goodness, which you may have heard of, or have seen ; whether amongst the dead or the living ; whether in the first or the nineteenth cen- THE THEEE APOSTLES. 27 tury. It is most important, whether in your lives SERM. here, or in looking forward to your future profes- - sions, that you should be made to feel that there have been, and are, and always will be, strains of a higher mood to be heard, flashes of a purer light to be seen, than the sights and sounds with which you are most familiar that there have been, and are, and always will be men, who think more of others than of themselves, more of who is above them, than of what is around them whose lives are a constant witness that you are not placed in this world solely for your own enjoyment that you have other interests to consult in your schemes, or opinions, or employments, than the interests and pleasures of yourselves or of your friends. It is most important that you should feel that no sight which you can possibly see is so ennobling, so pre- cious, as the sight of exalted goodness that it is at your own peril if you stifle the serious thoughts which it may for the moment awake in you or if you find an excuse in some difference of time, or circumstance, or opinion, or even in error and ex- travagance, for turning aside from the eternal lesson which from the Apostles downwards always has been and will be taught by holiness and self- devotion, wheresoever and in whomsoever it may be found. All this would be true, even if direct imitation were out of the question. But surely even here, even in the easy and unruffled, in the too often frivolous and selfish tenor of an academical life, 28 THE TH11EE APOSTLES. SERM. there is more room than many of us would sup- - pose for the exercising something of the love, for reaping something of the fruits of apostolical labours. With some of you there has been a time immediately before the commencement of your course here, when the peculiar responsibility and the peculiar means of usefulness which fell to your lot were so great, that a call to tread in the Apostles' footsteps was not then strange to your ears that St. Paul's complaint of " that which came upon him daily in the care of all the Churches," has actually been felt to be the legitimate ex- pression of the sense of your own anxiety. Such direct means of combating evil, as I here speak of, or as you will all of you have in after life, this place certainly does not afford, and its most obvious duties are of another kind. Still it surely is not the inevitable doom of an institution like this, that all care or thought of others should be paralyzed as soon as you enter its walls ; even here, in the necessary impression which your characters make on those around you, there is room to be Apostles of Christ or of Satan. Here, as well as elsewhere, there are recorded, instances, on the one hand, of the most precious gifts shipwrecked or perverted for the want of some such guiding hand, of some such thoughtful sympathy instances, on the other hand, no less, of the effect which a single example of firmness arid purity may have in the formation of characters, afterwards destined to become the support and blessing of thousands. Whether we look THE THREE APOSTLES. 29 to the history of the Three Apostles, or to our own SERM. daily experience here, we know well that it matters - not for this whether you have or have not intel- lectual gifts : it is not merely by conversing on serious subjects that you promote serious thoughts, nor by seeking directly to obtain influence that you really influence others it is by being good that you do good : it is by kindness and thoughtfulness for others' feelings, by sufferings or disappointments cheerfully endured, by advantages of intellect or fortune humbly borne, by adherence to fixed prin- ciples of duty, by the princely heart of guileless in- nocence, whose very look is the worst rebuke to vice that here even more than elsewhere, a whole society may be made to feel that there is something better worth living for than our own daily and hourly self-indulgence something which, even amidst the turmoil or apathy of our own little world here, speaks of that world whither Christ is gone before us. For our own sakes no doubt, indeed, this is no less im- portant than for the sake of others ; still the effect of our own conduct on others is often the surest way of reminding us of what it is on ourselves ; and as the recollection of the Apostles' lives, if for no other reason, is valuable to us as evidence to the fact that He once lived and died on earth so it surely is no exaggeration to say, that the lives of Chris- tians now are the greatest evidence for or against the fact that He now lives in heaven. " Because He lives, we shall live also u ." If amidst the con- u Johnxiv. 19. 30 THE THREE APOSTLES. SERM. troversies, the thoughtless selfishness, the positive 1 sins or temptations of this place, our excitement is sobered, our carelessness checked, our principles strengthened, by the thought of what He was and is of what He has done and will do for us then to others and to ourselves His name receives a wit- ness from us, more humble, but not less real, than it once received from Peter, Paul, and John. THE TRADITIONARY KNOWLEDGE OF THE APOSTOLICAL AGE. IT will be seen that in the course of these Sermons I have assumed that our chief knowledge of the apostolical age is to be gained from the study not of any later ecclesiastical writers, but of the documents of the aposto- lical age itself; and consequently, that in many instances a far greater knowledge is attainable on this subject by the investigations of later criticism than was possessed by the writers of the fourth and fifth centuries. It will be my endeavour in the following remarks to shew that this assumption is grounded in fact, and that whatever may be the use, in other respects, of studying the works of the four first centuries, no such advantage was conferred upon them in this respect by their proximity of time and place to the scenes and events of the first cen- tury, as in any degree to supersede the necessity of later inquiry. In the first place, it must be observed that the apostolic age, instead of being fertile in what we call traditions, was remarkably barren in them. In respect to the one great and central event of the first century, this is universally acknowledged. The New Testament, one may almost say the Gospel narrative, is " the sole record of our Lord's life and teaching a ." Tradition has either no part in it at all, or what it has may be collected in half a page. Of all that vast collection of acts and words, which, " if they were written every one of them, I suppose the world would not a Newman's Lectures on the Prophetical Office of the Church, p. 347, 348. 32 THE TRADITIONARY KNOWLEDGE contain the books which should be written," the whole result is contained in the short volume of the four Gospels. But what is true almost entirely of the chief subject of in- terest in the apostolical age, is true in a great measure of all that relates to it. Of the traditions of St. Peter, St. John, and St. James, I shall have to speak afterwards. But what do we really know of the rest of the Twelve? Legendary accounts of later date we have indeed in abun- dance, but "there are scarcely two out of the whole number," it has been remarked, " of whose deaths we have even so much as a statement of probable authority." " The graves of Peter, Paul, John, and Thomas, are well known," says Chrysostom, (Horn, in Heb. xxvi.,) "of the rest, none." Isolated facts and sayings no doubt have been preserved : and of the later years of St. John's age we have something like a continuous narrative but this is all ; there are oc- casional flashes of light, which make the darkness visible but the scene as a whole is not the less wrapt in obscurity. If then of our Lord Himself tradition could tell nothing if of the general history of His Apostles it could tell hardly any thing beyond what is recorded in the New Testament, it is superfluous to inquire further ; it is evident that the stream had been interrupted in its course that either the first century had nothing more of importance to give, or that the succeeding centuries were incapable of receiving it. It is indeed sufficiently easy to conjecture the great purposes which may have been answered by this broad line of demarcation between the two periods. It needs no more than a glance at any paraphrases, ancient or modern, of the sacred text, to understand how much any representation of the Divine Idea gains by concentration and loses by dilu- tion ; if we can enter into the Divine Providence which com- pressed even the authentic records of the origin of Chris- tianity themselves within so small a compass, we shall be at no loss to comprehend how high an end might be served by OF THK APOSTOLICAL AGE. destroying its doubtful and traditionary records altogether. But, in fact, it was but the almost necessary result of the circumstances of the case. Once grant that the great event of the first century was what we believe it to have been once grant its difference not only in degree but in kind, from all that followed, and we shall appreciate by the very force of the terms the depth of that chasm which must have been fixed between the two. Take even the ordi- nary instances of sudden transitions from one state of feel- ing and opinion to another take that with which all scholars are so familiar, the rapid change from the age of Plato to the age of Aristotle, and we may have some conception, however faint, of the incapacity which Chris- tians living amongst the ordinary influences of the age of Nerva and the Antonines must have had for entering into the feelings, or even recording rightly the facts, of an age which had witnessed the events and received the records of the Gospel history ; still more, when we add to this inward separation between the two eras, the complete loss of all outward knowledge of the times the destruction of such a multitude of traditions, feelings and customs, as must have perished in the fall of Jerusalem and the extinction of the Jewish Church. And if even at its source tradition was so nearly dried up, what are we to expect from the writers of the fourth or fifth centuries, from whom most of our information on these points must necessarily be de- rived? The period between St. Chrysostom and St. Paul, which, through the long perspective of ages, seems to us so brief, was really no less than that between us and the Reformation. It was a period too in which the variety and importance of 'the intervening scenes may well have inter- rupted the view of any writer, Christian or heathen in which the Church of the age of Nero may well have dis- appeared under the numerous layers not only of events, but of whole states and stages of society which must have D 34 THE TRADITIONARY KNOWLEDGE been heaped upon it in the successive epochs of Trajan, of Septimius Severus, of Aurelian, of Diocletian, and of Con- stantine. Whatever, after such a lapse of time, may be recovered, must depend entirely on the individual industry or sagacity of the inquirer. Tacitus and the Emperor Claudius dwell on points of early Roman history, which in the reign of Augustus were utterly unknown, and the reconstruction of the whole of that history by Niebuhr at the distance of twenty-five centuries, is far nearer the truth than the narrative which Livy composed at the distance of seven. And we might fairly ask whether in the case of a purely natural and intellectual gift, like that of historical criticism, we have any reason for imagining that the heads of the Christian clergy far as they were elevated above their cotemporaries in high moral tone and deep spiritual feeling were exempt from the general degeneracy which overspread the w r hole Roman literature in the age of Con- stantine and Theodosius, which could produce no greater poet than Claudian, no better historian than Ammianus, no profounder philosopher than Boethius. In illustration of these remarks I shall now proceed to give three or four well-known instances of points, on which, if on any, we might have hoped to have received inform- ation from these authors, and yet where their ignorance is so complete that our darkness seems light in comparison. The first two shall be from writers distinguished chiefly by proximity of time; the next three, from Eusebius and Chrysostom, both because their claim to critical acumen is undoubtedly beyond that of their cotemporaries, and also because in the subsequent part of this volume there will be occasion to express our real obligations to them on these very subjects; to Eusebius, for his preservation of the fragments of Hegesippus ; to Chrysostom, for the felici- tous rhetoric by which he has designated the work or cha- racter of each of the three Apostles. OF THE APOSTOLICAL AGE. 35 1. It is well known that most of the early traditions pre- Tradition served by Irenseus were contained in a lost work of Papias, Lord's Bishop of Hierapolis, who had seen and heard the Apostle ? John. This work amongst others contained the following statement of a discourse of our Lord on the times of His kingdom : " The days shall come, in which vines shall grow, " each vine with ten thousand boughs, each bough with " ten thousand branches, each branch with ten thousand " twigs, each twig with ten thousand bunches, each bunch " with ten thousand grapes, each grape containing twenty- " five measures of wine. And when any of the saints shall " take a bunch, another shall cry out, 'I am a better bunch, " take me, through me bless the Lord.' In like manner " also a grain of wheat shall produce ten thousand ears, " and every ear ten thousand grains, and every grain five " measures of two parts of clear white meal, and the rest " of fruits, and seeds, and herbs, according to their several " proportions ; and all animals using these kinds of food, " which are received from the earth, are to become peace- " ful and harmonious, subject to man with all subjection. " 'These things are possible to be believed by believers.' " And when Judas the traitor believed not, and asked, " 'How shall these predictions be brought to pass by the "Lord?' the Lord said, 'They shall see who come to " them; for these are the times of which Isaiah prophesied, " The wolf shall lie down with the lamb.'" (Iren. adv. Hier. v. 33.) Now even if it were possible for a moment to conceive that Papias had in this passage truly preserved a fragment of our Lord's teaching, yet still the fact would remain, that it is a departure from the usual tenor of that teaching, so absolutely unparalleled, that probably no one since Irenaeus has ever ventured to quote it as genuine. But if instead of receiving this as a true tradition, we should all with one voice regard it almost as blasphemy to ascribe such words D 2 8t) THE TRADITIONARY KNOWLEDGE to Him who spake as never man spake if we should all agree with the judgment of Eusebius in supposing thatPapias was here transferring the imaginations of " his b own little mind" to the Divine discourses which he was wholly in- competent to receive or report rightly what becomes of the great storehouse of tradition which his work contained, except in every case to subject it to a comparison with the sole authentic documents, of which we can no longer con- sider him an independent interpreter ? Statement 2. Irenseus, who was bishop of Lyons in the close of the Lord's second century, in his answer to the erroneous assertion of age in fae Gnostics, (which however coincided with the belief of Irenaeus. Clemens, Origen, and the later Fathers generally,) that our Lord's ministry began and ended* in His thirtieth year, states as a positive fact, that His preaching chiefly took place between the fortieth and fiftieth year of His age. This statement he defends partly by inferences from John viii. 56, 57, but chiefly by an appeal " to the testimony of " the Gospel and all the elders who had met John in Asia, " that John had handed down this statement to them, (for " he had remained with them till the time of Trajan :) and " some of them had seen not only John, but others of the " Apostles, and heard this same fact from them, and testify " to the truth of an account of such as has been given." "To whom then," he asks triumphantly, "is credit to be " given ? to men like these, or to [the Gnostic] Ptolemy " who never saw the Apostles, nay, who never even in his " dreams followed so much as an Apostle's footstep." (Adv. Hser. ii. 22.) Now it is just conceivable that Irenseus may be correct in stating that our Lord's public ministry lasted for nearly twenty years, and that in believing that it lasted for one or for three years, the whole Christian world of earlier and later ages alike may have been mis- taken. But if we may be allowed to acquiesce in the b ff<f>68pa ffniKpbs &v rbv vovv Qaiverat. Eus. H. E. iii. 39. OF THE APOSTOLICAL AGE. 37 common belief, sanctioned as it is alike by general consent and sound criticism, then the statement of Irenseus is a crucial instance of the worthlessness of all such traditional proofs. It has been sometimes stated that this is "im- properly called a tradition," that it "makes out no claim " to be considered apostolical." But so far from this being the case it would be difficult to find any appeal to apostolical tradition of equal positiveness and circum- stantiality of statement. However likely it may have been to have sprung in the first instance from a misap- prehension of what the elders may have inferred from John viii. 57, this is nowhere stated in the passage itself, and that text is referred to only as a proof subordinate to the apostolical tradition which Irenseus deemed a suffi- cient guarantee of the opinion which the whole world now regards as an exploded falsehood. When, therefore, on a point of such importance to the whole outward aspect of the Christian history, involving a complete revo- lution in the chronology both of the Gospels and Acts introducing a period of nearly twenty years in our Lord's life, wholly unaccounted for and unnoticed in the sacred narrative when on a point like this, we find that either the immediate hearers of the Apostles so utterly mis- conceived the Apostles' teaching, or were themselves so utterly misunderstood by Irenaeus, we may well ask what outward fact is there in the history of the first century, on which it would not be safer to take the assertion of one " who had not even in his dreams followed so much as an Apostle's footstep," if only it agreed with the undoubted tenor of the Apostles' teaching, rather than the assertion of those who professed to "have heard it from the Apostles themselves," if only it was in contradiction to all that the New Testament teaches us of the Apostles and their Lord ? 3. One of the most remarkable facts on the very surface c Newman's Lectures on the Prophetical Office of the Church, p. 206. 38 THE TRADITIONARY KNOWLEDGE Criticism of the New Testament, is the difference bet ween the fourth peis^by 08 " an( ^ tne tnree earlier Gospels, which accordingly had at- Eusebius. tractec i the attention of the cotemporaries of Eusebius. The solution which he gives is as follows : " The other three " Evangelists wrote the history only of the events after the " imprisonment of the Baptist, as appears from the com- " mencement of their narrative ; (viz. Matt, iv., Mark i., " Luke iv. ;) the Apostle John, therefore, is said to have " committed to his Gospel the period passed over in silence " by the other Evangelists, namely, the events before the " imprisonment, as appears also from his own statement " (John ii. 4). Therefore," he concludes, " to those who " understand this, there will no longer appear any difference " between the Gospels, inasmuch as the Gospel of St. John " contains the earlier part of our Lord's actions, and the other " three the account of the end of His life." H. E. iii. 24. Now at the very outset it is incredible that any one who had a real insight into what it was that he was professing to explain a difference not merely of outward facts, but of tone, spirit, object, of every thing in short which can distinguish one biography from another should have thought that he could do so by a theory of mere chronologi- cal transposition. The very attempt destroys his authority before we examine it. And now confining it merely to that narrow limit of the outward narrative, what is the solution which he offers ? That the events peculiar to the Gospel of St. John, took place before the imprisonment of John the Baptist; in other words, that almost the only events in the Gospel history which the context compels us to connect with the very latest period of our Lord's ministry, such as the visit to the Feast of Tabernacles, and the raising of Lazarus, must be supposed to have occurred in its very earliest period. " Grant this," he says, " and " then St. Matthew and St. John will perfectly agree." Compare this explanation, I will not say with the masterly OF THE APOSTOLICAL AGE. 39 discussions of the subject, and arrangement, of St. John's Gospel in recent commentators, but with the answer which would be given by the humblest theological student of the nineteenth century, and would it be possible to doubt which had the best understanding of the method accord- ing to which the Gospel narrative was composed? 4. No one can read the Acts or Epistles without observ- Statement ing how characteristic and prominent a feature of the O f Tongues apostolical age is represented to us in the Gift of Tongues, and accordingly in modern times many able discussions have been written upon it, from which, in spite of the great obscurity with which it is encompassed, yet a tolerably lively image may be formed of its true nature and ends. Yet of this whole subject, so interesting in itself, so capa- ble of receiving illustration from those who lived near the time, and who might be expected to have heard something of it from those who had actually witnessed it, our sole information from so illustrious a commentator as Chrysostom is summed up in the candid confession which he has left us in his Homilies on the twelfth chap- ter of the first Epistle to the Corinthians d . "This whole " place is very obscure, but the obscurity is produced by " our ignorance of the facts referred to, being such as then " used to occur, but now no longer take place." 5. In order to form an exact historical conception of the Chrono- apostolical age, no point is more necessary to determine stJPaul's than the order of St. Paul's Epistles : the tissue of events, Epistles r 3 m Chry- the understanding of the Epistles themselves, greatly de- sostom. pends upon it. Accordingly in Chrysostom's Preface to his Homilies upon them, is a brief chronological arrange- ment of them 6 , drawn out with tolerable correctness, and d In the subsequent parts of his comment he does indeed say that " after baptism one spake in the Indian, one in the Persian, another in the Roman tongue." But these are evidently mere conjectures of his own. e That the traditionary knowledge of the chronology of the Pauline Epi- stles had expired even before the beginning of the third century, appears from 40 THE TRADITIONARY KNOWLEDGE not without striking remarks on the importance of rightly understanding it. But it is impossible not to see that his knowledge on the subject is entirely confined to the infer- ences afforded by the Epistles themselves : the greater part of his cotemporaries, he says, either knew nothing about it, or else maintained a chronology directly at variance with the evidence of the Apostle's own words : and his conclu- sions accordingly are stated with a hesitation, a meagreness, a consciousness of uncertainty, which by the side of the searching and sifting criticism of German scholars, or even the plain common sense deductions of our own Paley, seem like scepticism itself. The inter- (>. One more quotation shall be added from Chrysostom, of the because, though not immediately connected with this sub- Chrysos- j ec ^ ^ J e ^ * s kindred to it, and affords a remarkable in- stance of the discrimination needed by those who take the Fathers for their guides in exegetical questions. In com- menting on the description of Christian love in 1 Cor. xiii. 8, the difficulty occurs to him, which has occurred to many since, "Why then saith David, 'Do not I hate them, O Lord, that hate Thee; I hate them with a perfect hatred?'" To this question he returns two answers. The first is as follows : " Now in the first place not all things spoken in " the Psalms by David, are spoken in the person of David. " For it is he himself who saith, * I have dwelt in the " tents of Kedar,' and ' By the waters of Babylon there we " sat down and wept,' and yet he neither saw Babylon nor " the tents of Kedar." That is to say, the apparent con- trast between the expressions of the Apostle and the Psalmist is explained by the fact that though David wrote all the Psalms, he yet, as in the case of the 137th, did the Fragment on the Canon preserved hy Muratori, (Routh, Rell. iv. 1,) where the order of arrangement, which professes to follow that of time, is as follows : 1. I and II Cor.; 2. Eph. ; 3. Phil.; 4. Col.; 5. Gal. ; 6. I and II Thess. ; 7. Rom. It is needless to point out the manifold errors. OF THE APOSTOLICAL AGE. 41 not always speak in his own person. On which it may be observed, 1st. What should we say at the present time to any one who was to excuse what appear to be diffi- culties in the Psalms on the ground that the Psalmist put them into the mouth of another person, implying of course that their use "for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, " for instruction in righteousness," depends entirely on their having been spoken in the person of David, and that if we can make them out to be spoken in the person of another, they may be (as in the case of the speeches of Job's friends) the dictates "not of God but of Satan. There may have been interpretations in modern literature equally uncritical, or equally rationalistic, but we may fairly doubt whether the whole recentftheology of England and Ger- many united could furnish a passage which equally com- bined the two. 2ndly. Is there any educated person, now living in England, who if asked 1 ] deliberately (for of course I do not now speak of oversights or popular parlance )'Jwhether the words "By the waters of Babylon we sat down and wept" were written in the reign of David, would not treat that as a wild absurdity, which the Archbishop of Constantinople in the fourth century as- sumed as an undoubted truth ? And if so, does not this imply such a radical difference between the whole mode of viewing the composition of the sacred volume in the respective periods, as to render it worse than useless for the readers of the latter age to be guided in their studies ex- clusively by the writers of the former? Far different is the ground assumed in the second answer, which meets the difficulty by insisting on the gradual progress of God's revelations, on the imperfect standard allowed and even approved under the old dispensation, as contrasted with the perfect law of love in the new. " But besides this we now require a completer self-com- " mand. Wherefore also when the disciples besought that 42 THE TRADITIONARY KNOWLEDGE " fire might come down even as in the case of Elias, ' Ye " know not,' saith Christ, ' what manner of spirit ye are of.' " For at that time not the ungodliness only, but also the " ungodly themselves they were commanded to hate, in " order that their friendship might not prove an occasion " of transgression to them. Therefore He severed their " connexions both by blood, and on every side He fenced " them off. But now because He hath brought us to " a more entire self-command, and set us on high above " that mischief, He bids us rather admit and soothe them." It is not meant that this exhausts the subject ; or that the harmony of the Scriptures might not be still further ^indicated by the distinction which later theologians have often drawn between the letter and the spirit between the (different forms which the same truth assumes in different stages of God's dispensations. But for the present pur- pose it is sufficient to call attention to the union of dis- cordant qualities which is implied in this abrupt transition from a statement which sets all rules alike of criticism and of reverence at defiance, to a statement which, whilst it is in full accordance with the highest requirements of later investigation, is at the same time an almost neces- sary inference from our Lord's own words in Matt. v. 43 ; xix. 8 ; and from the contrast implied throughout the New Testament between the Law and the Gospel. These instances of the small value of the traditionary knowledge of the apostolical age, and of the inability of even the most eminent writers of the fourth and fifth centuries to reconstruct the history of it from such sources, are, of course, perfectly familiar to students of patristic theology, and are, as is also well known, merely samples of a large class of passages which it would be alike invidious and tedious to detail at length. The hypo- OF THE APOSTOLICAL AGE. 43 thesis^ maintained by Tertullian and Cyprian, Cyril of Alexandria, Gregory, Jerome, and Chrysostom, that the dispute between the two Apostles at Antioch was a mere preconcerted collusion the confident 11 belief expressed " always, every where, and by all," in the existence of the Phoenix, not as an argumentum ad hominem, but as an undoubted fact the incapacity to discern or to grapple with the obscurities in the Apostolical Epistles, as when Chrysostom 1 passes over, almost without notice, the cele- brated texts in 1 Cor. xi. 10 ; Gal. iii. 20 ; where the hun- dreds of interpreters in modern times have at least recog- nized the difficulty of the passages, even if they have made but little advance towards discovering the meaning -the substitution of allegorical figures for real explanations of perplexities, whether in the Old or the New Testament, as when Augustine meets the question which naturally occurs on the perusal of the narrative of Jacob and Esau k , by answering that Jacob is the Church and Esau the syna- gogue these, and countless similar instances might be given, each of them capable of a detailed exposition like the preceding, as convincing proofs that whatever excel- lences the writers of the first ages of the Church possessed in other departments, we cannot as a general rule look to them for critical tact in receiving, or critical skill in repro- ducing, the events of a previous period. No doubt in some this critical acumen existed to a far greater extent than in others: but even in them there were counter influences .at work which prevented it from having its full scope. When Origen, for example, turned his attention deli- berately to questions of this nature, the gain to sacred criticism is immediate and undisputed : we thankfully ac- % See the references given in the notes to the Oxford edition of Chrysos- tom's Homilies on the Epistle to the Galatians, (Gal. ii. 12.) fc The only douhts are those expressed by Origen and Photius. 4 See Chrys. ad loc. k See Aug. ad loc. 44 THE TRADITIONARY KNOWLEDGE knowledge his recovery of the true 1 reading of geographi- cal names in Palestine, from his investigation of local tra- ditions his concise but comprehensive summary m of the controversy on the authorship of the Epistle to the He- brews his explanation of the darkness at the Cruci- fixion, as singular then as it is almost universally accepted now. But the tendencies of his age and school it may be of his own individual character led him for the most part to an opposite field of inquiry : it is not with the letter of actual facts, such as we have been now considering, but with the spirit of allegorical and mystical meanings that his name is always associated, and accordingly for one passage which we see quoted from his works as elucidating histo- rical difficulties, we meet with ten in which the his- torical fact is, if not denied or explained away, at least altogether lost sight of, in the profounder spiritual lesson which it was supposed to be intended to convey. To point out whence these counter influences came, or to point out the true services of " the Fathers" to their own or to after ages, is beyond the scope of the present discussion. It is only on the particular point of these claims as critical historians that I have spoken or wish to speak. It is difficult to conceive the circumstances which would justify an indiscriminate depreciation of the eminent men of any age, least of all of an age to which we owe so much, and in which there is so much to love and admire, as the period of the fourth and fifth centuries of the Christian Church. But it is necessary from time to time to shew, that because they did much, there is no reason to expect that they should have done all that there is nothing more extraordinary in their being deficient in historical criticism than in their being ignorant of the invention of printing ; and that their call was so wholly different from that of 1 Comm. on John i. 28. m Apud Eus. H. E. vi. 25. " Comm. on Matt. xxvi. 45. OK THE APOSTOLIC AGE. 45 modern theologians, that to charge the students of recent commentators with the presumption of preferring them to Augustine or Ambrose, is almost as irrelevant as if an admirer of Shakspeare were to be charged on that account with a contempt of Bacon. Where two spheres are wholly incommensurable, all comparisons to the detriment of either are happily innocuous or impossible. THE APOSTOLICAL OFFICE, AND ITS RELATION TO THE OTHER INSTITUTIONS OF THE APOSTOLICAL AGE. THE general description of the essential characteristics of an Apostle which has been given in the Sermon, (p. 23, 24,) will not be disputed. The common notion of an Apostle which must naturally occur to every one's mind, is of one eminently endowed with moral and spiritual gifts. The only sense in which the word is still naturally used amongst us, is of one devoting his energies to some great moral or reli- gious cause, as when we speak of Boniface the Apostle of Germany, or Xavier the Apostle of the Indies, or Howard the Apostle of prisons. Still as there are various notions associated with the name of Apostle, which more or less interfere with the clearness of this impression, and as it is of no slight im- portance to our own conception of the essentially moral and spiritual character of Christianity itself, that the con- ception which we form of those who appear as its chief propagators should correspond to this character, it may be worth while to define more precisely our idea of what we call the Apostolical office. I. The name is probably derived from the words and actions of the (G of our Lord Himself, (John xvii. 18; xx. 21 ; Matt. x. 5,) Apostles. ag ex p ress i ve o f the peculiar characteristic of the Apostles, which I have endeavoured to describe in the text, viz., that they were men, not speaking in their own name, but in THE APOSTOLICAL OFFICE. 47 that of Another ; not doing their own work, but the work of Him who had sent them forth. Compare Rom. x. 15. It is one of the many cases which we find in the New Testament, of an idea and of a word both new each illu- minating and illuminated by the other. The " Prophet " spoke the message which was delivered to him, or painted the vision which rose before him; but it was the pecu- liarity of the inspiration of an " Apostle" that inasmuch as it was not temporary but perpetual, on the one hand not only particular moments of his life, but his whole being was impressed by that one impulse which had driven him forth whilst, on the other hand, his particular utter- ances, far more than in the case of the prophet, appear to depend on the working of his own individual mind, and to be occasioned by the peculiar circumstances of his own life. One only of all the characters in the Old Testament approaches to this distinguishing mark of the New, in the complete self-devotion of his whole life to his original call, Moses, the man of God and it is remarkable, that as in Heb. iv. 1, it is in reference to Aaron that our Lord receives the title of Chief Priest (apxiepevs), so it is in evident re- ference to Moses that He receives the title of Apostle, (aTTocToXo?.) And it is for this reason that, whilst the pro- phet or the ruler may be regarded without reference to any thing but his words or his deeds, the Apostle's authority necessarily rests on the witness of his life and character 3 . It is obvious from this, that whilst in the very highest sense of all, the word could only be applied to Him whose whole life was the reflex of Him that sent Him, and whose words were the reflex of His life, so in the highest sense in which it could be applied to any mere man, it was ap- plied to the Twelve, and to them alone, with the addition of the Apostle Paul. [The only exceptions to this are to be accounted for either by the attraction of the context, (as a See 2 Cor. iii. 1 ; v. 12 ; xi. 1830 ; xii. 12 ; xiii. 3. 48 THE APOSTOLICAL OFFICE. in its application to Barnabas, Acts xiv. 4. 14; Apollos, 1 Cor. iv. 9. 6,) or by its being used in its simple etymolo- gical sense of messenger, (Phil. ii. 30. 45 ; iv. 18 ; 2 Cor. viii. 19. 23.)] The characteristic points, therefore, of an Apostle's office were two. 1. The appointment by Christ Himself. I have said that we can best understand the position of the Apostles by the analogous position of what we call great men. Great men, as we all know, are created by no human agency, but by God Himself. They are what they are often called, " God's nobility." Such, by analogy, although only by ana- logy, were the Apostles. Amidst almost every other conceiv- able difference, they were alike in this, that neither the one nor the other could be made or ordained by man. And this idea is strictly preserved in the New Testament. No human consecration intervened between Christ and His Apostles. His choice, His teaching, His mission not only super- seded but excluded all besides 5 . Nowhere does this appear more strongly than in the case of the two who were created after His withdrawal from them ; when, if ever, outward forms or human agency would have been employed for the purpose. St. Matthias was not appointed by impo- sition of hands, but by lot. He was found to have the only signs by which men could judge of his fitness for the post, namely, intercourse with our Lord, and being a witness of the resurrection : whether he had an inward character b It is a striking illustration of this fact, that in the most solemn inaugura- tion of the Apostles to their office, (John xx. 20,) the symbolic act which ac- companied it was not the usual form of imposition of hands by which the officers of the Jewish synagogue and of the early Christian Churches were appointed to their outward work, but that remarkable sign which is men- tioned here alone " He breathed upon them, and said, Receive ye the Holy Ghost." As if the sense were, "Earthly offices have been and may be given away by outward ceremonial acts, but you must enter on your work with no other recommendation or authority than the inspiration of My Spirit." Comp. Isa. xi. 4; 2 Cor. iii. 1. (See Herder, vom Geist des Christenthums, c.4.) THE APOSTOLICAL OFFICE. 49 corresponding thereto could be known only to the Searcher of Hearts and as soon as the prayer was over, and the lot fell upon Matthias, he was at once "numbered with the eleven Apostles." (Acts i. 2326.) St. Paul's case is, if possible, still more striking. His own words are decisive. " Paul, an Apostle not from man, neither by man, but by Jesus Christ, and God the Father who raised Him from the dead." (Gal. i. 1.) And to the same effect is 1 Cor. ix. 1 4. Two circumstances only in his life most seem to imply the intervention of some human form of appointment. (a). The imposition of the hands of Ananias in Acts ix. 17, three days after his con- version. But if we compare this fact not only with the two passages just quoted, but with his own account of the whole event in the two speeches in the latter part of the Acts, (6 0eo? . . . Trpoexeipio-aro, Acts xxii. 14 ; and still more axfrOrjv croi . . . Trpo^eLplo-acrdal (re, Acts xxvi. 16,) it is clear that the visit of Ananias was regarded as wholly subordinate to the appearance and words of Christ on the road to Damascus, so much so that in the second of the two speeches (Acts xxvi.) it is omitted altogether. The crisis of his life, so to say, was already passed when Ananias arrived ; and the imposition of hands, followed by the gifts of the Spirit, (probably the speaking with tongues, as in x. 46 ; xix. 6,) the cure of his blindness, and his baptism, evidently relate not to his Apostleship, but, as in the other passages where the same conjunction of facts occurs, (Acts ii. 38; viii. 12. 17; x. 46; xix. 6,) to his reception into the Christian society. And even if it could be sup- posed for a moment that these gifts could have constituted him to be an Apostle, it is important to observe that Ananias, through whose instrumentality they were con- ferred, not only was not an Apostle, but, as far as appears, was nothing more than an ordinary disciple, (/Aa&yr^?, ix. 10). ($). The imposition of the hands of the prophets of 50 THE APOSTOLICAL OFFICE. Antioch before his first journey, Acts xiii. 1 3. What has been already said of the coincidence of the call to his Apostleship with his conversion, applies still more strongly against connecting it with an event at least four years sub- sequent. But it is sufficiently clear from the transaction itself. This imposition of hands was evidently no inaugura- tion of Paul to an office which he had not before received, but a solemn dedication of him with prayer to that parti- cular part of it on which he was now for the first time called by the Spirit of God to enter, viz., the journey through the provinces of Asia Minor. The prophets who acted on this occasion were not the superiors, but the inferiors both of Paul and Barnabas; there is no proof, but rather the reverse, that they held any distinct office in the Church of Antioch; Paul himself, who is enu- merated amongst them in xiii. 1, had none such : the gifts of prophecy were enjoyed (1 Cor. xiv. 34; Acts xxi.) both by men and women; Hooker (Eccles. Pol. v. 78. 6.) has truly observed that "we nowhere find prophets to have " been made by ordination ;" and where these same, persons seem to be mentioned again in xv. 40, they are spoken of simply as " the brethren" (VTTO rwv d$e\(f>tov). The act itself also which they performed, is described in xiv. 26, as a "commendation of Paul to the grace of God," a phrase which obviously implies not any communication of a new office or character, but an invocation of God's blessing and protection on his arduous task, which did not take place once for all, but which might be, and apparently was, repeated many times over, whenever the Apostle entered on any new field of labour . 2. The second characteristic of the Apostles lies in the e Observe the repetition of the same expression Acts xv. 40, xiv. 26, when St. Paul departed on his second journey from the same place. " There was " scarce any public design or grand employment, but the Apostolic men had "a new ordination to it, a new imposition of hands." (Bishop Taylor's Epis- copacy Asserted, Works, vii. p. 43.) THE APOSTOLICAL OFFICE. 51 fact that their work consisted not in the performance of any formal or outward acts however solemn, but in the impres- sion produced by a whole life, character, and teaching. This in fact is the almost necessary consequence of what has just been said respecting their appointment. As their mission was derived from no lower source than God Himself, through the calling of His Son, so their authority rested on no lower ground than the personal qualities with which God Himself had endowed them through the gift of His Spirit They were, if one may so say, the natural aristocracy of the Church, as great men are the natural aristocracy of the world. Their power was moral, not magisterial; their influence spiritual, not official. The very words, "apostolical office," are, when we come to analyse them, a later union of two discordant ideas. Offices no doubt they undertook in abundance, t but it was only for particular emergencies of time and place, only to shake them off again, their own essential office, if we still will have the word, remaining unimpaired without them, as if it had never been identified with them. So it was in the well-known instance of the serving of tables and the minis- tration of the poor, which was first undertaken by the Twelve, then dropped, then resumed by Paul, when in addition to his labours as sole Apostle of the Gentile Churches, he also undertook the difficult and delicate task of providing for the needs of the Christians in Judaea. (Acts vi. 1, 2; 1 Cor. xvi. 1; xi. 30; 2 Cor. vi. viii.) So, to take again the case of the Apostle whose life is best known to us, at one time the government of all the Greek and Asiatic Churches devolved on him alone, (2 Cor. xi. 28,) then it is thrown provisionally into the hands of his companions, as of Timothy and Titus, (1 Tim. i. 3 ; Tit. i. 5,) once more however to be resumed by himself, whenever he should return in person to his charge, (1 Tim. iii. 14; v. 13.) And so of the various names which in the apostolical age or E2 52 THE APOSTOLICAL OFFICE. subsequently were taken to denote various orders or func- tions in the Christian society, there is not one, Bishop d , Presbyter, Deacon, Pastor, Prophet, which may not be found in all stages of. their lives applied to one or other of the Apostles ; not of course in their stricter and more technical meaning, but still sufficiently shewing how far above all the outward institutions which have gathered at its feet the true idea of the Apostolical character rises in its greatness, embracing all, circumscribed by none of them transmitted to later times, so far as it can be trans- mitted at all, not by any continuance, real or supposed, of apostolical usages or forms, but by the perpetuation and imitation of apostolical goodness and apostolical wisdom. The spiri- II. Here then the proposed sketch of the characteristics of Ihe Apo- of the Apostles might stop. But two or three points have Church nece ssarily been stirred in it, which may require solution, and which will also serve to illustrate what I have said. The Apostles, although the chief instruments in building up the early Church, were not the only instruments ; and in order to understand their ministrations aright, it may be necessary to describe those inferior ministrations of dif- ferent kinds, which, although in part resembling them, must not be confounded with them. First then, we find various gifts and functions described as bound up, like the gifts and functions of the Apostles, though less frequently and prominently, with the very essence of religious life in the Christian society, as the most visible sign of God's Spirit amongst Christians. See Rom. xii. 5 8 ; Eph. ii. 20 ; but especially 1 Cor. xii. 28 ; Eph. iv. 7. On these two last passages Hooker (Eccl. Pol., v. 78. 8, 9.) observes as follows. " I beseech them therefore ft which have hitherto troubled the Church with questions d MO-KOTTOS, in Acts i. 20 : Trpe<rftvTfpos, in 1 Pet. v. 1 ; 2 John 1 ; 3 John 1 : SiaKovia, tiianovtiv, Actsi. 25 ; vi. 1, 2; 1 Cor. iv. 1 ; 2 Cor. ix. 13 : John xxi. 16: Trpo^rr/s, Acts xiii. 1. THE APOSTOLICAL OFFICE. 53 " about degrees and offices of ecclesiastical calling, because " they principally ground themselves upon two places, that " all partiality laid aside they would sincerely weigh and " examine whether they have not misinterpreted both " places, and all by surmising incompatible offices where " nothing is meant but sundry graces, gifts, and abilities " which Christ bestowed. To them of Corinth his words are " these : ' God placed in the Church first of all some " Apostles, secondly Prophets, thirdly Teachers, after them " powers, then gifts of cures, aids, governments, kinds of " languages. Are all Apostles ? Are all Prophets ? Are " all Teachers ? Is there power in all ? Have all grace " to cure ? Do all speak with tongues ? Can all inter- " pret? But be you desirous of the better graces.' They " which plainly discern first that some one general thing " there is which the Apostle doth here divide into all " these branches, and do secondly conceive that general " to be church offices, besides a number of other diffi- " culties, can by no means possibly deny but that many " of these might concur in one man, and peradventure in " some one all, which mixture notwithstanding their form " of discipline doth most shun. On the other side admit " that communicants of special infused grace, for the bene- " fit of members knit into one body, the Church of Christ, " are here spoken of, which was in truth the plain drift of " that whole discourse, and see if every thing do not answer " in due place with that fitness which sheweth easily what " is likeliest to have been meant. For why are Apostles " the first but because unto them was granted the reve- " lation of all truth from Christ immediately ? Why " Prophets the second, but because they had of some " things knowledge in the same manner ? Teachers the " next, because whatsoever was known to them it came " by hearing, yet God withal made them able to instruct, " which every one could not do that was taught. After 54 THE APQSTOLICAL OFFICE. " gifts of education there follow general abilities to work " things above nature, grace to cure men of bodily dis- " eases, supplies against occurrent defects and impedi- " ments, dexterities to govern and direct by counsel, finally " aptness to speak or interpret foreign tongues. Which " graces not poured out equally but diversly sorted and " given, were a cause why not only they all did furnish up " the whole body but each benefit and help other. " Again the same Apostle otherwhere in like sort, ' To " every one of us is given grace according to the measure " of the gift of Christ. Wherefore he saith, When He " ascended up on high He led captivity captive, and gave " gifts unto men. He therefore gave some Apostles and " some Prophets and some Evangelists and some Pastors " and Teachers, for the gathering together of saints, for " the work of the ministry, for the edification of the body " of Christ.' In this place none but gifts of instruction " are expressed. And because of teachers some were Evan- " gelists which neither had any part of their knowledge by " revelation as the Prophets and yet in ability to teach " were far beyond other Pastors, they are as having re- " ceived one way less than Prophets, and another way " more than Teachers set accordingly between both. For " the Apostle doth in neither place respect what any of " them were by office or power given them through ordi- " nation, but what by grace they all had obtained through " miraculous infusion of the Holy Ghost. For in Christian " religion this being the ground of our whole belief, that " the promises which God of old had made by His Pro- " phets concerning the wonderful gifts and graces of the " Holy Ghost, wherewith the reign of the true Messias " should be made glorious, were immediately after our " Lord's ascension performed, there is no one thing whereof " the Apostles did take more often occasion to speak. Out " of men thus endued with gifts of the Spirit upon their THE APOSTOLICAL OFFICE. 55 " conversion to Christian faith the Church had her minis- " ters chosen, unto whom was given ecclesiastical power " by ordination. Now because the Apostle in reckoning " degrees and varieties of grace doth mention Pastors " and Teachers, although he mention them not in respect " of their ordination to exercise the ministry, but as exam- " pies of men especially enriched with the gifts of the Holy " Ghost, divers learned and skilful men have so taken it as " if those places did intend to teach what orders of ecclesias- " tical persons there ought to be in the Church of Christ 6 ." To these remarks little need be added, except in the way of confirmation and inference. The gifts here spoken of belong, as Hooker well observes, not to any one portion of the Church, but to the whole of it. In 1 Cor. xii. 28, this is necessarily required by the whole tenor of the argu- ment. "It is not necessary," the Apostle would say, "that each of you should have all the gifts of the Spirit, but it is necessary that each of you should have some of them." In Eph. iv. 7, the substitution of the phrase eSw/ce for Wero in 1 Cor. xii. 28, has somewhat tended to obscure the similarity of sense between the two passages. But this substitution is evidently occasioned by the greater promi- nence of the idea of "giving" in the later passage, in con- nexion with the quotation from Ps. Ixviii. in the 8th verse ; and the 8th, the 13th, (ol Trdvres,) and 16th verses, (irdaa a<t>rj,) express in the strongest language the fact that the perfection of which the Apostle speaks as the ultimate con- summation of the Christian body was to be brought about not by the ministration of one part to the rest, but by the joint co-operation of all the parts together. Again, as Hooker also observes, these two passages speak not of any outward office, but of personal gifts and quali- ties, moral, intellectual, or physical. Whatever obscurity e The remainder of the section has been left out, as belonging to another part of this discussion. 56 THE APOSTOLICAL OFFICE. may hang over particular parts in either of the passages, or (from its greater conciseness) over the whole of that in the Epistle to the Ephesians, there can be no doubt as to the meaning of those points which, as being the most prominent, naturally fix the meaning of the rest. Of the name of " Apostle " (aTrocrroXo?) which stands first in both catalogues, enough has already been said to shew its independence of any outward circumstance whatever. The next in order, as well as in importance, is that of " Pro- phet" (TrpofirJTTjs). Of this office in the early Church, I have already spoken in connexion with the dedication of Paul and Barnabas to their first mission by the Prophets of Antioch. What was then said is confirmed by all else that we know on the subject. What was the character of the Hebrew Prophet, from which that of the Christian Prophet was immediately derived, (so much so that in some passages (Eph. ii. 20; 2 Pet i. 19.) it is difficult to distinguish one from the other,) is sufficiently known to us from the Old Tes- tament. Confined to no tribe, or station, or sex, sometimes found in the heroic chieftain or chieftainess of an insurgent people, as in the case of Ehud and Deborah, sometimes in the precincts of the sanctuary, as Samuel, sometimes in the palace of the kings, as Saul and David, sometimes on the wild mountains and secluded pastures of the country, as Elijah and Amos ; the Prophet stands forth to us as the direct antithesis to all the more formal and positive parts of the Jewish system as the natural counterpoise to the more ceremonial element which was represented in the Priest- hood as the natural link which united the humblest of the people to the anointed of the Lord who sate on the throne of David. And accordingly whilst the inauguration of Priest and King is detailed to us with the greatest pre- cision, the Prophet with hardly a single exception f appears at once as the messenger of God, without any outward or f 1 Kings xix. 17. THE APOSTOLICAL OFFICE. 57 formal consecration to his office whatever. Schools indeed we hear of from the time of Samuel down to the end of the monarchy in which were educated those who were more or less gifted with the prophetical faculty; but even those seem rather to have been intended to develope or excite the divine inspiration than to train their pupils to a dis- tinct order in the commonwealth, and in all the most emi- nent of the number we have their own express statement, like that of St. Paul respecting his Apostleship, that they were first called to their mission by nothing short of the vision or voice of God Himself. Such were the essential features of that office which after a long interval revived in the first burst of inspired enthusiasm which ushered in the birth of Christianity. And the few traces which we gather of its history from the New Testa- ment, amply prove that the chief difference between its ear- lier and its later forms lay not in the additional restrictions, but in the additional freedom and developement which it acquired in its passage from the law of bondage to the law of liberty. There was still, as far as we can see, the same absence of any human or ceremonial inauguration to the office its authority still rested on the heayenly message itself which was to be delivered, and which, by disclosing to the hearer the secrets of his heart, caused him, like the Hebrew king of old g , to fall down as in fascination before a power greater than his own (1 Cor. xiv. 25.) But the wish of Moses in the camp, that not one or two only, but that all of the Lord's people should prophesy, was now re- ceiving a higher fulfilment than in any previous time ; whereas, even in the widest diffusion of the prophetical gifts in the age of Samuel or Isaiah, they had still been the exceptions, not the rule, so now they were the rule, not the exceptions ; the very modifications which they under- S I Cor. xi. 24. Comp. Numb. xxiv. 4, and the comments in Hengsten- berg's History of Balaam, p. 140. 58 THE APOSTOLICAL OFFICE. went arose from the fact that they had ceased to be par- ticular and had become universal that they were the ex- pression not of isolated individuals, but of the whole col- lective Church. If in one single family there were no less than four daughters all known as prophetesses, (Acts xxi. 9) ; if in one whole society, though it might have been dis- orderly, yet it would not have been thought impossible or extraordinary for every member of it, male and female, to have prophesied even in the public assembly, (1 Cor. xi. 4; xiv. 24. 31. 34); it is obvious that the new epoch was truly described by St. Peter when on the day of Pente- cost he saw, in the sudden disappearance of all previous barriers before the power of the new faith, the first ade- quate fulfilment of the words of Joel ; ee I will pour out My Spirit upon all flesh : and your sons and your daugh- ters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams : and on My servants and on My hand-maidens I will pour out in those days of My Spirit; and they shall prophesy." (Acts ii. 17, 18.) The two instances of Apostle and Prophet, which, as in order so in importance, stand first in the passages which have been quoted, will be enough to bear out the truth of Hooker's interpretation. Of the rest which are mentioned, some, (" miracles, gifts of healing, diversities of tongues," 1 Cor. xiv. 29,) will hardly be regarded by any one as belonging to any especial order or office ; the last in par- ticular, which occupied so prominent a place in the mind both of the Apostle and his readers, was evidently common to the whole Church, (1 Cor. xiv. 23,) and the usual ac- companiment upon a sincere adoption of baptism, (Acts xix. 6; x. 46.) Others, ("teachers, helps, governments," lCor.xiv.28; " evangelists, pastors," Eph.iv. 6,) are in them- selves more ambiguous, and shall be spoken of in another connexion presently. Meanwhile it cannot be doubted that the less certain and less prominent points in these and THE APOSTOLICAL OFFICE. 59 similar passages, must be fixed by the meaning of the more prominent and more certain points, such as those that have been mentioned. It could hardly be intended to describe a system of regular orders and officers by heading it, or uniting it, with gifts and functions whose essential charac- teristic it was that they belonged to no regular order or office whatsoever. We can now therefore understand how it is that these gifts are spoken of as the necessary accompaniment the natural expression, if I may so say, of a religion and a society, which was, in the highest degree, not formal and cere- monial, but moral and spiritual. What the Apostles were in the highest sense, the Prophets, Evangelists, speakers with tongues, workers of miracles, were in a lower sense the living representatives of all that was best and holiest in the Christian society the living witnesses of that unseen Friend and Master whose power and wisdom and good- ness was shewn forth in their actions and lives. As the Apostles derived their especial character from their inter- course with, and appointment by Christ Himself, so these lower functions were called into existence by the Spirit of Christ in that great manifestation of power which, in the energy of its operations, belonged peculiarly to the first rise of the new religion. And as no later time has or can reproduce in all points the exact image of the office of an Apostle, so no later time has ever witnessed, in any thing like its full extent, the same outpouring of spiritual gifts. " Prophesying," in its literal sense, was unknown after the close of the first century ; " the gift of tongues," with the exception of one faint trace of it in the beginning of the second, so totally passed away, that its very name and nature was to the writers of the fourth and fifth centuries a hopeless riddle : and whatever may be the case with respect to the continuance of miracles in general after the generation of the Apostles and apostolic men, no 00 THE APOSTOLICAL OFFICE. one could think for a moment of comparing the scattered and disputed instances, few and far between, from the second to the fifth century, with the constant display of them which is implied in the Acts, in the two Epistles to Corinth, and in the Epistle of St. James. In this, their strict historical sense, all these gifts ceased with the cessation of the immediate circumstances which had called them forth, thereby adding one to the many marks which divide, as by an impassable bar, the aposto- lical age from all that succeed. In another and a more gene- ral sense they can doubtless be still reproduced amongst us ; not, indeed, so truly as the office of the Apostles, inasmuch as they did not, in the first instance, rest so entirely on a moral and spiritual basis inasmuch as they belonged essentially to those things which St. Paul expressly de- clared should " cease and vanish away b ," whereas the apo- stolical authority had its root in that Divine grace of which we are assured no less emphatically that it (t never faileth." But by analogy, as has been often observed, these gifts are still a necessary growth of the perfected Christian society. If Christ be truly Lord of all, if to Him have truly been committed all things both in heaven and earth, then it is no idle fancy, but the simple truth, that we may trace His hand not only in the extraordinary and supernatural, but in the ordinary and natural gifts of men that the earliest form of the Christian society was, as it were, a microcosm of the world at large that what was supplied to it in its first stage by miraculous intervention, is to be sought for now in the various faculties and feelings which it has com- prehended within its sphere. And therefore it is truly a part of Christian edification to apply what St. Paul 1 and St. Peter have said of the diversity and relative importance h 1 Cor. xiii. 8. 1 Rom. xii. 68; 1 Cor, xii. 28; 1 Pet. iv. 10, 11. See Arnold's Ser- mons, vol. ii. 217 ; vi. 300. THE APOSTOLICAL OFFICE. 61 and final cause of the first extraordinary display of the gifts of the Spirit, to the analogous variety of the gifts of imagi- nation, reasoning powers, thought, activity, means of bene- ficence, whose co-operation in some degree is necessary to society for its very existence, whose co-operation in hum- bleness, disinterested love, and dependence on Him who gave them, is no less necessary to society for its perfection and full Christianization. III. Such, strictly speaking, is the end of all that can The out- be said on the formation of the early Christian Church as fi c es of such. But, besides the Apostles, and those who were pos- 2^2" sessed of spiritual gifts, there are also offices and officers Church, mentioned, not, like these, in connexion with the inner- most life of the Church, but as occupying posts of teaching and of government properly so called. It remains, then, to inquire what these were and what their relation to the Church of their own and of later times. 1. The first certain mention of any such, is that of the The Seven Seven Hellenists appointed to preside over the distribution of charities at Jerusalem. (Acts vi.) Although their appoint- ment is only mentioned incidentally, not so much for its own sake as for the sake of introducing the history of the forerunner of St. Paul, yet it may so far be regarded as in itself an epoch, that it constitutes the first instance of any direct administrative office in the Christian society, and, as such, furnishes us with the general principles on which all similar offices were founded during the apostolical age. (a.) The appointment is not described as necessarily re- sulting from any fixed principle of the Christian religion, but as intended to meet a particular emergency, viz. the murmurs of the Hellenist widows, and the accumulation of work upon the Apostles. And accordingly, whatever was required by the need, (eVJ TT}? %pe/a? ravrrj^,) distributing, (vi. 3,) preaching to the new converts, (vi. 9; viii. 5. 26,) baptizing, (viii. 12,) they performed. They are only men- 62 THE APOSTOLICAL OITICE. tioned in connexion with the history of Stephen and Philip, (Acts vi viii. ; xxi. 7,) and have probably k no direct con- nexion with the " Deacons" (Sidtcovoi) in the later period of the apostolical age, of whom I shall speak presently though they may possibly have borne the name, and though there was in some respects a likeness between their respec- tive duties. But their usual appellation 1 down to the time when the Acts were composed was "the Seven," (Acts xxi. 7,) as if in opposition to " the Twelve/' That is, on the one hand were the Apostles, maintaining the essen- tially moral and spiritual character of their office, by giving themselves up to prayer and the word on the other hand were the Seven, directing all the outward arrangements of the visible society. And if, as Hooker says, "tract of "time has clean worn out the first occasions for which " their office was the most necessary," (Eccl. Pol. v. 78. 5,) this should not prevent us from distinctly conceiving its original design. (b). They 'were elected, not by the Apostles, still less, like Matthias, by lot, but by the whole society. And they were dedicated to their office with prayer and imposition of hands, either by the whole society, or by the Apostles in conjunction with them, exactly as Paul and Barnabas were afterwards dedicated to their first mission by the pro- phets of Antioch. All that the Apostles, as such, had to k Such seems to have been the view of Chrysostom, (Horn, on Acts vi.) The council of Trullo (Can. 16.) also draws a distinction between these Seven, and the later deacons. (Concil. Labb., torn. vi. p. 1149.) 1 One of them indeed (Acts xxi. 5.) is called an "evangelist." But the context and usage of the word elsewhere makes it unlikely that it had any especial connexion with the office of the " Seven." 1. Philip is so called in connexion with the prophetical gifts of his four daughters, which would rather lead us to suppose it to imply something of the same kind. 2. Such is also the sense required by the context of Eph. iv. 11. 3. Timotheus is so called in 2 Tim. iv. 5, and whatever may have been the nature of his post at Ephesus, it could hardly have been identical with that of the Seven at Jeru- salem. THE APOSTOLICAL OFFICE. 63 do with the matter, was the relief which it afforded them : in the appointment of the Seven, they acted, if at all, merely in conjunction with the rest. " Select from yourselves, not from us, (eTTio-KetyaaOe e' vp&v,) men whom we (the whole Church you and we together not ^efc distinctively) shall appoint to their work (/cardo-TrjaofjLev) ; whilst we (^et? e) devote ourselves to prayer." And in like manner it is left ambiguous whether the Apostles, or the Church generally, are to be understood as "laying hands " upon them in vi. 6. (c). Whatever gifts were possessed by the Seven, they had not after, but before their dedication. "Look out men (not who are imperfectly supplied, or who are here- after to be supplied, but who are already) full of the Spirit and of wisdom," i. e. of those qualities which would most naturally fit them for the office, and which (vi. 10.) they exercised in that office. 2. The same general features will be found, although less TheElders distinctly marked, in the next institution which we find. y ou ng This is that of the Elders (Trpeo-ftvTepoi), illustrated as it men * is by the apparently corresponding office of "young men" (vearepoi,, or vedvivKou.) Of its origin we have no regular account, partly because it was not like that of " the Seven" connected with the progress of the apostolical history, partly also because unlike the Seven, it was not called suddenly into existence, but, as the name implies, and the nature of the office shews, grew up gradually from the natural allotment of certain functions to age and youth, and from the imitation m , conscious or uncon- m It is possible that of a.Tr6ffTo\oi may be supplied from T&V just before ; but the natural construction of the sentence would require the same nominative case to eTreflrj/caz/ as to effTyo-av and e|eAe|az/To, viz. rb Tr\ri6os ; and that it was no unusual thing for others besides the Apostles to lay hands on their fellow Christians is evident from the case of Ananias in Acts ix., of the Antiochene prophets in Acts xiii., and of believers generally in Mark xvi. 18, 19. 64 THE APOSTOLICAL OFFICE. scious, of the Jewish synagogue. But we may safely infer that it could not have assumed any definite shape at the time of the appointment of the Seven : the whole account of that transaction evidently precludes the notion of any governing body in the Church of Jerusalem be- sides the Apostles and the whole assembly; and the first mention of the "presbyters" (Acts xi. 30) implies that the very duty of presiding over the alms, which had been be- fore the especial business of the Seven, was now allotted to them. If one might hazard a conjecture, it would be that when in process of time the Seven had been broken up by the death of one of their number (vii. 50), and the settle- ment of another at Csesarea (xxi. 5), the outward super- intendence of the Church, originally committed to them, now devolved upon those whose age and tried qualities fitted them to exercise it, whilst the more active and actual bodily labour would be discharged by the younger members", who had from the first, according to the general feeling of the East, come forward to assist their elders. (Acts v. 6. 10.) In the case of these latter, who are only mentioned by that spe- cific name once again, (1 Pet. v. 5,) the connexion between the office and the age is too evident to be overlooked for a moment. In the case of the Elders, though it must from the first have been slightly modified by the official sense in which the corresponding Hebrew word was used in the ser- vices of the synagogue, yet even to the very close of the first century it still retained something of its original mean- ing. St. Peter, in speaking of the presbyters, classes him- self with them (1 Pet. v. 1.) as a fellow elder (o-v/j,7rp(r/3v- Te/30?) merely on account of his own advanced age. St. John (2 John 1 ; 3 John 1,) evidently for the same reason calls himself emphatically "the elde_r," (6 Trpeafivrepo?.) And n Compare the relation of Joshua to Moses, (Numb. xi. 28; Josh. i. 1,) expressed in both cases by the Hebrew word corresponding to the Greek THE APOSTOLICAL OFFICE. 65 it is well known that the name of " the elders" (ol irpea- pvrepot) was still used in the next generation not for any distinct office, but for those venerable men who were the depositaries of the last instructions of the Apostles. (Irenseus, passim. See Rothe, Anfange der Christlichen Kirche, i. 221.) 3. Such was the original office of the Elders, an office, The Bi- like that of the Seven, originating in the needs of the Deacons, particular Church of Jerusale^ n? and most frequently men- tioned in connexion witby'^.. and though, as we shall see, the name was part? . , y introduced into the Gentile societies, yet it is still in the predominantly Jewish Churches, and in the writings of the Apostles of the cir- cumcision, James arid Cephas and John, (Acts xi. 30; xv. 4, 22, 23; xxi. 18; James v. 1 ; 1 Pet. v. 14; 2 and 3 John 1 ; Rev. iv. 4, 10; v. 6, 8, 11, 14; vii. 11, 13; xi. 16 ; xiv. 3 ; xix. 4,) that it is chiefly to be found, as if it still lingered within the circle of the forms of the syna- gogue and the atmosphere of eastern customs, to which, humanly speaking, it owed its birth. But the first wants of the early Churches were too simi- lar all over the empire not to require the creation of similar offices to those which existed amongst the Churches of Judaea. It was a Gentile rather than a Jewish office that was to be ennobled and sanctified by its introduction into the bosom of the Universal Church. The institution of two grades like those just mentioned, one for the dis- charge of the higher, the other for the discharge of the lower and more mechanical duties of the society, was at once so simple, and also so exactly in accordance with the familiar division of the higher and the subordinate magis- trates of the Grecian commonwealths, that nothing more than congenial names, and a slight modification to meet local difficulties, was needed to introduce it at once into the Gentile Churches. The first instance of the name of 66 THE APOSTOLICAL OFFICE. "elders" in a Gentile society is that in which they are de- scribed as elected (xeiporovrjcravres) by Paul and Barnabas on their first journey through the several Churches of Asia Minor, (Acts xiv. 23) ; and the next is when St. Paul called together "the elders of the Church" from Ephesus to receive his farewell address at Miletus (Acts xx. 17.) But in the last of these cases the same persons whom the narrative calls "elders" are by the 'le himself designated as "over- " seers" or "bishops ^ * -^TTOU?) "over the flock," (xx. 28.) And although this naT^ a ^ ro bably used rather in its general than in its official seC evej yet it is probable that we here see the first indications of that use of it which was in a short time to become almost universal. The eight earliest of St. Paul's Epistles contain no detailed direct allusion to the government of Christian societies ; but at the close of his first imprisonment we find in the Epistle to the Philip- pians (i. 1), that the "bishops" and "deacons" are spoken of as the two bodies which had the supreme control of that Church; and in 1 Tim. iii., it is obvious that the only appointments with which Timotheus was concerned were those of " bishops" and "deacons." These were evi- dently the two correlative terms, as 7rpeo-/3vTpoi, and veto- repot seem to have been before : exactly corresponding in their mutual relation to the ap%ovTe$ and vTryperai of the Grecian states : thus, in the language of the New Testa- ment, "bishop" (eV/cr/eoTro?) is never used in conjunction with "younger" (z/eoore/jo?), nor "elder" (irpecT^vrepo^) with "deacon" (Sta/eow?). Accordingly the above passages amply prove that the offices of "bishop" and "presbyter," though slightly differing in origin, were in station and duties exactly identical. In the address of St. Paul (Acts xx. 28), if the word eVtWoTros is to be understood at all in its technical sense, it is applied to those who are called in xx. 17, "presbyters of the Church," (i.e., as the context indisputably implies, of the Church of Ephesus,) and who THE APOSTOLICAL OFFICE. 67 therefore cannot be regarded as independent heads of sepa- rate societies. In the Epistle to the Philippians (i. 1), it is no less evident that the "bishops" there spoken of con- stitute a body of several officers of equal rank within the single Church of Philippi ; and, if so, in a position corre- sponding to that elsewhere (Acts xi. 30; xiv. 23), denoted by the presbyterate. In the Epistles to Timothy and Titus, the identity of the offices is re- 1 still more apparent by the context in which the ^ ar ^cur. Titus is ordered to appoint at Crete presby'^.. ,ith qualifications precisely corresponding to those . ^ v ured in the first Epistle to Timothy for bishops, and uie reason for the necessity of such qualifications is expressly said in both cases to be " because " the bishop must be of this character," (Tit. i. 5 7; 1 Tim. iii. 1 7.) And further it is to be observed, that in 1 Tim. iii. 1 13, as in Phil. i. 1, no officers are mentioned, except " bishops and deacons," a mode of speech which would be inexplicable if so -important a body as that of presbyters had intervened .between them. If it be asked how it hap- pens that the name of "presbyter" occurs at all in these Epistles (1 Tim. iii. 14; v. 1, 7; Tit. i. 5), in its official sense, when it was so nearly or so entirely superseded by the more recent term of " bishop," it would appear that this transition is precisely what the passages indicate: where the functionaries of the society were spoken of in their more general relation, they might still be designated by that respectful title of " elder," which even in these Epistles is at times hardly distinguishable from that which would merely denote old age, (see 1 Tim. v. 1, 2 ; Tit. ii. 2, 3 ;) whereas when their official qualifications are brought for- ward, it is at once exchanged (as in Tit. i. 7) for the appellation of " bishop," which to Gentile ears more natu- rally expressed this aspect of their position. It only remains to trace in detail the origin and growth In this passage the word is F2 68 THE APOSTOLICAL OFFICE. of the two names of "bishop" and "deacon" in the Churches where we chiefly find them. In them, as in so many words in the New Testament, there is as it were a conflux of two trains of thought, an oriental and a western. In the earlier or more exclusively Jewish of the writings in the New Testament, we find the name "bishop" (eVtWo- 73-09) only in its more general sense, and in all these pas- sages (Acts xx. 28, Troifjiaiveiv, 7roifi,vi<p, i. 20, eiravXis, 1 Pet. ii. 25, iroifdva, v. 2, Troi^dvare} it evidently ex- presses generally the watchful care and superintendance of a shepherd, and this, so far as it became incorporated into the phraseology of Jewish Christians, must doubtless have been its predominant meaning. But it was, as we have seen, in the Gentile Churches that the word, from the more general signification noticed above, passed into the name of an office ; and this result was doubtless accelerated by the fact that it had been already so used as the translation of civil and military offices by the Seventy (see especially the elaborate use made of Is. Ix. 17, in Clem. Rom. 42), who had themselves probably derived it from the name of the officers stationed by the Athenians in their subject towns, corresponding to the Harmostse of LacedsemonP. It is evident in like manner that the word "deacon" (&a- KOVOS), with its cognate verb and substantive, had acquired a religious sense indicative of a man's humble service of God and his brethren long before it was appropriated to any particular office, and is perhaps more extensively used than any other for all the various functions of Christian life. This word however had also a hold on the Greek language from classical times, though not in quite so P Such at least was the opinion of Hooker, (Ecc. Pol. vii. 2. 