LIBRARY I of CALIFORNIA 145 CHRISTIANITY IN HISTORY MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED LONDON BOMBAY CALCUTTA MADRAS MELBOURNE THE MACMILLAN COMPANY NEW YORK BOSTON CHICAGO DALLAS SAN FRANCISCO THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD. TORONTO Christianity in History A Study of Religious Development By J. VERNON BARTLET, M.A., D.D. (Sr ANDR.) SENIOR TUTOR OF MANSFIELD COLLEGE, OXFORD and A. J. CARLYLE, M.A., D.LITT. LECTURER, LATE FELLOW, OF UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, OXFORD " We are the Ancients." LORD BACON " The Past, rightly understood, is no mere past." EUCKEN MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON 1917 Printed in Great Britain ty Turnbitll & Spears, Edinburgh " CHRISTIANITY resembles, not a circle with one centre, but an ellipse with two focuses. It is an Ethic of Redemption, with a conception of the world both optimistic and pessi- mistic, both transcendental and immanental, and an appre- hension both of a severe antagonism, and of a close interior union, between the world and God. Neither of these poles may be completely absent, if the Christian outlook is to be maintained. Yet the original germ of the whole vast growth and movement ever remains an intensely, abruptly Trans- cendental Ethic, and can never simply pass over into a purely Immanental Ethic. And the importance of that classical beginning ever consists in continually calling back the human heart, away from all Culture and Immanence, to that which lies above -both." ERNST TROELTSCH, as quoted in F. von Hiigel's Eternal Life, p. 200. CONTENTS PART I THE BEGINNINGS CHAPTER I JESUS THE CHRIST PAGE Christianity the child of Judaism ...... 1 Judaism in Christ's day far from uniform . . . . 2 The new element in Christ . . . . . . . 10 The Son of Man : Jesus' Messianic " secret " . - . . 21 The Kingdom : Jesus' emphasis ..... 28 The Christian revelation as historical . . . . 31 Jesus and the Jewish Law : the Cross . 35 CHAPTER II APOSTOLIC CHRISTIANITY Christianity is Christ living afresh in humanity . . : 39 The Apostolic Age the age of the Spirit 41 Primitive conceptions and usages ...... 43 The Gospel and the Jewish Law ...... 49 Early solutions : Paul's solution ..... 53 Paulinism ; its value ; the Ethics of Liberty .... 57 Other Christian types ........ 67 Theories of the Person of Christ ...... 69 The Johannine Theology ....... 73 Judaism a dwindling factor ....... 77 Additional Note on the Eucharist . . 79 viii CHRISTIANITY IN HISTORY PART II ANCIENT CHRISTIANITY CHAPTER I EXPANSION, TO THE FALL OF THE EMPIRE IN THE WEST PAGE Christianity as a Missionary religion . . * . . 81 A conflict of principles : persecution, its causes ... 87 Causes of Christianity's success ...... 92 The Christian Message : Logos idea : Neo-Platonism . . 96 Greek thought in the Church . . . . ' K* 2 A " Christian " Emperor : effects of this . . . . 105 The Victory incomplete, and fraught with change . . . Ill CHAPTER II LIFE AND DISCIPLINE The Problem of Conduct 114 Christianity the religion of Personality . . . . .117 Love: brotherhood: stewardship of Gifts . . . .118 Eschatological motive . . . . . . . .125 Early moral ideals : discipline : Cyprian . . . .126 Social Ethics . . . . . . . . .133 Changing ideals of Holiness : asceticism, gain and loss . . 135 CHAPTER III PIETY, WORSHIP, SACRAMENTS I. THE FIRST Two CENTURIES Ideas of Salvation determinative . . . . . .144 Hebraism and'Hellenism : N.T. Sacraments Hebraic . . 146 Hellenistic Sacramentalism gradually read into them ' . . 152 Early Christian worship : the Eucharist and Baptism . . 156 Growth of Sacramental Realism ...... 160 Justin, Irenaeus, Tertullian ....... 162 CONTENTS ix CHAPTER IV PIETY, WORSHIP, SACRAMENTS (continued) II. THE THIRD CENTURY AND AFTER PAGE Cyprian transitional . .. . . . . .171 Earliest extant Liturgies : Eastern and Western . . .172 Changes in structure and ideas . . . . . .179 Various types of Eucharistic presence ..... 184 Piety changing : causes of this . . . .- . .188 Sacramentalism : "folk piety" . . . . . .192 CHAPTER V > CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE I. To IREN^TTS Early Christian doctrine the product of fresh Life . . .196 The idea of Salvation central ; its relative setting . . . ' 198 New Testament forms : Paulinism little understood . . 202 Common Christian Faith .....*. 209 The Baptismal Creed ; " The Apostles' Creed " . . . 210 Christology and psychology . . . . .216 Two chief types emerge and interact . . . . ,219 Early Logos Christology : in the Apologists .... 234 Irenseus' Theology ........ 241 CHAPTER VI CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE (continued) II. FROM IREN.ETTS TO ATTQUSTTNE Fresh developments from the third century onwards . . 245 Greek and Latin Theology diverging . . . . 246 " Monarchianism " a stage in definition, esp. at Borne . . 248 New theological conditions due to Neo-Platonism . . . 254 Origen's Theology 256 Antiochene Theology : 261 Situation at Nicsea : its Creed ...... 263 CHRISTIANITY IN HISTORY New dogmatic " Orthodoxy " : the "two Natures " . . 268 Nestorius and Cyril : Chalcedon and after .... 273 Patristic theology : metaphysical and sacramental . . .281 Latin theology proper : Augustine's contribution to it . . 283 Patristic doctrine generally 286 Note on ousia, hypostasis, substanlia, persona, .... 288 CHAPTER VII THE CHURCH, ITS ORGANISATION AND MINISTRY Organisation and Life . . . . . . . 289 The primitive type : Jewish forms, modified by " the Spirit " . 290 Primitive Church principles ....... 299 The Ignatian Episcopate marks an epoch : later changes . . 302 The charismatic element long persists ..... 308 The Ministry c. A. D. 200-400 310 The Bishop and his " priesthood " . . . . . 312 Cyprian on Church and Bishop ..... 314 Presbyters and Deacons ....... 320 Orders at first twofold, then threefold ..... 321 Women as Ministers . . . . . . . . 322 Wider organisation ...'..... 323 Church and State : some results ...... 325 Papacy in East and West 328 CHAPTER VIII THE ONE HOLY CATHOLIC AND APOSTOLIC CHURCH Change in form and spirit . 332 " Catholic " emphasis on the Church ..... 333 The institutional and the personal elements in Catholicism . 336 Its idea of Salvation and saving Faith ..... 338 Continuity and discontinuity ...... 343 Catholic Piety, viewed comparatively 344 The Church in East and West 348 CONTENTS xi PART III THE MIDDLE AGES CHAPTER I INTRODUCTORY PAGE Contrast between the relation of the Church to Ancient and Mediaeval Civilisation . . . ... . .351 Church represented Ancient Civilisation to the Middle Ages . 352 Education of the Fathers and of the Mediaeval Clergy . . 354 Change in the position of the Church since the period of the Renaissance . . . . ... . . 356 CHAPTER II THE ORGANISATION OF THE CHURCH Nature of Church Authority in the Middle Ages . . . 361 Development of the Christian Congregation into the Diocese . 364 The Parish and its Minister 366 The nature of the government of the Diocese .... 369 The Ecclesiastical Province 374 Patriarchates and National Churches . 378 Eastern and Western developments in Church Authority . . 380 Position of the Bishop of Rome in early Middle Ages . . 383 Pseudo-Isidore ......... 385 Universal recognition in West of supreme jurisdiction of Rome . 389 CHAPTER IV CANON LAW Canon Law and the custom of the Christian People . . . 390 Growth of the collection of Canons ..... 394 The materials of the Canon Law . 396 xii CHRISTIANITY IN HISTORY CHAPTER V RELATION OF SPIRITUAL AND TEMPORAL POWERS PAGE The independence of the spiritual life ... . . 400 The position of the Christian Fathers . . . . . 403 The statement of Gelasius I. . . . . . . 406 Relations in ninth century . . . . / . . 407 The great conflict of the eleventh to the thirteenth century . 411 CHAPTER VI DOCTRINE AND SCHOLASTIC THEOLOGY The Latin mind dominant in Western theology . . . 420 Augustine's influence twofold ...... 422 Divine Absolutism in mediaeval thought ..... 429 E.g. Anselm's theory of the Atonement .... 430 Scholasticism, its phases and issue ' . . . . . 433 Scholastic Theology : Anselm and Abelard .... 437 Eucharistic theory : Transubstantiation .... 440 The later Scholastic Theology and Mysticism .... 449 Mediaeval Piety : the sacramental system .... 453 Merit, Penance, Indulgences ....... 457 Coming recoil ......... 461 PART IV THE GREAT TRANSITION CHAPTER I THE BREAK-UP OP THE MEDIEVAL SYSTEM The Clergy of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries . . 463 The Babylonish Captivity 466 The great Schism and the Conciliar movement . . . 467 The Financial troubles of the Church . . . . . 471 The development of nationalism in religion .... 473 The beginnings of religious and doctrinal revolt . . . 475 CONTENTS xiii CHAPTER II THE NEW RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE AND ITS FIRST RESULTS PAGE The revival of religion ........ 480 Luther and the German Reformation ..... 485 Zwingli . . . . 491 France and England . . . . . . . . 492 Religious revival in the Roman Church ..... 495 The first effects of the revival in the Protestant centres . . 498 CHAPTER III EARLY ISSUES OF THE REFORMATION The conception of the Church ...... 503 Reformed Theology : Calvin ....... 510 Tridentine Theology .. . . . . . .615 Socinianism . . * . . . . . . 618 The " Spirituals " 520 PART V THE MODERN PERIOD CHAPTER I NEW IDEAS OF NATURE AND HUMAN REASON : RATIONALISM The beginning of the new condition of Western Europe . . 527 The new scientific conceptions . . . . .^ . 531 The new philosophy : Descartes ...... 535 " Deism " 537 The critical spirit and Voltaire 539 xiv CHRISTIANITY IN HISTORY CHAPTER II THE REVIVAL OF RELIGION IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY PAGE Voltaire and Rousseau ........ 542 The Methodist movement and John Wesley .... 545 The Sentimental movement ....... 548 Goethe and Wordsworth ....... 551 The French Revolution 555 CHAPTER III i THE ROMANTIC MOVEMENT AND THE CATHOLIC REVIVAL The idea of continuity and unity in life ..... 557 Chateaubriand and Montalembert ...... 561 The Tractarians 562 The change in the Revolutionary conceptions : individualism and socialism ......... 565 CHAPTER IV THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Philosophy 569 Schleiermacher . . . . . . . . . 577 Coleridge 581 Later Theology ......... 583 Historical Criticism . . . . . . . 586 CHAPTER V THE PRESENT SITUATION Ritschlianism ......... 590 "Modernism" ......... 595 Christian Socialism ........ 598 Personality and Christology 600 Forces making for Unity ....... 603 INDEX ... ...... 607 PREFACE THIS work more than most needs some words of preface touching its scope. For it is a venture on rather novel lines. It is not a history of the Christian Church, nor again a sketch of the development of Christian doctrine, for instance like Allen's Con- tinuity of Christian Thought. It comes somewhere midway between the two, being less complete and concrete than the former, more manysided than the latter. Ours is in fact an attempt to set forth the genesis and growth of certain of the more typical forms and phases which Christianity whether as conduct, piety, thought, or organised Church life has assumed under the conditioning influences first of the Roman Empire and then of the Western civilisation that was its successor and heir. Thus, of books known to us, Professor Percy Gardner's Growth of Christianity is most akin to ours. Yet, apart from its larger scale, ours differs fron%.his a good deal in scope and execution. Such a work necessarily involves much selection and omission ; and the resulting perspective cannot but have about it a large subjective element. It is frankly an interpretation in broad outline. As such it runs its own special risks ; against which must however be set possible gains in clarity and sim- plicity of impression which selective emphasis, if only it be reasonably true, can best secure. xvi CHRISTIANITY IN HISTORY So much for the general idea. As to its execution, we wish here only to anticipate certain criticisms on matters of principle. Our survey falls into five main Periods. After one entitled " The Beginnings," we have adopted the usual threefold division Ancient, Mediaeval, and Modern. But we have ventured to innovate as regards the way in which the later part of the Mediaeval period and the earlier part of the Modern are related to each other. In- stead of sharply distinguishing from both an epoch styled " The Reformation," or treating this as the first stage of the general Modern period, we prefer to emphasise the continuity, in many important respects, of the Mediaeval and the Modern worlds of thought and feeling. Accordingly we bring that greatest of reformatory movements aiming at a return to primitive Christianity under the more compre- hensive heading of " The Great Transition." Within this fall both the symptoms of failure and inadequacy which made themselves felt in the Mediaeval Church's practice and thought during the last two centuries of its undivided sway, and the twofold effort of the Christian consciousness to remedy these known as the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation. The Reformation as " Protestant " went back pri- marily to'the Christian Beginnings as enshrined in the New Testament, but subject in effect to the modifying secondary influence of Catholic tradition, working consciously or unconsciously in men's minds. The Reformation as " Catholic," or carried out on more traditional lines in lands which remained in com- munion with the Roman See as symbol and guardian of Catholicism, practically inverted the influence of these two factors. But intellectually and in general outlook on life here and hereafter, nay more, in PREFACE xvii most things other than what was directly bound up with the type of experience and the ideas connected with their respective doctrines of Salvation as acceptance with God, both Catholics and Protestants in the sixteenth century still thought for the most part, and almost to an equal degree, in terms of the same traditional categories. And these categories were those of the Ancient world, as handed on and elaborated by the Middle Ages. Hence it was but gradually that the attitude and ^habits of mind distinctive of the Modern world began to make themselves really felt, and this at first mainly among minorities, religious and otherwise. As between the periods just described, it will at once strike the reader that disproportionate space seems devoted to that dealing with Ancient Christi- anity, down to the fall of the Roman Empire in the West. We submit, however, that in principle this is inevitable, owing to the immensely determinative part played by the Catholicism which grew up under the conditions of the Roman Empire. For its forms and their influence have persisted, without funda- mental change, as the main intellectual factor in the general apprehension of Christianity down to the present day. Accordingly it is needful to explain rather fully how and why they arose ; and this the more so that the modes of thought which lay behind and conditioned the process were largely alien to the modern mind, familiar as it is with the actual products viewed in a traditional way. In the Middle Ages, on the other hand, the further developments were in many cases elaborative rather than creative, and so of secondary moment, especially for later times. Those of most distinctive and abiding significance xviii CHRISTIANITY IN HISTORY were connected with the ecclesiastical organisation which arose, side by side with that of the State, under the new conditions in the West. This and the new ideas of Church and State, and their mutual relations, call for fairly full notice as really typical mediaeval contributions ; and the like is true of the scholastic or systematic form given to Christian Doctrine or Theology during the same period. To these topics, then, our treatment of the Middle Ages is practically confined, though much else would rightly demand notice in a history of another type and scope. This^ applies notably to mediaeval Piety, especially in its ascetic and monastic forms, as also to the significance of the various attempts at monastic revival and reform marked by the rise of new orders. Similar considerations helped to fix the scale and lines on which the two later periods are handled. Doubtless we have failed, time and again, to settle these questions of periods, proportionate fulness of treatment, inclusion and omission of topics, in a fully satisfactory way. But we have been aware of them all along ; and the actual shaping of the work is the result of a good deal of weighing of alternatives. The governing consideration has been the fact that we were looking at the whole development largely from the practical standpoint of the interests and problems present in men's minds to-day; and we gave the preference to what seemed of most value as data for forming a just judgment upon the general trend of things, as well as upon certain questions bearing on the true nature and genius of Christianity. In the weeding out of inaccuracies, which are most apt to occur in a survey of so immense a field, we would gratefully acknowledge the services of several PREFACE xix friends. Part I. has gained by the scrutiny of Canon G. H. Box and Rev. C. H. Dodd ; Part V. owes not a little to the careful criticism of Mr C. C. J. Webb ; while Mr H. G. Wood was good enough to read in a more general way the first proofs of Parts II. and IV. " A PERSON came, and lived and loved, and did and taught, and died and rose again, and lives on by His Power and His Spirit for ever within us and amongst us, so unspeakably rich and yet so simple, so sublime and yet so homely, so divinely above us precisely in being so divinely near, that His character and teaching require, for an ever fuller yet never complete understanding, the varying study, and different experiments and applications, embodiments and unrollings of all the races and civilisations, of all the individual and corporate, the simultaneous and successive experiences of the human race to the end of time." F. VON HUGEL, The Mystical Element of Religion, i. 26. PART I THE BEGINNINGS CHAPTER I JESUS THE CHRIST " I came not to destroy but to fulfil. 1 ' " What new thing, then, did the Lord bring in coming ? Know that he brought all newness in bringing Himself." IREXJEUS. CHRISTIANITY appears in history as the child of Judaism, claiming to be the perfected religion of Israel. But the Judaism in question was far more manifold than is often realised ; and Christ's own relations to its various elements, written or oral, call for great care and delicacy in handling. Two things are manifest, though their applications are less plain. One is the deference shown by Jesus towards the authentic heritage of Jewish religion, especially in the Old Testament Scriptures of his day : the other is his original and free attitude in selecting amid its contents, developing some while neglecting others as of merely provisional value. In this He used criteria of his own, so making him- self the final authority in the religion of revelation, as also its climax and fulfilment. Thus at the outset we are faced by the ultimate and super-historical problem of Christianity, the person of Christ. Into its solution a brief historical sketch cannot profess to go ; it is the last secret of i 2 JESUS THE CHRIST [PART i. faith in the Gospel, as reality as well as truth. But while the Gospel on the lips of Christ claimed both to fulfil the higher aspect of Judaism and set aside in principle its national limitations, this does not exempt Christianity itself, even in its earliest form, from all limitations, theoretic and practical. That would be to lift the Gospel sheer out of human history, where everything must in some real sense be con- ditioned by the past, if it is in turn to condition the future. So to say, however, is not to fix beforehand how far the new factor, implicit in Christ's person even more than in his words and deeds, rose in prin- ciple above the conditions out of which it emerged, or the degree to which its issues have transcended the ordinary levels of human life, in virtue of a regenerative power which ever and anon renews its own youth. Towards a just estimate of such matters the following sketch of the action and development of Christianity in history may perhaps furnish some assistance. What was the nature of the Judaism from which Christianity grew by a change so radical that, as Jesus himself put it, the forms of current Judaism and the new spirit were to each other as old wine- skins and new wine ? The question is complex and still much in debate. One thing is clear : the Juda- ism of that epoch was far other than the religion of the Old Testament. As we see from Christ's own claim to fulfil the underlying religion of those Scrip- tures, while yet teaching a message for which but few in Israel were ready, Judaism was not a simple or uniform development of the most vital elements in the Law, the Prophets, and the Psalms. Its existing species were due largely to emphasis CHAP, i.] JUDAISM IN CHRIST'S DAY on different elements in the religious heritage of Israel. Beginning with the most official type, which has too much absorbed Christian notice, and too often in an undiscriminating way, we have to reckon with Pharisaism. Noble as was much of its past, and great as had been its services when foreign influences menaced the Hebrew faith, it had fallen apparently on evil days. Its devotion to the ritual and formal side of piety had largely run to externalism, and was widely associated with a divorce between the letter and the spirit, to the loss of inward piety and moral veracity, as determined by purity of motive. Ob- servance of Torah, the system of sacred legislation, including the oral tradition handed down by t: the elders," parallel with the written Law of Moses and fixing its interpretation, had become in practice too much an end in itself. There was too little distinc- tion between primary principles and contingent details, judged in the light of the plain spirit of the whole, love to God and man. The Pharisees proper, those committed to all the Rabbinic rules for guarding against ritual " uncleanness " and secur- ing outward correctness of conduct under the Law, were a limited party of some thousands, though with many adherents of a less rigorous kind. Further, within Pharisaism itself there were different degrees, represented by the strict School of Shammai that dominant in Jesus' day and the milder, less logical School of Hillel, the parent of the later more spiritual type of Rabbinism. Besides the Pharisees and their rivals in Jeru- salem, the Sadducaic high-priestly families who con- trolled the Temple- worship, and also at this period the direction of native politics under the Romans, there JESUS THE CHRIST [PART i. were other special parties or sects. One of the less orthodox kind were the Essenes, who held aloof from animal sacrifices and cultivated a more devotional and ascetic type of holiness than the Pharisees ; and sects like the "Nasaraeans " in the less purely Jewish regions to the east and south-east of Galilee, and possibly in Galilee itself, who were marked by a freer attitude to the Mosaic Law even as written. As for the mass of the people, while they honoured the more pro- fessional piety of the Pharisees who claimed most of the Scribes and official teachers of the Rabbinic tradition they were not expected, as things were, to be able to live the full religious life according to the Law. " They knew not the Law," in all its rigour. To the more superficial among them " the Kingdom of heaven " had mainly a patriotic ring. But with the more serious sort it was otherwise. To such simply pious or godly souls (like the " meek " in certain Psalms) the nearness of " the Kingdom " spoke of the breaking forth of fuller tokens of the Divine presence in human life, for its comfort in the conflict with sin, its moral deliverance, and an enhanced sense of fellowship with the Holy One of Israel. " Emmanuel," God with us, was their inmost thought of " the Consolation of Israel," for which they awaited the coming Kingdom. At this point it would be desirable to have before the mind a connected view of popular Judaism as a whole, such as survives in the oldest parts of the Jewish Prayer Book, as well as in the less technical Pharisaic religion found in certain parts of the Talmud, going back in substance even to Christ's day. These have at least as much affinity with the best Apocalyptic literature as with the legal element in the Rabbinic tradition. But we must limit our CHAP, i.] THE MESSIANIC HOPE 5 view to what was central in contemporary faith. This was the Messianic idea in its wider sense, the ideal of the final Salvation or perfected state of Israel as God's People. The main lines of the picture had been drawn by the Hebrew prophets ; but they had been developed, added to, and modified in certain respects during the last two centuries B.C. These saw the Maccabean reaction against the foreign influences menacing the distinctive features of Hebrew religion, and the birth of various tendencies into which, as we have seen, Judaism resolved itself. Here the book of Daniel is the fountain-head of the later thought, especially in its Apocalyptic forms. Apocalyptic was now the equivalent of old Prophecy, from the time when the codified Mosaic Law so gained the upper hand that prophecy had to take refuge in writings issued under the names of Old Testament worthies, especially patriarchs. These delivered their message for the later times in the form of anticipatory Vision. The general tenor of such Apocalyptic was much the same as appears in certain mediaeval hymns. Full late the hour, full dark the times ; Watch we and fast. Lo ! the Judge in awful nearness, Highest and last. Nigh, nigh is He, all ill to end, All right to crown, All good reward, all care remove, And heaven bring down. 1 As to the means by which this should come about, the mass of Palestinian Jews expected that it would be, in the last resort, by distinct Divine intervention. Moreover this intervention was associated with the 1 Hora novisgima, slightly adapted in the last line. 6 JESUS THE CHRIST [PART i. Coining of a personal Deliverer or Anointed One (Messiah, Gk. " Christ "), bringing Judgment to sinners particularly the " unclean " Gentiles and vindication and every sort of blessing to righteous Israel. But it is to be borne in mind that differing ideals of the Messiah, and of his spirit and methods of securing the Divine Will on earth, prevailed in the various circles of Judaism already indicated, according to the piety distinctive of each. As the emphasis fell on " righteousness " and " purity " in a ritual sense, or in a moral ; or again upon the rectification of inequalities between rich and poor ; so the type of Messiah really hoped for varied. Finally there had grown up a body of ideas and ex- pressions touching the heavenly or supernatural agencies and events through which all this was to be realised, particularly the " Last Things " (Eschatology), which profoundly coloured even popular thought and speech touching the coming " Kingdom of heaven " on earth. Yet as this lore (Apocalyptic) arose in limited, rather esoteric circles of those who pondered much on the older prophetic Scriptures, it must remain uncertain how far any given books or even the ideas known to us chiefly through them were current among the people at large. This is the case, for instance, as regards the Messianic title " the Son of Man," first found in certain sections of the Parables in the Book of Enoch (chaps. 