2.) " The " name bishop' hath been borrowed from the Grecians ;" which he defends by the passages often since quoted from Suidas (voc. eTrtovcoTros), Dionys. Hal. Ant. ii. 76, Cic. ad Att. vii. 11, To these may be added Aristoph. Aves. 1022. with the Scholiast. THE APOSTOLICAL OFFICE. 69 definite" a form, as eWcr/eoTro?, sufficiently however to render its amalgamation easy, (see Buttmann's Lexilogus, p. 231 233); and it is accordingly only in the Gentile Churches^ that we find it, and that at a much earlier period than its correlative office of "bishop," viz., Rom. xvi. 1. It is not here necessary to enter into the various changes which in after times distinguished it from the simple office of the younger minister of the Christian synagogue. One modification however has r been remarked on its passage from the Jewish to the Gentile Churches, viz., the institution of female deacons, as we see at Cenchrea (Rom. xvi. 1), and perhaps at Ephesus (1 Tim. v. 8 19); not improbably from the greater delicacy required in deal- ing with the female converts in Greek society, where, as Grotius well observes, the female portion of the house- hold (yvvai/ccwrjTis) was closed against male intruders. These then are all the offices, properly speaking, which we can discover in the early Church. Other names indeed occur, also evidently denoting an official eminence, as ol TTpoio-TaiJLevoi, Rom. xu. 8; 1 Thess. v. 12, (evidently used as the most general name for the presiding body,) ol rjyov- fievoi, Heb. xiii. 7, (since adopted by the Greek clergy as a title for the heads of monastic establishments,) ol KCLTTJ- ^owre?, (Gal. vi. 6,) but it is so natural to suppose that they were either substantially the same as the elders and overseers, or (as is more likely) provisional officers who were afterwards blended with them, that this point re- quires no further discussion. Nor again is it necessary to prove at length the wholly temporary character of the office, if it may be called an office, which Timotheus and Titus held respectively at Ephesus and Crete, of whom the first was governor of the Church only in Paul's absence, 1 Tim. iv. 13 ; i. 3, and left it altogether before Paul's * Rorn. xvi. 1 ; 1 Tim. iii. 8 ; Phil. ii. 1. r Rothe, i. 244. 70 THE APOSTOLICAL OFFICE. death, 2 Tim. iv. 9, and the second was to leave the island that very winter, 2 Tim. iv. 10 ; Tit. iii. 12 s . Nor can any ecclesiastical institution be deduced from the mention of the "angels" of the seven Churches, in the total absence of any proof for such an application of the word in the apo- stolic age, and against the uniform use of it in all other parts of the Apocalypse in its usual sense of a heavenly messenger, which seems to be required especially in this place by the obviously figurative and prophetical style of the whole address in which the term occurs. (Rev. i. iii.) Accidental Such then is the difference between the apostolical and essential Ut the spiritual gifts of the early Church, on the one hand, distinction and itg O ffi ces on tne ot h er h an( j. That the two were fre- between. the gifts quently blended in the same persons is of course not only offices. likely but certain to have happened, even were no traces of such a union expressly recorded. "As every man hath re- " ceived a gift (e\a{3ev %dpi(r/jLa), even so minister the same " one to another (i. e., for your mutual profit, els eavrovs, " comp. 1 Cor. xii. 27), as good stewards of the manifold " grace of God ; if any man speak, let him speak as the " oracles of God ; if any man minister, let him do it as of " the strength (LO-^VOS) which God supplies (xopyyel), that " in all alike God may be glorified through Jesus Christ, to " whom (i. e., as the source of these gifts) is the glory and " the power (i. e., the glory of the teaching and the power " of the strength) for ever and ever." (1 Pet. iv. 10, 11.) Such doubtless was the general principle on which those who were endowed with the different gifts chose or were This is hesides almost required by the improbability of supposing Timo- theus to have remained at Ephesus after the arrival of St. John, or of ascrib- ing to Titus (contrary to the practice of that or of any of the early ages of Christianity) the regular episcopal superintendance not of any one of the hundred cities, but of the whole island of Crete. And it may be observed that Chrysostom in his Homilies on the Pastoral Epistles never gives the name of bishop either to Timotheus or Titus. THE APOSTOLICAL OFFICE. 71 appointed to the different offices in which they could best exercise them ; some, according to the division here sug- gested, in accordance with Rom. xii. 6 8 ; 1 Cor.* xii. 28, by their moral or intellectual character rather entitling a man to the function of teaching, others by the more out- ward and physical activity, which was also counted as a gift of God, being more suitable to the functions of government or of administration to external wants. The possession of these gifts was what (in the language of later ages) constituted the Divine "call" to the offices of the Church ; the subsequent appointment to these offices cor- responded in like manner to the actual ceremony of the present (< ordination." Accordingly, as time went on, the two spheres would naturally become concentric, the gifts which in Rom. xii. 6 8 ; 1 Cor. xii. 28, are freely distri- buted through the whole community, appear in the later enumeration of Eph. iv. 11, to be represented in the more fixed and concrete form of "evangelists," "pastors and " teachers," who in their turn are thrown into the shade in the yet later Epistles by the more formal array of " bishops " and deacons," who like Timotheus in his post" at Ephesus might well be called to find in their new offices the fittest scope for the exercise of those gifts of et government," of " knowledge," of " teaching," and of " ministering," which they had received long before at their conversion. But the two things are not the less essentially distinct. The former belong to the Church, strictly as the Church, * The gift of tongues in this passage is put last, perhaps as the one of which the Apostle was especially speaking : otherwise they are arranged as in 1 Pet. iv. 10; Rom. xii. 6, first the gifts of "speaking," then of "action" or " strength." u 1 Tim. iv. 14; 2 Tim. i. 6. The comparison of these passages with 1 Tim. i. 18. confirms the conclusion to which we are led by the general analogy of the apostolical history, and to which this transaction if otherwise interpreted would form the only exception, that the "gift" which Timotheus was to "stir up," had been received by him at his first conversion. Acts xvi. 1, 2. Comp. Acts ii. 38 ; viii. 17; ix. 17 ; x. 44; xix. 6; Gal. iii. 5. 72 THE APOSTOLICAL OFFICE. as a spiritual society of which Christ was the head, and all its members religiously equal in the sight of God, although endowed by Him with various gifts for the perfection of the whole body. The latter belong to the Church, not as the Church at all, but so far forth as the Church, dwell- ing on earth and amongst men, is constrained to borrow the forms of the world. It is not without significance that, whilst the name at least of the chief of those offices was amongst the Jewish Christians borrowed from the existing institutions of the synagogue, amongst the Gentile Chris- tians it was, as we have seen, derived from those of Greece and Rome. And in like manner, all the other names by which their functions were first designated, sprung not from the religious but the civil vocabulary of the time ; and the ideas which they first suggest to those well read in the his- tory of the times, are not of spiritual, but of political power. u Ordo" (the origin of the present "orders") was the well- known name of the municipal senates of the empire, "ordinatio" (the original of our (( ordination") was never used by the Romans for their religious ceremonies; the "diocese" already existed in the divisions of the Roman empire : the earliest place of Christian assembly was not a temple, but a basilica: the stern counsels of the first bishops are couched in the very language of the consuls and senates of the ancient republic: the Papacy itself, according to the well-known expression of Hobbes, of which the truth up to a certain point will not be disputed by any, was "the ghost of the deceased Roman empire " sitting crowned upon the grave thereof x ." In saying thus much I have slightly outstepped the limits of the apostolic age ; because, from the nature of the case, there was not in the apostolic age sufficient scope for the idea to develope itself. But though the intensely moral and spiritual character of the whole period precluded x See Hooker, Ecc. Pol. vii. 8. 7. Gibbon, c. xv. note 147. THE APOSTOLICAL OFFICE. 73 the possibility of any complete organization such as ex- isted in the Church a few years later, yet it is not to be denied, that in the last stage of the lives of the two great Apostles of the Asiatic Churches, St. Paul and St. John, we see something like the beginning of a new and com- plete institution growing up under their hands. We see it both on its good and evil side, on the one hand in the appointment of Timotheus and Titus by St. Paul, temporary though it seems to have been, and in the establishment of single officers in some at least of the Asiatic citres y by St. John; on the other hand, in Diotrephes striving to have the first place (3 John 9), and in the nameless indi- vidual whom Clement of Rome charges with usurping the rights of the Corinthian presbyters, (Clem. Rom. c. 47, 54,) w r e see the shadows cast before by the events of the coming age the little cloud at first like a man's hand, which was destined to overspread the whole heaven the earliest indications of that illustrious office, which was to assume such gigantic proportions in the days of Ignatius, of Cyprian, and of Gregory. To pursue these indications into their expansion in later history would be foreign to the present purpose; but it will not be out of place to add, in conclusion, a few words to point out how they contain elements of instruction which we could ill spare from the sacred volume, and which amply justify the parting gleam shed upon them by the latest writings of the Apostle of the Gentiles, by the latest care of the Beloved Disciple. First, these institutions serve to bridge over the gulf between the apostolical period and that which followed it; they were indeed but the outward frame-work of the 1 forou fte?/ eTTHTKOirovs KaraffT-fiffaiv, oirov Se oAas KK\r)(rias ap/j.6<r(av, Zirov Se K\riptp, eW 76 viva. KXripwffcai/, rwv viro TOV irufv/maros ffrjfji.aivofj.ei'cav. Eus. H. E. Hi. 23. " Ordo episcoporum ad originem recensus, in Joannem stabit auctorem." Tert. adv. Marc, iv. 5. 74 THE APOSTOLICAL OFFICE. Spirit, but still they were something tangible and visible for the Christians of the first age to hand on in bodily form to their successors, and for the Christians of the second age to look back upon as having, in very truth, grown up under the shadow of apostolic authority, and amidst the blaze of apostolic miracles. " We stop at the " last Epistle of St. Paul to Timothy," it has been said, " with something of the same interest with which one " pauses at the last hamlet of the cultivated valley, when " there is nothing but moor beyond. It is the end, or all " but the end, of our real knowledge of primitive Chris- " tianity ; there we take our last distinct look around ; " further the mist hangs thick, and few and distorted are the " objects which we can discern in the midst of it." This is perfectly true. Still it is something for us now it must have been something for the Christians of the second and third centuries to be able to trace in those " few and dis- " torted objects," a likeness, faint it may be and merely ex- ternal, but still a likeness to the forms which we last saw before the mist closed in upon us ; we know how precious are the relics of characters, or periods, which have passed away from us ; and we can well understand how dearly the generation which succeeded to the times of Paul and of John, must have cherished the links which bound them, however slightly, to the institutions amongst which Paul and John had actually lived and moved. Secondly, the prominent position which these offices of government occupy in the closing period of the apostolic age, implies a sanction it might perhaps without offence be said a sanctification of the principle of government gene- rally. When we contemplate the active freedom, the uni- versal excitement, the preternatural energies, of the Chris- tian society, as implied in the earlier Epistles, we might be led to doubt whether any outward and administrative in- stitution was not in itself an infringement on the original THE APOSTOLICAL OFFICE. 75 apostolical conception of a Christian Church. But when we find the attention bestowed on institutions of this kind in the pastoral Epistles of St. Paul, and in the best authen- ticated traditions of St. John, we learn that here also the harmony of God's dispensation has been preserved, and that this element of human interest, though still subordinate to the higher moral and spiritual ends of the whole society, has not been overlooked in the comprehensive sphere of apostolic teaching. The well-known injunctions in Rom. xiii. 1 6, and 1 Pet. ii. 20, to obey the authorities of the Roman empire, as ministers of God, had already prepared us to regard the power of government as an object to be held in respect and admiration by its Christian subjects to invest, as it has been said, "even those laws which we " call the common machinery of government," with some- thing of a divine character. The passages of which we are now speaking, whether in the writings or the actions of the later period of the apostolic age, carry us yet a step further. They teach us that these offices of outward administrative power may not only be reverenced by Christians, as exist- ing without the pale of Christianity, but may also be held by Christians themselves, within the pale of Christianity, without fear of degrading or secularizing their higher calling as citizens of heaven. Further than this the veil could not be withdrawn except by a miraculous anticipa- tion of the whole course of the world's subsequent history ; but so far as the apostolic sanction could be given to the Christian use of social functions in so simple, and, poli- tically speaking, so subordinate a body as the first Chris- tian society, so far it was given, and is capable of an in- finite variety of applications, not ecclesiastical only, but civil, down to the latest stage of the world's existence. Too much time perhaps has been expended in the fore- going pages on the proof of facts which are familiar to 76 THE APOSTOLICAL OFFICE. every student of this portion of Christian antiquity, and which have been long ago summed up in the obvious re- mark of Bingham, (ii. 19. 3,) that "all Churches had not " immediately all the same Church officers on their first " foundation, but time was required to complete their con- " stitution." But, not to mention that these facts are still often forgotten amidst the echoes of controversies which have themselves long since died away, it is not unim- portant to observe the testimony which, so far as they go, is borne by them to the genuineness of the Epistles which embody them. It will be observed that the state of things implied by them resembles indeed more or less the indica- tions preserved to us in the writings immediately subse- quent, such as Clement, but is wholly distinct from any thing after the middle of the second century. By that time not only the whole constitution of the Asiatic Churches had been altered, but the very terms by which its offices were expressed had changed their meaning. It is not perhaps impossible, but surely it is in a very high de- gree improbable, that works, which speak only of presby- ters and deacons, should have been composed during or after a period when, as even the genuine remains of Igna- tius testify, the authority of a single person was regarded as the one object of paramount importance when it must have required an effort of imagination wholly uncongenial to the habits of the time, to assume the language of a former age on the very points respecting which the greatest changes had taken place. And if it is only by slow degrees, and after the lapse of many centuries, that the original meaning of these passages has been discovered, it may afford some satisfaction to the Christian student to reflect that this is one of the cases, referred to before, where modern criticism has been allowed to furnish an evidence to the truth of the apostolical writings, which to the vague apprehensions of an earlier age was wholly or in part de- THE APOSTOLICAL OFFICE. 77 nied. We may lament that we can no longer find in the Pastoral Epistles the exact mirror of our own institutions that we cannot anticipate half a century by calling Timotheus the bishop of Ephesus, or by elevating that venerable name as it occurs in the pages of the New Testament to the single dignity which it has since acquired. But it is surely a compensation to feel far more truly than heretofore in their perusal that the very contrast between the earlier and later signification of the words employed sets a seal on their historical value and to be reminded by the absence of that complete organization which was reserved by God's good Providence for subsequent times that' we have not descended from the higher region of the apostolic age, that we are still moving not amidst the forms belonging to a particular period, but amidst the general principles which best accorded with the first beginnings of His Church, and can be applied for its guidance in all future ages alike. SERMON II ST. PETER. MATTH. xvi. 18, 19. Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build My Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth, shall be bound in heaven, and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth, sJuill be loosed in heaven. IN continuing the subject which I opened to you SERM. some time since from this place, when I attempted ~ to set before you the general character and position of the three great Apostles, St. Peter, St. Paul, and St. John, it must now be my endeavour to exhibit, so far as one part of so complex an enquiry can be separated from another, the first of the Three, St. Peter, both in his historical relation to the age in which he lived, and also in the practical applica^ tion of his life and example to ourselves. Whatever difficulty exists in recalling any part of the apostolical age, exists in the highest degree with regard to the earliest period of it represented to us by St. Peter. It is not only that his character is less strongly reflected in his writings, but that the 80 ST. PETER. SERM. outward sphere of his action, the immediate scope of ' his teaching, the cotemporary mode of thinking and feeling with regard to him, belongs, far more than in the case of the other two, to a state of things which has long passed away, not only from our experience, but from our very thoughts and imaginations. We must banish from our minds not only all the recent controversies with which his name has been con- nected, but all those images of the later epoch even of the apostolical age itself, with which the Epistles of St. Paul have made us familiar ; we must go back in thought to a time even before the name of Paul was known, or if known, known only to be suspected and feared when the dawn of Chris- tianity was but just breaking over the eastern sky, and men were too deeply absorbed in watching the first streaks of sunlight catch the mountain tops, to look round on the wide and varied prospect which was opening to their view on every side. Still there is something in the very remoteness of the scene, something in the very twilight of that early morn- ing, something in the very shade that veils so much from our sight, which invests with additional in- terest any image however faint of the only living object that we can discern, and which may render this enquiry profitable, even though its only result should be to impress upon us not our knowledge, but our ignorance. I. It is naturally in the first stage of St. Peter's life that we must look for the leading idea of his whole character. Progress indeed there was in him as in ST. PETER. 81 the other two, but there was no great and abrupt SERM; change from his former self, no sudden conversion as in St. Paul, no wide chasm of which we know nothing as in St. John. What he was when we first knew him, that same man, sanctified, softened, strengthened, he was down to the end. He was then and he still continues to be, in a sense which was true only of himself, the representative of the original apostolical brotherhood, of those who had seen the Lord face to face, of those who dwelt in the earliest recollections of that time preserved to us in the two earliest Gospels, both in an especial manner a connected with his name and teaching. What he was, that we see clearly they in a lower degree were also. He was exactly what he has been well called by those to whom that highest concep- tion of ancient poetry was still a living image. He was in the words of Chrysostom b the l< Coryphaeus" of the devoted band, which, like the Chorus of the Grecian Tragedy, watched the unfolding, part by It would require too long a discussion to enter fully on the connexion of the two first Gospels with St. Peter. It will suffice to observe with regard to that according to St. Matthew, that internal and external evidence alike represent it as the Gospel of the Jewish Churches with which St. Peter was especially con- nected, and that some of its recensions actually bore the name of Peter. And with regard to the Gospel according to St. Mark, the strong internal evidence of a kindred origin with St. Matthew's Gospel is confirmed by the unanimous tradition which recognises in it the substance of St. Peter's teaching as communicated to his companion and interpreter. b Chrysost. ad Matt. xvi. 16. 82 ST. PETER, SERM. part, of that awful drama, half actors half spectators, - from its opening scene to its final crisis. He is the central figure round which they all move ; in his hopes and aspirations, advancing, wavering, baffled, triumphant, we see the hopes and aspirations of them all ; in his impassioned acts and words, we catch the energetic expression of that which in them is silent or motionless ; in that strong Jewish enthusiasm, which is the key to his whole character, clinging to the forms of the ancient law, yet with his heart open to their true fulfilment, we see the natural leader of those whose especial office it was to be at once the last link in the line of Jewish pro- phets, the first in the line of Christian Apostles. Of all the three Apostles, as of God's chosen instruments in other times and for other purposes, it must be remembered that there was a correspond- ence between their work and their character. Dis- cover the one, and you have discovered the other. The call was made by Providence, and to that call their lives were the answer. It is when the fields are white unto the harvest that the Lord of the harvest sends forth His labourers to gather it in. It is difficult for us now to conceive the moment of suspense, when in the language of St. John, He who had been in the beginning with God, "came c l( unto His own, and His own received Him not." The yearnings of ages were accomplished, the law and the prophets were fulfilled, yet " the world c John i. 11. ST. PETER. 83 " knew Him not :" even " the greatest of those that SERM. <f had been born of women," could not reach the point at which he should become d " the least in " the kingdom of heaven :" even within the nearest circle of all, His kinsmen drove Him forth, and His brethren believed not on Him e . Where then was the smoking flax which the spark should kindle into life ? Who or what was to bridge over this chasm between the old and the new dispensations ? Who was to take the first step without which even the wisdom of Paul and the love of John could have found no fitting place ? Was Caiaphas indeed the representative of the whole people of Israel, as he deemed himself or was by others deemed to be, or was it still possible to find traces of that nobler influence, so characteristic of the better spirits of the older times, who stood fast indeed on " the ancient " ways," but whose hearts and minds f , unlike all the other nations of antiquity, turned not backward d Matt. xi. ll. e Luke iv. 29 ; John vii. 5. f See Bacon's paraphrase of the often quoted text " Stare super " antiquas vias." " That we stand upon the ancient ways and then " look about us, and discover what is the straight and right way, " and so to walk in it." (Essay on Innovations.) Compare Tholuck's first Appendix to his Commentary on the Epistle to the Hebrews. " The Jew was especially an ' homme de 1' avenir,' a ' homo desi- " deriorum.' " It is impossible in a passing remark to enlarge upon this remarkable feature in the character of the chosen people. The golden age of Palestine was not in the past, but in the future ; the epic of their history was in their prophecies ; the hero, if one may so speak, of their national affections was no divine ancestor of remote antiquity, but the Messiah who was " to come." G 2 84 ST. PETER. SERM. to an irrecoverable past, but forward to a distant ' future? It would be needless, perhaps, to look for any outward circumstances to account for feelings, which, if they existed at all, must have been im- planted from above in the inmost depths of the human heart. Yet if we were to turn especially to any one part of Palestine for such a faithful like- ness of the ancient glory of God's people as was needed for this purpose, it would be amongst the mountains of Galilee, or the secluded villages which line the shores of its inland sea. There, as we are reminded by St. Matthew", " in the borders of * Matt. iv. 15. The general sense of this passage, as of Isa. ix. 1, 2, from which it is quoted, is, that even the most despised and remote parts of Palestine shall share in the future glory of the Messiah's kingdom. (See Ewald, ad loc.) And in one sense it might be said that the Galileans were so mixed up with the sur- rounding Phoenician tribes as to be more than half Gentiles. This, however, does not interfere with the Jewish zeal here ascribed to them. They were, as distinct from the inhabitants of Judaea, the peasantry of Palestine. However much the purity of their race may have suffered from their juxtaposition with hea- then neighbours, their manners must have been less exposed than those of their southern countrymen to the contagion of Greek and Roman influence. It is amongst the followers of the Galilean Judas, perverted as their zeal might be, that we find the last trace of the mingled spirit of national independence and religious enthusiasm which had in former days charac- terized the struggle of the Maccabees against Antiochus : it is in the fidelity and affection of the Galilean peasants to their protector Josephus, that we find the simple feelings of self-devotion and gratitude which were vainly sought for in the Sanhedrin and the metropolis. (See Joseph. B. J. ii. 8. ST. PETIIH. 85 " Zebulon and Napthali " amidst the recollections SERM, of those heroic tribes who had once " jeopardied - " their lives unto the death" against the host of Jabin under the very shadow of those ancient hills which had once echoed the triumphant strains of Deborah and of Barak, was nursed that burning zeal, that unbroken patriotism, which made the name of Galilean so formidable even to the legions of the empire. There, far removed from the min- gled despotism and corruption of the schools and courts of Jerusalem, out of the country, from which the chief priests and scribes were proudly convinced that no prophet could arise, we might fairly look for the freer and purer development of those older yearnings after the future, of that un- dying trust in the invisible, which had once cha- racterized the Jewish race for an ardent hope of the promised deliverance, not yet hardened into formalism by the traditions of the Pharisee for a soaring aspiration after Divinity not yet chained to earth by the unbelief of the Sadducees. Such were all the Galilean Apostles such espe- cially was Simon surnamed the Rock. No priest of the house of Levi, no warrior of the host of Judah, ever burnt with more fervent zeal in behalf of God's chosen people ; no prophet ever waited in more rapt expectation for the hope of the coming De- liverer, as it dawned upon him through the earthly images which bounded his immediate view in Baby- 1 ; Aiit. xviii. 1. 26; xx. 5. 2. Vita passim, but especially c. 42, 43, 50.) 86 ST. PETEE. SERM. Ion, or Edom, or Jerusalem, than did the fisherman - of Galilee as he hung upon the words and looks of that unknown Teacher who appeared on the shores of his native lake. Gradually, dimly, doubtfully, the vision rose within his mind ; sometimes an awful consciousness of some Divine Presence, which, like Gideon or Manoah, he "prayed to depart from " him 1 ;" sometimes of an earthly empire, in which they who had " left all and followed Him k ," should reign as satraps of the King of Zion ; sometimes of the blaze of glory which rested on the ancient tabernacle, as when he woke upon the holy mount, and spoke " not knowing what he said 1 ." But, amidst all these dark and wavering images, his face was set in the right direction ; and therefore, in that memorable scene of which every detail of place and circumstance is described to us with unusual precision, when at Csesarea Philippi, far withdrawn from the gaze of the multitude beneath the snowy heights of Hermon, the question was solemnly put, "But whom say ye that I am m ?" the heavenly truth flashed upon him, and his whole being ex- pressed itself in the words which did indeed con- tain the meeting point between the two dispensa- tions ; " Thou art the Christ, the Son of the Living " God ;" the anointed Messiah, whom prophets and kings had desired to see ; the Son of Him, who once again, as at the burning bush, had come with everliving power to visit and redeem His people. 1 Luke v. 8. k Matt. xix. 27. * Luke ix. 33. m Matt. xvi. 15. ST. PETER. 87 Well might the solemn blessing which follows an- s E R M. nounce to us, as with a trumpet's voice, that this - was at once the crisis of Peter's life and of the Christian faith. " Thou hast told Me what I am, " and I will tell thee what thou art." In that con- fession were wrapt up the truths which were to be the light of the future ages of Christendom ; on him who had uttered it devolved at once the awful privilege of passing from the Jew into the Chris- tian ; from the Prophet to the Apostle ; from Simon the son of Jonah, into Peter the Rock. Gradually too, and doubtfully, and with many a wild and wayward impulse, did the enthusiasm of Peter kindle not merely into admiration for the Divine Teacher, but love for the Divine Friend. That central fire which was the life of the whole career of every one of the Apostles, so far as they were Apostles at all, in him existed, not more deeply and truly, it may be, but more visibly, as the one absorbing form in which his natural enthu- siasm centred. Amidst all the impetuous sallies of zeal amidst all the weaknesses consequent on our presumption and vehemence whether when he drew the sword in the garden, or gave way to the panic of the moment in the house of Caiaphas, this was still the sustaining, purifying, restoring principle ; " He needed not save to wash his feet, " and was clean every whit n ." Whatever else might be the feelings with which n John xiii 10. 88 ST. PETEB. SERM. he looked upon our Lord with whatever grounds " the early Church may have traced to his hand the representation of the Prophet and Lawgiver, which is preserved to us in the Gospel according to St. Matthew, it may have been a true feeling which ascribed to his more personal and direct teaching that second Gospel which, though in substance the same, is yet so remarkably contrasted with it in the minuteness p and liveliness with which it records the outward actions, the look and. manner, the very Syriac words which fell from Him who there ap- pears not merely as the Fulfiller of the ancient covenant, but in the closer and more personal rela- tion of the human Protector and Friend a Friend not only in boundless power and goodness, but in all human sympathy and tenderness. "He loved " St. John exceedingly/' says Chrysostom, " but it " was by Peter that He was exceedingly beloved." E. g. Matt, v vii. x. xiii. xviii. 15 20; xxiii. xxiv. xxv. xx viii. 18 20. P Compare for minute details, Mark v. 4, 13 ; vi. 21, 39 ; viii. 24; xi. 12, 13, 20; xiii. 1, 3; xiv. 51, 52, 68; for the 'out ward look and manner, vii. 34; viii. 12, 23; x. 16; for the Syriac words, Epphatha, vii. 34 ; Talitha Cumi, v. 41 ; Abba, xiv. 36. Inasmuch however as this vividness of description is also to be found in passages, such as the description of Herod's banquet, (vi. 21,) where it cannot be traced to any ocular observation either of the Apostle or Evangelist, it is perhaps safer to ground the in- ternal evidence for a peculiar connexion between the Gospel of St. Mark and the teaching of St. Peter not so much on the liveli- ness of the details as on the greater degree of attention devoted to the outward and the local, than the inward and spiritual part of our Lord's ministry. ST. PETER. 89 And therefore, as the more intellectual crisis OSERM. Peter's character and work (if I may so say) is - represented to us in the scene to which I have just alluded at Csesarea Philippi, so its moral phase is determined by that second scene on the shore of the sea of Tiberias, which the art of the painter has instinctively blended with it, when on the thrice- repeated declaration not only of general affection, but of the deep personal love of a human friend (Kvpie olSas on <pi\ o"e q ,) once again, in language more indefinite, but not less solemn than on the earlier occasion, that second blessing was pro- nounced, whose echoes are still reverberated to us alike from their fulfilments or their perversions, down to the latest ages, " Feed My sheep ; feed " My lambs r ." II. And now let us carry our thoughts a few years forwards and place ourselves in that early period of the Christian Church, of which our only historical record is to be found in the twelve first chapters of the Acts. It is indeed a scene only known to us dimly and partially ; the chronology, the details of life, the characters and fortunes of the several Apostles, are wrapt in almost impenetrable darkness. One colossal figure however emerges from the gloom, now more than ever the represen- tative of his brethren, though from twelve they have grown to many thousands ; though from the little i See Essay on the Promises to Peter. * John xxi. 15 17. 90 ST. PETEft. SERM. flock of the first Apostles they have grown into a - vast society striking its roots far and wide wherever the Jewish race extends. Can we doubt that this was the time when those promises to Peter which I have just quoted recurred to the minds of the dis- ciples with all the force of prophecies which had received their full accomplishment ? Can we doubt that, when they saw him stand forth in the front of the whole body of the believers, in their first days of bereavement, for the election of a new Apostle, in their first hour of exultation on the day of Pentecost, in the first brunt of persecution from the Jewish Sanhedrin, Peter was to them indeed the Rock and Shepherd of the Church 8 ? Can we doubt that when they witnessed the thousands* upon thousands of his converts, they felt that it was the rolling back of the everlasting doors by him who had the keys of the kingdom of heaven? that" when the magic arts of Simon quailed before him, when x the four quaternions of Herod's soldiers were unable to detain him in the guarded fortress, they felt that the embattled powers of evil were driven back be- fore that power against which the gates of hell should not prevail ? Can we doubt that when they saw the crowds 7 rushing into the city and laying their sick along the streets if so be that the shadow of Peter passing by might overshadow some of them, the awful z judgment upon falsehood in the 3 Acts i. 15 ; ii. 14 ; iv. 8. t Acts ii. 41 ; iii. 4. 11 Acts viii. 18. x Acts xii. 4, 10. y Acts v. 15, 16. z Acts v. 3, 5 ; ix. 36. ST. PETER. 91 death of Ananias , the divine sanction of beneficence s E R M. in the resurrection of Dorcas, they felt that what - Peter had bound on earth was indeed bound in heaven, that what Peter had loosed on earth was in- deed loosed in heaven ? But as before, so now, there was yet a higher mission to discharge than to stand at the head of his brethren. He had been the first to recognise 'the manifestation of the Son, he was now to be the first to receive the manifestation of the Spirit. It is true that as before he had been the fervent Galilean, so now he was the Apostle of the Circumcision*. Still in those appeals which swayed the hearts of thousands in the streets of Jerusalem, he takes his stand b on David's tomb he welcomes the newest and latest of God's dispensations in c the language of the oldest of the prophets. Still he and his brother Apostles are to be found entering the Beautiful Gate of the temple, to join in its noon- day services d ; still at the close of day they may be seen lingering on its eastern 6 height in that ancient cloister which bore the name of Solomon. The a Gal. ii. 8. b Acts ii. 29. " His sepulchre is with us until this day." c Acts ii. 16. "This is that which was spoken by the prophet " Joel." For the antiquity of the prophecy of Joel, see Ewald on the Prophets, i. 64. d Acts iii. 1. " Peter and John went up together into the temple " at the ninth hour." e Acts iii. 11 ; v. 12. Solomon's porch, or cloister, (oroa,) as is well known, was so called from the fact that in it were preserved the few fragments that remained of the ancient Temple. Joseph. Ant. xx. 9. 7. 92 ST. PETEK. SERM. worship of the temple and the synagogue f still went - side by side with the prayers, and the breaking of bread from house to house ; the Jewish g family life was the highest expression of Christian unity, whe- ther in the household of the great Apostle himself, where Abraham and Sarah 11 were still the types of Christian marriage ; or in that sacred circle of the brethren of our Lord, in whom with- their wives 1 and children the apostolic age may have loved to trace the continued sanction of those domestic rela- tions by which they were bound to our Lord Him- self. The fulfilment of the ancient law was the aspect of Christianity to which the attention of the Church was most directed, whether as set forth in the Divine code of Christian duty contained in the earliest and most purely Jewish of the Gospels, that according to St. Matthew, or in the earliest and f Acts ii. 46 ; compare the assembly (<rvvayo>yr)v) of Jewish Christians in James ii. 2. KO.T OIKOI/. Acts ii. 46 ; and compare the household of Mary, Acts xii. 12. h 1 Pet. iv. 1. For Peter's own household see Matt. viii. 14 ; 1 Cor. ix. 5 ; possibly 1 Pet. v. 13 ; and the tradition of his wife's martyrdom in Clem. Alex. Strom, vii. p. 736. 1 1 Cor. ix. 5. " Have we not power to lead about a sister or " wife, as well as the other Apostles (ot AOITTO)), and as the brethren of " the Lord and Cephas." So the story of St. Jude's grandchildren, in Hegesippus apud Eus. H.E. iii. 20. From the passage above quoted from 1 Cor. ix. 5, it is obvious that as a general rule the original Jewish Apostles, as distinguished from the Apostle of the Gentiles, were married, and with this coincides the belief of the three first centuries, which maintained that St. John was the only exception. See Cotel. ad Tgn. Phil. 4. ST. PETER. 93 most purely Jewish of the Epistles, the Epistle of SERM. James the Just, now beginning to take his place in - the Divine economy as the type of all that strictly belonged to the primitive, original Israelite Chris- tian j . But was this all? Was Christianity to be no more than a perfected Judaism ? Was Peter to be no more than the founder of the Jerusalem Church ? Was this to be the final end of those lofty aspira- tions of the ancient prophets ; the adequate fulfil- ment of those parting words of his ascended Lord ? Was the. existing frame-work of the Christian so- ciety, which, however widely ramified, was still con- fined to that Hebrew race, and those Hebrew insti- tutions that bore on their very front the marks of approaching dissolution was this the Church against which the gates of death were never to pre- vail? Were all those generations of the ancient 1 " world who had lived before the law all those countless hundreds of Gentile proselytes who even now were knocking for admittance at the gates of life were all these, with all the heathen nations at their rear, to be for ever excluded from the king- dom of heaven ? Such were the questionings which must have arisen in the mind of the great Apostle, when on the roof at Jaffa, overlooking the waves of the western sea ] the sea of Greece and Rome the J See the Sermon on St. James. k See 1 Pet. iii. 18, which, however interpreted, must imply reference to the state of the primitive world. 1 See Christian Year, Monday in Easter Week. 94 ST. PETER. SERM. sea of the isles of the Gentiles he knelt in trance - and prayer waiting for the answer to his thoughts. No, it could not be ; no, although he himself shall pass away before a new Apostle, greater even than himself; though the first shall be last m and the last first ; though he has borne the scorching blast n of the rising sun, and the other has been called but at the eleventh hour though all this take place, it must not be. What God hath cleansed , that Peter must not call common or unclean ; . already the messengers of the Roman centurion are in the court below ; once more he is to wield the keys of life and death once more to loose the Christian Church for ever from that yoke p which neither he nor his fathers had been able to bear once more, wider far than ever mortal hand had up to that moment dared, to throw open the gates of heaven, even to the whole human race ; and then his work, his own especial work, as the first Apostle and the founder of the Church, was ended. III. The conversion of Cornelius is then the last recorded apostolical act of St. Peter an act, in its unspeakable consequences, in its union at once and m Matt. xx. 6. The whole of this passage has long been used in the Church -services as the Gospel for the Feast of the Con- version of St. Paul. n rov Kavo-fova, Matt. xx. 12. That it means not the heat of the noonday sun, but the scorching wind of the desert at sunrise, appears from James i. 1 1 ; Jonah v. 8 ; Matt. xiii. 6 ; see Trench's Parables, p. 169. Acts x. 15, and compare Acts xv. 9, where the same word KaOapicras is repeated. Acts xv. 10. ST. PETER. 95 for ever of the Gentile with the Jewish world, SERM. worthy indeed to close the career of him whose - characteristic it was, that with his thoughts ever bounded by time, his spirit was ever open to the first dawn of things eternal. Henceforth, for the long period of twenty years, between his escape from Herod and his death, we derive our know- ledge of his life only from such incidental allusions as occur in the Epistles, or from such uncertain light as can be gathered from ecclesiastical tradi- tions. At Antioch q , at Corinth, and in the scene of his earlier history at Jerusalem, we trace for a moment his presence or his influence. We catch a glimpse of him with the partner of his labours, and his son r Mark, far away in the distant i For Antioch, see Gal. ii. 11 ; for Corinth, 1 Cor. i. 12, and compare 1 Cor. ix. 5 ; xv. 5, as indicating a certain authority in his name. For Jerusalem see Gal. ii. 9 ; Acts xv. 7. The connexion of St. Peter with Alexandria and Egypt, though asserted in some ancient traditions, and some modern commen- tators, is too remote or too uncertain to be noticed here. r 1 Pet. v. 13. It is difficult to resist the conclusion that T) (TweKXeKTr) is the wife of Peter, and if so that 6 vlos /xou is not metaphorically (in which case TCKVOV would be the natural word, as in 1 Tim. i. 2) but literally " his son." Whether the Babylon from the neighbourhood of which this Epistle is dated be the city of Mesopotamia, or, (as in Rev. xiv.) a metaphorical name for Rome, cannot perhaps be settled with certainty. On the one hand there is the natural inference that in the context such a meta- phor would be out of place; the fact that the Mesopotamian Babylon was, next to Jerusalem, the chief seat of the Hebrew Jews, and so the proper field of Peter's labours ; the indication (observed amongst others by Niebuhr) in 1 Peter i. 1 . that the countries are addressed not from west to east but from east to west. On the other hand is the frequent use of such metapho- 96 ST. PETER. SERM. east, by the waters of Babylon, amongst the de- - scendants of those who long ago had hung their harps on the willows that are therein. And yet again, although here we are dependent solely on the wavering testimony of later ages, it may still be allowed to us to trace his footsteps by the banks of the Tiber to witness beside the Appian way the scene of the most beautiful of ecclesiastical legends 8 , which records his last vision of his crucified Lord to overlook from the supposed spot* of his death the city of the Seven Hills, to believe that his last remains repose under the glory of St. Peter's dome u . Such uncertainties are indeed of no moment to us, if " the hour had indeed come when neither at Jeru- rical names in the Jewish phraseology of this period, and of this very name for Rome (Schottgen Hor. Heb., vol. i. 1125); the calamities which had recently devastated the Babylonian pro- vinces; and the short interval which is left for the passage of St. Peter from Babylon to Rome, if we attach any credit to the common traditions of his martyrdom. Whatever can be said in favour of this second hypothesis is stated with great ability by Windischman in his Vindicise Petrinse, (p. 130-133,) and it is supported by the universal opinion of the four first centuries, and in later times by the polemical interests both of Papal and Anti-papal controversialists. But on the whole there does not seem sufficient reason for abandoning the literal meaning of the passage, backed as it is by the arguments just mentioned, and which maybe found at length in the commentaries of Steiger, (Eng. Tr., vol. i. p. 30), and Mayerhoff, (p. 130,) or in Lightfoot, Hor. Heb. Appendix (ad 1 Cor. xvi.) The Chapel, " Domine quo vadis." 1 The eminence of S. Pietro in Montorio on the Janiculan. u The remains of St. Peter, as is well known, are supposed to be buried immediately under the great altar in the centre of the famous Basilica which bears his name. ST. PETER. 97 :( salem," nor Babylon, nor Rome, "were men to SERM. " worship the Father," but that everywhere, in the - words x of St. Peter himself, "he that feared God and " worked righteousness, would be accepted of Him;" and, however great the scope which the silence of Scripture on these points may leave for imagination or speculation, it certainly does not encourage us to dwell upon them either for historical infor- mation or moral instruction. One general fact, however, does emerge to us respecting him out of the general obscurity which is the true image of the close of his mortal life ; and which shews, that though his own age was passed away, and the age of Paul had begun, there was still a work left, which then, and not before, Peter, and none but Peter, could perform 7 . Throughout the empire, in the capital and in the provinces, there existed a powerful body, of Jewish descent, des- perate enough to attempt, and numerous enough under an energetic leader to effect, any enterprize for the establishment of the kingdom of David upon the ruins of Rome. These were the men who, seeing in the intense excitement, and the vast energies of the first burst of Christianity, a ready instrument for the prosecution of their own daring plans, would fain have identified themselves with the early Church; these were the men who became the rallying point for all those wild revolutionary sects and super stitions which the heathen historians and statesmen confounded with the Divine system under which x Acts x. 35 ; 1 John iv. 21. y Essay on the Judaizers. H 98 STc PETER. SERM. they tried to shelter themselves these were the - Judaizers who had long been at such deadly war with St. Paul, and who still hoped to make circumcision and the rites of the law essential, that they might turn the Gospel into a vast organization, distinguished by the political badge of Judaism, armed with the strength of a new faith, and unearthly origin, to rise against the weak and profligate princes who occupied the imperial throne. To one place and to one name the eyes of this great party were turned ; that place was Jerusalem, and that name was Peter. If even in Corinth, the most exclusively gentile of all the early Churches, there was yet a faction which bore the name of Cephas z , we may well conceive, and St. Paul's Epistles sufficiently indicate, how studiously the Apostle of the Circumcision must have been put forward in opposition to the Apostle of the Gentiles in the Churches of Asia Minor, and above all in the Church of Galatia a , where this party was entirely dominant ; and in the apocryphal acts and writings ascribed at a somewhat later date to St. Peter, we may still read the covert, but sig- nificant language which denounces " the hateful 11 teaching of the enemy of the law b ." Such was the host which might have been gathered round Peter as the Mahomet of a Chris- tian Judaism. Such however was not, nor could * 1 Cor. i. 12; ii. 22; and implied in 1 Cor. ix. 5. a As implied in Gal. ii. 7, 8, 11, 14. b See the Epistle of Peter to James (c. 2), prefixed to the Clementines in Cotelerius' Patres Apostolici, (vol. i. p. 602). See Essay on the Divisions of the Corinthian Church. ST. PETKU. 99 be by any possibility, the career of any Apostle of SERM. Christ. It was now if we may take the most pro- bable conjecture as to the time and place of its composition it was now that from the banks of the Euphrates there came that great Epistle addressed to all the Asiatic Churches, from the eastern hills of Pontus down to the cities on the ^Egean sea. Its direct object seems to have been at once to strike, whether amongst the Jewish or Gentile por- tions of those communities, at the root of that counterfeit Christianity which would have made him its Apostle : to conjure them, not once only, but repeatedly, " to submit to every ordinance of " men for the Lord's sake ;" "to have their con- " versation honest among the Gentiles;" that "they " should not give occasion to evil speaking ." And how nobly this object was answered, at least in one of the Churches which received the Epistle, is pre- served to us in that only extant record of the early Bithynian Church, the letter of the younger Pliny. There we see how " by their well-doing they put to " silence the ignorance of foolish men ;" how by their universal practice " not to be thieves, or mur- " derers, or evil-doers," they disarmed the suspicions alike of the proconsul and of his imperial master d . But the indirect object and general character of the Epistle are still more significant. There, at the close c 1 Pet. ii. 12, 13; iv. 14. d 1 Pet. ii. 15 ; iv. 15. Comp. Plin. Ep. x. 97. Affirmabant . . . quod essent soliti . . . . se obstringere . . . ne furta, ne latrocinia, ne adulteria committerent, ne fidem fallerent, ne depositum appel- lati abnegarent. H 2 100 ST. PETJSK. s E R M. of his life, lie appears not glorying in bis early fame as leader of the first Apostles, not entrenching himself within the sphere of his naturalJewish prepossessions, but striving to merge his own individual character and existence in the career of him whom his own follow- ers would fain represent as his rival and his enemy. We trace, indeed, the favourite recurrence to the images of the older world e ; the longings of the prophets ; the simplicity of patriarchal life ; the traditions of the antediluvian epoch ; the strong resemblance to the Epistle of St. James, no less than to his own early speeches in the Acts f . But still its whole spirit and phraseology accords not with that of James or of John, but of Paul ; and coin- ciding *as it does with the thoroughly Pauline cha- racter of his only recorded speech during this later period g ; coinciding also with the celebrated testi- mony however explained in the second Epistle " to the wisdom of his beloved brother Paul ;" coin- ciding lastly with the express assertion that the Epistle was sent by Paul's own companion Silvanus, and that it was to assure them that " this h ," the Gospel to which Paul had converted them, " was 11 the true grace of God, wherein they stood 1 ," it e 1 Pet. i. 6; ii. 23 ; iii. 6, 18. f For the resemblances to the speeches in the Acts see Hilde- brand's Commentary on the Acts, p. 571 574.; for the resem- blances to the Epistle of St. James see De Wette's Commentary on the Epistles of St. Peter, St. James, and St. Jude, p. 8. s Comp. especially Acts xv. 9, 11, with Rom. iii. 22, 24. h 2 Pet. iii. 15. 1 1 Pet. v. 12. ST. PETER. tO>l : may well be taken as the pledge of the last work of SERM. St. Peter, in crushing absolutely and for ever this - fatal schism which would have divided the two great Fathers of our faith him who gave it its first outward form, and him who proclaimed its deep inward spirit. And it is pleasing to trace the traditionary confirmations of their entire unity the unity which joins St. Peter to St. Paul, rather than to his own early friend St. John the legends which represent them as joint rulers of Antioch, Corinth, and Rome both confined in the same Mamertine dungeon both receiving the crown of martyrdom on the same day and in all the early works of Christian art both ever exhibited side by side the one with his inverted cross, the other with the ex- ecutioner's sword "lovely and pleasant were they " in their lives, and in their deaths they were not " divided V k These traditions are referred to not as in themselves a proof of the unity of the two Apostles, but only as the prolonged echo of the fact, of which the^ real proof is given in the first Epistle of St. Peter. Valueless as may be the historical testimony of each singly, yet collectively they are of some importance as ex- pressing the consciousness of the third and fourth centuries that there had been an early contest, or at least contrast, be- tween the two Apostles, which in the end was completely re- conciled ; and it is this feeling which gives a real interest to the outward forms in which it is brought before us, more or less indeed in all the south of Europe, but especially in Rome itself. It would be difficult to find in a few words a truer representation of their respective characters and missions than is given in the two farewell addresses to each other inscribed over the small chapel which professes to be built on the scene of their final parting, immediately without the walls of the citv. ST. PETER. SERM. IV. Such is the career of St. Peter, and such the - fulfilment of the great prediction which must always stand at the head of his history. We cannot indeed realize it so vividly as those did who actually wit- nessed it ; but the lapse of eighteen centuries rather increases than diminishes our sense of its literal and perfect truth, whether we look at what it did or what it did not contain. Without Peter, humanly speaking, the infant Church must have perished in its cradle ; he it was who under God's blessing caught 1 the truth which was to be the polar star of its future history who guided it safely through the dangers of its first existence ; who then, when the time came for launching it into a wider ocean preserved it no less by his retirement from the helm which was destined for another hand. He was the Rock, not the builder of the Christian society the Guardian of its gates, not the master of its innermost recesses the Founder, as I have before expressed it, not the propagator, nor the finisher the Moses of its Exodus, not the David of its triumph, nor the Daniel of its latter days. And with him, by the very force of the terms, the purely personal and historical part of our Lord's promise of necessity came to an end. Never again can Jewish zeal and Jewish forms so come into contact with the first beginnings of Christian faith never again can mortal man find himself so standing on the junction of two dispensations the Church once founded can have no second rock * "The pilot of the Galilean lake." ST. PETER. 103 the gates once opened can never again be closed SERM. the sins which were then condemned, the virtues - which were then blessed, the liberty which was then allowed, the license which was then forbidden, whether by word or deed, of the first Apostle, were once for all bound or loosed in the courts of heaven, never again to be unbound or bound by any earthly power whatever. But there is a sense and that of great practical importance, in which the example of Peter like that of the other Apostles lives and will live always. We know the feeling of suspicion, of contempt, of compassion with which the world regards those labourers in a good cause, who whether in praise or blame are called enthusiasts. We know how often this feeling is provoked or even deserved by the imperfections, the narrowness, the one- sided views with which such characters are often marked, and how strong is the temptation to regard them, if not as absolutely mischievous, at least as useless or despicable. It is as a warning against such a feeling as this that the blessing on Peter becomes the expression of a universal law of the Providence of God. Most signally indeed was it shewn in the character of the first Apostle, that it was by no intellectual greatness or strength of mind that Christianity was first communicated to man. Most remarkable is the proof afforded of the Divine origin of our faith, when we contemplate the fact that he, who was undoubtedly its first human founder, cannot by the wildest license of conjecture 104 ST. PETER. SERM. be imagined capable of conceiving or inventing it: - Grant that Peter was the chief of the first Apostles and it follows almost of necessity that the Apostles were, as they professed to be, the disciples of no less than the Son of God. What is true however of Christianity in its first rise, is true also in a measure of all its subsequent exemplifications. Look at the history of any great movement for good in the world, and ask who took the first critical step in advance, whom it was that the wavering and undecided crowd chose to rally round as their leader and their cham- pion ? and will not the answer always be as it was in the apostolical age not the man of wide and comprehensive thought, nor of deep and fervent love, but the characters of simple unhesitating zeal which act instead of reflecting, which venture in- stead of calculating, which cannot or will not see the difficulties with which the first straggle of an untried reformation is of necessity accompanied. They may be doomed, like Peter, to retire before the advancing tread of a new Apostle ; but it is not till their task is finished ; they may perish, but their cause survives ; they have been the pioneers in the great work which they themselves but faintly and partially understood. And of such, whether in nations or individuals, the well-known comment of Origen on the words of the text, echoed as it is m with more or less distinctness by so many illustrious voices from Tertullian down to Leo, is no exaggera- tion of the truth " He who has Peter's faith is m See the end of the Essay on -the Promises to Peter. ST. PETER. 105 " the Church's rock; he who has Peter's virtues SERM. u has Peter's keys." Doubtless there have been ages in which that spirit and those blessings have been especially exemplified. Such above all was the momentous epoch, when Christianity may almost be said to have had a second beginning when the northern nations rushed down upon the Roman empire and modern Europe came into existence. If ever there was a time which needed a second founder like Peter, it was the age of Clovis and of Gregory, of Charlemagne and of Innocent ; if ever a sphere des- tined for spirits who like him should be the Moses of the Christian Church, it was the age when the deeds of Joshua and Sampson and Jephthah were acted over again in the lives of the first Crusaders ; if ever a period when, as in the age of the Apostle of the circumcision, the outward form of Judaism seemed necessary as the temporary framework of the inward life, when the irregular impulses of a simple enthusiasm were made the means of preserv- ing so much that was holy and divine, it was the union of anarchy and superstition with heroic zeal and self-devotion which characterized the system of the Middle Ages. I am not saying that that system was a complete representation of St. Peter's charac- ter it doubtless was in many respects an exaggera- tion and distortion of it. But if there be any such general resemblance as has been stated, then I know not the wisdom of denying that here also our Lord's promise was fulfilled and that in the connexion 106 ST. PETER. 3 E RM. which the great city of the Middle Ages sought to es- - tablish between itself and St. Peter, there was some- thing more than local tradition or fanciful associa- tion ; I know not why the most determined oppo- nent to the revival of that ancient system should not recognise the shadow of this undoubted truth, when in the most magnificent edifice ever yet con- secrated to Christian worship, he reads the majestic inscription traced in colossal characters round the cupola which overhangs the Apostle's grave Tu ES PETRUS ET SUPER HANC PETRAM ^DIFICABO ECCLESIAM MEAM ET TIBI DABO CLAVES REGNI COELORUM. I have said thus much on the real revival of the spirit of Peter in the institutions and feelings of the Middle Ages, both because it helps us to appre- ciate them rightly, and also because it shews how thoroughly we may enter into the great historical associations with which the name of St. Peter has been invested without involving ourselves for one moment in either side of the later controversies that have been built upon it. But there is a far more practical conviction to be enjoyed of the reality of that solemn promise there is a far higher sense in which before Him who seeth not as man seeth it is written in a temple not made with hands even in the heart of every one in this congregation who after his measure walks in Peter's steps and abides in Peter's faith. The Middle Ages have passed away; with them and their own especial institutions we have no longer any concern. But ST. PETER. 107 those moral and spiritual gifts, which they exhibited SERM. on so gigantic a scale, and in so exclusive a form, - must still in some shape or other be capable of revival amongst ourselves. Peter was succeeded by Paul and by John, but his spirit was still continued though its form was wholly changed : Paul still retained the zeal of the Pharisee ; the Beloved Dis- ciple was also the Son of Thunder. Whatever else might be superadded, enthusiasm was, and always must be, the basis of the true apostolical character. And surely not least is this lesson needed in this place, where on the one hand the dawn of Christian life and manhood opening upon you, as upon St. Peter, at once requires and justifies the natural zeal of youth in behalf of what is pure and just and holy and true ; where on the other hand there is so much in the deadening influences of our own peculiar atmosphere to chill or to corrupt it. Think of the great works which still remain to be accomplished of the great evils which still remain to be destroyed in this our age and country ; think of the vast capacities of moral improvement here, in which every one of you may bear his part above the slightest taint of controversy, above the slightest suspicion of presumption ; and then ask yourselves whether there is or is not need of zeal either in yourselves or in others ; whether there are not higher objects for it than those temporary or trivial or external subjects which now so often absorb it. You know what it is to be enthusiastic in your tastes, in your opinions, yes, even in your amuse- 108 ST. PETER. SERM. merits; you surely must know, or can conceive, - what it is to be enthusiastic purely for good and against evil. You must have felt yourselves, or you can at any rate imagine for others, the thrill, the elevation, communicated by even a single spark of true moral enthusiasm. Without doubt there is danger in zeal, or in the prejudice and narrowness with which it is often allied. But still the very point which I am urging, is that He, who out of the Jewish Simon raised up the Christian Peter, can out of these very weaknesses, if only they be coupled with an honest and true heart, make His strength perfect ; that it is possible for us to be like the Galilean Apostle, without being like the Galilean zealot ; that it is possible to have the fervour of the Middle Ages without their forms or their fanaticism. It may be that from temperament or other causes we cannot be enthusiastic ourselves ; but there is one thing which we can all do, and that is, to admire, or at least not to condemn, those who are. Such an one, whoever he may be, with whatever slowness of intellect or plainness of speech, with whatever way- wardness or eccentricity or false assumption, is to us the true representative of the first of the Apostles. To such at least the command is still in force " to " strengthen their brethren," and woe be to us if by word or deed of ours we damp the fire of their ardour, or suffer our sense of difference of manner, or disposition, or intellect, to overpower our sense of the far greater cause which we have or ought to have in common with them ; if we refuse to acknowledge ST. PKTKR. 109 that the Spirit of Christ and of all goodness still SERM. breathes the spirit of power and of wisdom. Their - judgment may be weak, their opinions crude ; but if they have the simple self-devotion of Peter, if they have at heart the thought of God and Christ and duty, not the thought of their own abilities, or inter- ests, or amusements, then, like Peter, "they need not " save to wash their feet and are clean every whit." There, amidst whatever defects, will be the Rock of the Church that is amongst us : wherever by their influence the path of duty is made more easy, the path of evil more difficult and odious, there the gates of heaven are opened, the gates of hell are closed : whatever of playful sport or serious principle is by their presence and example sanctioned, that for all practical purposes is sanctioned to us in heaven : whatever lax notions of duty, or loose conversation, or vicious action, are by such an one condemned, there, as far as human voice and countenance repre- sent it to us, we may look for the condemnation of heaven. Let the world at large be distracted as it may, still for us, in our world here, in our work here, in proportion as we can dwell in the love and recollection of such characters amongst ourselves, we may rest assured that we are reposing under the shadow of St. Peter's throne, that we are holding communion with that Church against which the gates of hell shall not prevail. PREACHED IN THE EASTER TERM OP 1846. ON THE PROMISES TO PETER. A GENERAL view of the promises addressed to Peter in the Gospel narrative has been already given in the Sermon. But the importance of these passages, both intrinsically and from the interest with which in some instances they have been invested by later controversy, may render it desirable to give here once for all such a detailed exposition of them, as the nature and limits of a spoken discourse necessarily precluded. They are contained in three of the four Gospels, Matt. xvi. 1719; John xxi. 1519; Luke v. 10; xxii. 31, in which order it is now proposed to examine them, endeavour- ing in each case to discover the general intention with which they were originally recorded, and the precise meaning which the words originally bore. It will be seen that in so doing the results of the investigations on the subject have been given, without interrupting a disquisition in itself too long by refutations of hostile, or quotations of favourable commentators, or by specifying in each particular case the obvious sources of German and English theology, from one or other of which have been for the most part de- rived the arguments or references which the following pages contain. 1. THE PROMISE TO PETER IN MATT. XVI. 17 19. This passage forms part of a large section common to St. Matthew, St. Mark, and St. Luke, (Matt. xvi. 13 ; xvii. 23 ; Mark viii. 27 ; ix. 32 ; Luke ix. 18 45,) con- 112 ON THE PROMISES TO PETER. taining the account of the questions to the Apostles, the confession of Peter, the first announcement of the Pas- sion, the Transfiguration, and the healing of the demo- niac child. In most parts of the record of our Lord's ministry, as preserved in the three Gospels, it would be extremely rash to venture to pronounce on the exact time and place when the events may be supposed to have occurred. Whatever may have been the order of arrangement followed, the transpositions sufficiently prove that it could not have been that of an exact chronology. In this instance, however, an approximation seems possible. It is an unusual mark of precision in the narrative, which we probably owe to a sense of the extreme importance of the event described, that the confession of Peter is said to have taken~place not in the general neighbourhood of the sea of Galilee, but at a spot not elsewhere mentioned in the New Testament, and the northernmost point of the Gospel ministry, the remote city of Paneas a , or Csesarea Philippi. And combined with the fact of this retreat so far beyond the ordinary circle of our Lord's teaching, we are met for the first time by intimations of the impending sorrows of the Passion, remote indeed, but arresting our attention from the fre- quency and emphasis with which they recur. Hud any change, unnoticed by the three Evangelists, come over the hitherto even tenor of the Lord's teaching? Was there any cloud passing over the heavens at this particular juncture, of which this triple narrative has as it were un- consciously caught the shadow ? It is at least a remarkable coincidence that when we turn to St. John's Gospel, with which we are here for the only time during the whole of a The only other connexion which this city has with our Lord's history is in the story of the statue there preserved of His healing the woman with the issue of blood (Eus. H. E. vii. 18.) But, as the Gospels indisputably refer that event to Capernaum, nothing can be deduced from the statement. ON THE PROMISES TO PETER. 113 the synoptical account of our Lord's ministry brought into contact by the mention, immediately preceding, of the one miracle (that of the loaves) common to all the Four, we find that it is precisely this period which is there described as the crisis, the turning point (if we may so speak) of the earthly career of our Lord's life. From the time of the memorable discourse recorded in the sixth chapter of St. John's Gospel, we are told that "many of His disciples " went back and walked no more with Him ; " even the Twelve seemed likely " to go away ;" and Jesus could " no more walk in Jewry (Judaea) because the Jews " sought to kill HirnV The enthusiasm which up to that moment had drawn such multitudes after Him, now began to turn steadily against Him, until (with the exception of the temporary reaction on the resurrection of Lazarus) it closed in the Betrayal and Crucifixion. Such, if we may trust these indications, was the juncture at which the confession of Peter took place. It fully agrees with the corresponding confession recorded in St. John (vi. 68), supposing that we regard them as the same ; or, if we are to look upon them as distinct, though nearly cotemporaneous, it would account for a reiterated requirement of that belief, which was now about to un- dergo such a severe and unprecedented trial. The time was now come when the mere feeling of personal attach- ment and national predilection would be insufficient to secure the allegiance of the Apostles to their new Teacher ; if Christ was no more than a Jewish prophet, the course of events had now shewn that a Jewish prophet He was not; if they were not prepared to receive Christianity, they could no longer conceal their discipleship under the veil of Judaism. Whether, therefore, in answer to the question, " Whom " say ye that I am ?" or to that more touching address in " John vi. 66; vii. 1. I 114 ON THE PK-OMISES TO PETER. St. John, " Surely ye are not also bent on going away," (M?) Kal vfjiets 0\6re vTTayeiv) the impassioned exclama- tion of Peter is substantially the same, and equally signifi- cant. " Thou (<rv) art the Christ, the Son of the living " God." " Thou and no other that is yet to come art, not " merely Jeremiah, or John the Baptist, mortal forerunners " of the hope of Israel, but the anointed Messiah Himself " the Son or Likeness of God Himself, before the living " power of whose manifestation all other manifestations are " dead and powerless." " Lord, to whom shall we go ? " Thou hast the words of eternal life." " What to us could " the world now be without Thee ? Those words which are " indeed as Thou hast said, spirit and life, can be found " with Thee, and what else do we need ?" " And therefore " (for so the speech of Peter continues in almost exact agree- ment with the earlier Gospels, St. John as usual having supplied the deep inward conviction and idea of that, of which they only give the outward expression) "we (ridels " 7T7rt(rT6VKafj,6v) have believed and known that Thou art " the Christ, the Holy One of God c ." "We, whatever others " may think, have long felt in our inmost hearts who and " what Thou art." It was not merely the outward belief in supernatural power, but the inward belief in that higher region, whither miracles point the way, though they can- not of themselves force an entrance. It was not merely the momentary impulse which caused them to leave all and follow Him, but the deliberate conviction that in Him they found all that their moral nature needed that with Him was happiness and life, without Him, misery and death d . Such a confession we may well conceive to have occu- pied that prominent place in the recollections of the early Christian world which is implied in its position in all the c So Lachmann's text runs; the remaining words of the received text being probably taken by the MSS. from Matt. xvi. 16. d See Neander's Leben Jesu, p. 277, 448. ON THE PROMISES TO PETER. 115 four Gospels. They wished to know what was the first expression of the feeling which possessed their own hearts and souls, and they found it here. But, unlike the confession itself, the blessing which follows upon it is con- tained in St. Matthew alone. It is by bearing in mind the probable cause of this that we shall best be able to enter into the true meaning of the words themselves. Now, whatever other uncertainty may hang over the nature and origin of the first Gospel, there is no reason to doubt that it was originally intended for Christians of Jewish descent, if not of the Syriac tongue. It was therefore with the peculiarities of this especial portion of the Christian world that the peculiarities of this Gospel have been usually sup- posed to correspond; and it is precisely what we might expect, that, whereas the most signal honour bestowed on St. Peter should have had no especial interest for the readers of the Gospel narrative generally, it should have at once assumed the highest importance in that part of it which was intended for those amongst whom, as we know from the Acts, and the Epistles to Corinth and Galatia, St. Peter was the chief authority. " Tell us e ," they may well have said when they came to this point of the Gospel teaching, " tell us something of our great Apostle : tell us " not only what he said of his Master, but what his Master " said of him tell us what prophetic anticipations were " uttered in this the crisis of his life concerning those " mighty works which he has done and is doing amongst " us concerning those awful responsibilities which have " been entrusted to him alone in his dealings with his "Jewish and Gentile brethren?" And to this question the blessing on St. Peter in St. Matthew's Gospel was the answer. e For the gradual omission of the prominence of Peter from the cycle of the Evangelical teaching, see Herder on the Son of God, 14. i2 116 ON THE PltOMISES TO PETER. THE NAME OF PETER. " Blessed art thou, Simon, Bar-Jonah, for it was not " flesh and blood that revealed it to thee, but My Father " who is in heaven." " Blessed" (paicdpios) for a con- fession such as this implies that holy temper* which is indeed blessed, (Matt. xi. 27 ; 1 Cor. xii. 3.) " Simon, Bar- Jonah" This is evidently the full designation of Peter by his original name and parentage, as if dwelling on the human and natural personality which was contrasted with the new and spiritual birth, implied in the new name of Cephas. Compare John i. 42. " For it was no human " power" ("flesh and blood," in the language of the New Testament, Gal. i. 16; Heb. ii. 14; 1 Cor. xv. 50; Eph. vi. 12; John i. 12, as well as of the Rabbis (Lightfoot ad loc.), is always used of human f nature in its out- ward and perishable aspect) "that in that confession un- " veiled (aTre/caXv^re) to thee this great truth, but the power " of Him who sits enthroned above any human power " or influence whatever." [For the exact phrase compare the similar expression in John vi. 44 ; and for the general contrast between the divine inspiration of Peter and the earthly fickleness of others, compare the corresponding passage of John vi. 63, 65, 70. He might have confessed Jesus to be the Messiah on former occasions, but now first in the sight of Him who knew what was in man, his con- fession was the result of a purely heavenly influence, un- mixed with an} 7 baser element.] " And / (/caya)) say unto thee, thou (crv) art Peter ;" thou " hast told Christ what He is, and now He tells thee what " thou art. In token of that new spirit which in this the " crisis of thy life has come upon thee, it is declared to thee f It was thus opposed to "hearts and reins," (the inward man.) See Ziillig, on Rev. ii. 23. ON THE PROMISES TO PETER. 117 " that that new name, which expresses the rock-like firtn- " ness of thy resolution, is now for the first time truly thine." [The different form of the giving of the name " thou art" here, and "thou shalt be called" in John i. 42, of itself im- plies that the name had in some sense been given before ; and compare the exact analogy in Gen. xlvii. 8. (f Judah " (Praise) art thou, and thy brethren shall praise thee."] The giving of the new name to imply a new character, carries us back naturally to the instances of it in Gen. xvii. 5, 15 ; xxxii. 28 ; where the change of appellation proceeds from God Himself. The name, as originally given in John i. 42, and if, as is most probable, the Syriac lan- guage was used, here also, was of course not Peter, but Cephas : and so far as we can trace its gradual assumption, it seems to have been as follows : The name of Simon is still preserved in most of our Lord's addresses to him in the Gospel history, Luke xxii. 31 (but not 34); John xxi. 15 17; and in the Jewish Church it still appears in the speech of James at the council at Jerusalem, (Acts xv. 14). But the usual name by which he was known amongst the Jewish Christians, during the period of his chief influence, must have been Cephas, as appears from its being the only name by which St. Paul calls him in the first Epistle to Corinth, and with one exception in that to Galatia. That % exception (Gal. ii. 8) seems to indicate the occasion of the first adoption of the Greek translation of Cephas in the word Petrus or Peter. As Cephas h had been his name amongst the Hebrew Jews of Palestine, so g In the received text indeed this is not apparent, but the recension of Lachmann, whilst it retains rieVpos in Gal. ii. 7, 8, in Gal. i. 18, ii. 9, 10, 14, gives KTJ^SS. h For the general practice of changing the Jewish names in foreign countries see Ziillig on the Apocalypse, i. 301. Instances of its being effected by a slight alteration of the sound are "Jason" for" Jesus" or" Joshua," " Josippus" for " Joseph," " Alcimus" for " Jehoiakim," Mnaseas or " Mnasson" for " Ma- " nasseh," " Paul" for "Saul," " Kedron" for "Kidron," or by a translation, as in the case of Peter, "Didymus" for " Thomas," "Porphyrius"for"Malchus." 118 ON THE PROMISES TO PETER. " Peter" seems to have been his designation amongst the Hellenistic Jews of the dispersion; in which sense it is used, first, as has been said, in the allotment of the Church of the circumcision to him, as of the Gentiles to Paul in Gal. ii. 8, and then in 1 Pet. i. 1, and 2 Pet. ii. 1. What principle guided the selection of one or other of the different names in the narrative, as distinct from the speeches, of the several Gospels, it is perhaps im- possible to determine. " Peter" is the general name in St. Matthew 1 and St. Mark, (perhaps from the fact that these two Gospels were addressed to the Jewish Christians, with whom " Cephas," or its corresponding phrase " Peter," was most familiar,) " Simon" in St. Luke, " Simon Peter" in St. John. Ultimately the name of Cephas became en- tirely extinct, and that of " Peter" (which apparently had not before existed as a proper name) took its place in the nomenclature of the Christian world. THE ROCK OF THE CHURCH. " And upon this rock I will build My Church k , and the " gates of the grave (rov 'ASov) shall not prevail against it." From the giving of the name we pass to the meaning which was involved in it. That it was in consequence of the confession and in reference to it that the name was bestowed, thus agreeing with the probable origin of the only other surname bestowed in like manner on any of the Apostles, (Luke ix. 54,) there can be little doubt. But as the name of Cephas has regard not 1 In the Syriac version of Philoxenus, " Petrus" is used throughout St. Matthew ; in the Peschito, " Cepho ;" in the ancient MS., now in the British Museum, "Simon," or "Simon Cepho." For this as well as for all other information on the Syriac versions I am entirely indebted to the kindness of Mr. Cureton, of the British Museum. k Compai'e the exactly similar transitions in Gen. xvii. 5 ; xxvii. 36 ; xxxii. 27, the "and" (wai) here being equivalent to the "for" in the Hebrew. ON THE PROMISES TO PETER. 119 merely to this particular act, but (John i. 42) to the general character of which it was the expression, so it seems certain that the words themselves (eVt ravrrj rrj irerpa), though occasioned by the confession, refer to Peter himself. The change of person " on this rock," instead of " upon thee" is the natural result of the sudden transition from a direct 1 to a metaphorical address; and is in exact accordance with our Lord's manner on other occasions. He said not "Destroy Me" or "the temple "of My Body," but "destroy this temple," (John ii. 19.) The change of gender from Herpos to Ilerpa, is the natural result of the change from a proper name to the word from which the proper name is derived. The French language alone, of all those into which the original has been translated, has been able entirely to preserve their identity. The Greek Tlerpos^ which for the sake of the masculine termination was necessarily used to express the name itself, was yet so rarely used in any other sense than a " stone" that the exigency of the language required an immediate return to the word Ue'r^oa, which, as in Greek generally, so also in the New Testament, is the almost invariable appellation of a " rock." To speak of any confession or form of words, however sacred, as a foundation or rock, would be completely at variance 1 An exact parallel to this transition may be seen in Rev. ii. 12, except that whereas here it is from the person to the metaphor, there it is from the metaphor to the person. " He shall he a, pillar, and on him I will write." m In the Peschito and the ancient MS. before referred to it is " Cepho" in both cases, except that in the passage where it is used for this rock the femi- nine pronoun is added. In the Philoxenus version it is " Thou art Petrus, and " on this ' shuo' I will build," &c. " Cepho" appears properly to mean a stone (A.i'00?), but from the poverty of the Syriac to be also used for a rock. In the Peschito of Matt, xxvii. 60, it is used in the same verse both for \idos and Trerpa. The few instances of Trerpos for a "rock" (Soph. (Ed. Tyr. 334; Callim. Ap. 22, see Bloomfield, ad 1.) are merely exceptions proving the rule ; and in the New Testament TreVpa is invariable. Comp. especially Matt. vii. 24, 25. 120 ON THE PROMISES TO PETER. with the living representation of the New Testament. It is not any doctrine concerning Christ, but Christ Himself, that is spoken of, as being in the highest and strictest sense the foundation of the Church, (1 Cor. iii. 11,) and so whenever the same figure is used to express the lower and earthly instruments of the establishment of God's kingdom, it is not any teaching or system that is meant, but living human persons. Thus the Apostles are all of them called " foundations" of the Church in Eph. ii. 20; Rev. xxi. 14; and, by a nearly similar metaphor, Peter, James, and John, are called "pillars," (Gal. ii. 6,) the- faithful Christian a " pillar in the temple of God," (Rev. iii. 14,) and Timotheus, by a union of both metaphors, " the pillar and ground [or foundation (eSpai^^aJ] of the " truth in the house of God." (1 Tim. iii. 15 n .) To return to the particular application of this metaphor to Peter, it is necessary to conceive rightly the whole image of which it forms a part, and to draw out the several trains of latent association which its connexion with the n The above interpretation of a somewhat disputed passage may need a few words of explanation. The sense of the whole context is as follows : " That thou mightest know how to walk in the house of God, (and by the " house of God I mean no literal temple of dead stones, but the congregation " of the living God,) in which thy true position is to be a pillar and founda- " tion of the truth ; which truth is the mystery of godliness," &c. : the words, " which is the Church of the living God," being inserted as a parenthesis to explain the previous metaphor. The common interpretation which makes "the Church" to be the "pillar," would not indeed involve in it any disputable conclusions, as it is obvious that " the Church" here, as else- where, means the whole assembly of Christians as distinct from its officers or ministers, and also that it is spoken of in its ideal rather than its actual con- dition. But it is evidently against the whole tenor of the passage to describe the same object first as a building and then as a part of that building ; and the invariable application of the figure of a pillar to individuals rather than to abstractions, is further confirmed by the fact that in the very first quotation of these words by any subsequent writers they are so applied .- in the Epistle of the Church of Lyon, c. 5. (A.D. 177), Attalus the martyr is expressly called the pillar and foundation of all in that place, (<TTV\OS /cal e'8pa/ux ruv eV- ravQa. #et 7 eyovSrow) . Compare also the similar passages in Clem. Rom. 5 ; Ign. Phil. 6. St. John is called 6 <TTV\OS in Chrysostom, (Horn. Joan. i. 1.) ON THE PROMISES TO PETER. 121 whole tissue of Scripture imagery almost necessarily in- volves. The Church, or assembly of God's people, (this and Matt, xviii. 17, are the only passages in the Gospels where the word occurs,) is represented as a house ; not a temple so much as a beleaguered fortress, according to the figure frequently used by the prophets immediately before the captivity, and naturally suggested by the actual p position of the palace and temple of Jerusalem on their impregnable hills. But this assembly or con- gregation, which up to this time had been understood only of the Jewish people, is here described as being built afresh; "built," according to the significant mean- ing of that word, which, both in the Old and New Tes- tament, always involves the idea of "progress, creation, " expansion," by Him who here, as so often elsewhere, appropriates to Himself what had up to that time been regarded as the incommunicable attribute of the LORD of Hosts. It is of this fortress, this spiritual house, as it is called in his own Epistle, (1 Pet. ii. 5,) that Peter is to be the foundation-rock. It was no longer to be reared on the literal rock of Zion, but on a living man, and that man not the high-priest of Jerusalem, but a despised fisherman of Galilee. He, who had stepped forward with his great con- fession in this great epoch, had shewn that he was indeed well fitted to become the stay and support of a congregation In both these places the word seems to be used in strict accordance with its original and proper meaning. In the passage before us, as in that just quoted from 1 Tim. iii. 15, it expresses that the structure to be reared on the rock is no dead structure of wood and stone, but a vast congregation of living human souls. In Matt, xviii. 17, it expresses that if the offender will not listen to the remonstrance of individuals, he is to be brought before the whole body of believers, that body of which it is afterwards said " where two or three are " gathered together in My name, there am I in the midst of them." p Compare the expression " Obliam" or " Ophliam," as applied to St. James, the "Ophel" or "bulwark" of the people, Ophel being actually the name of the ascent or " clivus" to the eastern side of Mount Zion. See the Sermon on St. James. 122 ON THE PROMISES TO PETER. no less holy than that which had been with Moses in the wilderness, or with Solomon in the temple. And against this new theocracy not merely in itself, (for then there would be no purpose in mentioning it here,) but as so founded and supported q not as a mere abstract state- ment of general truth, but as a promise of present com- fort in an approaching conflict, it is declared that "the " gates of the grave shall not prevail." It is a continuance of the same image : on the one side is the divine citadel, seated aloft on its unshaken rock ; on the other r , like the dark shadow of the valley of Gehenna, under the precipice of Zion, which doubtless rendered the picture more vivid to its first readers, yawned the gates of that black abyss where the powers of death and destruction sat enthroned against it. It is one of those frequent expressions found from time to time in the Scriptures, and suggesting to the oriental hearer, in two words, a whole world of imagery, which, to a modern reader, needs to be unfolded in a pain- ful and detailed exposition. The figure, it will be ob- served, is derived from the oriental sieges, where the kings sat round about the beleaguered city, (Jer. i. 15,) only that here the adverse powers are more immediately con- fronted by the mention not merely of the camp, but of the very gates themselves of the enemy, which, accord- ing to the eastern custom, so often alluded to in the Old Testament, and still preserved in the name of the Sublime Porte of the Turkish empire 8 , represented the power and i /car' aur^s must refer (according to the usual interpretation) not but fKK\T)ffia. Still it is to the Church as founded on the rock. The phrase would not be left thus ambiguous if a more general meaning was intended. r Thus in the Apocalyptic representation of the heavenly Jerusalem, the lake of fire (uniting the images of the Dead Sea and the valley of Himnon) is brought close under its walls. See Ziillig, p. 387. 8 Such too are the vestiges of the practice still preserved in Europe the Gate of Lions at Mycenae, where the kings of the patriarchal age of Greece sat in judgment before the palace, and the Gate of Justice at the Alhambra, which receives its name from having been in like manner the seat of the Moorish ON THE PROMISES TO PETER. 123 greatness which in early times took its seat in them, as in later times in the Forum, the Senate-house, or the Throne. And further, these gates are the " gates of the grave," an expression which belongs to the whole Hebrew con- ception of Hades, VlKSP, or " the unseen world" of death, which in the English version is usually rendered by the translation, true etymologically, but conveying a false im- pression theologically, of " hell." Here, as elsewhere, it is represented to the outward sense as the dark palace of death hewn, like the sepulchral caves of the east, in the depths of the earth, (see Lowth's well known com- ment on Isa. xiv. 15,) and guarded like an impregnable fortress, (Isa. xxxviii. 10.) And here too, though from the frequent blending of the two together, the, thought of evil seems to be implied in the thought of destruc- tion, yet the idea of Destruction is predominant of Destruction, whether it be merely the region of De- struction that is spoken of, or whether, as in the bolder imagery of the Apocalypse, (Rev. i. 18; vi. 8,) it is conceived as the King of the unseen world* sitting to receive the prey which Death (Oavarbs) brings to him from the world above. Whichever it be, the promise is clear, that vehement as may be the struggle for its very existence which the early Church will have to main- tain, yet such will be the strength of Peter that through Christ's blessing it will survive the shock triumphantly. kings in that last western stronghold of oriental customs, and where the passage of the text is also recalled by the figure of the "key," which, in common with many other Moorish fortresses, it presents engraven on its archway. * See Ziilligon Rev. i. 18. ON THE PROMISES TO PETER. THE KEYS OF THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN. " And I will give to thee the keys of the kingdom of " heaven." The idea which was placed before us in the preceding words now expands into a wider and higher range : from the earthly and outward " congregation" or " Church" of God's people waging an outward warfare with earthly danger, we pass to that inward and heavenly aspect of it that Church as it were within a Church where the visible and invisible are blended into one, and which in the New Testament is represented to us in the expression, "the kingdom of God" or "of heaven." And with the change of idea the imagery changes also, yet so as naturally to grow out of that first presented to us. It is still a fortress or building, but it would seem as though the gates of the dark valley had suggested the correlative idea of those " everlasting gates" of Zion u which had lift up their heads of old on the overhanging mountain as though the gates of the deep abyss had called into more immediate view the corresponding image of the gates of the highest heaven, of which those earthly gates were the natural and fitting symbol. It is not now so much the struggle for life or death which is set before us as the final triumph ; and accordingly the great Apostle now appears no longer as the mute E/ock on which the city leaned for support, but as the keeper of the Keys which are to repel or to admit the suppliant captive or triumphal procession that seek to enter the walls of the victorious people. The august associations which have been just alluded to as belonging to the eastern idea of the "gates," in part be- longed also to the keys. It is mentioned as the highest reward of Eliakim, that " the key of the house v of David " should be laid upon his shoulder, and he shall open and u See Ewald on Ps. xxiv. v Isa. xxii. 22. ON THE PEOMISES TO PETER. 125 " none shall shut ; and he shall shut and none shall open. 1 ' And the same expression is in the Revelations (iii. 7) transferred to our Lord, in a passage strikingly illustrative of the words before us, because, like them, it contains the same implied contrast between the keys of heaven and the keys of Death and Hades, which had in one of the chapters immediately preceding (i. 18) been spoken of as wrested from their owners and given to Him who was dead and is alive for evermore. And as the Rock, which in the highest sense could only be predicated of Christ, was yet in a lower and sufficient sense predicated of Peter, so the power over the Keys, which admitted men into the inner- most sanctuary and citadel of heaven, was indeed in the highest sense to be wielded by none but the Holy and the True, yet in the lower sense might be enjoyed, like all other attributes of our Lord, by all His servants : and by whom so fitly as by that Apostle whose insight into heavenly things had been so critically shewn on the present oc- casion ? [That the meaning above given to the "keys" of Peter is correct, will appear still more clearly by reference to the other passages in the New Testament, where the same metaphor is used. (1.) In that just quoted from Rev. iii. 7, the natural meaning of the "house of David" is evi- dently merged in that of the temple ; and the sense of the whole passage will be, (t To Christ, as High-Priest, (cf. Rev. i. 13.) is given the right of entrance into the Holy of Holies; and that right He also gives to all His true followers ; they shall be kings and priests like Him." (cf. iii. 12 ; i. 6.) And such is obviously the meaning, more generally expressed, " 1 am the door of the sheep." (John x. 7.) (2.) In Acts xiv. 21 it is used with express reference to the event in Peter's life which, as will appear, was the chief fulfilment of this especial promise. " They rehearsed how God had " opened the door of the faith to the Gentiles." (3.) In 126 ON THE PROMISES TO PETER. St. Paul's Epistles, (1 Cor. xvi. 9; 2 Cor. ii. 12; Col. iv. 3,) it is applied more generally to the giving or with- holding opportunities of usefulness to the Apostle, but still, so far as it goes, confirming, rather than contradicting, the explanation of the text in St. Matthew.] THE BINDING AND LOOSING. " And whatsoever thou shall bind on earth shall be te bound in heaven, and whatsoever thou shalt loose on " earth shall be loosed in heaven." One remarkable characteristic of this whole passage is the consecutiveness with which one image rises out of another. It is im- possible to mistake the parallel between the words " what- " soever thou shalt bind," &c., and those which form the close of the passage just quoted from Isa. xxii. 22, "he " shall shut and none shall open," &c. ; and the point of transition from one idea to the other is naturally afforded in the ancient x practice of fastening gates not by locks, but by cords. Still it is clear that a new idea is introduced ; however naturally the notion of " opening and shutting" shades off into that of " binding and loosing," it is obvious that the less familiar expression would riot have been substituted for the more familiar without some specific reason, which reason is in this case supplied by the well-known meaning of the words themselves. The figure of "binding and " loosing," for " allowing as lawful, or forbidding as unlaw- " ful," is so simple and obvious that no language has been wholly without it ; " Set," " religio," " obligation," " a man is " bound to do his duty," are all familiar instances ; but in x For the keys of the ancients, and the use of cords, compare the works quoted in Rosenmiiller ad h. 1, who mentions especially a picture (in Mich. Angel. Causseum. in Simulacris Deorum. Fab. xv. Torn. V. Ant. Rom p. 776,) of a woman holding a key in her right hand, and in her left a cord. ON THE PROMISES TO PETER. 127 the Jewish literature of our Lord's time it was more than this ; the examples given by Lightfoot of the use of these words in this sense, being, as he says, selected out of thousands, incontestably prove not only that these words might have had this meaning, but that in the minds of those who heard them they could have had no other. Twice besides the expression is used (Matt, xviii. 18; John xx. 23) to others besides St. Peter, and on each occasion the sense is substantially the same. "So great shall be the " authority of your decisions, that unlike those of the ordi- " nary schools or rabbis, whatsoever you shall declare law- " ful shall be held lawful, whatsoever you shall declare un- " lawful shall be held unlawful, in the highest tribunal in " heaven." It is, as it were, the solemn inauguration of the right of the Christian's conscience to judge with a discern- ment of good and evil, to which up to this time the world had seen no parallel. " If the house be worthy, let your (( peace come unto it, but if it be not worthy, let it return " to you," (Matt. x. 13.) "It is not ye that speak, but " the Spirit of My Father which speaketh in you," (x. 20.) " He that is spiritual judgeth all things," (1 Cor. ii.) " He " that despiseth [i. e. thinks lightly of the evil of sensuality] " despiseth not man but God, who hath also given to us [or "you] His Holy Spirit," (1 Thess. iv. 8.) "Ye have an " unction from the Holy One, and ye know all things, and " ye need not that any man teach you," (1 John ii. 20, 27.) " If we judged ourselves, we should not have been judged," (1 Cor. xi. 31.) These are some out of the many instances in which the same truth without the metaphor is ex- pressed as belonging to the disciples of the first age of Christianity. In that age, when the foundations of all ancient belief were shaken, when acts which up to that time had been regarded as lawful or praiseworthy were now condemned as sinful, or which before had been re- garded as sinful were now enjoined as just and holy, it was 128 ON THE PROMISES TO PETER. no slight comfort to have it declared by the One authority which all Christians acknowledged as divine, that there were those living on the earth on whose judgment in these disputed matters the Church might rely with implicit con- fidence. In the highest sense of all doubtless this judg- ment was exercised by Him alone who taught as one having authority and not as the scribes, and who on the Mount of the new law drew the line between His own commandments and what was said by them of old time. In a lower sense, it was exercised and has ever since been exercised, by all those who by their teaching or their lives, by their words or their examples, have impressed the world more deeply with a sense of what is Christian holiness and what is Christian liberty. In an intermediate sense, it has been exercised by those whose especial gifts or opportuni- ties have made them in a more than ordinary degree the oracles and lawgivers of the moral and spiritual society in which they have been placed. Such above all were the Apostles. By their own lives and teaching, by their divinely sanctioned judgments on individual cases, (as St. Paul on Ely mas or the incestuous Corinthian,) or on general principles, (as in their Epistles,) they have in a far higher sense than any other human beings, bound and loosed the consciences, remitted and retained the sins, of the whole human race for ever. Whatever in short was the gift in them, which first in the early Church, and then in all future times, has invested their words and acts with a sacredness and authority accorded to no other acts or words of men, that was the realization to them of this august promise, now addressed especially and first to Peter, who amidst the general panic stood forward to avow his belief in the divinity of the cause which others deserted, and who might therefore well be named not as the only one, but as the first, whose judgments should be proved by the most infallible signs to be not human but divine. ON THE PROMISES TO PETER. 129 Every part of this remarkable passage as so explained, now stands in complete harmony with itself. First, the blessing, followed by the declaration that the confession which had called it forth was no transient emotion, bat the work of God Himself; then the announcement, that he who had uttered the confession had proved himself to be indeed the foundation-rock of the new spiritual edifice, followed by the declaration that the edifice so founded was no perishable structure, but instinct with immortal life : lastly the promise, that of that edifice Peter should command the entrance, followed by the declaration that his judgments there pronounced should not pass away like those of the Jewish Rabbis with the fleeting opinion of successive schools, but should, like those of his brother Apostles, be ratified for ever in heaven. It only remains for us to enquire what was the fulfilment of the promise in Peter's subsequent history. In propor- tion indeed as we believe it to partake of the character of a Divine prophecy, we should shrink from marring its effect by an endeavour to fix down each word to any par- ticular fact, and for this reason it has been thought best to explain its general meaning before attempting to descend into any minuter application of it to details. Prophecy, it has been well said, is not so much anticipated history, as an enunciation of those eternal principles by which history is determined, and accordingly neither here nor in the pro- phets of the Old Testament, are we justified in demanding such a literal anticipation of every detail as would leave no room for the free play of human agency and subordi- nate circumstances. If the general effects of the Apostle's character, and of characters like his in after ages, has cor- responded to the language here used, the essential and eternal value of this promise has been sufficiently vindi- cated. Still it has been so ordered, that, as in the prophe- cies generally, so here, the salient points, so to speak, of K 130 ON THE PROMISES TO PETER. the history and the prophecy, shall to such an extent coincide, that whilst the Divine wisdom of the prophecy speaks for itself, our attention is fixed on its Divine power by the history. Its true spiritual import stretches into the remotest future, but its first historical fulfilment is to be found in the life of Peter. It is needless to repeat what has been already said on this point at sufficient length in the Sermon, especially as it would also in part anticipate what is yet to come in the exposition of the remaining passages. Yet it may not be irrelevant to justify more at length than was there possible the great importance attached to Peter's acts, and their consequent correspond- ence with the greatness of the promise. In the first place, we must recollect the extremely scanty materials from which our knowledge of Peter's life is derived. The ten first chapters of the Acts com- prise it all. Where so much is left untold, it is probably that "what is told has been preserved and recorded from the deep impression which it had made on those amongst whom it occurred, and which it was intended to make on those who were to read of it. Had there been a hundred speeches handed down of the different Apostles during the first years of their residence at Jerusalem, the two speeches of Peter which remain to us might have been comparatively insignificant. But when these two alone are preserved, it is evident that the very fact of their pre- servation is a guarantee of their great importance. What is not told becomes to us more expressive than what is told. Accordingly, though it would be rash to say that either the history or the prophecy were recorded one for the sake of the other, it certainly does seem as if it was the same prominence which occasioned the selection of the general traits of St. Peter's character in the one, and the selection of the particular facts of his life in the ON THE PROMISES TO PETER. 131 other. When for example we reflect on the all but entire extinction to which the first disciples were ex- posed during the first days or months succeeding to the Ascension, it surely was most natural that in the one man who then stood at their head, and by whose preaching took place the first great increase of their numbers, which in fact converted them from an insignificant handful of individuals into a formidable and extensive society, they should realize the image of the foundation-rock, and in his wonderful escapes from death and imprisonment should acknowledge the baffled attempts of the powers of the grave to destroy him. Or again, if ever there was a time when the keys of heaven might be said to be wielded with more than ordinary sway, it was in the crisis which has been described in the Sermon as taking place at the conversion of Cornelius. Nothing but our own complete acquiescence in what then seemed the most startling of paradoxes could blind our eyes to the immense import- ance which that journey from Joppa to Caesarea must have assumed in the eyes of those to whom it was the one absorbing question of the times, and the greatness of the consequences which it involved for all future generations. And lastly, if there could be any doubt as to the cor- rectness of the view above given of the power of " binding " and loosing," and the reality or significance of such a gift in the early Church, nothing could so effectually dispel it as a view of the unquestioned exercise of it by St. Peter, as recorded in the Acts. " Let your yea be yea, and your " nay, nay y ," was the injunction to strict veracity put for- ward as we know on the very front of the earliest Christian Church at Jerusalem as a mark of the new society, and the more remarkable from its collision with the besetting sin of all the nations of the east. What more terrible proof could be given that what the Apostles had thus bound on y James v. 12. K 2 132 ON THE PROMISES TO PETER. earth was bound in heaven than in the death of Ananias and Sapphira at the word of St. Peter ? " The pure and un- " defiled service of God z ," such was another maxim now asserted in the churches of Judaea, "is to visit the fatherless " and the widows, and to keep oneself unspotted from the " world." What more consoling proof could be given to the outward senses that this was truly the service which God approved, than when Peter raised from the bed of death, " the woman who was full of good works and alms- " deeds which she did," and over whose body "all the widows " stood weeping, shewing the coats and garments which " Dorcas had made when she was with them a ?" And if from the peculiar failings or excellencies of the Church of Pales- tine, we ascend to the record of the more general questions which agitated the Church at large, it is still no exaggeration to say that here also the "binding and loosing" of the Chris- tian conscience which was doubtless exercised in a measure, and subsequently perhaps in a greater measure, by the other Apostles, was in the first instance exercised pre- eminently by St. Peter. In the great dispute which was, so to say, the source of all the casuistry of the first period of the apostolical age, it was Peter whose decision on the lawfulness of associating with Gentiles both at the conver- sion of Cornelius and in the assembly at Jerusalem was confirmed by the descent of the Spirit, and the whole sub- sequent order of Providence b . In the daring attempt of the second period of the earliest heresies to claim the sanc- tion of Christianity fo;r their own wild and revolutionary doctrines, it was Peter whose decision on the unlawfulness of " using the liberty of Christians for a cloak of malicious- " ness," was, as has been in part shewn already and will be more fully shewn hereafter, the chief human instrument of their overthrow. ' James i. 27. Acts ix. 36, 39. * Acts x. 45 ; xv. 28. = ] Pet. ii. 16. ON THE PROMISES TO PETEIl. 133 II. THE PROMISES TO PETER IN JOHN XXI. 15 23. The difficulties of the passage which has just been discussed arise in great measure from the strongly pro- phetic and Hebrew character of its expressions; but its general import could never have occasioned so much dis- pute if it had been measured by the more simple language of the passages in the two remaining Gospels, which treat of the same subject, and which, though touching upon it only incidentally, are in one respect doubly valuable on that account, because they afford a remarkable proof that the record of the promise in St. Matthew cannot be ascribed merely to the reverence of the Palestine Church for its great Apostle, but that it agrees substantially with other speeches of our Lord, for the preservation or in- vention of which there existed no similar motive. We now pass to that contained in John xxi. 15 23. The chapter in which these words occur, occupies, as is well known, a remarkable position in St. John's Gospel. That it is an appendix, so to speak, to the general narra- tive, which had already been closed with the solemn scene of the confession of Thomas, can hardly be doubted; and there are not wanting indications that the actual compo- sition is by another hand than that of the Evangelist him- self d . But these difficulties in the outward details of this chapter are not incompatible with the belief that we have, if not the very words, at least the last recollections of the beloved Disciple; taken down it may be from his mouth, or written immediately after his death by the Ephesian disciples, but still substantially his own. There can be little doubt that the immediate object of recording the scene must have been the contradiction of the expectation of John's immortality. With this it closes ; d See Lucke's Commentary on John xxi. 134 ON THE PROMISES TO PETEE. to this it tends throughout ; and on this the chief stress is laid by the writer. But it would almost seem as if in the statement of the real saying of our Lord, on which the false rumour had been founded, the whole scene had come back so vividly to the Apostle's mind not merely the Divine prediction, but also his own early companions, employ- ments, and haunts that either he delighted to record, or the enquiring disciples would not pause in their questions till they had received, the whole account even down 'to the minutest outward details 6 , elsewhere so unusual in St. John's Gospel, and especially those which related to that early friend of their own beloved teacher, the ancient Apostle of a bygone age, of whose latter days and dread- ful death the recollection was still fresh in the minds even of the eastern Christians. And thus were touched so many chords of the earlier narrative of the Gospel his- tory, the names of the five disciples, the miraculous draught, the leaping into the sea, it may be the older promises to Peter, that it appeared then, as it has ap- peared since f , no unfitting conclusion to the last teaching of St. John. With this preliminary view of the general spirit and object with which the account was given, we may now, as far as may be, endeavour to conceive the immediate scene and circumstances when it represents the words to have been spoken. It was the early dawn upon the sea of Galilee; the fishing vessel with its little crew, headed by Peter, was once again, after a long interval, on the waters of the lake ; and now again, as once before, the long night had passed away in useless toil. Then it was that there came the e If we admit some such explanation as is here given of the minuteness of the details, it obviates the necessity of introducing into the narrative a lengthened allegory, such as that adopted by St. Augustine, wholly uncon- genial to the usual spirit of St. John's Gospel. 1 " I almost seem to see the whole Gospel in it." Arnold. ON THE PROMISES TO PETER. 135 friendly voice from the shore, the sudden draught of fishes, the instant recognition which that sign of former times brought home to the mind of the younger of the sons of Zebedee, that "it was the Lords." In a moment they rush to land; Peter, with his characteristic vehemence, plunging h into the lake, the others following in the little boat (r&> 7r\oiapl(0), by which they neared the shallow water which the larger vessel (TO ir\olov) could not ap- proach, and with the heavy net behind, which Peter dragged up the shelving bank, and spread upon the white margin of the sandy beach. But it was not now, as it had been in other days ; an awful silence reigned through that solemn meal ; no inter- change of questions and of answers, as on the last supper in the upper chamber, or as on the feeding of the five thousand on the mountain-side. He was still indeed the same holy and loving Master; they knew that it was " the Lord:" but they felt also that their relation was changed : He was now to speak, and they, except at His command, to be silent. v And now, when the meal was over, in those accents of s One is perhaps hardly justified in assuming a reference to the miracle in Luke v. 9. Yet when one considers the reflective character of the whole narrative, the natural recurrence of it to St. John's mind, the mention (else- where not occurring in St. John) of the sons of Zehedee, it may be worth while suggesting whether it he not the most obvious solution of the recognition which is here described, and is evidently spoken of as resulting from the sudden revival of an old association. ll I have ventured thus to enter into the details, because the narrative itself, probably from the circumstances of its composition mentioned above, invites us to do so. It is evident that Peter rushed to shore through the shallow water, which could only be approached in the little boat attached to the larger fishing vessel, as is still the custom with the Galilean fishermen, (see Light's Travels in Palestine, p. 205,) and hence the mention (not of his casting off but) of his putting on his outer garment which he had thrown off whilst fishing. The scene is also marked by the word alyta\os; one of those spots where the shore of the lake descends to the water side not in a steep grassy slope, but a white sanded beach, (see the authorities quoted in Trench's Parables, p. 57). 136 ON THE PROMISES TO PETER. mingled love and rebuke, which seemed to blend in one the recollection of all those previous addresses of former times, there came the question, thrice repeated, " Simon, " son of Jonas, lovest thou Me ?" and in the first of the three, " lovest thou Me more than these ?" It is not the address now to Peter as the future Apostle, but to Simon, the man, the disciple, the friend, who, as he had thrice denied, was now thrice called upon to avow that love to his Master * which alone could blot out the memory of his sin; and which at least in its outward manifestations existed, as Chrysostom has said, more fervently in him than in any of the others. Thrice he answered, " Yea, Lord, Thou (o~v) " knowest that I love Thee." It is allowable to mark the contrast between the confident words, " Though all should " forsake Thee yet will not I," and this refusal to answer at all for himself, much more to institute comparisons between himself and the others, this throwing of the question back on the searching knowledge which he now felt, by sad experience, to be indeed possessed by Him, to whom, in his last reply, he felt that he could truly say, not merely " Thou knowest my love," but " Thou knowest " (olSas) all things ; all things are given to Thee both in " heaven and in earth; Thou k canst recognise (yiyvcoo-KetS'), " though I dare not, the depth of that love which I bear to " Thee ; not the mere general affection which Thou askest " of me, and which Thou hast enjoined to all Thy disciples l ), but the deep personal affection which one i " Love covers the multitude of sins," 1 Pet. iv. 8. k It is difficult to suppose that these words are in the same sentence inter- changed at random ; and the meaning which is here given to them corre- sponds with that which they bear in a somewhat similar juxtaposition. " Jesus' divine power I recognise (yiyvitxrKQ)), Paul's historical existence I know (eTricrrafjiai) ." Acts xix. 15. Here, as usual, the distinction is lost in the Peschito, and preserved in the Philoxenus version. * Here again the words are interchanged, evidently with the sense above affixed to them. 'AyctTnj is the general love from man to God, and from man to man, for the sake of God, which occurs so often in the writings of John. ON THE PROMISES TO PETER. 137 " human friend bears to another," (<f>i\ta.) It was after each of these successive answers (according to that uni- versal law exhibited in Scripture, God answering for man only when man answers for himself, bestowing His gifts not arbitrarily, but through and because of the moral and spiritual affections of man) that our Lord repeats those charges, which bear the same relation to the promise in St. Matthew that the confession of individual affection here bears to the confession of general belief there. The peculiarly Hebrew imagery is dropped; the particu- lar features of the Rock and the Keys and the binding and loosing, which were to be exemplified in his rule of the Palestine Church disappear; and we have instead the more universal metaphor with which the readers of this Gospel must have been already familiar from the para- ble of the Good Shepherd. It is as if the sense were : " Love is the true condition of Apostleship ; he only who is a term, as the readers of Aristotle know, more general than our word " friendship," inasmuch as it includes all family relations yet still having this in common with it, that it always implies personal affection, and is, ac- cording to Aristotle's definition, e/ceivou ez/e/co. (Eth. viii. 3.) It is of course a doubtful criticism which transfers the rules of classical Greek to that of the New Testament. But the distinct ideas which lie at the root of words often survive many changes, and in cases like the present, where a direct contrast is made, are the surest guide in determining the sense. It would seem to be from a feeling of reverence that the mote special affection of our Lord for John and Lazarus is always expressed by the more general word ayairav : the only exception is the speech in the mouth of the unbelieving bystanders at the grave of Lazarus, " Behold how He loved him," (e^iAet), John xi. 36. It is also to be observed, that in the last of our Lord's three questions <pi\eis is substituted for ayairas, as if the sense was, " Thy double avowal has satisfied " Me that thou lovest Me generally ; but hast thou indeed that true personal " love which thou claimest to have, and which so signally failed in the hour " of the betrayal?" In the English the distinction is wholly lost. The Vulgate has made an ineffectual attempt to preserve it in " diligo" and " amo." It is of more importance to observe, that here, according to its usual, though not invariable practice, the Syriac version of the Peschito employs the one word rohem for both, whilst the Philoxenian, according to its professed object of preserving the Greek text as faithfully as possible, renders <f>iAeT/ by rohem, and ayairai/ by maheb. 138 ON THE PROMISES TO PETER. " excels his brethren in love may excel them in power ; " and if thou lovest thy Master truly, thou shalt be as thou " wast before. But He will be no longer with you. The " Chief Shepherd shall be withdrawn from this earthly " scene ; it will be for thee to shew thy love to Him by care " for those whom He leaves behind. (Comp. Matt. xxv. 40; " x. 40.) Therefore, according to each successive avowal of " thy love, follow the successive charges 111 , Feed My lambs ; t( Give that tender care to the little ones, to the young of " thy flock which they especially need ; Be the shepherd of " My sheep (Troi/maive) ; Guide and protect the matured " and full-grown disciples through the dangers which will " attack them ; and also Feed My sheep ; forget not in thy " higher task that even the oldest may require the same " tender care that thou owest to the young." It is needless to repeat the events of Peter's earlier life, in which this charge, no less than the promise in St. Matthew, was realized. But as it was probably to the latest recollections of Peter's life that this chapter was addressed, so it is pro- bably the more general image, now fading in the distance, and more especially that implied in his First Epistle, that its readers would recognise : and, if nothing more, it is at least a striking coincidence and illustration of this passage that there is no part of the New Testament (with m The distinction between the words &pvia and irpSftara, &6(TKe and iroi- fj.aive, whatever may be meant by it, is surely as undeniable as that between $iA.e?z/ and aya-rraf, although Liicke, who maintains the first, denies the second. It is true that in the two corresponding passages of Matt. x. 16, Luke x. 3, irp60a.Ta and &pvas are used as synonymous ; but this cannot apply to a context where they both occur together: and the meaning here given is certainly borne out by the two passages referred to in the writings of the two Apostles chiefly concerned, (1 John ii. 12; 1 Pet. v. 1, 5.) And again, when we remember the danger and difficulty implied in the eastern notion of a shepherd, (comp. John x. 11, 12 ; 1 Sam. xvii. 34, 35 ; and, taken as it probably should be, in conjunction with the earlier part of the chapter, 1 Pet. v. 8,) there is nothing strange in tracing a difference between the simple notion of "feeding," and that of " being a shepherd." In both the Syriac versions the distinction is lost, as there is but one word in Syriac to express the two ideas. ON THE PROMISES TO PETER. 139 the exception of John x.) where the image of the shepherd is so prominently brought forward as in this very First Epistle of Peter (v. 2 4), where almost the very words of this passage are repeated, and where in the same con- nexion the very distinction that seems implied in our Lord's address, between the elder and the younger disciples, is drawn out with an emphasis peculiar to himself (v. 1 5) and St. John (1 John ii. 12.) (See also the previous Essay on the Apostolic office on the word 'ETTIO-KOTTOS.) But as this passage, unlike the one in St. Matthew, has reference to Peter's individual history, rather than to his apostolical mission, and to the later part of that history rather than the earlier, so the address of our Lord here includes the allusions to his death, in which, as I have said, the later generation of the age of John would naturally take a deep interest. The general sense, in part arising from the contrast between the younger and older members of the flock who would need Peter's care, might perhaps be expressed thus : " This is thy charge, " which if thou lovest thy Lord truly, thou wilt fulfil " arduous though it will be. For in thy youth, before " these heavier cares have fallen upon thee, thou wast free " to follow thine own pleasure, even as just now in the " boat thou couldst gird n thy fisher's coat about thee, or " cast it off as thou wouldest ; or walk (TrepieTrarels) along " the shores of the lake, or tread its shelving sands, ac- " cording to thine own free will. But it is a far different u portion which awaits thy future years. Thou hast loved thy a The repetition of the word " gird," (etypvvfs,} which had occurred so im- mediately before (Sie^axraro in ver. 7), fixes the reference to the ordinary occupations of Peter's youth. That it is a natural reference is confirmed by its occurrence (without any direct intention of elucidating this passage) in a similar contrast in the Christian Year. (St. Peter's Day.) " Or haply to his native lake His vision wafts him back, to talk With Jesus, ere his flight he take, As in that solemn evening walk." 140 ON THE PROMISES TO PETER. " Master hitherto ; canst thou love Him also in age, when " thou wilt have to sacrifice thine own pleasure in all things, " when thou shalt stretch forth thine hands on the cross " which must be borne by all His true disciples ; when thou " shalt be the sport of the rude hands of enemies, to gird " thee with another than a fisher's belt, to carry thee to " other places than the free air of the Galilean lake ? And " now if thou fearest not this, once more, as at thy first " call, and as was promised to thee at the Last Supper, "follow Me." In itself the passage is not so much a prediction of an actual event, as a warning of general suffering and distress, such as the passage, so strikingly similar to this in its immediately following upon the promise in Matt. xvi. 18, " If any man p will come after Me, let him deny himself " and take up his cross and follow Me." (Matt. xvi. 24). But it is precisely after the manner of the Evangelist to refer to specific details, as the fulfilment of promises or warnings which themselves bear a more general significa- tion, (see vii. 38 ; xii. 32, 38 3 and most indisputably xviii. 9). And in this case especially, where the words seemed expressly framed to meet the exact circumstances of Peter's death (the literal extension of the arms, the literal binding, whether of the girdle <i round his loins, or of his r hands and feet to the cross), it was natural that the parti- cular should throw the general into the shade, and that the self-crucifixion of Peter through his whole subsequent life Matt. iv. 19; John xiii. 36. P So again the notion of "binding with a girdle" was expressive not only of the binding at crucifixion, but of imprisonment and affliction generally. (Acts xxi. 11.) Evang. Nicod. 10. * Tune Petrus ab altero vincitur, cum cruci adstringitur. Tert. adv. Gnost., c. 15. This may be a fair testimony to the general practice of binding, as well as nailing, criminals to the cross ; but it is too evidently founded on this passage to be considered as an independent testimony to the particular mode of Peter's crucifixion. ON THE PROMISES TO PETER. 141 should seem to be concentrated in the actual crucifixion which closed it, and thus signify " by what death he should " glorify God" -even as the two thoughts are beautifully blended together in the legend which is in fact a comment on this whole passage, and which represents Peter as es- caping from Rome on the eve of his martyrdom, as if at the last seeking to have again that liberty which he was here warned to sacrifice, and meeting on the Appian way the vision of his risen Lord who said, "Venio Romam " iterum crucifigi s ." The coincidence of this last passage with Matt. xvi. 24 has been just observed; it is remarkable and may perhaps throw some light on the context, that the parallel still seems to continue, and that in Matt. xvi. 28 occurs the passage which of all in the three first Gospels most nearly corresponds to the concluding words in John xxi. 19 22. Of these words, as forming the keystone of the whole chapter, and also occupying a prominent place in one of the subsequent Sermons, it will not be out of place to give an explanation here, though not immediately connected with the character of Peter. As the last words to Peter were uttered (so we must conceive the scene) the Lord turned to depart ; Peter, with the natural energy of his character, and also with the tendency which so often appears in the minds of the dis- ciples, to take in its immediate literal sense what really could have only a spiritual meaning, sprang forward as if in obedience to His injunction to " follow Him," forget- ting for the moment that as He came and went amongst them not as in former times, so they could be with Him only in the higher sense which His address had of itself indicated. But as Peter thus hung on his Master's parting s As 1 Pet. v. 1 5 may be considered an allusion to the first part of the address, so it might seem that 2 Pet. i. 14 is in allusion to the second part of it. 142 ON THE PROMISES TO PETER. - words, another step was heard behind, and he turned and beheld the beloved Disciple, silent as before, but, now that the dialogue with Peter was closed, following like him, in rapt attention, the track of his departing Lord. What wonder if, with the thought of the marked contrast of their characters, the active energy of the one, the passive gentle- ness of the other, impressed as it was even on the minute details of this brief scene, elated it may be by his own restoration to favour, and excited by the foreshadowing of his own future destiny, the natural impetuousness of Peter should break through the awful reverence which had up to that moment prevailed over the meeting, and vent itself in the question partly of eager curiosity, partly of half- expressed complaint or personal interest at the fate of his youthful friend, too retiring to ask for himself, " Lord, and " what shall this man do ? " It was on this occasion, it was under such circumstances, (so we can imagine the feeling to have run which dictated the record of this scene,) that the Lord uttered that memorable speech, on which has been founded the belief that John " should never die ;" with how much or how little truth may be inferred from the speech itself. Jesus saith unto him, "If I will that he tarry till I come, " what is that to thee ? Follow thou Me." The first im- pression conveyed and intended to be conveyed, is of a rebuke to Peter; that same rebuke which throughout the Scriptures, but in the Gospel History especially, is ad- dressed to those who leave the thought of their own duties for profitless enquiries about the fate of others. " Lord, " are there few that be saved?" was a similar question of Peter's on a former occasion, and met by a similar answer, " Strive to enter in at the strait gate 1 ." And now the solemnity of the rebuke was enhanced by the additional awe which invested all their interviews since the Resurrec- ' Luke xiii. 23, 24. ON THE PROMISES TO PETER. 143 tion, and which more than ever refused to be broken in upon by questions of idle or irreverent curiosity. " Touch " Me not" is the prevailing tone which pervades the whole mysterious intercourse of the Forty Days. But in this as in many of our Lord's rebukes, a positive lesson lies hid under the negative form in which it is couched, just as we find an eternal truth wrapt up in the answers to the Pharisees and Sadducees in Matt, xxiii., although the outward form in which they are expressed is intended not so much to impart truth, as to confute error. Even regarding it still in its reference to Peter, there is the general instruction conveyed which is so beauti- fully deduced from it in the Christian Year, and which so strongly resembles the answer given to the somewhat similar question of the same Apostle on a previous occa- sion, "We have forsaken all and followed Thee, what "shall we have therefore?" (Matt. xix. 27 xx. 16;) or to the demand of the mother of John himself, when she asked for her two sons the loftiest places in the kingdom of heaven. (Matt. xxi. 20.) " What is it to thee, if he " tarry u till Christ comes, in rest and peace, whilst thou " art led to suffering and death ? What is it to him, if he " linger on year after year in loneliness and weariness of " spirit, whilst thou art serving in active self-denial ? Each " of Christ's servants has his appointed task. Thou art u As in the previous passage, much depended on the double meanings of "gird" and "walk," (^uvvwai, TreptTrore?^,) so here on the various significa- tions of /jiweiv. It is no douht this very fulness of sense which renders the word so appropriate. (1.) It is probably chosen from its immediate contrast with d/>Aou0ei. " He may stand still here, but thou must follow My depart- " ing steps." But then (2.) it also has the sense which it seems to have acquired in the apostolic writings of "continuing in life," 1 Cor. xv. 6; 1 Thess. iv. 17, in which sense it must have been understood by the authors of the rumour of John's immortality. And (3.) both meanings must be in- vested with the notion of permanence and quiet resting, which, in St. John's writings especially, is the peculiar force of this word. (See inter alia, i. 32, 33; xiv. 17; xv. 4; 1 John iv. 16.) 144 ON THE PROMISES TO PETER. " the first, and yet it may be thy lot to become the last, " and he the last and youngest of the Apostles may by his " happy and peaceful end become the first : thou mayest " glory in thy martyr's death, but he too may serve " though he only f stand and wait:' the cup that he shall " drink and the baptism that he shall be baptized with " is far different from thine, and from that of his elder " brother, yet each shall have the reward that is prepared " for him. In the Father's house are many mansions, and " divers are the paths which lead thither : whether there- " fore thou murmurest for thyself, or complainest for him, "rest content in the belief that that which ( I will' is " good." Such, if we may so far venture to paraphrase the Lord's words, is the most obvious and general lesson which they convey, the lesson of that resignation to the will of God and Christ, in which, according to the well-known saying of Bishop Butler, is involved the whole sum of human piety. But that "will" is on this occasion expressed in such definite language, as to invite to a consideration not merely of man's duty under it, whatever it might be, but of what it actually was to be. The natural inference un- doubtedly is that His will was that John should " tarry till " He came." The first and most obvious sense in which this must have been fulfilled to the mind of the early Church, was that he, alone of all the more celebrated Apostles, lived to see the close of the Jewish dispensation in the fall of Jerusalem, which in the thoughts of the first disciples and in the speeches of our Lord Himself was blended with what is called "the coming of the Son of Man." It would be in this case an almost exact parallel in sense, as well as in position, to Matt. xvi. 28. There, as here, the general tenor of the whole passage speaks of the final reward of Christ's servants according to their several works at His coming, and of the near approach of that ON THE PROMISES TO PETER. 145 coming within the lifetime of those who heard Him. The only difference would be that what is there spoken in general terms of the existing generation is here concentred in the person of John ; a concentration, to which the natu- ral feeling of the early Church towards the sole surviving representative of the original Apostles would at once re- spond, and which is no less familiar to later ages from the connexion of his name with the book which is writ- ten in express expectation of Him who "comes quickly, " and whose reward is with Him to give to every man as '' his work shall be," (Rev. xxii. 12.) But this sense of our Lord's words did not satisfy the feeling of the Church, after this first coming was past and gone and John still remained alive. Of the belief which arose in consequence that he should never die, there will be occasion to speak hereafter, (see Essay on the Tradi- tions respecting St. John.) We are here concerned not with their false interpretation, but with what we may con- ceive to be the true interpretation still remaining, after the words had received their first and historical fulfilment. The " coming of the Lord," as we know from the variety of passages in which it occurs, expresses any such epoch or " crisis" in the world's history as may be considered in some sense a foreshadowing of its final end and judgment. Sometimes it may be marked with "fearful sights and " great signs," as in the fall of Jerusalem and of Rome, (Luke xxi. 11,) sometimes "coming not with observation, " with no man saying ' Lo here' or ' Lo there,' for behold " the kingdom of God is within us." (Luke xvii. 21.) Such a coming as the last of these two modes was the close of the apostolical age at the end of the first century ; to ordinary observers imperceptible, gradually passing away with the last sands in the hour-glass of one enfeebled, speechless, solitary old man ; yet withal a crisis which even more than the fall of Jerusalem or of Rome marked off the end of 146 ON THE PROMISES TO PETER. that generation from all which preceded it, inasmuch as it marked on the one hand the extinction of the last re- flected ray of the Divine Presence which had illuminated the whole of that period with a preternatural intensity of light ; but on the other hand the beginning of that great society, which, as now left to itself, and its indwelling Spirit, was now what we call in its ordinary sense the Chris- tian Church, " the holy city, coming down from God out " of heaven, prepared as a bride to meet her husband." This crisis x , the point of transition between the mira- culous and the natural, between the age of the Apostles and the age of the Church, between the times of the earthly and the times of the spiritual Jerusalem, St. John lived to see and in this sense may truly be said to have waited till his Lord came to call him to Himself. One remaining and still higher sense there is in which those words may have been in part fulfilled, in the work which is still left and always will be left to be performed till the end of all things, by the spirit of John, whether in his own writings, or in the still more living monuments of his earthly likenesses. But for this so much more fitting a place will be found in the Sermon upon St. John that it need not be further pursued here. It may be allowed in conclusion to call attention to the striking example which this passage aifords of "inspiration," or whatever else we may call the charac- teristic difference between ordinary writings and those in the Sacred Volume. Here is a chapter, of which it might be alleged that the peculiarities of its style and composition suggest the probability of its having passed through other hands than the Apostle himself; an interpretation of our Lord's words is spoken of as generally current in the Church ; an interpretation which actually laid so great a hold of the existing generation that it has required nearly x See Ziillig's Introduction to the Apocalypse, p. 67. ON THE PROMISES TO PETER. 147 seventeen centuries to shake it entirely off; an interpreta- tion too, which from its definiteness and precision would in some respects have exactly suited the mind which so loved to trace the fulfilment of the Lord's words in parti- cular specific events. And yet, thus hovering as it does on the very confines of the sacred writings, thus seeming even to demand admission, it is rejected. The Evangelist goes to the very verge; he mentions it; he does not even declare it to be false; he contents himself with stating the real saying on which it professed to rest. But, as if by an infallible instinct, he there pauses; and the New Testament is relieved from having given the slightest sanction to a belief, which however natural and even beautiful in itself, was yet sure to degenerate into wild superstition, and which even in its simplest form was incompatible with the stern plainness of Christian history. III. THE PROMISES TO PETER IN LUKE V. 1 10; xxii. 31, 32. The compilatory y character of St. Luke's Gospel pre- cludes the possibility of fixing on the intention of any par- ticular narrative in it with as much precision as is attain- able in the others. Still there is a general purpose running throughout, however much obscured by incidental causes. That the universal diffusion of Christianity as a fact is the chief object of that "second treatise" which we now call " the Acts of the Apostles" no one will doubt, and it seems probable, that in like manner the universal applicability of Christianity even to the lowest and most degraded states of humanity is the prevailing characteristic of his " first " treatise," now called his " Gospel." Such at least is the tenor of most of those parts which are peculiar to it, and y As stated in the Preface to the Gospel (Luke i. 1 5). L 2 148 ON THE PROMISES TO PETER. such apparently the occasion of the insertion of the two passages now before us. The prominent feature in each of the two transactions is the contrast between the struggles and weaknesses of Peter's human nature, and the gracious assurance of his Divine Master. The great Jewish Apostle, as in St. Matthew, the passionate and eager friend, as in St. John, are here put out of sight. It is only the man Simon that is set before us, in whose life, as in the prodigal son, the woman who was a sinner, the weeping women of Jerusalem, and all the other characters peculiarly brought out in this Gospel, a lesson may be read to the desponding minds whom it was intended especially to console. It is therefore from a wholly new point of view that We now approach the promises to Peter; their substance is the same, but their form, their context, their intention is entirely different. "Fear not, for henceforth thou shalt " catch men," (Luke v. 10,) conveys no doubt the same truth as was expressed in St. Matthew by the Rock, and in St. John by the Shepherd ; it is but the image which would be most naturally used in the first call of the Apostles to that higher life of which their common occupations furnished so ready a likeness : as in that higher life it would also bring back to their minds the humble origin from which they had risen to it. But it would seem as though the words were here recorded not so much as an augury of the future greatness of the Galilean "Fisherman," but rather as an answer of com- forting reassurance to the feeling of conscious sin, which, as in our first parents, so in the first Apostle, shrunk from the presence of Divinity and vented itself in the despairing cry "Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord." "Fear " not to approach, it is for thee and such as thee that these " mighty wonders are wrought. The presence of Christ, " divine though it be, will not be death to thee, but life ; " and if thou followest Him, thou shalt perform wonders far " greater than that which thou now seest ; not the mute ON THE PROMISES TO PETER. 149 " unconscious creatures of the deep, but living human " beings shall henceforth be thy spoil." So again the address at the Last Supper, Luke xxii. 31, 32, was doubtless fulfilled when the wavering resolutions of the early Church were "strengthened" by the reviving energy of Peter at the election of Matthias, at the day of Pentecost, before the Sanhedrin; in the council, and in the first and second Epistle. But all these mighty works of the great Apostle lay far in the remote horizon of that awful evening. All the nearer prospect was overclouded, doubt, betrayal sorrow even unto death desperate declarations of fidelity, which by their very vehemence proved their fickleness ; such were the thoughts and words which brooded over the closing meal. It was amidst associations such as these that the chief Apostle was singled out to receive his Master's warning. Again, in the repetition of the name (e Simon, " Simon/' we recognise the same solemn form, as in the earlier and later address, but it is now not in allusion to what he was about to be, but to what he actually was ; the vision set before him is not of the future, but of the present and the past, not clothed in the imagery of the national prophecies, but of that book which above all others in the Old Testament speaks of the struggles and temptations of the individual man in the presence of his Maker. It is the opening of the book of Job that furnishes the medium through which the inward and spiritual contest is repre- sented to the outward sense. As in a previous occasion, peculiar to this same Gospel, it had been said on the return of the Seventy z , "I beheld Satan fall from heaven like " lightning," as if the court of heaven had been opened, before Him, and at the triumph of good the Accuser had visibly fallen from his wonted place amongst the sons of God ; so here the same scene is again displayed, but with its brightness overcast by the coming on of the Sf hour of z Luke x. 18. 150 ON THE PROMISES TO PETER. " the power of darkness," brought before us, also in this especial Gospel, with a vividness and emphasis peculiar to itself. (Luke xxii. 53.) It is, if we may so far bring out the latent image implied in the sacred words, "It is no " light trial which is now impending over you, it was no " slight demand which has, as it were even now, been " made and obtained by the great Adversary a as he stood " before the throne of heaven, and received permission " from the Most High to sift as on a threshing floor the " good from the bad who are mixed up in your company." (Comp. "Ye are clean but not all," John xiii, 10.) "But " great as the trial will be to all, and above all, to thee, the " first and chief Apostle, fear not. One there was who at " that moment sent up His prayer to the Father that thou " at least mightest come through victorious, that thy faith " might not sink under the terrors of the coming distress ; " and it will be for thee therefore, whensoever the time may " come that thy spirit shall revive, and that thou shalt turn " again from thy flight, (eVfccrrpeS/ra? Trore,) to support those '* whose faith has even more than thine given way under the " danger ; when thou hast known what it is to be tried thy- " self, thou wilt be the better able to strengthen b others," The sense, here given, is so much lost in the English version, that it may be necessary to justify it in detail. 1 . The translation of the aorists e^r^craro and eSeTjaa^Vy "has desired" and "have prayed," instead of "desired" and "prayed," though allowable and perhaps necessary in some cases, is a violation of the usual rule, which in this case is not only not called for, but destroys the vividness with which the trial, so to speak, is brought forward as in a scene or vision which had just passed as they were speak- ing. 2. The want of emphasis in the English pronoun "I" (eya> Se) also prevents us from seeing the contest, as it were, between Satan or the Adversary on the one hand, Compare Rev. ii. 10. b Rev. iii. 3. ON THE PROMISES TO PETER. 151 and Christ on the other, for the souls of the Apostles. Comp. Zech. iii. 1 ; Rev. xii. 10, and the whole passage in John xvii. 11, 12, where there is the same sifting implied, one of them being actually lost in the process, and where the prayer for their safety is actually offered up by our Lord. 3. The present confession of "you" and "thou," causes most modern readers to overlook the distinction which is faithfully represented in the original between Peter and the other Apostles. All of them were to be sifted by Satan, but it was for Peter that the prayer was especially offered up, and Peter who was especially warned to comfort the rest, a distinction in accordance with the actual result, inasmuch as the others all fled at once, but Peter's courage alone (with the exception of John) endured till the last moment, and also was the first to revive. 4. efyrrjo-aro is not merely (like e^r^cre) "de- "sired" or "asked," but "succeeded in his request," a sense not only in accordance with the general usage of the word, but almost required by the context, which im- plies that they were all to be tried, though one only was to be lost ; and the others, though overcome for a time, were to be restored. (John xiii. 10.) 5. eTTWTptyas Trore, is ill expressed by " when thou art converted." Evidently the indefinite Trore throws a remoteness and uncertainty over it, fully in accordance with the general gloom of the whole context, and eTrio-rptyas is in direct allusion to the flight and discomfiture of the Apostles, as implied not only in the parallel passage in Matt. xxvi. 31, but in Peter's answer in this very place (Luke xxii. 33), "Lord, why speak of " flight and return ? with Thee I am ready to go in undi- " vided companionship to prison and to death." The 'foregoing remarks on the promises to Peter d have c See Greswell's Dissertations, vol. iii. p. 114. d The only allusion to the promises to St. Peter contained in St. Mark's Gospel is when in the catalogue of the Apostles it is said, " Simon He sur 152 ON THE PROMISES TO PETER. been confined to the explanation of the original meaning of the passages, without entering on the wider application, which has been given in the Sermon, or the subordinate applications which have at different times been affixed to them. They have as is well known been greatly varied according to the circumstances of the age, and the point of view from which the passage was ap- proached. In the fourth and fifth centuries, the whole stress was laid on the confession of Peter, as an argument for our Lord's divinity, in the Arian controversy which was then at its height. In the sixth, seventh, and following centuries, it was adduced to support the then rising power of the supposed successor of Peter in the person of the Western Patriarch. In the sixteenth and seventeenth, this last interpretation was again met by' the revival, although under a somewhat different form, of the more dogmatical view of the fifth and sixth, and between these two the works of controversial divines have to a great extent oscil- lated ever since. But wherever the immediate points of dispute have fallen out of sight, there the more spiritual and universal explanation which has been quoted in the Sermon from the commentary of Origen on this passage has maintained its ground. From time to time the vehe- mence of controversy has thrown it into the shade, or endeavoured to explain it away : but on the whole, whether " named Peter, and James and John, Boanerges." It might be asked why in a Gospel ascribed by general tradition to the teaching of St. Peter, all the more especial mention of Peter's blessing should be omitted, and (without ascribing it, as has sometimes been done, to the supposed modesty of the Apostle, or to the intended neutrality of the Evangelist) it might be answered that, unless in works especially written with a view to exalt the author, it would be more natural, than not, that the author should be thrown into the shade. If we had a second history of the Peloponnesian war we should pro- bably learn more from it concerning the life of Thucydides, than we^can from his own narrative. But this is a precarious argument, and it is safer to ascribe the omission merely to the absence of any particular occasion for mentioning it, such as we have seen to exist, in different degrees and forms, in the Gos- pels of. St. Matthew, St. John, and St. Luke. ON THE PROMISES TO PETEE. 153 we look at the long chain of patristic opinions collected by Dupin and Gratz, and in the Appendix to the recent Oxford edition of Tertullian, or whether we turn to the Churches of the Reformation, the Church of England as represented in the Apology 6 of the final compiler of its Articles, (to give one authority out of many) the Churches of the Continent, as represented in the almost unanimous opinion of their latest divines, we shall find that amidst much fluctuation and contradiction even of the same writers with themselves, it is after all this interpretation which alone includes them all, and with which for that reason this discussion shall be closed f . "If we shall say, like Peter, c Thou art the Christ/the " Son of the living God,' not by the revelation of flesh and " blood, but by the light of our Father which is in heaven " shining into our heart, we become Peter, and to us might " be said by the Word, ( Thou art Peter,' &c. For every " disciple of Peter is a rock, from the time when (or e from " whom' a<j> ov) they drank of him who drank from ( the " spiritual rock which followed them,' and upon every such " rock is built the whole teaching of the Church (6 /cK\rj- " cri-aariKos TTCLS \6<yo$\ and the polity formed according to " such teaching; for in every individual of those who, being " perfect, have the collection of those words, and deeds, " and thoughts, which make up the state of the blessed, " there is the Church which is built by God." [After ex- tending this to the other Apostles, and explaining the meaning of -the gates of hell, he proceeds.] " Now let us " see in what sense it has been said to Peter and to every " one who is Peter, (TO> Uerpo) /cal jravrl Ilerpm,) ' I will (< give to thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven.' And " first I think that it has been said in connexion with 'the " gates of hell shall not prevail,' &c. ; for he is worthy from " the same Word to receive the keys of the kingdom of e See Jewell's Apology, part 6. f Origen ad Matt. xvi. 154 ON THE PROMISES TO PETER. " heaven who has guarded himself against ' the gates of " hell, lest they should prevail against him/ as though in " return for the powerlessness against him of the gates of " hell he was to receive for a reward the keys of the king- " dom of heaven, that he may open for himself the gates " which are closed against those who are conquered by ft the gates of hell : and he enters, if he is gifted with self- " control, then through a gate as it were of self-control, " opened by the key which opens self-control, and if " he is just, through the gate of justice opened by the " key of justice, and so in the case of all the other virtues ; " for I conceive that by every virtue of knowledge some " mysteries of wisdom, according to the corresponding " forms of virtue, are opened to him who lives virtuously, " the Saviour giving to those who are not overcome by the " gates of hell as many keys as there are virtues, opening " an equal number of gates according to the revelation of " the mysteries to each separate virtue ; perhaps too each " separate virtue is itself the kingdom of heaven, and all f< virtue collectively is f the kingdom of the heavens g ,' so " that, according to this, he is already in the kingdom of " the heavens who lives according to the several virtues ; " and thus, ' Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at " hand,' is not to be referred to time, but to acts and dis- " positions, for Christ, who is Himself the sum of every " virtue, has taken up His abode there, and speaks, and " therefore it is within His disciples, that the kingdom of " God is, not 'Lo here' or <Lo there.' And see what power " is possessed by the rock on which the Church is built by " Christ, and by every one that says, ' Thou art the Christ, " the Son of the living God,' so much so that his judg- 8 Oil this distinction, founded on the exact words of the original, TWV olpavuvy] Origen lays stress afterwards in explaining that herein lay the superiority of the promises to Peter to that addressed to the other Apostles in Matt, xviii. Peter binding in all the heavens, (to rots ovpavois,) they only in one, ON THE PROMISES TO PETER. 