39-71), which add this conception to the simpler and more prophetic titles, the Elect and Righteous One. But in any case many were in- terested in " transcendental Messianism " and in speculative schemes regarding the End of the age, with all 1;hat this involved, rather than in the develop- ment of the oral tradition as a protective " hedge " CHAP, i.] AS FULFILLED IN CHRIST 7 around the Law, or in making strong the middle - wall of separation between Israel and the " unclean " Gentile world tasks on which Rabbinic Pharisaism spent much energy. Nevertheless even the latter had at this time its own Apocalyptic side, connected with Messiah and the Last Things generally, includ- ing the doctrine of a future life and of bodily resur- rection thereto usually confined to the righteous in Israel, as distinct from the "sinners" and the Gentiles. Doctrine as to the Kingdom, the Messiah, or the Resurrection and Judgment involved in its full real- isation, was not uniform ; and the degree to which the moral and spiritual elements prevailed over the material and national differed in different circles of Judaism. On the whole, the more spiritual the type of piety, the more closely was the person of Messiah related to Jehovah's own sphere of being and nature, and the more it transcended the older type of David's royal Son, with or without addition of the Aaronic High-priesthood. Judaism was now largely ab- sorbed with " the last things," the ultimate counsels and ways of full Divine self-manifestation. As to what the form of these might be, Apocalyptic, a product of the pious imagination raised to an exalted frame of feeling and thought, through a great tradi- tion inspired by the poetry of religious faith, furnished a number of suggestions more or less widely current, and more or less seriously accepted as forecasting the Great Future. Such was the Jewish world of thought, centring in the heavenly Kingdom on a renewed earth, in which Christianity came to birth. It did not pre- sent itself in its Founder's teaching as a new religion, but as the true issue, the " fulfilment," in his deep 8 JESUS THE CHRIST [PART i. use of that term, of the religion of the Chosen People. It was in fact the renovated form of the Covenant (Mark xiv. 24), which in its earlier phases had been made with Moses, as before him with Abraham, and which rested upon the promise in the primaeval revelation and in the protevangel which followed on human sin (Gen. i. 26 ff., iii. 15). To keep this steadily in mind saves one from many errors of historical perspective, some of which have theo- logical consequences. Thus it will save us from treating Christianity, even as given in the teaching and person of its Founder, as though it claimed to be absolute religion in such a sense as to have no relative or temporary elements in its historical expression. The transition from ordinary Judaism to the Gospel of Christ was prepared for by the ministry of John the Baptist. The Judaism of the two centuries B.C. was, we have seen, a richer thing than the one-sided Rabbinic Pharisaism 1 which "stood as the sole and orthodox Judaism after the fall of Jerusalem in 70 A.D." still more after its ruin in 135. " This larger Judaism embraced both the prophetic and the legalistic elements " to a greater degree than did the later, more uniform type ; and in John the Baptist a real prophet was felt to have appeared. Nay more, the message he had to deliver was nothing short of this, that the long-desired Kingdom was at hand. How, then, did the Forerunner of Jehovah's full presence among His People himself conceive that great intervention ? Where did his emphasis lie ? Essentially on old prophetic lines, though doubtless under forms supplied by current Apoca- lyptic tradition. His mind was filled with the 1 See Dr R. H. Charles, The Book of Enoch, 1912, pp. vi, ciii. CHAP, i.] JOHN THE FORERUNNER 9 parallels between the situation depicted in Malachi, the last of the Canonical Prophets, and that prevail- ing in his own day. The remedy too was the same ; real loyalty to " the law of Moses, My Servant," was God's demand. And the warning voice that should summon Israel to this, ere God visited it in Judgment, in "the great and terrible day of the Lord " when He should be " like a refiner's fire " in the person of " the messenger (or angel) of the Covenant " thus to be vindicated, was to be that of " Elijah the prophet." His it would be to bring about a general repentance and reconciliation in Israel, lest Jehovah himself, through His repre- sentative, "come and smite the land with a curse." The chief danger to true religion is unreality ; and its worst form is moral make-believe, often com- plicated by self-deception. Such " acting " or hypoc- risy is the easier to fall into when religion is largely ritual or non-moral in form. Then the conscience is apt to try compounding by ritual zeal for lack of loyalty to God's will in the other and more per- sonal sphere. Such was the " hypocrisy " both of Pharisees and Sadducees which stirred John's moral indignation, as it did that of Jesus also. Doubtless this was true only of a section of the Pharisees in Christ's day ; but it was a typical section of the official leaders of Jewish piety, those who gave it its tone for the time being. What our Gospels as a whole imply as to widespread lack of reality in the official religious leaders, is in the main (apart from certain features, e.g. in the " Woes " of Matthew, perhaps developed in oral tradition by controversy between Jewish Christians and their chief foes) quite probable and in conflict with no contemporary witness for this period. 10 JESUS THE CHRIST [PART i. Here we have the setting of John's ministry, and at the same time the starting-point for that of Jesus, who, in common with the religious circles in which both of them were born and reared, and indeed with a large part of Israel, saw in the Baptist the true Elijah of the Kingdom. The whole situa- tion, as John set it forth in his striking " Baptism of Repentance," meant that true religion was at a low ebb in Israel and its official leaders. John's call was for real obedience to the Law of Moses, taken in its true or prophetic sense. " Except your righteous- ness shall exceed that of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no wise enter into the Kingdom of heaven," was part of John's preaching no less than of that of Jesus. So far their emphasis was the same, the ethical nature of the Kingdom and of the conditions of a personal share therein. These were repentance and conduct expressive of new moral purpose, " works worthy of repentance." Further, by unflinching loyalty to the idea of spiritual state as the one thing essential before God, John was led, like some of the prophets before him, to a virtual setting aside of the privileges of race or nation in religion. " Begin not to say within yourselves, We have Abraham to our father ; for . . . God is able of these stones to raise up children to Abraham." This is a principle which Jesus carried yet farther by applying it to Gentile receptiveness of faith, so as to annul the national basis of God's favour, save in an historical sense and as giving prior right of access to the Kingdom, the final form of God's reign on earth. But while John and Jesus were at one in their emphasis on the prophetic idea of religion, John's accent was of the stern and rather negative sort, CHAP, i.] THE NEW CHRISTIAN ELEMENT 11 full of " the wrath to come " on those unfit for the Kingdom. Repentance with him only opened up the prospect of possible future forgiveness for those who should live lives of such righteousness as to pass muster with " the messenger of the Covenant," whose sifting " fan " would sever " wheat " from " chaff." But in Jesus' lips the accent is on the nearness of the Kingdom as glad news calling for grateful faith, though its acceptance implies repent- ance from the average life then marking Israel as a corporate whole. The Kingdom was nigh as Salvation rather than as judgment (Mark i. 14, 15). Thus Luke fitly gives the key-note of Jesus' preach- ing in the words of Is. Ixi. 1, 2a, his text in the synagogue at Nazareth ; while Matthew twice uses the phrase " the Gospel of the Kingdom " to describe its contents. Herein lay the new note of Jesus' ministry. It was positive in nature, and in earnest communicated the spiritual experience of the King- dom to individuals, as they received it in repent- ance and trustful devotion. But the Kingdom was not made " good news " by any lowering of the moral standard required of its members. On the contrary its ethical quality was deepened and heightened. It was the new inspiration to faith, hope, and love, the religious dynamic making obedience under the " yoke " of the Divine will, as Jesus depicted it, not only possible but " easy " to the meek, that made the difference. Not only did He re-enunciate the Mosaic Law, giving an authoritative version of its inmost intention, without the limitations which " the hardness of men's hearts " had imposed on its earlier promulgation. He also exercised the supreme spiritual function of God's vicegerent, in declaring the Divine forgiveness of 12 JESUS THE CHRIST [PART i. sins against the Covenant ; so claiming to know its inmost spirit and the conditions of the forgiveness which God had through the prophets declared Himself willing to dispense to the contrite heart. This claim, which deeply shocked the representatives of Jewish orthodoxy, is a symbol of the difference in spirit and power between the two stages in religion which historically blended, as Jesus took up John's message in his own new way. Not that this was at first fully apparent. On the contrary, we may assume that Jesus started his public career with much the same heritage of ideas touching the Kingdom, and even the sudden mode of its " coming," which we have seen in his kinsman John. Whether, indeed, John thought of it after the Apocalyptic manner, rather than simply like the old Prophets, is dubious. But in any case, Jesus himself held all features of the Messianic tradition which were of secondary religious moment, judged in the light of his own inner spiritual experience, with a certain looseness of grasp, as belonging to the temporal and conditional order, and used them largely symbolically. 1 He treated the Apocalyptic tradition, rooted in the imagery of the Prophets, with even more sovereign freedom than He showed towards the far more venerable tradition of Torah, rooted in the revelation to Moses. This must be borne in mind throughout ; and one can see in the crucial case of the methods by which the Kingdom was to be brought nigh, how early Jesus was led by inward reflection and conflict to modify the Messianic ideal of the Forerunner, and of his own home-circle. As the story of the Temptation and his actual 1 Cf. " The Symbolism of the Bible " in Dr Sanday's Life oj Christ in Recent Research, CHAP, i.] THE METHOD OF CHRIST 13 ministry show, He from the first set aside, as unfitting, all spectacular and coercive methods of bringing in the Kingdom, such as conventionally miraculous deeds of power, some of which even the more spiritual types of the Messianic hope included. Other traces of a purification and spiritualising of the whole idea of the Messianic Kingdom, and its " coming " to men in their unpreparedness, meet us as we follow carefully Jesus' ministry. In par- ticular a deliberate change of method in Christ's teaching, marked by the parable of the Sower (Mark iv. 1 ff.), took place as experience proved the extent of men's unreadiness to meet the spiritual side of his message half-way. " He that hath ears to hear, let him hear " becomes the refrain of challenging utterances, accompanied more and more by parables and other forms of exposition meant to test the hearer's moral insight, instead of offering him the truth in a form requiring no personal effort to assimilate its mean- ing (Mark iv. 11). It was bad for them, and bad for the Kingdom already forming in nucleus in the persons of true disciples who penetrated the thin veil, as it was to sincere souls, of parable or paradox that the unawakened should be under a delusion as to their acceptance of the coming Kingdom. It was '* to cast pearls before swine." Hence it was " mercy " as well as " judgment " to change from his earlier manner of direct preaching, to one which safeguarded spiritual reality, when this was found to be in danger. In this, as in other ways, Jesus was going on the lines of the greater Hebrew prophets, with their conviction that " salvation " must come in the first instance to a fit " remnant," an elect nucleus which might one day leaven all Israel. But such a dealing 14 JESUS THE CHRIST [PART i. with an Israel within Israel meant a fresh trial of faith, in obedience to the pointing finger of God, since it meant postponing the arrival of the Kingdom " in power " during a process of growth which even he could not measure (Mark iv. 26-29). Thus his vision of the time and form of its coming underwent alteration as the ministry advanced, and as he found least readiness for his essential message, touching his Father and the righteousness He required, where he had most right to expect it. Not among those of special religious privileges, such as the Pharisees, but among the simpler folk, " the little ones," the " babes " in religious knowledge, as " the wise and understanding " esteemed them, did * he find that " faith " in which he saw the prime qualification for the Kingdom. The distinction in question as regards simple moral receptiveness, unspoiled by professional pride, largely coincided with another between the selfish and unselfish spirit, which in turn coincided roughly with the distinction between rich and poor. This was specially the case in Palestine ; indeed it is still typical of Eastern society generally, where the absence of an impartial system of justice gives added power -to social advantages. Hence Jesus, though he refused to interfere directly in social conditions, saw most promise in the poor in lot, as also usually " poor in spirit." What the Kingdom meant above all was a new vision of God and His ways, as Jesus inter- preted these afresh. This new vision of God's nature, as embraced by the will, became the germ of a fresh type of religious experience. Its newness, as a con- scious and joyous illumination of the soul, is clear from Jesus' own testimony that, great as CHAP, i.] HIS SPIRITUAL SELECTION 15 was John the Baptist in his own dispensation that of the world-order or age which his ministry virtually closed one " but little " in gifts, who yet was " in the Kingdom of heaven " by participating in its distinctive spirit, was " greater than he " in religious experience. And such participation was already possible through acceptance of his Gospel : and in this vital sense the Kingdom of the " age to come " was so far present, though as the full harvest it seemed ever to recede. The Kingdom as he preached it virtually " came " in " the Word," which became germinal life in the individual soul. Accordingly it was " within " certain, here and now (Luke xvii. 21), though none could by force of self-will, instead of child-like acceptance of its conditions, attain to it (Matt. xi. 12). Yet such acceptance really involved a moral heroism, an uncalculating self-abandonment to God's great and holy cause. But simplicity of mind and moral heroism are often close allies. Jesus' testimony to John implies indeed continuity with his message ; and the same classes in Israel that received the one tended to welcome the other. Yet it implies also the superiority of the latter in positive, inspiring quality, as the revelation of God's true character and the principles of His Kingdom (as soon to be made manifest). As such it was joyous in tone, needing not that one sit apart with ascetic or defensive vigilance, but enabling a man to hallow all the relations of common life with a triumphant filial spirit, such as marked Jesus himself, " the Son of man," in contrast to his Forerunner. Still each is right in his own order ; " and Wisdom is justified of all her children." But while many who saw God's hand in John's 16 JESUS THE CHRIST [PART i. ministry were able to go on to discern the Divine wisdom under the new guise of " the Son of man," this was far from true of all. A deeper, a more original insight was needed : and this sometimes existed in unlikely quarters. Thus "the publicans and sinners " in Israel, whom its official teachers left severely alone, were often attracted to Jesus. His very holiness, instead of repelling by a sense of con- trast to what they were, drew them with a wistful sense of what they fain would be, and what in that presence they began to feel they might yet be, with his encouragement and aid. This spell exercised by Jesus' personality and speech about the heavenly Father is what strikes the best liberal Jewish opinion to-day 1 as most unique in him, in comparison with the Judaism about him. Another aspect of the same originality was his attitude to women, which may be described in modern terms as one of spiritual chivalry even to those most scorned of men while he accepted them within his personal circle of helpers in a degree all his own. The cause of such raising up of that which was despised or little esteemed was throughout the same, namely Jesus' sense of what each and all were " worth to God," in direct relation to whom he ever viewed the human soul. It was this sense of the intrinsic equality of souls before God which lay, too, at the root of his attitude to " faith " as found altogether outside the Chosen People, in men of Gentile birth. In all these cases Jesus was quick to accept the Father's " good pleasure," and to adjust his thoughts of the Kingdom thereto, so moving ever further away from traditional conceptions of any circle. Accordingly his attitude to manhood and womanhood as such, and the 1 E.g. C. G. Montefiore, The Religious Teaching of Jesus, p. 56 f. CHAP, i.] THE NATURE OF " FAITH " 17 religious sanction on which it rested, contribute the very core of what is distinctive in Christ's Gospel and what has wrought most as leaven of redemption in Christianity. They gave a new sanctity and significance to personality in individuals, and so virtually transformed the emphasis of the Kingdom and the basis of membership therein. Henceforth racial and national privilege was doomed. We have seen how original was Jesus' idea of the " faith " admitting to such a Kingdom as he was conscious of bringing in. This appears further in the way he led his inner circle on to a faith in himself as Messiah yet more personal in character, the slowly ripened fruit of moral conviction. Thus, and thus only, could it be their very own (Luke viii. 18), the sure index and crown of response to the teaching of the Heavenly Father in their inmost conscience, and the root of a character of the type visible in Messiah himself. This we must keep in mind in the sequel, as the norm of " faith " in its specifically Christian sense. On the other hand, morally individual as it was, Jesus saw in such a faith, as it spoke in Peter at Caesarea Philippi, no mere utterance of subjective insight and loyalty. Behind and beyond its individual aspect, he hailed it in its Divinely inspired aspect as the very principle or foundation of the Kingdom 1 in the concrete, the Messianic People of God, his Church. It was in fact really a corporate conviction, formed within the deepest life of the disciple-circle : and he 1 Cf. Odes of Solomon, xxii. 12, " that the foundation of every- thing might be Thy rock ; and on it Thou didst build thy Kingdom, and it became the dwelling-place of the saints." Here <: Thy rock " = God's Truth, as in Ode xi. 5, " I was established upon the rock of truth." 18 JESUS THE CHRIST [PART i. declared that this rock-like truth, as a living faith, was able to bear all the shocks of the corporate opposition of the forces of evil. When this was attained, but not till then, he began to unfold to those who ought now to be able to bear it the mystery which had been slowly defining itself in the depths of his own soul ; namely, that " the Son of man " should come to his Kingdom, in the full and open sense, only through rejection by the leaders of God's historic people as a nation, and that to the point of death at their hands. How radical a transformation of the Messianic idea, even in the circles nearest to Jesus, this involved, is shown by the manner in which his tested disciples themselves stumbled at it. Yet one more trace of the new and distinctive nature of Jesus' Messianic thought. The Last Supper, last and most sacred of the long series of meals of fellowship with his inner circle in " the breaking of bread " a usage charged with religious feeling among the Jews was manifestly overshadowed by the associations of the Paschal season. This spoke of redemption through blood, applied to the protective hallowing of God's People in their collective being, as households met within portals marked by the blood which spoke of the abiding Covenant between God and the People. Seizing upon this object- lesson ready to hand, and using its symbolism for the purpose of a visible parable, in order to enhance the effect of pictorial words, Jesus spoke those phrases which have echoed through the Christian centuries with unique power and appeal : " Take ye, this is my body." Through that body, as the visible form of his spirit's sacrifice, was to come a redemp- tion which should fulfil spiritually, and so more CHAP, i.] THE COVENANT RENOVATED 19 really, that which once came through the body of the lamb in Egypt, devoted to God's uses by yielding up its blood for a sacrificial rite of consecration. And so again, " This is my blood of the Covenant, which is being shed for you." Without entering into doubtful aspects of this pair of sayings, which by Hebraic parallelism set forth twin aspects of one profound idea, we may take it that St Paul is right in seeing in the combined words and actions a prophetic " declaration of the Lord's death " for his People's redemption, in fulfilment of the one Covenant from Abraham onwards. This was now passing into its final form in the Kingdom of per- fected fellowship between God and man. Here we get the complete transformation of the Messianic idea as achieved in the experience and mind of Jesus. For in those last weeks of his earthly ministry he felt and taught that at its heart lay the truth, adumbrated in Isaiah liii. but never hitherto made integral to the Messianic Hope, that " the Son of man came not to be ministered to," like an earthly king, " but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many " (Mark x. 45). Looking back over the changes wrought by Jesus in the idea of the Kingdom and its Messianic Head as the ministry proceeds, one feels the psychological verisimilitude of the whole process, although the Evangelists do not call attention to it. It is in this light that we must interpret any phenomena in the record of Jesus' Messianic consciousness about the meaning of which we might else be in doubt. This is the case with the point now to be referred to, which is of crucial importance for a true reading of the nature of his Gospel of the Kingdom as related to his own person. 20 JESUS THE CHRIST [PART i. What are we to say of Jesus' frequent use, seen in several passages cited above, of the title " the Son of Man " as a self -designation ? The question raises delicate problems as to how far the Master's words have undergone unconscious development during oral transmission and use in practical instruc- tion. All analogy, such as the early Lives of St Francis, points to such a possibility ; and no true historian to-day can avoid allowing for it, especially since the recovery of the apocalyptic literature of the period has made us more aware of the light in which Jesus and his ministry must have been viewed by his followers. Thus the attempt to discriminate primary and secondary elements in the Gospel records must be made ; nor are the main lines of demarcation really beyond our reach, thanks to the differences between our Synoptic Gospels them- selves. Here, too, we do well to recall the presump- tion created by the originality of Jesus' thought as to the Law and the " Kingdom," as well as the traces of a change of perspective in Jesus' own teaching as his ministry developed with the changing attitude of his people. Particularly was it so as to the nature of the Kingdom and its coming, with which his language about his own person and fortunes was closely bound up. Granting, then, that "the Son of Man " was a religious term already used in certain circles, Jesus' use of it may yet have been all his own. The current usage of the title, so far as it was current at all, was " Apocalyptic." It went back originally to Daniel vii. 13 f., and developed the symbolism of " one like unto a Son of Man " as con- trasted with various savage beasts, types of Gentile Empires in a particular way. " I saw in the night visions, and, behold, there came with the clouds of CHAP, i.] " THE SON OF MAN " 21 heaven one like unto a son of man ; and he came unto the Ancient of days. . . . And there was given him dominion, and glory, and a Kingdom, that all the peoples, nations, and languages should serve him : his dominion is an everlasting dominion . . . and his Kingdom that which shall not be destroyed." As apocalyptists brooded on this passage in later dark days, it seemed to point to the intervention of a heavenly being, coming into the visible and material sphere of human history straight out of a state of quasi-divine existence. Thus they gave an artificial turn (possibly under the influence of some mythologi- cal conception, of which we have traces in the East) to the plain meaning of Daniel. " One like unto a son of man" ceased to be a symbol in a vision, and became hypostatised into the Son of Man, who should achieve the judgment for " the saints of the Most High " themselves in Daniel the reality of which the man-like figure was but symbol. Now it is not likely that Jesus, with his sense for the spiritual heart of every other Old Testament passage to which he alludes, should adopt as his own such arbitrary and unbiblical exegesis, and use as his chosen designation " the Son of Man " in this Apocalyptic sense. Further, it does not fit several of his uses of it in our Gospels. One of these is self- evident, viz., the question to the disciples at Caesarea Philippi as given in Matt. xvi. 13, 1 " Who do men say that the Son of Man is ? " He is clearly ask- ing touching himself : and when the answer comes, 1 It does not matter whether this form is the original one or not. It shows that the Evangelist did not see in Jesus' use of the term a popular Messianic title of any sort. Moreover, the question even as given in the other Gospels is virtually in terms of the Son of Man, since that was his habitual title for himself. 