155 " ments remain firm, as though God judged in him, that in " that very act of judging the gates of hell should not pre- (( vail against him. Against him, therefore, who judges " unjustly, and does not bind upon earth according to " God's word, nor loose upon earth according to His will, " the gates of hell shall prevail, but he against whom they " do not prevail judges justly. Therefore he has the keys " of the kingdom of the heavens, opening them to those " who are loosed on earth and free, that also in the " heavens they may be loosed and free, and closing them " to those who by his just judgment are bound on earth, " that also in the heavens they may be bound and con- " demned. But since they who lay claim to the rank of " episcopacy (rbv TOTTOV) use this saying, as being Peter, " and as having received the keys of the kingdom of " the heavens from the Saviour, and teach that what " is bound, i. e. condemned, by them, is bound in the " heavens also, and that what has received forgiveness " from them has been loosed in the heavens also, we " must say that they speak soundly, if they have the work " or reality (epyov) on account of which it has been said to <f that first Peter (e/ceiva) r&> Herpw>\ ' Thou art Peter/ " &c., and if their characters are such as that on them h " by Christ the Church is built, and that to them might " reasonably be applied the saying, * the gates of hell shall " not prevail against him that wishes to bind and loose.' " But if he is bound with the cords of his sins, it is in vain " that he binds and looses. Perhaps also it might be said " that it is in the heavens of the wise man, i. e. in his " virtues, that the wicked is bound ; and again, that in " them the good is loosed, and every one who obtains " pardon (a^vria-riav) for the sins committed before he h In like manner, when commenting on Matt, xviii. 18, he ascribes the power of binding and loosing there spoken of to all who have thrice a rebuked their erring brethren. 156 ON THE PROMISES TO PETER. " became good. Just as he who has no cords of sins, no " sins like cart ropes, is not bound by God, so neither is he " by any who is in the place of Peter (oaris av y Herpes.) " But if any one who is not Peter, and who has not the " qualities here mentioned, believes that he can bind on " earth like Peter, so that what he binds is bound in the " heavens, and what he looses is loosed in the heavens, " such an one is puffed up, not knowing the meaning of " the Scriptures, and being puffed up he has fallen into " the snare of the Devil." SERMON III. ST. PAUL. ACTS xxii. 21. Depart, for I will send theefar hence unto the Gentiles. IN recurring I trust not unfitly on this day a to the SERM. consideration of the three great Saints and Apostles - of the Christian Church, St. Peter, St. Paul, and St. John, the thoughts of some will perhaps recur to the three original disciples of our Lord, with the mention of whom I opened these discourses. The first has been already spoken of. But when we come to the second, the continuity van- ishes. Unlike his two fellow disciples, James the son of Zebedee is suddenly called away without leaving a trace behind to justify the exalted place which he occupied above his brother Apostles, and in his stead we find one born out of due season, not only not belonging to the circle of the original Three, or even of the Twelve, but in all the cir- cumstances of his education, his calling, and his life, most unlike to all of them. I am not now going to dwell on the thoughts which this substitution suggests ; such coinci- a Preached on the Feast of All Saints, 1846. 158 ST. PAUL. SERM. dences are often more fanciful than real, not to - speak of the handle which they afford to scoff against the undoubted truths with which they are confounded. Still though the connexion between St. Paul and James the brother of John is immaterial to the general argument, I know not how we could find a truer point of view from which to regard the rise of the great Apostle of the Gentiles, than by placing ourselves in the position of the early Church mourn- ing over the untimely death of the eldest of the Sons of Thunder. It was not only that now for the first time a chasm had been made in the original apo- stolical brotherhood never to be again filled up on earth, that one of those who were to " sit on twelve " thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel" had passed away, without seeing with his bodily eyes the coming of the Lord : but also that a change had come over the general aspect of the whole Christian society. Jerusalem was no longer the exclusive centre of the new faith ; the Church was no longer one with the Synagogue ; new wants had arisen which no natural experience of the fishermen of Galilee was able to supply ; the children were come to the birth and there was not strength to bring forth: even Peter " withdrew 11 and separated " himself" from the very emergency which he had been the chief instrument in bringing to pass ; the framework of the early Church, which twelve years b Gal. ii. 12. ST. PAUL. 159 before had seemed instinct with immortal vigour, SERM. now appeared to be breaking up and passing away - before a mightier spirit which it was unable to com- prehend : far off beyond the confines of the Holy Land, in the purely Gentile city of Antioch, the capital of the Grecian kingdom, was growing up a new body of prophets which threatened to throw the older societies of Palestine into shade ; a new name was given to the disciples, of which the very c form indicated its Roman origin, and which so long offended against the feelings of the earliest converts that down to the very close of the apostolical age the great mass of believers still shrank from adopt- ing it. And now who was the new teacher round whom these tendencies of dangerous error, as they would have been deemed by some, this unfolding of divine truth as it was deemed by others, gradually fixed themselves ? We are not left to conjecture to know the feelings with which this question was asked by the more timid or the more prejudiced of the great bulk of the Jewish Christians. " Who was this pre- 1 ' tending to the name of an Apostle, yet ' un- " known by face to the Churches of JudseaV " ' unknown to the circle of those who had seen c The name " Christianus" which was first given to the disci- ples at Antioch is never used in the New Testament except as applied to them by others, as in the place where its origin is men- tioned, Acts xi. 26, in the speech of Agrippa, Acts xxvi. 28, and in 1 Pet. iv. 16. "If any man suffer [before the Roman magis- " trates] as a Christian." d Gal. i. 22; 1 Cor ix. 1 ; Acts xxi. 21. 160 ST. PAUL. SERM. " the Lord Jesus/ with no authority for his teach- " ing, human or Divine, of Gentile life if not of " Gentile birth, a renegade to the faith of his " fathers, 'teaching 6 the Jews which are among the " Gentiles to forsake Moses, saying that they ought " not to circumcise their children, nor to walk after " the customs.'" Such was the image which we learn from the Acts and Epistles to have been the Jewish concep- tion of St. Paul. But there were others even then, who were ready " to glorify God when they heard " that there was one preaching the faith which once " he destroyed f ;" and now after the lapse of so many hundred years we may still be allowed to ask the question even with a deeper interest, " Who was " this founder of a new epoch in the Christian reli- " gion ? Who was it to whom a greater prominence " is given in the New Testament than to any one else " save our Lord Himself? Who was this to whom " alone of the sons of men our Lord revealed Him- " self on earth after His Ascension, for whom not " merely the laws of the world of nature, but the " order and continuity of the world of grace seemed 1 ' to be suspended and interrupted?" Whatever difficulty there may be in answering this question certainly does not arise from the ab- sence of materials. Unlike in this respect to the Apostle of whom I last spoke to you, there are very e Acts xxi. 21. For the fuller exposition of the misrepresenta- tions of St. Paul see the Essay on the Judaizers. f Gal. i. 22. ST. PAUL. 161 few characters in ancient history of which we know SERM. so much as we do of St. Paul, none perhaps in the " Sacred Volume with the exception of the Psalmist King, who in this as in many other respects holds a place in the older dispensation analogous to that of the Gentile Apostle in the new. His very form and manner, his personal feelings and affections the advance of years from the prime of manhood to old age are all reflected to us in the Acts and in his letters with a liveliness and minuteness of detail which have always furnished to the Christian apolo- gist one of the best defences of the authenticity of Christian history. The argument of Paley's Evi- dences must change its value with the shifting state of the metaphysical schools of the age. The argu- ment of the Horse Paulinas will stand fast for all ages alike. In examining what this character was it is not necessary to go back to the times before his con- version. It was this which was his birthday into the world's history. He might no doubt have been the head of the Pharisaic faction in the last expiring struggles of his nation; he might have rallied round him the nobler spirits of his countrymen, and by his courage and prudence have caused Jerusalem to hold out a few months or years more against the army of Titus. Still at best he would have been a Maccabaeus or a Gamaliel, and what a difference to the whole subsequent fortunes of the world between a Maccabaeus and a Paul, between the Jewish Rabbi and the Apostle of the Gentiles ! It was not till the M 162 ST. PAUL. SERM. scales fell off from his eyes after the three days -stupor 8 , till the consciousness of his great mission awakened all his dormant energies, that we really see what he was. That Divine Providence (which, as he himself 11 tells us, had " already separated him " from his mother's womb") had no doubt overruled the circumstances of his earlier education for the great end to which he was afterwards called; in him, as in similar cases, the natural faculties were by his conversion "not unclothed but clothed upon:" the glory of Divine grace was shewn here as always not by repressing and weakening the human character, but by bringing it out for the first time in its full vigour. He was still a Jew; the zeal of his ancestral tribe 1 which had caused him " to raven as a wolf in " the morning" of his life, still glowed in his veins when he " returned in the evening to divide the " spoil" of the mightier enemy whom he had de- feated and bound ; and in the unwearied energy and self-devotion, no less than the peculiar intensity of national feeling, which mark his whole life and writings, we discern the qualities which the Jewish people alone of all the nations then existing on the earth could have furnished. But there were other elements which his conversion developed into life besides the mere enthusiasm of the Jew shared equally with him by St. Peter. I would not lay stress on the Grecian culture which he might have g " He was three days without sight, and neither did eat nor " drink." Acts ix. 9 ; compare 2 Cor. xii. 1 . h Gal. i. 15. Gen. xlix. 27. ST. PAUL. 163 received in the schools of Tarsus k , or the philoso- SERM. in. phical tone which we know to have characterized - the lectures of Gamaliel, though doubtless these had their share in the formation of his subsequent character ; nor yet would I insist on the difference of intellectual power, great as it seems to have been, between his mind, and that of James and Peter and John. But whatever had been in former ages that remarkable union of qualities which had from the earliest times constituted the chosen people into a link between the East and the West, that was now in the highest degree exem- plified in the character of Paul. Those histori- cal anticipations of the Grecian forms of thought and feeling which have so often struck the classi- cal student of the Old Testament; those pro- phetical aspirations after a wider and more compre- hensive system to which the Apostle so often refers in what he calls the "very bold 1 " expressions of Isaiah, reached their highest pitch, although under a different form, not only in his mission, but in himself. Never before or since have the Jew and Gentile so completely met in one single person, not, as in Josephus and Philo, by mere imitation, not, as in the Jews of later times, by the destruction k For the schools of Tarsus, see the often quoted passage in Strabo, (xiv. p. 673), expressing their superiority even to those of Athens and Alexandria. And for the Talmudic traditions of the Gentile tendencies of Gamaliel, agreeing with the tolerant spirit of his speech in the Acts, so alien to the usual rigidity o f his sect, see Tholuck on the Character of St. Paul, (Eng. Trans, p. 17. 26.) 1 Rom. x. 20. M 2 164 ST. PAUL. s E RM. of the older element, but by an absolute though un- - conscious fusion of the two together ; not founding a new system, but breathing a new spirit into that which already existed, and which only needed some such Divine impulse to call it into that fulness of life, which had been stunted only, not destroyed. He knew nothing, it may be, of those philosophers and historians with whom we are so familiar, nor can we expect to find in him the peculiar graces of Athenian genius ; yet it is in the dialectical skill m of Aristotle, the impassioned appeals of Demosthenes, the complicated sentences of Thucydides, far more than in the language of Moses or Solomon or Isaiah, that the form and structure of his arguments finds its natural parallel. He had never studied, it may be, or, if he had, would hardly have discerned those finer feelings of humanity of which the germs existed in Greece and Rome, and have from them been pre- served to modern Europe, but how remarkably are they exemplified in his own character ! What is that probing of the innermost recesses of the human" heart and conscience, so unlike the theo- cratic visions of the older prophets, but the aposto- lical reflexion of the practical, individual, psycho- logical spirit of the western philosophies ? What is that inimitable union of self-respect with ra As a few out of many instances of this unconscious parallelism to Aristotle, Demosthenes, and Thucydides, may be given, (1.) Rom. vii. 723; 2 Cor. viii. 13, 14; (2.) 2 Cor. xi. 22, 31; (3.) 2 Cor. iv. 8, 9, and the digressions in Eph. iii. 2 ; iv. 1 ; 1 Tim. i. 419. n As in Rom. vii., viii. 105 respect and deference to others which distin- SERM. guishes his more personal addresses to his con- ~ verts, but the anticipation of that refined and polished courtesy which has been ever esteemed the peculiar product of European civilization? What is that capacity for throwing himself into the position and feelings of others, that becoming " all things to all men p ," which his enemies called world- ly prudence, that " transferring q of arguments" to his own person, which lends such vigour to the Epi- stles to Rome and to Corinth, that intense sym- pathy in the strength of which, as has been truly said, he ' had a thousand friends, and loved each as his own soul, and seemed to live a thousand lives in them, and died a thousand deaths when he must quit them/ which " suffered when the weaker " brother suffered'," which would not allow him to " eat meat whilst the world standeth lest he make " his brother to offend" what was all this but the effect of God's blessing on that boundless versatility of nature which had formed the especial mark of the Grecian mind for good and evil in all ages? what was it but the significant maxim of the Roman poet, "Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto," transfigured for the first time in the heavenly radi- ance of truth and holiness ? As in the Epistles to the Corinthians, Philippians, and Philemon. P 1 Cor. ix. 22 ; see Essay on the Judaizers. 1 Rom. vii. 723 ; 1 Cor. iv. 6 ; vii. 1 ; viii. 16. r 2 Cor. xi. 29 ; 1 Cor. viii. 13. 166 ST. PAUL. SERM. II. It will not be supposed that in this brief view - of the outward aspect of St. Paul's character I have attempted to give a complete analysis of it. I have purposely confined myself solely to those natural and moral gifts which as they were practically called into existence by and for the work which he was to perform, can only through and in that work be fully understood. There is perhaps no feature of the apostolical age which is more difficult for us to realize than the immense importance attached by St. Paul to so obvious a truth as the admission of the Gentiles into the Christian Church, still more the furious opposition by which its first announce- ment was met. Yet so it was. Other questions occupied the attention of the first dawn and of the final close of the apostolic age, but the one question above all others which absorbed its mid-day prime, which is the key to almost all the Epistles, which is the one subject of the whole history of the Acts, was not the foundation, not the com- pletion of the Christian Church, but its universal diffusion ; the destruction not of Paganism, not of Gnosticism, but of Judaism. He therefore who stood forward at this juncture as the champion of this new truth at once drew the whole attention of the Christian world to himself every other Apo- stle recedes from our view east and west, north and south, from Jerusalem to Rome, from Mace- donia to Melita, we hear of nothing, we see nothing but St. Paul and his opponents. It is only by bearing this steadily in mind that BT. PAUL. 107 we can rightly conceive the nature of the conflict, s E R M. He was not like a missionary of later times whose - great work is accomplished if he can add to the number of his converts ; he was this, but he was much more than this ; it was not the actual conver- sions themselves, but the principle which every conversion involved ; not the actual disciples whom he gained, but he himself who dared to make them disciples, that constitutes the enduring interest of that lifelong struggle. It was not merely that he reclaimed from Paganism the Grecian cities of Asia Minor, but that at every step which he took west- ward from Palestine he tore up the prejudice of ages. It was not merely that he cast out the false spirit from the damsel at Philippi, but that when he set his foot on the farther shores of the ^Egean sea, religion for the first time ceased to be Asiatic, and became European. It was not merely that at Athens he converted Dionysius and Damaris, but that there was seen a Jew standing in the court of the Areopagus, and appealing to an Athenian audi- ence, as children of the same Father, as worshippers, though unconsciously, of the same God. It was not that at Rome he made some impression more or less permanent 8 on the slaves of the imperial palace, but that a descendant of Abraham recognised in the dense masses of that corrupt metropolis a field for his exertions as sacred as in the courts of the Temple of Jerusalem . It Was not the Roman governor or the Ephesian mob, but the vast body 8 Phil. iv. 22. 168 ST. PAUL. SERM, of Judaizing Christians which was his real enemy ; : not the worshippers of Jupiter and Diana, but those who made their boast of Moses and claimed to be disciples of Cephas. The conflict with Paganism was indeed the occasion of those few invaluable models of missionary preaching which are preserved to us in his speeches ; but it is the conflict with Judaism which forms the one continuous subject of that far more elaborate and enduring record of his teaching which is preserved to us in his Epistles. At every step* of his progress he is dogged by his implacable adversaries, and at every step, as he turns to resist them, he flings back those words of defiance, of entreaty, of rebuke, of warning, which have become the treasures of the Christian Church for ever. They deny his authority, they impugn his motives, they raise the watchword of the law and of circumcision, and the result is to be found in those early Epistles to Corinth, to Galatia, and to Rome, which have once and for ever laid down what an Apostle is, and what he is not, what are the limits and what the extent of Christian liberty, which have asserted in a form which, if startling now, was assuredly not less startling then, the great principle, " That man is justified by faith without " the works of the law u ." They harass him in his imprisonment at Rome, they blend their Jewish 1 See Essay on the Judaizers. u See especially (1.) 1 Cor. ix. 1 7 ; 2 Cor. x. xii. ; Gal. i. 1 ; ii. 10 ; (2.) 1 Cor viii., x. ; Gal. iv. 10 ; v. 1 ; vi. 7 ; Rom. xiv. ; (3.) 1 Cor. i. 30; Rom. iii. 20; viii. 30; Gal. ii. 16; iii. 29. ST. PAUL. notions with the wilder theories of Oriental philo- SERM. in. sophy, and there rises before him in the Epistles to ' Ephesus, Colossae, and Philippi, the majestic vision of the spiritual Temple which is to grow out of the ruins of the old, of that Divine head of the whole race of man, before whom all temporary and tran- sient rites, all lower forms of worship and philo- sophy fade away, in whom in the fulness of times all things were gathered together in one x . They rise once more in the Asiatic Churches ; all Asia is turned away from him ; his own companions have forsaken him ; he stands almost alone, under the shadow of impending death y . But it is the last effort of a defeated and desperate cause. The vic- tory is already gained, and in the three Epistles to Titus and Timotheus we may consent to recog- nise the last accents of the aged Apostle, now con- scious that his contest is over; some forebodings * indeed we catch in them of that dark storm which was about to sweep within the next few years over the Christian and Jewish world alike ; but their general tone is one of calm repose the mid-day heat is past away the shades of evening are begin- ning to slope, the gleam of a brighter sky is seen beyond, and with the assured conviction that the object of his life was fully accomplished, that Judaism, though for a time it might still linger * See especially Eph. ii. 1922; iv. 1116; Col. i. 1527; ii. 9; Phil. ii. 6 10. y See 2 Tim. i. 15; iv. 10, 11, 7, 8. z 1 Tim. iv. 16 ; 2 Tim. iii. 16. 170 ST. PAUL. SERM. on. could never regain its hold on the Christian in. Church so long as the world lasts, he might well utter the words on which seventeen centuries have now set their indisputable seal, " I have fought " the good fight, I have finished my course, I have " kept the faith a ." III. Such was the work of St. Paul. Others may have had some share in it ; Peter prepared the way for it it was hallowed by the sanction of John, but still it was emphatically wh at he himself calls it, the Gospel of Paul and of Paul alone. Had it not been for some such timely intervention, all future genera- tions must have entered Christianity through the gate of Judaism, the peculiar usages of an Oriental nation must have been hopelessly blended with the ordinances of the Universal Church. But God's purposes were not thus to be narrowed ; with the preaching of St. Paul began that mighty change which does indeed justify the pre-eminence given in the Sacred Volume to his conversion above every other human event which it records. Henceforward the Church and the world became co-extensive ; other evils may hinder the diffusion of Christianity, but not the limits of a local and national worship ; other restrictions may be imposed on the freedom of the human race, but the yoke of Judaism never ; other forms may be assumed by the spirit of bigotry and superstition, but from its earlier province it is utterly expelled: the most exclusive zealot will a 2 Tim. iv. 7. ST. PAUL. 171 never again venture to confine the privileges of the s E R M. true religion to a single nation ; the most ardent ~ admirer of ancient usages and external forms will never again dare to insist on the universal necessity of circumcision. Truly, even if this were all, St. Paul would well deserve, according to the fervent eulogium of Chry- sostom b , the glorious name of " the Heart of the " world." But did St. Paul's work indeed end with his own life ? are we to reverse the judgment of his contemporaries, and say that while " his bodily pre- " sence was mighty and powerful, his letters are weak " and contemptible ? " or may we not rather believe that in a sense higher than Chrysostom ever dreamt of, the pulses of that mighty heart are still the pulses of the world's life, still beat in these later ages with even greater force than ever ? There is indeed no need to confine the operations of his teaching to any time or country whatever; even in periods of the darkest ignorance and of the narrowest superstition, the spark of spiritual life and freedom must have been kept alive in Europe by those thirteen Epistles to an extent which we cannot easily calculate. Still if there is any purpose in the study of Scripture it is surely not too much to presume that a vast additional impulse must have been given to the peculiar teaching and spirit of St. Paul, when for the first time almost for fifteen hundred years his Epistles were again read with all b First Homily on Epistle to the Romans. c 2 Cor. x. 10. 172 ST. PAUL. s E RM. the zest of newly discovered works ; when his words ' were again made the watchwords of parties, of schools, of nations, with an intensity of feeling and a conviction of their truth, which however perverted or exaggerated it might be, had not existed since the age when they were first uttered ; when in the great men, whom the convulsions of the sixteenth century produced on either side, the one character which they have always as it were unconsciously sug- gested to their admirers is that of the Apostle of the Gentiles. But it is not necessary to refer to any uncon- scious instinct or doubtful analogy of an excited age ; it is an inevitable result of the very nature of things and the course of events that for the last three hundred years the example and teaching of St. Paul must have a meaning for us which it could not have had for those who went before. 1 . When last I addressed you from this place, I spoke of the simple enthusiasm and childlike faith which were at once the especial characteristic and the especial privilege of the Middle Ages ; whatever other perplexities may have existed, they were not such as resulted from novel and complicated rela- tions of thought or of society. But no sooner did that older state of things begin to crumble away before the new characters, the new enquiries, the new wants which rushed in like a deluge with the opening of the sixteenth century, and have more or less agitated the mind of Europe ever since, than the question at once arose, " Can this be reconciled ST. PAUL. 173 " with Christianity or can it not?" It is unhappily SERM. no imaginary difficulty which here presents itself. We know only too well how the love of truth and the love of goodness' have been constantly set in array one against another, how piety and wisdom have almost regarded each other as natural enemies, how often the promoters of the social and intel- lectual improvement of mankind have regarded all high and pure devotion with indifference if not with hostility, how those who really care for religion have either stood aloof altogether from the .great cause of human progress, or have joined it only with a blind and one-sided zeal. It surely is of no slight importance that the history of the first age of Christianity should pre- sent us with one undoubted instance of a character which unites all the freedom and vigour of a great Reformer with all the humbleness and holiness and self-denial of a great Apostle. If any one thinks on the one hand that wide comprehensiveness and re- moval of restraints is unchristian, or on the other hand that Christianity is servile, degrading, super- stitious, let him reflect that St. Paul threw down the greatest barriers that ever divided man from man, not in spite of his being a Christian, but because he was a Christian ; not because he had forgotten, but because he never could forget the heavenly vision on the road to Damascus ; not in obedience to a rebellious human reason, but be- cause those solemn words were always sounding in his ears, " Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou Me?" 174 ST. PAUL. SERM. And as St. Paul's life is a sanction of such unequal '- struggles against the apathy or the corruption of men, so also is it a pledge of their final triumph. That blessed Apostle whose memory is now revered by every sect and party throughout the world, was condemned by the most ancient of the ancient Churches as " a ring-leader of sedition and heresy d ;" that teaching which has in later times with hardly an exaggerated estimate been actually called " the 11 Gospel," was treated by his own contemporaries as the most fatal delusion ; that new name by which the Gentile disciples were first called in Antioch, and which for so long even Apostolic lips feared to utter, is now esteemed as the most exalted name which can be given to any human being ; that mixed society which he ventured to uphold, but with which 6 Peter and Barnabas and the mother Church of all the world feared to hold any intercourse, was in the next century enshrined for ever in the solemn confessions of Chris- tendom under the name of the f( Holy Catholic " Church;" that blessed communion of " All Saints" which is this day celebrated through almost the whole Christian world, was first announced by him as the most startling novelty which the ears of men could conceive. There may be times when truth and goodness are so universally triumphant that we must be guided by the adage of "Quod semper, quod " ubique, quod ab omnibus;" but there are also times, and the time of St. Paul was one, when it is no less d Acts xxiv. 5. Gal. ii. 12. ST. PAUL. 175 needful and no less comforting to remember the SERM. opposite truth, " Athanasius contra mundum." 2. Yet again, when at last after a long interval God's Providence opened to the human mind an horizon wider than the mere circle of half-formed ecclesiastical literature to which it had been before accustomed, when for the first time the works of pagan art and genius began to be studied in Europe, when new worlds in the earth and in the heavens were opening to the eyes of science, again the ques- tion must have arisen with still greater earnestness, " Are these also capable of being brought within " the sphere of Christianity, or must we choose be- " tween secular and religious knowledge, between this " world and the next ?" We know also that this is no trivial question, least of all in this place where the very course of our education brings us into contact with those very subjects which most sug- gest the enquiry. It is no answer to say that reli- gion has a sphere of its own, and that worldly knowledge may be taught by worldly men. The conviction of the truth of Christianity rests far more than may at first sight appear on the convic- tion of its universality, and if it could be proved that large provinces of human thought, important elements of human advancement were altogether foreign if not hostile to its teaching, then far more than by any direct attack on its outward evidences, would its hold be loosened over the minds of men ; it might be held to have been a religion, it could hardly be practically held to be the religion of the 176 ST. PAUL. SERM. world. Thanks be to God, the Scriptures teem with ^ a thousand proofs that no such alternative is offered to us, and none perhaps is more convincing than the lesson forced upon us by the work and charac- ter of St. Paul. Even in detail we may surely be allowed to see a significance in those traits which do at once connect a Christian Apostle with those immortal nations in whose works, as I just now said, our studies here almost compel us to take so deep an interest. We may surely dwell with satisfaction on the fact that a " Hebrew of the Hebrews" did not think it a profanation of the speeches and epistles which were to guide the Church in all future ages, to quote from f Menander, Aratus, and Epimenides, to point his argument by allusions 8 to the green garland of the Isthmian games, to the gorgeous spectacle of the Capitolian triumph ; that a de- scendant of the royal tribe of Saul, a citizen of the nation that owned no earthly sovereign but the house of David, should have assumed a name which recalls to us the days not of Gilboa but of Cannae h f 1 Cor. xv. 33 ; Acts xvii. 28 ; Tit. i. 12. 8 It is almost needless to refer to the " corruptible crown of " those who strove for the mastery" at Corinth, the green pine of classical ages which still clothes the plains of the Isthmus. (1 Cor. ix. 25). And it is in the scene of the triumphal procession at Rome, with its incense and sacrifice, its solemn trophies of victory and its victims doomed to death, that we at once recognise the train of images which follows on the appropriation of that greatest of earthly associations to the Apostle's triumph in Christ /Seuo-ai/rt.) (2 Cor. ii. 14.) h "Saul, who is also called Paul." Acts xiii. 6. ST. PAUL. 177 should have shielded himself from Jewish 1 persecu- SERM. tion under the privileges of a Roman citizen should ~ have acknowledged in " the minister of God" who " bore the sword" on the Roman seat of justice an authority no less Divine than that which had once been enthroned on the holy hill of Zion. But it is not on any mere details, remarkable as they may be, that we need rest the Divine sanction hereby given to Gentile studies. If anything that I have said of St. Paul's work and life be true, then surely the conversion of the nations must have embraced something far beyond the mere outward fact ; it was not their bodies only, but their hearts, and minds, and spirits that were to be saved and sanctified ; man may"" strike thrice and stay, "but it is the will of God that he should " strike till he have utterly " consumed ;" and therefore it is with no fond pre- sumption but with a humble Christian confidence that we in this place may feel when wrapt in the study of Pagan literature, of European art and science, that however startling this contrast may seem, it is not so startling as that first event in which it virtually had its origin, under the ex- press commands of Him who said to His chosen Apostle even in the courts of His most holy temple, " Depart, for I will send thee far hence unto the " Gentiles j ." 3. But it is not only on your present studies that St. Paul's life and teaching may throw so cheering 1 Acts xxii. 25 ; Rom. xiii. 1 ; xxv. 1 1 . Acts xxii. 21. N 178 ST. PAUL. SERM. a light ; it is even more on all those various occu- m. pations of your after life, on that vast outer world, into which before three years are over almost every one of you will have past, to influence or to be in- fluenced by it. There was a long period of Euro- pean history when all distinct professions and call- ings either slumbered altogether, or else reposed under the shadow of the great ecclesiastical institu- tions which remained standing amidst the wreck of the Empire. But there came a time when as at the voice of the Archangel's trumpet, all these several elements of society were suddenly called into a new existence; new relations, new populations, new responsibilities rose up and have ever since been rising up on every side, for which the old frame- work of society furnishes no adequate place, on which the old associations and restraints exercise no hallowing influence. To meet this want, to ac- knowledge, enlighten, sanctify, these new elements of individual and social life, is indeed a great task, yet surely not more hopeless than that which was set before St. Paul; and which he accomplished. Is it too much to say that, in their measure, the vast mass of secular professions, sciences, and pursuits, are now to the old forms of religious and ecclesias- tical life from which they have been dissevered what the vast mass of heathen nations were to the com- monwealth of Israel in his time ? that to all such portions of the human race, whensoever, and by whatsoever barriers they are, or appear to be, divided from that fulness of communion with God to which ST. PAUL. 179 they are all alike entitled, St. Paul is called to de- SERM. in. clare, whether in the first, the sixteenth, or the nine- - teenth century, that they are "no more strangers and " foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints and " of the household of God k ? " Is it too much in short to say that, as he was the Apostle of the Gentiles then, so he is the Apostle of the Laity now ; that, as he proclaimed then that in the great matters of human salvation there is no difference between Jew and Greek, so now he proclaims, as he did in fact proclaim even then, that " every man in the calling " wherein he is called is therein to abide with God;" that "whether we eat or drink, or whatsoever we do, " we can and ought to do all to the glory of God 1 ." We cannot of course be indifferent as to what pro- fession we choose ; one far more ,than another may help or retard our heavenly progress, one far more than another may be suited to our peculiar faculties or characters. But it is when we have chosen that it becomes of the utmost importance to remember that none is in itself nearer to God than another ; that the Church, according to St. Paul, is not one order or institution however sacred, but the whole body of Christian believers with all their various gifts acting and sympathizing for and with each other; that every member of the Church "in his " vocation 111 and ministry," no less than the highest primate or pontiff, is called to be the soldier and servant of Christ ; that, to use the words of a great k Eph. ii. 19. l 1 Cor. vii. 24; x. 31. m Second Collect for Good Friday. N 2 180 ST. PAUL. SERM. religious, leader of the age of which I just now - spoke, and whose reverence for ecclesiastical autho- rity is beyond all dispute, "It is the Devil's master- " art to persuade us that any profession would be to " us holier than our own;" that in all the variety of callings and pursuits amongst which you may be thrown, there is no corner too dark, no occupation too secular, to escape the influence of Christianity ; no station in which the great battle of our age against ignorance and sin may not by your selfish indolence or your devoted energy Jbe -retarded or advanced. 4. But after all, the one great reply to all these questions, the one great lesson of St. Paul's teach- ing still remains behind, in the innermost springs of his own individual life. Unlike the other Apostles he had been called alone, by no gradual preparation, with no sympa- thizing brothers or companions, " not of men, nei- " ther by men, but by the immediate revelation of " Jesus Christ," and " as one born out of due " time," " having been before a blasphemer, and " persecutor, and injurious"," he stood before the heavenly vision " seeing no man," knowing and feeling nothing in the whole world besides, save himself, and " Jesus whom he had persecuted." He looked upon all that he and his countrymen had up to this moment held most sacred, the descent from Abraham, the strict observance of outward acts, moral no less than ceremonial, pre- n Gal. ii. 1 ; 1 Cor. xv. 8 ; 1 Tim. i. 13. ST. PAUL. 181 scribed by the law he looked upon all these, and SERM. he knew by his own experience that he had tried them all and found them wanting : " circumcised " the eighth day, of the stock of Israel, of the " tribe of Benjamin, an Hebrew of the Hebrews, " as touching the law a Pharisee, as touching the " righteousness of the law blameless : if any man " had whereof to trust in all these things, he " more :" yet " he counted them all for loss;" he felt that " circumcision availed nothing, nor un- " circumcision," that "by the works of the law " should no flesh be justified," "yea that he had " not known sin except the law had said, ' Thou " shalt not covet V One word there still re- mained in the sacred vocabulary of his country- men, one principle, wrought into the very inmost being of man, which had been for years despised or neglected, not in the heaven above, nor in the depth beneath, but "very nighi, even in his heart " and in his mouth," and that was " the word of " FAITH which he preached." That Faith, that trust in the unseen and eternal, which even in the heathen world " Through many a dreary age " Upbore whate'er of good and wise " Still liv'd in bard or sage" which every Jew must have acknowledged to be the glory of his first ancestor Abraham, and the Phil. Hi. 4. P Gal. v. 6 ; Rom. iii. 20 ; vii. 7. i Rom. x. 8. 182 ST. PAUL. SERM. key-note of the Psalms of David, was now to be in * : aroused from its slumber of ages, was now to be- come in the hands of St. Paul " the likeness of a " living creature 1 *," so much mightier than it had ever been before, in as far as it was now directed to a new object, even to the Lord Jesus Christ, who died for our sins and rose again for our justification. Such a principle, so seated in the inmost heart and will of man, so resting by its very nature on the unseen and spiritual world, so containing in itself be- yond every other human motive, the necessary seed and germ of all holiness, love, and obedience, could not but become the natural and peculiar topic of him, to whom, as for the first time, the struggles of the inward conscience were fully revealed ; who in his efforts to be delivered from the bondage of the Mosaic law could hardly fail to assert the complete freedom of the human will, not only in the contro- versy of Jew with Gentile, but of man with himself and with God. Other aspects no doubt there are of St. Paul's teaching, and this great principle itself is merged in the great object of his mission to the Gentile world. Yet still, standing as it does in the very front of his chief Epistles, it is absent from hardly any, and is the basis implied in all; and, as it is the principal, so also it is the peculiar, characteristic of his teach- ing. Doubtless both in the heathen and the Jewish r "The words of St. Paul are not dead words; they are living " creatures, and have hands and feet." Luther, as quoted in Arch- deacon Hare's Notes to the Mission of the Comforter, (p. 449.) ST. PAUL. 183 world it had been to the extent of their knowledge SERM. understood and taught, and we see at once in the - Gospel narrative that from the moment of our Lord's appearance on earth this must henceforward have been the work of God, " to believe on Him " whom He hath sent." But to draw this out in all its various applications, to confront it with the claims of rival systems, to make as it were the lever of the new moral world, this was reserved for the especial ministrations of St. Paul. A Creed, and not a Commandment, henceforth became the universal symbol of that religion which rests not on the requirement of what man is to do towards God, but on its belief of what God has done for man. The Living Person in whom we trust, not the system of precepts which we follow, or of dogmas which we receive, is the centre of the Christian society. The name by which religion in all sub- sequent times has been known is not an outward " ceremonial" (Optfo-Keia) as with the Greeks, nor an outward " restraint" (religio) as among the Romans, nor an outward "law" as among the Jews ; it is by that far higher and deeper title, which it first re- ceived from the mouth of St. Paul, " the Faith." How this principle was applied at that period when it was again made the watchword of an awakening world, when nations and individuals once again rallied around it as the Article of a fall- ing or a standing Church ; how deeply it must affect every age and society where the struggles of the inward conscience are consciously felt and 184 ST. PAUL. .SERM. realized, opens a thousand questions on which it is -impossible to enter at length, but still in which all of us, more or less, must bear a part. Even in its negative aspect it may well remind us again and again that it is on no outward circumstance, however solemn, not even though it be as sacred as circumcision was to the Jews ; on no outward act, however great, even though it be the deeds of that law which was " holy and just and good," but only on our individual faith and conscience that the highest welfare of the human soul depends. What- ever and wherever we may be, all that is really essen- tial must, if St. Paul's words are true, be still within our own reach ; our own individual souls are ours to save or to lose ; our own individual consciences can and must decide in the great matters of right and wrong, of life and death, of time and of eternity. But the great and crowning lesson of St. Paul's teaching is lost upon us, if, while learning from him, as learn we must, the principles of entire freedom from all that is around or below us, we fail to learn the no less essential dependence on what is above us. /^dependent in some sense you must be of outward institutions, and of mere human opinion ; your own natural feelings of youth recommend it ; the course of the world, in which you will have to act, requires it ; Christ through the voice of His own holy Apostle sanctions it. But it seems to have been specially ordered that he, who was to be so mighty a witness to the liberty of man, should have been a witness no less mighty to the power of God; ST. PAUL. 185 that he, who was so entirely removed from every- SERM. thing that was earthly or local as not 8 to " have - " known after the flesh" even Christ Himself, yet should have been united in the very closest com- munion with Him in spirit. I have described up to this point the undoubted life and teaching of St. Paul, as I might have described the career of any other great benefactor to the human race, who was to be held up for our example. And now I would ask the question which is to receive its no less undoubted answer from those of his Epistles whose genuineness has never yet, so far as I know, been disputed by the extremest criticism, whether of German sceptic or French infidel, What was the principle by which through such a life he was animated? What was the strength in which he laboured with such immense results ? We may, if we will, represent him to have been an enthusiast, or his words to have lost their meaning for us, but we cannot pretend to doubt for one moment the full sincerity of his own belief that " the life which he lived in the flesh he lived by the " faith of the Son of God, who died and gave Him- " self for him*." To believe in Christ crucified and risen, to serve Him on earth, to be with Him here- after, these, if we may trust the account of his own motives by any human writer whatever, were the chief, if not the only thoughts, which sustained Paul of Tarsus through all the troubles and sor- rows of his twenty years' conflict. ' His sagacity, 8 2 Cor. v. 16. t Gal. ii. 20. 186 ST. PAUL. SERM. his cheerfulness, his forethought, his impartial and : clear-judging reason/ all the natural elements of strong character which I have tried to set before you, are not indeed to be overlooked : but the more highly we exalt these in our estimate of his work, the larger share that we attribute to them in the performance of his mission, the more are we compelled to believe that he spoke the words of truth and soberness, when he told the Corinthians that "last of all Christ was seen of " him also u ," that by "the grace of God he be- " came what he was," that "whilst he laboured " more abundantly than all, it was not he but the " grace of God that was in him." Some doubtless there must be in almost every Christian congregation, and I trust here also, to whom such words of St. Paul will suggest a whole world of thought on which I have hardly ventured to touch ; some who, whilst I have been going over the outward glory of his life and the effects of his teaching on the course of human history, will have felt that St. Paul himself still remains to be de- scribed ; that the interest of his outward conflict and victory fades into nothing before the interest of that inward conflict and inward peace which have made his Epistles the storehouse of comfort to thousands of humble believers, who know no more of the con- troversy of Jew and Gentile than if it had never been. For them, it needs no formal words to set forth that life of his life which was u hid with Christ u 1 Cor. xv. 10. ST. PAUL. 187 " in God," and which must find a far deeper and truer s E RM. explanation, it may be, in their own personal expe- - rience, it may be, in what they have seen in others. For the rest of us, even for the most sceptical or the most indifferent, it surely is not without in- struction to feel that there is something in St. Paul's life beyond what we can understand, that there is a height veiled from our view because we are not fit to see it. We can trace the presence of a great mystery, even though we cannot comprehend it ; we can be moved by the sight or sound of acts and words, even though we dare not imitate or adopt them for ourselves. If we see that a man so holy as St. Paul was yet penetrated with so deep a sense of his own sin and of his own need of God's forgive- ness ; if one so wise and energetic as St. Paul should still feel that he owed all to " the grace of Christ " strengthening him," what are we if such thoughts as these are utterly strange to us ! Or if, on the other hand, we can find something like a response to them, however faint, it surely is no presumptuous fancy, but the very simple truth, that we are ap- proaching, however remotely, to that standing place from which St. Paul moved the world ; that in all our difficulties and temptations, here and hereafter, we may rest assured, like him, that we are not the slaves of our own passions or prejudices, nor yet the victims of an unchangeable destiny, but that we may go on as he did advancing still in all Christian goodness, from youth to manhood, from manhood to old age, and in the end be more than conquerors 188 ST. PAUL. s E R M. through the selfsame living and eternal Saviour in -whom he trusted. Let us realize thoughts like these, and then we shall indeed feel that St. Paul's Epistles may be read with a deeper than any mere theological in- terest ; we shall indeed enter more and more into the truth of his memorable words, not as the text of a worn-out controversy, but as the life of our inmost being, "That being justified by faith we " have peace with God, through our Lord Jesus " Christ." THE JUDAIZEBS OP THE APOSTOLICAL AGE. IT has often been remarked that truth and error keep pace with each other. Error is the shadow cast by truth, truth the bright side brought out by error. Such is the relation between the heresies and the apostolical teaching of the first century. The Gospels indeed, as in other respects, so in this, rise almost entirely above the circum- stances of the time, but the Epistles are, humanly speaking, the result of the very conflict between the good and evil elements which existed together in the bosom of the early Christian society. As they exhibit the principles after- wards to be unfolded into all truth and goodness, so the heresies which they attack exhibit the principles which were afterwards to grow up into all the various forms of errors and wickedness. The energy a , the freshness, nay even the preternatural power which belonged to the one belonged also to the other. Neither the truths in the writings of the Apostles, nor the errors in the opinions of their opponents, can be said to exhibit the dogmatical form of any subsequent age. It is a higher and more universal good which is aimed at in the former ; it is a deeper and more universal principle of a Through the whole of this Essay I have derived great assistance from the recent Essay of Thiersch on the Criticism of the Writings of the New Testament, as well as from the facts stated in the works of his opponents. 190 THE JUDAIZERS OF THE APOSTOLICAL AGE. evil which is attacked in the latter. Christ Himself, and no subordinate truths or speculation concerning Him, is reflected in the one ; Antichrist, and not any of the particu- lar outward manifestations of error which have since ap- peared, was justly regarded by the Apostles as fore- shadowed in the other. Such being the case, it is obviously as impossible for these primitive heresies, as for the Divine truths which they opposed, to be comprehended under any one outward form, or ascribed to any merely local influence. And in point of fact any undue limitation of either has always resulted in an undue limitation of both. As those who have identified the opponents of the Apostles with some particular evil of their own day have also incurred the risk of degrading the Apostles themselves into the partisans of their own parti- cular sect, so those who have traced the course of Gnosti- cism or Judaism in every object of the apostolical censures, have also turned those censures themselves from univer- sal lessons of instruction into attacks on evils long ago extinct. Still, as there is a sense in which the language of the Apostolical Epistles was coloured by the influences of the age, so we must expect to find that the heresies which called them forth were also clothed in a particular histo- rical form. And therefore, whilst a complete analysis of the principles of these heresies belongs to a wider field than can now be entered upon, it may not be without its use to give at least so much of their outward appearance as may be necessary to explain the allusions in the sketch which has been attempted in the Sermons of the career of the Apostles themselves. It has been there stated that the true conflict of the apo- stolical age was, to speak generally, not the foundation or completion but the universal diffusion of Christianity. To unfold this in its gradual stages "in Jerusalem, and all THE JUDAIZERS OF THE APOSTOLICAL AGE. 191 " Judaea, in Samaria b , and unto the utmost parts of the " earth," beginning with the first intimations of it in the day of Pentecost, and ending with the preaching of the Apostle of the Gentiles, is the one thread which connects together the whole history of the Acts. And although in the earliest and the latest of the Apostolical Epistles the marks of the conflict are not so visible as in those which occupy the centre of the period, yet even in St. James we may trace the first rise, and in St. John the gradual sub- siding of the storm which forms the whole atmosphere of St. Paul. Necessarily corresponding to this is the fact that of all the false systems or sects which the Apostles are called on to oppose, there is hardly one which is not con- nected more or less remotely with Judaism. The principle itself which was involved, the mightier power of evil of which it was but the outward organ, has, so far as it is included within the range of the present volume, been already discussed; it yet remains to trace it through its several phases, to detect the various forms which it assumed, the opposite quarters which it occupied. It is not necessary here to enter upon the national feeling of the Jewish Church or nation itself as it existed before it was brought into direct collision with Christianity, according to the picture which in its better side is pre- sented to us in the character of Peter and of James the Just, in its worse in the description of the Scribes arid Pharisees in the Gospels, especially Matt, xxiii., and in the Epistle of St. James, and the end of the second chapter of St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans (Rom. ii. 17 24.) In b Acts i. 8. This verse, or at least the successive propagation of the Gospel as implied in it, gives the natural divisions of the Acts of the Apostles. 1. The preaching of Peter at Jerusalem, i. v. 2. The preparation for the preaching of Paul by the diffusion of the Gospel through Judaea and Samaria, vi. xii. 3. The preaching of Paul " to the uttermost parts of the earth," xiii. xxviii. 192 THE JUDAIZERS OF THE APOSTOLICAL AGE. part this is exhibited in different portions of this volume, in part another occasion may perhaps occur of exhibiting it more fully hereafter. It is not the nation of the Jews, but the sect of the Judaizers that have to be described, and in so doing it will be convenient to consider them in the three successive stages into which their history naturally falls. First, the period which coincides with the latter chapters of the Acts, from the fifteenth chapter to the end, and the six earliest Epistles of St. Paul, viz., those to the Thessalonians, Corinthians, Galatians, and Romans. Secondly, the period from the close of St. Paul's Roman imprisonment to the fall of Jerusalem. Thirdly, the period from that time to the close of the first century. It is not meant that this division thoroughly exhausts the subject. The Clementine Homilies and the writings of, Justin Martyr sufficiently prove that a contest between Judaism and Christianity was still to be traced till the middle of the second century, and vestiges of Judaizing sects were to be found even in the time of Jerome. But it is the object of this Essay to confine itself, as strictly as the subject will admit, to the writings of the New Testa- ment, and to assume, as in the present state of our know- ledge is the safest as well as the most convenient course, the usual limits assigned to the intervals of time over which they severally extend, and of which the successive stages of development, rather than the chronological exactness of dates, is the matter of chief importance. I. FIRST PERIOD, from Acts xv. 1, to Acts xxviii. It was not till the universal character of the Christian religion became known from the preaching of St. Paul on his first journey that the great division of which we have now to speak first manifested itself amongst the disciples. THE JUDAIZEES OF THE APOSTOLICAL AGE. 193 Up to that time the idea of the Christian Church had been First rise confined to the idea of a Jewish synagogue, distinguished d a j ze rs. indeed from all similar associations by its belief that Jesus was the Christ, and by its purer morality and faith, but still entirely confined to God's ancient people. Within the range of the circumcision, whether in Palestine or out of it, it was to witness the name of Christ and to proclaim the duty of renouncing in baptism the sins " of that untoward " generation ," above all the one great sin of the Cruci- fixion ; but still its sphere was not more catholic than that of the Jewish race itself. To those indeed who watched with observant eyes the progress of the new revelation, a considerable shock must have been given to this notion, if not by the intimations in our Lord's teaching, and to a certain extent in that of Stephen and Philip, at least by the conversion of Cornelius, and of the Greeks at Antioch. But to the mass of the Jewish Christians even this great step was not decisive. Cornelius had indeed been received into the Christian society by baptism without any previous admission into the Jewish people by circumcision ; it was henceforth incontestably proved "that in every nation," whether Gentile or Israelite, "every man that feared God " and worked righteousness was accepted of Him" so far as to be forthwith enrolled amongst the members of the Christian synagogue. Yet after all it might be said that this was the exception only, not the rule. Even if circum- cision were deferred in such cases for a time, it might be insisted upon afterwards; even if in their case it were altogether suspended, yet still so long as the mass of the society partook of it, so long as the metropolis of the Church was at Jerusalem a few interlopers here and there might well be overlooked or tolerated, as Araunah the Jebusite and Uriah the Hittite had been tolerated in the ancient times of the monarchy; they could exercise c Acts ii. 40. O 194 THE JUDAIZERS OF THE APOSTOLICAL AGE. no important influence in separating the Christian con- gregation from the body of the nation. But this illusion was at once dispelled when the tidings arrived not merely of a few isolated instances of conversion amongst the Roman soldiers at Ccesarea, or the Greek settlers at Antioch, within, or at least only just beyond, the confines of the Holy Land, but of whole Gentile commu- nities in the heart of Asia Minor ; when it was announced at Jerusalem that two of the most distinguished members of the Christian society had been sent out by the prophets of Antioch for this very purpose; that seeing how the Jews " had judged themselves unworthy of everlasting life they "had turned" deliberately " to the Gentiles;" that "He " who had wrought so effectually in Peter amongst the cir- " cumcision, had wrought effectually in Paul amongst the " uncircumcision d ;" that in short the Christian Church, instead of being as heretofore a nucleus of Jews with a sprinkling of Gentiles, was henceforth to be a vast society of Gentiles with a sprinkling here and there of Jews. It was natural that at this discovery the suspicions of the Palestine Christians, which must have been long awakened, should have broken out into open hostility ; they had temporised, it might be said, long enough, it was neces- sary at last to adopt some decisive measure which should stifle in the cradle this new movement which was carrying them they knew not whither, to consequences wh : ch those who had first set it on foot could never have anticipated ; and accordingly the account of the first Gentile mission is immediately followed in the Acts of the Apostles by the first mention of the Judaizers; no sooner have we heard that Paul and Barnabas had " rehearsed all that God had ee done with them, and how He had opened the door of "faith to the Gentiles," than we are told 6 that "certain " men which came down from Judaea taught the brethren d Acts xiii. 46 ; Gal. ii. 8. e Acts xiv. 27 ; xv. 1. THE JUDAIZERS OF THE APOSTOLICAL AGE. 195 " and said, ' Except ye be circumcised after the manner of " Moses, ye cannot be saved.' " In itself this was no more than would probably have been Circum- maintained a short time before by the Apostles themselves wa tchword and by the Church of Jerusalem ; even at this moment, as the context implies, it was regarded as an open question. But amongst the thousand instances which are perpetually recurring even in ordinary history, and which are brought before us with peculiar liveliness in the New Testament, of positions or modes of teaching which, according to the point of view from which they are taken up, may be regarded as the holiest truths or the most fatal errors, none is more striking than the maintenance of the necessity of circum- cision before and after the conversion of Cornelius. Other points there were no doubt on which the Judaizing Chris- tians may have at different times or places insisted, but this was always their main watchword. In Palestine itself, as we may gather from the accusations f against Stephen and from the Epistle to the Hebrews, the Temple and the Temple service was the great bond of union ; but, when an appeal had to be made to the feelings of the whole Jewish race throughout the world, it necessarily rallied round that which they all had equally in common the observances of the Law ; and of all these observances, great as might be the stress laid on the festivals and sabbaths, or on the distinction of clean and unclean meats, yet still the one essential, universal, indispensable sign of a Jew was the sign of the covenant which God had made with their father Abraham in circumcision. Foreign armies were not allowed to offer their services in defence of the holy city foreign kings could not ally themselves with prin- cesses of the house of Herod, unless they submitted to this ceremony? was it to be borne that those who claimed to f Acts vi. 13 ; Heb. vii. x. e Joseph. Ant. xx. 7. 1, 3. See Milman's Hist, of Christianity, i. p. 425. 02 196 THE JUDA1ZERS OF THE APOSTOLICAL AGE. be the servants of the true Messiah should commence their career by breaking through the one bond of national union, and admitting to the closest of human intercourse those who had always been regarded 11 as "cut off from the "people of God?" And as this was the one point for which the Judaizers contended, so it was the one point on which the Apostles took their stand against them. Although they taught that the Temple with its worship was henceforth to be sought only in "the spiritual house and royal priesthood 1 " of the whole Christian society, still they never k scrupled to fre- quent its services. Although St. Paul spoke of the " holy t( days and new moons, and sabbath days," the observation " of days and months, and times and years 1 /' as merely a shadow of things to come, still he did not hesitate himself to keep the feasts of the Passover and of Pentecost" 1 , and to the Romans he spoke of it as a thing indifferent whether " one man esteemed one day above another, or another "esteemed every day alike"." "The kingdom of God," they well knew, "was not meat or drink ," but here again St. Paul would not "eat meat whilst the world " standeth lest he should make his brother to offend ;" and the assembled Apostles and brethren at Jerusalem enjoined the Christians " to abstain from meats offered to (< idols, and blood, and from things strangled?." But on the point of circumcision they were immoveable, in pro- portion as their opponents were urgent. Both alike saw that all else might be conceded, and the real cause of Christian liberty be left untouched that, if this were granted, all else must follow with it. And therefore, to their solicitations St. Paul "gave way by subjection, no, not h Gen. xvii. 14; Ex. xxxi. 14. ' 1 Pet. ii. 5, 9. k Acts ii. 46; iii. 1 ; xxi. 26. J Gal. iv. 10; Col. ii. 16. m Acts xviii. 21 ; xx. 16; xxiv. U. Rom. xiv. 5. Horn, xiv. 17. p 1 Cor. viii. 13; Actsxv.29. THE JUDAIZERS OF THE APOSTOLICAL AGE. 197 " for an hour q ;" and, as if in direct antithesis to their own statement, declared with an emphasis which would be un- accountable but for the vehemence and the importance of the conflict, that "if they were circumcised, Christ profited " them nothing, they were fallen from grace 1 ";" and the final decree of the Apostles at Jerusalem, which, as has been said, conceded to Jewish prejudices all that could be conceded, was prefaced by declaring that <f to those who " went out 8 from them saying, 'Ye must be circumcised " and keep the law,' they gave no such commandments." Such was the position of the Judaizers after the frustra- Their wide tion of the first attempt to impose a yoke* on the neck of dlffuslon< the disciples which neither the Apostles nor their fathers had been able to bear. The battle had been fought and lost at Jerusalem, but the cause was to them too sacred to be given up without a farther struggle in its behalf, and it is from this time forward that we trace their efforts as a dis- tinct and energetic body in almost every place to which the influence of Christianity extended itself. Palestine of course must still have remained their head-quarters. Every Jewish Jew, wherever he dwelt, must have felt with Philo, " Jeru- settlers - " salem is the city of my fathers, the mother city not only " of Judsea, but of almost all the countries of the world " through the colonies w r hich it has at different times sent " forth"." But he must have felt no less how widely and deeply the ramifications of his race extended, through all the various provinces which Philo proceeds to enumerate. Beginning from the east, there was the vast settlement in Babylonia of those Jews who had remained after the return from the captivity. Of the twenty-four courses of priests, only four had followed Ezra to Palestine. No less than three universities of Jews existed in Mesopotamia alone. It I Gal. ii. 5. r Gal. v. 2. 8 Acts xv. 24. * Acts xv. 10. u Philo Leg. ed. Caium. 1031. Comp. Jos. Ant. xiv. 7. 2. J 98 THE JUDAIZERS OF THE APOSTOLICAL AGE. was a well-known saying, " whoever dwells in Babylon is as " though he dwelt in the land of Israel." (Lightfoot, vol. ii. Appendix to Comments on 1 Cor. xiv.) Advancing west- ward, there is hardly a province of the empire in which they did not form a considerable portion of the population. The great colony at Alexandria is too well known to need any further comment here. In every part of Asia Minor they had possessed numerous settlements from the time that the two thousand families of their countrymen had been transplanted thither by Antiochus the Great, to keep down the unquiet population of Phrygia. (Jos. Ant. xii. 3.) Spreading, probably from thence, to Greece and the adja- cent islands, in that of Cyprus alone their force was such that in the insurrection under Hadrian they massacred 240,000 of the Greek inhabitants, and took possession of the island. And in Rome the settlers to whom a large part of the Trans-tiberine district had been assigned by Pompey (Philo, Leg. ad Caium. 1014.) had by the time of Augustus reached such an amount, that Josephus (Ant. xvii. 1. 11.) calculates the number of those who appeared at the trial of Archelaus to have been 8000, and Horace expresses so strongly his sense of their importance, as to imply (hyperbolically of course) that he and his fellow citizens were a minority in comparison x . (Sat. i. 70.) Nor were they at this time, as we see from Juvenal (Sat. iii. 65), and Martial (i. 42), that they were soon after the fall of their city, the contemned and oppressed race that they have been in later times. They were feared, they were hated, but they were not despised. In that era of transition, when the native vigour both of Pagan- ism and of the Roman character began to decline, it was natural that the strong will of the Jewish race, indomit- able even in its extravagance, should have made itself x Most of these references are derived from the second volume of Milman's Hist, of the Jews, p. 134141. THE JUDAIZERS OF THE APOSTOLICAL AGE. 199 felt; that the ignorant populace, the sceptical philosopher, Proselytes. the Epicurean statesman, should alike have cowered before the sight of a religion, whose sublimity must have awed if it did not convert them, whose mystery must have excited their curiosity if it did not awaken their conscience. No complaints against the Roman governor gained such a ready hearing at the imperial court as those from Judaea ; no portion of the Roman people had such especial privi- leges granted to them as the Jewish y settlers in Egypt and Asia Minor. But it was more than this. The gulf which naturally might have been expected to exist between the Jewish and heathen portions of the empire was bridged over by the vast floating population of the proselytes whether "of "righteousness" or of "the gate," who, Gentiles by birth, be- came Jews by religion, and, being henceforth known by the name of the "devout 2 ," the "men that feared God," lost the recollection of their own outward descent in the sense of that higher spiritual descent from Abraham which they were held to enjoy by the rite of circumcision ; whilst the diffusion of the Greek language by the conquests of Alex- ander as the medium of communication between the east and west at once introduced them to the study of the Old Testament, not in the form, so difficult to foreigners, of its Hebrew original, but in the well-known version of the Seventy. With what zeal these new citizens, so to speak, were invited to join the ranks of Judaism, may be judged from the woe denounced on those 3 who " compassed sea and y See the account of the Egyptian Jews in Straho apud Jos. Ant. xiv. 7, 2, and of the privileges granted to the Galatian Jews in the Inscription of Ancyra. z Such, as is well known, is the almost invariable usage in the Acts of the words euo-ee?s, euAa0e?s, and Qo&ovnevoi rbv 0eW, meaning apparently "those " who though Gentiles by birth were distinguished from the rest of their race " by devotion and fear of the true God," a usage of which we already find traces in the contrast drawn in the later Psalms between "the house of " Israel" and "those that fear God." (See Ps. cxv. 911 ; cxxxv. 19, 20.) a Matt, xxiii. 15. 200 THE JUDAIZERS OF THE APOSTOLICAL AGE. " land to make one proselyte." With what success this zeal was accompanied may be inferred from the complaint uttered on this very account by the Roman philosopher in the reign of Nero, " that the conquered had given laws to " the conquerors b ." It has been necessary to enter at some length into the numbers and the influence of the Jewish residents in different parts of the empire in order to the full under- standing of all that follows. How exactly these inferences from contemporary writers agree with the state of things described in the Acts and Epistles is obvious. In every Grecian city whether in Greece or Asia Minor (with the single exception of Athens), St. Paul found a Jewish syna- gogue or proseucha to which in the first instance to address himself; in every one (with the exception of Philippi) the persecutions which he underwent were either excited or fomented through the influence of the Jewish over the Gentile population of the place. Of all the Epistles, how- ever clear the evidence in some instances that they are ad- dressed to those who had been originally heathens, there is not one which does not imply a familiar acquaintance with Jewish customs, and with the Scriptures of the Old Testament. Now what was true of the relation of the Jews themselves to the rest of the ancient world would be true also of the Jewish Christians, more especially of those to whom, as making their Christianity subordinate to their Judaism, it has been customary to give the name of Judaizers; and it was accordingly in the wide field thus open before them that they endeavoured to rally their forces for the preservation (as they thought) of the Chris- tian society from the contamination and dissolution which the indiscriminate admission of the Gentile world was likely to bring upon it. b Victoribus victi leges dederunt. Seneca, ap. Aug. See Neander's Hist. of the Church. (Eng. Tr., vol. i. p. 58.) THE JUDAIZERS OF THE APOSTOLICAL AGE. 201 In describing the operations and views of a great party Their hos- merely from such scattered hints as occur in the Epistles of St. Paul, it is of course difficult to ascertain that we have at all times seized the right point of view from which to regard them ; and it is obvious from those allusions themselves that the motives and feelings of the party were extremely various. Nor again must we confound with the great body of the sect, that portion of them whom we may call "the weaker brethren ," to whose prejudices, as arising not from party violence but from a scrupulous conscience, such tender consideration is shewn by the Apostle in the fourteenth chapter of his Epistle to the Romans, and in the eighth of the First to the Corinthians. But with these qualifications it is easier to exhibit an outline at least of their proceedings and character than might be expected by those who have not duly weighed the great vividness and truth of the touches, few and isolated as they may be, which we possess in the Apostolical Epistles. The first period of their activity, as has been already said, begins with the time when St. Paul first commenced what may be called his independent career as Apostle of the Gentiles; it closes with what was practically his farewell to the Eastern Churches in his voyage to Rome. It is evident that to counteract the objects of his great mission, now for the first time fully known and understood, was the one great aim of the Judaizers. To contend against truth rather than for error, was with them, as with others of later times, the mark of sect and heresy, as it has been no less the mark of wisdom and goodness to contend not against error, but for the truth. It might well seem too, as if in this case, it was all that would be wanted for the accomplish- e Such a distinction seems to have existed in the Jewish Christians of Justin's time, (Dial, cum Tryph. 48.) (Neander, Hist, of Church, ii. 12.) (Eng. Tran.) corresponding apparently to the two divisions afterwards known by the names of Nazarene and Ebionite. (ib. 19.) 202 THE JUDAIZERS OF THE APOSTOLICAL AGE. ment of their purpose. The other Apostles might possibly be persuaded to concede; Peter, they knew, had been over- awed by them at Antioch; Barnabas had been carried away by their dissimulation; but he, never. "Delendus " est Paulus" was as truly their watchword as the cry for the destruction of Carthage had been of old to the Roman senator. Accomplish this, and all was clear before them ; without it, nothing. So long as Christianity appeared merely as a purer form of Judaism, as one of those ancient religions which was tolerated by Roman law, it won even from heathens some- thing of that reverence, which, as has been before shewn, was entertained towards the Mosaic worship. But as soon as the preaching of St. Paul exhibited its independent character, all those vague feelings of suspicion, of alarm, of mistrust, which the mass of mankind entertain against anything new, would immediately fasten on the man who dared to disturb the existing order of the world. Every point in his authority which seemed open to question, every trait of his character which could by any possibility admit of a sinister interpretation, would be at once turned against him, even though it may seem to us the best proof of his Divine mission and of his saintly character. * He had not "seen the Lord Jesus" (1 Cor. ix. 1) in His ' lifetime' such we know from his own Epistles was the language used concerning him, strange as it now seems to recall it 'his authority was only "by man and through ( " man," it might be from the prophets of Antioch, it ' might be from "those at Jerusalem who were Apostles f " before him." (Gal. i. 1, 17.) He was only a Jew of ( Tarsus, not of pure Palestine d origin like the original d This is all that could be inferred with certainty of the accusation from the Epistles. But if we may trust the account of the Ebionite attacks upon him in Epiphanius (Haer. xxx. 16), it went so far as to assert that he was altogether a Gentile by birth, and only adopted circumcision in order to THE JITDAIZERS OF THE APOSTOLICAL AGE. ' Twelve, (2 Cor. xi. 22; Phil. iii. 5), with no letters of s commendation from the mother Church at Jerusalem. ' (2 Cor. iii. 1 ; x. 18, 12.) His very appearance and ( conduct betrayed the hollowness of his claims. " His '"letters" indeed from a distance "were weighty and ' " powerful," but " his bodily presence was weak and his 4 " speech contemptible," (2 Cor. x. 10.) His "infirmities ' " in the flesh" were manifest to all, (2 Cor. xi. 30; xii. * 10; Gal. iv. 13;) even he himself had confessed that he s had "no excellency of speech or of wisdom;" (1 Cor. ii. ' 1, 3 :) even the heathens round about, whilst in Barnabas * they had recognised the majesty of Jupiter, in the insig- ' nificance of Paul had observed only the "chief speaking" ( of Mercurius. (Acts xiv. 12.) He was conscious himself ' of his inability to carry out his authority ; he fixed and ' unfixed the times of his coming; he "used lightness," ' and the things that he purposed he purposed according 6 to the flesh, so that his vacillating intentions were alter- ' nately "yea, yea," and "nay, nay," (2 Cor. i. 17;) "in ' " absence only he was bold towards them, in presence he * " was base." (2 Cor. x. 1.) He made a great boast of ' receiving no maintenance from the Greek Churches, but 1 the real reason was that he did not venture to exercise ' that true apostolical privilege. He worked with his own f hands, only because he "had not power to eat and drink" ' (1 Cor. ix. 4, 6; 2 Cor. xi. 10) at the cost of the Church. ' He remained single only because "he had not power to ' " lead about a sister as a wife" like the other undoubted ' Apostles, the great saints of the Jewish Church, " the ' " brethren of the Lord and Cephas." (1 Cor. ix. 5.) And ' yet all this seeming simplicity was merely a cover for ' serving his own interests. Every one knew how easily ' he could " become all things to all men." (1 Cor. ix. 22.) marry the high-priest's daughter, and that it was the rejection of this suit which drove him into his extreme hostility to the law. 204 THE JUDAIZERS OF THE APOSTOLICAL AGE. ' Was there no fear lest "his exhortations should not be ' " of deceit and uncleanness and guile;" "flattering words ' " and a cloak for covetousness," (1 Thess. ii. 3, 5 ;) in ' " fleshly wisdom ;" " dealing in the hidden things of dis- ( t( honesty;" " walking craftily and handling the words ' of God deceitfully," (2 Cor. i. 12; ii. 17; iv. 2;) "with ' " secret meanings," (2 Cor. iii. 12 :) " writing other things ' " than would be read or acknowledged" on the surface ? * (2 Cor. i. 13.) In this very matter of the refusal of main- ' tenance, " be it so, he in his own person (eyco) did not * " burden them, but being crafty he caught them with ' " guile ;" whilst pretending to receive nothing from them ' himself and on this ground, he yet contrived to "make ' " a gain of them by Titus, and those whom he had sent" ' (2 Cor. xii. 20) to collect the contribution which was to ' be ministered through him to the poor Christians in < Judaea. (2 Cor. ix. 20, 21.)' Such, it would be said, were the manifold disqualifica- tions for the office which he had assumed ; what a contrast, they would urge, to their own lofty pretensions! 