22 JESUS THE CHRIST [PART i. " Thou art the Messiah," he blesses Peter's inspired insight ; whereas on the Apocalyptic view it would be a mere matter of using one synonym for another. The same holds for the whole of Jesus' ministry. He was constantly styling himself the Son of Man, and yet refraining from laying explicit claim to be the Messiah either in the present or in the near future. In fact his whole method of bringing men to faith in his person through acts of moral and spiritual insight into his character, and not into mere terms varying a little in associations, excludes the Apocalyptic use of the title as primary with him. Thus Jesus must have adopted " the Son of Man " as a term of unfixed meaning, at least to most of his hearers, but one of a suggestive sort, particularly for the aspect of his person which he was most anxious to emphasise. What was this ? Its repre- sentative nature, as the divinely designated Head of the Messianic Kingdom, unto which he, like others, had been set apart at the Baptism, when he heard God's voice saluting him as His "beloved" Son. 1 Here we have the real source of Jesus' use of the phrase, namely, his consciousness that his humanity stood in unique and archetypal relations to humanity at large, if primarily to Israel as God's collective *' Son " by election. He felt that he stood and now he realised as never before the Messianic meaning of the fact in that perfectly filial relation to God which was the destiny of man as originally created " in the image of God," though it had been lost by Adam and never recovered until in his own experi- ence and person. Such a view 2 suits Jesus' dis- 1 Probably here used as in Is. xlii. 1, cited in Matt. xii. 18. * Reached by analysis of Jesus' words themselves, but also proved to be a marked element in the outlook of the prophets. H. Gress- CHAP, i.] LAST THINGS AS THE FIRST 23 tinctive standpoint in much of his teaching. Thus he takes the relations of man and woman in the story of Creation as regulative of the idea of marriage. By this standard, the normative or ideal order of " the beginning," in which his whole thought touch- ing " the end " moves, he boldly sets aside the Mosaic ordinance on the subject, as an accommoda- tion to a lower and provisional state of things. From this standpoint also his revision of the Mosaic Law touching the Sabbath and foods is best under- stood. He judges by a type of human relations ideally prior to, and more Divine in authority than the Mosaic, the latter being relative to " the hard- ness " of men's hearts as fallen under the power of sin. Jesus felt himself, then, to be revealing afresh and carrying to completion the will of God revealed implicitly at Creation, as was fitting on the eve of its perfect realisation in the Kingdom, which was of the nature of a new creation by fresh Divine intervention. In this new creation, wherein God is saying, " Behold, I make all things anew " (Rev. xxi. 5), He works primarily in and through Messiah as the representative Head of humanity, 1 even as humanity itself is the head of creation (Gen. i. 27, ii. 7, 15-17). This gives its true meaning to a passage like Matt. xix. 23-28, where Jesus refers to " the Regeneration," the era of the new order or maim, " The Source of Israel's Messianic Idea," American Journal of Theology, 1913, 173 ff., says : " The end returns to the beginning. So we see that all the ideas of the Messianic end-time which do not depend upon the historical situation, have their origin in the ideas of the Golden Age or the Paradise " (p. 186). 1 Cf. 1 Cor. xi. 3 ; Rom. viii. 20 f., and Paul's whole idea of the Second or Heavenly Adam, annulling the failure of the First. 24 JESUS THE CHRIST [PART i. " Kingdom of heaven," " when the Son of Man shall sit on the throne of his glory," and when his Apostles too " shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel " in its new spiritual form. So too the Protevangel in Gen. iii. 15 tells of the woman's seed, which should through suffering " bruise the head " of the Tempter, so gaining the upper hand over his power. This must surely have been taken like the whole Creation story in certain Jewish circles in a Messianic sense, and would be bound up in Christ's mind with the title, " the Son of Man" i.e. of Mankind. Being such, the title implied also that the Kingdom, as symbolised by his own person, was as universal as the humanity created by God but marred by sin. Only, as it was through Israel, the chosen medium of God's gracious counsels for all, that the redemptive know- ledge of God was to come ; so it was to fit Israel itself for its Messianic work, that Jesus felt himself sent in the first instance. Hence the restriction of his mission and practical horizon to " the lost sheep of the house of Israel " during the preparatory ministry recorded in the Gospels. But implicitly and ulti- mately it was for the world. Thus the formal starting-point of Jesus' concep- tion of the Kingdom may have been the vision in Dan. vii., only this as interpreted in his own deeply religious way. He started from its original sugges- tions, viz. that sovereign power should pass from bodies of men organised on principles of brute-force, the world-empires described in the context, to " the saints of the Most High," humanity organised by Divine intervention on the basis of man's proper nature, in virtue of which he was made to share the Divine image. In this sense man was the true CHAP, i.] JESUS' MESSIANIC SECRET 25 organ of God's glory, no mere creature but a being who, like Adam, was in idea and potency a true son of God (cf. Luke iii. 38), though with a sonship no less dependent than was the frailer aspect of humanity as ** flesh." This idea is quite explicit in Psalm viii., where man's glory as appointed ruler of the lower creation is dwelt on, and he is hailed as " but little lower than God " (v. 5). Man is there styled first " man " and then " the son of man " ; and we can hardly doubt that this striking psalm on man's place in creation coloured Jesus' use of the Son of Man. Accepting, then, as he did, the general Messianic idea, especially as it appears in Isaiah witness his use of Is. Ixi. 1 ff. in the synagogue of Nazareth he thought of himself as Messiah primarily on these lines. As such, he, the Son of Man par excellence, was the typical Head of " the Saints of the Most High," themselves symbolised in Daniel by " one like unto a son of man." Later on, when rejection became his lot, Jesus saw this mystery more and more in the light of the Suffering Servant of the Lord in Is. liii., who through his very suffer- ings and death was to " justify many " and finally " see of the travail of his soul and be satisfied." In so using " the Son of Man," in an allusive, un- explained manner, Jesus was but acting in conson- ance with his general method, seen in his parables and in certain phrases which condense in bold and paradoxical form a whole world of suggestions. His was an enigmatic use of it, on the biblical lines of the use in Ezekiel and in Psalm viii. (pointing back to Gen. i. 26 f .), meant to stimulate personal thought in the hearer and so lead on to the heart of Jesus' idea of himself as Messiah. It was symbolic, as we might expect in one whose whole ministry was on 26 JESUS THE CHRIST [PART i. the lines of the greater Hebrew prophets ; and it contained in a nutshell the "mystery" of the Kingdom. Such a conception was fitted not only to set aside the national associations of the term " Messiah," but also to direct men's thoughts to Himself, here and now, as type and sample (cf. the typical Sonship implied in the Baptism and Tempta- tion) of the qualities essential to the kind of kingdom for which men were to prepare. In this way it also set aside the conventional Apocalyptic conception alike of the Kingdom and of Messiah. For according to Apocalyptic, the Son of Man played no part in preparing his people for the Kingdom, but appeared suddenly with no prior human history a vital con- trast and proceeded to execute judgment between the fit and unfit, as He then found them. Such a being had no organic or ethical solidarity with his people, and was no true Messiah as the Hebrew prophets conceived the role. The Apocalyptic Messianic ideal cannot, then, have been Jesus' own ideal, or the real basis of the title by which he chose to hint at his own function and person. The real source of his Messianic consciousness, and therefore what moulded his own distinctive idea of Messiahship and the Messianic Kingdom, was his filial consciousness of the Father during the years of silence at Nazareth, known to us only by one revealing moment. The current Messianic and Apoca- lyptic conceptions merely afforded forms which he used, probably often with poetic freedom, just so far as they did not hamper his own thought. The great bulk of the cases in which Jesus refers to himself as " the Son of Man," at least in Mark, and where Matthew and Luke agree with Mark, CHAP, i.] "THE SON OF GOD" 27 are entirely satisfied by the purely Biblical sense just assigned to it, viz., the man after God's own heart, His normal man " the proper man " of Carlyle's version of Luther's Eine jeste Burg. As such he was God's authorised medium of revelation and power among men, His Messianic Son. Thus, it having been laid down that " the Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath," it follows that " the Son of Man," God's normal man, has inter- pretative and dispensing " lordship " even over Sabbath observance. Again, in the narrative touch- ing Jesus' claim that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins, Matthew says that the crowd " glorified God who had given such authority to men." That is, the evangelist here saw in the title itself no heavenly dignity. But the associations of the title are twofold ; on the one hand, frailty and liability to humiliation as "flesh," on the other, supreme authority under God, in virtue of spiritual affinity (Ps. viii., cf. John x. 34 f ). Thus " the Son of Man " has as its correlative the title which Jesus more rarely applied to himself, " the Son " of God. This, too, seems to have different shades of mean- ing, beginning as his own religious experience, viewed as the normal Biblical one, and rising to the unique aspect from which his Messiahship springs in his own eyes. The latter is implied in Jesus' whole tone and attitude during the ministry, but especially towards the end. 1 In the former sense it already underlies his thought in boyhood touching his Father's house, and is prior to the idea of " the Son of Man." But in order of self -manifestation 1 It is implied in the Baptism and Temptation, also in his attitude of authority in things Divine : it is explicit in Luke x. 22 ; Matt. xi. 27 ; Mark xii. 1-6, 35-37, xiii. 32, xiv. 61 f. 28 JESUS THE CHRIST [PART i. to others " the Son of Man " is prior and the centre of emphasis, while it is the virtual correlative of the unique sense of Divine Sonship. For the primary suggestions of its usage too are of dignity and authority, not of human frailty. In this respect there is little contrast with the Apocalyptic usage, save in the true solidarity with humanity at large which belongs to the one usage and is absent from the other. Jesus has final authority for judgment " because he is son of man " (John v. 27). This being so, it was also natural that at the very close of his earthly life or at earliest at Csesarea Philippi, after reference to his coming sufferings when facing a future the details of which were obscure even to himself (Mark xiii. 32), Jesus should fall back upon the symbolic language of Daniel vii. 13, to express the certainty that his Messianic sove- reignty would begin to be evident even to his foes from the very moment l of their formal condemna- tion of his claims as blasphemy. But even this foreshadowing of his triumph probably denotes no immediate return, but rather session at the right hand of God in power, the pledge of his coming erelong to reign more visibly on earth. He saw that things were not ripe for this latter consummation : that a process of moral preparation by his Gospel of the Kingdom was needful to test and mature men either for acceptance or rejection, of a really personal and decisive nature ; and that such a process was re- quired by the spiritual nature of the Kingdom. That the process, in the case of a Kingdom with Divine capacity for rapid growth, as of mustard- seed, would be prolonged beyond the generation of 1 " From now,' as Matt, and Luke have it independently, making plainer the sense of Mark xiv. (32. CHAP, i.] THE KINGDOM 29 his personal disciples, he does not seem to have anticipated (Mark viii. 38, ix. 1, xiii. 30, xiv. 25 ; Luke xxii. 30). Still on such time-relations Jesus felt his own limitations even as God's unique Messiah Son. He was sure, however, that the probation of the Jewish nation would not last longer than the generation then living as indeed was the case. With the wider world of men beyond the Chosen People Jesus did not directly concern himself, re- garding its interests as bound up with those of the Messianic Israel within Israel, through whose purified life and ministry in the age of the Kingdom, when " come in power," the Gentiles would receive the blessings of the Knowledge of God foretold by the prophets. On the whole, then, we may say that to Jesus the Kingdom of God was present in the coming of the Son of Man ; but was also future in that only a small nucleus of the true Humanity was so far in existence. A decisive point is here marked by the Apostles' solemn confession of Faith in his real character as the Son of Man. On this living faith the New Congregation (Ecclesid), the true Israel of God and of His Christ, rested secure of final con- summation. Moreover, the type of life which it already embodied in its small beginning, like the sprouting mustard-seed, was in germ the same as that proper to the completed organism. Thus its organic laws of conduct were no mere " stop-gap morality," pending the consummation of the King- dom at the visible return of Christ. The eschato- logical or foreshortened perspective of Jesus' historic world-view did indeed limit the degree to which he himself applied those principles to social, economic, and national ethics generally, including peace and 30 JESUS THE CHRIST [PART i. war : for the persistence of national life at all, in its existing relations, both internal and external, was no essential part of the idea of the Kingdom of God on earth. The Divine transformation bring- ing in the Kingdom would solve all such problems in other ways than were then practicable. In this wider social sphere, then, all must be provisional and left on the existing basis. But in the properly personal sphere, out of which are the issues of life in every relation, all was already made new, already under the reign of the laws of Divine Grace, and bound in the end to leaven everything. The ethical laws flowed inevitably from the two constitu- tive religious principles of the Gospel, the Father- hood of God and the brotherhood of men in Him. These were unified and interpreted, in actual fact and experience, in the person of Messiah, repre- sentative alike of men (Son of Man) and of God (Son of God). Thus Christ's own person contained in principle the Messianic Salvation, the Righteous- ness of God, the fellowship of God and man in a perfect unity of life which overflows as fellowship between men as true children of God. Righteousness, then, in the Christian sense is rooted in and springs directly from Christ's own religious experience in its deepest and most personal aspects, towards both God and man. To this the current categories of " the Kingdom " were not really germane. " As a fact, the central conceptions of His religious and ethical teaching are borrowed not from the political, but from the domestic sphere," not from the Divine Kingship, but from the Divine Fatherhood 1 a fundamental change in emphasis 1 W. P. Paterson, art. "Jesus Christ" in Hastings' single- volume Diet, of the Bible (1910). CHAP, i.] CHRIST'S SPIRIT OR EMPHASIS 31 from that of Judaism, especially as regards the individual. " One is your Father," and " all ye are brethren " : these words express Jesus' char- acteristic outlook, alike in the Lord's Prayer, his chief parables, and much of his normal teaching. Here, then, we have " the organising idea " of all his thought and teaching, the unity running through its occasional and unsystematic form. This deter- mines its spirit and dynamic quality : it is this, as expressed in Jesus' winged words, but still more movingly in his own person as " a life-giving spirit " so that *' virtue hath gone out of " each embodi- ment of himself in recorded deed and look which has told most in the long run upon Christianity. All this, too, is independent of its original historical relations of space and time, whether in thought or practice. From these the religious insight of faith can disentangle it, along with all that depends immediately upon it, and re-embody it in fresh forms natural to its thinking, without vital loss. As we shall see, this was what the ancient Church at once began instinctively to do for itself (Part II. ch. v.) : and it remains an office of the religious consciousness to strive, with its growing experience, to grasp more perfectly the emphasis of Christ's Gospel. In this lies its intention and spirit, behind the historical forms of thought and speech which even Jesus em- ployed, though with all prophetic and poetic freedom. The above account of the foundation of the Church as nucleus of the Messianic Kingdom, like any which deals fairly with the data of the Gospels, recognises a certain element of intellectual limitation in the time and space relations of the Kingdom as viewed even by Christ when on earth. This raises theological 32 JESUS THE CHRIST [PART i. problems which do not concern us here, any more than those raised by the geocentric assumptions underlying Jesus' world- view or by his belief in the daemonic origin of disease, both mental and physical to name only two chief points turning on the state of physical and experimental science in the ancient world. In none of these matters did Jesus claim to be entrusted with any special revelation. Such things lay outside his vocation, as he states it. And here we come again on a principle vital to a true understanding of the element of " revelation " in Christ's message, viz. emphasis and its significance for Christianity. Its Founder claimed Divine authority for his teaching, as of absolute or abiding validity, only on certain points, on which He laid great stress, returning to them again and again. In this He spoke in the manner of the Hebrew prophet, where it differs from the systematic method of Greek intellectualism. Its genius is intuitive, fixing on cardinal points which virtually control and illumine the whole field of practical life. It does not care to think out all their implications, least of all for the facts of Nature as these interest the scientific intellect, namely as phenomena with continuous relations of cause and effect. All this aspect of things is taken for granted in current terms, and used as part of the mechanism of re- ligious thought or speech, much of which Jesus used symbolically. The real interest is elsewhere ; its emphasis is upon the Divine aspects and relations of persons, as the prime factors of the moral order and as specially related to God and His will in and through the world. The prophetic type of religious truth, then, is personal and teleological, just as its mode of thought and expression is poetical : it is, CHAP, i.] THE CHRISTIAN "REVELATION" 33 in a word, essentially moral, with a constant ultimate reference to God. In this light it is not hard to distinguish in principle the element of revelation, or further unveiling of the essential relations of God and man, which Jesus claimed to convey in his Gospel of the Kingdom. Rightly to apply the principle in detail, however, is a different thing. We shall see later how largely lack of historic insight into the psychological back- ground of Christ's life, as of the New Testament generally, explains various conflicting readings of the Gospel, in its spirit and contents, which have confused and marred historic Christianity. Yet we can also see why it is that there has been such unity of underlying religious type. The religious impression conveyed by the New Testament as a whole is due in the main to Christ's personality and the piety of which He himself is the supreme type. The uniform appeal to all sorts and conditions of Christians made by such an expression of Christ's spirit as the Lord's Prayer, illustrates what is here meant. The Lord's Prayer may help, too, to bring home the distinctive character of Christianity, as compared even with the Judaism out of which it issued, ful- filling and universalising Old Testament religion on its progressive side. It is no accident that the most typical and sacred form of words in Christianity is not a creed or a law, but a prayer, an act of devo- tion to God's Name as Father and to His will among men. Most of the separate clauses of this prayer can be paralleled from Judaism ; but the simple and organic form in which they here appear, and above all their suggestive order, bears the impress of a selective spiritual experience, of a personality behind 34 JESUS THE CHRIST [PART i. the words, that is more than Jewish. Hence it is fitly styled " the Lord's Prayer " ; and it has owed more than half its power over human souls to the suggestion which it brings up of the personality in whom its ideal was once for all embodied. Here, in one palmary instance, we see the secret of the specific advance of the religion of the New Testament upon that of the Old, as the writer To the Hebrews, himself a Jew, so vividly realised and argued. It all lies in the personality of Christ, as mediator of the New Covenant of access to God. The Law, apart from its national and racial associations for the Jew, is too abstract and formal to win and inspire the soul, especially the sin-stricken conscience, with the confidence and power requisite to full obedience. Neither is it per se a universal " quickening spirit," able to enter and lift up the fallen, or to kindle the love to God and " enthusiasm of humanity " which Ecce Homo justly describes as characteristic of Christ's influence. Personality is the supreme medium for awakening personality : it is of his- torical forms the most inexhaustible in possibilities of moral suggestion and inspiration ; and Jesus, in his perfectly filial holiness loyal, humble, loving, free and in his human sympathy and devotion, is the supreme religious personality. As such he superseded Judaism as the religion of the Law a national law and inaugurated Christianity as the Catholic religion of the filial Spirit. The very criticisms of official Judaism during his ministry, and its part in bringing about his death, ^o but serve to throw into clearer relief the full religious significance of Christ's person and work. It was his relation to the Law that was the essential issue between it and him. It was not that he made CHAP, i.] JESUS AND THE JEWISH LAW 35 the Law of God less exigent in its demands on man's obedience. Quite the reverse. A law taken seriously in the spirit is more universal in its applications than the most rigid of literal codes. Jesus' reading of the Mosaic Law was ever in the interests of a fuller obedience to God's will, nay, of an imitation of God. Yet in order " not to destroy but to fulfil," he treated its ordinances in certain cases with sovereign freedom, as of a son who feels so sure of the inner mind of his father in making rules, that in his father's name he authorises departure from their letter, in order the more to carry out their real intention. The sense of sacrilege which this evoked in the Pharisees is but proof of the uniqueness of the claim involved. It meant such an intimate knowledge of God as only Messiahship in the highest sense, a spiritual union or sonship such as none of the prophets had claimed for himself, could guarantee. But this is just what had been anticipated in God's Elect and Anointed One ; and this and nothing less Jesus habitually assumed as his, with a quiet con- fidence equalled only by his humility before his Heavenly Father. The issue, then, was sharp and clear, on current Jewish notions. 