'They ' knew and were known by the great pillars of the Church, ' " James and Cephas and John." (Gal. ii. 9.) Some of * them, those of Palestine origin, came direct "from James," 6 the head of the Church of Jerusalem, (Gal. ii. 12;) others, ' belonging to the dispersion, looked to the great Apostle ( of the Circumcision as their head, called themselves by 6 the name of Cephas, (1 Cor. i. 12; iii. 22; ix. 5,) and ' rested on his authority and example. (Gal. ii. 11, 14.) ' They had known too not Apostles only, but " Christ < " Himself after the flesh," (2 Cor. v. 16;) they "trusted 6 " to themselves" from this their earthly connexion with ' Him that they were in an especial manner " Christ's ' " own," (2 Cor. v. 7 ;) with " proofs of Christ speaking in them," (2 Cor. xiii. 3;) "Apostles of Christ," (2 Cor. xi. 13;) "ministers of Christ," (2 Cor. xi. 23;) "the " THE JUDAIZERS OV THE APOSTOLICAL AGE. 205 6 " party of Christ 6 ," (1 Cor. i. 12.) They came then in ' all the plenitude of Apostolical authority, as more than ' Apostles, as the very chiefest Apostles, (pi V7rep\t,av cnro- ( <TTO\OI) (2 Cor. xi. 3; xii. 11;) with "letters of com- f " mendation" at once attesting their mission, (2 Cor. ' iii. 1; v. 12; x. 12, 18;) with no false shame in assert- * ing the privilege which the Lord Himself had ordained ' to His oldest, original disciples, that " they who preach ' " the Gospel should live of the Gospel." (1 Cor. ix. 14; ' 2 Cor. xi. 21 ; Matt. x. 11.) Powerful in speech, (2 Cor. 6 xi. 6,) not hesitating to f assume that absolute control ' over their charge which by "exalting themselves" and f " bringing into bondage" and "lording it over the faith" e of their converts (2 Cor. ii. 1 ; xi. 20) was the best ' ground for glorying and for proving that they were the ' masters and not the slaves of their disciples. (2 Cor. xi. 6 18; iv. 5.)' It would be natural to expect, even if we had not posi- tive testimony to assure us, that with these lofty claims of the Judaizers were mingled those baser and more selfish motives into which all sectarianism is prone to degenerate. To them may well be applied with a slight alteration the well-known saying of Coleridge, that they " who began by " loving the law of Moses more than the truth, went on to " love their own sect better than the law, and ended by " loving themselves better than their sect." It was natu- ral that in their claim to receive maintenance from the Churches, they should have been convicted by St. Paul of being " deceitful workers of their own interest," e The more detailed proof of this representation is reserved in part for the Essay on the Divisions of the Corinthian Church, with such illustrations as are furnished by the Clementines. f This again is in accordance with the spirit of hierarchical dominion ex- hihited in the Ehionite works of a later date. See Ep. Petr. ad Jac. c. 1. Clem, ad Jac. 1. Apost. Const, ii. 3032, 34, 35. 206 THE JUDAIZERS OF THE APOSTOLICAL AGE. epyarai, 2 Cor. xi. 13,) and of "making a trade of the 61 word of God,'' (/ccnfX'rjevovTes rbv \6jov rov deov, 2 Cor. ii. 29) : and again, that with their zeal for circumcision was blended the baser motive of hiding their Christianity under g the veil of a tolerated religion, " whose praise was "not of God but of man," (Rom. ii. 29,) in order "to " please men," "lest they should suffer persecution for the "cross of Christ." (Gal. i. 10; v. 11; vi. 12.) Still on the whole they must be regarded as genuine fanatics, with that mixture of craft and self-interest with which fanati- cism is often blended, yet subordinate to the zeal, the jealousy, (trfkos, Gal. iv. 17, 18,) for the honour of their law and country which distinguished the Jewish "Zealots" properly so called, and which alone could have given them the success which they enjoyed. Their What that success was is evident from merely following Palestine ^ e course f St. Paul's journeys. Wherever he was, there Asia Mi- were they, like vultures on his track, to seize the spoil nor, and Greece, which his apostolical efForls had won for the Church before they entered on the field. (2 Cor. x, 14.) The meeting at which his mission had been sanctioned by the Church of Jerusalem had hardly been dissolved, when " certain came from James " to Antioch in the hope, and for a time with the effect, of undoing all that had there been determined. (Gal. ii. 12.) In Galatia 11 , the simple- Sub umbraculo religionis Hcitae. This was made a reproach against Christians in later times. See Neander, Hist, of the Church, (Eng. Tr.) i. 83. h This, rapid transition from extreme veneration to extreme antipathy, which is nowhere so strongly implied as in the Epistle to the Galatians, is exactly what might have been expected from the excitable and changeable temper of a half-civilized race. Compare a similar revulsion in the simple heathens of Lystra and the "barbarian" inhabitants of Melita. (Acts xiv. 19 ; xxviii. 6.) Compare too the well-known scene in the history of the ancestors of these very Galatians, when in the sack of Rome the Gauls had first re- garded the Roman senators in the Forum as something more than human, and then, the moment that the spell of reverence was broken, put them all to death primo ut deos venerati, deinde ut homines despicati interfecere. See Arnold's Rome, i. 542. THE JUDAIZERS OF THE APOSTOLICAL AGE. 207 minded Celts who had just received St. Paul "as an " angel of God, even as Christ Jesus," and "would if it " had been possible have plucked out their eyes and given " them to him," (Gal. iv. 15,) were so soon carried away by these new teachers " to another gospel/' " a little leaven "had so entirely leavened the whole lump," (Gal. v. 9; i. 6,) that their once beloved Apostle had "become an " enemy to them because he had told them the truth; they " were fallen from grace." (Gal. iv. 16 ; v. 4.) At Corinth, already before he had written the first Epistle, the party of Cephas, though not dominant, had begun to question his authority, (1 Cor. i. 1 ; ix. 1, 4,) and in the few months which elapsed by the time that it was necessary to write the second, they and their kindred factions had attained such influence that "the majority" (ol 7ro\\ot, 2 Cor. ii. 17) of Corinthian teachers belonged to them. All the boasted wisdom of the Corinthian Church could not pre- vent them from "suffering" the despotic dominion of any of these leaders " gladly," " even if he brought them into " bondage, if he devoured them, if he exalted himself, if "he smote them on the face," (2 Cor. xi. 20;) and the reports which had been already circulated with less success at Thessalonica (1 Thess. i. 3, 5) against the character of the Apostle whom they had known by "so many signs and " wonders and mighty deeds," were so readily believed on the authority of these new comers, that he had himself to take every precaution " to provide things honest not only " in the sight of the Lord but in the sight of men," (2 Cor. viii. 20;) and to vindicate himself in detail from the charges brought against him. (2 Cor. i. 13 18 ; iii. 1 iv. 7 ; x. xiii.) And, although we cannot with certainty assume that they were connected with all the plots against his life, of which the Acts speak as concerted by the Jews, yet when we consider how slight the distinction must have been which separated them from the "Jews which believed 208 THE JUDAIZE11S OF THE APOSTOLICAL AGE. " not," (Acts xvii. 5,) and how necessarily from their in- tense hostility to St. Paul they must have sympathized with every attempt to thwart his progress, it is almost unavoid- able to conclude that in the share which the Jews took in the Ephesian tumult, (Acts xix. 23,) and the conspiracy which was to lie in wait for him on his return from Greece to Syria, (Acts xx. 3,) at the time when his contest with the Judaizers was at its height, they must have played an active part. The furious assault upon him in the Temple (Acts xxi. 20) which ended in his long imprisonment at Csesarea and Rome, is not indeed expressly ascribed to the instigation of "the many thousand Jews who believed at " Jerusalem :" still, when we consider how completely it de- stroyed the effect of the peace-offering to his countrymen in the contribution for the poor in Judaea, on which he had built such hopes, and which they had, for that very rea- son perhaps, done so much to misinterpret; (Rom. xvi. 25 27; 1 Cor. xvi. 1; 2 Cor. vii. ix. ; Acts xxiv. 17;) how totally it altered all his plans of a mission to western Europe, (Rom. xv. 24 28 ; Acts xx. 25,) and removed him for four years in this the prime of his life and activ- ity to close imprisonment, (Acts xxiv. 27 -, xxviii. 30,) we may well imagine with what a proud satisfaction the Judaizers must have felt that God had set His seal to their exertions, and that the danger which had threatened their Church and nation was now successfully arrested. Their One task alone remained to them, and that was to under- efforts at mme (-j^ influence which he might have acquired before by his Epistle, or would now acquire by his presence, although in confinement, at Rome. At Rome alone, that particular phase of Judaism which we are now considering had not yet manifested itself. There had been the " weaker brethren," as we have seen already, whom St. Paul addressed in the fourteenth chapter ; there had been another class of whom we shall see more hereafter, who had been addressed in THE JUDA1ZERS OF THE APOSTOLICAL AGE. 209 the thirteenth and sixteenth ; but, as there is no trace in the Epistle itself of the peculiar form with which we are now concerned, so also it is expressly stated that when on St. Paul's arrival at Rome he addressed the Jewish Chris- tians, evidently expecting that his implacable enemies had been there before him with their usual accusations, they answered at once, " We neither received letters from Judaea " concerning thee, neither any of the brethren (i. e. Chris- " tians) who came shewed or spake any harm of thee.*' (Acts xxviii. 21.) That such however was not long the case, appears from the one Epistle which gives us any account of the Apostle's personal history during the long imprisonment at Rome, that to the Philippians. There we still hear of those rival teachers, who " preached Christ " of contention, not sincerely, supposing to add afflic- " tion to his bonds." In them apparently it was that he saw the inveterate enemies, who like the unclean " dogs" of the eastern cities had tracked their prey even into his prison at Rome, the "evil workers" of their own gain, the party who, having confidence in the flesh, deserved only the name of " the concision," leaving the name of the cir- cumcision in its highest sense to those who worshipped God in the spirit, and "made their boast" (Kav-^w^evovs) not in outward rites but in " Christ Jesus k ." This however is the latest direct mention in the New Testament of that peculiarly personal hostility to St. Paul, that zeal for the law and circumcision, which marked the earlier stage of the Judaizing Christians; subordinate traces of it indeed may be found afterwards, but it is no longer the k Phil. i. 16; iii. 2, 3. The image of "the dog" both in Greek and Hebrew, as still in Oriental countries, seems to unite to the expression of scorn, the double idea of shamelessness and uncleanness, such as I have en- deavoured to represent. Comp, Ps. xxi. 17; Deut. xxiii. 18 ; Rev. xxii. 15. For the notion of dishonesty implied in the words " evil workers," (5o\iovs epydras,} comp. 2 Cor. xi. 13; iv. 2. P 210 THE JUDAIZERS OF THE APOSTOLICAL AGE. prominent aspect which it wears in the Apostolic writings ; whether from the absence of the fuel which had once been furnished to its energies by the personal presence and activity of its great opponent, or, as is more probable, from its absorption into the new forms in which it henceforward clothed itself. II. SECOND PERIOD. The later Epistles of St. Paul, and the General Epistles of St. Peter and St. Jude. The heresies of the second act of the conflict with Judaism on which we now enter are, as is natural, more difficult to reconstruct than in those of the first ; the unity of the contest is lost by its ceasing to centre round St. Paul; the individual traits which were brought out by hig per- sonal conflict with his opponents are necessarily lost in the more general character of the Epistles from which we must now derive our information; the simple element of a Judaizing Christianity, intelligible to any ordinary reader of the Old and New Testament, now becomes complicated by a vast variety of mixed influences, only to be under- stood fully through their connexion with causes extrane- ous to both Jew and Christian. It will still however be possible by confining ourselves to the Apostolical writings, and to the historical rather than the prophetic represen- tations which they furnish, to give so far as can be done within a short compass a general view of this new develop- ment of evil. Revolu- Its object and principles were in most respects wholly Character different from those which we have first discussed. The heresies g reat a ^ m of the Judaizers hitherto had been to restrain, so of this t speak, the energies of Christians within Jewish limits, period. chiefly on purely fanatical grounds, as has been before stated, partly also with something of the worldly prudence which formed at least one element in the speech of the THE JUDAIZERS OF THE APOSTOLICAL AGE. 211 chief priests, "lest the Romans should come and take away " their place and nation 1 ." Then, as on that more awful occasion, they thought " it expedient that one man should " die and the whole nation perish not," (John xi. 49 ;) they joined their unbelieving countrymen, in fear of the odium which they might incur from the extravagances of a rising sect which threatened to "turn the world upside down, " and to do contrary to the decrees of Caesar." (Acts xvii. 6, 7.) But when in proportion to the diffusion of Chris- tianity and the recognition of its universal character, any such attempt became more and more hopeless, it is per- fectly conceivable that the very same party should suddenly shift its ground, and that, instead of endeavouring to check the new religion, they should see that it was possible to use it as an engine for effecting their own purposes. The very fact however of this change of position at once introduced elements which were either wholly new, or which having been before subordinate, now rose to the surface of the movement. Christianity was now about to share the com- mon lot of every great moral change which has ever taken place in human society, by containing amongst its advo- cates men who are morally the extreme opposites of each other, some being the really best and noblest of their kind, and others the vilest. "Perfect as it was in itself," (it will be perceived that this description is taken from the work m in which this fact has been most fully set forth,) " perfect as it was in itself, its nominal adherents often " took part with it for its negative side, not for its positive, ft advocating it so far as it destroyed what was already in " existence, but having no sympathy with that better state " of things which it proposed to set up in the room of the " old. Accordingly when the Church began to shew its " wide range of action and its singular efficacy, all who 1 John xi. 48. "' Arnold's Fragment on the Church, p. 85. 212 THE JUDAIZERS OF THE APOSTOLICAL AGE. " longed to see the existing system overthrown, rallied " themselves round its assailant. Here they thought was " a power which they could use for the accomplishment of " their purpose ; when this should first have cleared the " ground of the thickets which encumbered it, it would be " for them to sow in the vacant soil their own favourite " seed. Let any one who knows what the Roman empire " was in the first century of the Christian era imagine to " himself the monstrous forms of opinion and practice " which such a state of society so diseased could not fail " to engender. All varieties of ancient and foreign super- " stition existed together with the worst extremity of un- " principled scepticism, while, in practice, the unquelled " barbarism of the ruder provinces, and the selfish cruelty " fostered by long and bloody civil wars, had provided a " fearful mass of the fiercer passions, and the unrestrained " dissoluteness of a thoroughly corrupt society was a source " 110 less abundant of every thing most shameless in sen- " suality. These seemingly incongruous evils, superstition " and scepticism, ferocity and sensual profligacy, when " from any particular circumstances they turned against 16 the monster society which had bred them, sheltered " themselves under the name of Christianity," and became the heresies of the second period of the apostolic age. Greatness The vastness and reality of the danger which this crisis danger. threatened not only to the purity, but (humanly speaking) to the very existence of the Christian Church, is evident both from heathen authors and from the apostolical writings themselves. Far and near, the front rank of the Christian society, as it moved forward in its aggression on the heathen world, was pre-occupied by these dreadful shapes of error and wickedness, which alone attracted the attention of the superficial observer, and which rendered the Christian name a byeword amongst its enemies for licentiousness and fanaticism, prevented the wisest and best of Roman I UK Jl'DAl/KKS OF THE APOSTOLICAL A(iK.- 18 historians from seeing anything in the Christianity of the age of Nero, except a "hateful superstition," known 11 only by the "shameful and abominable crimes" of those who professed it. One point alone these heresies shared in common with the Church, and that was the intense and the Scriptures justify us in adding the preternatu- ral energy of its operations. Even the Apostles them- selves seem to have gazed with awe on the portentous forms, half human half diabolical, which confronted them either close at hand or in immediate prospect. The " working of Satan with all power and signs and lying " wonders," (2 Thess. ii. 9 ;) the " seducing spirits and " teachings of demons, who speak lies and hypocrisy, " and have their consciences seared with a hot iron," (2 Tim. iii. 1 ;) the "synagogue of Satan," (Rev. ii. 9, 13;) "the false prophet," (Rev. xvi. 13; xvii. 13;) the " antichrists," (1 John ii. 18;) the "spirits that were to be " tried whether they were of God," (1 John iv. 1 3 ;) the sorceries of Balaam, of Egypt, of Jezebel, (2 Pet. ii. 15 ; Jude 11; Rev. ii. 14; 2 Tim. iii. 8, 9; Rev. ii. 20;) such are the figures under which the Apostolical writings ex- press their sense of the danger which impended over them. In endeavouring to exhibit its workings in detail, two its form, points emerge which will give some assistance in guiding Jewish - us through the mazes of a labyrinth from the nature of the case so wrapt in obscurity and uncertainty. In the first place, it would seem that Judaism still succeeded in making itself the rallying point of the movement. It was no longer the informing soul and spirit, but it was still the framework, the instrument, the handle, to which the floating elements of evil, however loosely and remotely, continued to fasten themselves. It was no longer the stiff Pharisaical Judaism n Tac. Ann. xv. 44. Comp. Iren. adv. Hser. i. 25. 3. o The English version is ambiguous. All the participles in 1 Tim. iv. 2, 3, relate not to T/es THE JUDATZERS OF THE APOSTOLICAL AGE. which had opposed St. Paul, that, so far as the Church was concerned, had retired into the background, and St. Paul is therefore no longer the all-absorbing figure of the plot ; but we shall see, as we trace it in detail, that it still wore the Jewish physiognomy, still pandered to Jewish preju- dices, still fostered the wilder and more remote extrava- gances of Jewish superstition. Its chief Secondly, what is lost in unity of person is in some suf'and *" measure compensated by the greater unity of place. The the Asiatic p rev i ous movements of the Judaizers had been discernible Churches. * in every part of the empire from Palestine to Italy; the present, so far as we shall be able to follow them in the apostolical writings, however widely they may have extended, and however great their influence may have been at times in Rome itself, yet generally speaking had their head quarters in that part of Asia Minor on which the earlier Judaism had produced the least effect, the province of Proconsular Asia, the Christian commu- nities which lay in the plain formed by the Vales of the Mreander and Cayster. If the metropolis of the earlier opponents of Christianity had been, as in some sense it must have been of the later also, the holy city of Jeru- salem, so the metropolis of the mixed Judaism of this second period was Ephesus. In that great emporium of Asia Minor, uniting, as has been truly said p , more than any other city in the world, the manners of the east and west, with its mingled population of Greeks and Asiatics, with its schools of magic, and its magnificent temple, whose sacred image blended the name of the Grecian Diana with the symbolic form of the old eastern nature-worship, with its large population of legalized Jewish settlers who had furnished there as elsewhere the nucleus of the Christian Church; there more than in any other place it was natural that the strange forms of eastern and western superstition P See Milman's Hist, of Christianity, ii. 24. 203. THE JUUAIZKRS OF THK APOSTOLICAL A(!K. 215 should meet together, and that their combination should exercise the greatest sway. And there accordingly it is that we are to look for the chief scene of the last aposto- lical conflict. It was in his farewell warning to the Ephe- sian elders against the false teachers who should arise even from their own body to draw away disciples after them, that St. Paul gave the earliest distinct intimation of the coming evil. It is to individuals or communities within the range of this influence that every one of his later Epi- stles are addressed, with the exception of that to the Philippians, which, as has been seen, treats for the most part of the earlier form of the mischief. It is to the Chris- tians of Asia Minor that the First Epistle of Peter is ex- pressly written, and with it, we may suppose, the Second Epistle and that of St. Jude. And it is, lastly, to the seven Churches immediately in the neighbourhood of Ephesus, or to Ephesus itself, that we must confine the ministrations of St. John. As, in short, it was the centre of what q was called " tho'people of the dispersion," so also for that very reason it naturally became the chief sphere of Christian activity, the battle-field of the conflict of Christianity with its most formidable rival. It now remains to trace this new effort of early heresy through its various forms down to the crisis of the aposto- lical age, commonly marked by the fall of Jerusalem. These may be divided into the two phases indicated in the predictions of the two Epistles to Timothy, (1 Tim. iv. 15; 2 Tim. iii. 19,) into what may be called the ascetic and the licentious. Both equally partook of the mixed elements which have just been noticed, and each played into the other, but here for the sake of convenience they may be considered apart. (a.) The former of these, as might be expected, is the The Ju earlier in point of time, as we infer from its occupying the See Ziillig on the Apocalypse, p. 215, 216. 216 THE JITDA1ZERS OF THE APOSTOLICAL AGK. hi their chief place in the two first of the Epistles which were and super- written within this period, viz., that to the Colossians and form 118 ^ e ^ rst to Timothy. Its two leading features, in which we already see the influx of the more purely oriental element, are a scrupulous abstinence from matter, and an indulgence in fanciful speculations about heavenly beings. It is true that to both these errors a Gentile origin might, not without reason, be ascribed. " Touch not, taste not, " handle not" "a shew of wisdom in will worship, and " humility a neglecting of the body," (Col. ii. 21, 23) " forbidding to marry, commanding to abstain from food," " bodily exercises," (1 Tim. iv. 3,) might in themselves be merely the result of the Manichsean abhorrence of matter, with which doubtless they have a connexion. The " philosophy and vain deceit after the tradition of men," " the voluntary humility and worshipping of angels," "intruding into things not seen," (Col. ii. 8, 18,) "the " profane and vain babblings and oppositions of science falsely so called," (1 Tim. vi. 20,) the rejection of the doctrine of the resurrection of the body by Hymenaeus and Philetus, (1 Tim. i. 20; 2 Tim. ii. 18,) perhaps "the " seducing spirits and teaching of demons," (1 Tim. iv. 1,) might possibly be referred to the Gnostic theories of aeons and emanations. But that the general form of the errors was Jewish appears in the Epistle to the Colos- sians, from the stress laid on the spiritual as distinct from the outward circumcision, (ii. 11 14,) in the First Epistle to Timothy, from its opening declaration that the " vain "janglers" who were to be opposed "desire to be teachers " of the law," (1 Tim. i. 7.) This is true also, predomi- nantly if not exclusively, of each particular subdivision. That the bodily austerity had attached itself to the Jew- ish asceticism with which we are familiar in the Essenes and Therapeutse, is evident from its association with such phrases as "the rudiments of the world," (Col. ii. THK .11 DAI/KHS 01' TI1K APOSTOLICAL AGE. 217 8, 20; comp. Gal. iv. 3, 9;) "let no man judge you in " respect of the meat and drink, or of an holy day, or the " new moons, or the Sabbath days, which are a shadow of " things to come," (Col. ii. 16; comp. Gal. iv. 10; Rom. xiv. 3;) "profane and old wives' fables," (1 Tim. iv. 7,) evidently identical with "Jewish fables, and command- " ments of men/' in the Epistle to Titus, (i. 14.) That the angel worship also was such as became ultimately fixed in the superstitions of the Talmud, may be inferred partly from the general tone in the Epistle to the Colos- sians, partly from the similar danger implied in the nearly cotemporary Epistle to the Hebrews, whose readers, of un- doubtedly Jewish descent, receive almost similar instruc- tions, (comp. Col. i. 16; iii. 15, with Heb. i. 4 17,) and is confirmed by the vestiges of such a superstition which may be traced in the neighbourhood of Colossae long after it had ceased to exercise any general influence, the cen- sures directed against it in the thirty-fifth canon of the council of the adjoining city of Laodicea, the chapels of the Archangel Michael which Theodoret saw in Phrygia and Sardis, and one of which remained standing in Colossse itself down to the Middle Ages, not to speak of the legends which are still said to linger amongst its present Greek inhabitants 1 ". Such was the last form of Judaism which attracted the direct notice of the Epistles of St. Paul. It is evident indeed that in them he regards it as a feeble antagonist compared with its earlier manifestation; he is nowhere incited to the same vehemence as in the Epistle to the Corinthians and Galatians; he speaks strongly of it, but not so much in anger as (if we may venture so to apply the word) in scorn. Still we may believe that under these few withering sentences in the Epistles to Colossse and Timotheus all that was important in the purely Jew- r See Thiersch's Essay on the Criticism of the New Testament, p. 272. 218 THE JUDAIZERS OF THE APOSTOLICAL AGE. ish element of this false asceticism dwindled away and perished. The Ju- (b.) There was however another and more formidable heresies in shape which the Judaizing spirit was to assume, and with their H- which the one iust discussed seems to have allied itself centious and revo- according to the proverbial paradox of the natural approxi- lutionary T . i i form mation of extremes. It is to this, the wilder and more licentious aspect of the early heresies, that the general sketch with which this part of the subject has been opened more especially applies. That this danger had in some sort already beset the Christian communities is evident from the warnings in 1 Thess. iv. 1 8; 1 Cor. v. vi.; 2 Cor. vi. 11 18, Rom. xiii. 13, 14; Gal. v. 19; but it is not till the period now before us that it presented any distinct and organized front. But taking the Epistle to Titus and the Second to Timothy for the connecting link between this and the last mentioned form of error, and examining fully the Epistles of St. Peter and St. Jude, and the address to the seven Churches of the Apocalypse, we shall arrive here also at certain definite characteristics which mark a new era in the development of these Judaic heresies. These are, the attempt to overthrow the existing order of Roman society, combined almost always with doctrines of avowed licentiousness, and, although less fre- quently, with professions of sorcery and magic. It is re- markable that the earliest notices of any tendency of this kind are found not in the Asiatic provinces which have been described as the usual scene of these wild opinions, and in which they ultimately organized themselves, but at at Rome: Rome. There, where as we have seen, the Pharisaic form of Judaism did not make its way till long afterwards, we find a joint exhortation to obedience and to purity of life in language so strong as if to imply there was something in the state of the Roman Christians which imperatively called for such a warning. (Rom. xiii. 1 14.) And the T11K .11 DAl/KKS OF TI1K APOSTOLICAL AGE. 219 only teachers especially marked out for their condemnation and avoidance are those who cause it to be slanderously reported of Christians that " they say * let us do evil that " good may come,'" and who " cause the divisions into two " parties, and the occasions of offence and scandal amongst " them contrary to the teaching which they had received, " (ras Si^oa-rao-ias Ka\ TO, (T/cavSaXa,) who serve not the " Lord Jesus Christ but their own belly, and with words te of kindness and bounty (Sta rfjs xpycrToXoyias KOI euXo- " ylai) deceive the hearts of the simple," (Rom. iii. 8 ; xvi. 17, 18.) These words would exactly describe the counterfeit Christianity taught by those who wished to use the real Christianity for their own interests, and would also critically coincide with the somewhat later description in the Epistle to the Philippians of a party, wholly distinct as it would seem from the pure Judaizers of Phil. iii. 1 6, also at Rome; "who are enemies of the cross of ft Christ, whose end is destruction, (comp. Rom. iii. 8,) " whose God is their belly, whose glory is in their shame, " who mind earthly things for our citizenship (q^v yap " TO TToKireviia) is in heaven ;" as though the Apostle said, "they desire an earthly empire, but we look only " for a heavenly one 8 ." (Phil. iii. 19, 20.) Now when we consider how completely Rome was at this time the con- fluence (to use the expression of its own poet) of the Tiber and the Orontes, how truly in its darker form it was like " Babylon the great who had made all nations to drink of " the wine of the wrath of her fornication," it is not sur- s Such an application of this passage from Phil. iii. 20, as well as of that from Phil. iii. 2, 3, quoted in p. 209, is perhaps not capable of formal proof to any one who is disposed to doubt it, nor is it essential to the argument. Still it may be said, 1. that no other explanation falls in so naturally with the immediate context, or with the probable reference of the allusions in this Epistle to parties not in the East but at Rome. 2. That it receives confir- mation from the coincidence of Phil, iii 2, 3. with Phil. i. 15, 16, and of Phil, iii. 20. with Rom. xvi. 17, 18. 20 THE JUDA1ZER8 OF THE APOSTOLICAL AGE. prising that we should find here an exception to the usual scene of the last apostolical conflict, and that the earliest manifestation of this wild revolutionary spirit should have first shewed itself not in the eastern but the western focus of lawlessness and superstition, where there was so much at once to foster and to provoke it. And it may reasonably be asked whether the practices to which the Apostle here alludes may not have furnished some foundation for the tradition of the visit to Rome of that real heresiarch and sorcerer, who had indeed before " declared himself to be " the power of God, and had bewitched the people of " Samaria," but who here first, according to the story, set himself in. open rivalry and hostility to apostolical Chris- tianity 1 ; whether it may not have been these very prac- tices which gave rise to the misrepresentations of Tacitus already referred to, nay whether it is not probable that they may really in their hostility to the city, as well as the laws of Rome, have given cause for the saying of Nero himself that the true incendiaries of Rome were to be found amongst the ranks of the Christian community, in the But another sphere than the crowded stage of the metro- Churches. P^ s was nee( led for the full exhibition of these heresies ; it was reserved for another hand than that of the Apostle of the Gentiles, whose work was now drawing towards its natural close, to arrest their progress. It is in the Asiatic Churches that this false liberty, like its twin sister of false asceticism, presents itself most definitely to view. It is impossible to mistake that the party which called forth the last warnings of St. Paul at Crete and Ephesus in the Epistle to Titus, and the Second to Timothy, is in all its main features the same as that which is attacked in Asia Minor generally in the Epistles of St. Peter and St. Jude, and in the seven Churches of Proconsular Asia in the Revelations. In all there is the same remarkable union of 1 Act? viii. 9 ; Iren. adv. Haer. i. 20. THE JUDAIZERS OF THE APOSTOLICAL AGE. 221 principles at once anarchical and licentious ; men " lovers " of their ownselves," "proud, unholy, without natural affec- " tion, truce-breakers, traitors, heady, high-minded, lovers " of pleasure more than lovers of God," (2 Tim. iii. 2 4;) men " whose mind and conscience is defiled, so that with " them nothing is pure abominable and disobedient, and " to every good work reprobate," (Tit. i. 15, 16;) who must " be put in mind to be subject to principalities and powers, " to obey magistrates, to speak evil of no man, to be no " brawlers, so that the doctrine of God their Saviour may be " adorned in all things, and that he who is of the contrary " part may be ashamed, having no evil thing to say of them." (Tit. iii. 1 ; ii. 8, 10.) This general picture is evidently the same as that which calls forth the warnings of St. Peter's First Epistle, "to abstain from fleshly lusts and submit " themselves to every ordinance of men for the Lord's " sake ;" to " have their conversation honest among the " Gentiles, who speak against them as evil-doers, that so " with well-doing they may put to silence the ignorance " of foolish men ; as free and not using their liberty for " a cloke of maliciousness, but as servants of God ;" that " to endure grief is thankworthy only if when they do well " they suffer for it ;" that " it is better they should suffer "for well-doing than for evil- doing;" that "no one will " harm them if they become (yevrjcrOe) followers of that " which is good " that " they must not suffer as murderers " or thieves or evil-doers." (1 Pet. ii. 11 20; iii. 11 17; iv. 12 15.) And what is implied here indirectly is in the Second Epistle of St. Peter and the parallel passage in St. Jude stated directly. In both, the examples of the angels and the world before the flood and of Sodom and Gomorrah, are held out as warnings to those "who walk after the " flesh in the lust of uncleanness, and despise governments;" " murmurers, complainers, walking after their own lusts, "speaking great swelling words;" who while "they pro- 222 THE JUDAIZERS OF THE APOSTOLICAL AGE. " mise their followers liberty are themselves the servants " of corruption." (2 Pet. ii. 119; Jude 616.) And lastly, all of them are identified with the corrupters of the Seven Churches by the implied union of those doctrines of gross sensuality with the profession of magic and sorcery, a union which perhaps might be startling to us did we not know from the cotemporary records of heathen authors how generally these acts were professed by all those who lent themselves by such means to be the instruments or instigators of the crimes so prevalent amongst the higher orders of the Roman Empire. Flectere si nequeo superos Acheronta movebo, which has always been the feeling of the dregs of a corrupt society, was never more fully exemplified than in the min- gled wickedness and superstition which marked the witches, sorcerers, and astrologers of the age of Tiberius, Nero, and Domitian. Elymas at Cyprus, Simon Magus u at Rome, Apollonius of Tyara at Ephesus, are well-known instances of the influence which such arts endeavoured to gain in rivalry to that of the Christian miracles. And it is there- fore exactly what we might expect, when we find that with the grosser forms of vice in the Second Epistle x to Timothy are joined "seducers" or " wizards" (yorjres) after the manner of the old Egyptian magicians " Jannes and Jambres who withstood Moses," (2 Tim. iii. 8, 13 ;) and that in the Seven Churches, " the woman Jezebel who calleth herself a pro- " phetess, and the false prophet Balaam," who is also held up as the type of the heresies attacked in 2 Pet. ii. 15, and Jude 11, and whose very name when translated into the Greek form of Nicolaus seems to have been fixed on one u For the union of licentiousness and magic in the representations of Simon Magus, see Iren. adv. Haer. i. 23. x The same union is to be observed in Gal. v. 19, 20, THE JUDAIZERS OF THE APOSTOLICAL AGE. 223 of their sects, are spoken of as the prototypes of those who now endeavoured to lead the Christians " to eat things " sacrificed to idols and to commit fornication." (Rev. ii. 6, 14, 15, 20.) It might seem at first sight, after this brief survey of these Gentile . . element. wild and licentious speculations, that now at last we must have bid farewell to Judaism, that now at length we must have reached a form of evil which is the excess not of the servile spirit of the East, but of the free spirit of the West ; not a perversion of the teaching of James and Cephas, but a perversion such as we have seen in later times of the teaching of Paul. To a certain extent this is true : the heterogeneous element which from the state of the Roman empire at this time must have been mixed up with any such movement has been already noticed. The Epistles to the Corinthians furnish indications that there had been, even at that early period, a danger lest the unrestrained profligacy of the Gentile world should shelter itself under the cover of Christian liberty. The close of the Epistle to the Galatians (v. 11 vi. 6.) indicates that there was a party who, while they despised the Judaizing Christians and prided themselves on being "spiritual," were in danger of "sensuality, idolatry, and witchcraft." The answer in the Epistle to the Romans (vi. 1.) to the question " Shall " we continue in sin that grace may abound?" proves that there was a fear even then of that which is implied to have actually taken place in 2 Pet. iii. 15, 16, that there were things in the Epistles of St. Paul "hard to be understood, " which the unstable and unlearned had wrested to their " own destruction." But stiff and unaccommodating as was the more Phari- Jewish saical form of Judaism to foreign usages, there was yet more than one point of view in which it lent itself to the corrupt practices and excesses of heathenism. The language of the older prophecies which had spoken "of the law going 224 THE JUDAIZERS OF THE APOSTOLICAL AGE. " forth from Jerusalem, and of the riches of the Gentiles " flowing into her, of Gentiles coming to her light and " kings to the brightness of her rising, of the dromedaries " of Midian and Ephah, the flocks of Kedar, and the rams " of Nebaioth, her gates open continually, all nations and " kingdoms fearing her ;" conveyed, as is well known, to the carnal minds of the later Jews, far different notions of universality and magnificence than those with which we are familiar through the application of it by the Christian Apostles. It was to them a universality not of spiritual, but of temporal dominion ; it was a felicity not of moral and religious blessings, but of outward and worldly plea- sures. Such was the vision which floated before the more aspiring spirits amongst the purely Jewish zealots in their last desperate endeavour to throw off the Roman yoke in the war with Titus ; such, when translated into a differ- ent form, was the gross conception of the millennial reign of Christ entertained by the Judaizing Cerinthus. With such feelings as these it is easy to conceive how to the Jewish Christians the all-absorbing comprehensiveness, the all-overpowering energy of the Church might seem to furnish a mean for promoting their object, which was denied to them by the fixed rigidity of the Synagogue. Whether or not they intended ultimately to receive Jesus of Nazareth as the true Messiah, whether or not their whole nation would at once acknowledge Him when He returned, as they hoped, in earthly splendour to take His seat on the throne of David, they might still use His name as a watchword for gathering round them the allies whom in the hour of triumph they might discard or retain at their pleasure. Such is the general form which we can imagine to have been assumed by the Jewish nucleus of these heresies. It now remains to justify it in detail through their various manifestations. THE JUDAIZERS OF THE APOSTOLICAL AGE. 225 That the earliest indication of this revolutionary move- At Rome, ment, which has been noticed in the city of Rome itself, was, if not predominantly, at least to a great extent, Jewish in its origin or its connexions, may be inferred not only from the generally Judaic character implied in the readers of the Epistle to the Romans, more so than in any other Epistle except those to the Galatians and Hebrews, but also from the context of the passage itself which contains the warning in question. " Owe no man anything, for he " that loveth hath fulfilled the law ; for this Thou shalt " not kill, thou shalt not steal,' is briefly comprehended " in this saying, * Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thy- " self,'" is an address which, standing as it does in the very midst of the exhortations to obedience and to purity, could hardly have been used unless those who needed these exhortations had themselves acknowledged the authority of the Mosaic law. And the contrast between the earthly and spiritual empire, implied, as was above noticed, in Phil. iii. 19, 20, could apply to nothing so well as to the outward and carnal dominion, which was the object of the aspirations of the Judaizers. Nor again is there anything in such a view contradictory to the allusions to this move- ment preserved in heathen historians. The expression of Suetonius, (Claud. 25,) that the Emperor Claudius expelled " the Jews from Rome in consequence of their tumultuary " proceedings at the instigation of Chrestus," evidently has reference to some such attempts; the name of Chrestus indicating its connexion with Christianity, the mention of the Jews indicating its Jewish origin, which would be the more certain if we could identify this with the expulsion of the Jews from Rome, which brought Aquila y to Corinth. (Acts xviii. 2.) And with regard to the expressions of * It has sometimes been said that Aquila had been a follower of Simon Magus (Burton's Eccl. Hist. i. 185), but this rests on a confusion between him and the (apparently) imaginary character in Clem. Rec. II. 1. vii. 33. Q 226 THE JUDAIZERS OF THE APOSTOLICAL AGE. Tacitus on the persecution by Nero, (Ann. xv. 44,) besides the more general excuse for them which has been already noticed, it is at least not an improbable conjecture of a recent historian 2 that "when the Jewish part of the i( Christian community saw the great metropolis of the " world blazing like a fiery furnace before their eyes, " the Babylon of the west wrapped in one vast sheet of " destroying flame, they may have looked on with some- " thing of fierce hope and eager anticipation, they may " have regarded it as the first indication of the coming " of the Lord to judge the world in fire, as the opening " of that kingdom which was to commence with the dis- " comfiture of heathenism," and to conclude with the millennial triumph. The It is however when we turn to the Asiatic stage of the ChorcLs. heresies that their Jewish parentage is most evident. In the Epistle to Titus this is stated in express words, where the "unruly talkers and deceivers" are said to be specially " of the circumcision," (i. 10,) and their false teaching is directly connected with "Jewish fables and command- " ments of men," (i. 14,) with " foolish questions, and " genealogies, (probably of Levitical families,) and con- " tentions, and strivings about the law.'' (iii. 9.) These expressions would of themselves almost be sufficient to prove a similar origin in the almost exactly similar evils mentioned in the Second to Timothy, (comp. especially 2 Tim. iii. 6, with Tit. i. 11 ; 2 Tim. iv. 4, with Tit. i. 14,) and the First Epistle of St. Peter, (comp. especially 1 Pet. ii. 13, 14, with Tit. iii. 1.) In the latter Epistle moreover it admits of a distinct proof from the origin of those who are described as its readers. To maintain indeed that the strangers scattered throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cap- padocia, Asia, and Bithynia, were exclusively Jews of the dispersion, is hardly consistent with the assertion that their z Milman, Hist, of Christianity, ii. 37. book ii. c. 3. THE JUDAIZERS OF THE APOSTOLICAL AGE. 227 former religion had been " a vain conversation received by st tradition from their fathers," (^draia dvacrrp6(f)rj Trarpo- TrapdSoros, i. 18,) that "in time past they were not the " people of God," (ii. 10,) and that they once "wrought " the will of the Gentiles, walking in lasciviousness, lusts, " revellings, banquetings, and abominable idolatries," (iv. 3.) But when we consider the close intermixture of the Jewish settlers with the native inhabitants of the Gentile countries which has been described above, their great numbers and influence in these very countries, the almost complete identification with them, even amongst those who had been wild semi-barbarian idolaters, (Gal. iv. 8,) which is implied in St. Paul's Epistle to the Galatians, the fami- liarity with the Old Testament and with Jewish customs which is presupposed throughout this very Epistle, it is natural to suppose, especially in a letter from the great Apostle of the circumcision, that the nucleus, the main- spring of these Asiatic Churches, and consequently of these Asiatic heresies, was not Gentile but Jewish. If we could rely with confidence on the natural inference from 2 Pet. iii. 1, that the Second Epistle of St. Peter was addressed to the same readers as the First, then what has just been said would necessarily include the censures contained in this and the corresponding Epistle of St. Jude. But in con- sideration of the obscurity which hangs over the origin and composition of both, it will be safer to derive the proof of the Judaic connexion of the heresies which they attack, partly from their likeness to those already men- tioned, partly from the Jewish allusions (see especially Jude 9, 14) with which both abound, chiefly from their exact coincidence above pointed out with those in the Apo- calyptic Churches, (Rev. ii. 14, 20,) where it was not so much the revolutionary spirit, as the profession of magical arts, that was spoken of as associated with the licentious practices common to all these forms of evil. That the use Q2 228 THE JUDATZEES OF THE APOSTOLICAL AGE. of sorcery, however strongly forbidden by the Law, was generally prevalent amongst the Jews at this period is too well known to admit of elaborate proof; the very name of Cabbala the semi- Jewish origin of Simon Magus the seven Jewish exorcists at Ephesus, the magical wonders supposed to be wrought by those possessed of the mysteri- ous name of God, are all familiar instances of it. That it actually was so in this particular case is certain from the express language of the Apocalyptic vision, " I know the " blasphemy of them which say they are Jews and are not, " but are the synagogue of Satan." (ii. 9 ; comp. ii. 13, 24, iii. 9; and compare the false claim to be Apostles (ii. 2), with the language of the Judaizers in 2 Cor. xi. 5, 13, 23, xii. 11.) What was the precise meaning of the acts ascribed to them which likened their sin to that of Balaam, (ii. 14, 20,) whether it was that they were themselves guilty of expressly transgressing the apostolical decree, and indulg- ing in the sacrificial feasts and accompanying sensuali- ties of the heathen worship, thus combining the excesses of the Gentile with the fanaticism of the Jewish party ; or whether they, in their hostility to the true Christians whom they regarded as their rivals, tempted them to do so by laying accusations against them before heathen ma- gistrates, is not clear. Probably both may have existed together, exactly as the earlier Judaizing or Jewish zealots, who were themselves bent on destroying the Roman em- pire, did not scruple to use this very charge as a pretext to the Romans for the destruction of St. Paul, and of our Lord Himself. (Acts xvi. 20; Matt. xxiv. 5; John xix. 12.) Both crimes however are alike compatible with a Jewish origin. If we suppose them to have tempted the Chris- tians " to eat meats offered to idols and to commit fornica- (t tion" by their own example, then it is parallel with the warning given nearly at this same period even to the. THE JUDAIZEBS OP THE APOSTOLICAL AGE. 229 Hebrew Christians in Palestine, "Follow peace with all " men," (i. e. do not think it necessary to enter on hostile aggressions against any one, not even against the heathen Romans,) " and holiness, without which no man shall see " the Lord," (i. e. but at the same time do not so mix your- selves up with them as to lose that purity (a^iaa^ov) which is to Christians what ceremonial holiness was to the Jews, comp. 1 Thess. iv. 3, 4, 7; Matt. v. 8;) "looking dili- " gently lest any man fail of the grace of God, lest any root " of bitterness springing up trouble you and thereby many " be defiled," (i. e. in evident allusion to Deut. xxix. 18 ; lest any of you should go after heathen customs, and by his example lead any into their polluting sins ;) " lest there be " any fornicator or profane person like Esau, who for one " morsel of meat sold his birth-right," (i. e. lest any of you for the sake of his temporary gratification in the sacrificial feast, fall into the sins by which these feasts are so often accompanied, comp. 1 Cor. viii. 13; vi. 13.) And appa- rently there is a similar allusion to these practices in the last chapter, (xiii. 9,) " Be not carried away with divers " and strange doctrines. For it is a good thing that the " heart be established with grace, (see xii. 15,) not with " meats which did not profit them that walked in them," (dvacrrpefavo-iv.) Or on the other hand if their crime was tempting the Christians to join in the sacrifices by expos- ing them to the fear of heathen persecutions 3 , this again would be in conformity with what we know of the instigation of these persecutions not only in the early period during St. Paul's first journeys, (Acts xvii. 5, 13,) but at this very period, in these very provinces. Clement of Rome asserts that Peter and Paul met their deaths through envy, (Sia a To justify the application of the description of the false prophet (Rev. xiii. 12; xvi. 3) to the Judaizers of Rev. ii. 14, would be too long a digres- sion, but it is evident how exactly the above traits agree with Rev. xiii. 1218. 230 THE JUDAIZERS OF THE APOSTOLICAL AGE. an expression not elsewhere explained, but, so far as we can build upon it, apparently pointing to the machina- tions of some such rival sect, as the Judaizers. (Comp. Phil. i. 15.) Melito expressly says that Nero and Domitian were prejudiced against the Christians " by certain enchanters," (VTTO ftacricavtov TWWV avOpwirow,) a phrase which exactly coincides with the sorcerers and followers of Balaam in the passages before us. In the account of the martyrdom of Polycarp, bishop of Smyrna, one of the very Churches where these Judaizers existed in the greatest force, it is said that the Jews no less than the heathens joined in the shout which went up on the appearance of the aged martyr, " This is the teacher of all Asia, the overthrower of " our gods, who has perverted so many from sacrifice and " from adoration of our gods ;" and that they howled with savage joy around the funeral pile whose materials they had themselves eagerly collected. The Such being the form and origin of these heresies, it tcTthese remains to ask from what quarters and by whose means were met ancl destr y ed? No doubt St. Paul's General Epistles contained in themselves the antidote not only to St. Peter Jewish Pharisaism, but also to this Jewish libertinism, which in some sense was the abuse of his own teaching. But it is not after the manner of the Scriptures that one Apostle or Prophet should exhibit the whole cycle of truth; it would not have been according to the analogy of faith, that St. Paul should have been the Apostle especially brought forward to correct himself. It was now that the intervention of St. Peter, of which a description has been attempted in the second Sermon, would naturally be ex- pected. Vestiges may well have been preserved in this later stage of Judaism either of the ancient hostility to St. Paul, or of the hopes that Peter was to place himself at the head of that great party which had once, and perhaps still called itself after his name, and turned as of old to the example THE JUDAIZERS OF THE APOSTOLICAL AGE. 231 of the brethren of the Lord and of Cephas ; and to repress these would have been a fitting call for the exercise of the authority of St. Peter and St. Jude. Here too was the true place for the intervention of the ethical character which belongs more or less (with the exception of that of St. John) to all the General Epistles, or in other words, the writings which bear the names of the purely Jewish Apostles; and what the moral teaching of St. James (as will afterwards appear) was to the barren belief of the Palestine Church, that the moral teaching of St. Peter and St. Jude might well be to the licentious fanaticism of these later Judaizers. Whilst on the one hand the style and language of the First Epistle of St. Peter, and the express assertion of the Second, must have indicated then, as it has been a decisive proof ever since, that before the close of the Sacred Canon the traces of the dispute at Antioch had been virtually effaced, so the three Epistles together must have borne testimony then, and are a valu- able testimony now, to the irreconcileable difference which existed between real Apostolical Christianity and that counterfeit representation of it which for a time deceived the world by its rival pretensions. External resemblances are to an outward observer so much more palpable than inward differences, that Tacitus may well have confounded together the abominable superstition and the Divine in- struction, which both presented themselves to him under the common name of a new religion, even as Aristophanes had long before assailed as belonging to the same school the basest of sophists and the greatest of philosophers. But as even in the case of Grecian history the judgment of posterity has set aside the Athenian verdict upon Socrates, much more have these Epistles determined for ever the true relations once so grievously misunderstood between the Apostles and their opponents, and the mistake of a part for the whole which, as we see from Tacitus, was 232 THE JUDAIZEES OF THE APOSTOLICAL AGE. natural in the reign of Nero, we learn from the Epistles of the younger Pliny to have become impossible in the reign of Trajan. The viper which had come out of the heat and fastened itself on the apostolic age was shaken off into the fire ; the wild anarchy which then succeeded in identifying itself with Christianity has been rarely con- founded with it since ; and if the lessons of acquiescence in existing authorities which this spirit called forth from the Apostles in the first century were in the next pushed to excess by Ignatius and his followers, if in later ages they have been used as pretexts for undue servility, yet if rightly understood, and taken in conjunction with the other parts of the New Testament, they may be well regarded as monuments of the possibility of reform without revolution, of introducing the greatest moral and spiritual changes without loosing the social and political bonds which hold mankind together. In the Lastly, as the authority of these two Jewish Apostles lypse. was thus employed in strangling in its cradle this mon- strous birth of Jewish and Gentile evil, so that of the only one who remained (for the work of James the Just was as will be seen confined to a narrower sphere) was no less providentially employed in exhibiting in the Apo- calypse the only aspect of it which was capable of a Christian expression. Reserving entirely the ques- tion of the interpretation of its details, it is sufficient to observe here that what the Gospel and Epistles of St. John have often been remarked to be in relation to the third stage of the primitive heresies, that the Apo- calypse is to the second. It meets them not by direct opposition, but by adopting and redeeming all that was capable of a higher meaning in their thoughts and phrase- ology. If there be a worse than the Roman Babylon to be destroyed, if there be a holier than the Jewish Jeru- salem to be reverenced, if there be a reign of Christ THE JUDAIZERS OF THE APOSTOLICAL AGE. 233 greater than the Jtidaizing millennium to be hoped for, they are to be sought for in the true antithesis to the Apocalypse b of Cerinthus, in tlie "Book of the Revela- " tion of St. John the Divine." III. THIRD PERIOD. The Gospel and Epistles of St. John. The juxtaposition of these two names brings us to the Errors op. closing period at once of the bright and of the dark sides st.John. of the apostolical age. It is a remarkable proof of the indiscriminate transference of our own notions to that time, that most readers of ecclesiastical history if asked what was the most controversial period of the first century, would fix upon that which seems in fact to have been the least con- troversial of all. It is precisely because the energy of the primitive antagonism to apostolical truth was gradually dwindling away into the ordinary operations of error, such as have provoked the controversies of later ages, that we therefore insensibly come to regard the writings of St. John as more polemical than those of St. James, St. Paul, or St. Peter. But the apostolical controversies were not like ours, they were carried on not against "flesh and " blood," not against the mere outward figure of mortality in which evil may chance to clothe itself, but "against " principalities, against powers, against rulers of the dark- " ness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high " places," against the real principles of moral evil which lay at the root of the whole matter, and which shewed them- selves in their naked undisguised depravity of avowed hostility to goodness, and avowed love of wickedness. And if therefore in St. John's writings, the vehemence of St. Paul, and the severity of St. James, has disappeared, it is not merely because the fire of the Son of Thunder has been superseded by the peaceful temperament of the 1> See Eus. II. E, iii. 28, vii. 25; Epiph. Hfer. -51. 3. 34 THE JUDAIZERS OF THE APOSTOLICAL AGE. Apostle of Love, but because St. James and St. Paul and St. Peter had thoroughly done their work, because the evils with which he had to contend, however malignant in spirit, were at least less rampant and less powerful in form, because it was c only a solitary Diotrephes here and there, and not whole masses of Christian communities who " received him not." This would be our natural impression if we derived our impression from the general tone of St. John's writings, not as illustrated by later theologians, but as compared with those which proceed directly or indirectly from his brother Apostles. Yet some form of rivalry, some hostile principles of evil we do seem to encounter even here, and these, with the assistance of tradition, which, as shall elsewhere be shewn, is here more important than usual in filling up the gap of apostolical history, it now remains to endeavour to reproduce, Chiefly Doubtless in the speculations concerning the nature of Christ which seemed to be glanced at in the Gospel and Epi- stles of St. John, (John i. 114 ; 1 John i. 1 ; ii. 13 ; iv. 2,) there seem to be traces of an opposition to the first indica- tions of those Gnostic errors, which as belonging to a later age, and to another sphere than that with which we are now concerned, it is not my intention here to notice. But the Gnostic sects, properly so called, had not yet come into existence, their first founder Basilides did not appear till A.D. 120, long after the Apostle was laid in his grave. So far as the principles opposed by St. John had assumed any outward and definite shape at all, it is still the same ancient enemy that we have tracked throughout, it is still not Gnosticism but Judaism, or, if we will have the word, it is not yet the Gnostic pure, but the Gnostic d grafted on a Jewish soil. c 3 John 9. d That even the later Gnosticism was in its origin Jewish appears from THE JUDAIZERS OF THE APOSTOLICAL AGE. 235 It was after the fall of Jerusalem had stripped it of every The other form in which it could take refuge, after its Phari- saical rigidity and its daring ambition had in that great catastrophe been alike extinguished, that the Judaism of the Christian Church entrenched itself in that first of sects or heresies, according to the later meaning of these terms, which is commonly designated by the name of Ebionite. The very name indicates its Jewish origin, not from an individual leader, but, as is now generally acknowledged 6 , from the Hebrew word expressive of the poverty and humble state of the Jewish Church, the caricature (if one may so say) of those Divine blessings which in the earlier Gospels had been pronounced on the poor and the poor in spirit, of those Divine privileges which in the earliest of the Epistles had been ascribed to the " poor of the world, whom " God had chosen to be rich in faith and heirs of the king- " dom which He hath promised to them that love Him." (James ii. 5.) And with this perversion of the social prin- ciples of Christianity was united a similar perversion of its Divine truths. That simple reverence with which many of the Jewish Christians may long have continued to regard our Lord, as the great prophet of their nation, without endeavouring to analyze minutely the precise nature of their feelings towards Him, was in this the last stronghold of all that was purely Jewish in Christianity, hardened and petrified, according to the true spirit of sectarianism, into a fixed dogma, which refused to recognise in Him any- thing else than a mere man, which determined to see in Him not the fulfilment of those wider and higher intima- tions of the Messiah in the ancient prophets, but only of the technical formula of later Rabbis, according to which the man Jesus was indeed to be their deliverer and re- such passages as Tgn. Magn. 8, Heges. ap. Eus. H. E. iv. 22, and the claim of Basilides to have derived his teaching from the traditions of St. Peter. e See Neander, Hist, of the Church, ii. 10. (Eng. Tr.) 236 THE JUDAIZERS OF THE APOSTOLICAL AGE. deemer, but to be recognised as the anointed Messiah only when he had received the promised unction from the hands of the messenger of the Lord who was regarded as his superior, the greatest of the prophets f , Elijah. John the Baptist with them was still all in all; he had indeed come in the spirit and power of Elijah : from him Jesus of Nazareth had received His baptism, and though they might well, according to John's instructions, acknow- ledge themselves as His disciples and call themselves by the name of Nazarene, what need they asked was there to go further, what need to ascribe to Him that more universal character, to take to themselves that more universal name of " Christian" which the Gentile Churches were now be- ginning to insist upon ? It was in Pella g , the last home of the Judaeo-Christian community, that this sect arose, or rather that the simple faith of the Palestine Christians refused to expand into the higher or more universal creed of the society which was now about to be called in name what it had long been in reality, the Catholic Church. But after all that has been said of the widely spead Jewish element throughout the Asiatic provinces, it would not be surprising to find traces of it at Ephesus, even had we not the preparation for it in the disciples of John the Baptist, who formed the nucleus of the Ephesian Church in the lifetime of St. Paul, (Acts xix. 1 6.) And so far as any definite errors are implied by St. John's writings as existing within the sphere of his teaching, they are at least as much of this peculiarly Jewish, as of the later Gnostic, character. The stress laid on the testimony of the Baptist to our Lord's superiority over him the strong assertions (beyond what the other Gospels contain) of the universality of the Christian religion the f Justin, Dial. Tryph. c. 49. See Thiersch on the Criticism of the New Testament, p. 260. g Epiph. Haer. 30. 3. THE JUDAIZERS OF THE APOSTOLICAL AGE. 237 importance attached to the Divine character and mission of our Lord, which, so far as it can be said to have any polemical view, coincides exactly with the similar expres- sions undoubtedly aimed against Jewish errors in the Epistles to the Colossians and Hebrews, and the First to Timothy the very use of the phraseology of Philo, which, as we see from the Epistle of St. James h , was familiar even to the Jews of Palestine, much more to those of Ephesus, all point to the fact which later writers ex- pressly assert, that the errors against which the Gospel and Epistles were directed were Ebionite. It is indeed a remarkable coincidence, that, if we may Cerinthus. trust the traditionary statements, the one individual form which we can discern in the midst of these last heresies is the same which we see though more dimly in each of their preceding stages. Cerinthus, who is always spoken of in such close connexion with the Ebionites as in one place 1 to be confounded with their imaginary founder Ebion, is not only the antagonist of St. John's latest years, but is also repre- sented as in his representation of the Millennium the cham- pion of those doctrines of sensual profligacy which marked the previous period of the primitive heresies, and yet further back still, is stated to have been actually k one of those who in the very first beginning of the conflict carne from Jeru- salem to Antioch, and taught " Except ye be circumcised " after the manner of Moses ye cannot be saved." In this final conflict then of the last heresiarch of the apostolical Church with its last Apostle, the long struggle is brought to its natural close. They had met, it may be, at the meeting at Jerusalem, when John with James and Cephas 1 as the chief pillars of the Jewish Church gave the hand of fellowship to Paul ; they had been confronted once again h See Schneckenburger on St. James. (Introduction.) Epiph. Hjer. 30. 25. k Epiph. Haer. 28. 2. 1 Gal. ii. 6. 238 THE JUDAIZERS OF THE APOSTOLICAL AGE. when the Apocalypse of each was set in opposition one against another, in the troubles which preceded the fall of the Jewish nation ; and now, on the threshold of the apo- stolical age and of their own lives, they met once more, the aged Apostle with the last earthly lineaments of his charac- ter purified away in the light of love and holiness the aged heretic having descended step by step from the rigid dogma of a stern fanaticism through the licentious schemes of a wild revolution down to the hard cold scepticism, which, as it had been deaf before to the dictates of huma- nity was now equally closed against the recognition of divinity the withered trunk, cut down already to the roots, leafless, sapless, lifeless. Opposi- Such is the representation which tradition loved to give of hidivi- ^ tne meeting of the last champion and the last enemy of of al rfn T a P sto ^ ca ^ trutn > guided at least so far by a right instinct pies. that it preserves the faithful impression of the consistency of Judaism in which, as their one continuous outward form, from first to last the primitive heresies clothed themselves. But as in St. John's own writings no name of any particu- lar sect is preserved, no individual Cerinthus handed down to infamy, so it would be safer for us to consider that, as the Judaism which was up to this time the palpable mani- festation of evil had itself retired into a less prominent position, so also his opposition to it, if so it may be called, is merged in the general antagonism to sin as sin, to dark- ness as darkness; as if to bring before us once for all in this the closing period of the conflict the real principles which alone had been at stake throughout. And if, as is likely, it may have been the result of St. John's work, that the false teachers who up to this time had maintained their ground within the Church were henceforth cast out from it, "if they went out from us because 111 they were not of us," and because the Christians at the Apostle's bidding " would m See 1 John ii. 19 ; 2 John 10 ; 1 John v. 19. THE JUDA1ZEBS OF THE APOSTOLICAL AGE. 239 " not receive them at their homes nor wish them God speed, " lest they should be partakers of their evil deeds ;" yet there is still the higher truth to be remembered, which is implied as through all the apostolical writings so especially throughout St. John, that the true antithesis, the true con- tradiction is not between the Church and the individual Judaizers, whether Pharisaical, revolutionary, or Ebionite, but between the Church which "speaks the truth in love," and the " world which lieth in wickedness." SERMON IV. ST. JOHN. JOHN xxi. 22. If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee ? WHATEVER ground there may be for the hesita- SERM. tion with which a pious mind approaches a critical analysis of any of the apostolical characters, what- ever reverence and caution may be required in con- ducting this analysis, exists in the highest degree with reference to the last of the Three Apostles, St. John, on whose life and work I this day pro- pose to enter. The strongly-marked natural pecu- liarities which distinguish St. Peter, the full blaze of historical light which surrounds St. Paul, in themselves justify and invite an investigation of the human springs of action to which they were subject. But St. John's life, at first sight, seems shrouded in an atmosphere of religious awe which we cannot penetrate ; in him the earthly seems so completely absorbed into the heavenly the cha- racter, the thoughts, the language of the disciple so lost in that of the Master that we tremble to draw aside the veil from that Divine friendship; 242 ST. JOHN. SERM. we fear to mix any human motives with a life iv. J - which seems so especially the work of the Spirit of God : it was, we may be inclined to think, a true feeling which in the greatest of Christian poems declared itself unable to discern any earthly* form or feature in the third of the Three Apostles ; we may fancy that in the answer to the question, " Lord, and what shall this man do ?" there is con- tained for us, though in a different sense, some- thing of the same mild rebuke as was addressed to John's first companion, " What is that to thee ? " Follow thou Me." But the fact is, that in these natural and obvious feelings we have virtually anticipated all that is peculiarly distinctive of the life of St. John. The mysterious characters, as well as the mysterious truths of Scripture, are placed before us not to perplex but to instruct us ; and our Lord's words, if rightly understood, may invite us to the task of defining the lineaments of that character which Jesus loved without intruding into things invisi- ble ; of ascertaining the true position of the Apo- stle of Love without instituting any irreverent com- parison between him and the Apostle of Faith. It was precisely in this very capacity for reflecting, as in an unbroken glass, the glory of things Divine ; a As he who looks intent, And strives with searching ken how he may see The sun in his eclipse, and through decline Of seeing loseth power of sight, so I Gazed on that last resplendence. Gary's Dante; Paradiso xxv. 117. ST. JOHN. 243 in this passive reception (so to speak) of the high- SERM. est and holiest influences, that the human fitness of~ St. John for his appointed work properly consisted. It was not by fluctuating and irregular impulses like the first Apostle, nor yet by a sudden and abrupt conversion like the second, that he received his education for the Apostleship ; there was no sphere of outward activity as in Peter, no vehement struggle as in Paul ; in action, while Peter speaks, moves, directs, he follows, silent and retired ; his teaching is expressed not in the arguments and entreaties which mark the Epistles of St. Paul, but in the simplest forms in which human language can arrange itself. Every thing local and national seems to have passed away ; and, if in Peter we seemed to trace the Jewish element in its native vigour, if in Paul there seemed to be a development of those peculiar qualities which so well fitted him to be the Apostle of the Gentile nations of the west, it would almost seem as if in St. John the still con- templation, the intuitive insight into heavenly things, which form the basis of his character, had been deepened and solemnized by something of that more eastern and primitive feeling to which the records of the Jewish nation lead us back ; some- thing of that more simple, universal, child-like spirit, which brooded over the cradle of the human race ; which entitled the Mesopotamian Patriarch, rather than the Hebrew Lawgiver or the Jewish King, to be called the " friend of God b ;" which b James ii. 23. R 2 244 ST. JOHN. SERM. fitted the prophet of the Chaldsean captivity, rather - than the native seers of Samaria or Jerusalem, to be the " man greatly beloved ." If there be any out- ward influence visible in the mind of St. John, it is from these remoter regions, from that more primi- tive atmosphere that it seems to come : it is in the opening words of his Gospel that, after the lapse of ages, we catch the echo of the same words which had announced the creation of all things d : it is in the close of the Sacred Canon that we hear 6 once again of the tree of life and the river of para- dise : it is the most primeval traditions and images of ancient civilization to which, if to any outward source, we owe those ideas of life and death, of light and darkness that blending of fact with doc- trine, of the real with the ideal, which so strongly characterize the writings of St. John. He could not by any possibility have been a Jewish zealot or a Hellenistic rabbi ; it is possible to conceive that but for the grace of God he might have been an Oriental mystic. Still, after all that can be ascribed to any outward circumstances, the whole sum of his character must of necessity be contained in the one single fact that he was " the disciple whom Jesus loved." Once understand that from whatever causes no obstacle intervened between him and that one Divine object which from the earliest dawn of youth to the last years of extreme old age was ever impressing itself c Dan. x. 19. d Comp. Gen. i. 1. with John i. 1. e Comp. Gen. ii. 9, 10. with Rev. xxii. 1, 2. ST. JOHN. ;2 | :> deeper and deeper into his inmost soul, and his SERM. whole work on earth is at once accounted for. - Whatever we can conceive of devoted tenderness, of deep affection, of intense admiration for good- ness, we must conceive of him who even in the palace of the high priest, and at the foot of the cross, was the inseparable companion of his Lord ; whatever we can conceive of a gentleness and holi- ness ever increasing in depth and purity, that we must conceive of the heart and mind which pro- duced the Gospel and Epistles of St. John. I. One phase, however, of his character there was, which might at first sight seem inconsistent with what has just been said, but which nevertheless was the aspect of it most familiar to the mind of the earliest Church. It was not as John the Be- loved Disciple, but as John the Son of Thunder, not as the Apostle who leaned on his Master's breast at supper, but as the Apostle who called down fire from heaven, who forbade the man to cast out devils, who claimed with his brother the highest places in the kingdom of heaven f , that he was known to the readers of the three first Gospels. But in fact it is in accordance with what has been said, that in such a character the more outward and super- ficial traits should have attracted attention before the complete perfection of that more inward and silent growth which was alone essential to it ; and, alien in some respects as the bursts of fiery passion may be from the usual tenor of St. John's later cha- f Luke ix. 53 ; Mark ix. 38 ; x. 37. 246 ST. JOHN. SERM. racter, they fully agree with the severity, almost ' unparalleled in the New Testament, which marks the well-known g anathema in his Second Epistle, and the story, which there seems no reason to doubt, of Cerinthus and the bath. It is not sur- prising that the deep stillness of such a character as this should, like the oriental sky, break out from time to time into tempests of impassioned vehemence ; still less that the character which was to excel all others in its devoted love of good should give indications in its earlier stages even in excess of that intense hatred of evil, without which love of good can hardly be said to exist. But, though this is only a temporary and sub- ordinate feature of the Apostle's character, there is yet one point of view 7 where it meets us at once at the exact stage which we have now reached in this sketch of the apostolical age, and which though later than the end of St. Peter and St. Paul, is yet the first beginning of the work of St. John. It was not till the removal of the first and the second Apostle from the scene of their earthly labours that there burst upon the whole civilized world that awful train of calamities 11 , which break- ing as it did on Italy, on Asia Minor, and on Pales- tine, almost simultaneously, though under the most s 2 John 10 ; see Essay on the Traditions concerning St. John. h For these calamities, and the effect produced by them on those who witnessed them, compare, in Palestine, Joseph. B. J. vi. 5.3; Luke xix. 43 ; xxi. 20 24 ; xxiii. 2830 : in Asia Minor, 1 Pet. iv. 12 19 ; Rev. ii. 10, 13; iii. 10: in the Empire gene- rally, Matt. xxiv. 6, 7 ; Tac. Hist. i. 1. 2. ST. JOHN. 247 different forms, was regarded alike by Roman, SERM. Christian, and Jew, as the manifestation of the~ visible judgment of God. It was now, if we may trust the testimony alike of internal and external proof, in the interval * between the death of Nero and the fall of Jerusalem, when the roll of aposto- lical epistles seemed to have been finally closed, when every other inspired tongue had been hushed in the grave, that there rose from the lonely rock of Patmos that solemn voice which mingled with the storm that raged around it, as the dirge of aii expiring world ; that under the " red and lowering 1 To enter into the proofs of the date of the Apocalypse here assumed as the most probable, would involve too long a dis- cussion, especially as it involves more or less the whole question of the interpretation of the book itself, which had better be re- served for another occasion : I will content myself therefore with stating the general grounds of this opinion, and for the details refer to Liicke's Introduction to the Apocalypse, and to a very able article on the subject in the first number of the Biblical Review. 1. The extremely Hebraistic character of the language, beyond that of any other part of the New Testament, best agrees with a date long previous to that of the Gospel and Epistles. 2. The troubles described in the book as impending over the Church not at some distant period, but immediately, (Rev. i. 9 ; xxii. 6, 7, 10, 12, 20,) refer to no historical event so naturally as the destruction of Jerusalem described almost in the same Ian- guage in the three first Gospels. 3. The indication of the exact time furnished by the book itself, (Rev. xvii. 10,) which assuming the most natural interpretation which the words will bear, would fix it to the year A.D. 68, or 69. 4. The external testimony referring it to the time of Nero has at least as much weight as that which refers it to the reign of Domitian. 248 ST. JOHN. SERM, " sky" which had at last made itself understood to iv. '- the sense of the dullest, there rose that awful vision of coming destiny which has received the expressive name of the Revelation of St. John the Divine. This is not the place and time to enter on the origin and object of that mysterious book, but it is not irrelevant to the present subject to ask whether amidst all the differences which distinguish it from St. John's later writings, we may not trace a con- geniality to the earlier phase of his life to which it properly belongs ; whether in the thunderings and lightnings and voices which proceeded out of the throne, in the cry " How long, O Lord, holy " and true," in the thrones on the right hand and the left, and the armies clothed in white, we may not see k something like the flash, the last ex- piring flash it may be of the Son of Thunder ? May we not in these words be justified in recog- nising the same accents that we remember from the impatient disciple in the earlier Gospels, now used, however, to express not the transient feelings of human indignation, but the solemn message of inspired revelation ? May we not enquire whether in the wild Oriental imagery, in the peculiarly He- braic character, both of style and thought, in the true apostolical counterpart which it presents to those carnal dreams of earthly dominion, which the troubled aspect of the times had brought to their highest pitch in the Judaizing spirit of this k Comp. Mark iii. 17 ; Luke ix. 54 ; Rev. v. 5; xi. 19; xvi. 18; yi. 10; xix. 14; xx. 4. ST. JOHN. 249 epoch, there is any thing really incongruous with SERM. the mission of St. John ? whether he who had been - up to this time an Apostle solely of the circumci- sion, and had, in this sense at least, tarried till his Lord was come, might not now for a moment be rapt out of himself and of his own especial sphere, to utter the last voice of Divine judgment over the catastrophe which, by a Christian of that age, could almost without a figure be called the end of the then existing world, to sing the coming triumph of a holier even than the earthly Jerusalem over a greater even than the Roman Babylon ? II. But there was a higher sense in which the Lord was yet to come, in which, according to no subordi- nate circumstance, but to the inmost essence of his character, the beloved disciple was to be the Apostle of the latter days. The clouds which had gathered so darkly round the Apocalyptic vision rolled away, and we now enter on that final period of the apo- stolical age which is emphatically and without dis- pute the age of John. He alone of the Three now survived : if here and there some Diotrephes 1 might be found to dispute his authority, still, generally speaking, unlike that of his two predecessors, it must have been unquestioned ; he full of years and of holiness must have been truly the father of the new generation of Christians, and they his " little " children;" to him, in his Ephesian retreat in the 1 3 John 6. m See the 1st Ep. of St. John passim, and for the address to 250 ST. JOHN. s E R M. metropolis of the Asiatic Churches, which were them- IV. - selves the centre of Christendom, every eye must have been turned with the feeling that now, if ever, was the time when he should break his silence when his appointed work was fully come. Nero and the tyrants who had succeeded him on the im- perial throne were swept away ; and no Peter was needed to revive the hope of an infant and perse- cuted Church. Jerusalem had perished, and in its ruin was broken the strength of that Judaic spirit which had so vehemently struggled against St. Paul. There was nothing within or without the Church to break the profound peace in which the whole world reposed at the commencement of the reign of Trajan, and which seemed as if providentially designed for the atmosphere in which this epoch of Christian history should receive its final completion. Whatever were the needs of this last period were not outward, but inward ; trials not of the flesh, or of the world, but of the spirit ; the temptation not of the hungry wilderness, nor of the view from the exceeding high mountain, but of the pinnacle of God's holy temple, of presumptuous speculation and slumbering conscience. A new generation of Christians had now appeared, to which the thoughts and feelings of the first were unknown; "fathers " and young men n " are alike addressed in St. John's the Christians in the assembly, and to the young robber, see Essay on the Traditions of St. John. n 1 John ii. 12 14 ; see Lucke's commentary on the passage, from which it would appear that the phrase " little children," is ST. JOHN. 251 Epistle as having grown up in Christian education ; SERM. very few now remained who had seen the face of the - Lord Jesus : between the earlier and the present state of Christian society, if by no other cause at least by the destruction of Jerusalem, there seemed to be fixed a chasm as of many centuries ; and what wonder if in the place of that Divine history now growing dim in the distance, there should have arisen those portentous shadows of oriental specu- lation which afterwards deepened into the Gnostic heresies of the second century, but which even now were chasing each other to and fro across the field of the Eastern Churches? what wonder if in the place of that fervent zeal, which marked even in excess the conduct of the earliest Christians, we find iniquity abounding and the love of many waxing cold, and faith and holiness which to St. Paul's view had seemed absolutely indivisible, now falling asunder from each other in that fatal disunion which is de- plored through all the Epistles of St. John ? And now what were the weapons with which these evils were combated by the sole surviving Apostle of the Christian Church? We must re- member that compared with the mortal conflict which was waged by St. Paul in the Epistles to the Corinthians and Galatians against his Jewish op- ponents, or with that which was sustained in the Epistles of St. Peter and St. Jude against the revo- used as a general designation of the disciples, to whom in each case a general address precedes the more particular appeal to the earlier and later generations of the Apostle's hearers, spoken of respectively as " fathers" and " young men." ST. JOHN. SERM. lutionary sects which threatened to shake the foun- ' dations alike of moral and religious society, the age of St. John, so far from being in itself a time of fierce controversy, seems much rather, both in the evils attacked and the mode of attacking them, to partake of the general tranquillity of the whole period, ' moving towards the stillness of its rest/ gradually softening away into that deep silence which succeeds immediately to the apostolic age, " that silence as it were about the space of half an " hour/' during which we hear and know hardly any thing, till it is broken by the din of the angry combatants in the middle of the next century. It is then in exact accordance with the wants and cir- cumstances of the age, no less than with his own character, that the chief form in which the beloved disciple inculcated Christian truth, was not that of a polemical Epistle, but an historical Gospel ; was not the assertion of any principle however deep, of any morality however exalted, but the description in all its fulness of the Person of Jesus Christ. This is the subject of his Gospel, and round this his Epistles converge. Previous Evangelists had given to the Church that which the Church had then most needed ; the cycle of the warnings, the precepts, the miracles, the external ministrations of the Lord had been preserved in what we now know as the teaching of the three first Gospels. But the Life, as a whole the outer life, with the distinct stages of progressive interest from passover to passover, and all the several steps that led to the final issue the inner life, with the Divine discourses which repre- ST. JOHN. 253 sented not merely the wisdom of the earthly prophet, s E RM. but the glory which He had with the Father before IV ' the world was the life, not as seen only by Jewish eyes, and in connexion with Jewish feelings , but as intended to be the source of life to the whole world this was precisely what we might expect from St. John ; the Beloved Disciple, and the Last of the Apostles. It was as though the recollections of his youth, which to the minds of all else were waxing faint, came back upon him in the loneliness of his declining years with all their original vividness : no greater treasure could he bequeath to the world, which seemed as it were to have had a new term added to its existence, than a faithful historical record of those scenes that would else have perished with him out of human memory : no fitter antidote could he fur- nish alike for the intellectual and moral perversions of his age, than that which in a measure had been already urged in the later Epistles of St. Paul, as the remedy to the same incipient evils, the com- plete representation of the Word made flesh. But to meet such tendencies as those with which St. John was surrounded, no belief in mere facts, however great, was sufficient : the errors of his day had arisen from speculating not on the facts them- selves, but on the ideas which the facts represented ; the sins of his day had arisen not merely from an outward forgetfulness, but from an inward unbelief of the great end for which the facts took place. Still, therefore, keeping his stand on the immove- able historical ground of " Jesus Christ come in the See Herder on the Gospel of St. John, p. 362. 254 ST. JOHN. SERM. flesh" as the one central truth of all, both in the - Gospel, and in the First Epistle which seems to have accompanied it as a practical comment, he passes over every thing merely outward or local ; institutions, miracles, actions, are only mentioned in the higher truths which they represent, or else introduced only for the sake of those truths ; the earthly things of the previous Gospels are, as has been well said, transfigured in the fourth ; they, as the early Christian writers expressed it, are of the body ; his, is of the Spirit. The dreamy specula- tions of the East which in the central city of Ephe- sus blended with the advancing tide of Platonizing philosophy from the West, he met not merely by opposing them, but by acknowledging and repro- ducing in the light of Christian faith whatever there was of truth in them. With that natural approx- imation, which I have already ventured to describe in his character, to the simplest and purest forms of Eastern contemplation, it is impossible not to re- cognise in his phraseology the imagery, and even the words, of the Oriental philosophies transferred to the most sublime and awful subjects of Christian theology ; and it is a curious proof of this outward coincidence between them, that' for the first hun- dred years after the publication of St. John's Gos- pel there are more indications of the high estima- tion in which it was held amongst the Gnostic sects p than in the bosom of the Church itself. Yet it seems almost like profanation to bring P The first commentary on St. John's Gospel was that of Hera- cleon. See Thiersch, p. 192; Lange on the Gospels, i. 170. ST. JOHN. 255 such a subject into any connexion, however remote, SERM. with the debased Orientalism of the Ephesian- schools ; and, in strict historical truth, the gulf between Caiaphas and Peter, between Gamaliel and Paul, is not so deep as that between Cerinthus and St. John. It was not enough that this later age should bring out in all its clearness the facts of the Gospel history, or that its peculiar tendencies should meet with a character whose natural turn enabled him to understand and correct them ; it must bring out ST. JOHN himself, the St. John who beyond any other of the sons of men had received the impression of the Divine character; in whom all that there had been of earthly or of selfish in the Son of Thunder had melted away in the soften- ing light of growing perfection ; in whom all merely outward and intellectual elements were swallowed up in the contemplation of things spiritual and eternal. It was doubtless no undesigned or use- less lesson to this last period of the apostolic age, that when the eyes of men turned to the head of the Christian world they saw there enthroned not the activity and zeal of Peter, nor even the faith and wisdom of Paul, but the love and goodness of John. Then, when the Church was about to enter on that period of God's ordinary Providence in which it was henceforth destined to move, there was no blaze of miracles like that which heralded the approach of the first Apostle ; no scenes of suffering, imprisonment, and martyrdom, such as closed round the end of the second ; nature went 256 ST. JOHN. SERM. on upon her usual course; there was nothing to '- divert the attention from the one simple unadorned spectacle of moral and spiritual excellence, en- shrined as if in its own heavenly light, irradiating every thing that fell within its sphere, not by the speculations of an Eastern mystic however pro- found, but by the crystal purity of a heart and mind penetrated through and through with the in-dwell- ing Spirit of Christ. Words and ideas which had up to that time suggested only the gross doctrines of Manichean superstition, or at best the complex theories of an abstract philosophy, were now as it were redeemed one by one from their baser earthly use, as they passed through that translucent atmos- phere, until we have almost forgotten that they had ever any other than that high and heavenly meaning which they owe, humanly speaking, to the writings of St. John. He spoke of " life and death/' of " light and darkness," as the conflicting elements of the universe ; but it was of a moral not a phy- sical conflict that he spoke ; of the birth, and life, and extinction, not of systems or emanations, but of the moral soul and spirit of man. He spoke of duty of separation from "the world" as the anta- gonist of all good ; but it was not the world of out- ward matter, but " the world that lieth in wicked- " ness." He spoke of the Divine " Word which was " in the beginning with God ;" but it was no shadowy effluence or abstract speculation that he proclaimed, but a Living Person, " whom his eyes had seen and " his hands had handled ;" " whose glory he had be- ST. JOHN. 257 " held, and of whose fulness he had received ;" " who s E R M. IV. " came to destroy the works of the devil, and to do ' "His Father's will." He spoke of "the Spirit" which was to come and dwell with man; but it was no irregular impulse, no ecstatic leader of a wild fanaticism q , such as the Asiatic sects were for ever expecting, but the Eternal " Comforter, " who was to convince the world of sin, of right- *' eousness, and of judgment. " Above all, he spoke of the union of the soul with God, but it was by no mere process of oriental contemplation, or mystic absorption; it was by that word which now for the first time took its proper place in the order of the world, by LOVE. It had been re- served for St. Paul to proclaim that the deepest principle in the heart of man was Faith ; it was reserved for St. John to proclaim that the essential attribute of God is Love. It had been taught by the Old Testament that " the beginning of wisdom " was the fear of God ;" it remained to be taught by the last Apostle of the New Testament that * the end of wisdom was the love of God.' It had been taught of old time by Jew and by heathen, by Greek philosophy and Eastern religion, that the Divinity was well pleased with the sacrifices, the speculations, the tortures of man : it was to St. John that it was left to teach in all its fulness that the one sign of God's children is " the love of <3 For the form which this feeling took in Asia Minor, compare the belief, as of the later Arabians with regard to Mahomet, that Montanus was himself the Paraclete. 258 ST. JOHN. SERM. "the brethren." And as it is Love that pervades IV - our whole conception of his teaching, so also it pervades our whole conception of his character. We see him it surely is no unwarranted fancy we see him declining with the declining century; every sense and faculty waxing feebler, but that one divinest faculty of all burning more and more brightly; we see it breathing through every look and gesture ; the one animating principle of the atmosphere in which he lives and moves ; earth and heaven, the past, the present, and the future, alike echoing to him that dying strain of his latest words, " We love Him because He loved us." And when at last he disappears from our view in the last pages of the Sacred Volume, ecclesiastical tra- dition still lingers in the close : and in that touch- ing story r , not the less impressive because so familiar to us, we see the aged Apostle borne in the arms of his disciples into the Ephesian assembly, and there repeating over and over again the same saying, " Little children, love one another ;" till, when asked why he said this and nothing else, he replied in those well-known words, fit indeed to be the farewell speech of the Beloved Disciple, " Because " this is our Lord's command, and if you fulfil this, " nothing else is needed." III. Such was the life of St. John ; the sunset, as I have ventured to call it, of the apostolic age : not amidst the storms which lowered around the Apo- r Hieron, Comment, ad Gal. vi. ST. JOHN. 259 calyptic seer, but the exact image of those milder SERM. lights and shades which we know so well even in - our own native mountains, every object far and near brought out in its due proportions, the harsher features now softly veiled in the descending shadows, and the distant heights lit up with a far more than morning or midday glory in the expiring glow of the evening heavens. And now, as in the case of his two predecessors, we must ask what has St. John done or left corre- sponding to this position ? The immediate work of St. Peter and St. Paul was, as we have seen, in a great measure fulfilled within their own lifetime. Can this be said of St. John, or is it not much rather the truth that on his own cotemporaries he exercised hardly any permanent influence at all ? Some check no doubt must have been given to the Ephesian heresies, some effect produced by the sight of a life and character so divine, something like a respite and breathing time afforded for the Church of St. Peter and the Gospel of St. Paul to take root be- fore they were left unassisted to bear the shock of outward violence or inward dissensions. But half a century had not passed before, as we are told, the tide of Gnostic delusions broke over the Apostle's grave in all their fury; even in the school of holy men which succeeded him in the sphere of his earthly labours, the teaching of Poly carp is based far more on that of Paul than of John ; and what a contrast between his Gospel, and the traditions of Papias, between his Epistles, and the letters, whether s2 60 ST. JOHN. SERM. we read them in their longer, their shorter, or their IV - shortest form, of Ignatius of Antioch ! And when from the age of the Apostle himself, we track his influence through the succeeding centuries of the Christian world, are we not still met by the same disproportionate results ? The very surface of Eu- ropean society, its greatest revolutions, its works of art, its most splendid edifices bear on their very front the names of St. Peter and St. Paul ; can it be said that there has been any age which in any sense at all corresponding to this bears the impress of St. John? Doubtless it may be maintained, and with much truth, that this is precisely what we ought to expect : that it is in the still small voice that we are to recognise the highest marks of divinity : that it is not in the palaces of kings, or the revolutions of opinion, but in the secret chambers of solitary goodness, that we are to recognise the influence of the last Apostle, St. John. Something even in the world at large must always have been due to the impulse which in all ages has been given to Christian poetry by the imagery of the Apocalypse, to the strains of impas- sioned devotion, treasured up alike by both sec- tions of the Christian Church, which have been formed almost entirely on the model of his Gos- pel and Epistles ; much more when from these we turn to the countless individual souls, which in life and in death his writings have supported. There is enough, it might well be said, in the added gen- tleness and tenderness which seems so often to be ST. JOHN. 261 the natural forerunner of a blessed end, in the SERM. increasing glow of all pure and heavenly affections - amidst the decay and dissolution of every other feeling and faculty, to remind us of the closing career of St. John ; and how many cases are there alike in youth and age where the very mystery attendant on his destiny, the loneliness, the weari- ness, the apparent uselessness of his course, may well read to us the lesson so beautifully drawn from it by our own Christian 8 poet, " If I will that " he tarry till I come, what is that to thee?" ' What is that to him or thee, So his love to Christ en- dure?' Still we may be excused for asking whether after all we may not look for something more. It was, we know, an early, though mistaken belief, that " that disciple should not die;" it was* a natural superstition which led the Christians of the three first centuries to hang over the grave, where they still believed him to lie not dead, but only sleep- ing, and to watch what they fondly deemed to be the gentle heaving of the sepulchral dust by the breath of the slumberer ; or which, in later times, has ever and anon awakened the vain expectation that he was on the point of returning once again to visit in bodily form the world which he had too soon deserted. Wisely indeed was it ordered that to any such idle fancies as these an express contra- diction should be given in the last page of his Gos- s Christian Year, St. John's Day. * See Essay on the Traditions of St. John. 262 ST. JOHN. SERM. pel. Yet is there not still a sense in which we may indeed humbly trust that he still lives, and that his work is yet to come, in which we may even at this very time hear the sound of his approaching foot- steps, and hail the coming of a time when the same course of natural Providence which impressed so strongly on our forefathers the acts and words of St. Peter and St. Paul, may open our eyes in like manner to the peculiar lessons of the life and writ- ings of St. John ? May we not still hope that the future has an especial share not only in the visions of the Apocalypse, on which this is not the time to enlarge, but in the eternal spirit of truth and holiness which breathes through the Gospel and Epistles, and which, more than the spirit of pro- phecy, lifts the teaching of John above any parti- cular age, and renders it, in the language of Chry- sostom, the " Inheritance of the universe ?" When, indeed, we look out on the world around us ; when we see the bitter factions, the cold indif- ference, the absorbing selfishness of the age in which we live, it does seem like a cruel mockery to say that this or any thing like this can be in any sense the age of the Beloved Disciple. But in speaking of the Divine dispensations, we necessarily speak not of what is, but of what might be ; not of the actual evils which exist in any age, but of the pecu- liar opportunities for good which it holds out, whe- ther men will profit by them or no. How great is the contrast between the triumphant exultation of the first half of the 89th Psalm and the deep de- ST. JOHN. :>(i;i spondency of its close; and yet it is but the same SERM. subject approached from opposite sides ; it is but - the difference between the course of God's intended providence and the course of man's perverseness. Or if from this last decline of God's chosen people in older times we turn to that very close of the apostolical age of which I have been this day speak- ing, how little real correspondence was there be- tween the divine life and teaching of the Apostle on one side, and the worldly and carnal influences which surrounded him on the other ! And so with regard to these latter days of our own, the real question is whether any obstacles are removed, or are likely to be removed, which formerly stood be- tween us and the true understanding of the Apo- stle's writings ; whether there are any peculiar ten- dencies, which if encouraged would, more than those of former ages bring us into harmony with his spirit ; any peculiar evils, which his example and teaching seem especially calculated to counteract. To those who know what has been done even for the mere criticism of St. John's writings within our own generation, there is enough to make us ask whether we have not at least a truer insight into their composition and intention than existed in earlier times. Never before has there seemed so fair a prospect of seeing the Apocalypse delivered from the wild and arbitrary interpretations which had long made its study a byeword and reproach amongst sober-minded Christians ; never before has the relation of the Gospel and Epistles to each other been so clearly brought out ; never before have the 264 ST. JOHN. SERM. low and unworthy theories of the polemical, or sup- -plemental, or temporary character of the Gospel, been so completely exploded ; nor its supreme im- portance, both for Christian history and Christian theology, been so deeply and generally recognised. But it is after all our own inward relations to the teaching of St. John which will best enable us truly to profit by it ; and that not by any fanciful ar- rangement of mystical cycles, such as belongs rather to Etruscan soothsayers than to Christian students, but by the natural course of the history of the world. It is not that we are to expect to have an especial interest in St. John, merely because he came the last in the series of the Three Apostles, but it is because in the very nature of things the close of every long-protracted struggle in human society must be marked by tendencies more or less resembling those which marked the end of the great crisis of the apostolical age ; and if any such can be discerned in our own days, it is but natural to turn for instruction to the lessons which the highest wisdom provided under similar or analo- gous circumstances ; it is but just and fair, whilst we shrink from boasting of our own age, or church, or nation, to beware of dwelling only on its darker side, of involving in our censure of its real evils the traits which it may possess in common with the life of the Beloved Disciple. Surely, when we look around upon our own later times, full indeed of moral and intellectual interest, but outwardly unruffled without persecution and without enthusiasm far removed from the last con- ST. JOHN. 2G5 fines of the age of miracles, martyrdom seeming SERM. to be almost an impossibility, human and natural - agencies alone at work every where ; it is not without its use to check desponding thoughts if we remember that such an age, uncongenial as it might seem to the growth of religious excellence, was the age which witnessed the full development of that character which we are wont to regard as the holiest amongst the sons of men. Or again, when we look at the intellectual temptations by which our times are especially assailed, the tendency to lose sight of fact and reality in shadowy systems of philosophy which we have not strength to grasp, the confusion and dissolution of barriers which once fenced round our opinions and our duties, may we not fairly be reminded of some of the speculations which beset the Christian world at the close of the first century ? may we not be allowed to trust that as then in the first publication, so now in the revived study of St. John's writings, we may find our best refuge from the distractions of the time, that as of old we have seen that he was the "true u Gnostic," so now he may be to us for all our practical wants, the true Idealist of the age ? may we not hope that as the life of western Europe was developed si- multaneously with the study of the Apostle of the Gentiles, so even in those theories and ten- dencies which at the present time often seem to stand most aloof from Christianity, nay even in those great strongholds of primeval unbelief u So the well-known expression of Clement of Alexandria. 266 ST. JOHN. s E R M. with which we are yearly brought into closer con- - tact in the regions of the remote East, and on which all previous teaching seems to have made so faint an impression, there may be some divine chord which yet remains to be struck, some nobler aspi- ration than our dull senses have yet discerned, which may even yet be drawn within the range of that highest aspect of Christianity, of which the Apostle at Ephesus is the true representative ? Lastly, and with a far more practical and universal interest than belongs to any mere speculative difficul- ties, it is hardly much to say that, manifold as are the reflexions which suggest themselves in speaking of the coming age before those who in all human probability must exercise no unimportant influence over it, great as are the difficulties and the pri- vileges of those who feel what it is to live in these latter ages, ' foremost in the files of time,' yet if the Apostle himself were again brought before us, there is no doctrine, or precept, or principle that he could deliver, more immediately striking at the root of our greatest dangers, or awakening more ef- fectually our greatest hopes of good, than those last words of his earthly life, " Little children, love one another." The words, alas, fall upon our ears, as they did indeed on those of the Ephesian Christians, with all the triteness and powerlessness of an exhausted proverb. We ask like them, ' Why repeat once more what we have heard a thousand times, and what if we were to hear a thousand times again, can tell us STc JOHN. 267 nothing beyond what we knew before?' But is it SERM. indeed so? Can any age be said to have truly - realized it in theory, and, even if it had, is it not part of the very nature of the command that it is illimitable ? There has been zeal no doubt, there has been philanthropy, but can we say that our own or any age of the world has shewn such a careful consideration for the consciences and feelings of others, such an abstinence from imputing bad motives where not absolutely necessary, such a sympathy with the wants of our poorer brethren, such a deep sense of the misery of moral evil, of the greatness of moral excellence, such an earnest at- tempt to fix our thoughts and affections steadily on the one central object, which all must allow to be the essence of the Christian religion can we say that either with our fathers or ourselves anything of this ever existed to such an extent, as to justify us in supposing that we have yet seen the full and legitimate results of Charity or Christian Love ? has it ever assumed that undisputed and paramount supremacy in our minds, over every other part of the Divine instructions, as that we can respond to the Apostle's own answer to this very complaint, and feel that in that short and simple saying was vir- tually contained the whole sum and substance of the Christian revelation ? Most true indeed is it that it is " a command- " ment," as he himself calls it, at once " old and " new ;" and most encouraging to think that, much as there may be of evil in the tendencies of our age, 268 ST. JOHN. s E RM. far removed as it may be itself from the age of Love, ~ yet at least it is a preparation for it, if we would only use it as such ; it is not in itself the voice of the Apostle, but it is the prelude, the expectation, the hush of the audience before the gentle accents of that farewell speech can make themselves heard. Doubtless there never has been any age of Chris- tendom in which forbearance has not been held a duty, and unity a blessing. But (to take even the very simplest case) whatever there may now be, whether in private or in public life, of that unforgiv- ing spirit which is not so much against the perfec- tion, as against the very rudiments, of Christianity, whatever forms of implacable enmity, national, political, or private, of injuries, long and studiously remembered, of sensitive readiness to receive, and to offer affronts, of looking on every act or circum- stance of life through the medium of personal pique or jealousy, wherever such feelings are found, as they certainly may be found both in nations and individuals, who pride themselves on being in ad- vance of their time, it must be remembered that whatever excuses they may have once had, exist no longer ; it is at least something gained to the cause of Christian Love that they are not now, as in the times of Feudalism or of the Reformation, in accord- ance with the tendencies of the period, but against them ; and that to sin thus openly against the com- mand of St. John, thus sanctioned alike by God and man, is therefore in a sense beyond what it has been in any previous age to sin against light. And when ST. JOHN. we ascend from this the lowest and most obvious SERM. fulfilment of the Law of Love to its higher demands, is _ it too much to hope that here too we may he enabled to enter on that more excellent way by approaches which to our fathers were closed ? Although we have ceased to enforce agreement, like them, by fire and sword, although we have ceased to tolerate dis- agreement, like them, in placid indifference, al- though the outward means of unity seem further off than ever ; although divisions appear to multiply rather than diminish; and comprehensions, alli- ances, reconciliations, are regarded as idle dreams ; yet can it be said that in those inward means which after all are alone essential, any previous age has been so rich as our own ? Is not the gift of discerning in- ward agreement under outward difference, of distin- guishing between the form and the spirit, of placing ourselves in the position of others, of trying to appreciate and understand instead of at once con- demning the characters or systems from which we differ, is not all this, if not peculiar to the present time, at least so eminently characteristic of it, as to have changed the whole course of its poetry, history, and philosophy ? Nay is there not something in the t total disruption of party, whether ecclesiastical or political, which, whether in this place or elsewhere, has taken place without any merit of ours, even within our own experience, that almost compels us to look round for some deeper and wider basis of sympathy than we have been before accustomed to, that forces us almost in the very weariness of ex- 270 ST. JOHN. SERM. haustion to repose on the belief that where wisdom - and goodness and holiness are, there and there alone is the Spirit of God? If this be indeed so if our opportunities be in- deed so great, what ought to be our responsibilities, and what judgment should those of us deserve who have become the 'heirs of all the ages' only to criticise them in listless apathy ; who have burst the barriers of form and opinion only to speak lightly of selfish- ness and sensuality ; who have lost enthusiasm without increasing in charity ; who despise zeal, be- cause we worship ourselves ; who live in the age of St. John to be disciples of the Epicurean Cerinthus ; who have tarried even to the days of the Son of man, only " to eat and drink, to buy and sell, to plant 11 and build," until He shall indeed come in an hour when we look not for Him ! May God grant to us a truer sense of our posi- tion and duties, and then no evil tendencies of the present, no gloomy prospects of the future, ought really to deprive us of the example of St. John's life and doctrine. It is indeed the highest consumma- tion in which any practical lessons which any of us may have derived from these discourses find their fullest exemplification. c To all but one in ten ' thousand/ it has been well said, ' Christian specu- ' lation is barren of great fruits ; to all but one in 1 ten thousand, Christian benevolence is fruitful of * ' great thoughts.' There may be many here present to whom the various intellectual questions on which I have touched may be wholly useless ; there are ST. JOHN. 271 none who cannot derive benefit, both moral and SERM. IV intellectual, from recollecting the all-sufficient im-- portance of that divine Love of which we know, even from the life of St. Peter, that the one condition of apostolical power was that he " loved" his Mas- ter " more than others ;" of which we should know, even from the words of St. Paul, that though "there " abide these three, Faith, Hope, and Charity, yet the 11 greatest of these is Charity." Much more do we know that it bore St. John on eagle wings into the Eternal Presence, and that it will bear us also, if only we dare to trust it. Let us not fear for visible institutions, or for the cause of Divine truth. Even here the Apostle's life may fitly remind us that it was not under St. Peter but St. John that there grew up that framework of Christian society x in the Asiatic Churches which eventually became the model of all ecclesiastical government ; that it was not the Apostle of Faith, but of Love, who was em- phatically called "Theologos y ," and whose words supplied the foundation of the most universal of the Catholic Creeds. Truth, if spoken in love, will not become indifferent to us, but its several parts will then assume their proper harmony and proportion. Outward institutions will not perish, but will then be used in subordination to the higher ends, which alone can give them their proper value. x See Essay on the Apostolic Office. y "Theologos," or the " Divine," as applied to St. John, is not used in its ordinary modern sense, but, as is well known, in the peculiar sense which it bore in the fourth century, " one who " spoke of the Divinity of our Lord." 272 ST. JOHN. SERM. Former ages and ancient associations, future ages - and lofty aspirations will not be trampled under foot, but will alike acquire their true meaning in the light of that charity which " beareth all things, " believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all " things." Let us not think that in the great work that is before us we shall need the bonds of an ela- borate system, and the combination of party or pro- fessional ties ; let us think rather, as every thought- ful man must think if only he looks round on the familiar faces of his own college chapel, that as in this place he would not dream of resting our true bond of union one to another on sameness of in- tellect or of theological schools, so in the greater struggle of life itself we shall have enough to oc- cupy and to unite us if we have in common a due sense of those great practical evils which as Christians we are bound to subdue and of that great moral good which as Christians we are bound to accom- plish ; that, whether here or elsewhere, the natural sympathy and practical co-operation which such a feeling cannot but engender, is, if we would but so regard it, our true shelter from the strife of tongues, until this tyranny be overpast ; our true refuge from the storms and waves of this troublesome world, until we have attained a more certain view of our destined haven. And not only in the toil and conflict of this mor- tal life, but when we think of that higher life which it has not entered into the heart of man to conceive, there also it may be truly said that the veil which ST. JOHN. 273 rests on the view even of zeal and faith is drawn SERM. IV up from before the gaze of Love. The curtain of - the physical world which hides it from our sight may with each advancing year be extended more widely and woven more thickly around us : one after another, the discovery of the general laws of the universe may throw the first moving Cause further and further back beyond the limits of time and space : we no longer hear or see Him as our fathers did, in the wind, the earthquake, and the fire. But, if we have that blessing of a loving heart which no advance of science can take from us, we have St. John's assurance that " we know" what GOD is : the same Apostle who has moved Him furthest from our outward senses in the announcement that He " is a Spirit," has brought Him nearest to our inmost affections by declaring to us that He " is Love." And yet once more, if we dare no longer figure to our minds the life beyond the grave with those images which brought it home to the mind of pre- vious ages ; if we dare no longer speak, as our fathers did, of the mountain of purification and the circles of paradise ; if there are times when the things of this world on the one side, and the great change effected by death on the other, seem to leave no place in our thoughts or imaginations for the things beyond ; if ever difficulties like these press upon us, there is surely some comfort in re- membering that there have been those to whom these or similar difficulties have been present, and who yet have assured us that there is one faculty at least which shall rise with our regenerated na- T 274 ST. JOHN. SERM. hires, and live amidst the death of all heside. St. IV. : Paul, who has told us that all our present powers of knowledge shall "cease and vanish away," has told us that " Charity never faileth." St. John, who declared that " it doth not yet appear what we 11 shall be," has told us that " Hereby we know " that we have passed from death to life, because " we love the brethren/' Yes, even in that familiar love of our earthly homes which is to most of us the well-spring of our earliest and latest happiness in that love of our friends and benefactors which so endears to us the scenes of our education here and else- where in that love which in after-life binds us to the service of those for whom God in our several stations makes us each responsible in that love which in all but the very worst of us must be from time to time awakened for the wisdom and good- ness which not having seen we long to see, which to believe in now is what to many of us makes life worth living for, which to see hereafter is the great and blessed promise reserved for those who shall see Him as He is in all these several degrees we have at least some link to connect the life of time with the life of eternity. When in its perfected form Love has indeed mastered self, here even in this life we may trust that the mortal has indeed put on immortality. For of a truth " that disciple " shall never die ;" for " he that dwelleth in Love, " dwelleth in God and God in him." THE TRADITIONS RESPECTING ST. JOHN. IN considering the traditions which form the ground of almost all that we know or are told respecting the latter part of St. John's life, it is important to remember that they cannot lay claim to the same authority as they would have if they formed parts of a connected narrative instead of being, as is for the most part the case, isolated anecdotes of which the purport may have been lost or mistaken by their separation from the context, so to speak, in which they originally occurred. But they have contributed so largely to the conception commonly entertained of the life and character of St. John, and they are most of them so consistent with each other and with the records of the Apostle in the New Testament, that it seemed right to dwell upon them at greater length in the Sermon on St. John, than was possible in the case of the analogous tradi- tions of St. Peter, and also to state as far as could be ascer- tained the amount of external and internal probability which they severally present. And they possess more- over this advantage, that none of them (except that which was pressed into the service of the Paschal controversy in the second century) have been inextricably mixed up with polemical disputes. I. The earliest recorded tradition respecting St. John Tradi- had apparently sprung up, not like most of them after the john^sim Apostle's death, but during his lifetime, and professed (for mortaht y- this is the obvious inference from the manner in which it is reported to us) to be founded on an express prediction of our Lord that " St. John should never die." In this case it was still possible to confront the traditionary state- 276 THE TRADITIONS RESPECTING ST. JOHN. ment with the historical : a chapter was added to the Gos- pel, apparently with this especial object, in which the true fact was brought out, that Jesus said not unto him, " He " shall not die," but " If I will that he tarry till I come, " what is that to thee?" Whether the misunderstanding of the words of our Lord on that particular occasion was the sole origin of the tradi- tion may perhaps be questioned : it is perhaps most likely to have been in the first instance occasioned partly by the great age to which the Apostle seemed to be advancing, partly by some such expectation, as I have described in the Sermon, of greater works than he had yet performed : we feel at least that no such belief could have sprung up with regard to St. Peter or St. Paul. Nor again, was the opinion without some ground of truth if we consider the earlier belief of the Church that the world was to end with that generation, and the language in which the Lord's coming is throughout the New Testament so often identified or at least blended with the images which equally describe the fall of Jerusalem. (See especially Matt. xvi. 28, and the expla- nation of it given in the Essay on the Promises to Peter.) This last feeling however had evidently passed away before the time when the tradition assumed the particular shape specified in John xxi. 23, and it now therefore took its ground on the supposed saying there referred to. The " coming of the Lord" was now to them what it is to us, another expression for the end of all things, and having thus limited the spirit of our Lord's words, the next and natural process was to limit the words themselves, to the new view which now prevailed concerning them. Yet neither the express caution of the Evangelist in that chap- ter, nor yet the contradiction of this story by the fact of his death, was sufficient entirely to eradicate it. The story of his being not dead but asleep in his grave at Ephesus was related to Augustine by persons who professed to have THE TRADITIONS RESPECTING ST. JOHN. 277 witnessed the motion of the dust by the supposed breath of the sleeper (Tract. 124. in Joann.), and the notion that he was still living not only became a fixed 3 article of popular belief in the middle ages (Niceph. Hist. Eccl. ii. 42), but has been revived from time to time by later enthusiasts (Lampe, Proleg. p. 98), and is still partially commemorated in the Greek Church in the Feast of the Translation of the Body of St. John. But even without the apostolic refutation of it, we should have required much stronger proof than can be adduced to warrant our admission of a story so alien not only to the simplicity of apostolic times, but to the reasonableness of Christianity itself; and, however willing we may be to regard it as the fanciful expression of what might have been in itself a true feeling, yet it must be pronounced to belong essentially to the region not of Christian history but of Christian legend b , where it has both in earlier and later times found its appropriate place. II. The anecdotes of traits of character vary in value, but there seems no reason for absolutely rejecting any of them. 1 . The story of the young Asiatic robber, preserved Tradition in Clement of Alexandria, and from him in Eusebius you ng (H. E. iii. 23), A. D. 180. What was Clement's autho- robber ' rity does not appear, but the communication between Alexandria and Ephesus may easily have supplied the in- formation, and the internal evidence of the details of the story is strongly in its favour. The account of the organi- zation of the Asiatic Churches with which the story opens has been spoken of elsewhere, and accords as well with the express statement of Tertullian that St. John was the author a See Liicke's Introduction to the Gospel of St. John. b Compare amongst other instances the well-known story of the apparition of St. John to James IV. at Linlithgow before the battle of Flodden, the belief in Prester John in central Asia, and the ancient legendary representa- tions of the search for the body in the empty tomb. Such also is the aspect of it which has been so happily caught in Mr. Moultrie's poem on St. John's Day. 278 THE TRADITIONS RESPECTING ST. JOHN. of the episcopacy which existed in his time, as with the indications contained in the Pastoral Epistles of St. Paul that Ephesus with its district was the first spot where the government of Churches became more regularly consti- tuted . In all other respects, the paternal care of St. John over the Asiatic Churches generally, old and young alike (comp. 1 John ii. 13), the use of "presbyter" and "bishop" as convertible phrases, the robber-hold d in the mountains close to the neighbourhood of the Greek cities, the agreement of the general moral of the penitence of the young man with the distinction drawn in 1 John v. 16, and ii. 2, and the characteristic union of sternness and energy with devoted affection, which pervades the whole account, seem strong guarantees for its genuineness not only in substance but in form, especially when it is con- sidered that some of these points belonged to a state of things which by the time of Clement had ceased to exist. Tradition 2. The sto'ry of Cerinthus and the bath rests on the of Cerin- thus and authority 6 of Irenseus (Adv. Haer. iii. 3), who professes to the bath. c It would also exactly agree with the theory which represents the " angels " of the seven Churches in the Apocalypse to have been their respective heads or bishops. But for the reasons stated in a previous Essay, the context hardly justifies our departure from the ordinary use of the word in the Apocalypse, especially when the particular language used concerning them (see especially Rev. ii. 4, 5, 9; iii. 15, 17) almost compels us to regard them not as indivi- dual ministers, but as the Churches themselves, personified in their guardian or representative angels. Comp. Matt, xviii. 10, and also Dan. x. 13, 20. So too they are represented in medieval illuminations of the Apocalypse. And it may be observed that even if we could assume that the word here was used for an officer of the Church, it is still doubtful whether it would imply the supreme governor. The angel or minister of the Jewish synagogue was infe- rior not superior to the officiating Rabbi. (See Ewald ad Apoc. i. 19.) The deacon not the bishop is the " angel" of the Apostolical Constitutions (ii. 30). d The chief strongholds of the pirates who infested the Mediterranean in the later times of Roman history were in Cilicia, but they extended more or less to a 1 ! the maritime states of Asia Minor. Appian, Bell. Mith. c. 92. See Arnold's Later Roman Commonwealth, i. 274. e Epiphanius (Haer. 30. 25), who represents the heretic to be not Cerinthus but Ebion, lays stress on the fact that St. John's use of the bath was so mi- THE TRADITIONS EESPECTING ST. JOHN. 279 derive it from hearers of St. John's own scholar Poly- carp, and if regarded unfavourably is in accordance with the spirit of Luke ix. 51, Mark ix. 38, if favourably, with the expression in 2 John 10. It is however precisely in such a story as this, and passing through such hands, that the essential difference between history and tradition is to be borne in mind. That some such event took place it is unreasonable to doubt. But the point of such an anec- dote greatly depends on the circumstances which accom- panied it, and which a second or third hand narrator of it, especially when relating it for a special purpose, is likely to omit. What a difference for example would there have been if the passage just referred to in 2 John 10 had been handed down to us by tradition, without the accompani- ment, " For he that biddeth him God speed is partaker of " his evil deeds." That this same direct wickedness was also the character of the teaching of Cerinthus we have reason to believe from other sources, and in this aspect the story may be usefully employed, as a living exemplifica- tion of the possibility of uniting the deepest love and gentleness with the sternest denunciation of moral evil. But to use it simply and in itself as a warrant for refus- ing intercourse with the teachers of erroneous opinions, would be an assumption, which however true it may pos- sibly be on other grounds, cannot be warranted by the amount of testimony on which this particular story is handed down to us. Polycarp may have reported it as we now have it, but even in his mouth something may have unconsciously altered according to the feeling ascribed to him in the story of his dialogue with Marcion. Or again, Polycarp may have heard and related it rightly, but how usual, as to give to the visit in question the appearance of a providential occa- sion for his uttering the anathema. This is certainly not the impression left by the account in Ireuaeus, who speaks of it without any indication of surprise. 280 THE TRADITIONS RESPECTING ST. JOHN. easily may the genuine tone and spirit of it have been lost in its transmission through the Gaulish bishop, whose whole heart was in the great polemical work of his life, and who also maintains that he heard from St. John's hearers that our Lord was above fifty years old. The tradi- 3. The story of the calling of the Ephesian presbyters composi- together for a common fast when they asked him to com- Gospel! e P ose ^' ls G s P e lj an( i tnen suddenly as if by miracle breaking out into the words, " In the beginning was " the Word," rests on the authority of Jerome (De Vir. 111. 29.) It is of course itself perfectly conceivable, but with the suspicion thrown upon it by the silence of Irenseus f (Adv. Hser. iii. 1), who relates the general fact of his being asked to compose a new Gospel, it ought perhaps to be regarded as originating in a wish to give a tangible shape to the solemn feeling with which the opening words of the Gospel have always been regarded in the Church. The tradi- 4. The story, mentioned in the Sermon, of his last tion of the , , ,-, , . ~, , . , , , last words words to the Ephesian Church, again rests solely on the ofStJohn. aut hority of Jerome (Comm. ad Gal. vi.), but its exact agreement with the spirit and phraseology of the Epistles of St. John, and we may add, its contrast with the severe language so frequent in the author who records it, as well as with the general spirit of later times, as embodied in the wholly different account of St. John's last days, given by Nicephoruss, sufficiently justifies the general credit which it has received. The tradi- 5. In the works of Cassianus the monk (A.D. 420), con- Johnand' sisting of twenty-four Collationes or colloquies of different the hunts- man. f The fact however of the fast is mentioned by the author of the ancient Fragment on the Canon (probably of the end of the second century), preserved by Muratori, and agrees with the practice in Acts xiv. 22; xiii. 2. See Routh, Hell. iv. 16. * Hist. Eccl. ii. 42. See Cave's Apostles, p. 151. THE TRADITIONS RESPECTING ST. JOHN. 281 abbots, and prefixed to the works of John Damascenus, occurs a story which considering the character of the work in which it is found, ought hardly to be noticed amongst the usual traditions of St. John, were it not that it occurs in the regular account of his life in Fleury's Ecclesiastical History (ii. 54), and that although wholly destitute of ex- ternal testimony, it possesses a grace and tenderness, which would be an argument in favour of its reception had it any other support to rest upon. "It is said" (so the Abbot Abraham is introduced as arguing on behalf of some relaxa- tion of the usual austerities of the convent on the arrival of new brethren), " it is said that the blessed Evangelist St. " John, as he was gently stroking a partridge which he held " in his hand, suddenly saw a huntsman approaching, who " in astonishment at the sight of so illustrious a character " descending to such trivial enjoyments, asked, ' Art thou " that John, whose glorious renown had inspired even me " with a wish to know thee ? why then occupy thyself with " pleasures so humble ?' St. John replied, * What hast "thou in thy hand?' <A bow/ was the answer. 'And " why dost thou not always carry it bent?' 'Because/ " replied the huntsman, ' it would then lose its strength, " and when it was wanted to shoot at some wild animal, " it would fail from too continuous straining.' ' Then, let " not this brief and slight relaxation of my mind offend " thee, young man/ answered St. John, ' without which " the spirit would flag from over exertion, and not be able " to respond to the call of duty when need required/" A similar speech is ascribed to an Egyptian king by Herodotus, and the metaphor is too obvious to need an Apostle to enunciate it. Still, if it be, as it is perhaps most safe to regard it, a pure invention, we may fairly admire the dramatic propriety which has placed the scene in the life of the one apostolical character which we most naturally associate with all the gentler affections not less 282 THE TRADITIONS RESPECTING ST. JOHN. than with the more solemn devotions of the Gospel nar- rative. III. Such is the more general class of traditions with which we are familiar ; another cycle less known, and less easy of interpretation, are those which belong to St. John, not so much as the Apostle of Love, but in that earlier aspect, of which I have spoken in the Sermon, in which he appears to us as one of the Apostles of the Circumcision. The tradi- 1. The general picture of this side of his life is taken Johns l fr m tne collection of stories which exist in Epiphanius' tie? 6 "" work on heresies C 78 - 14< )> written about"A.D. 380. St. John, as well as his brother James, are there described as sharing the same mode of life as James the Just, who "lived a " single life, on whose head the razor never came, who " used neither bath nor oil, who ate no animal food, and " wore no garments but linen." This account of James is evidently taken from that of Hegesippus, to which refer- ence will have to be made again in another connexion, and from its mention here it would seem to be presented to us as the type of a Jewish Apostle, according to which the lives of the others were to be modelled. If therefore there is any truth in the representation of it in St. James, there is perhaps no sufficient cause for doubting it, at least at some period of his life, in St. John, who as we know from the Acts attended the temple services with Peter, and was with Cephas and James one of the chief pillars of the Church of Palestine, if we make allowance for the doubt which must hang over parts of it, from their apparent con- tradiction with 1 Cor. ix. 4, and Iren. Haer. iii. 3. And when we recollect that even the Apostle of the Gentiles conformed in all matters of indifference to the Jewish ritual, much more according to the same rule similar conformity would be expected from those who like St. John and St. James were especially Apostles of the Circumcision. 2. In a fragment of Polycrates, who was bishop of THE TRADITIONS RESPECTING ST. JOHN. 283 Ephesus in the close of the second century, amongst a The tradi- catalogue of the remarkable saints whose bodies were p^ntifica^ interred in Asia Minor, and thus gave to its Churches a diadem - claim to be heard in the controversy concerning the time of Easter, it is said, " And John too, he who reclined on " the Lord's breast, who became a priest bearing the " diadem (os eyevrjOrj iepevs, TO irera\ov Tre^ope/ca)^ which " is somewhat inaccurately paraphrased by Jerome, pon- " tifex ejus auream laminam in fronte portans), and martyr " and teacher (/cat ftdprvs /cal Si.SdcrfcaXos), he too sleeps " (/cetcotwrai) in Ephesus." (Eus. H. E. v. 24. Hieron. De Vir. 111. c. xlv. 119.) That the 7rera\ov or plate here alludes in some way to that borne on the forehead of the Jewish high-priest (Ex. xxxviii. 36, 37) is evident, but what Polycrates meant by saying that St. John wore it must on any hypothesis be very doubtful. The same thing is said of St. James the Just by Epiphanius (Hser. 39. 2. 4. 78. 2. 14), and of St. Mark in an anonymous MS. (Passio S. Marci, quoted by Valesius, 169,% p. 155. c. 7), and of the latter it is expressly said that he wore it as being of the family of Levi, which statement is confirmed to a certain extent by its coincidence with the inference which may be drawn from the statement in Col. iv. 10, that he was a relation of Barnabas, and in Acts iv. 36, that Bar- nabas was a Levite. But if James the Just was the same as James the brother of our Lord, and if there is any ground for the very late tradition that John was a relation of our Lord, they must have been of the tribe of Judah, and at any rate it is safer to look for some further reason. That James the Just was in the mind of the early Jewish Christians invested with all the attributes of the Jewish high- priest, is clear from the account in Hegesippus, and this not by virtue of any Levitical descent nor of any outward office which he held in the Christian society, but by reason of his own intrinsic and extraordinary holiness of life. But 284 THE TRADITIONS RESPECTING ST. JOHN. the impossibility of understanding literally the words " to " him alone it was lawful to enter into the holy place," (for the Jewish high-priest must at any rate have entered also,) would almost lead one to suppose that the words are to be interpreted as a matter of fact exposition by the later his- torians of what was really a strong figure by which the Church of Jerusalem expressed its belief in the sanctity of its head; in the same way as by a similar metaphor Symeon the successor of James, and equally of the tribe of Judah, is apparently called not only a priest, but also a Rechabite, the latter expression being evidently derived not from any literal descent from the Kenite tribe, but from the Naza- rite austerities which he in common with James was sup- posed to have exercised, and which in some important points resembled that of the sons of Jehonadab h . And the same may probably be said of the still later addition of the wearing of the golden plate by Epiphanius. If then we apply this to the statement of Polycrates respecting St. John, perhaps the simplest explanation, and the one which best agrees with the context of the "martyr" or "witness" and " teacher," is that John as well as James was re- garded as invested with the sanctity which was especially indicated in the golden plate of the mitre, and which up to that time had belonged only to the descendants of the house of Aaron. The statement of Epiphanius respecting St. James might lead us to ascribe to this story a Palestine origin. But if the mention of it by Polycrates points to an Asiatic tradition, and we ask how an image so purely Jewish could have presented itself to the mind of the Ephesian Christians, the answer is perhaps to be found in the apo- stolical writings peculiar to the period when St. John's prominence was first beginning to be recognised. It is in the Epistle to the Hebrews, the First Epistle of St. h See the Essay on the Traditions of St. James. THE TRADITIONS RESPECTING ST. JOHN. 285 Peter, the Gospel of St. John, and the Apocalypse, that we find for the first time distinct mention of the High Priesthood of our Lord, and as involved in it 1 , of the priesthood of all His true followers. Such a feeling may well have regarded St. John as being in an especial manner a representative and living witness of the truth which he taught, and, whether sanctioned or not by any outward practice of the Apostle himself, may have easily shaped itself into the image of his wearing the golden plate. Other circumstances also confirm the belief that it was a figure of speech, and not an actual fact on which the story was founded. (1.) The total absence of any such ornament in any of the ecclesiastical usages of the four first centuries. (See Bingham, Ant. ii. 7.) (2.) The fact that in Rev. ii. 17. such a figure is actually used to express the priestly or the pontifical character with which every true Christian is invested, "To him that overcometh will I give to eat of " the hidden manna," (i. e. an access to the manna hid- den within the Holy of Holies, where none but the high-priest could penetrate,) "and will give him a white " stone," (i. e. the precious stone on the high-priest's breast-plate, Ex. xxviii. 21,) " white and shining" (iii. 4), " and in the stone a new name written, which no " man knoweth saving him that receiveth it," (i. e. the stone on which was written the unutterable name of God, and in the place of which is now written the new name of Christ, iii. 12.) (See Ziillig's Excursus on Rev. ii. 17.) (3.) The extreme facility with which such figures, whether preserved in word or in pictures, pass into matter of fact statements ; as, for example, in later times, of the 1 For a similar figure of speech, compare the address of Eusebius to the clergy of Tyre, in an age when it was usual to invest them with priestly attri- butes. " O friends and priests of God, who wear the holy robe which reaches " to the feet, and the heavenly crown of glory, and the divine unction, and " the priestly garb of the Holy Ghost." (Bus. H. E. x, 4. See Liicke i. 21.) 286 THE TRADITIONS RESPECTING ST. JOHN. support of a falling church by St. Francis of Assisi from the dream of the Pope, as possibly, in the traditions of St. John himself, the story of the cauldron of boiling oil from some strong expression of the sufferings through which he passed unhurt, as in the misinterpretation which has actually been put on St. Paul's words, " I bear in my body " the marks (TO, o-rlj^ara) of the Lord Jesus," as though he had, like the devotees of later times, literally exhibited in his person the marks of the Five Wounds of the Cruci- fixion. Had this last expression been preserved to us not in the words of the Apostle himself, but in the chance record of a later tradition, it might have been as difficult there, as it now is in the 6 jreraXov irefyopiicws of Poly- crates, to distinguish between what is fact and what is metaphor J. Tradition 3. Lastly, it was a tradition preserved in Asia Minor, and servation mentioned in the fragment just quoted from Poly crates, Jewish that St. John had introduced the practice of celebrating passover. Easter on the day of the Jewish passover irrespective of the Christian Sunday. (Ens. H. E. v. 24.) This doubt- less indicates a more decided regard to Jewish associations than might naturally have been expected from the in- tensely spiritual character of the Apostle's later writings. But (not to speak of its coincidence with the traditions just mentioned) there is nothing incredible in the suppo- sition that when he left Jerusalem for Asia Minor, he should still, with that reflective habit of mind which so characterizes the narrative of his Gospel, have recurred in thought and practice to the recollections of his earlier years, however little we can imagine him to have sympa- thized with the attempts of the succeeding generation to invest them with the character of a Divine apostolical ordi- nance. Nor is there in this tradition a more decided J For the opinions on this whole question Lucke refers to Cotta De lamine Pontificiali Apostolorum Joanni, Jacobi, et Marci, Tubing. 1754. THE TRADITIONS RESPECTING ST. JOHN. 287 indication of attention to outward forms than in those which ascribe to him the first formation of the system of government, which afterwards spread through all the Churches of Christendom. And it has been well re- marked k that there is a natural fitness in the sanction of these outward forms not by Peter from whom they might have derived a more rigid fixity than was congenial to the new and spiritual dispensation, nor by Paul, whose calling was in a wholly opposite direction, but by John, whose elevation (so to speak) above the peculiar usages of any age or country, would afford a scope for giving to them such support and favour as from either of the other great Apostles would have been either misplaced or misunder- stood. IV. In conclusion we may observe that all the accounts Tradi- of St. John's later life resolve themselves into a statement John's re- of his residence at Ephesus and of his living to the close or *J d nce at .kpnesus, shortly beyond the close of the first century 1 . This state- and of his i- i . . . i i i extreme ment, implied as it is in every story which is preserved to old age. us respecting St. John, and thus attested by so many inde- pendent witnesses, and contradicted by none m , and with no possible motive for its invention, stands on a different ground from any one of the isolated traditions just quoted, and unless all testimony subsequent to the first century is to be rejected, must be regarded as an indisputable fact. In the difficulty of reconstructing any clear or consistent view of the latter part of the apostolical age, it is not to be expected that much additional light can be gained even from a statement so well authenticated as this. Still it k Thiersch's Essay on the Criticism of the New Testament, p. 319. 1 Those traditions which relate to his persecution at Rome and his banish- ment to Patmos are so closely connected with the interpretation of the open- ing words of the Apocalypse, that it has been thought best altogether to post- pone their consideration. m The story of his preaching in Parthia seems to be a mere inference from the superscription (itself a mistake) to the second Epistle, "ad Parthos." 288 THE TRADITIONS RESPECTING ST. JOHN. may be worth while to remark that so far as it goes it confirms the inferences which we should naturally deduce from the apostolical writings themselves, and that, as a testimony is in some degree borne to the traits of St. John recorded in the New Testament by their coincidence with those ascribed to him in some of the traditions just enume- rated, so also this account of the close of his life is at least not at variance with the most probable conclusions which the history of the New Testament would itself suggest. Thus, for example, whilst any early date for the removal of St. John to Ephesus would have been contradicted by Gal. ii. 5, as well as by the absence of allusion in the Epi- stles of St. Paul, the alleged date of his removal and of the subsequent position ascribed to him as head of the Asiatic Churches agrees so far as it goes with the scattered notices of those Churches contained in the several books of the New Testament, especially with the importance attributed to them in at least five of the Epistles of St. Paul, in the Apocalypse, and in the First of St. Peter n . And in like manner the alleged composition of the Gos- pel and Epistles at Ephesus, and in extreme old age, is the condition which would best suit the intimations furnished by the books themselves, such as the distance from Pales- n It is not necessary here to enquire into the truth of the late ecclesiastical traditions which represent Timothy as continuing in the see of Ephesus till his martyrdom in A.D. 97. This story would only contradict the more authentic statement of St. John's residence at Ephesus on the hypothesis ascribing to the Apostles that fixed official character, which in a previous Essay has been represented as not belonging to them. Still any account, which confirmed the natural inference from 2 Tim. iv. 21, that Timothy's resi- dence at Ephesus expired even before St. Paul's death, would unquestionably accord better with the absence of all allusions to Timothy in the traditions of St. John. It should perhaps be stated that the Apostolical Constitutions (vii. 16.) assume a double succession, as at Antioch and Rome from Paul and Peter, so at Ephesus through Timotheus and the presbyter John from Paul and John. Such however does not appear to have been at all a general view, and is almost equally difficult to reconcile with the common account of the state of the Asiatic Churches in St. John's time. THE TRADITIONS RESPECTING ST. JOHN. 289 tine implied in the explanations of Jewish localities, cus- toms, and words the late date indicated both by the gene- ral tone of the Gospel and Epistles and also by particular passages, as John xxi. 18, 28; 1 John ii. 14, and the resemblance between some of the views opposed and those which are attacked in the Epistles of St. Paul to the same Churches. [The two following Sermons in point of time preceded the Fourth, but from their subordinate character have been here reserved as Supplements to the Second and Third.] SERMON V. SUPPLEMENT TO SERMON II. THE EPISTLE OF ST. JAMES. JAMES i. 1. James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ. IN beginning the series of discourses, in which SERM. the present discourse 8 must be regarded as a di- gression rather than a continuation, I stated that SERM< " although the lives and teaching of the three great Apostles comprise in themselves all that is of neces- sary and eternal import in the apostolical age, yet there were other subordinate influences and charac- ters at work, which it would be necessary to con- sider in order to the full understanding of the whole subject before us. These may be shortly summed up in the purely Jewish element of the Church of Palestine, and the more mixed influences of the Church of Alexandria. To have treated of these points together with the main subject of the whole, would have inter- a Preached in the Vacation, on the Sunday before Christmas- Day. u 2 292 THE EPISTLE OF ST. JAMES. SERM. fered with the order of the argument, and have introduced extraneous topics where they would ii. have been least needed. But I trust to be excused if on separate occasions like the present, I venture to call your attention to these important though subordinate elements of the apostolic history, begin- ning, as will be seen, not without some response in the services of this day, with the chief represen- tative of the purely Jewish Church, James the Just. I. It is, I would hope, needless to employ your time in reminding you that the subject of my pre- sent discourse is distinct from the other James, the son of Zebedee. Nor again need I enter on the arguments for and against his identification with James the son of Alphaeus. Whether he was or was not the same, is of but little practical im- portance in considering his history; it is obvious that whatever was the influence which he exer- cised 11 , or the authority which he maintained, it was exercised and maintained not in his capacity as James the Apostle, but in those relations in which he is more naturally brought before us by the epi- b Without entering into the details of a controversy which has been decided in so many different ways, and which never perhaps can be decided with certainty, it seems on the whole the most probable truth that James was identical with the Apostle James, the son of Alphaeus, and that the comparison has in great measure arisen from the circumstance alluded to in the text, that the Apo- stleship in his case, as in that of his brothers, was thrown into the shade by his relationship to our Lord, and by his position as bishop of Jerusalem. THE EPISTLE OF ST. JAMES. 293 thets affixed to his name, as James the brother of SERM. y^ our Lord, James the head of the Church of Jeru- - 8UPP. TO salem, James the Just ; in other words, from his SERM - lr - natural connexion with his Divine kinsman after the flesh, and from his peculiar position in regard to his countrymen in Palestine, whether Jews or Christians. How great that influence and authority was we now with difficulty conceive. No doubt if we look at it from the more general point of view, whether of the whole Jewish Christian world, or of the whole Gentile Christian world, it sinks into nothing before the majesty of Peter and of Paul. But place ourselves within the circle of those purely Palestine Christians who still frequented the services of the Temple, and adhered to the usages of the syna- gogue confine our view to the horizon of the favoured land, which was the scene of the last ex- piring struggle of Jewish national life, and we shall find that to whatever quarter we turn for informa- tion, James appears before us as the one authorita- tive ruler, as the one undoubted representative of the Christian society. If we open the cotemporary Christian records of the Acts and Epistles, it is c to his decision that the council of Jerusalem bows, to him, as a pillar of the Church, taking precedence d even of Cephas and John, that Paul communicates the new revelation which had been entrusted to c Acts xv. 13. d Gal. ii. 9. James, and Cephas, and John, who seemed to be pillars. Comp. Acts xxi. 18; xii. 17; Gal. i. 18; ii. 12. 