1 Either Jesus was Messiah in the exalted sense which Isaiah ix. 6, for instance, implies, when it says, " Unto us a Child is born, unto us a Son is given . . . and his name shall 1 Here we must not judge by the later standards of a Judaism jealous to exclude all conceptions of the union of the Divine and human natures, even in Messiah, such as might leave any opening for a unique incarnation in Jesus of Nazareth. Had his judges not been biassed against him by contrariety in their religious ideal of what Messiah should be ; had they been willing to accept such an one as Jesus of Nazareth as " the Messiah, the Son of the Blessed " (Mark xiv. 61) ; then they would have been able to accept from him as Messiah even modifications of the Mosaic Law. 36 JESUS THE CHRIST [PART i. be called Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God, Ever- lasting Father, Prince of Peace " Divine epithets, betokening absolute identity of spiritual nature such as would warrant even handling of the Divine Law in a way that to Jews would be blasphemy in any ordinary prophet ; or Jesus did not realise in his person such an ideal, and he was blaspheming. Here lay the meaning of the Cross for official legal Judaism. Either Jesus or the Jewish Law, as a body of ordinances, had to be reduced to a secondary place as organ of the Divine Will. Which was it to be ? Judaism answered one way, Christianity the other. The issue was, as Saul the Pharisee saw when he thought it out a little later, momentous. At first he himself decided one way, and judged Jesus a blasphemer : afterwards he embraced the other alternative, though he saw that it involved more than the simpler Galilsean disciples perceived. The Jewish Law could no longer be as it was before, seeing that through its official guardians it as letter had condemned Jesus, its modifier in God's name, who was in fact Messiah and therefore the final authority on the Divine Will. Inevitably, it was deposed from its old place of authority : its dispensation was over. Messiah's law of the Spirit was the new form of the Covenant, that of the Messianic Kingdom. Chris- tianity, while in form a reformation of Judaism, was in spirit a revolution. It was a return, however, to essential prophetic Hebraism, which it "fulfilled" in the highest sense and transformed into a spiritual universal ism. All this was, indeed, only implicit in the religion of Christ as embodied in his own spirit and career. But there it lay in fact, in his new emphasis on religion as personal love to God and love to man as CHAP, i.] THE CROSS AND THE GOSPEL 37 such, in the light of God's Fatherhood rather than as external obedience to Divine Law on a national basis. The two aspects did not as a rule come into formal conflict under the conditions of Christ's historic ministry as a Jew : but the contrast of ideals was felt by the Pharisees and objectified by their hostility, even unto the Cross. And what of the Cross ? It has shared the transvaluation of Him who there voluntarily yielded himself to death, in utter loyalty of self-sacrifice for the sake of God's purpose for men. It has been in experience the piercing point of the Gospel. It has been the pledge in deed of the redemptive and sacrificial grace of God, holy and loving as Christ himself. Thus has it spoken to the Christian heart. What in theory it has meant to Christians we shall see as we go on. There, as in relation to Christ's person, we shall meet again the difficulties to thought caused by the historical form under which Christianity came to men, as the child of Judaism as well as of the Spirit of God. But in the fact of Christ, and of Him crucified, all authentic Christianity lies implicit. Only, as the historic Christ proved " a stumbling-block " to official Judaism, in virtue of its literalism in religion ; so his Gospel has often seemed to the non-Jew not only " foolishness," but also a thing hard to be understood even by its friends. One reason for this is now becoming clearer. It lies in the conditioned nature of the historic forms in which every moving of the Spirit must needs clothe itself, forms beset with the infirmities and relativities of human thought, especially in the earlier and simpler stages of its development. The Gospel of Christ, even as it came to and through the sinless personality of the Son of Man, could form no exception to this 38 JESUS THE CHRIST [PART i. law of manhood. Sinlessness and infallibility are not synonymous, though faith in Christ in the former aspect naturally begot trust in all he said en bloc, without any effort to discriminate the sources whence the different elements in his speech and thought really came. The Divine treasure of religious experience must ever be committed to finite vessels of the intellect ; and has to be emptied from one to another with difficulty, and not without loss as well as gain. Or changing the metaphor to one less inadequate, in transmission the seed must undergo transformations. It grows by elimination of matter once forming part of its living tissue, as well as by assimilation of fresh elements from outside. CHAPTER II APOSTOLIC CHRISTIANITY "They sing the song of Moses . . . and . . . of the Lamb." "We have the mind of Christ." THE essence of Christianity is Christ : its method the influence of personality upon personality. The secret of its origin, as of its repeated renewal the most striking fact in its history is the power of His personality over men. The primitive Church was the broadening out of the circle of disciples which had grown up in the footsteps of Jesus. They had been gathered by the test of religious experience, from nearly every class, social or religious, within contemporary Judaism ; but most of all from the non-official and humbler types, in which the essential spirit of religion was least entangled with the tradi- tional and secondary. The principle of selective affinity was a certain openness to spiritual reality, and a readiness to sacrifice all for it, which Jesus himself spoke of as the child-like spirit and the *' single eye." Such were the essential qualities of those who felt themselves " elect " unto membership in the people prepared for God's Messianic reign. For in the coming of Messiah among men, the Kingdom had come in principle, though not *' in power " owing to the unreadiness of the nation as a whole, seen in its rejection of Him. Yet even this great anomaly would be annulled, and that right 39 40 APOSTOLIC CHRISTIANITY [PART i. soon, by God's overruling, possibly through a national penitence, when Jesus should return to reign. Such was the form of their faith. But what of Jesus' death by crucifixion ? How could faith survive so crushing a refutation of the claims of the Prophet of Nazareth to be the Messiah it had begun to see in him ? Simply because the Cross, as so read, had itself been refuted by another fact vouchsafed to his followers as a body, their experi- ence of Jesus as risen. It was this that raised them out of the despair into which his death had plunged them. The very rallying of the scattered disciples and their assembling in Jerusalem, the scene of their Master's seeming defeat and their own real one in a word, the birth of the Church in history- presupposes the faith of the 'Resurrection as resting on a basis of experience. But was that experience only subjective, due to their own mental reaction on the situation ? On such an hypothesis, could it be given more psychological verisimilitude than it has so far attained, the basis seems unequal to the superstructure it had to bear in the Apostolic Age. It is not as though the witnesses were fewest or least varied the nearer we get to the events. On the contrary the earliest and most official evidence, that cited by Paul, the ex-persecutor, as having reached him and become the basis of his connected instruction of his converts so going far back beyond even the date of his preaching at Corinth, some score of years after the crucifixion this evidence is the most manifold of all. Accordingly the first link historically uniting Christ and His Church is one of personal experience in some peculiarly objective sense, as Paul, himself the very type of habitual rather than occasional spiritual fellowship with his Lord, is our CHAP, ii.] THE AGE OF THE SPIRIT 41 best authority for believing. Not that Paul, to judge from his habit of thought, viewed the appear- ances of the risen Jesus as vouchsafed apart from the action of the Spirit of God upon those who received them : for all within the Messianic Kingdom, the new spiritual order of experience, was conditioned by the Spirit. It was thus that God " revealed His Son " to him (Gal. i. 15 f.), whatever other condition might be present. Here we have a distinctive feature of the Apostolic Age. It was the age of the Spirit, marked by a great spontaneity of religious life, on lines inspired by the impression produced by the Master himself. It was marked also by a fervent love and sense of fellowship. The heart was enlarged and overflowed in joy and sympathy. This holy " enthusiasm " or inspired state of soul was at first described in simple, picturesque, experimental language as " holy Spirit," " falling upon " or " filling " those in whom it was manifest. 1 Its most typical forms in the early days, when expectancy touching the consummation of the Kingdom was most intense, were the ecstatic and inarticulate utterances called " speaking in tongues " (glossolalia), and the more self-conscious and con- trolled exposition of Divine things known as " prophecy." The first and greatest exhibition of such phenomena was at Pentecost, when Peter explained them as the fulfilment of the prophecy of Joel touching "the last days." In the gifts of the Spirit Jesus was felt to be still active. " Having received of the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit," He had "poured forth" the Pentecostal manifestation (Acts ii. 33). Nay, the whole life of 1 Striking analogies will be found among the early Franciscans and Quakers. 42 APOSTOLIC CHRISTIANITY [PART i. the Church, and particularly of its Apostolic leaders, was a continuation of what Jesus " began both to do and to teach " during his earthly ministry (i. 1 f.). The Church was the chosen organ through which the Christ still spoke and acted by His Spirit among men, pending His return in person to reign in manifest glory. Herein lay the secret of its power to impress and attract fresh members to its fellow- ship. " It was not the thought of the disciples, not their Messianic doctrine as such " : it was the inspired quality of their life. Thus, while its Jewish outlook is symbolised by " the Parousia," Messiah's visible return, its own atmosphere may be described by the phrase " holy Spirit," the actual animating element in religious experience. It is here that we have the living new germ due to Christ himself, which was destined to break through the formal envelope of Jewish Messianic conceptions, including a finite and temporal Parousia an envelope which though at first protective of faith, in its need of intellectual continuity, was soon felt to be too narrow for the facts of present religious experience. The Church, then, was already the true or Messianic Israel in germ, though not in fulness either of numbers or complete penetration by the Spirit's transforming power for soul and body. " In hope " only was it " saved " in this full sense. As its attitude was one of constant expectancy, so all the forms of its life were provisional and temporary. All readings of the institutions of the Apostolic Church which fail to bear this in mind are so far unhistorical. It did not even occur to them at first, as their duty, to revise Jewish usages in the light of the distinctive spirit of Jesus ; as for instance when He showed what really defiled a man " so making all things clean " (Mark vii. 19 ; CHAP, ii.] PRIMITIVE CONCEPTIONS 43 c/. Acts x. 15). It was only by the teachings of ex- perience that the new element in its simply personal faith, that " the Messiah is Jesus " and none other, 1 made itself articulate in beliefs and Church usages, independent of Judaism and frankly based on the principles of universal humanity. At first, though the Church believed in a new type of Messiah, it expected the old type of " Kingdom," and one restricted by the Law of Judaism. Time was needed for Christian experience, and reflection on it, to develop sufficiently to transform or at least modify their Jewish conceptions alike of the Kingdom and of the Mosaic Law in relation to it. These first days, with all their Jewish limitations, were highly formative for the outlook and usages of the early Church. Its emphasis was eschatological, a fact which coloured at once its whole conception of Salvation, both collective and individual, and its view of Messiah through whom that Salvation was mediated. The Messianic Salvation for which they looked and longed was conceived in a naive and picturesque way. It was not only the return of the Lord's Anointed, but that after a rather external fashion. It was corporate, a matter of member- ship in a consecrated People. " The Saints " were those set apart by baptism unto Jesus as the Christ. His Name, with all that " name " implied to a Jew, was invoked upon the believer, and so he was identified with his Lord in status and privileges. Thus they became objectively " holy," though in virtue of a deeply personal act of adhesion involving a man's inmost soul, and " sealed " by the Spirit's manifest presence ; and were pledged to loyalty to 1 The true emphasis not only of Acts xviii. 5, 28, but of Acts as a whole. 44 APOSTOLIC CHRISTIANITY [PART i. their covenanted Lord. As to the content of the duty thus embraced, this was denned by Jesus' own teaching and example. It was summed up in the two-fold principle of Love to God and one's neighbour in the widest sense, which the Master had declared to be the soul of the Law and the Prophets. Flowing from assurance of acceptance with God through for- giveness of sins, on the ground of union with the Holy Servant of the Lord whose death was now, in the light of the Resurrection, felt to have atoning significance, on the lines of Isaiah liii. came a deep sense of unity with other souls in this sacred bond of common salvation : and from both came a great and purifying joy. This joyous spirit helped to lift men above the barriers of egoism and selfish use of worldly goods, by the sense of a boundless common good, a life of Divine fellowship. Such unlimited good-will and sympathy within the Beloved Com- munity as it has been happily called showed itself in uncalculating beneficence wherever need of any kind existed among the brethren. " All who had believed unto unity, used to have all things in common " (Acts ii. 44). Not that there was any formal community of goods. All was spontaneous and voluntary, actuated by the principle expressed in a primitive Jewish Christian catechism styled The Two Ways, "If ye are fellows in that which is immortal, how much more in things mortal." Such is the general effect of the early chapters of Acts. It shows, like parallel cases of a religious movement in its fresh prime, a vital blend of corpor- ate and individual experience, each helping to in- tensify the other. So was it with its sacramental usages, by which membership in the holy community was first ratified and then continuously fostered. CHAP, ii.] BAPTISM 45 Baptism, whereby status as incorporated members was conferred and corresponding obligations under- taken, 1 " sealed " not only converts by personal adhesion on confession of faith, but also their children, whatever their age or incapacity to make personal confession. This was entirely in accord with ancient religion generally, as well as Judaism itself in the matter of circumcision, to which in the case of the children of proselytes baptism also was added. The religion of a family was determined by that of the paterfamilias, before any question of subjective choice or personal faith could arise -with years of discretion. If the child did take its own way later on, it was regarded as apostate from the paternal religion from which it elected to with- draw. This was the view of Jews ; and this no doubt shaped the usage of the Messianic Israel within Israel, as the words of Peter at Pentecost imply (Acts ii. 39). The children of those within the New Covenant themselves ranked as within it, and so presumably received the sacramental sign, on the assumption that they would in due course personally appropriate their birthright in the Spirit, as Jewish children the blessings of the Covenant of the Law. On this basis they were reared " in the nurture and admonition of the Lord," and taught to "obey their parents in the Lord," i.e. as Christians (Eph. vi. 1, 4). On such presuppositions of religious solidarity between parent and child, Paul regarded the child even of a single Christian parent not as *' unclean " but " holy " (1 Cor. vii. 14), in a corporate or social sense, in virtue of its parent's Covenant 1 This aspect is clearly brought out by the Didache, which contains traditional " Teaching of the Twelve Apostles " current in the latter part of the first century. 46 APOSTOLIC CHRISTIANITY [PART i. with God. The dangers to which such an objective view of religious relationship was liable are obvious to us. But these were not present to the experi- ence, and therefore did not embarrass the action, of the primitive Church. It simply had an aspect of truth to express in the matter of corporate religion, and expressed it with naive emphasis. We have only to see the facts in the light of the mission field to- day to realise their true historical bearing, where the Christian Church first stood sharply defined from all around it, and baptism marked to the eyes of men the line between those inside and those out- side. Ritually to treat the children of " the saints " as other than within the objective sphere of grace, would have been at least as misleading in suggestion as the opposite course could then be. We come next to the other sacrament of spiritual solidarity. 1 " And they were adhering stedfastly to the Apostles' teaching and to (the) fellowship the breaking of bread and the prayers." These last were the special forms in which the fellowship took effect ; and we read farther on that " they daily broke bread " in domestic gatherings. Such table-fellow- ship the Jews were wont to hallow with prayers which invested common meals with sanctity and solemn joy. Much more would Messiah's followers do so. Neighbouring brethren would naturally form a unit of such fellowship, a "house-church." Our best helps to understanding these conditions are the phrases " break bread by way of thanksgiving " (eucharist), or more briefly " break a Thanksgiving," found in the pseudo-Clementine writings, repre- senting certain conservative Judaeo-Christians of the third century. The true antecedents of such 1 See appended Note on the Eucharist, p. 79. CHAP, ii.] THE BREAKING OF BREAD 47 " breaking of bread " were the habitual meals of fellowship in Jesus' own circle during his earthly ministry, of which we have an echo in the story of the meal at Emmaus. Such informal, domestic, daily " breaking of bread " is to be distinguished from more formal meetings on the Lord's Day for worship and religious fellowship, when the Bread came to be broken with clearer reference to the Last Supper, with its special associations and explanatory words so "showing forth the Lord's death." But, in any case, fully corporate table-communion in the Jeru- salem Church would be physically impossible, a consideration which needs to be borne in mind in other connections also during the Apostolic Age. Though the form in which these, two types of Eucharistic meal were observed in parts of the Church having different religious antecedents may have varied somewhat (Pt. II. ch. iii.), it is im- portant to keep in mind the co-existence of the two throughout the first century and even later. For it probably bears on the problem of the Agape and the Eucharist proper, and their mutual relations ; as well as on certain tendencies to hole and corner forms of religious fellowship within a local Church, such for instance as Ignatius early in the second century opposes as destructive of unity alike in feel- ing and in doctrine. There is no sign that " the breaking of bread " in Acts ii. 42, 46 was on the lines of the Last Supper. There is no allusion to the wine, which was integral to its symbolism, nor indeed to anything connecting this breaking of bread formally with the death of Jesus. Possibly quite another symbolism grew up around the Jewish forms of sacred meal, in which solemn breaking of the loaf and its distribution, as 48 APOSTOLIC CHRISTIANITY [PART i. a symbol of fellowship, were doubtless central. This is what is suggested by the Jewish Christian Euchar- istic prayers of the Didacht, on the one hand, and by a reference in St Paul, on the other. In the former, 1 emphasis falls on the many grains once dispersed but now united to form the one loaf, used as an eschatological allegory or " mystery touching the Church." So Paul in 1 Cor. x. 17, " One loaf, one body, are we the many, for we all partake of the one loaf," seems to allude to the like sym- bolism as basis for his more special thought : " The loaf which we break, is it not (does it not signify) communion with the body of the Christ " ? Here he has in mind the sacrificial death, 2 as we see from the parallel passage in xi. 26. The common symbolism may have grown up first in connection with the more domestic " breaking of bread," rather than with the more ritual commemoration of the Last Supper at the larger Church gathering for worship on the Lord's Day. But in either form and both went back to Jesus' own example the ideas of solidarity in Christ and of reunion with each other, and with all fellow-members, in the consum- mated Messianic Kingdom (often conceived as a Feast of fellowship), were prominent in all primitive 1 It is noteworthy, too, that even the symbolism of the Cup is concerned with the Messianic Kingdom, rather than Messiah him- self, under the simile of " the Vine of David." The order here first Cup, then Broken Bread may be that of the more domestic " breaking of bread," in cases where wine was used at all. 1 St Paul is trying to make the Corinthians realise the nature of the Communion involved in the " Lord's Supper," which some treated as a mere convivial meal. He therefore puts foremost the aspect of the Christian Communion meal on which he himself laid most stress, as being the most solemn one of all ; yet so as to show how it is really implied in the more common symbolism of the one loaf and one Body. CHAP, ii.] CHRIST THE NEW FACTOR 49 Communion meals. At the centre of their present joy and expectancy was the thought of Messiah Himself. Mar ana tha, " Our Lord Come," was their key-note ; and as they dwelt on it, their hearts burned within them, fellowship rose to ecstasy, and His presence became so spiritually real, that His returning footsteps often seemed at the very door. The thrill of such hours is felt in the ejaculatory petitions of the Didache : " Let Grace come and let this world pass away. Hosanna to the God of David . . . Mar ana tha." But we must now consider how Christianity out- grew its Jewish limitations, and becoming catholic in scope became to that extent more adequate to its ideal, as determined by the spirit of Christ. From the first Christ himself was the centre alike of Apostolic experience and preaching. The Gospel was more than a message about God and man and their mutual relations in the abstract, as proclaimed by Jesus the Christ. It was all this as embodied in Him His life, death and resurrection power made present to faith through the Spirit. The con- trast between the Gospel in this sense and as preached by Jesus himself on earth is sometimes treated as a change for the worse, a deviation from authentic Christianity. The Apostolic writers, Paul in par- ticular, make personal relation to Jesus himself, by " faith," essential to such righteousness or salvation as the Church enjoyed. Thus Jesus, the Revealer of God as his Father and our Father, is himself practically the immediate object of faith. Thereby Christianity, it is said, becomes Christocentric rather than theocentric. The facts, no doubt, are very much as here stated, but for the assumption that D 50 APOSTOLIC CHRISTIANITY [PART i. the original perspective, that of Christ's brief visible ministry on earth, ought to be the abiding one for man- kind, even after others began to proclaim the Gospel in his stead. But the difference in practice was bound to be immense, in the case of a message so bound up with the personality of the Messenger as the Gospels show it to have been. When Jesus spoke his words, they really owed most of their power with the hearers to the impression of his person ; it was as His words that they became " spirit and life " to others. He had no need to insist on this fact : it would ill have befitted his humility to have done so. But what was only implicit in facts themselves while Jesus was re- vealing the Father among men, naturally became explicit in the personal testimony of his disciples. Fresh stress thus fell on the person of Jesus as the Holy One of God, now exalted by God's hand to the position of " Lord and Christ," through whom the " holy Spirit " was actually vouchsafed to men. It is a matter of great moment that Christians from the first found themselves setting forth their witness to the " Eternal life," involved in knowledge and love of God, sub formd Christi. Further, it was owing to such emphasis, and particularly upon His death on the Cross, that Christianity escaped remaining a sect of Judaism in position, and ultimately in spirit also. Faith in Christ's Gospel, and trust and love directed towards Himself, have historically, that is experimentally, always gone together. In this sense Christianity has been Christocentric, i.e. practically though not theoretically. And the question of the Christocentric form of Christianity first came up as the problem of the Jewish Law and the Gospel. CHAP, ii.] JEWISH LAW AND THE GOSPEL 51 The testing question for the primitive Church was : " What is to be the place of the Jewish Law in the New Israel based on faith in Jesus the Christ." It was bound soon to emerge. But before it did so in connection with those born outside Judaism, it was raised even for those within by the reflective inter- pretation of Christ's religion given by the Hellenist Stephen. Already a difference of emphasis existed between the strict Hebrew type dominant in Judaea and the Hellenistic type of the Diaspora or Disper- sion in foreign lands. The latter was marked not only by Greek culture but also by a tendency to interpret its religion in a liberal or idealistic spirit. This meant more or less conscious stress on the ethical and universal aspects of Judaism as the revealed form of monotheism, after which the best and wisest Gentiles were feeling vaguely and in- effectively. Its more national elements tended in this light to be regarded as of less moment. Hence, while loyal to such Mosaic customs as were not im- practicable outside Palestine, Jewish Hellenists dis- tinguished between essentials and accidentals in Judaism a distinction to which the Mosaic Law gave no formal sanction, and which, though implied by the Prophets, was in the teeth of the tradition of the Palestinian Rabbis. Approaching the Gospel of Christ in this spirit, Stephen perceived the tend- ency implicit in certain of Christ's characteristic sayings and actions, to interpret the Law according to the Spirit rather than the letter, and- so in prin- ciple to transcend it as law or Divine code, equally binding in all its parts and incapable of true growth. It was this latter idea which he refuted in his defence against the charge of Sacrilege, in teaching that Jesus as Messiah could change even customs which Moses 52 APOSTOLIC CHRISTIANITY [PART i. had delivered to Israel, especially the forms of worship associated with the Temple (Acts vi. 14). That is, Stephen found in Jesus' attitude to Temple and Mosaic Law a new sanction for the liberal or progressive view as to the contingent forms of religion, even as given to Israel ; and in the light of Messiah's warnings as to the calamities overhanging an impenitent orthodoxy, he ventured to argue against the finality of Mosaism. Of this same tendency, carried to a more positive conclusion in favour of Christianity, as psychologic- ally the reality of which the forms of Judaism were but the relative and sensuous " shadows " or sym- bols as religion which could give perfect access to God in a spirit of sonship, like Christ's we have a noble example in the " Epistle to Hebrews " by an unknown author, possibly the Alexandrine Apollos, Paul's fellow-worker on lines of his own. But the whole tendency was more widespread than has generally been realised, and must have influenced in one degree or another the Gospel as it went forth from Palestine, even before the mission work of Paul commenced. This applies not only to the be- ginnings of Christianity at Rome, but also doubtless to Alexandria and even Ephesus (c/. Acts xviii. 24 f ., xix. 1), as well as other great Jewish centres. In particular the Church's origin at Antioch, the second home of Christianity, is traced to Hellenists scattered from Jerusalem by the persecution caused by Stephen's bold preaching. Thus the Hellenists formed one side of the bridge by which the Gospel first passed over to the Gentile world, the other being their Gentile counterpart, the proselytes attached to the synagogues in all the main centres of the Diaspora. CHAP, ii.] TENTATIVE SOLUTIONS 53 And so we come to the broadening of Christianity due to the ready response of non-Jews to the Gospel of Jesus the Christ, with the new interpretation of it thereby brought about. Here again we must realise the immense significance of the large body of prepared minds, as well as souls, afforded by the semi-Judaised Gentiles known as proselytes, par- ticularly those not formally incorporated in Judaism by circumcision, which practically denationalised the convert, but known as " devout ones " or " wor- shippers." They would be a most valuable leaven- ing influence, tending to assimilate raw Gentile converts to such elements in Christian piety as were derived from Judaism and its sacred Scriptures. These were the men who had responded to the Jewish Hellenists above described, as they strove to realise " the Catholic Hope of Judaism," that through Abraham's seed all nations of the earth should be blessed with the revealed knowledge of God. Accordingly when Isfael within Israel, the Church of Messiah, served itself heir to this glorious heritage, which Pharisaic Judaism suffered to go by default, it was they who first rejoiced the heart of that fruitful mother of spiritual children. It may be that we have, in the composite collection of spiritual lyrics recovered under the title Odes of Solomon, expressions of the joy with which first the liberal element in the Judaism of Alexandria, and then its Christian successors, welcomed those born outside God's special covenant of grace. It is not necessary to retell the story of the stages by which very tentatively, as God seemed to lead by His Spirit, the Jerusalem Community under the Apostles, Peter in particular, came to see that not only circumcised Samaritans but also uncircumcised 54 APOSTOLIC CHRISTIANITY [PART i. " devout " Gentiles like Cornelius were included in the scope of Christ's Gospel. We note, however, that it was in obedience to Divine experience rather than to clear principle that the extension was allowed. Probably, too, it was assumed that circum- cision would as a rule follow admission to the new Israel, if lacking before faith and the gift of the Spirit were vouchsafed. In any case it was not dreamt that departure from the strict principle which conditioned incorporation in the old Israel would be needful save in exceptional cases, such as the devout semi-proselytes of Cornelius' circle. This is implied by the marked way in which the extension at Antioch is described, affecting as it did " the Greeks " in large numbers. For the more exceptions multiplied, the more the relation of the Church to the Jewish Law became acute. And so far, this had not been faced and thought out, even by the Apostles. One man, indeed, had faced it fully ; but he was not in the eyes of the Jerusalem Church an Apostle, and was known to it only by vague rumour. Paul's attitude to the problem of the Gentiles sprang from definite principles, themselves rooted in his own personal experience. That experience, epoch-making as it was, must be understood, if one is to do justice to him either as a missionary or as the fountainhead of a great religious and theological tradition in the Church. It went far back into his pre-Christian stage as the most zealous of Pharisees. 1 1 Mr C. G. Montefiore's recent denial of this, in his Judaism and St Paul (1914), seems to confuse the moral dissatisfaction of a profound soul like Saul with the Rabbinic Judaism of his day, and ignorance of its real ideas and ethos, whether in Palestine or beyond it. CHAP, ii.] PAUL AND THE LAW 55 This at once marks him off from the bulk of the primitive Community and its apostolic leaders, men of simple and popular types of religion and not given to theoretic reflection on their inner experience. Saul of Tarsus, on the contrary, was not only trained in Rabbinic religion but was endowed with a pro- found mind and a subtle power of self -analysis. Moreover, his spirit was prepared for reflective thought by the stimulating experience of living where two cultures, the Hebrew and Graeco-Oriental (itself complex), met and mingled in a great university city, his native Tarsus in Cilicia. It would appear, then, that Saul, if any, had a wide experience of religion to guide his thinking, when he grappled with the religious problems arising in his own heart, alike in his Jewish and Christian stage. His fundamental concern was a passion for Righteousness, real Tightness of soul as well as outward conduct. Here, to his surprise and deep distress, Judaism failed him under the test of rigor- ous experiment. The Law of God's revealed will, denning the path of righteousness and peace, proved the very means by which he was led to an ever more miserable sense of moral failure and alienation from God. The record of this practical refutation of the Law as understood by Rabbinic Pharisaism in a strictly legal sense, and as put forward in this form as the perfect means of attaining righteousness before God, is contained in a passage of psycho- logical power unequalled even in the Confessions of Augustine, the famous seventh chapter of Romans. The essence of his discovery was that while the Law, " holy and good " in nature and purpose, as he of all Jews was most ready to assert, could bring sin home to the conscience, it could not help to free from it. 56 APOSTOLIC CHRISTIANITY [PART i. To sinful man, therefore, it was in itself, i.e. as law, practically useless, save to bring to clear light the lurking liability to do wrong, and so condemn him before the tribunal of his own soul as well as of God. This was due to no defect in the Law as such ; but it meant a grave limitation in Law as a means of Salvation from sin and of righteousness in the sight of a God who weigheth the hearts. Thus the Law was set aside for the very purpose for which it was prized by current official Judaism, namely, for posi- tive righteousness before God. Its main effect on human nature was in fact negative. It could bring home to man his shortcomings, and by revealing to him the mixed and biassed nature of his inmost aims lead him through self-despair to rely more directly upon God himself for the motive power to will real righteousness. That was all : and how much less was it than Judaism, especially Pharisaism, had claimed for the Divine Law of Moses ! " He that doeth it, shall live by it." Yes, but the ex- perience of the man who beyond all others had taken it seriously, and had leant most weight of reliance on its aid, ended in the verdicts, " By the Law is knowledge of Sin," " The power of Sin is the Law." Awful findings ! Blasphemous ! added Pharisaism. But on the plane of moral psychology the Law being taken strictly as law, i.e. in the legal spirit, as current Rabbinic Pharisaism, on Saul's testi- mony, took it there was no escape from them. Saul had to capitulate and cry, " O, wretched man that I am ! Who shall deliver me from this body of death," from the tyranny of " sin in the flesh," that " evil heart " which turns even the divinely- given Law to a man's undoing by occasioning the living death of an evil conscience ? CHAP, ii.] LEGALISM IN RELIGION 57 But this was not all. Paul's experience disclosed not only the Law's impotence to create the righteous- ness it demanded. It proved also its tendency to foster a by-product in sinful human nature, vitiating much of the obedience which men, seeking the approval of God and the rewards promised by the Law, actually rendered. This by-product was legalism, the spirit which sought to " establish its own right- eousness," and to look for the promised rewards as of merit and right, even before God. This is what Paul means when he speaks of having renounced the idea of justification by " works of the Law," which might seem to warrant self-complacency, and of having gratefully accepted God's true way of making men righteous. This was the way now clearly revealed in Christ, though implied and hinted in Scripture all along, viz. justification ** by faith " for the repentant, excluding all " glorying " on man's part. 1 Yet in so saying he did not feel that he made the Law " of none effect " in the discipline of man : rather he " established " it in honour, by taking it in a more serious and exacting sense as regards inner obedience, while assigning it its true but limited function. Law as such can do some things, but even the most perfect law cannot justify the sinful. 2 Law in religion, then, even the revealed Law of Moses, has two defects as a method of saving the soul. It is impotent to impart righteousness : it tends to stimulate in sinful human nature the spurious products of legalism and pride. Now it may be said that this is simply a morbid view of the matter; and that as to "legalism," for a healthy conscience no such effects as Paul de- 1 Rom. x. 3 ; Phil. iii. 9 ; Rom. iii. 20-28 ; 1 Cor. i. 31. * Rom. iii. 31 ; Gal. iii. 19, 21. 58 APOSTOLIC CHRISTIANITY [PART i. scribes out of his own experience ought to arise from the 'action of that good gift of God, the Divine Law, whether in its Mosaic form or in the less explicit law of conscience in all men. As regards this criticism in its Jewish form, it assumes what is in itself most improbable ; namely, either that Paul as a Christian caricatures, by grossly exaggerating, the legal spirit in which the Law was commonly taken even in Rabbinic circles of his own day ; or that Saul of Tarsus, even as a pupil of Gamaliel, from the first morbidly misunderstood current teaching and practice on the point. Far more probable is it that Saul, with his profound spiritual insight otherwise proved beyond question perceived what is really latent in any Divine Law, and especially in the Mosaic Law as treated by Pharisaism in his own day, viewed in its actual effects upon the nature of man. There is a pathological tendency to egoism and self- righteousness. Such a tendency does beguile many men into " going about to establish their own righteousness " as of desert, to the ignoring of the deeper elements in the moral situation. To a man of Saul's sincerity of conscience, impure motive vitiated the quality of action. So long as the will as a whole was self-centred and egoistic in aim, so long also there was moral impotence to will and do God's will. But law as such, whether that of Moses or not, cannot change the attitude of " the natural man," as determined by " the flesh " in Paul's sense of the term, viz. as covering the whole sensuous and self-seeking element in man's conscious- ness, of which the fleshly desires for pleasure may be taken as the concrete type (like the Jewish " evil heart "). Law in religion can but perform the temporarily needful function of a restraint external CHAP, ii.] THE VALUE OF PAULINISM 59 to the real personality, during the stage of moral pupilage, like that of the child learning " the rudi- ments " of things under guardians themselves not free, until the hour of moral sonship and freedom, to which he is heir, shall arrive. " But when the fulness of the time came " in Christ, the type of sonship in religion, then the Law gave place to the spirit of adoption (Gal. iii. 23-iv. 7). Accordingly, Paul did immense religious service to mankind, when by experiment in his own heart one of exceptional vitality and depth he pointed out the impotence of Law to generate goodness by defining right and wrong, and when he detected religious " legalism " as apt to arise in the soul under the joint action of law and the egoism of human nature. Thus he forearmed men, at least those of his own temperament and here a practical limitation of the value of his analysis comes into view which has too often been forgotten against a subtle danger, spiritual pride, which is nowhere so unseemly and so fatal as in religion. His emphasis on the negative action of Law on human nature may be too one-sided, considered in the abstract : but it placed in relief a profound truth, and one which in the actual religious situation needed special attention. " But where," it may be said, " is there trace of all this in the teaching of Christ himself, the supreme authority for Christians ? " The answer is, as in many other cases, " Explicitly it may be nowhere, but implicitly everywhere." It is so in the parable of the Pharisee and the Publican, and in the whole conception of righteousness as filial in spirit and motives. That is why " the babes " in legal know- ledge are acceptable to God, rather than " the wise 60 APOSTOLIC CHRISTIANITY [PART i. and understanding " in the Law, i.e. because they excel in personal trust in God Himself. The legal type of righteousness is set aside by Christ no less than by Paul, only in a more positive and universally human way, as befits the Master as compared with the disciple. Nevertheless, just because the disciple knew by experience certain pathological aspects of the case as his Master's unbroken filial conscious- ness could not, he has his own contribution to make to the safeguarding of his fellows by explicit analysis, and by negative verification of the true kind of righteousness which Christ knew by unclouded intuition. The enabling grace of God, through faith, formed indeed part of the living religious tradition to which the Law itself historically belonged ; yet from this vital element it was practically divorced in the type of legal Pharisaism contemplated alike by Christ and Paul. But for Paul, an ambiguity might have lurked in the relations of the Law and the Gospel, first in history and then in universal human experience. What Saul in vain sought in the Law, hypos - tatised by him in the abstract manner of his age and circle, that he found in Jesus as the Christ. His faith was the outcome of a struggle revolution- ary of his whole outlook. Starting as .a devotee of Judaism, as defined by the national religious authorities, he found the crucifixion of Jesus at their hands an insuperable " stumbling-block " to faith in him as Messiah. To begin with, the type of holiness which the prophet of Nazareth represented was non-legal in spirit. Further, " Cursed," said the Divine Law, " is everyone that hangeth on a tree." That fate had been meted out to Jesus by the authorised custodians of that Law, and for teaching CHAP, ii.] PAUL'S CONVERSION 61 and conduct subversive of it. Hence it was the Law that had condemned him and his claims. The only alternative would be to condemn, instead, both the authorities of Judaism and the Law as they under- stood it. " God forbid " would be Saul's instinctive comment. The disquiet of doubt he tried to escape by doing the more zealously what seemed to be his plain duty, namely, opposing the arch-blasphemer of the Law in the persons. of his followers. Yet he felt it " hard to kick against the goad," the pricks of conscience as he did this dreadful duty with a growing sense of hypocrisy, in playing the part of zealot for the very Law which was in fact working " death " rather than " life " and peace in his own soul. What right had he to persecute men and women who traced their peace and joy to one who had impressed his followers with the sense of a uniquely devoted love to God and man, and as to whose approval by God through resurrection from death they were so absolutely convinced ? From this impasse he was delivered only by the vision of Jesus as living, God's Son in glory, in such a manner as to settle for him by personal experience the crucial point on which he had stood out against the Apostolic witness to Jesus, as risen and therefore vindicated of God. At once his incredulity, rooted in the consequences to the Law's authority of such a belief, melted away : but in the same light the Law also underwent a change in his eyes. It ap- peared as subordinate to the Christ, who, though adjudged to death by its principles, had yet been approved of God according to some higher principle of righteousness, some deeper and more potent type of obedience than that to which the Law was relative. But if so, Christ had died at the hands of 62 APOSTOLIC CHRISTIANITY [PART i. the Law's representatives for a reason deeper than their motives in bringing Him to death. He had in spirit already died unto the Law, as more than an inadequate and provisional expression for God's perfect Righteousness. He had pressed, in the path of pure filial obedience, right on to the Cross of self- sacrificing love for His people, in order thereby to bring them, according to God's sovereign and loving wisdom, to true repentance and to a more intimate union with God than the Law could ever mediate. That was the inevitable meaning of God's approval of One formally accursed of the Law by the very form of his death. It meant that the dispensation or method of Divine government through the Law had come to an end in Messiah's person, and a new method of Righteousness was revealed as that of the Messianic Kingdom. The principle of the Covenant with the Chosen People through Moses a form of covenant only " added because of trans- gressions " was now superseded by the New Covenant, fit for writing on the heart, as Jeremiah had put it. It was based on the principles of the original covenant with Abraham, " grace " in God evoking " faith " in man ; and was fittingly mediated by God's Son, in whom both parties to the Covenant were represented, since as Messiah He was a Divine- human person. Thus Paul's Gospel, hammered out in his experi- ence, lay in germ in his favourite phrase " in Christ." The new Head of Humanity replaced the old Adamic type of self-centred, sinful humanity, to which Law was given as- a temporary method of discipline, until, through self-knowledge, man should be ready for closer union with God. Christ was the life-giving " Spirit " needed to quicken in human CHAP, ii.] PAUL'S GOSPEL 63 nature, with its spiritual capacity but actual bond- age to " the flesh," the higher type of life for which man was destined by creation, and for which the way was opened by redemption. Redemption in Christ was summed up in His Cross, outwardly so shameful and " to the Jew a stumbling-block," but by Paul transformed into the heart of the Gospel. For not only was it the formal abrogation of the Mosaic Law, which working on " the natural man " occasioned it, and so of the principle of law in re- ligion ; it was also the condemnation of " sin in the flesh," proved by Christ's victory over it to be a mere usurping power. " There is therefore now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus. . . . For what the Law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God, sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin, condemned sin in the flesh : that the just re- quirement of the Law might be fulfilled in us who walk not after the flesh but after the Spirit." " For the law (principle) of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus made me free from the law of sin and of death." In this climax to Paul's high argument in Romans (viii. 1-4) we have what had hitherto been only felt by other Jewish Christians in religious experience, reduced to principle through a deeper psychological experience of Salvation as present fact. " The love of Christ constraineth us, because we thus judge, that one died for- all therefore all died ; and He died * for all, that they who live should no longer live unto themselves, but unto Him who for their sakes died , and rose again. . . . Wherefore if any man be in Christ a new creation : the old things are passed away : behold, they are become new." That is the soul of Christianity according to Paul ; and at 64 APOSTOLIC CHRISTIANITY [PART i. its centre is Christ crucified. The breach with Judaism has become absolute. It is the Cross that has made the Church, as distinct from the synagogue. " The Lord hath reigned from the Tree," is the watch- word of Christians of every age and type. In the light of the Gospel so conceived, what Paul called " my Gospel," the problem of the Gentiles was already settled in principle, and on principle rather than by the simple logic of Divine facts. All questions of opportunist policy, connected with the proportion of uncircumcised converts which could safely be tolerated within the Holy People, became irrelevant. None had the right to impose the usages of the Mosaic Law upon anyone not bound to it by regard for his nation's sacred past. For to none, not even to the Jew, was it any longer the revealed condition of acceptance with God or means of living after His will. In these aspects it was formally abrogated though none had before realised it by the Cross, by which the risen Christ had finally passed beyond even its formal jurisdiction. This was the inner meaning of the sensible fact that the Messianic gift of the Spirit, sealing faith as genuine and its possessor an heir of the Kingdom, had been vouchsafed to Gentile believers not only apart from circumcision, the rite of incorporation into Judaism, but at times even before baptism in the name of Messiah, the corresponding rite of incorporation into the Messianic People. Paul's anti-legalism was profoundly ethical in aim and spirit. But anti-legalism is capable of another reading and emphasis, usually called anti- nomianism, the view that religion and ethics are so unrelated that the former is not to be tested by the latter. That Paul himself was alive to this CHAP, ii.] CHRISTIAN LIBERTY 65 danger is proved by the very Epistle to the Galatians in which he meets the plea that the Mosaic Torah (involved in circumcision) be added to trust in Christ. In it he describes the " fruit " of the Spirit, love and other graces or inner dispositions formative of character, which Law as ordinance or statute cannot create. The Spirit is the true counteractive to " the flesh " or egoistic impulse in all its varied forms. Here as always Paul assumes that the moral ideal, God's will in concrete forms, is more or less known to the Christian as inspired by Divine love and good-will, and so enabled to see aright in things spiritual. In this he shared the general tendency of early Christianity, like all movements of religious revival, to overlook or minimise the psychology of human limitations, especially of the intellectual order, as conditioning the action of the Divine factor, which predominates in religious experience. What is most impressive, however, is the fact that Paul did not for a moment recoil from the difficulty, but while more and more at pains to guard against abuses by making explicit " the mind of Christ " insisted that the personal Christ-ideal, and not a law, was the true way of righteousness for mature humanity. Spiritual union with Christ was the secret both of the filial will and of growth in moral insight for all " in Christ," not in isolation but as sharing in the corporate consciousness of His body, the Church. Thus he vindicated for the future an Evangelic theory of Christian Ethics, in contrast to every form of legalism or moralism in religion, with its objective " safeguards " for ethics. No theory can of itself secure in all cases what it provides in idea : and it has its own onesidedness of emphasis. Paul's theory was specially liable, taken in the letter, to 66 APOSTOLIC CHRISTIANITY [PART i. this drawback, being stated in terms of an individual and passionate genius. In particular his vivid personifying of " the flesh," as well as of the " holy Spirit " active in the Christian over against it, was open to misinterpretation by those who had the Greek's metaphysical rather than the Hebrew's ethical cast of mind. Thus by many " Gnostics " he was thought to favour a fatalistic view of salvation or perdition, as a matter of nature rather than moral responsibility. It has been needful to go thus far into Paul's thought, in order to understand the history of Christianity at large. For his is the greatest of influences which have wrought within it after that of its Founder. Some indeed have made Paul out to be the real founder of historical or ecclesiastical Christianity, or at any rate the coequal founder with Jesus. But this involves a judgment as to the relation between him and his Master which he would have been the first to disown. He himself dis- tinguishes in his .own teaching between what was given on his own authority " in Christ " from what had the direct authority of " the Lord " (1 Cor. vii. 10, 12, 40). Yet Paul was so much the greatest of Jesus' disciples, that it is in fact mediately through Paul that much of what men now see as implicit in the historic Christ originally passed into the Christian consciousness. The converse of this is the fact that he left his mark on future ages even in features due to his idiosyncrasy and special mental culture. So much having been said as to the principles on which Paul dealt with the Gentile problem, it is needless to go far into the historical process by which his solution of it was accepted by the older CHAP, ii.] OTHER CHRISTIAN TYPES 67 Apostles, and by the Jerusalem Church as a whole under their lead, or into the controversies with Judaising reactionaries, in Galatia or Corinth, who tried in various ways to get it set aside. The results of the Jerusalem Concordat of Acts xv. were far-reaching. It laid the basis of unity between the Jew and the Gentile in the one Church of God, and broke down the age-long " middle wall of partition " between the privileged nation and humanity at large. In this expansion of Christianity, by the embracing of Gentiles as such, there was involved also an unfolding of its latent spirit and power. This is closely connected with its liberation from the restraints of the Jewish Law. Such libera- tion was already implicit in the spirit of Jesus : but it took time for this to be realised by all his followers. In certain circles of Jewish Christians, who became known as Ebionites, the dangers of rigid conservation in religion were exemplified no less than those of innovation, for want of real assimi- lation, in certain Gentile circles. But before the great national catastrophe of 70 A.D., which helped to separate the Judaising section of Palestinian Christians, and probably a few groups of those like- minded even in the Diaspora, from the main stream of the Church's life, we meet with a striking inter- pretation of Christianity in relation to Judaism on other lines than Paul's, in what is known as the Epistle to the Hebrews. It is coloured by Alex- andrine idealism, and makes Jesus the spiritual ful- filment of the sacrificial and ritual system of Judaism, much as Paul makes Him the fulfilment of the Law in its legal and moral aspects. Along this line, too, comes the final call, " Let us go forth therefore unto Him without the camp (of Judaism), bearing 68 APOSTOLIC CHRISTIANITY [PART i. his reproach." Here alone in the New Testament is Christ described as the High Priest of the New Covenant, though the idea is implicitly present also in the Apocalypse of John. Such applications to Christianity of the symbolism of the Jewish sacrificial system made a deep impression on later generations, as we shall have occasion to observe. So far we have traced the development of Apostolic Christianity mainly with reference to the crucial problem of the Law and the Gospel, of Synagogue and Church. But there wa$ varied development also in Christian doctrine proper, both in Palestinian and non-Palestinian circles. All such unfolding of the Christian idea was vitally determined. Fresh experience set in motion fresh reflection on the central facts, and then sought to express their newly per- ceived aspects in the fittest forms of thought avail- able. We must confine our attention to those developments which most influence later thought. Hence what was most distinctive of Judaism is of least moment for us. Thus the " Epistle of James " conceives matters after the manner of the " Wisdom " piety of Judaism, which viewed religion in terms of the Law indeed, but in a purely ethical and broadly human spirit, akin to that of the Sermon on the Mount. In this Epistle Christ is regarded as the incarnate " Glory " or Manifestation of God (ii. 1), an almost purely religious idea which could hardly influence later Christology. In relation to future thought we have to reckon chiefly with Paul and the authors of the Epistle to Hebrews and the Fourth Gospel. In these we note a tendency to transfer attention from eschatology to religious experience, without reference to time or CHAP, ii.] CHRISTOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENT 69 place. It is only a tendency, and not carried out so as to exclude the earlier setting of Christian thought. For, true to her positive interest and reverence for her spiritual ancestry, " religion never cuts off her dead branches : she leaves them on the tree till they drop off of themselves," J though men of later times often mistake the meaning of this and try to revive that from which the organic life has departed. But the tendency was marked, and is significant of the genius of Christianity. Side by side with the receding of the Parousia from the centre to the horizon, and with the gradual supersession of the whole Apocalyptic mode of thought by that begotten of deepening personal religion, we note in the next place the development of constructive Christology. As Christian experi- ence unfolded its own distinctive features, the simple primitive views of the person of Jesus, which were of the usual Messianic type, were outgrown. The notion in question was one of adoption to Messi- anic royal Sonship, in fulfilment of Psalm ii. 7, " Thou art my son ; this day have I begotten thee." This conception of mere adoption to Divine sonship, however spiritualised, came to be felt by the Christian leaders, as reflection developed, to make the relation between God and Jesus too external and unessential to satisfy the facts of his filial life and of Christian experience. To Paul in particular, whose experience of Christ began with the other end of His career, with Christ crucified and thereafter glorified " marked out as Son of God in power, according to a spirit of holiness, by re- surrection from among the dead " (Rom. i. 4 ; cf. Acts ix. 20) a theory which related Christ's filial 1 The Dean of St Paul's, in The Constructive Review for July 1913. 