294 THE EPISTLE OF ST. JAMES. SERM. him. If we turn to the later traditions of the Jew- v. SUPP T0 ish Christians themselves, as preserved in the frag- SERM. ii. men t- s o f Hegesippus or in the Clementine Recogni- tions and Homilies, he appears hefore us as the one mysterious bulwark of the chosen people, invested with a priestly sanctity before which the pontificate of Aaron fades into insignificance, as the one uni- versal bishop of the Christian Church, in whose dignity the loftiest claims of the ecclesiastical domi- nion of later times find their earliest prototype 6 . If we look to the impression produced on the mind of the Jewish people itself, we find that he alone of all the Apostles has obtained a place in their national records, whether in the simple narrative of his death by Josephus, or in the wilder version of the miracles f of " Jacob of Secaniah," preserved to us in the legends of the Talmud. Whatever sanctity in short was attached to that little bands of brothers, e See Essay on the Divisions of the Corinthian Church. f See the quotations in Dr. Mill's Dissertation on the Brothers of our Lord, p. 317. 8 It is an ingenious conjecture of Schneckenburger, that, assum- ing the identity of James with the son of Alphaeus, we have then the three "brothers of the Lord" holding the same place in the apostolical body, and each marked by a surname indicative of their Jewish sanctity James the Just, Simon the Zealot, Jude, whom he asserts (in a reference to the ancient Latin version which I have been unable to verify) to have been also called Zelotes ; and to these he would then add with great plausibi- lity, Joses the Just, who evidently after the Apostles themselves (Acts i. 23 ; xv. 22) must have been one of the most eminent of the disciples at Jerusalem. Comp. Mark vi. 3. with the cata- logues of the Apostles. THE EPISTLE OF ST. JAMES. 295 which in their domestic circles, their ancient Jewish SERM. y family life, their austere Rechabite or Nazarite cus- toms, still kept up the recollection of the Son of SERM - " David with whom the bonds of earthly relationship connected them, whatever veneration was due to him who in consequence of that connexion seemed the natural head of the earliest organized Chris- tian society, whatever awe was still inspired by the sight of the stern righteousness of the ancient pro- phets, of that "justice" which seems to have been the peculiar distinction used to characterize those who lived like Simeon and Zachariah " according to " all the ordinances of the law blameless," all this belonged to James of Jerusalem and him only. He was emphatically the "Just;" his own personal name h was superseded by it ; the predictions of the " Just One" were regarded ass fulfilled in his per- son 1 ; the people, we are told, vied with each other to touch even the hem of his garment 15 ; after the manner of Elijah 1 he was reported in the droughts of Palestine to have stretched forth his hands to heaven and called down rain ; and, like the ancient saints m , even in outward aspect, with the austere features, the linen ephod, the bare feet, the long locks and unshorn beard of the Nazarite, he ga- * Epiph. Ha*., 78. 14. * " They fulfilled the prophecy which is written in Isaiah, Let " us take away the Just." (Heges. ap. Eus. H. E. ii. 22.) k Hieron. in Gal. i. 19. 1 Epiph. Hser., 78. 14, possibly founded on James v. 7, 17. m Ibid. See for this the Essay on the Traditions of St. James. 296 THE EPISTLE OF ST. JAMES. s E R M. thered round him the admiring populace to ask as once before of one who had appeared in like man- > supp T0 ii. ner on t^ banks of the Jordan, " What is the gate 11 of salvation?" And in that striking scene, when at the close of his n long life he is described as standing on the front of the temple and bearing wit- ness to the coming judgment of the Son of man in the presence of the assembled multitudes who had come up to worship at the Passover, it was with a feeling of bitter disappointment that the Scribes and Pharisees are represented as rushing upon him with the cry, " Woe, Woe, the Just one also is de- " ceived ;" and in his cruel death, the Jewish histo- rian no less than the Christian martyrologist saw the filling up of the cup of 'guilt which was to hasten on the final catastrophe of the apostate nation. But as his sphere was limited, so also was his pre-eminence ; with the destruction of the Church of Palestine all that was peculiar in his posi- tion was destroyed also. However great his in- fluence over the immediate circle of his cotempo- raries, it was based upon a transient feeling which necessarily died away before the higher purposes of the Christian faith. His lineage no doubt still won for himself and his kinsmen the reverence of those who thought p more of his outward connexion with the Son of David, than of their own eternal com- n See Essay on the Traditions of St. James. So at least Origen and Eusebius read. P See Essay on the Divisions of the Corinthians. THE EPISTLE OF ST. JAMES. 297 munion with the Son of God : the austere Symeon, s E R M. the son of Cleophas q , was still selected to succeed SUPP. TO him in his charge at Palestine ; the grandsons of SERM ~- " his brother Jude were still remembered as descend- ants of the house of David, in their humble 1 " occu- pations amongst their native valleys ; his chair was preserved as a relic till the fourth century 8 ; the sepulchral pillar which marked the spot where he fell 4 long remained to be seen in the dark valley of Jehoshaphat, under the precipice from which he was thrown. But these were merely local and tradi- tional tributes to his memory. " Jerusalem was to " be trodden down of the Gentiles ;" " Though we " once knew Christ after the flesh, yet henceforth 11 we are to know Him so no more ;" and accord- ingly there was far less in the career of St. James, than in that of the three great Apostles, to involve any eternal principle in God's government of the world ; there has been no great revolution of action or opinion of which his name has been the watch- word ; with the details of his life, as preserved to i Hegesippus apud Eus. H.E. iv. 22. Whether Symeon was the brother or cousin of James is uncertain, but it seems evident that it was as a member of the same sacred family that he was chosen to be the second bishop of Jerusalem. And with this also would agree the austerity of his Nazarite or Rechabite life, (Epiph., 78. 14). See Essay on the Traditions of St. John. r See the story in Hegesippus, ap. Eus. H. E. iii. 20, which de- scribes how they were brought before Domitian, and shewed their hands hard with toil, to vindicate themselves from the charge of aspiring after royalty. s Eus. H.E. vii. 19. * Heges. ap. Eus. ii. 22. 298 THE EPISTLE OP ST. JAMES. SERM. us in the fragmentary notices to which I have ' supp ' To just referred, we have now no practical concern ; ii. w hatever is of universal import in them is included in the more comprehensive range of the character of Peter ; of the rest Scripture is silent, and its in- terest belongs rather to the historical student than to the Christian preacher. II. One aspect however of his character there is which reads to us a valuable lesson, and which is preserved to us for ever as the one authentic monu- ment of him which we find in the New Testament. It was not, we may believe, without an object that the Divine Providence which so carefully excluded from the sacred volume those harsher or more tem- porary peculiarities on which the Palestine Jews dwelt with exclusive pleasure, has admitted into it the great Epistle, where the same general character indeed appears before us, but refined and purified from the earthly admixture by which the merely human record of him is marred. Let me then take this Epistle, as the true reflex of all that it practically concerns us to know of James the Just. It stands, as many of us doubtless are aware, according to the oldest arrangement of the New Testament, first u in order of all the apostolical Epistles. And this position does in fact exactly correspond to its character, both historically and morally. Whether it be or be not the earliest in time, which however there is much reason to believe, it is u As in Lachrnann's arrangement, according to the Canons of Laodicea. THE EPISTLE OF ST. JAMES. 299 certainly the earliest in spirit. It belongs if not to SERM. an age, at least to a mind, which knew nothing of ^ SUPP. TO the contest which shook the whole Christian society SERM - to its very foundations in the time of St. Paul : not only is the Gentile Christian completely out of sight, but the distinction between Jew and Chris- tian is itself not yet brought to view; both are equally addressed in the Epistle as belonging to the twelve tribes scattered abroad ; it passes at once from rebuking the unbelieving Jews of the higher orders x to console the believing Jews of the lower orders ; the Christian 7 assembly is still spoken of under the name of " synagogue ;" the whole scene in short is that which appears before us in the earlier chapters of the Acts of the Apostles, and which I have already described in the Sermon on St. Peter. And as in these outward circumstances, so also in its inward spirit, this Epistle exactly coincides with the character of him in whom the Jew and the Christian throughout his whole life were indistin- guishably blended together. Christianity appears in it not as a new dispensation, but as a development and perfection of the old ; the Christian's highest honour is not that he is a member of the universal Church, but that he is the genuine type of the ancient Israelite ; it instils no new principles of spiritual life such as those 2 which were to " turn the world " upside down" in the teaching of Paul or of John, but only that pure and perfect morality which was x See the transition from James v. 1 6, to v. 7, 8. y See James ii. 2. z Acts xvii. 6. 300 THE EPISTLE OF ST. JAMES. SERM. the true fulfilment of the law : it dwells not on the y TUPP "TO" numan Teacher and Friend, whose outward acts ii. anc [ W0 rds are recorded minutely in St. Mark, or on the human Sufferer, whose sorrows and whose ten- derness are brought out in St. Luke, nor yet on the inward and essential Divinity impressed upon us by St. John ; but, as we might again expect from the position of its author, it is the practical comment a on that Gospel which internal evidence as well as general tradition ascribes to the Church of Pales- tine, and in which our Lord appears emphatically as the Judge, the Law-giver, and the King. 1 . It is however not merely the general character of the Epistle which accords with what we know of the position of St. James. Its particular time and circumstances equally imply that there was a mis- sion which its author felt that he was peculiarly a Compare especially James i. 23 ; Matt. vii. 24 : James ii. 27; Matt. xxv. 35 : James ii. 26 ; iii. 2 ; Matt. xii. 36, 37 : James ii. 1 ; Matt, xxiii. 8 : James iv. 3 ; Matt. vii. 7 : James v. 12 ; Matt. v. 34. In connexion with this internal resemblance of the Gospel of St. Matthew and the Epistle of St. James, it is worth while to mention the links of external tradition. Not to speak of the ascetic life ascribed to both of them as saints of the Juda?o- Christian Church, (see Essay on the Traditions of St. James,) or of the possible tie of relationship between them if Alphaeus the father of Matthew were, as has been sometimes conjectured, iden- tical with the father or relation of James himself it is a remark- able coincidence to find a statement in the works of Athanasius, (torn. ii. p. 102, quoted in Kirchhofer's work on the Canon, p. 202, and Thiersch's Essay on the Criticism of the New Testament, p. 221,) that the Hebrew Gospel of St. Matthew was translated into Greek by James the bishop of Jerusalem. THE EPISTLE OF ST. JAMES. 301 sent to perform. It was indeed a moment when, if SERM. ever, the spirit of the ancient prophets might seem ~ p ~ - to have revived. It was, we must remember, ' the be- SERM - " ginning of the end.' However early the date of this Epistle, it could not have been before the first mani- festations of that terrible catastrophe, whose com- pletion is portended to us in the Christian Scriptures by the Apocalypse, as its commencement is by the Epistle now before us. This is nqt the place to trace the resemblances and contrasts between these books, in most respects so widely different. Yet it is not without interest to observe that as the Apocalypse and the Epistle of St. James represent to us by far the most exclusively Jewish phase of thought and language, although in wholly opposite aspects, which the New Testament has preserved to us, so they preserve to us the two predominant forms of the ancient prophecies ; if it is impossible to overlook the likeness of Ezekiel and Daniel which is repro- duced in the seer of Patmos, so it is equally impos- sible to overlook the likeness of the moral teaching of Amos and Jeremiah, which reappears in the pro- phet at Jerusalem. It is not on the banks of some great Eastern river, nor on the desert shore of a sea-girt island, that St. James takes his stand. It is in the streets of the holy city, it may be even within the courts of the Temple itself, where popular belief imagined him to kneel by day and night interceding for his people's sins, that we must conceive this last representative of those ancient preachers of righteousness, like them, if SUPP. TO 302 THE EPISTLE OF ST. JAMES. SERM. we may so far again trust the traditionary picture, like them even in outward garb and form and man- " ner, such as had indeed been seen recently in the forests of the Jordan, but which probably had not beenb beheld within the walls of the capital for at least four hundred years. But though Jerusalem was his chosen home, his view again, like that of the older prophets, extended to the utmost confines of the Jewish race. Dispersed as they already were in all lands, from the Euphrates to the Tiber, the bond of nationality still remained unbroken ; to every true Israelite the name, the fortunes, the sufferings of an Israelite, wherever he might be, had an enduring interest, and therefore it is but natural to find that it is not his own immediate charge at Jerusalem alone, but " the twelve tribes scattered " abroad," who are addressed by the warning voice of this last watchman from the gates of Zion, not in the native accents of his own Hebrew tongue, but in the more universal language which the Macedo- nian conquests had made the vehicle of communi- cation throughout the Eastern world. 2. It was probably some immediate practical occa- sion, from which this address took its rise. I have said that, early as it might be, the troubles of the last period of Jewish history were already beginning, and it might seem, as it has been well expressed by a modern historian, ' as if the skirts of that b This also distinguishes him from the Essenes, whose customs have otherwise much resemblance both to the details of his life as recorded by Hegesippus and to some parts of his Epistle. THE EPISTLE OF ST. JAMES. 303 tremendous tempest which was slowly gathering SERM. over the native country and metropolis of the gi)pp ' To devoted people first broke and discharged their SERM - " heavy clouds of ruin and desolation one by one over each of their remoter settlements .' Such amongst others was the train of calamities which, about the probable date of this Epistle, fell upon that vast Jewish population which still dwelt in the plains of Babylonia, and which, unlike their brethren of Alexandria, still looked to the tem- ple of Jerusalem as the centre of their faith, and still regularly sent their contributions for its sup- port. It was, we may suppose, to console and sustain these, or such as these, of his countrymen, that St. James wrote, just as his predecessors had in like manner striven to revive the sinking spirits of the different portions of their nation or its kindred tribes as one by one they fell before the advance of the Chaldean invasion. " Count it all joy when ye fall " into divers temptations," " Let patience have her " perfect work/' " Blessed is the man that endureth " temptation," " The coming of the Lord draweth " nigh/' " The Judge is standing before the door d ;" these and similar exhortations are the "burden" of c Milman, Hist, of the Jews, ii. 185. For the suggestion of this (A.D. 42) as the probable occasion of this Epistle, as well as for much else respecting its general character, I am indebted to Chevalier Bunsen. d James i. 2, 4, 12 ; v. 8, 9. This last passage evidently alludes to the eastern practice of the judge taking his stand before the gates of the city. 304 THE EPISTLE OF ST. JAMES. SERM. the Epistle, which the twelve tribes received from 8UPP T0 the metropolis of their race. [ - But we know too well that now no less than for- merly it was not consolation alone, but instruction and rebuke which they needed from any true ex- pounder of God's will towards them. The Gospel narrative and the history of Josephus alike inform us of the deep moral depravity which had eaten into the heart of the national character, and which, far more than any outward cause of war or pestilence, was hastening on their final doom. And therefore we may well understand how St. James was called to fulfil the mission, if I may so say, rather of a Christian Baptist than of a Christian Apostle or Evangelist, to make them believe in Moses, before he could make them believe in Christ. He knew that with the mass of his readers forms were everything and morality nothing ; that he was addressing a nation which " strained at gnats and " swallowed camels;" which "cleansed the outside of " the cup and platter, but within was full of extortion " and excess;" which "made its boast in the law, " and yet through breaking the law was a dishonour " of God e ." And therefore in the true spirit of that Divine discourse in St. Matthew's Gospel, which is the true model of his whole teaching, he asserted f the depth and unity of the moral law, that " who- " soever shall offend in one point, he is guilty of " all ;" that " he who has shewed no mercy shall have e Matt, xxiii. 24, 26 ; Rom. ii. 23. f James i. 8 1 1 . Comp. Matt. v. passim. THE EPISTLE OF ST. JAMES. 305 " judgment without mercy ;" that the " pure and un- s E RM. " defiled" service 8 of God is not to use many ablu- '- * SUPP. TO tions and eat with unwashen hands, but to perform 8ERM - those acts of purity and beneficence which were so beautifully shewn forth in the society over which he presided in Palestine, in the Church of Barnabas and Dorcas, and of those who had all things in common, "to visit the fatherless and widows in 11 their affliction, and to keep unspotted from the " world." He knew well the fatalism which threw the guilt of its crimes upon an overruling Providence, and the fanaticism which under the name of "faith" made zeal for God the pretext of the most atro- s Qprjo-Kcia KaQapos *ai dfiiavTos, James i. 27. "The outward " service of ancient religion, the rites, ceremonies, and ceremonial " vestments of the old law had morality for their substance. They " were the letter of which morality was the spirit, the enigma of " which morality was the meaning. But morality itself is the " service and ceremonial (cultus exterior) (Sprja-Kcia) of the Chris- " tian religion. The scheme of grace and truth that 'became* " through Jesus Christ the faith that looks down into the law of " liberty, has light for its garment its very robe is righteousness." (Coleridge's Aids to Reflection, Aph. 23.) This is no doubt the true meaning of the passage, obscured in our version by the obsolete sense of " religion," which at the time of the translation was generally used for a " monastic order." For the general sense comp. Matt. xxv. 34; xv. 10. Ablutions, as they had been part of the ancient ceremonial, so, as is well known, were observed with excessive and rigid punctiliousness, not only by the Pharisees, but also by the Ebionitish section of the Chris- tian society. See Epiph. Hser. 30. 2. 15. 21. 'Ai/a*ce0. p. 140; Clem. Horn. xi. 26. 1 ; x. 1, but especially xi. 28, where there is almost a verbal contrast with this passage, TO idiov rf)s eVrt TO 306 THE EPISTLE OF ST. JAMES. SERM. cious wickedness, and desperately trusted in the ^- privilege of being God's chosen people as the cloak ii. f or every sin, the charm against every danger. And therefore he taught that "no man could be tempted " of God," and that "the wrath of man worketh " not the righteousness of God ;" that the trust and faith in God which now bore that name with them was something wholly different from that trust which had caused their ancestors to be en- rolled amongst the "just," and which, whether in their own first father Abraham, or the one divinely sanctioned type of Gentile excellence in Rahab, was no wild and licentious fanaticism, but the simple performance of acts of self-denial and love, such as now were despised and hated h . He knew the hollowness and falsehood which pervaded all their social intercourse, the casuistry which distinguished between the formal oath and the simple affirmation 1 , and between the oath by the temple, and the oath by the gold of the temple ; which cared much for the honour of teaching, and being called Rabbi, Rabbi k , and cared nothing for its duty and reality. And therefore with an em- phasis which would be startling did we not remem- ber how in the Gospel which is his model we are told that "by our words we are justified and by our " words we are condemned," how in the very society of which he was the head, a single falsehood was punished with immediate death 1 he insists on the 11 James i. 13, 20; ii. 14 26. * Matt. v. 33; xxiii. 16. k Matt, xxiii. 7. l Matt. xii. 37 ; Acts v. 1. THE EPISTLE OF ST. JAMES. 307 control of the tongue, and the right use of conver- SERM. sation, as one of the heaviest of all responsibilities, ^77"^ the most solemn of all religious duties. " Be not SERMt " " many masters," "If any offend not in word he is " a perfect man," " Above all, swear not at all m ;" such are the traces of the teaching of his Divine master, preserved almost verbally in this Epistle ; whilst in the injunctions " Is any afflicted, let him " pray; Is any merry", let him sing psalms," we see exactly the same spirit of blending together the com- mon acts and words of daily life with the heavenly and the spiritual, as was exhibited in outward form for the first time in that primitive Church at Jeru- salem , of which we read that its members, " break - " ing the bread," (for so surely we must understand the sacred narrative,) "breaking the bread" of the Holy Communion "from house to house," did there, in the common intercourse of family life, "eat their " food with gladness and singleness of heart." Lastly, he was addressing a body of readers, not like the Greek communities of St. Paul's Churches, thinly settled in an impoverished country, and therefore with no strong demarcation of ranks ex- cept that of the free citizens and household slaves, but vast masses of a great nation, even in this its last decline, exhibiting traces both of its ancient wealth, and of that activity and facility in the acqui- sition of wealth which have so fatally distinguished it in more recent times, -inhabiting both in Pales- m James i. 26 ; iii. 1 ; Gal. v. 12. n James v. 13. Acts ii. 46, x2 308 THE EPISTLE OF ST. JAMES. SERM. tine p and out of it, some of the most thickly peo- ~ upp * T0 pled regions to be found in the then known world, SERM. ii. an( j impressed w ith the same broad distinction be- tween rich and poor, which had so strongly marked it in the flourishing ages of the Jewish monarchy. Such was the state of things, with the haughty aristocratical insolence engendered by it amongst the higher classes, to which Isaiah and Jeremiah q had addressed themselves of old, which had not escaped the rebukes of Him who declared r " woe on l( those who devoured widows' houses" which the early Church of Jerusalem had endeavoured at once to check and to remedy by its commons property and its frequent contributions for the wants of the poor in Judsea, and against which now for the last time was lifted up the warning voice of James the Just. He saw the oppression which trampled on the poor, and the meanness which truckled to the rich, although* amongst the poor were " the heirs of the " kingdom which God hath promised to them that " love Him," and amongst the rich were those who P Such as Babylonia (Milman, ii. 186) and Galilee, (ii. 262; Joseph. Vit. 145 ; B. J. ii. Ill, 112.) q See Isa. v. 8 ; Jer. v. 5. r Matt, xxiii. 14. 8 Acts ii. 45; iv. 34; Gal. ii. 12; Acts xi. 30; xxiv. 17; 1 Cor. xvi. 1 ; 2 Cor. viii. 4 ; Rom. xv. 27. t James ii. 1 9. The " poor men," (ol Trrw^ot) was in fact almost the recognised appellation of the Christians of Palestine, whether from the real poverty of their circumstances, (comp. Acts ii. 45 ; iv. 34,) or from the stress which they laid upon it as a voluntary virtue. See Rom. xv. 26 ; Gal. ii. 10 ; and compare the later name of Ebionite, originating from this very circumstance, (Neander, Hist, of Church, ii. 10.) THE EPISTLE OF ST. JAMES. 309 " blasphemed the worthy name by which Christ's SERM. " people were called." He heard the cry of the ' supp ' T0 labourers 11 , who were defrauded of their hire, on the 8ERM - " one side, and he heard on the other the sound of feasting and wantonness", and the words of careless luxury and selfishness which said, even under the shadow of impending destruction, " To-day or to- :e morrow we will go into such a city and continue " there, and buy and sell and get gain." He saw and heard all this, and his spirit burned within him, and breaking through all the forms of the apostolic Epi- stle, once alone in the pages of the New Testament we hear the terrific denunciation of the ancient pro- phet, delivered with all the impassioned 7 energy of an Amos or a Joel, " Go to, ye rich men, weep and " howl for the miseries that shall come upon you," and then, as if its work was over, dying gradually away into the softer Christian strain, which bids even the oppressed and suffering poor take comfort in the surer consolation that " the Lord was at hand 2 ," and to turn to the records of the older dispensation, not only for awful warnings against their enemies, but for the more enduring instruction which they hold out in " examples of suffering, affliction, and " patience." 3. Such is the peculiar character of the Epistle of St. James. Standing as it does in the foreground of the apostolical Epistles, it is to them what in the Gospel narrative the teaching of the Baptist is to u James v. 4. x James v. 5 ; iv. 13. y James v. 1. z James v. 7 11. 310 THE EPISTLE OF ST. JAMES. SERM. the teaching of Christ. Its voice indeed is the voice y of the new dispensation, but its outward form and ii. figure belongs almost entirely to the older. It is the lake which lies midway on the mountain-side; it has received the torrents which have descended through a thousand channels from the ancient heights above, but it is not yet divided into the mighty waters which are to fertilize the world below. It is the outline which is to be filled up, the foundation which is to be built upon, the mate- rials which are to be worked, by the hands of the later Apostles. It is not opposed to the teaching of St. Paul and St. John, but it is St. Paul and St. John on a lower stage ; like St. Paul, he opposes a religion of ceremonies, but he opposes it not by the assertion of faith, but of morality 8 ; like St. John, he speaks of love, but it is as the royal law b , not as the divine life of man. Still less is it c , as some have imagined, a cor- a James ii. 15. b James ii. 8. c For the whole view here and in the earlier part of the Sermon taken of the relation of the statement of St. James to that of St. Paul, see Neander's Hist, of the Planting of Christianity, p. 295 ; Schneckenburger's Commentary on St. James, app. 2 ; Thiersch's Essay on the Criticism of the New Testament Writings, p. 257 269; Archdeacon Hare's Victory of Faith, p. 32. It is there maintained with the same arguments as are used here, that the faith spoken of in James ii. 15 is a perversion not of Christian but of Jewish faith, corresponding in modern times not to the Evan- gelical perversion of grace, but to the ecclesiastical perversion of creeds. This false faith or fanaticism, being identical with that described in Matt, xxiii. 15, Rom. ii. 17 29, shewed itself in two forms, (1.) a desperate trust in their privileges as the people THE EPISTLE OP ST. JAMES. 311 rection of St. Paul. It would surely be against the SERM. whole order of progress so manifest in the revela- supp r m o tion of Christianity, if we could suppose that the SERM - " of God, like the Mahometan belief that death in battle for the faithful is a passport to heaven. Compare for earlier instances Jer. vii. 4; 2 Mace. xii. 43 45; Eccl. vii. 4, and for its worst and latest excess, the fatalism described in James i. 13 ; Jos. Ant. xiii. 5. 9, and the last days of the final siege of Jerusalem ; (2.) a trust in their orthodox belief in the unity of God, James ii. 19. Comp'. Rom. ii. 17; Justin, c. Tryph. 378; Clem. Horn. iii. 3. 7; xiii. 4 ; xii. 23. Of course the great objection to this view, which to many per- haps will appear insuperable, is the apparently designed antithesis between the expressions of St. James and those of St. Paul. But, if we can suppose that the words "faith," "works," "justifica- " tion/' were, as is most probable, not invented by St. Paul, but taken by him from the ordinary Jewish phraseology, and invested with a higher Christian meaning, as the parallel case of Xoyos and TrX^pw/bia in the writings of St. John, the difficulty would be greatly diminished. The selection of Abraham and Rahab is sufficiently accounted for by the reason given in p. 306, not to mention that the only Pauline passage in which they both occur is contained in the Epistle to the Hebrews, and there not in juxtaposition, and in no connexion whatever with the contrast of faith and works. After all, the practical difference between this and the com- mon explanation is not so great as would at first sight appear. On the one hand, even if we suppose that St. James had in view the phraseology of St. Paul or St. Paul's followers, we are still compelled by the context to conclude that the example of its per- version which he attacks was to be found in the barren faith of the Jew : on the other hand, if we adopt the interpretation fol- lowed in the text, and thus avoid even the appearance of a colli- sion between the two Apostles, we may still from the pointed con- trast of their expressions derive the lesson which seems thus to have been as it were providentially brought before us, and remem- ber that, as I have endeavoured to shew further on, there is still a sense in which the teaching of St. James may at times be used as a useful supplement to that of St. Paul. 312 THE EPISTLE OP ST. JAMES. SERM. more perfect statement of Christian truth in St. 7 Paul should be intended to receive its completion SERM. ii. f rom the i ess perfect statement in St. James, and, even if this were possible, it would be precluded by the very nature of the circumstances under which the Epistle was written. So far from its readers being likely to have fallen into an exaggerated zeal for St. Paul's assertion that " a man is justified by " faith without the deeds of the law," it is probable that they had either never heard of it at all, or if they had would have rejected it with scorn ; and at any rate to have warned them against an exces- sive or licentious use of it would have been like insisting on the dangers of knowledge to a man who has not learned to read, or on the dangers of liberty to one who has spent his life in slavery. It was, as we have seen, a far different teaching which they needed and which he gave ; it was not an abuse of Christian faith, but of Jewish faith, against which they had to be warned ; it was not the Apostle's teaching of " faith in the blood of " Jesus Christ," but the Pharisee's teaching of faith " that there is one God;" not the wild extra- vagance which said, " Let us continue in sin that " grace may abound," but the stiff formalism, which rested satisfied in its correct belief. His was a teach- ing as a preparation for St. Paul and St. John most valuable, but no more tending to contradict or super- sede them, than the sober warnings of this morn- ing's service can be said to contradict or supersede the glad tidings which await us on Christmas Day. THE EPISTLE OF ST. JAMES. 313 4. Such is the Epistle which stands before us at SERM. y the opening of the Canon, such the legacy which the ' Jewish Church of the first age has been allowed by 8ERM - " God's Providence to bequeath to after times. It may be that there are those amongst us who in- wardly complain that it neither soars to the heights of divinity, nor descends to the depths of our com- mon humanity, who in the impatient spirit of the earlier d though not the later years of Luther, would fain declare that, compared with the writings of Paul and John, it is an Epistle of straw. Yet, unless we would wilfully run counter alike to the reverence of ages and to the soundest laws of sacred criticism, we cannot tear it from its place in the Word of God; there it stands, to warn or to in- struct us, if only we will ask ourselves what lessons it was intended to teach us. Even if no deeper and more general principle were involved, it would be important to remark the peculiar energy with which it enforces particular precepts, which we are all of us perhaps inclined too much to overlook. It is not without its use to have a proof that the ordinary rules of familiar in- tercourse, of words, of conversations, which we are accustomed to treat as the mere play and surface of life, were not thought beneath the notice of the earliest address to the Christian Church. It may be instructive to see that those national and social d For the true account of this, as of so many of the other mis- representations of Luther's words, see the Note W in Archdeacon Hare's Mission of the Comforter. 314 THE EPISTLE OF ST. JAMES. SERM. duties, which we are inclined to leave as the undis- gupp xo turbed province of worldly politicians, or at least ii. to confine to the older Scriptures, have not been thought too secular for a prominent place in the New Testament ; and, if the severe denunciations against the higher orders of society which this Epistle contains have been often quoted by wild and lawless fanatics, this makes it not the less, but the more important to remember that there has been a time, when we must acknowledge them to have been the words of truth and soberness, spoken not by a fierce revolutionist, nor yet by a prophet of the Hebrew nation, but by " James, the servant " <jf God and of our Lord Jesus Christ." But it is in the more general impression left by the whole Epistle that its chief instruction consists. Undoubtedly its one pervading characteristic is that its end and object is entirely moral, that the same energy of language, the same authoritative tone, which in other parts of the New Testament are used to inculcate what we strictly call religious truths, or to excite what we strictly call religious feelings, are here used to insist upon those plain matters of right and wrong, of vice and virtue, which strictly speaking we hardly call religious at all. It is indeed not to be forgotten that this Epi- stle is one only out of many. St. James himself, even if we identify him with the Apostle of that name, was yet not one of the Three, whose position commands" an universal interest, and his teaching must in like manner be regarded as subordinate to THE EPISTLE OF ST. JAMKS. 315 theirs. But still the mere fact that it has been SERM. admitted at all within the range of apostolical doc- 8UPP .' T0 ~ trine is an indisputable proof that there are times SERM ' "' and circumstances when the simple inculcation of a high and pure morality is not only not incompatible with Christian teaching, but the best and only mode of imparting it. St. James, as I have said, may be looked upon either as, the earliest of the Apostles, or as the latest of the prophets. He may be looked upon as the especial teacher of those who like the Chris- tian converts amongst his readers are on the very beginning of their new life, and in this aspect how great an example to those who are or have been concerned with the first formation of Christian Churches ! How much might have been spared of useless toil and disappointed zeal on one hand, how much of unchristian superstition and unchristian practices on the other hand, if the first missiona- ries whether of our own forefathers of the German forests, or of heathen populations in later times, had always remembered that " repentance towards God" must precede " faith in Jesus Christ," that in the order of the Divine dispensations the moral teaching of St. James must go before, or at least accompany, the religious teaching of St. Paul and St. John ! Or again, he may be regarded as the especial teacher of those who, like his own Jewish country- men, have fallen step by step into the degenerate formalism of the last stages of a corrupted faith. And here again, although we need not fear to find 316 THE EPISTLE OP ST. JAMES. SERM. any exact parallel amongst Christian nations to the * ast state f t^t Degraded race, yet undoubtedly j s t oo p OSS ible for men to come in the last days even of the Christian religion who shall have the form of godliness without the power, who shall speak much of the doctrines of Christianity, and care nothing for its duties ; who shall trust, like the Jews of St. James's time, that oppression, and self- ishness, and careless luxury, may be fully compen- sated by the inviolable sanctity of their descent, by their strict adherence to the letter of the ceremonial law, by their correct belief in the creed of their forefathers. And doubtless wherever such a state of things be found, wherever the faith in Christ which was preached by Paul has sunk into a dead and formal belief, as in the last age of the Jewish nation was the case with the faith in God, which had been preached by Moses, there is indeed a sense in which St. James may come in to correct the teaching of St. Paul, as he came in before to correct the teaching of Moses. I need not repeat what I said in the Sermon on St. Paul of the words which he used to assert the great principle of spiritual life and freedom ; I need not repeat how those words became after the lapse of centuries the symbol of a reviving world, how important it is for each one of us to remember that they are not the text of a worn out controversy, but the very life and soul of our inmost being. But still if ever there has been or may be a time when they shall come to be used as a mere technical formula or party watchword, THE EPISTLE OF ST. JAMES. 317 then we may feel thankful to that good Providence SERM. which has secured us against this very perversion - 11 J r 8UPP. TO by the counter statement which is always at hand SERM - to check it in the words of the Epistle which tells us that " a man is justified by works, and not by " faith only." St. Paul has always furnished the rule and standard of our theological confessions, but the exceptions may well be expressed in the language not less inspired, though less frequent, of St. James. But it is not only to large masses of men, or in particular epochs of the world, that this Epistle has its use. How often are we obliged to acknowledge the great usefulness of books, which are yet without the tone and feeling which we generally expect from religious men ! how often have we heard of persons, who, having been by circumstances separated from the religious world, with hardly ever a religious ex- pression on their lips, have yet been so earnestly employed in works of honesty, or justice, or bene- volence, that we cannot but think of them as having been engaged in the service of God ! It is in con- templating such cases as these that the Epistle of St. James may be most useful, both as a warning and an encouragement. It teaches us not to con- demn at once those whose life and teaching is formed on the model which God has been pleased to set before us in the life and teaching of St. James. It may not be the highest excellence, any more than the Epistle of St. James is the most important part of the New Testament ; but at the same time it is 318 THE EPISTLE OF ST. JAMES, SERM. not on that account to be put under the ban of the v ^J Christian world, any more than this Epistle was ii. rejected from the Sacred Canon. It is not the end, but it is the beginning. It is not Christmas, but it is Advent. It is not the teaching of any of the three great Apostles of the whole Christian world, but it is the teaching of the chief pillar of the Church of Palestine. It is the ground of an honest and good conscience which every Christian rite and every Christian truth implies ; it is, if rightly and wisely dealt with, no mere superstructure of " hay, straw, " and stubble," which the fiery trial will sweep away, but the very house which He who is the true foundation has Himself declared to be built by " whosoever both heareth His sayings and doeth "them 6 ; and the rains descend, and the floods " come, and the winds blow and beat upon that " house, and it falls not, for it was founded upon " a roc/c." e Matt. vii. 24, 25. THE TRADITIONS OF ST. JAMES THE JUST, AS NARRATED BY HEGESIPPUS. THE account of the martyrdom of St. James the Just, which has been so frequently referred to in the previous pages, is found in one of those remarkable fragments which have been preserved to us by Eusebius, from the lost work of Hegesippus, a Christian of Hebrew origin, (as Eusebius conjectures, H. E. iv. 22,) who wrote in the reign of the Antonines and lived at Rome between the years A.D. 157176. (Hier. Vir. 111. 22.) Of the history, of which nothing remains but the following narrative, (with the ex- ception of a very few and comparatively insignificant frag- ments,) we know nothing beyond the information derived from Eusebius, (H. E. iv. 8,) viz., that it consisted of five books, and professed to give an account of the preach- ing of the Apostles that its style also, as we can our- selves judge from what remains to us, was extremely sim- pl e? an d that it contained passages or words in the Hebrew language, a fact of some importance in determin- ing the meaning of some of the chief obscurities in the existing fragments, and thus confirming what would appear likely on other grounds a , that the present narrative has not come down to us in its original state. Such is the conclusion also at which we should naturally arrive from the variations in the account as we find it in Epiphanius, (Haer. 78. 14,) who though he' does not profess like Eusebius to give the words of Hegesippus's narrative, has evidently used it as his groundwork. 320 THE TRADITIONS OF JAMES THE JUST, Two other early accounts remain of the same event; one the very brief description of it in Josephus, (Ant. xx. 9. 1,) which even if in part interpolated was already in the copies of Josephus seen by Origen, (Com. on Matt. p. 234,) the other in the Clementine Recognitions, (i. 70,) which describe a scene at Jerusalem evidently based on this, but with the difference that James, after being thrown from the " steps of the temple," is not killed, as it was at first thought, but returns to life, a variation possibly suggested by the necessity of the story of that work, which required that James should outlive Peter. Between these two must be placed the narrative of Hegesippus, less authentic than the cotemporary account of the Jewish historian, but certainly more so than the Clementine romance. It is not my intention to go through the various arguments which have pointed out the atmos- phere of fable in which even this the earliest merely human record of apostolic times has been enveloped. The contradictions of the narrative, the direct verbal imita- tions of Scripture, the contrast of its extravagances and exaggerations with the calm majesty of the Canonical Epi- stle, are sufficiently evident. It will be enough to indicate the fragments of truth which it contains more perhaps than have been allowed by some of the more severe critics of recent times and there is at any rate an interest in the subject, and even in the abruptness and simplicity of the style, which may fairly invite us to consider, however cur- sorily, this last detailed account of the Church of Palestine, this earliest specimen of Christian martyrology. "The b charge of the Church was undertaken with the " Apostles by James, the brother of our Lord, who is " called by the name of * Just' by all from the Lord's time b The passage may be read either in Eus. H. E. ii. 23, or together with all the fragments of Hegesippus, and the convenient apparatus of annotations collected in Routh's Relliquiae Sacrse, vol. i. p. 182 255. AS NARRATED BY HEGESIPPOS. 321 " till our own, for there were many of the name of James. " Now he was holy from his mother's womb ; he drank no " wine or strong drink ; he eat no animal food ; no razor " ever went upon his head ; he anointed not himself with " oil, and used not the bath ; to him only was it lawful to " enter into the holy place, for he wore no wool, but only " linen ; and he only was wont to enter the Temple, and " he used to be found lying on his knees, and entreating " forgiveness for the people, so that his knees became hard " like a camePs, from his always kneeling in prayer to " God, and entreating forgiveness for the people. On ac- " count therefore of the excess of his righteousness (Suceuo- " avvrjv) he was called the " Just," and " Oblias," which is " in Greek ' bulwark of the people,' and ( righteousness,' as " the prophets testify concerning him. Some then of the " seven sects amongst the people, who are described by me " in my history, asked him * What is the gate of Jesus ? ' " and he said that He was the Saviour, from which some " believed that Jesus is the Christ. But the aforesaid sects did not believe, either in the resurrection or in " one who should come to award to every man according " to his deeds, but all who did believe, believed through " James. When many therefore even of the rulers were " believing, there was an alarm amongst the Jews, and " Scribes, and Pharisees, saying, ' The whole people is in " danger of falling into the expectation of Jesus as the " Christ.' They came therefore to James, and said, ' We " beseech thee, restrain the people, for it has gone astray " after Jesus, as though He were the Christ ; we beseech " thee to persuade all that come to the passover concern- " ing Jesus, for to thee we all give heed, for we and the " whole nation bear witness to thee that thou art just and " 'receivest not the person of men.' Do thou therefore per- " suade the multitude not to be deceived concerning Jesus, " for the whole people and all men give heed to thee. Y 322 THE TRADITIONS OF JAMES THE JUST, " Stand therefore on the pinnacle of the Temple, that thou " mayest be visible from above, and that all thy words may " be well heard by all the people, for on account of the (t passover all the tribes with the Gentiles also have come " together.' The aforesaid Scribes and Pharisees therefore " placed James on the pinnacle of the Temple, and cried to " him and said, ( O Just one, to whom we all ought to give " heed, inasmuch as the people is gone astray after Jesus " who is crucified, tell us what is the gate of Jesus?' And " he answered with a loud voice, ' Why ask ye me con- " cerning Jesus the Son of Man? He sits in heaven on the " right hand of the mighty power, and He also is about to " come in the clouds of heaven.' And many being con- ft vinced, and glorifying [Jesus] on the testimony of James, " and saying, ' Hosanna to the Son of David ;' then again (( the same Scribes and Pharisees said amongst themselves, " ' We have done ill in furnishing so great a testimony to " Jesus, let us go and cast him down, that they may be " struck with fear and so not believe on him/ And they t( cried, saying, ' Oh ! oh ! the Just one too is gone astray.' " And they fulfilled the prophecy written in Isaiah, ' Let " us take away the Just, for he is troublesome to us, there- " fore shall they eat the fruit of their deeds.' They went " up then and threw down the Just one, and said, e Let us " stone James the Just,' and they began to stone him. For " he had not been killed by the fall, but turning round " knelt and said, ' I beseech Thee, Lord God, and Father, " forgive them, for they know not what they do.' But whilst " they were thus stoning him, one of the priests of the sons e( of B/echab the sons of Rachabim, who are mentioned by " the prophet Jeremiah, cried, saying, ' Stop, what do ye ? " the Just one prays for you ;' and one of them, one of the " fullers, took the club with which he used to press the " clothes, and struck it on the head of the Just one. And " so he bore witness, (epapTvprja-e,) and they buried him on AS NARRATED BY HEGESIPPUS. 823 " the place by the Temple, and the pillar still remains on " the spot by the Temple. He has been a true witness both " to Jews and Gentiles that Jesus is the Christ. And im- " mediately Vespasian besieged them." 1. It will be seen that in the opening of this passage a Position of distinction is drawn by Hegesippus between James and f n t- Jjf 68 the Apostles generally, whether we interpret iiera "with" Church of Jerusa- or " after. On that intricate question, for the reasons lem. above stated, it is unnecessary here to enter: whether he was or was not identical with the son of Alphseus, it is obvious that both in the New Testament and the earliest ecclesiastical writers, he is described as holding a different position from the apostolic body generally, with which this statement of Hegesippus is therefore so far in exact accord- ance. It may however be worth while to observe, both in itself and as an indication of the general antiquity of the nar- rative, that he is nowhere in it called by the name of eW- O-KOTTOS, and that the pre-eminence assigned to him, as to the Apostles of the New Testament generally, is evidently attri- buted to his sanctity of life, rather than to any official dig- nity. At the same time we can well understand how in the Church of Palestine, where the existing organization of the synagogue would naturally invite such an arrangement, he should both here and in the Acts and Epistles be described as occupying a position far more resembling that of the later bishop than we can venture to ascribe to the minis- trations of St. Peter, St. Paul, and St. John ; and we may therefore, in spite of the slight anachronism and inaccu- racy involved in it, be justified in designating him by the well-known title of " Bishop of Jerusalem," which a few generations later was usually accorded to him, and which Hegesippus himself unequivocally gives to his successor Simeon, at whose death it expired, never again, or at Y2 324 THE TRADITIONS OF JAMES THE JUST, least not for many centuries, to be revived in its original form. His auste- 2. It is the account of the austerities of James which has provoked the chief suspicions of the authenticity of the whole narrative, on the ground of the numerous inconsis- tencies with Jewish usages in the very character which is held up as a model of Jewish sanctity. It is certainly impos- sible to reconcile the literal meaning of the priestly practices ascribed to him in any degree with historical probability; the Epistle to the Hebrews is of itself evidence, if evidence were wanting, of the utter impossibility of such a violation of Jewish feeling as that any private individual not of the house of Levi could enter into the Holy of Holies, much less that he should be the only one who should be so privi- leged d . Still even in this, as I have endeavoured to shew in the Essay on the Traditions of St. John, there may have been a foundation of truth, in the sentiment which invested him with a priestly sanctity, not of office but of character, and of which the hyperbolical expression has by the later his- torian been taken for reality of fact. Such is evidently the feeling in the Clementine Recognitions, (i. 68,) which sets his living influence as it were in rivalry with the dead formalism of Caiaphas, not altogether without its counter- part in the solemn character with which prophet and king were invested in earlier times, amidst the first indications of the decline of the high-priest's power. In like manner in the other details, amidst great exaggeration of particular circumstances, elements of truth may be discovered which it seems fastidious to reject altogether. We may regard the " kneeling till his knees were hard as the knees of camels," c When the Christians returned from Pella, their Church was called by the name of the new city of uElia, and hy the time that the sacred appellation of Jerusalem was again restored to it, the ancient title of "bishop" had been exchanged for that of "patriarch," still retained by the Greek occupant of the see. & Comp. also the strong feeling expressed in Jos. Ant. xv. 11. 5. AS NARRATED BY HEGESIPPUS. 325 as an Oriental hyperbole, and his "constant prayers in the " Temple," as a striking contrast to the attention to social duties inculcated in his Epistle ; but still the general fact is in accordance with the practice of Anna, " who departed " not from the Temple, serving God with prayers and fast- " ing night and day," (Luke ii. 37 ;) of Peter and John, who went up to the temple services, (Acts iii. 1,) and of the disciples at Jerusalem generally, who immediately after the ascension were " continually ($LairdvTos) in the " temple," "continuing daily with one accord in the " temple, blessing and praising God." (Luke xxiv. 53 ; Acts ii. 46.) And as the life and teaching of James re- calls to us that of the ancient prophets, so also this resi- dence (if one may so call it) within the precincts of the Temple is well illustrated by the practice of Jeremiah and the prophets cotemporary with him, who are described not only as teaching in the Temple courts, (Jer. xxvi. 2 ; xxxvi. 10, 20,) but as actually living in its chambers or cells. (Jer. xxvi. 7 ; xxxv. 2 4.) So also his asceticism is for the most part strictly Jewish. The abstinence from wine and strong drink, and the long hair, is what might be expected if he were of the order of Nazarites, (Numb. vi. 1 6,) a fact which is expressly asserted of him in the corresponding pas- sage of Epiphanius, (Haer. 78. 14,) and is apparently im- plied in the expression of Hegesippus, "holy from his " mother's womb." That such vows, whether perpetual or for a time, were common at this time amongst the devout Jews, appears not only from the case of the Baptist, who in many respects occupied a position so similar to that of James, and of whose life almost precisely similar expressions are used, (Luke ii. 15,) but also from the general practice as implied in the account of the Nazarites, whose vow was un- dertaken to be discharged by Herod, (Joseph. Ant. xix. 6. 1,) and by St. Paul, (Acts xxi. 26,) the latter at the instigation of James himself; not to mention the Rechabites, who are 326 THE TRADITIONS OF JAMES THE JUST, mentioned further on in this very narrative. Whether there- fore, as Neander has conjectured, James as the eldest son might have been devoted to this order like Samuel, Sam- son, and the Baptist, from his birth, or whether he entered upon it after he became known, it would equally accord both with his general character and with the details here given. The other traits are more questionable. But the abstinence from the luxury of oil is a custom of the Essenes, the account of whose life in other respects so much reminds us of St. James, (see Joseph. B. J. viii. 2, 3,) and the absti- nence from animal food, though it would hardly have been practised literally by any Jew who partook of the paschal lamb, yet in some sense must have been the practice of the weaker brethren, i. e., of the Jewish Christians who are described in the Epistle to the Romans (xiv. 2) as eating only herbs. This may indeed have been practised only with the view of avoiding the danger to which they were constantly exposed in heathen countries, possibly even in Palestine itself, of buying in the shambles the remains of idol sacrifices ; but it is easy to see how it might thus be- come part of the regular type of a devout Jew, and thus be fairly represented as the practice not only of James, but of the Jewish Apostles generally, of Peter, (Clem. Rec. xii. 6; Horn. xii. 6; xiv. 1,) of the sons of Zebedee, (Epiph. Hser. 78. 14,) and of Matthew, (Clem. Paid. ii. 1.) So again the linen garments agree with the practice of ascetic Jews, so amply illustrated by commentators on Mark xiv. 51, (where the young man with " the linen garment" has been sometimes identified, perhaps however from this passage, with James himself,) and would accord with the semi- sacerdotal character ascribed to him. The abstinence from the bath, unless taken simply as a general expression for an ascetic life, is the point most difficult to reconcile, not only with the general practice of ablutions in Oriental nations, hallowed as it was amongst the Jews by the ex- AS NARRATED BY HEGESIPPUS. 327 press command of the Law, but also with the great stress laid on it by the Essenes (Jos. B. J. viii. 2. 7. 10) and Ebionites, (Epiph. Haer. 30. 2. 21.) Possibly however the contrast of the alleged practice of St. James with that of the last-mentioned sect, may furnish us with a reason, if not for believing it to be historical, at least for the inser- tion of it by his biographers amidst other customs so in- disputably Jewish. According to the statement of Epi- phanius, the use or disuse of ablutions was the recog- nised mark of distinction between the Ebionite sect and the Catholic Church, and thus whilst he ascribes to this motive the perpetual purifications and washings attri- buted to St. Peter in the Clementines, (Hser. 30. 15, 21,) he regards the well-known story of St. John's visit to the bath where he encountered Cerinthus (or, as it is there re- presented, Ebion) as a solitary and almost miraculous ex- ception to the Apostle's usual rule, providentially brought about for the purpose of disclaiming intercourse with the heresiarch. (Haer. 30. 25.) If such a feeling existed in the apostolic age, then the alleged practice of St. James might fairly be taken as an outward representation of the same inward truth, which, as has been observed in the Sermon, is strongly brought out in his Epistle, (i. 21.) If on the other hand it was only the growth of later times, it would at least be important as indicating a distinction which has been sometimes denied between the Ebionites and Hegesippus himself. One circumstance further deserves to be mentioned in this narrative, though perhaps it is merely accidental, namely, the omission of the celibacy of St. James, so strongly insisted upon by Epiphanius 6 (Hser. 78. 14) and later writers. It is possible of course that in this as in e Another trait added by Epiphanius is his walking barefoot. For this compare Jos. B. J. ii. 15. 328 THE TRADITIONS OP JAMES THE JUST, other points his life may have resembled that portion of ascetic Jews which as we learn from Josephus (Ant. ii. 8. 2) abstained from marriage, or that there had already begun in the Palestine Church that high admiration for the single state which soon overspread the whole Church. But if so, it is a fact extremely difficult to reconcile with the implication of the Apostle Paul, not merely that the " brethren of the Lord and Cephas" were married, but that they were held up as apostolical examples on that very account, (1 Cor. ix. 4.) That Jude, the brother of James, was so we know from the appearance of his grandchildren in the reign of Domitian, (Eus. H. E. iii. 20;) and, although the expression need not of itself include all the brothers, yet, when we remember that they were only four in number, one could hardly expect that it should have excluded exactly the one who was most eminent and most likely to be selected as the type of the whole family. And therefore the discrepancy of Hegesippus with later writers is so far worthy of notice, as it brings his statement into nearer conformity with the most authentic declaration which we possess on the subject. The 3. The next point to be observed in the narrative is St. James. tne statement of the names of James. This is one of the passages which makes it probable that we have here a Greek translation of a sentence, originally Hebrew or Syriac. " He was called Just (Alicaios) and Oblias, which " is in Greek bulwark of the people and justice," ($(,- /caioauwrj,) where it is obvious that the sense requires in the first clause of the statement a Hebrew word for "Just," such as " Zadok," which would then, as in the correspond- ing phrase of Obliam, be translated in the next clause by its counterpart in Greek. However this may be, the sense is clear that St. James was known by two names, " The Just," and " Oblias," or in the Hebrew form " Obliam." AS NARRATED BY HEGESIPPUS. -329 With regard to the first of these, it would seem from this narrative, as well as from the express statement of Epiphanius, (Hser. 78. 14,) that it had in common par- lance superseded his original name. " He was called so," says Hegesippus, " to distinguish him from the many " other individuals of the name of Jacob or James," and no less than five times in the story he is not called "James " the Just," but simply " The Just," Whether it might be the Greek Al/couos, the Latin "Justus," (as in Acts xviii. 7,) or the Hebrew " Zadok," as in the well-known name of the high-priest of Solomon, and the alleged founder of the Sadducees, it was, as has been stated in the Sermon, the word especially used in this last period of the Jewish nation to express " those who kept the ordinances of the " law blameless." Thus Simon " the Just," the high-priest on whose character Jewish tradition dwelt with peculiar attachment, (see Ecclus. i. 50,) and whose death, like that of James himself, was regarded as the commencement of the disasters under the Syro-Grecian kings. (Milman's Hist, of Jews, ii. 32.) So Zacharias and Elizabeth were both "righteous," (the same word, SUaios, Luke r. 6,) and Simeon "just," (Luke ii. 25;) so Joseph who was surnamed "Justus," (Acts i. 23.) Hence probably the true origin of the name of " Sadducee," assumed as a name of honour by themselves as the real observers of the Law in opposition to their rivals the Pharisees. Hence also the appropriateness of its peculiar use in St. Paul, as vindicating for it the higher spiritual meaning which was properly attached to it, and which was endan- gered by the more outward and ceremonial signification with which this Jewish usage had invested it. (Comp. especially Phil. iii. 6, 9.) The other name, " Obliam," though of more obscure origin, is still not difficult to decypher, especially with the explanation given of it by Hegesippus himself, which at 330 THE TRADITIONS OF JAMES THE JUST, once leads us to the true etymology &V ^'V f , the "ophel" or " fortress of the people," a name the more appropriate, from its likeness in signification, as has been before ob- served, to the surname of the other great Jewish Apostle " Cephas," and to the image of the "pillar" of the Church, so emphatically given by St. Paul to James himself; the word " ophel" being used for a tower or fortress generally, as in Isa. xxxii. 14; Micah iv. 8; 2 Kings v. 24; but more especially for the eastern projection or ascent (in Latin " clivus") of mount Moriah, (2 Chron. xxvii. 3; xxxiii. 14; Neh. iii. 27 ; xi. 21 ; Jos. B. J. vi. 6. 3,) which would thus tend to familiarize the expression to the inhabitants of Jerusalem. Compare too in earlier times the name Reho- boam, (enlarger of the people,) Jeroboam, (multiplier of the people,) in all cases perhaps names of the attributes of God transferred to men. Comp. Ex. xxxii. 24. A similar compound seems to have existed at the same time in the word "Bala-am," (&3> jA?,) "Destroyer of the people," sometimes in its Hebrew, sometimes in its Greek form, (Nicolaus,) applied to the false teachers of this period, (2 Pet. ii. 13; Jude 11 ; Rev. ii. 6.) See Hengstenberg's History of Balaam, pp. 22, 23, and Ewald on Rev. ii. 6. g f See Neander's Hist, of the Planting of the Christian Church, p. 291. * As this interpretation of the word Nicolaitans, first suggested 1 believe by Vitringa, has been alluded to more than once, it niay be as well to answer briefly the arguments which have been brought against it. 1. The common story of their origin from the Nicolas of Acts vi. 5, is one of very gradual growth, (see Neander's Hist of Church, ii. 116,) and may well have arisen, like that of the confessedly imaginary Ebion, from a misunderstanding of the word. 2. The passage in Rev. ii. 15, " So hast thou also them that hold the " doctrine of the Nicolaitans," which from the ambiguity of the English trans- lation has sometimes been supposed to draw a distinction between the teach- ing of the Nicolaitans, and the teaching of Balaam, mentioned in the pre- ceding verse, is in fact a strong argument in favour of their identity, being the natural close of the charge just brought against the Church of Per- gamus in spite of its general excellence. "Thus it is, that even thou, " pure as thou art, hast still those who hold this hateful teaching," the Greek being here substituted for the Hebrew word, as so often elsewhere in the Apocalypse, for the sake of greater emphasis. AS NARRATED BY HEGESIPPUS. 331 4. In the account of the death of James, as well as that The of his mode of life, there are many points which awaken considerable suspicion, both in detail and in the romantic air of the whole transaction, and critics have naturally pointed out the strong resemblance of the story itself to that of Prexaspes in Herodotus, and of the speeches of James and of the Jews to those in the Gospels and the Acts. Still there is enough of general probability in the whole, and we may add enough of difficulty in some of the details, to warrant us in supposing that we can dis- cover in this earliest scene of ecclesiastical history some authentic ground-work of the story of the martyrdom of James. The great influence implied in the words "all " who believed believed through the means of James," partakes indeed of the general tone of exaggeration which runs through the language of the Palestine Christians respecting him, as though he had been a greater even than the Apostles ; and the whole description of the plot against him is disfigured by contradictory and inconceivable statements. But in the union of Pharisee and Sadducee once again against the Christian preacher we recognise the same union which had taken place against his Divine Master; and especially in the prominence given as it were unconsciously to the Sadducees, (for although the Phari- sees alone are mentioned, it is obvious from the opinions especially alluded to that the Sadducees were the moving power,) we have an unintentional coincidence both with the active part taken by them in the first persecutions of the disciples, under the first Annas, (Acts iv. 1, 6,) and with the express testimony of Josephus that it was under the rule of the second Annas b , also a Sadducee, that James was put to death. Nor is there any thing more h That the persecution of Annas was directed against Christians, whether the clause about James himself is received or rejected, is well argued in Milman's Hist, of Christianity, vol. i. p. 441. 332 THE TRADITIONS OF JAMES THE JUST, tumultuary in the stoning of James by the Jewish popu- lace than had already taken place in the case of Stephen, especially when we reflect how much further the dissolu- tion of the nation had advanced since that time, and that here again we learn from the account of Josephus that Annas had taken advantage of the temporary interval between the two Roman governors to perpetrate the crime. So also in descending to particulars there is nothing that is absolutely incredible, though much that needs ex- planation. The question "What is the gate of Jesus?" cannot be understood without supposing that the origi- nal sentence has been in some way altered in reaching its present form, and perhaps no more probable interpre- tation can be given than that suggested by Mosheim, that as before the Greek word St/caios had been substituted for the Hebrew Zadok, so here the Hebrew word " Jeshua," (ny-185^) <( salvation," has been preserved in the proper name " Jesus," when it ought to have been translated by the Greek word o-wrripla 1 , and that the question, so natural to the falling nation, would then be " What is the door or " way of salvation?" exactly analogous to the questions put to John the Baptist and our Lord, " What shall we do " then ?" " What shall I do to inherit eternal life?" " What " shall we do that we may work the works of God?" A similar explanation seems in part to apply to the obscure passage relating to " the priest of the sons of Eechab the " son of Rechabim," for here again it would seem as if the Hebrew plural "Rechabim" had been retained, when in fact it had been already translated in the expression the This is more obvious in the first passage where the question occurs, irvv9dvovTO avrov rls f) Qvpa. TOV 'iTjcroD, Kal H\fyf TOVTOV flvai rl>v 2wnjpa, where it would almost seem as if the Greek and Hebrew words had changed places. ' They asked, " What was the gate of salvation," (ffcar-npias,) and he said " that it was Jesus," AS NAERATED BY HEGESIPPUS. 833 " sons of Rechab." What could be meant by introducing on the scene a priest who was also a Rechabite, and there- fore not only not of Levitical, but not even of Jewish descent, is not so easy to explain, but the key to the diffi- culty, as has been already suggested, seems to be contained in the parallel passage of Epiphanius, (Haer. 78. 14,) where he ascribes the words of the Rechabite to Symeon, and, if so, whether we understand by Symeon, the brother or cousin of James, it is natural to suppose that, he, like his kinsman, was classed amongst the order of Nazarites, and so regarded as having at once a priestly sanctity though not after the ceremonial law, and as being identical in spirit with the Rechabites of Jeremiah, though not lineally descended from them. The scene of the event, though strange, has more to attract than to repel belief. If we imagine the people-* assembled in the front court of the Temple, and James standing on some elevated terrace or battlement k to address them, nothing can be more natural than that the priests in their indignation should drag him to the verge of the precipice of Mount Moriah, on which the Temple stood, and, in their fear of polluting the sacred precincts with blood, cast him down from thence into the gorge beneath, and that on or near the spot where he so fell, not within the walls, (as has been sometimes errone- J It is worth while to observe the constant use of "the people," (6 \dos,) for the chosen people, as in the New Testament every where, and not as far as appears in later writers; so also " all the tribes." (iraacu at </>u\ai.) Corap. James i. 1. k The word rrrcpvyiov and its Latin translation (pinnaculum), as applied to a building, is elsewhere used only in Dan. ii 26, (LXX) ; Tertull. adv. Jud. 8) ; and in the accounts of the Temptation, Matt. iv. 5; Luke iv. 9 ; from which it was probably borrowed here : and it would be enough for the general truth of the narrative to suppose any of the elevations in or about the Temple buildings; "at the top of the steps," (pro summis gradibus,) is the spot given in the Clementine Recognitions, (i. 70.) But even if it were the irrfp-uyiov itself, the word seems to mean not so much "pinnacle" as " front," (fastigium,) and the royal cloister which formed part of the great front is also expressly said to have overhung the steepest part of the precipice. (Jos. Ant. xv. 11. 5.) See Schleusner in voce irrepvyiov. 334 THE TRADITIONS OF JAMES THE JUST, ously inferred from this passage,) but amongst the rocks of the valley of Jehoshaphat, to this day so thickly set with sepulchres, the very "street of tombs" to Jerusalem, the memorial of his death should have been erected, and there remembered and preserved till the time of Hadrian. The cavern still shewn as " the Tomb of St. James" derives its 1 traditional name not from being supposed to be his sepulchre, but from a legend of his concealing himself there, and it is curious that amidst the many localities at Jerusalem which profess to be connected with Apostolical times, there is none which lays any claim to connexion with this almost the only local tradition which can be traced as far back as the second century. The undoubted tombs however amongst which it is situated, and which are im- mediately opposite the Temple, illustrate the possibility of what is here suggested, whether or not we agree with a recent suggestion, that the monument which bears the name of Zacharias refers to the son of Baruch m , who in the Jewish war was thrown over the walls of the Temple into the valley beneath, in a manner reminding us of the death of James himself. The date of the death of James is fixed by the account of Josephus to A.D. 63; and that it happened some years before the siege of Jerusalem is the natural inference from Heb. xiii. 7. Nor in fact is there any reason for pressing the words of Hegesippus to mean that the siege followed upon it in the very next year ; it is evident that here, as in 1 Robinson's Palestine, i. 518; Jerome (De Vir. 111. 4.) seems to have known of this tradition and disbelieved it. It may be observed that if the spring En-rogel (interpreted in the Targum to mean the spring of the fullers) is the same as the fountain of Siloam which is usually identified with it, or according to Robinson, that at a little greater distance, the well of Job or Joab, it would agree with the circumstance that the slayer was els rcov yv0.<$>4<av y "one of the fullers," as if speaking of a class of men either well- known or likely to be close at hand. m Joseph. B. J. iv. 5. See Williams' Holy City, i. 173, (2nd edition.) AS NARRATED BY HEGESIPPUS. 335 the alleged passage of Josephus quoted by Origen, Comm. in Matt. 324 ; Eus. H. E. ii. 22, the whole stress is laid on the fact that the calamities of the city were a judgment for the death of the Just one ; whether a few years sooner or later, could be of no great moment either to the Jewish or the Christian historian of the event, SERMON VI. SUPPLEMENT TO SERMON III. THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. HEB. i. 1, 2. God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by His Son, whom He hath made the heir of all things. WHEN first I opened this course of Sermons SERM. VI on the chief characters of the Apostolical age, it "T^T^T was also my hope to describe on such a occasions as SERM - '" would not interfere with the more general argu- ment, the subordinate influences which, though of less moment than those that are involved in the characters of the three great Apostles, are yet neces- sary to complete the full picture ; namely, the purely Jewish element of the Church of Palestine, and the mixed element of the Hellenistic Jews ; closing it may possibly be at some future time with the great catastrophe which cut short the influence of both in the capture of Jerusalem by Titus. Of these the first was discussed at the end of last Advent, in an a Preached on the Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul. SUPP. TO SERM. Ill 838 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. SERM. analysis of the character and Epistle of St. James, and now I trust that I may be allowed on this day, so especially connected with the name of St. Paul, to dwell on that peculiar portion of his teaching which is preserved to us in the Epistle to the Hebrews, and which has always been regarded as exhibiting, more or less distinctly, the influences shared by the Apostolical age in common with the Church of Alexandria. It is needless to remind you that the Jewish race at the time of the Christian era was commonly divided into the purely Hebrew b Jews, whose centre was at Jerusalem, and the Grecian or Hellenistic Jews, whose centre was that great city, which bore the name of the only conqueror of ancient or modern times who has succeeded in fusing toge- ther the discordant elements of the East and West. There, under the sway of the Grecian Ptolemies, a colony of Jews had grown up so important as to be known by a distinct name , and to have a separate worship of their own ; there was the chief seat of the later Jewish literature ; there also was the chief school of Christian theology during the four first b The word " Hebrew," CEftpaios,) as is well known, is used in the New Testament, and in the earliest ecclesiastical Greek, for those Jews who spoke Hebrew, whilst the word " Hellenist," ('EAATji/tWTjs,) always translated in the authorized version by the word " Grecian " as distinct from " Greek," (which is confined to the translation of "EXX^i/,) is used for those Jews who, living in the eastern parts of the empire, made use of the Greek language, then the medium of communication between all civilized nations. See especially Acts vi. 1. c See Jos. Ant. xiv. 7. 2 ; 10. 1 ; xix. 5.2; B. J. ii. 18. 7. THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 339 centuries. But, great as must have been the in- SERM. VI fluence of the atmosphere on the outward aspect 8UPP T0 of the Christian Church, even in its earliest times, SERM - '" and long as it survived the extinction of the Church of Jerusalem, it seems at first sight to have been passed by in the sacred record as if it had never existed. Few points bring before us so vividly our imperfect information of the apostolic times as .the recollection of what we do and do not know of the one representative of that great community who appears before us in the person of Apollos. There is no one d whose natural gifts are so highly com- mended in the New Testament, as are his eloquence and power when he was first found by Aquila and Priscilla at Ephesus ; no one out of the Apostolic circle whose name attains so great a pre-eminence as his, when it was placed by the Corinthian fac- tions on a level with that of Paul, of Cephas, and of Christ Himself. But this is all, and what Scripture fails to tell us, tradition, contrary to its usual cus- tom, does not even attempt to supply ; of him almost alone amongst the characters of the New Testament can it be said that his name is enrolled e in no calendar, however apocryphal, his presence attested by no relics, however disputed. And thus whereas by the side of St. Peter arose St. James, by the side of St. John his less illustrious namesake the Ephesian Presbyter, whose presence tended to d See Acts xviii. 