70 APOSTOLIC CHRISTIANITY [PART i. spirit or higher nature more closely to God was imperative. What exactly his theory was may be obscure, as also the sources from which its intellectual form came to him. But it is most probable by all analogy that it came from his Jewish training, in which alone he could recognise any adequate Divine revelation, even preparatory in nature. But in any case it involved in sharp contrast to frail human nature pre-existent sonship in a Divine form, 1 perhaps as being implied by Gen. i. 26, "Let us make man." Thus he recognised a transcendent element in Christ, as not in other men, and that it formed the essence of His historical human person- ality as " the last Adam " or " second man," who was " of heaven " in nature and became " a life- giving spirit " (1 Cor. xv. 45, 47). Being freed, through death, from the temporary limitations of " the flesh," though continuing to possess an organic medium of self -manifestation which Paul calls " a spiritual body," the re-exalted Divine nature of Christ acts on souls as " spirit," in terms of his historic humanity. Yet Paul does not lay stress on his own Christology intellectually considered ; and naturally, since " we know in part," and Christ's person, no less than His love, surely " passeth knowledge " (Eph. iii. 19). But there is no mistaking Paul's religious estimate of the transcendent nature of Christ's personality, revealed in his own experience as redeeming from sin and giving new life to men. As that life was truly Divine, so was its medium of communication, nay, its very principle within the soul. " I live, no longer I, but Christ liveth in me." 1 So Phil. ii. 6 ff. , the most explicit of Paul's statements on the subject, though it is only incidental to a moral appeal based on Christ's example in "self-emptying" : cf. 2 Cor. viii. 9. CHAP, ii.] IDEA OF THE CHURCH 71 Here we have the most characteristic aspect of Paul's religious experience, the mystic union of faith. In the cosmic or strictly metaphysical aspects of Christology he was really less interested, develop- ing them only in answer to minimising views as to Christ's place in the spiritual order of redemption, as compared with other spiritual beings, angelic powers of various ranks in the invisible hierarchy of good and evil spirits, on which the later Judaism in certain circles loved to speculate. That is, certain ideas seemed to him the natural cosmical equivalents of the spiritual pre-eminence which Christ verifiably held in religious experience. He never refers to these aspects of Christ as "revealed" to him by apostolic inspiration, as he does in the case of the properly religious aspects of His Person and Gospel, but appears to assume them as part of the higher and more spiritual form of the current Messianic idea. In any case the emphasis of his own thought, unlike that of certain " Gnostics " later on, fell elsewhere than on cosmic theology, viz. on the heart's experience of salvation from sin ; and there he was sure of Christ's supreme place, as in the present, so also in the future. Paul's more explicit Christology is closely con- nected with his developed view of the Church, as a great organism of spiritual energies flowing from Christ as its one Head. Even in 1 Cor. xii. 12 he had spoken mystically of " the Christ " as inclusive of the many members of the one Body, according to the conception of human solidarity familiar to Hebraism and indeed to ancient thought generally. But later he develops the thought in a striking fashion. In Colossians (i. 27 f.) Christ is at once the principle of Christian life and the means of 72 APOSTOLIC CHRISTIANITY [PART i. every Christian's perfecting, to which ascetic scruples and rules are irrelevant. In Ephesians the corporate or mutually dependent aspect of this process is dwelt on ; and the goal is a unified humanity of the Christ-type, the full realisation of the possi- bilities latent in the personal Christ, the Head considered by itself (i. 22 f., iv. 12-16). Paul thus conceives Christ's personality in a potentially in- clusive and dynamic sense, in virtue of which His Spirit becomes the life-giving principle and energy of those who constitute the Church, as His Body. Doubtless this is highly mystical ; and we, with our idea of personality even in its recent less rigid or exclusive form should perhaps express the same facts differently, more psychologically and less realistically. For instance we might conceive Christ's spiritual presence and influence as realised more mediately, through the Spirit of God " taking," as the Fourth Gospel has it, " of the things " of Christ and revealing them to the soul. But in his own way Paul thus anticipates what Christ has actually been to His Church in all ages, not only in its devotional experience but also in its moral and mental development. Similar in essentials is the Christological attitude of the writer to "Hebrews," though his mind is less mystical and more idealistic. His thinking is more in terms of the Alexandrine Jewish philosophy, Platonic in type, which is best known to us in Philo, an older contemporary of our author. But our writer has also a firm grasp of historic reality, which makes him dwell' much upon the human experience of the incarnate Son, in whom God's partial and varied revelations through the Prophets reached finality. Especially does he emphasise His struggle with tempta- CHAP, ii.] THE JOHANNINE THEOLOGY 73 tion, through which He, as Son of Man, was morally qualified to become to others the " pioneer Leader and Consummator of Faith," a faith like to that by which He himself was loyal to the uttermost, even unto death on the Cross (xii. 1-3). In this noble thinker we see Christianity, as it becomes more reflective, attaining a harmony of the best in Hebrew and Greek thought (see Pt. II. ch. v.). A still more mature stage in the reconciliation of these contrasted elements of the prceparatio evangelica is seen in the Fourth Gospel. This is a product of primitive Christianity in its final stage, and prophetic of the far future quite as much as symbolic of its whole past development. It is now generally regarded as both apostolic and post- apostolic, as embodying the tradition of Christ's life in the form which it assumed in the memory and teaching of John the Son of Zebedee, but re- duced to connected literary shape in a second mind, that of a younger disciple, himself of a Hellenistic type of Jewish culture akin to that of the writer to Hebrews. Written probably at Ephesus, about the end of the century, yet not a product of the moment so much as of the long period of gestation through which it had passed in two deeply religious and mystical souls as they faced the needs of those around them and the state of thought in the Church at large it has profound significance as the last and most comprehensive interpretation of Christianity which can claim the title " Apostolic." It may be regarded as the supreme product of the prophetic spirit (cf. Rev. xix. 10) in the Church, itself due to the Paraclete of whom it speaks (xvi. 12-15). It is an instance of the conservative yet progressive spirit in religion, using the local, the temporary, 74 APOSTOLIC CHRISTIANITY [PART i. and the relative in sacred history largely as symbols, to exhibit the universal and eternal the more clearly in a new exposition. This is seen not only in the free- dom with which it deals with the tradition of Christ's life as preserved in the Synoptic Gospels, but also in the way in which it takes up and sets forth in a more complete synthesis the leading lines of thought to be discerned in Apostolic theology as a whole, par- ticularly in Paul, Hebrews, and the Apocalypse. Yet the Hebraic soil and background of all are still apparent, even in the Prologue which expounds the idea that has most Greek affinities as to its form, the Divine Word 1 or Logos. It is, indeed, an open question how far the intel- lectual element even here is of the essence of the exposition, or how far it is subordinate to the experimental and mystical aspects. " The Life was the Light of men." And this is borne out by the actual effect of the book upon Christians all down the ages : for it has appealed to pious souls of all sorts, even the least cultured, provided only they had a vital religion. But the very question shows that there was in this Gospel a liability to be taken in an intellectualist sense by those whose main in- terest was in ideas. Hence its early vogue in certain Gnostic circles. Its real spirit, however, is one of reverent contemplation (theorid), akin to that which Ruskin in Modern Painters describes as condition of true knowledge in Art. Its author's aim is to make men realise that in Jesus the very nature of God Himself became manifest in the flesh. The Logos doctrine of the Prologue is meant to enable 1 The substance even of this idea perhaps presented itself to our author's own mind primarily under Jewish forms, such as Wisdom and the quasi-personal Memra of Rabbinic literature. CHAP, ii.] AND THE FOURTH GOSPEL 75 those familiar with that great conception, so im- pressive and illuminative to the best culture of that day, the more readily to enter into and share such faith. " This is the veritable God, and eternal life " : such is the moral of the Gospel no less than of its companion epistle, which also starts from the idea of the concrete historical manifestation of " the Word " or Revelation " of life." The " glory " visible in Christ was "as of an only-begotten from a father " (i. 14), able to reflect the full nature of the source of his being. Here we have again the old and oft-repeated emphasis, in various forms of Apostolic thought, upon the filial consciousness of Christ : and the content of the revelation so mediated is, with more uniform emphasis than ever before, Love as the ultimate nature of God and also His supreme manifestation in human life. Hence these Johannine writings are really the final simplification of religion and theology, their reduction to spiritual fundamentals. If " God is Love," and " Love is of God," then spiritual Life, Light, Truth, Knowledge, Liberty, are all phases of this and conditioned by it. All these are in the last resort appropriated by the will, which is an essential element in Faith or spiritual receptivity ; they are thus, along with Faith, morally determined. 1 The Truth is to be " done," and needs to be loved, if it is really to be- come part of one's personality and vitally " known." Such teaching is Hebraistic to the core, and has little akin to Greek intellectualism, with its abstract notions of Truth and Wisdom, as reached by dia- lectic apart from character. One other feature of the Fourth Gospel calls for notice ; its doctrine of the Spirit, the Paraclete, 1 See John iii. 19-21, v. 39-44. 76 APOSTOLIC CHRISTIANITY [PART i. through whose coming to Christ's disciples He him- self returns in more intimate manner, to " abide " in them as the Life of their life. This conception of the Spirit (e.g. vii. 39, xiv. 26, xvi. 7 ff.), which completes a tendency already marked in Paul's thought, largely replaces the older concep- tion of the Second Advent as an event in the near future. Communion with Christ is already a matter of present experience and new spiritual dynamic. Thus in every sense this gospel is, as Clement of Alexandria styled it in contrast to the Synoptics as " bodily " narratives, a " spiritual Gospel," since in it the ideas of Christian experience appear in greater purity. This involves loss as well as gain. There is loss not only in historic realism, but also in con- crete human interest and appeal. This has tended even to foster at certain epochs a subtle docetism as regards Christ's full humanity. Moreover, the ideal method of separating men into absolute types of " faith " or " un-faith " leads easily to hard and unjust judgments upon actual men and women who are still indeterminate. Hence for the full and just effect of the revelation in Christ, both kinds of Gospel are needed. Yet the new emphasis of the Fourth Gospel was of great moment, as bringing the Life originally manifest under Hebraic forms into more intelligible contact with the Graeco-Roman world, in which for centuries Greek thought had been and was yet to be prevalent. As we look back over this rich and rapid develop- ment of interpretative thought, called into being by " the fact of Christ " a development so varied in form, so one in spirit we perceive that all the highest categories available were called in to help CHAP, ii.] JUDAISM A DWINDLING FACTOR 77 to express what Christ meant to Christian experi- ence. It is striking testimony to the personality of the Church's Founder. It meant, however, certain changes of stress, from parts of the earliest tradi- tion as to the Master's own teaching and person, to others ; it meant even translation of the spiritual content of some of these into fresh forms of thought, as His Person was seen set in ever-widening horizons of experience. But, as has been well said, it is not the verdict of universal Christian experience that what was latest in date was also furthest removed from the spirit of the Master. In so saying we are already face to face with the problem of " true " and " false " development, which will accompany our future course. If the Gospel arose on Jewish soil, it also soon died out on it, so showing that it was not really of it or destined for it in its limited national aspect, whether popular or Rabbinic. It was when trans- planted that it began to unfold its full meaning. Here Hellenising Judaism and its proselytes were only transitional : the real advance in principle occurred in the epoch-making person of Paul, the ex-Pharisee. In his experience and career the in- trinsic spirit of Christ's universalism came clearly to light, if with an anti-Pharisaic recoil which made his anti-legalism hard for others, especially those of non-Jewish training, to grasp aright and share ex- perimentally. But the logic of events brought home to all but a few the supersession of national Judaism in another way. That judgment which Jesus saw impending overtook it, amid terrible internal dissensions, while striving to realise its own ideal of its theocratic destiny by revolt from its Roman overlords. In a very real sense this marked 78 APOSTOLIC CHRISTIANITY [PART i. " the consummation of the age," the end of the old era of revelation in and through a chosen nation. Its day of special election was over. The perfected form of its religious life, rejected by it as a nation, had passed forth to fulfil, apart from " Israel after the flesh," the leavening of humanity which had been begun by sons of Israel. The old prerogative position of the Jewish people had been lost for the most part, because it " knew not the day of its visitation." The way in which the Old and the New People respectively adjusted themselves to the crisis of A.D. 70, brought home to each, and to the world outside, the intrinsic difference between them. Judaism organised itself afresh, with patient devo- tion, around its sacred Law, becoming more uni- formly Rabbinic in its type of legal piety. But Rabbinism was now, especially after a second ruin of the Jewish State in 135, more chastened in temper and more alive to personal heart-piety, whether in Israel or outside it, as of supreme value with God. Christianity, on the other hand, with equal dis- tinctness defined itself in relation to Christ, finding its Shekinah in an historic person, as the human incarnation of Deity. Thus in the course of two generations " Primitive Christianity," which contained the germs of that of later ages, attained independent form. The Church became clearly differentiated from Judaism, but only after taking into itself the most vital and progressive elements in its spiritual mother. What has been happily styled " the baptism of Judaea " was com- plete ; and the baptism of the Graeco-Roman world was already well begun. Its later stages until the fall of the Roman Empire in the West when the baptism of the new Teutonic peoples in turn begins CHAP, ii.] THE GROWTH OF CATHOLICISM 79 must be traced in the next few chapters. The many problems involved in this long process of mutual assimilation together constitute the problem of the genesis and significance of the Ancient Catholic Church. ADDITIONAL NOTE ON THE EUCHARIST. The Eucharist is so important as reflecting current conceptions of Christianity that it may be well at this point to discuss it a little further. We must distinguish three things : (1) The Last Supper, as recorded in the Gospels ; (2) Breaking of Bread or the Lord's Supper in the primitive Church ; (3) the Eucharist, as the central part of worship in the Ancient Church of later date. (1) Recent research, starting from the different dates for the Last Supper suggested by the Synoptic narrative and by the Fourth Gospel, decidedly favours the evening prior to the Jewish Passover, as implied in the latter. Even St Mark's narrative (which here affects St Matthew and St Luke), both in the immediate context (especially xiv. 1 f. in contrast to 12) and in the Passion story as a whole (e.g. xv. 6, 21), contains self-contradictorv features, and so far supports the Johannine date (see The Journal ofTheol. Studies, iii. 358 ff., xvii. 291 ff). This gives fresh value to certain features of the Lucan story, due to a special source, the meaning of which is obscured by the Evangelist's accept- ance of the secondary and mistaken suggestions as to date found in St Mark Thus (i) Luke xxii. 15 f. implies that Jesus did not eat the Passover as He had longed to do, and (ii) xxii. 17 f. suggests that instead of this He gave the meal which He and His were to eat together for the last time a specially sacred character through the " hallowing " (Kiddush) rite, which began with Blessing or Thanksgiving (Eucharist) over a Cup of Wine shared by all the rite with which the Paschal Meal was, in fact, wont to begin. Then came, in keeping with Kiddush usage, " breaking of bread " with blessing and distribution. The new special reference of the whole in Jesus' mind was shown by the words : " This is My body, which is being given on your behalf " ; i.e., this loaf represents My body, to be sacrificed, like the Paschal Lamb, in order that the Messianic Redemption may be achieved, and the true Passover ere long be "fulfilled in the Kingdom of God." (iii) " The Cup after supping " after the usual evening meal which intervened i.e., the Cup of Blessing or Grace after food, was given like Paschal associations, symbolising Jesus' blood about to be shed to ratify the Covenant in its final form. The fact, then, that the Last Supper was thus charged with Paschal meaning, easily gave rise later on to the idea that it was actually during the Jewish Paschal Meal that Jesus gave fresh meaning to the Breaking of Bread and to the Cup of Blessing after food. (2) Whether the words " This do in remembrance of Me " were uttered (as in Luke, cj. 1 Cor. xi. 24) or not, the special Eucharistic features of the Last Supper were dramatic symbols for the benefit of those then present and needing light on the tragedy overhanging their faith. It was only gradually that its Paschal meanings took full effect in the sacred meals of fellowship on usual Jewish lines (continuous 80 APOSTOLIC CHRISTIANITY [PART i. rather with the habitual practice of Jesus and His disciples), referred to in the primitive Church as " the Breaking of Bread " or " the Lord's Supper." And it was seemingly yet more slowly that the ritual use of the " Words of Institution," as they came to be regarded, became usual at the Breaking of Bread in Thanksgiving (Eucharist) for the food of Eternal Life in Christ. (3) From the end of the first century the term " Eucharist " or "Thank-offering " prevails over all others. It was used both of the act of spiritual sacrifice namely, prayer and blessing and gratitude offered in corporate worship, and also (more rarely at first) of the material symbol of such thank-offering, the bread and wine as " gifts " to the Giver from His own bounties (Didache, 1 Clement, Ignatius). The crucial moment of change, perhaps, came with the separation of the ritual "Breaking of Bread by way of Eucharist," as consecrating the meal that followed, from the meal itself, the Agafi part of such religious fellowship. Having lost its original sense as the Hallowing or Consecration of a religious meal, the ritual Thanksgiving over Bread and a cup seemed to need a fresh interpretation, as though the elements were not only viewed in Eucharistic prayer as symbolising Christ's body and blood, but became themselves the food of the soul, as actually His flesh and blood. This new inter- pretation arose naturally in the new, non-Jewish mental environment. The Church's prayer, which by its Eucharistic quality consecrated bread and wine as an oblation to God, now made explicit reference to Christ's self -oblation, and even quoted, by Justin's day, the "Words of Institution." Such "remembrance" (anamnesis) of His supreme sacrifice, which qualified Christians as such to offer their own oblations, gave assurance of acceptance to their priestly service of Thank-offering (Justin, Irenseus, and the earliest Liturgies, see pp. 173 ff). This was the original Catholic idea of the "sacrifice " of the " Eucharist," as the Offering (Anaphora or M issa = M issio) of the Church's self, in and through word and visible gift, to God as Creator and Redeemer. There followed " Communion " with God and each other in faith, hope and love, increase of which, as fruits of the Holy Spirit's special operation in their souls, was expected and in course of time explicitly besought. This is the idea underlying all early liturgies, though in most of them spiritual grace is found (as in Justin and Irenaeus) associated with another notion of the Divine Presence, as within the physical symbols themselves, making these a sort of secondary " body and blood " of the Word, who once for all assumed a fleshly body. The mode of such bodily presence was variously conceived, from Justin onwards. But in all forms this added conception of the grace of " Communion," as a par- taking of Christ literally in and through the sacramental elements, had primary reference to the regenerate body of the Christian, as capable of resurrection to incorruption in the Messianic Kingdom on earth. In no form, however, even the most realistic, was the " body and blood " of Christ, present in bread and wine by virtue of consecration whether by use of His sacred words alone, or also by explicit invocation of the Spirit or the Word Himself connected during the first three centuries with propitiation for sins in the worshippers. It was as holy men, with conscience purged from sin through union with Christ, that they were " deemed Worthy " by God to offer Him Eucharistic worship and enjoy its fruits of communion. PART II ANCIENT CHRISTIANITY CHAPTER I EXPANSION, TO THE FALL OF THE EMPIRE IN THE WEST " For the business is not one of persuasive talk ; but a matter of might is Christianity, whensoever it is hated by the world." IGNATIUS. EARLY Christianity was an intensely missionary faith. Indeed the Church itself was one great Missionary Society. It was so in virtue of the very nature of its Gospel of love and service to man as man, for the love of God and of Christ, who had shed His blood for the salvation of all, through that of an elect People, the trustee of Divine knowledge for the world. But Christians had at first an extra incentive to zeal in spreading their faith, in their expectation of an early end of the existing order at Christ's return in power. This, while for themselves their great Hope, was in relation to others a cause of anxious pity and responsibility. We must imagine, then, the Christian Mission going forward at first with earnest, often feverish, devotion on the part not only of those who gave up all else for it but also of the rank and file in the Church. These in their ordinary places in society exercised their office as Christ's witnesses, " lights in v 81 82 EXPANSION IN THE EMPIRE [PART n. the world, holding forth the word of life." Through both classes of evangelists the Gospel passed along the great Roman system of roads, the arteries of the circulating life of the Empire, to the larger centres of population ; and then filtered more slowly and unequally out into the regions around and beyond. For within the political unity of what was styled " the Roman peace " lay a bewildering diversity of civilisations and human types, the members of which were prepared in very different degrees to respond to the Christian message. The centres first occupied by little outposts of the Kingdom, each a " sojourning " of citizens of the " heavenly Jerusalem," were cities on or near the seaboard of the Eastern Mediterranean. The best seed-plots were those already prepared by the Jewish Dispersion, with its fringe of proselytes and enquirers, as at Alexandria and Rome. For Juda- ism, especially in its more liberal forms, had taken considerable root among Gentiles in virtue of its ethical monotheism and its brotherhood between those within the Covenant. But its growth was restricted by its national basis and usages, which made Judaism a sort of caste system and disqualified it from becoming a really universal religion. Hence its true fulfilment was the Christian Gospel, with its sole emphasis on spiritual receptivity, and its embodiment for heart and imagination in an historical Personality instead of a national Law. It is sig- nificant that the type of primitive Christianity which clung to the bare letter of Jesus' earthly ministry, the Judaic " Ebionites," gradually faded away and died out. If, however, Judaism had two sides as a preparation for something higher, a positive and a negative, it was no less so with Paganism, a thing CHAP, i.] GROWTH AGAINST ODDS 83 of great complexity which we are only beginning to know in any adequate fashion. But before trying to indicate the state of the Roman Empire at large as a mission field for Christi- anity, we must sketch the external facts of its spread, as suggestive of the power of the new force at work. The Empire was only in its first youth when, in the words of Gibbon, " a pure and humble religion " springing from a despised province and with cre- dentials which only evoked the scorn of a Roman like Tacitus " gently insinuated itself into the minds of men, grew up in silence and obscurity, derived new vigour from opposition, and finally erected the triumphant banner of the Cross " on the very Capitol. This is at least a striking example of the supremacy of spiritual forces over all others in humanity. For at first every vested interest, as well as the pride, learning, patriotism, state- policy clothed too with all the sanctions of religion and finally, the religious prejudices of the Empire and its several parts, stood in hostility over against the new religion, with its audacious claim to uni- versal acceptance. What all this must have meant, we may imagine to-day from the attitude of Hindu- ism even to a Christianity which comes, not as the " barbarous " faith of a sect of a despised race, but backed by the prestige of Western civilisation and of a ruling Empire. On its side stood at first simply the nature of the soul, " the soul in its native Christian sympathies," as Tertullian could exclaim after a century and a half of conflict, and out of his own experience as a convert from paganism. Only when these things are duly weighed can the exten- sion of the Christian name tell its proper tale as to the intensive vitality which was able so to endure, 84 EXPANSION IN THE EMPIRE [PART n. and in the end to utilise the positive elements underlying the general hostility of the ancient world. Ere the end of the Apostolic Age, which closed with the Fall of Jerusalem in 70, we know from the New Testament that Christianity had vigorous colonies at the chief strategic points around the Eastern Mediterranean from Caesarea in Palestine to Corinth, including islands like Cyprus and Crete ; while it is morally certain that the like was true of Alex- andria and the adjacent Gyrene in N. Africa. In Italy it had a strong footing. Other chief spheres of influence were N. Syria and Asia Minor, in the latter particularly on the main trade routes of its southern half emerging in the Roman province of Asia. In this last lay the great cities named in the Apocalypse of John, notably Ephesus and Smyrna. It was in this region that progress during the first generation is most known to us. But how inadequate our Christian documents are as evidence of the extent of such progress, and how worthless is any argument from silence in the matter, is proved for the early years of the second century from a pagan source. Pliny, the Governor of Bithynia-Pontus, lying along the southern shore of the Black Sea, states, c. 112 A.D., that the Christians included " many of every age and rank, and of both sexes " ; that some were Roman citizens ; and that " not cities only but also villages and country districts " were affected as by a contagion. Temple-worship and trades dependent on it had suffered seriously. The very number of those whose lives were at stake as actually accused of this " illicit religion " made him consult the Emperor Trajan how to proceed. It is from the centres already named that we must CHAP, i.] VARYING RATE OF PROGRESS 85 picture extension as going on, at various rates, during the second century. Its Western fields were proconsular Africa, with Carthage as its focus of influence ; Italy generally, though we cannot trace the lines of advance ; and South Gaul, where Lyons overshadows all other churches, though the great port of Marseilles must have had not a few Christians in it. Things are obscure as to Spain and further north in Gaul, not to mention Britain. But analogy leaves little doubt that wherever trade was brisk or the legions were long quartered, there Christianity early made itself felt. In the East, at the end of the century, we find it beyond the Euphrates, especially in Edessa, the capital of Osrhoene, whose king seems even to have issued coins with the sign of the cross, shortly before it was annexed by the Empire early in the third century. During the third century growth was great. Out- lying regions were occupied and the country districts around cities gradually leavened. This can be traced chiefly by the number of bishops, each stand- ing for a church in a city or a country district, of whom we have knowledge through their meetings on various scales. These become a growing feature of Church organisation, so as to alarm the Roman State as an index of the solidarity and influence of the Christian religion, and to stimulate more organ- ised repressive measures. Thus at the synod of Elvira or Granada, soon after 300 A.D., there were nineteen bishops representing a large part of Spain. So the Synod of Aries in 314 indicates large advance in Gaul ; while the presence of three British bishops, from London, York, and possibly Lincoln, means much for the Celtic island across the Channel. Similar extension along the northern frontiers of 86 EXPANSION IN THE EMPIRE [PART n. the Empire can be traced in varying degrees. In the further East, Armenia was decisively influenced by Gregory the Illuminator at the end of the century ; and in Egypt Christianity was extending up the Nile valley and affecting the natives races as well as the Greek-speaking population. The final persecu- tions, begun under Diocletian in 303 and lasting intermittently for some ten years, until the Edict of Milan in 313, bring out strikingly the presence and numbers of the Christians, often where we had no prior inkling of either. We must indeed beware of inferring uniform dis- tribution of Christians in all parts of the Empire, any more than a uniform rate of progress during these two and a half centuries of growth as a martyr Church, ever liable to suffering of some kind or degree for the Name. There were two periods of marked extension, under the Emperor Commodus and his semi-Oriental successors (181-248), and again during " the Peace of the Church " (260-303) after the great storm of the Decian and Valerianic persecutions. Local conditions, too, greatly affected progress. It was quicker in cities than in the country, and in the Greek East than in the Latin West ; it was at first comparatively slight in the circle of culture and rank ; but from the age of Commodus it was other- wise. As time goes on special missionaries disappear ; Evangelisation proceeds simply through the essential missionary nature of the Christian life. In par- ticular the impression produced by the Church corporately, as a community with purer and more humane ways of living, and with a morally and emo- tionally impressive type of worship, told powerfully as an object-lesson. There was a certain danger in this more external and institutional appeal : but CHAP, i.] A CONFLICT OF PRINCIPLES 87 the effect was widespread, and tended to rapid, if sometimes superficial extension. As to actual numbers, our most definite evidence is the fact that in 250 A.D. the Roman Church in- cluded 1500 widows, orphans, and others in receipt of relief ; which points to a total membership per- haps of 30,000. Proportionate figures may be assumed for cities like Antioch, Alexandria, Ephesus, Carthage, and Lyons. At the close of the last per- secution there were some 800-900 bishops in the East, and some 600-700 in the West ; and partly on this basis Harnack * thinks one-tenth of the whole population a likely proportion for the Christians, who were in the East twice or thrice as many as in the West. Another estimate 2 rises to " nearly a half, among Greek-speaking peoples," though " not more than a fifth, in many parts not more than a tenth, in the West." Even the smaller of these estimates means an enormous leavening of the Roman Empire, when we consider the changes of thought and feeling implied, and the outwardly feeble resources with which the Gospel went forth into a world where it was bound to conflict with established authority. For the Christian idea of the Kingdom of God was radically incompatible with the Roman idea of the State. To imperial statesmen the Empire was the human end of ends, and its official head had such author- ity as made him semi-divine. To the Christian the type of humanity represented by Christ was the one absolute ideal for man, and the Kingdom of God was its social form. These two ideals stood at 1 In his Expansion of Christianity, the classic account of the whole subject of this chapter. 1 C. H. Turner, in The Cambridge Medieval History, L 168. 88 EXPANSION IN THE EMPIRE [PART n. first, when the Christian hope was vividly eschato- logical, in sharpest contrast. This lasted for some two centuries ; and though from the end of the second . century the Church became more naturalised, as an organised institution within the framework of existing society, this only changed the form in which the rival ideals confronted each other. Christianity no longer seemed religious anarchism, but rather an imperium in imperio, with which the State must grapple decisively or lose its authority. Between these two poles of thought the policy of the various persecutions moved, inclining more and more to the latter. But throughout, the policy was self -defensive, and that in a growingly serious and even anxious sense. Throughout, the State and the Church were largely at cross purposes, unable to do full justice to each other. The principles of Roman policy in the matter were fixed beforehand by law and usage. Christianity, once it ceased to be mistaken for a sect of Judaism itself allowed as a national faith was in the position of a non-recognised " foreign superstition " or religio illicita. As such it had no right to be ; and if for any special or local reason it seemed a menace to law and order, about which the Roman State was most sensitive, it fell under the summary jurisdiction (coercitio) devolving in such cases on higher magis- trates, as deputies of the Emperor. Now there were aspects in which Christianity seemed anti- social (odium generis humani), if not flatly immoral (flagitia nomini cohcerentia). So it was judged at least by popular rumour, which imagined unspeak- able crime and vice to lie behind its secret communion rites. Accordingly whenever any person or event brought them to official notice, Christians were liable CHAP, i.] PERSECUTION ON PRINCIPLE 89 to the extremest penalties without further ado, and without any special legislation directed against them. So was it with the Neronian persecution in 64, on the occasion of the burning of Rome. This outburst (in Nero's most extravagant style), the policy of which was possibly copied elsewhere, for instance in the province of Asia, established a pre- cedent against the Christians, what Tertullian calls the institutum Neronianum a term which helped to foster the idea that Nero had framed special legis- lation in the matter. But there was a further way in which Christianity might become a capital charge, namely, as involving high treason (Icesa majestas) towards the Emperor in his divine capacity, through refusal to sacrifice to his genius or spirit, represented by his statue. This was one of the tests to which Pliny put Christians in Bithynia ; and it plays a large part in later persecutions, symbolising as it did the essential issue " Caesar or Christ." It was on this issue more than any other that the " martyrs " gave their distinctive witness to the voice of God in Christ as supreme for conscience, and so became the very " seed of the Church," fruitful in and through death. Among all its " fruits," it was this that made the strongest and most direct appeal on behalf of Christianity to those inclined to despise or ignore it, winning them first to respect and then to study the new and " barbarous " religion. The apologists again and again show this. The author of the " Epistle to Diognetus " exclaims : " Christians when punished increase more and more daily. So great is the office for which God hath set them, which it is not lawful for them to decline. For it is no earthly discovery, as I said, which has been committed to them : neither do 90 EXPANSION IN THE EMPIRE [PART n. they take care to guard so carefully any mortal invention. . . .' These look not like the works of man ; they are the power of God ; they are proofs of His presence." Hence in spite of the repulsion caused by Christians' aloofness from much of the daily life of their neighbours, especially their social gatherings and amusements often not only morally tainted but carried on under the formal auspices of some pagan deity people in all classes felt that they were in the presence of religion in a new and morally potent sense. Whilst it promoted sympathy and unselfishness between all sorts and conditions of men and women, on the simple basis of a common humanity receptive of the Divine life, it also inspired awe of God as alone entitled to command conscience. In this it was unique among the multiform religions of the Empire, and gave the humblest man, woman, child, or slave, a dignity of loyalty to the Highest, as immediately and exclusively the object of worship, such as few, if any, of those who prided themselves upon superiority to popular religion were able to practise. For outward conformity in religion was the law of ancient society, which was collectivist in spirit and set small store by the individual. Its underlying notion of human life was too naturalistic, not sufficiently informed by any idea of moral personality, to admit of the conception and con- sistent exercise of spiritual religion, as it existed in the best Jewish piety and in primitive Christianity. Ancient religion generally, and Roman religion in particular, was " something to be done, rather than something to be thought or believed or loved." Thus it could be commanded by human authority as a thing of expediency rather than conviction. The State's interests, in the first instance, and so CHAP, i.] CHRISTIANITY'S EXCLUSIVENESS 91 the individual's also, demanded the homage due to the heavenly powers, lest these should be alienated and visit their subjects with evil. Hence the formula of organised persecution under Valerian in 258 ; " those who do not cherish Roman religion ought to observe Roman ceremonies." It was the ex- clusiveness of the Christian allegiance, as a matter of conscience, that was the rock of offence. Even the State religion, " the Augustan establishment," which attempted to supply a common religious basis for allegiance to the Empire, was essentially inclusive. It added to the personal religion which each held in virtue of race or free choice, a common or imperial super-cult, directed towards the genius of the Emperor, his ancestors now deified, and the Salus populi Romani. Nor were any of the more personal religions, save Judaism, exclusive in the allegiance demanded. One might be an initiate of all the " mystery " cults. There was a religious cosmopolitanism, corresponding to that of citizenship and culture, which had disintegrated the older exclusive loyalties. All deities tended to be con- ceived as but aspects of the one supreme Deity, which more and more was coming to be recognised behind all cults : each was free to choose the aspect or aspects which best suited his own needs and temperament. Cosmopolitanism gave a new opportunity for the free spread of certain Oriental cults which had no aristocratic traditions and limits, and therefore appealed the more to the broadly human temper that was now on the increase. Such a cult was that of the Egyptian Isis and Osiris, which appealed in its various aspects to both simple and cultured. Another was the cult of Mithra, a Persian deity, 92 EXPANSION IN THE EMPIRE [PART n. which moved westwards towards the end of the Flavian period, and thereafter spread rapidly, especially in the army. But into all this religious cosmopolitanism Christianity refused to be fitted : hence conflict. What, then, gave the Christian Gospel victory in its seemingly hopeless struggle with the forces in the Roman Empire ? At bottom, doubtless, its secret appeal to the deeper nature of the soul, backed by the object-lesson of Christian life, when lived out in purity and power, and especially in cheerful endurance of all that average humanity most fears and shuns. But such an appeal was met by a special preparedness in the better trends of thought, both theoretic and practical, of an age mature enough in self-knowledge to feel the inadequacy of its own spiritual resources for the attainment even in principle of its own ideals. " The children were come to the birth, but there was not strength to bring forth." In particular it met, in a more ethical and personal sense than aught else, the widespread instinct for religion as redemption from a world which oppressed the soul with a sense of evil and futility, as it stood amidst a flux of change and decay. This made an assurance of standing above it in the core of one's being, as the heir of a diviner and immortal life, the one thing needful. Again, the idea of duty had become, largely through philosophic reflection, par- ticularly in Stoic circles, more universally human, and even humane ; and it had become more integral, if not essential, to religion. There was a strong trend towards some kind of Monotheism. But there was no corresponding historic faith, save Christianity, ready to give definiteness and concrete moral appeal to the feeling after God as personal, CHAP, i.] READINESS FOR ITS APPEAL 93 " a God with a character " fit to command the spiritual allegiance of good men. For Judaism was in form, and largely in spirit, a national and not a universal religion one appealing to man as man, and wider even than the Empire in its humanity. There was, too, an enhanced feeling after direct, personal fellowship with the Divine nature, as the source of assurance, peace, and power to hold the head above the welter of life, with its desire, passion, failure, sin and sin in a more ethical sense than of old. The moral task of existence was pressing more imperiously at the very time when man was realising anew his helplessness as a child of Nature, and of Chance or Fate, in things external. Here lay the enhanced tragedy of life. It was inevitable, then, that the more serious sort should be driven deeper within, and finding no adequate help there, should " feel after God, if haply they might find Him," in some form of revelation. But where was the religion that could satisfy the new and enlarged demands of soul and conscience, and appease the quickened sense of sin ? Hence a widespread readiness to resort to hitherto untried ways of reaching God, ways suited to the new sense of moral personality and to the instinct for the Divine as personal and superior in character to the inexorable course of Nature or Fate. The " mystery " cults which claimed to possess the secret of " initiation " into such vital union, through definite rites of immemorial antiquity, going back to an era of closer intercourse between God and man these made the greatest appeal in the early centuries of our era. Emotionally this mystical temper, this thirst for God as personal and saving, and to that extent above Nature, was something common to humanity at 94 EXPANSION IN THE EMPIRE [PART n. large and to the Christian Gospel, however super- stitious and unethical were many of the rites in which men sought and in part found satisfaction. There was new spiritual sensitiveness at any rate ; and this gave an opportunity to such a religion as that of Divine Fatherhood and human sonship, with its resulting universal brotherhood, as taught and embodied by Jesus Christ. He came to men "in bondage," in the Empire as well as in Judaea, "in the fulness of time." Such a prevalent sense of failure was the negative condition essential if man was to be raised to a higher and diviner level of spiritual attainment. This had been strongly expressed by Paul, in relation both to Jew and Gentile. A century later it finds an echo in the unknown Christian writer " To Diognetus," who is at pains to explain why the Almighty and Good Creator had " seemed to neglect " mankind for so long. " Having, then, in the former time demonstrated the inability of our nature to attain life, but having now revealed the Saviour able to save even creatures without ability, He willed that for both reasons we should trust in His kindness, and esteem Him Nurturer, Father, Teacher, Physician, Mind, Light, Strength, Life " (ch. ix.). This is how the Gospel affected men, with its direct appeal to their underlying instincts and noblest . needs, and with the grace of the Cross of the Son of God as the piercing point of the message. Gibbon has essayed to analyse the main causes which " most effectually favoured and assisted " the growth of Christianity. " The inflexible " and even " in- tolerant zeal of the Christians " ; their "doctrine of a future life " ; " the miraculous power ascribed to the primitive Church " ; their " pure and austere CHAP, i.] CHRIST THE FULFILLER 95 morals " ; " the union and discipline of the Christian republic " ; all these were real factors. Yet in their very nature these are " second causes," not only as means used by God, but as compared even with the new religious experience just set forth. All such causes are historically effects, as regards their specific character and vital unity, of the person- ality of Christ and the new consciousness of God imparted by Him. It is true that the Gospel often gained its access to men's souls through intellectual arguments of only temporary value. Such was the verbal argu- ment from prophecy, which depended on the alle- gorical method of interpreting sacred writings. But underlying this illusion was a true perception of spiritual continuity and fulfilment ; for " the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy." Though lacking the true historic key, the idea of a progressive revelation under forms conditioned by man's receptivity at different stages, Justin and others were not in error touching the broad effect of the prophets as converging on the Kingdom of God embodied in Christ's Gospel. It was indeed a great gain for Christianity, though not an unmixed one, that it was rooted in the venerable Hebrew bible. Not only did it roll away the reproach then a serious one of being a religion of yesterday ; but it also hepled to save Christianity from becoming hopelessly assimilated to its new environments, by furnishing a touchstone for its fundamental Hebra- ism, when this was in danger of being overlaid by the subtleties of Greek thought and " mystery " rites. What, then, was the message which the Christian 96 EXPANSION IN THE EMPIRE [PART n. preacher delivered during the period when the primitive Church was striking its roots, and so determining the future of Christianity ? The question is not as easy as it might seem, judging from the New Testament. For the average appre- hension of Christianity even in the Apostolic Age was not quite the same as the Apostolic teaching. Harnack lays stress upon the religious unity amid intellectual variety which marked the mission preaching. He reckons as its religious fundamentals the one " living " God, Jesus the Saviour and Judge, resurrection unto reward or penalty, and self- mastery in the path of obedience ; to which may be added forgiveness of past sins, on repentance, as clearing the way to obedience. These main points of emphasis were set forth in many lights, not as abstract ideas but in the practical atmosphere of the thought that life issues in moral recompense. Subject to this, Christianity appeared in various forms, differing as widely as the types of serious religious thought and instinct. It was the Gospel of Salvation, of Love and Charity ; the religion of the Spirit and of power, of moral earnestness and holiness ; of authority and of reason, of mysteries and transcendent knowledge ; of the New People or the Third Race, alongside Paganism