24; 1 Cor. i. 12. e The name of Apollos as a Saint is said nowhere to occur in the Acta Sanctorum. z2 VI. SUPP. TO 8ERM. Ill 340 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. SERM. confuse the traditions of the early Church re- specting the Apostle himself over the whole re- gion which bears his name in the New Testament St. Paul reigns alone, and the one character which might have been placed in competition with him in the same sphere has been swept out of it by subse- quent history as if it had never existed. But, whilst Alexandria itself with all that belongs to it is thus entirely, and as it were studiously thrown into the shade, as if to guard the sacred precincts from the slightest intrusion of merely human wisdom, as if to impress upon us that " the " understanding of the prudent, and the scribe and ft disputer of this world" had indeed no place amongst the Apostles and Evangelists of Christ ; yet still, as there is a true union of philosophy and faith, which Christianity does not refuse to recognise, so there was a true union of divine and human learning even then, of which one phase at least is perpetuated in the New Testament. What there was in it purely outward and transitory has for the most part passed away with the theologians of Alexandria, who have preserved to us only its exaggerated and distorted likeness ; what was compatible with the divine sim- plicity of Apostolical faith, may for the most part be found where the Church has always sought and re- cognised it, in the Epistle to the Hebrews. I. In considering the object and occasion of this Epistle, it is not necessary here to enter on the question of its origin. If the Gospels of St. Mark THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 341 and St. Luke, though not written by Apostles, SERM. have yet been admitted into the Sacred Volume, 8UPP> ' TO no one need regard the canonicity of a book as SE dependent on its authorship ; if once we recognise its place in the circle of Apostolical teaching, it has an authority over us which no criticism respecting its origin can disturb. And in the case before us, quite independently of the question of its general authority, it is still less necessary to decide posi- tively, inasmuch as whether we believe it to be or not to be the writing of Paul himself, the conclu- sion at which we must arrive concerning its end and spirit must be substantially the same. If in obedience to the doubts suggested by Clement, Irenseus, Hippolytus, Tertullian, Cyprian, Caius, Origen, and in a less degree by Clement of Alex- dria, Eusebius, and Jerome, we ascribe the Epistle in its present state not to the Apostle, but to one of his companions, whether Luke, or Clement, or Barnabas, or Apollos, we must still acknowledge that though not of Paul it is Pauline ; that without the intervention of Paul it would, humanly speaking, never have been composed ; that the thoughts and images are too like those of the Epistles to the Romans and Galatians to be merely an accidental coincidence ; that there is a certain sense in which we may thus far, in accordance with the common phraseology, regard it as the " Epistle of Paul the " Apostle to the Hebrews." If on the other hand we venture to trust in the decision of most of the writers of the Eastern Church, and the universal SUPP. TO SERM. III. 342 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. SERM. belief which subsequently prevailed in the middle ages, and conjecture that it was written not only in the spirit but by the hand of Paul, yet still the indications which Providence has left to guide us on its very front by the marked difference of form, style, and language, from the other Epistles which expressly claim to be by the Apostle himself, and by its confessed approximation in all these points to the Alexandrian school, must compel us to con- clude that if St. Paul himself be the author he has assumed for the time a new character ; he has dropped the commanding tone of the Apostle of the Gentiles which marks the thirteen previous Epistles ; he has become e (to use his own phrase) " a Jew to the Jews ;" he has " for their sakes f " transferred in a figure the things of Apollos to " himself;" he appears before us, not as heretofore, with independent authority, " neither by men nor " through men," but " as s having had the word con- " firmed to him by those that first heard it ;" not " with signs 11 and wonders and mighty deeds," but as "an eloquent man 1 , and mighty in the Scrip- " tures, mightily convincing the Jews, and shewing " out of the Scriptures that Jesus is the Christ." Whether in short we believe that " Paul planted " and Apollos watered j ," or whether we prefer to think that Paul both planted and watered, suffice it to know that in either case it is " God that gave e 1 Cor. ix. 20. f 1 Cor. iv. 6. * Heb. ii. 3 ; comp. Gal. i. 1. h 2 Cor. xii. 12; comp. Heb. ii. 4. l Acts xviii. 24, 28. J 1 Cor. iii. 6. THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 343 " the increase :" whether we lean to the decision of SERM. VI. the Western or the Eastern Church, we cannot go 8UPP .' TO wrong if we acquiesce in the judgment of the pro- 8I foundest of all the ancient Fathers, that amidst the conflicting theories on the subject " the real author " is known to God alone V Leaving then this question, let us proceed to examine the time, circumstances, and object, of the composition of this great Epistle. It was addressed, as its ancient and undisputed title tells us, " to the " Hebrews;" that is, to that portion of the Jewish nation which spoke the Hebrew tongue, the aristo- cracy, if I may so speak, of the whole race, unde- filed by any contamination of Grecian custom or language. Palestine, to a true Israelite, whether Hebrew or Hellenist, must still have been the home to which his national feelings turned. Jerusalem, k " The style of the Epistle to the Hebrews has not the rude- " ness of the language of the Apostle who confessed himself to be " rude in speech, that is, in diction : but the Epistle is more purely " Greek in its composition, as would be confessed by every one " who is any judge of the difference of styles. On the other hand, " that the thoughts of the Epistle are wonderful, and not inferior " to the acknowledged writings of the Apostle, would be agreed ' ' upon by every one who has paid any attention to the reading of " the Apostle. My own judgment then is that the thoughts are " the Apostle's, but the language and the composition of some " one who noted down the Apostle's views, (ra a7roo-ToXca,) and " as it were commented as a scholiast on what had been said by " his master. If then any Church hold to this Epistle as Paul's, " let it have the credit of so doing, for it was not without reason " that the ancients have left it as Paul's. But as to who wrote " the Epistle, the truth is known to God." (Origen, ap. Eus. H.E. vi. 25.) 344 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. SERM, to a Jewish Christian, even though he wrote from SUFP T0 imprisonment in a distant country, would, especially &ERM. in. j n this its impending crisis, command the first claim on his " word of exhortation 1 ." It is still therefore the Church of St. James which we see before us, but with times and circumstances far different, St. James himself already it would seem numbered with the departed, " the end of whose conversa- " tion" the Hebrews were to consider with grate- ful remembrance ; the calamities which then only threatened them from a distance were now near at hand; the bonds of their communion were to be drawn closer and closer, "so much the more as they " saw the day approaching" ;" the trial of trials, which year after year had been delayed, was now brought inevitably before them the dreadful necessity of choosing once for all between those ancient institu- tions, in which up to this time even Apostles had not refused to join, and that eternal polity which could alone endure the convulsion which was " to " shake not the earth only but also heaven /' The teaching of St. Paul, from the First Epistle to Thessalonica down to the latest Epistle to Timothy, had for these wants no especial meaning ; the controversy of Jew with Gentile was either set at rest for ever, or at least had no concern for 1 Heb. xiii. 22. m Heb. xiii. 7- This assumes that the date of James's death in Josephus, A.D. 63, is correct. n Heb. x. 25. Heb. xii. 26. THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 345 them; the purely spiritual teaching of St. John SERM. VI could not fully come into the world until after the SUPP. TO dissolution of that older framework of the earlier SERM - In - period of the Apostolic age under which they still sheltered themselves. It was a link between the two which they needed, a teaching which, whilst it entered into their national feelings with a sympathy beyond what could have been possible during the vehemence of the original contest with Judaism, should yet through those feelings prepare them for the full appreciation of those spiritual truths, which St. Paul himself had rather indicated than expressly taught. It was no native prophet of Palestine, dwelling within the sphere of their own narrower view, to whom the suffering Hebrews can have looked for a solution of their doubts ; here, if ever, was the time for the introduction of a higher wisdom, a profounder knowledge, such as might well be supposed to exist amongst their foreign countrymen, analogous, it may be, to the gifts which had been partially communicated from contact with Greek philosophy, but elevated above them by the purifying and strengthening influence of Apostolical faith and love. Such was the consolation which they needed, and it came. It came, bearing in its very form the mark of that transitional period to which it belonged, when, after the subsiding of the personal contest of St. Paul with his antagonists, it ceased to be regarded from whom, but only to whom and for what object Apostolical instructions were sent ; when, as in the contrast of old between 346 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. s E R M. the acts and speeches of the earlier Prophets and - the books p of the later, so here the living Epistle of . in. the first period of Christian history was gradually fading off into the systematic and general treatise, headed by no personal greeting, closed by no auto- graph salutation. As in form, so also in style, it bespoke at once its peculiar character : language equally classical may be found in parts of St. Luke ; appeals to their national history and tradition equally emphatic in the speech of the Hellenist Stephen; interpretations of the Old Testament equally spiritual in the Epistles to Corinth and Galatia ; adoption of terms equally philosophical in the writings of St. John ; but there is no other part of the New Testament where all these Helle- nistic elements are brought so strongly forward. There they are occasional and accidental, here they are perpetual and essential ; the rhetorical flow, the sustained argument, the polished Greek, the spiritualising interpretations, neither can be, nor by an observant reader ever have been overlooked, as the predominant marks of this Epistle, however we may attempt to account for them. And, as the outward aspect, so also are the inward contents of the Epistle. It was in true harmony with the wants of the time that all the Apostolical writings immediately before and after, as well as during this period, those especially, addressed by St. Paul and St. John to the Asiatic Churches, bring out with the utmost vividness the One central Object P See Ewald on the Prophets, i. 40 ; ii. 208, 392, 542. THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 347 of Christian faith in the Person of our Lord, in SERM. direct contrast to the dissolving forms both of opi- nions and institutions with which this particular 8ERM - epoch was beset. But the peculiarity of the Epistle to the Hebrews is that in it the manifestation of God in Christ is set forth not only in its more general aspect, but as the consummation (if I may so speak) of the historical course of human events, as the satisfaction of the yearnings, the realization of the institutions, of the Jewish nation. It is necessary once for all to place before our minds the feelings of the Hebrew Christians. Their national existence was, as I have said, on the eve of destruction ; the star of their ancient glory was about to set in blood ; their institutions had " de- " cayed and waxed old" and were " ready to vanish " away q ;" but still for this very reason there was the fond attachment which clings to what all the world beside has abandoned ; there was the longing linger- ing look which a dying nation casts behind to its earlier life ; there was the despair which cherished the more dearly the vestiges of it that still re- mained. The ' chariots of angels, even twenty thou- sand of angels Y amidst which the Law had been de- livered ' in the holy place of Sinai,' they might still believe to watch unseen around the walls of Jeru- salem, as when they guarded the prophet of old at Dothan. The recollections of Moses and of Joshua 3 , <i Heb. viii. 13. r As inferred from Heb. i. 3 13. See Ps. Ixviii. 17 ; 2 Kings vi. 17. s As inferred from Heb. iii. iv. 348 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. SERM. the possession of the Law and of the promised rest, ^- still seemed to them pledges of the Divine protection. HI. The Temple still stood in all its magnificence on Mount Moriah ; the priestly ministrations still con- tinued day by day according to the exact letter of the Levitical law ; the pontificate of Aaron, after the vicissitudes of fifteen hundred years, after the dis- appearance of Judge, and King, and Prophet, through the splendour of the monarchy and the oppressions of the captivity, still remained unshaken and un- impaired as when it was first ordained amongst the mountains of Horeb. What wonder if the better spirits of the nation should be fascinated by the spell, which rallied even the blood-thirsty ruffians of the final siege round the ruins of the burning sanc- tuary, which awakened a glow of patriotic enthu- siasm in the breast even of the renegade Josephus while he described his descent 1 from the house of Levi, which invested the high-priesthood 11 even of Caiaphas with a character of Divine inspiration? What was there, they might well ask, what was there in the whole world beside, which could com- pensate to them for the loss of recollections so august, of institutions so sacred ? It was to meet this need that the Epistle to the Hebrews was written. And now, if we compare its opening words with those of the Gospel of St. John, it is the natural result of what has just been said, that whereas in the latter we are carried be- * Joseph. Vita, c. 1. Comp. Contra Apionem, i. 7; ii. 21. u John xi. 51. THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 349 yond the limits of the visible world to that " be- SERM. " ginning in which the Word was with God and the - " Word was God," in the former we are brought 8ERM - down to the close of the long series of ages in which, after " having in times past spoken unto the fathers by " the prophets, God in these last days spoke to them " by His Sonv." If the Ephesians, Colossians, and Philippians, were taught to look to Him who was 4 'the First-born of every creature, the Head of the " Church, the Lord of heaven and earth*," we find that the Hebrew Christians are especially reminded that there y was One far above all their own ministering angels ; One who was 2 to be " counted worthy of " more glory" than their great law-giver Moses ; One a who was to guide them into a deeper rest, than even their great deliverer who with the same signi- ficant name of "Joshua" or "Jesus" had led them to their earlier rest in Canaan ; that there was b a true sense in which the glory not only of Aaron, but even of the mysterious patriarch king of Salem, was transferred to Him who was to be to the whole human race " a Priest for ever after the order of " Melchisedec." Every name, every feeling, every institution, which had existed under the older covenant was still to v Compare the two passages, as they appear in the Gospel and Epistle for Christmas-Day. x Eph. i. 2023; Col. i. 1518; Phil. ii. 10. y Heb. i. 313. ' Heb. iii. 1. 8 Heb. iv. 8. Compare too the more than usually frequent use in this Epistle of the name of " Jesus" for our Lord. b Heb. v. 10; vii. 28. 350 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. SERM. continue, but invested with a higher meaning, a SUPP T0 meaning, new indeed in itself, but yet fulfilling for SERM. in. fa e rg f. ti me w h a t h a( j before been dimly shadowed forth; "the first was taken away only that the " second might be established." It was indeed no visible hierarchy of angelic forms, to which their thoughts were now directed, but d He who was the same always, and " whose years could never fail ;" it was no earthly 6 Sabbath to which He was to guide them, but the eternal " rest which remains for the " people of God ;" no weapons of human warfare, like those which won the land of Canaan, but the " word f of God, quick and powerful, and sharper " than any two-edged sword ;" the Laws was to be written not on tables of stone but "in their hearts and " in their minds ;" the Sacrifice 11 was to be offered up in no earthly sanctuary; the Priest was to minis- ter within the veil, "not 1 in the holy places made " with hands, but in heaven itself, now to appear " in the presence of God for us." But still it was something to be told that the past and the future were not to be suddenly snapt in sunder, something to feel that the new wine k was not rudely to be forced on those whose natural feeling would still make them say that " the old was better," some- thing to be assured by Apostolic teachers that the words, the thoughts, the associations with which c Heb. x. 9. d Heb. i. 12. e Heb. iv. 9. f Heb. iv. 12. g Heb. viii. 10; x. 16. h Heb. ix. 12. 1 Heb. ix. 24. k Luke v. 39. THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 351 they had been familiar would not perish in the SERM. approaching catastrophe, but would endure, as humanly speaking through the medium of this very Epistle they have endured, to become the stay and support of thousands in every age and country, to whom the difficulties, the sentiments, the very ex- istence of the original Hebrew Christians would be utterly unknown and unintelligible. Yet, gradual as this preparation was, tenderly as they were accus- tomed by "the milk 1 of babes" to receive "the strong " meat which belongeth to them that are of full age," it still remained to touch some faculty or feeling in their own hearts which should respond to this higher strain, which should raise them from m " the first " principles of the doctrine of Christ to go on unto " perfection," which should prevent them when in n sight of " so great salvation" from sinking back into the wretched state of the apostate nation, " rejected " and nigh unto cursing, whose end was to be " burned ." That feeling was "Faith," the same " Faith" which had been so triumphantly brought forward by the great Apostle of the Gentiles in his conflict with Judaism, but which was now insisted upon not in vehement controversy, but in earnest ex- hortation ; a faith, not condemned like mere Jewish faith, as in the Epistle of St. James, not set in dis- tinct opposition to the works of the Law, as in the Epistle to the Galatians, but traced back through all its various stages from its most general manifes- 1 Heb. v. 13, 14. m Heb. vi. 1. n Heb. ii. 2. Heb. vi. 8. 352 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. SERM. tation by which P in its earliest effort the Jewish vi. J supp T0 mind had " understood that the worlds were framed HI. by t^ wor( J of God," down to its latest workings in the heroic struggles of the Maccabean age, " desti- " tute, afflicted, tormented." With such a " con- " fidence (vTroaraa-is) in things hoped for, with " such an evidence of things not seen," they might well rise above the visions of outward dominion and array of legal ceremonies which hovered before the earth-bound senses of their countrymen; they might still have " patient q trust that in a little while he " that shall come will come and will not tarry ;" they might well be assured that although not like their fathers in the presence of " the terrible 1 " sight " of the mountain that might be touched and that 11 burned with fire," they were even amidst the im- pending ruin of their earthly home, brought within " the city of the living God s , the heavenly Jerusa- " lem, to the innumerable company of angels, the " general assembly and Church of the first-born " which are written in heaven, and God the Judge " of all, and the spirits of just men made perfect, " and Jesus the Mediator of the new covenant." II. Such is the Epistle to the Hebrews ; the true link between St. Paul and St. John, the true prepa- ration for the end of the old and the rise of the new dispensation, the true picture of the Apostolical sympathy of a loftier spirit and a larger heart with the wants and failings of the weaker brethren of P Heb. xi. 237. Heb. x. 37. r Heb. xii. 18. s Heb. xii. 22. THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 353 Judaea. Like the Epistle of St. James, it endea- SERM. vours to exhibit the new covenant not as the de- - struction, but as the fulfilment of the old : only in SEKM. m. accordance with the change of times and circum- stances, it was not now the moral but the religious element of the ancient law that the Hebrew Chris- tians needed to see developed. Like the Apoca- lypse, it is written under the impression of ap- proaching convulsions, and the prospect of what was in some sense the immediate coming of the Lord ; its imagery is in many respects the same*, only with the necessary difference between the fervid strains of a prophetic vision, and the calm reason- ings of a didactic treatise. Resembling however these two books in the readers to whom or in the circumstances under which it was written, resem- bling them in the peculiar light which it throws on the local and temporary influences of the age, it resembles them no less in the subordination in which it stands to that aspect of apostolical Chris- tianity which has of itself an universal and eter- nal interest. It is not, nor could we have ex- pected it to be, a necessary part of the conti- nuous progress of the new revelation ; it fills up an interstice between the successive stages of the ascent; it does not in itself command on every side the approaches to the heavenly summit. But in saying even thus much, it is obvious that there have been, and will be, to the end of the world, * Comp. especially Heb. iv. 12; Rev. i. 16; xix. 1315: Heb. vii., viii. ; Rev. i. 13 : Heb. xii. 22 ; Rev. xx. 1. A a 354 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. SERM. peculiar times and occasions, when this Epistle fur- supp T0 nishes us not merely with a true representation of SERM. in. Christianity, but with the very representation of it which is of all others most needed, when the loss of it from the Sacred Canon could for the time be hardly compensated by the possession of all the rest. To explain the peculiar bearing of the truths themselves which this Epistle teaches, is beyond my present purpose ; I have spoken only of the occasion and the mode of its teaching them. In every part of Scripture there is this two-fold method of Divine instruction ; not the message only, but the circumstances of its communication, not the matter only, but the form. It is to the latter alone that I have wished to confine myself, as heretofore, so now ; and, although in comparison with those who are employed in unfolding and applying the truths themselves we may seem to be but as hewers of wood and drawers of water in the Temple of God, yet it is surely a useful though an humble task to gather such lessons as we can from the time and circumstances under which these eternal truths were delivered. There have, as we know, been extraordinary exceptions when the two have been wholly disjoined, as when we are told that God through the voice of the dumb ass rebuked the madness of the prophet, or that Caiaphas spake by Divine inspiration 11 the words which even from Apo- u 2 Pet. ii. 16; John xi. 51. THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. sties had been hitherto withheld. But this is not SERM. VI the usual process ; it is not through the unconscious p ' T0 agency of an irrational animal, or an apostate priest, 8ERM - "' but through the living words of His own holy Evan- gelists and Apostles that God has caused His will to be known. To learn with what object and in what spirit these words were first uttered, is not all, but it surely is something; to place ourselves at the feet of our inspired instructors, and catch, so far as we may, the look, the emphasis, the feeling, with which their lessons were accompanied, is surely a fitter posture for truly understanding them, than if we merely sit afar off and hear the sound of their voices as they come to us over the waste of many centuries, borne indeed on the wings of a mighty rushing wind, but with no visible form on which our thoughts or imaginations can repose. What then is the lesson which we may learn not from the truths which the Epistle to the Hebrews communicates, but from the outward circumstances, the form and manner, in which they were commu- nicated ? 1. In the first place there is for all who live, like the Hebrew Christians, on the point of transition between two epochs, a real instruction to be derived from this example of the method in which under such circumstances larger and wider views were im- parted to those who clung to the older state of things. The Epistle to the Galatians no doubt furnishes a proof that there may be characters, who can only A a2 356 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. SERM. be shaken out of their ancient prejudices by having TO new truths placed before them in the most vivid n. contrast ; but the Epistle to the Hebrews teaches us no less that there is a stage in the process of transition when ancient forms and feelings must be treated not with stern severity, but with tender sympathy ; when the failing heart and flagging spirit will be best attracted towards Divine truth not by seeing its opposition, but its resemblance, to that with which they have been themselves familiar. It might for example have been asked even then what words or institutions could of themselves ap- pear more transient and fugitive, than those of "temple," " sacrifice," and "priest," to one who knew that in a few short years or months the whole Jew- ish system was to perish for ever ? what fanaticism could appear more grovelling than that which still regarded with devoted reverence what had now be- come a u den of thieves," an empty "shadow," a " whited sepulchre x ?" Yet it seemed good that these institutions should be confronted by those truths in the Christian Revelation, which have ever been regarded not as their antagonists, so much as their counterpart and fulfilment : that these feelings should be met not by leaving them without an object, but by raising them to those true objects which had hitherto been known to them only through earthly veils ; that there should have been a meeting point in which the old should blend into the new, without any violent disruption, the perish- * Matt. xxi. 13; Col. ii. 17; Matt, xxiii. 27. THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 357 able exhibited as the type of the eternal, without SERM. any unchristian compromise. . SUPP. TO It is a lesson also not only to those who like 8ERM - " the author of the Epistle have to communicate new truths, but to those who like its readers have to receive them. A struggle indeed so trying as theirs none are again likely in all its extent to experience ; never since have the foundations of society seemed to be so shaken to their base, as in the dissolution of the Jewish commonwealth ; never since have systems so venerable as the Jewish jpolity and priesthood been seen hastening to their graves. Yet still in a measure such critical periods have occurred, and will be likely to recur, in the history of the Christian world. Some such trial was un- dergone by the Church at the fall of the Roman empire, or still more when it lost the social and religious framework of the Middle Ages ; some such trial for the Christian mind and conscience, when the traditional and authorized version of the Sacred Scriptures was first confronted with the countless variations of the original manuscripts, or when the ancient mode of interpreting them was first disturbed by the discoveries of Copernicus and Galileo. It is in the panics which attend on such convulsions as these that this Epistle may serve to reassure us that there is a difference between what is essential and what is accidental. It is a pledge to us that those feelings which we most cherish and most value will not be lost to us with the destruc- tion of those outward objects, on which they may 358 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. SERM. now be fastened, but will it may be we know not supp To how be taken up into a higher sphere, as was the in. Hebrew reverence for the ceremonial of the Temple service. It is a pledge that amidst all the varia- tions of things outward, local, national, there are truths inward, eternal, unchangeable, on which we can always fall back, and towards which every such change teaches us ever more and more to advance ; not always "laying again the foundations, but going " on unto perfection y," adding ourselves, if so it may be, to the long catalogue of the heroes of faith who have gone before us, " God having provided " some better thing for our children, that we with- " out them should not be made perfect 2 ." It is a pledge, we may fervently trust, that He in whom the Hebrew Christians were taught to find the most complete satisfaction to all their wants, will still be to us as to them, amidst all changes inward and outward, a sufficient stay and support, " Jesus 11 Christ, the same yesterday, to-day, and for " everV 2. It is also the Epistle for sufferers; for suf- ferers of whatever kind, whether from the more refined suffering of inward perplexity, such as I have just now noticed, or from the actual " re- " proaches and afflictions b ," such as fell on the Jewish Christians amidst the persecutions and cala- mities which attended them in the downfall of their nation. It is there, that those words are written y Heb. vi. 1. z Heb. xi. 40. a Heb. xiii. 8. b Heb. x. 33. THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 359 for our endless comfort and instruction, which are SERM. appointed to be read, and which have been read ^ SUPP. TO again and again by the beds of the sick and dying, 8ERM - '" to teach us how we should * patiently and with ' thanksgiving bear our heavenly Father's correc- 1 tion, whensoever by any manner of adversity it ' should please His gracious goodness to visit us c .' It is there that more fully than in any other part of Scripture we have set before us the examples of our suffering brethren, who " confessed that they were d " strangers and pilgrims upon earth," who had "trials " of cruel mockings and scourgings, yea moreover of "bonds and imprisonment; were stoned, were sawn " asunder, were tempted, were slain with the sword, " who wandered about in sheep-skins and goat-skins, " in deserts and mountains, and caves and dens of " the earth, of whom the world was not worthy." It is there that with the most especial solemnity He to whom its whole teaching points is brought before us as the Man of Sorrows. What the Gos- pel of St. Luke is to the two earlier Gospels, this is to the other Epistles. As it is to St. Luke's Gospel that we most chiefly refer for the accounts of His tenderness, His sympathy, His own human sufferings, so here we learn the practical application of it to ourselves. In the other Epistles we read of the greatness of His work of redemption, of His in- communicable union with the Father, but it is to this Epistle that we turn to learn of Him " who in c See the Exhortation in the Order for the Visitation of the Sick. * Heb. xi. 13, 3638. 360 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. SERM. " the days of His flesh offered up prayers and sup- ^- " plications with strong crying and tears," " who SERM. in. endured such contradiction of sinners against " Himself," who is " touched with the feeling of " our infirmities, having been in all points tempted " like as we are, yet without sin e ." 3. Were I preaching before a common congrega- tion, it might be needless to proceed, but in this place there is yet a further lesson to be furnished by this Epistle, in the very structure of its outward form and composition. It is here that we have before us the first and only Apostolical model of a systematic study and Christian application of the older Scrip- tures. They furnish no doubt the illustrations and the style of St. Peter, St. Paul, and St. John ; they furnish much of the spirit and almost the whole imagery of St. James and the Apocalypse ; but it is here alone that they are made the object of a distinct and acknowledged study. The comparison of the two dispensations, which is elsewhere implied and suggested, is here alone formally stated ; it is from this source that we chiefly derive our use of the very names of the " Old and the New Testament f ," for the two parts of the Sacred Canon ; it is here that we have the earliest exposition of the problem which has so often agitated thoughtful minds, ' Ve- ' tus Testamentum in Novo patet ; Novum Testa- * mentum in Vetere latet.' The peculiar character of the Epistle at once ex- presses to us its peculiar object. It approaches the books of the Old Testament not as from a Hebrew, * Heb. v. 7; xii. 3; iv. 15. f Heb. viii. 7; x. 14. THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 361 but as from a Christian, point of view; it regards SERM. them as standing in connexion with an institution '- 8UPP. TO that is virtually past and gone, but as still capable *** m. themselves of a living application ; the subjects of which it treats are purely Jewish, and therefore partaking of all the practical hopes and fears, the immediate wants, the impending calamities of the time ; but its own style is the least Jewish of any part of the New Testament. It looks on as it were from a sphere of its own, withdrawn from the actual presence of that which it meditates, as if that its own meditations might be themselves unbroken. It is as though the turmoil of the Apostolical age was for a moment suspended, as if on the eve of the approaching convulsion we were called aside into the stillness of the student's chamber, and bid to contemplate in quiet the relations of the earlier and the later systems which we had hitherto watched only in struggle and conflict. Here alone in the New Testament we are allowed to see, if I may so say, the very process and apparatus of composition ; here alone we are called upon to dwell on the skilful construction of sentences, on the euphonious ar- rangement of words ; here alone, whilst the great subject of the Epistle expands before us, we are in- vited to trace its labour and research, to watch the careful comparison of passage with passage, to see the s scroll of the Septuagint Version unfolded as it e The quotations from the Old Testament in the Epistle to the Hebrews can be traced, as is well known, not merely to the LXX version, but to the particular edition of it, preserved to us in the Codex Alexandrinus. SUPP. TO SERM. Ill 362 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. SERM. were before our very eyes, text by text, with scru- pulous fidelity ; to be present at the reconstruction of the details of the Temple service in the ninth chapter, or the summary of Jewish history in the eleventh. The practical, energetic, impassioned Epistle has given way to the outward form of a regular Treatise; the greatness of the Apostolic office has retired for a time into the background to make way for the first advances of Sacred Criticism. Doubtless when we come to consider this aspect of the Epistle to the Hebrews in detail, there are (to use its own words) " many things to say, hard " to be uttei-ed;" things, as in St. Paul's Epistles generally, " hard to be understood, which they that " are unlearned and unstable may wrest to their " own destruction 11 ." But the general lesson which we may derive from it is obvious and indisputable. It surely is a great thing to us, if we would but feel it to be so, that, amidst all the differences which divide the Old from the New Testament, we have this undoubted assurance, that it was not set aside in the Apostolic age as belonging to a perishable and perishing system, but was still even in that momentous crisis revered as a source of Divine instruction, explored as an unexhausted mine of Divine truth ; that its expressions of devotion and warning, its record of institutions and events, were thought worthy to rouse the sinking faith of apo- stolical Christians, to engage the deepest research of apostolical teachers. Nor in considering the style h Heb. v. 11 ; 2 Pet. iii. 16. THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 863 and manner of this Epistle ought we to overlook SERM. the feeling of solemn responsibility which it im- VI> -.- SUPP. TO presses upon us in our study of the Old Testament, 8ER >- not indulging in fanciful and unrestrained specu- lations concerning it, but making use of those ap- pointed methods of ascertaining its real meaning, which Providence has afforded to us, and of which this Epistle gives such remarkable indications ; not dwelling on details selected at random from the sacred narrative, but viewing it, as in this Epistle, in its general bearings, systematically and as a whole ; not confounding all its various portions to- gether in indiscriminate confusion, but comparing, so far as our knowledge will allow, the occasions 1 and the context of psalm, and history, and pro- phecy ; the successive formation part by part of the " great cloud of witnesses," through all " the " sundry times and divers manners by which God in " past times spoke to the fathers by the prophets." And this brings me to yet a further principle which is involved in the method of instruction adopted in the Epistle to the Hebrews. In point- ing out the continuity of the Divine dispensations, it necessarily confined itself to the relations between Christianity and Judaism, because it was of Judaism alone that circumstances required it to speak. In using the weapons of argument and of learning, it necessarily confined itself to the language of the Hel- 1 Compare for the confirmation of this fact the argument in Maurice's Lectures on the Epistle to the Hebrews, p. 3639. 364 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS, SERM. lenistic literature, because that was the highest form - of mental cultivation with which the Jewish mind was SUPP. TO in. familiar. But when with the added light of eighteen centuries we read the solemn words with which the Epistle opens, is it possible to escape the convic- tion that they have a meaning high above the sense which they bore to their own immediate readers? that when we of the western world see, as we can- not but see, in the dim aspirations of heathen mythology and philosophy the anticipations of a brighter world to come, we may indeed feel that " God, who at sundry times and in divers manners " spoke in time past unto our fathers, hath in these " latter days," not by an interruption, but by a consummation of His previous revelations, however imperfect and partial, " spoken unto us by His Son, " whom He hath made the heir of all things?" When in its general style we trace not merely the unconscious reproduction of Gentile forms, or the occasional fragments of Gentile learning, which I noticed on a former occasion in the Epistles to the Corinthians, but the polished Greek, the well- turned periods, the elaborate arguments, with which this Epistle alone abounds, may we not turn with pleasure to the sanction here given to the philological, and oratorical, and critical studies, which humanly speaking we trace to the well-spring of Hellenis- tic literature at the University of Alexandria, and may we not extend it by a just analogy to those Gentile schools of learning which have sprung up in countries of which the Hebrews never dreamed, THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 365 under the auspices of a greater than Alexandrian SERMI civilization, of which we are the natural inheritors ? St IT. TO When m the eleventh chapter of the Epistle we 8ERM - " read the record of Patriarchal saints, and Israelite heroes, and Maccabean patriots, who, although ex- pressly said "not to have received the promises," are yet held out as examples of faith to Christians is it not allowed us to apply the thought to our own his- torical studies, whether of the heroes of the heathen world, whose deeds of imperfect virtue have " ob- " tairied for them a good report," or still more of our own Christian ancestors 15 , who in a far higher sense than those old Hebrew worthies, "have through faith " subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, and " out of weakness been made strong," to feel that by the very course of our studies we too are " com- " passed about with a cloud of witnesses," far greater than that which this Epistle sets forth, in propor- tion as our Christian education has opened to us a wider and a loftier view, than by any Jewish student was or could be enjoyed ? May we in this place take this duly to heart, especially now at the commencement of our usual studies 1 ; may we feel all of us, both we who teach and we who learn, that if we are not the better and k It is hardly necessary to refer to the passage at the close of Archdeacon Hare's Sermons on the Victory of Faith, which forms so natural an accompaniment to the study of the eleventh chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews. 1 This Sermon was preached on the second day after the open- ing of the Lent Term. 366 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. SERM. the wiser for such pursuits, it is not their fault but ~suppTr<r ours 5 ma y we f ee l> whenever the Epistle to the HI. Hebrews is read, that it is a warrant to us for hoping that our work here, however different from that more direct and active contest with evil which is carried on by God's servants elsewhere, is yet worthy of a place in His dispensations ; that we may bear our part, however slight, in rearing up an edifice on that " foundation 111 ," of which St. Paul was the master builder, in preparing the way for that " perfection/' which was to close in the teaching of St. John. m I Cor. iii. 10, 6; Heb. vi. 1. ON THE DIVISIONS IN THE CORINTHIAN CHUECH. IN the Essay on the Judaizers of the Apostolical Age it has been attempted to give some account of what we should now call "the heresies" of the apostolic age ; in the present discussion it is intended to attempt an account of what would in like manner be called the "schisms" or factions of the same time two subjects indeed so closely connected that much which has been said of the former has necessa- rily anticipated what might be said on the latter, but still sufficiently distinct to deserve a separate consideration 3 . In tracing the history of the heresies of the apostolical age, there was no fear lest any feelings of reverence should be shocked by the discussion of men and of principles long since consigned by common consent to infamy and abhorrence. The peculiar curse of faction and party spirit on the other hand, is that it calls into its service the a It is hardly necessary to observe that the Greek words from which our names of " heresy " and " schism" are derived, are in fact synonymous. See especially Gal. vi. 20, 21, where the word "heresies," (oipeVfts,) is introduced between " seditions" and " envyings," evidently as a sin of the same character, and still more clearly in 1 Cor. xi. 18, 19, where as a reason for his belief that " there were divisions" (ffxiffnara) amongst the Corinthians, he gives the fact, " for there must be even heresies (alpeffcts) among you." The idea which we mean to express by the word "heresy," is in the New Testa- ment represented by the phrases of " false teachers," " false prophets, " false " apostles," and in this sense I have ventured to adopt it in the Essay on the Judaizers. 368 ON THE DIVISIONS OF THE CORINTHIAN CHU11CH. highest and purest names, and desecrates them in the process ; its essence is not that it is evil in itself, but that it worships with an unholy zeal objects in themselves most holy, and it might in this case therefore almost seem an ungracious task, to examine into the party watchwords of an age, which would naturally take them not from the fallible men of common history, but from those whose names we can least bear to hear associated with local or temporary animosities. There is however the less tempta- tion here to enter into detail, because, unlike the picture of the ancient " heresies " which is represented to us through the whole course of the apostolical Epistles, we are left to form our picture of the ancient "schisms" from a few scat- tered allusions, enough indeed to convince us of the fact, and to give us the judgment of Scripture concerning it, but not enough either to gratify our curiosity, or to offend our natural feelings of devotion by its perpetual prominence or recurrence. Omitting then all the more doubtful indications of such divisions as may exist in the New Testament or out of it, I propose to confine myself to those passages in the First Epistle to the Corinthians, to which, as forming our chief source of information in the Scriptures themselves, I have already had occasion more than once to allude, and to the apocryphal work called the Clementines, which forms the best comment upon them in subsequent writings, and which has also been frequently referred to in the previous pages. The fac- I. It is natural that whatever notices of these schisms we Corinth. nave * n other parts of the New Testament, (as for example in Gal. vi. 20; Rom. xvi. 17,) should have been brought to a head in the Church of Corinth. The traveller who has stood upon the lofty citadel of the Acro-corinthus, and seen the winding shores of the double sea unite in that narrow isthmus, will easily conceive how through those ON THE DIVISIONS IN THE CORINTHIAN CHURCH. 369 free outlets to the eastern and western world, the influences of the age would have passed to and fro to the city which has been truly called the V T enice of antiquity. The classical scholar who is familiar with the never-dying spirit of fac- tion, (arda-is,) the proverbial disorder of the Grecian com- monwealth the ecclesiastical student who recognises the same spirit reproducing itself in the later controversies of the Greek Church, and who in the times immediately suc- ceeding the Apostolic age is reminded by the Epistle of Clement to the same Corinthian congregation, almost of the very phrases which expressed the feuds of the old re- publics, will not be surprised in the one city of Greece which still retained some vestiges of political and social activity, to meet with traces of the ancient national spirit displaying itself in the new forms to which the vast excite- ment of the new faith would naturally give birth. That these factions were not merely chance divisions, but that they ranged themselves under distinct party watchwords, and that these party watchwords were derived not merely from their own local teachers, but from the highest and holiest names to which they could attach them- selves, is clear from the express mention, certainly of three, perhaps of four appellations, by which these factions claimed to be known. See especially 1 Cor. i. 12; iii. 4 22. The only passage which could throw any doubt on the reality of these parties and of their designations, is the expression in 1 Cor. iv. 6, "These things have I trans- " ferred in a figure (yLterao-^^arto-a) to myself and Apollos " for your sakes," as if, as it has been sometimes said, he had used the names of himself and Apollos instead of the names of the unknown leaders themselves, in order either to avoid mixing himself up in their party disputes, or to impress more forcibly upon them the futility of these rival claims, which even in himself and Apollos would be out of place, much more in those who really made them. But even Bb 370 ON THE DIVISIONS IN THE CORINTHIAN CHUIICH. if the whole passage (iv. 1 7) did refer principally to the subordinate teachers in the Corinthian Church, there still would be nothing in it necessarily to interfere with the literal meaning of the other passages, (i. 12; iii. 22,) which mention the names not only of Paul and Apollos, but of Cephas, and which naturally imply that whatever might be the claims or rivalries of particular leaders of the respective parties, those were the names to which the respective parties and leaders alike appealed. Accordingly it seems the natural inference that the Apostle here is stating the fact, that in- stead of speaking of the factions generally, especially of the rival faction calling itself by the name of Cephas, he had confined himself to those which called themselves after his name and that of Apollos, in order to shew that his censure was aimed not against his Judaizing opponents merely, but against the factious spirit itself, by which those who claimed to be his partisans were no less animated than those who claimed to be his enemies. Such appears to have been the course adopted also in i. 13 16, where he immediately selects the party which said, " I am of Paul," as the chief instance of the sin common to them all. When from the fact that such parties existed we come to consider what they were and in what their differences con- sisted, the scanty information which we possess forbids "us to advance anything with certainty beyond the most gene- ral statement. That they followed the great division of Jew and Gentile which run through all the Churches of this period, and that the adherents of the former ranged themselves under the name of Cephas, and those of the latter under Paul, will hardly be doubted; and, if so, it would seem probable that it was the party of Paul that were in the ascendant during the period of the First Epistle, which chiefly attacks such sins as would belong to the more Gentile portion of the community, and the party of Cephas during the period of the Second, which ex- ON THE DIVISIONS IN THE C01UNTHIAN CHURCH. 371 pressly attacks a formidable body of Judaizers. And the connexion of these latter with Cephas is further confirmed by the appeals which they would seem to have made to his example and authority, in the only passage where their presence is certainly indicated in the First Epistle, (ix. 4,) and in the stress laid by St. Paul on the error of Peter in his address to a similar party in Galatia. (Gal. ii. 17.) What might be the relation of the followers of Paul to those of Apollos is now perhaps impossible to determine. That they were on the whole homogeneous, may be in- ferred both from the connexion of Apollos with the dis- ciples of Paul in the Acts, (xviii. 26,) and from the constant union of their names in this Epistle, (iii. 4j iv. 6; xvi. 12.) The only other certain indications furnished to us are those contained in the contrast of the expressions ft planting" and " watering," " laying the foundation," and " building," which would, so far as they go, agree with the account in the Acts, speaking of the mission of Apollos to Corinth as producing a great impression subsequent to that of Paul. To this, although less positively, we might add the frequent allusions to pretensions to human wisdom and learning in the early chapters, (i. 17 28 ; ii. 1 6,) which would agree with no party so well as with those who professed to follow "the Alexandrian Jew, eloquent, mighty in the Scriptures;" whether we suppose them to have been found amongst the pure Gentiles or amongst the Hellenistic Jews, to whom he seems chiefly to have addressed his arguments. (Acts xviii. 28.) Whether the words eya Se Xpio-rov, refer to any dis- tinct party, must always remain doubtful. One would be glad with Chrysostom so to read the passage, as if the Apostle, after enumerating the other names, had broken off with the indignant exclamation, " But I am of Christ." Had however such an antithesis been intended, some such expression as eyco Be IIav\os Xpiarov seems almost Bb2 372 ON THE DIVISIONS IN THE CORINTHIAN CHUHCH. of necessity required to prevent the ambiguity which other- wise arises. And that there was some party laying claim to an exclusive connexion with the One Name which, as the Apostle implies in 1 Cor. i. 13, ought to have been re- garded as common to all, is strongly confirmed by the ex- pression in 2 Cor. x. 7, " If any man trust to himself that " he is of Christ, let him of himself think thus again, that " as he is Christ's, even so are we Christ's;" and although with a much less certainty, by the claims apparently of the same persons to be considered " Apostles of Christ," and " ministers of Christ," (xi. 10, 23.) Without profess- ing to determine the nature of this party with exact pre- cision, or to examine the many opinions which have been expressed concerning it, the context of the Second Epi- stle where the above passages occur, indicates that, if they refer to either of the two leading divisions of the Corinthian Church, it is to the Jewish ; and it is in accordance with what is implied of Judaizing Christians in other passages, that they should have dwelt especially on their national and lineal connexion with "the Christ/' "the anointed " Messiah," " the Son of David," and that " the outward "appearance," the "carnal and fleshly" arguments on which they prided themselves, (2 Cor. v. 12 : x. 2, 3, 7,) should have been their intercourse either with " Christ " Himself after the flesh," (as seems implied in 2 Cor. v. 16,) or with the original Jewish Apostles, who had seen Him, (1 Cor. ix. 1,) or with "the brethren of the Lord," (1 Cor. ix. 4,) especially James, who would be prominently put forward as the head of the Church of Palestine. (Comp. especially Gal. ii. 16, 20.) Such a view, which has been often defended at great length and in distinct treatises, is of course nothing more than a conjecture, but as the most probable, and, as that which has been in part assumed in a previous Essay, it seemed not out of place to mention it here. ON THE DIVISIONS IN THE CORINTHIAN CHURCH. 373 II. From these indications of the primitive factions inTheCle- the Apostolical Epistles, I pass at once over the various mentine8 ' traces of them more or less doubtful to the remarkable monument of them which is preserved to us from a some- what later period in the work published for the first time by Cotelerius, from a MS. in the Royal Library at Paris, under the name of " the Clementines," which, whether we regard it as a fruitful storehouse of ancient traditions, or an almost unique example of a work in which the early here- tics or sectarians speak for themselves, or as the earliest specimen of a religious romance, is certainly deserving of more attention than has usually been bestowed upon it, even although it be regarded as an accidental memorial of some obscure sect, and not as an indication of a more general tendency. It may be necessary for the sake of perspicuity to state briefly the nature of this work, of which a detailed account may be found in the elaborate treatise of Schliemann. The " Clementine Homilies," which form the chief part of the whole book, and of which eighteen out of twenty remain, profess to give the account of the life and conversion of Clement of Rome, as recorded by himself. He starts from Rome to Palestine in search of the truth, after having vainly sought for it in the schools of heathen philosophy : on his way meets with Barnabas at Alexandria, who intro- duces him at Csesarea to Peter, and after witnessing or taking part in various dialogues, in which Peter and him- self defend the unity of God against the Polytheistic errors of Simon Magus and Apion, is baptized in one of the cities of Phrenicia, which form the scene of the latter part of the book; and the story closes with a discovery and mutual recognition of his mother, brothers, and father, who had been separated from each other and believed to have been lost. The plot is of course subordinate to the conversations, which chiefly consist of a representation of Christianity as 374 ON THE DIVISIONS IN THE CORINTHIAN CHURCH. a perfected form of Judaism, in opposition to the absurdi- ties of Pagan and Gnostic philosophy, of which Simon Magus appears as the representative. To the Homilies are prefixed (1.) an Epistle of Peter to James, sending to him a book of his " preaching," with a charge not to let it fall into the hands of the Gentiles, lest they should corrupt it ; (2.) a solemn adjuration of the presbyters by James, that he and they shall comply with this request; (3.) an Epistle of Clement to James, in which, after announcing Peter's death, he proceeds to describe his appointment by Peter to the see of Rome, with an accompanying description of the duty of a bishop, and a charge that Clement will send to James " an epitome of Peter's preachings on his travels." This title is affixed to the Homilies, and it is therefore clear that the Epistle of Clement was meant as a preface to them ; and for the same reason, as well as from their position in the MS., it would appear, though less certainly, that the two previous documents relating to Peter's communication with James are inserted with the same view. Besides this work, which is called by the name of "the Clementines," there exist two other treatises more or less closely connected with it. (1.) "The Clemen- " tine Recognitions/' (so called from the mutual discove- ries in Clement's family before mentioned,) which though originally composed in Greek, exist now only in a Latin translation of Rufinus, arid are, like the Clementines, to be found in Cotelerius's Patres Apostolici. They consist of ten books, which carry on the story to the end, and in the earlier part (i. 54 72,) contains a very curious description of a controversy between the Apostles and High-priest, not to be found in the Homilies ; but otherwise they appear to be abridged from the Clementines, and are without the Epistle of Peter or the Attestation of James. Their date is fixed by an allusion in ix. 27, to the reign of Caracalla, A. D. 212230. (2.) The Clementine Epitome of the ON THE DIVISIONS IN THE CORINTHIAN CHURCH. 875 Preachings and Journeys of Peter, including an account of Clement's own death a compilation of very late date, (apparently after A.D. 980,) from both the previous works, but in all important points of variation following the Re- cognitions. It will be seen from this account, that of these three works, the chief historical interest attaches to the original treatise of the Clementines. The other two seem to be subsequent editions of it, in which most of the passages of questionable tendency have been either suppressed or altered. Its own date is uncertain, but the undoubted indications of Ebionite views on the one hand, combined with its artificial style on the other, would seem to point to some period about the middle of the second century, which would also suit the date of the subsequent Recognitions in A.D. 212230. Another treatise which perhaps should be mentioned as forming part of the same cycle is the Apostolical Constitu- tions, a work which professes to be the teaching of the twelve Apostles drawn up by Clement, and which, though not otherwise exhibiting any close resemblance, has pas- sages on ecclesiastical government, coinciding almost ver- bally with the Clementine Epistle to James; (Compare Apost. Const, iv. 61 ; vi. 6. 44. 57.) Amongst the many points of interest which this book presents, there is none so great as that which arises from the fact that here alone we have the undoubted language of one at least of those factions which are mentioned in the Epistles to the Corinthians, at a later period indeed, and doubtless with considerable modifications of sentiment, but still sufficiently identical to serve as an illustration of the truth of the Apostle's representations. Springing as it does from a Jewish quarter, it was not likely that the watch- words either of Paul or Apollos should have been found in it, and as a matter of fact their names are never mentioned. 376 ON THE DIVISIONS IN THE CORINTHIAN CHURCH. It is, as one might expect, the accents of those who claimed to be adherents of Cephas or of James, whose echoes we catch, however remotely, in this treatise. Of these indications the following are the most remark- able. 1. Peter is represented not merely as the Apostle of the Circumcision, but as the Apostle of the Gentiles also ; all the glory of St. Paul is transferred to him ; no other preacher to the Gentiles is acknowledged except him. (Ep. Pet. ad Jac. c. 1 ; Horn. ii. 17 ; iii. 59.) For the coincidence of this with the language of the earlier Judaizers, compare 2 Cor. x. 14 15; Rev. xv. 20; for its contrast with the acts of the Apostle himself, compare Gal. ii. 9, 10. 2. Although Peter is spoken of as "the first of the " Apostles," (Ep, Clem, ad Jac. i. 3,) and as appointing Clement to the see of Rome, (ibid.,) yet James is de- scribed as superior in dignity both to him and Clement, (Ep. Pet. ad Jac. 1 ; Ep. Clem, ad Jac. 19,) and to all the Apostles, (Rec. i. 66 68;) as "the Lord and Bishop of " the Holy Church, Bishop of Bishops, ruling the Churches " everywhere, the Bishop, the Arch-bishop;" "the Chief " Bishop," as opposed to Caiaphas " the Chief Priest." (Ep. Pet. c. 1 ; Ep. Jac. c. 1 ; Rec. i. 66. 68. 70. 72, 73.) For the coincidence of this with the extravagant claims of the early Judaizers, compare 2 Cor. i. 24; xi. 20; 2 Cor. xi. 5, (agreeing again with the sentiment ascribed by Irenseus (Haer. i. 26.) to the Ebionites, " Hierosolymain " adorant quasi domum Dei.") For its contrast with the expressions of the canonical Epistles, compare James i. 1 ; 1 Pet. v. 2. 3. St. Paul is never attacked by name, but the covert insinuations are indisputable. (a.) St. Peter is represented as warning St. James against " the lawless and foolish teaching of the enemy," (rov %0pov avOpMTTov,) who perverts "the Gentiles from the ON THE DIVISIONS IN THE CORINTHIAN CHURCH. -Ml " lawful preaching of Peter," and misrepresents Peter "as " though he thought with the Gentiles but did not preach " it openly." (Ep. Pet. ad Jac. 2.) Comp. Gal. ii. 12, 14. (b.) The "enemy" (homo inimicus) appears again as taking part in the attack on the life of James, and as receiv- ing letters from the high-priest to persecute Christians b at Damascus. (Rec. i. 70.) Comp. Acts ix. 1. (c.) St. Peter warns his congregation to beware of " any " Apostle, prophet, or teacher, who does not first compare " his preaching with James, and come with witnesses, lest "the wickedness" which tempted Christ "afterwards, " having fallen like lightning from heaven," (for the allu- sion here comp. Acts xxvi. 13, 14,) "should send a herald " against you, and suborn one who is to sow error (TrXdvyv) " amongst you, as it suborned this Simon against us, preach- " ing in the name of our Lord under pretence of the truth." (Horn. xi. 35.) Compare again the coincidence with the stress laid by the Corinthian Judaizers on commendatory letters as marks of Apostleship. 2 Cor. iii. 1; x. 12 18; v. 12. (d.) The parallel which is suggested in the foregoing passage between St. Paul and Simon, is carried out still further in other passages, which go so far as actually to describe the Apostle under the name of Simon, as the re- presentative of all Gentile and Gnostic errors. This in- sinuation is first conveyed in general language, and in con- nexion with the doctrine of pairs or combinations, which is strongly put forward in this work as a principle of the Divine government. St. Peter is introduced as maintain- ing that as Cain preceded Abel, and Ishmael Isaac, so b It 'may be observed here tbat according to the altered point of view from which the Recognitions are written, the allusions to St. Paul are taken not from his later antagonism to Judaism, but from his earlier hostility to Chris- tianity ; that he is spoken of not as identical with Simon Magus, but as charging the Apostles with being his followers. 378 ON THE DIVISIONS IN THE COltlNTHIAN CHURCH. " Simon preceded Peter to the Gentiles, and that Peter (( then succeeded to him, as light to darkness;" that "the " false Gospel must come first from some deceiver, (VTTO " 7r\dvov TWOS,) and then, after the destruction of the holy " place, the true Gospel ; were he known, he would not " have been received; but now, not being known, (dyvoov- " yitei>oj,) he has been trusted to; he who does- the deeds " of those who hate us, has been loved ; he who is our " enemy, has been received as a friend ; being death, he " has been longed for as a saviour ; being fire, he has been "regarded as light; being a deceiver, (7r\dvos } ) he has " been listened to as speaking the truth." (Horn. ii. 17, 18.) Much of this might be regarded as merely taken from the necessary opposition between Simon and Peter, from our Lord's prophecy in Matt. xxiv. 11, 14, 15, and from the account of Simon's universal reception in Acts viii. 10. But, when taken in conjunction with the designation of " the enemy" in Ep. Pet. ad Jac. c. 2, it seems impossible to doubt that the whole passage contains allusions, sometimes even verbally exact, to such charges against St. Paul as are implied in 2 Cor. vi. 8, 9 ; Acts xxL 28, or to the gene- ral success of his mission in parts where the Jewish Apo- stles had not yet penetrated, as implied especially in Rom. xvi. 19, 20; 2 Cor. x. 1316; 1 Cor. i. 13, 15; Gal. iv. 14 16. All doubt however is removed by the more pre- cise language of another passage in a later part of the work. In an argument between Simon and Peter, in which the former insists on the superiority of visions as evidence to our Lord's discourses, the latter on that of actual intercourse, Peter concludes as follows: "If then Jesus our Lord (6 " 'Irjaovs fj^wv) was seen in a vision and was known by " thee and conversed with thee, it was in anger with thee " as an adversary that He spoke to thee through visions and " dreams, and even through outward revelations. But can " any one be made wise to teach through a vision ? If ON THE DIVISIONS IN THE CORINTHIAN CHURCH. 379 " thou sayest that he can, why then did our Master abide " and converse with His disciples not sleeping but awake " for a whole year? And how shall we believe the very " fact that He was seen of thee ? And how could He have " been seen of thee when thou teachest things contrary to " His teaching? And if by having been seen and made a " disciple by Him for one hour, thou becamest an Apostle, " then expound what He has taught, love His Apostles, " fight not with me who was His companion. For against " me the firm rock, the foundation of the Church, even me " thou didst 'withstand' openly, (avOear^Kas.) If thou " hadst not been an adversary, thou wouldst not have " calumniated me and reviled my preaching, to deprive me " of credit when I spoke what I had heard myself in inter- " course with the Lord, as if I were to be blamed, I whose " character is so great. Or if thou sayest that I was to be " blamed, (^Kareyvwcri^kvov^ thou accusest God who re- " vealed Christ to me, arid attackest Him who blessed me " because of that revelation. But since thou wishest truly " to work with the truth, now learn first from us what " we learned from Him, and when thou hast become a dis- " ciple of the truth, then become a fellow-worker with us." (Horn. xvii. 19.) * The whole passage is given because it exhibits at length the objections made to St. Paul's divine mission, which might have been inferred to exist from his own expressions in Gal. i. 1, 12, 15, 16 20; 1 Cor. ix. 1; 2 Cor. x. 16 ; xi. 1 5. And in the indisputable reference to St. Paul's own words in the account of the feud at Antioch, avrevrriv, Kareyvwo-jjievov, (Gal. ii. 11,) which was before glanced at in Ep. Pet. ad Jac. 2, there is hardly an attempt to draw over the true object of the passage even the thin veil of the character of Simon, which serves to darken only, not conceal it c . c In quoting these passages I have not ventured to question the date assigned to them by Schliemann, as forming parts of a treatise which it seems 380 ON THE DIVISIONS IN THE CORINTHIAN CHURCH. Further indications of the same tendencies might per- haps be collected from the same work or from others of the same period, but what has been given is sufficient for our purpose. It may be tantalizing to see these few memorials, rising here and there like fragments of a submerged conti- nent, and to know that they belong to a series of events or of feelings which are now lost to us ; and it is natural that in an age in which so much has been done to recover and re- construct past history, complete systems should have been formed to fill up and bridge over the vast gulfs which in- tervene between one of these stepping-stones and another. But it is not necessary to do this for the sake of vindicating to criticism in this sphere that constructive power which in its other branches almost all would now accord to it. There was a time when with far less real knowledge than we at present possess, it was supposed that nothing more remained to be known beyond the isolated facts on the surface of the history ; it is something now to be im- difficult to place before the middle of the second century. It is a point in our present state of knowledge possibly beyond the power of criticism to determine accurately ; and some of the passages (those from the Epistle of Clement and from Horn. ii. 17.) may be too essentially interwoven with the present text, to be imagined ever to have existed separately from it. There is however in the Epistle to James and in Horn. xi. 35, and xvii. 19, a loose- ness of connexion with the context, and also a vigour and conciseness of ex- pression unlike the general style of the Homilies, such as might possibly suggest the doubt whether they do not in fact belong to a still earlier work, which may have been wrought up into its present form of the Clementines, as the Clementines themselves have been wrought up into the subsequent editions of the Recognitions and Epitome ; or whether they might not have been become incorporated from some other source, in the same manner as there are evidently passages which have undergone an interchange between the Clementines and the Apostolical Constitutions. But it is useless to speculate on a subject which will soon in all probability receive a new light from the same collection of Syriac MSS. in the British Museum which has already enriched our knowledge of the first ages of Chris- tianity, and which contains a Syriac version of the Clementines, not agreeing precisely either with the Recognitions or the Homilies, to be brought out shortly under the auspices of Mr. Cureton. ON THE DIVISIONS IN THE CORINTHIAN CHURCH. 881 pressed with the sense that our information is broken and uncertain, to be reminded that the mere consciousness of the large departments of our ignorance is in itself a great accession to our knowledge, that of the second no less than of the first creation, darkness and chaos was the natural prelude and accompaniment. In the case before us that very dimness and uncertainty is itself a testimony to the Divine origin of the light which shined in the darkness and " the darkness comprehended it fl not." It is by catching a glimpse, however partial, of those wild dissensions which raged around and beneath the Apo- stolical writings, that we can best appreciate the sublime unity and repose of those writings themselves; it is by see- ing how completely these dissensions have been obliterated that we can best understand how marked was the difference between them, and analogous divisions in other history. We know how the names of Plato and Aristotle, of Francis and Dominic, of Luther and Calvin, have continued as the rallying-point of rival schools and systems long after the decease and contrary even to the intentions of their re- spective founders. But with regard to the factions of the Apostolical age it was not so. Hundreds of inferior names have been perpetuated in the history of inferior sects; but the schools of Paul, and Apollos, and Cephas, which once waged so bitter a warfare against each other, were extin- guished almost before ecclesiastical history had begun ; and the utmost diversity of human character and outward style between their supposed heads has been unable to break the indissoluble harmony in which their memories are united in the associations of the Christian world. Partly this arose from the nature of the case. The Apostles could not have been the founders of systems even if they would. Their power was not their own but another's, "who made them to " differ from another ? what had they which they had not " received ?" If once they claimed an independent autho- 382 ON THE DIVISIONS IN THE COBINTHIAN CHURCH. rity, their authority was gone ; great philosophers, great conquerors, great heresiarchs, leave their names even in spite of themselves, but such the Apostles could not be without ceasing to be what they were, and the total ex- tinction of the parties which were called after them is in fact a testimony to the divinity of their mission. But are we not also justified in believing, as has been assumed through- out these pages, that in the great work of reconciliation, of which the outward volume of the Sacred Canon is the eternal monument, they were themselves not merely pas- sive instruments, but active and conscious agents ; that a lesson is still to be derived from the record which they have left of their own resistance to the claims of the factions which vainly endeavoured to divide what God had joined together? I have endeavoured to exemplify this in the case of St. Peter, and if the view taken in the Sermon on St. James is correct, it is obvious that the opposition which some have sought to find between him and St. Paul rests on a mistaken interpretation of his words. But as the one deci- sive testimony to the existence of these factions is con- tained in the passage from the First Epistle to the Corin- thians prefixed to this discussion, so the one decisive testi- mony to the "still sublimity with which the Apostles rise " above them" is contained in St. Paul's own comment upon them, with which for that reason the subject may most fitly be closed ; whether we regard it as the most complete answer to the charges which in ancient times or in modern have been brought against the motives of the Apostle, or whether we turn to it, irrespectively of any temporary object, as the -true model of Christian wisdom and forbearance in factious and troublous times. There we have an indisputable proof that it was not merely the errors or the hostilities of sect or party, but the spirit itself of sect and party, even when it conferred glory on himself, that the Apostle denounced as the sign ON THE DIVISIONS IN THE CORINTHIAN CHURCH. 383 of an unchristian or half-Christian society, when he warned them that not only their sins or their Judaism, but their " strifes" and "divisions" of whatever kind, were a proof that they were "carnal and walked as men;" when he " transferred in a figure to himself and A polios" all that he would teach them of the evil of the factions generally, in order that they might fully understand that it was by no personal feeling that he was influenced, but that what he condemned he condemned "for their sakes" in what- ever form it might be found, whether it made for him or against him. (1 Cor. iii. 3; iv. 6.) There too we meet with the most express contradiction to the suspicions always natural to low minds, that a character which exer- cised so vast an influence must have been intent *on self- exaltation, when he tells them that "he rejoices that he " had baptized none of them, but Crispus and Gains, lest " any should say that he had baptized in his own name ;" when he conjures them " so to account of him" not as an in- dependent teacher and master, but merely as a subordinate " minister (VTTTJP eras') to Christ," as a humble "steward" whose only object it was faithfully to expound "the se- " crets of God," not to think that their favourable judgment would justify him before God, but to wait patiently to the end of all things, for "then" and not before "shall every " man have praise of God." (1 Cor. iv. 1 5.) And there lastly we have the true secret of freedom from party-spirit, true always, but in the highest degree true of the Apostles, when he represents the nothingness of himself and all other teachers, how wise soever, in comparison with the great- ness of their common cause, with the recollection that they were "in Christ Jesus, who of God was made unto " them wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and " redemption." " All things are yours," however strong their outward contrast, "whether Paul or Apollos or " Cephas, or the world, or life or death, all are yours, for 384 ON THE DIVISIONS IN THE CORINTHIAN CHUECH. "ye are Christ's and Christ is God's." (1 Cor. i. 30; iii. 22.) With these words of the great Apostle I gladly close this volume. They contain the sum and substance of all that I have endeavoured to express. To represent faithfully both the distinctness of character and the unity of object which St. Paul there sets before us, has been one chief object of the previous pages. If I should have overstated either the one or the other, I trust that the attempt may at least be of use in inducing others to adjust more exactly the scales of that balance, which cannot be disturbed without danger, whether in the study of the Sacred Writings them- selves, or in their application to our practical duties, as men, as citizens, and as Christians. OXFORD : HUNTED BY I. SHRJiMlTON. 384 ON THE DIVISIONS IN THE CORINTHIAN CHURCH. "ye are Christ's and Christ is God's." (1 Cor. i. 30; iii. 22.) With these words of the great Apostle I gladly close this volume. They contain the sum and substance of all that I have endeavoured to express. To represent faithfully both the distinctness of character and the unity of object which St. Paul there sets before us, has been one chief object of the previous pages. If I should have overstated either the one or the other, I trust that the attempt may at least be of use in inducing others to adjust more exactly the scales of that balance, which cannot be disturbed without danger, whether in the study of the Sacred Writings them- selves, or in their application to our practical duties, as ERRATA. P 2 line 25. for change read chance _1 1(5 i. 18. add I. before In examining 183. 8- read make it 189. 14. no break __ 222. 18. for Tyara read Tyana 2-*3. -- 13. for element read elements __ it, .' 15. for has read have s >34 t 19. far seemed to be read are OXFORD : IRINTEI) BY J. SHRJM1TON. RETURN TO LOAN PERIOD HOME USE CIRCULATION DEPARTMENT Mnin Library 1 98 Main Stacks BE RECALLED AFTER 7 DAYS. be made 4 days p,io f to me due date. Books may be Renewed by calling 642-3405. DUE AS STAMPED BELOW RECEDED FORM NO. DD6 U. C. BERKELEY LIBRARIES