and Judaism ; of a Book and of a history fulfilled. But in all it was in conflict with polytheism and idolatry. In this last connection we often meet the belief in personal spirits (daimones) still living on in the thoughts of Christians from their pagan educa- tion. The fact helps us to realise the immense relief from daemonic dreads of all sorts which the clear message of the sovereignty of the One God, as revealed in Christ, brought to the mass of men. CHAP, i.] THE CHRISTIAN MESSAGE 97 Now they were regarded only as the spirits behind polytheism, the active causes of its seductive power. The more thoughtful type of preaching in the sub- Apostolic Age, by which the earliest Apologists were converted, is seen in the missionary message in the " Preaching of Peter," compiled about 100 A.D., and widely read, as well as used in other writings, during the second century and later. Besides a criticism of the religions of the Greeks and of the Jews, it contained an exposition of the true nature of God and of Christian piety, the " third kind," as being that acceptable to the true God. This was enforced by appeal to Jewish prophecy. Men are urged not to worship their Creator after a manner unworthy of His spiritual nature, but " in new fashion," by obedience to His will as made known through Christ ; and forgiveness of sins is promised to all who repent of the deeds done in ignorance, as " not clearly knowing God." We must not, however, imagine the mission preach- ing as uniform in conception or emphasis during the whole period when Christianity was spreading by its own energy in word and life. The Gospel from the second century onwards bears growing traces of unconscious adjustment to its environment, whether for good or ill, both in idea and usage. The results of this, though often hard to discern, as between any two adjacent epochs, are quite patent as between the extremes, the sub-Apostolic Age and the fourth century, when the Church's victory was already assured. Certain new factors, on the whole favouring the Gospel's appeal to the Greco-Roman mind, entered more and more into the Church's message from about 150 A.D. In addition to the natural fruits 98 EXPANSION IN THE EMPIRE [PART n. of the Christian spirit, its brotherly love and readiness for self-sacrifice, as need arose through persecution or distress of any kind including that of pagan neighbours, due to famine and pestilence growing assimilation in the forms of its worship, and even the ideas embodied in them, enabled Christianity to appeal more readily than at first to the religious emotions of those susceptible to mystical suggestions through ritual. But further, from the middle of the second century the (iospel possessed itself also of the highest forms of current thought. These it used to interpret its own inner meaning to minds, both within and without the Church, saturated by ideas derived from Greek philosophy. This meant translation of its spiritual message out of the terminology of Hebraism, where this was foreign or " barbarous " to the Greco-Roman mind, into that of the cosmopolitan culture of the Empire. Here there was one master idea, central to philosophy since Plato and now playing a large part in all phases of the prevalent eclecticism, and that in a form closely related to religion. This was the idea of the Logos or principle of Reason immanent in Nature and in man, the source of the order, harmony, and unity discernible in both, in spite of certain limiting or intractable elements matter, sense, passion. It included, too, the attributes of power and life, which came in chiefly from the pantheistic use of Logos as the active law or organ- ising principle of the Cosmos, a living whole or Body informed by the World-Soul. It was an idea as all-pervasive as that of Evolution to-day, colouring the thought and speech of cultured men. But it was now used more variously than of yore, often in ways suggestive of conscious or personal being. For CHAP, i.] THE LOGOS IDEA AN AID 99 as Deity itself was being conceived in more and more personal terms, so the Logos or Reason immanent in the world took on correspondingly personal shades of meaning. The clearest and most unmixed use of the Logos idea is seen in the Christian Apologists from the fourth decade of the second century onwards, especially the Greek Apologists. Of these Justin, Martyr, his disciple Tatian, Theophilus of Antioch, Athenagoras, and Clement of Alexandria, may be named together with Origen in the first half of the third century. Justin gives a vivid account of his own preparation for Christianity through the quest for spiritual satisfaction, the new sense which " happiness " was coming to bear in serious circles. Here Platonism was the final stage prior to his experiencing the direct religious appeal of the Prophets and of the words of Jesus, which carried his conscience by storm. To him the Logos, or Divine principle of Reason illumining the honest and pure mind, was the element common to the best in human thought and life before Christ's appearance and to Christianity. His philosophy of religion and history was exactly that of Tennyson's prelude to " In Memoriam." The partial forms of spiritual truth visible elsewhere were " but broken lights " of the Logos, now completely incarnate in Jesus within the limits of human capacity The same idea that true philosophy was a training for the Gospel, especially as teaching men to recognise the hand of Providence in the world, appears in Clement. " For," says he, " of all good things God is the cause ; but yet of some pre-eminently, as of the Old Covenant and the New, while of others second- arily, as of Philosophy." " Accordingly it too was 100 EXPANSION IN THE EMPIRE [PART n. schoolmaster (pcedagogus) to the Greeks, as the Law to the Hebrews, to bring them to Christ. Philosophy then is a preparation, making ready the way for him who is to be fully initiated by Christ." Here we have the root idea of his apolo- getic, in which the Logos is presented to the heathen world as drawing all men to Himself by inward persuasion. How such a line of argument might appeal to the cultured mind of the day appears from the judge's remark in the Acts of Apollonius, a noble Roman martyred about 181 : " We too know that the Logos of God is begetter both of soul and body of just men." Before the end of the second century, indeed, the usual attitude of philosophy to Christianity was one of disdain ; witness the philosopher-emperor Marcus Aurelius and Celsus, the first deliberate critic of Christianity, who probably wrote during his reign. But before Origen, at the request of a friend, replied to Celsus a couple of generations later, his work had become out of date owing to changes both in the Christian camp, where culture had become largely acclimatised, and in that of paganism, where a new religious spirit and a new religious philosophy had arisen, destined to alter much in the struggle between the Church and its rivals. The new philosophy was Neo-Platonism, as moulded during the first half of the third century by l?lotinus in particular. It was the last phase in the development of Greek philosophy, 1 " a devout 1 Eucken, The Problem of Human Life, p. 122, points out that Plotinus' mystic idealism meant in fact the end of " the ancient ideal of life, with its definiteneas of form, and the creation of a new ideal of spiritual exaltation and soaring aspiration, . . . the emancipation born of a pure spirituality, the subjection of all CHAP, i.] NEO-PLATONISM 101 idealism, in which the knowledge of the Good, the True, and the Beautiful was to be achieved through a strict religious and moral discipline." In this religion of thought as the revelation of the Absolute Being the Logos held a central place, though in the final stage of union with Deity by " ecstasy " that highest function and bliss of the soul even Reason itself swooned away into ineffable vision. Whether Neo-Platonism did or did not unconsciously derive any ideas or points of emphasis from Christianity, it is certain that it was vividly conscious of the latter as its one serious rival, the one religion for which it could not find a place in its system. It could not even tolerate it, because it would not be tolerated, but claimed to supersede all others, as itself the ful- filment of any truths lying behind their erroneous forms. Neo-Platonism, on the other hand, while its leading spirits were enlightened and often spiritual men, was complaisant to all varieties in which the religious instinct expressed itself. " To worship Deity according to ancestral usages " was its practical formula : which meant that for the mass of mankind one form was as good as another. This involved a too naturalistic conception of religion and cut the nerve of progressive spirituality, which demands selection and exclusion in the interests of moral personality. It was for this that Christianity stood, alike in its idea of God and man, and of religion as at bottom an ethical relation between them. As Neo-Platonism more and more became a sort forms of activity to the control of a primordial, all-comprehending Being." This " prepared the way for a new view of the world and a new conduct of life." Thus Neo-Platouism was an important factor, both negative and positive, conditioning the development of Christianity both in ancient and mediaeval Catholicism. 102 EXPANSION IN THE EMPIRE [PART n. of synthesis of all traditional faiths and cults, the struggle became ever more clearly one to the death between it and Christianity. There was indeed now a third 1 candidate for the position of the universal religion ; ,and it too was exclusive in its claim. But Manichaeism, in which Mani gave a fresh shape to the native dualism of Persia by the aid of elements derived from Chaldean cosmology, on the one hand, and some gnostic Christian notions on the other, dates only from the middle of the third century. It did not begin to affect the empire until the reign of Diocletian, who burned its " abominable books." It was only during the fourth century, when the issue between Christianity and Neo-Platonism had virtually been decided, that it seriously challenged the victor in that struggle, and then mainly in limited areas both in East and West. In the latter its stronghold was Africa, where Augustine was first attracted by its claim to explain the problem of evil, then found that claim delusive, and finally became its great and successful opponent. From the time when the Gospel began to state its underlying Hebraic monotheism in terms of the highest philosophical idea of Greek thought, that of the Logos, and so was able to set forth its ideal relations to the world, its appeal was twofold and reached further than at first. It no longer appealed simply to the conscience, to "the soul, by nature Christian " in its instinctive faith in one God, just and good ; it spoke also to the reflective reason which discerned an ideal order of law and moral 1 Mithraism was not sufficiently refined in its thought and ritual really to rank as a fourth. It was by this time at any rate strong mainly in the army. CHAP, i.] GREEK THOUGHT IN THE CHURCH 103 authority, but could not. on a polytheistic basis, relate this to religion and its needs. Henceforward we get a rational apology and constructive exposition of Christianity in terms which contemporary thought must needs regard as more or less valid and entitled to respectful consideration, in spite of certain con- comitant Jewish conceptions which it found hard or impossible to make its own. Among these the eschatological setting of " the Kingdom of God " and " eternal life," as preached by primitive Christi- anity, was of course chief ; but this was being set aside as mere symbolism by many Christians, especially in Alexandrine circles, from the beginning of the third century. Thus the reasoned word, whether spoken or written, from Justin Martyr onwards, and particularly after the " Christian Platonists of Alexandria," Clement and Origen, entered the field, played a large part in the extension of Christianity. This taking over of its own weapons from Hellenism, especially by Origen, was bitterly resented by Neo-Platonists like Porphyry, the greatest of Plotinus' disciples. But the growing body of philosophically cultured Christians, notably of Origen's school, whether in Alexandria or in his later home (c. 230-54) at Csesarea of Palestine, alike proved and spread the influence of this new factor of growth. Greek philosophy in its now more religious spirit, seen in New Platonism, admitted the idea of revelation as needful to religion both in idea and practice, and therefore as credible as well as matter of experienced fact. But the Lives of its sages and saints, such as Apollonius of Tyana in the first century or Plotinus himself, not to name Pythagoras among the ancients, afforded nothing in the way of revelation in a historic personality 104 EXPANSION IN THE EMPIRE [PART n. comparable to what the Christian Gospels afforded to all sorts and conditions of men. And so the issue became more and more focussed upon the idea of the incarnation of the Logos in the historical Jesus. This appears clearly from the youthful apologetic treaties of Athanasius early in the fourth century. That against pagan religion leads up to the doctrine of the Divine Logos, through whom the Good Father governs and quickens all things ; while in that " On the Incarnation of the Logos " he sets himself to show the fitness and congruity of the belief that the agent in Creation and Providence became also the agent in Redemption. To Athanasius indeed (comp. c. xli. 3-5) the Logos is more personal than to the philosophers he addresses. But even to some of them the idea trembled on the verge of personality ; and the line taken must have been to such at least suggestive, needing only a slight step of " faith " beyond what " reason " might warrant, in order to attain the religious conviction for which Athanasius pleaded on moral and scriptural grounds as well. Thus by the end of the third century the Church, as Harnack puts it, was exerting " a missionary influence in virtue of her very existence, inasmuch as she came forward to represent the consummation cf all previous movements in the history of religion." The result was something not perhaps quite theoreti- cally consistent, but of great vitality and with a vast range of practical appeal, answering to human experience under the forms of ancient thought generally. " Every age has to conceive and assimi- late religion as it can alone understand it and make it a living thing for itself." " Distilled religion is not religion at all." And so, whilst recognising that CHAP, i.] AT LAST A "CHRISTIAN " EMPEROR 105 " the distinctively religious element was a stronger factor in the mission at the outset than at a later period," when it had taken shape as "Catholicism," Harnack sees in the latter not only "a complex" made up of opposite and even incongruous elements, but one which was in a measure the necessary out- come, for the time being, of the spirit of universalism latent in the Gospel and bound to lay hold of the entire life of man. Yet not indiscriminately. The catholicising process acted by a vital natural selec- tion, in keeping with a secret instinct of loyalty to the religious and moral type impressed on its con- sciousness by the Christ of the New Testament, and particularly of the Gospels. Accordingly on the failure of the final attempt of the pagan state and pagan religion rallied afresh under the inspiration of Neo-Platonism to cast out as alien the spiritual power which had now become the strongest and best organised single force within the Empire, Constantine, the Augustus of his age, did but sanction a victory already won by inward forces. He first gave Christianity liberty to have its own way, and then chose it as the religious basis and guarantee of the Empire's social well- being. The real situation was not indeed seen at once by all in this light. But what the great states- man's insight enabled him to do was to anticipate the trend of things, in the leading province* in particular. Sooner or later " some Constantine or other would have had to come upon the scene." That things were ripe for the new relations of the Empire and Christianity is shown by the absence of serious protest against Constantine's policy. At first that policy, as defined in the edict of Milan in 313, simply tolerated Christianity alongside other 106 EXPANSION IN THE EMPIRE [PART n. religions. By Constantine, " for the first time in history, the principle of universal toleration was officially laid down that every man has a right to choose his religion and to practise it in his own way without any discouragement from the State." l Yet Constantine had not really accepted the full con- sequences of the principle of freedom for each man's conscience in religion. Even he tried to crush out Christian minorities, such as the Donatists and Arians, in the supposed interests of religious unity as bound up with the well-being of the State. Further, while full toleration implies parity of treat- ment by the State, from 323 especially, when he became sole emperor, he positively patronised Christianity among the many cults embraced within the policy of toleration. Not only did he in 325 convoke the Council of Nicaea, and use all his influ- ence for restoring unity to the Church : his laws more and more favoured Christianity, or rather the Catholic Church in distinction even from Christians outside it, as far as he could without frankly abandon- ing the official neutrality of his earlier policy and so risking a recrudescence of the old issue, paganism versus Christianity. Still it was only on his death- bed that he laid aside all ambiguity and took the final step of baptism (May 337). Nevertheless he had for long made his own sympathies plain, especi- ally after his refounding of Byzantium as Constantin- ople, the official inauguration of which took place hi May 330. It was to be a Christian city, free from pagan traditions such as lived on in Rome : and his discouragement of paganism and care for Christian interests was most marked in his last years. Such being Constantine's policy towards Christi- 1 Gwatkin, in The Cambridge Medieval History, i. 5. CHAP, i.] EFFECTS OF THIS CHANGE 107 anity, what was its effects on the Church ? Both gain and loss : gain in numbers and prestige, loss in average quality owing to mixed motives for adhesion, and confusion as to the real principles of the Gospel. No doubt the Church strove, especially at first, to guard against the new danger of nominal conversion by the probation and careful instruction of catechumens before baptism. But the atmosphere created by State patronage, as well as State inter- ference in matters affecting even the Church's faith and inner life, was all-perversive. It operated alike on the masses and on the leaders, especially leading bishops who were brought into the dangerous position of courtiers. The broad result was a growing worldliness, which changed the accent of the Church's witness and obscured some of the most distinctive aspects of New Testament and old-style Christianity. The story has often been told. 1 Amid all the changes during the ante-Nicene Age the Christian paradox of " life through death " to self still held sway for the majority. But after the new relation between Church and State had time to tell, the distinctive Christian spirit flagged. The Church was largely " secularised by the World." A manifest proof of this is the immense growth of the ascetic ideal among earnest Christians, and its expression in the monastic mode of life, " retreat " from the world and all its ways. Thus there arose a sort of Church within the Church, circles of the elect, " the religious " in the sense of those who cheerfully assumed the obligation of the full Christian ideal as then under- stood. On the other hand the common run of * Most recently and justly in Canon Hobhouse's Bampton Lectures for 1909, The Church and the World, phrases of which are used in what follows. 108 EXPANSION IN THE EMPIRE [PART n. Christians seem largely to have lost their savour as the salt of society. What made things worse was the dreadful lack of charity and good-feeling, even of fair-mindedness and honesty, shown by otherwise holy men in the doctrinal controversies of the fourth century, in which the Emperor and Court took a leading part. Surely, too, there was something amiss with the ideal of religious truth and value lying behind such rancorous zeal, when the fruits were so bitter. Somehow or other the Church had here missed its Founder's way. How, we must enquire in other connections. A partial purgation from the evils just described as caused or aggravated by the new relations of Church and State, was caused by a brief return of the older conditions. The pagan reaction under the Emperor Julian sobered, and united in a new sense of that which was common to Christians as such, many who had been worldly or estranged by intellectual differences. The causes of that reaction were in part general, in part personal to the Emperor himself. Something must be put down to natural irritation at the intolerance of others' religion shown by Julian's immediate predecessors, and still more by local Christian mobs with their connivance. As to Julian, his traditional title " the Apostate " misrepresents the facts. He had chafed as a lad under enforced compliance with Church forms ; he was shocked by the bitter quarrels of Catholics and Arians, and revolted from what he called " the worship of dead men's bones " (relics of martyrs). When emerging from a cramped youth he came under the influence of attractive Neo-Platonist teachers, and felt as if breathing a divine air in the study of the ancient literature of Greece. Hence- CHAP, i.] THE FINAL STRUGGLE 109 forth his chosen mission was to revive " Hellenism " on its religious side, as he conceived it. But his version of it, expressing itself on the one hand in high moral ideals and ascetic living, and on the other in a zeal for bloody sacrifices and thaumaturgic rites, was an idiosyncrasy, and astonished no one so much as the average pagan. In the end, though Julian struck a shrewd blow at Christianity by shutting it off from the teaching profession, his brief reign (361-3) really helped to purify, renew, and unite the Christians. Common trial for loyalty to the common Lord of Christians brought home afresh their one religious faith, working beneath the divisive Greek intellect. It was ben trovato, if but a legend, that the dying Julian was said to have exclaimed touching the trial to which he exposed the Church, " Thou hast conquered, Galilean." After the advent of Theodosius the Great (379-95), the second Constantine of the Church's fortunes, the supremacy of Christianity was finally assured. Spiritually, however, the drawbacks of the new regime operated once more. Force was used against both paganism and heresy in the Christian camp ; and both died harder than has generally been realised, alike in East and West. In the Greek world intel- lectual paganism had its stronghold at Athens, in the Neo-Platonism of its schools, until Justinian closed the Academy of Plato in 529. In the West it was strongest at Rome. There the Senate, with its conservative sentiment for all connected with the old Roman glories, was its rallying-point ; and it had not a few noble embodiments in men like Prsetextatus and Symmachus. The latter fought a spirited losing battle for the restoration of the Altar of Victory to the Senate House, in the final phase 110 EXPANSION IN THE EMPIRE [PART n. of which he was baulked by Ambrose of Milan. The bishop justly urged that Christians did not force others to attend their services. Why should pagan rites be obtruded on them ? The struggle touching the Altar was by all felt to be the last stand of the old Roman religion for public recogni- tion. Behind this struggle lay not only deep feeling for the old religious associations of Rome in its great days of expansion, but also a belief that its fortunes were bound up with recognition of the " Heavenly powers " under their old attributes and with the rites they had chosen and blessed. This feeling found wide expression when in 410 Rome saw the foreign invader within her walls, in the persons of Alaric and his Goths, for the first time for long centuries. Was not this clear proof that Heaven resented the supersession of the old religion by the new ? Augustine's great work, The City of God (413-426), was the Christian reply to this. The book is really of wider scope than its immediate occasion demanded, and is in fact a philosophy of history, the greatest so far, save that found in germ in St Paul. World-history is sketched in bold out- line, details being left to his disciple Orosius. whose History in Reply to the Pagans largely formed the historical background of the Middle Ages. Augustine's master idea is the contrast throughout between the city of men, of society as based on a humanity marred by sin, and the city of God, human life as organised on the basis of faith in the One true God. The one was animated by love of self, the other by love of God, and of man for His sake. As to the recent capture of Rome, it was not due to Christianity, which rather helped to mitigate CHAP, i.] THE VICTORY INCOMPLETE 111 its horrors, since that faith had some hold on the barbarous conquerors. But the sack of Rome by the Goths did much to destroy its old religion, both, outwardly and inwardly. There and elsewhere it survived among the cultured mainly as one element in a deep sentiment for the Greek and Latin classics, and for the glorious history of " the eternal city," which entered so largely into Augustan and post- Augustan Latin literature Yet in spite of this, as hi the third century so in the fourth, Christianity won over a growing proportion of serious-minded men, who used then: culture gained through that literature in the service of the new life of the soul learned in the school of Christ. There was, too, during the age of Augustine no little kindly feeling and mutual respect between the nobler spirits in both camps. On the whole the old religion lived on longest in the life and customs of the country-side. So much was this the case that the line of least resistance was often taken by the Church, and pagan festivals and customs were continued, with but superficial reform and baptism, in the popular life of Christen- dom. Many a tutelary deity became a local or patron saint : and in other ways of accommodation to the old and superstitious ideas, especially as embodied in customs, transition to Christian pro- fession was made more easy and meant less. Such depreciation in the value of the Christian name was naturally one result of the unspiritual method of wholesale conversion, through coercion of one degree or another, due to the legislation of the " Christian " Empire. Thus a new type of Christianity and new missionary methods arose, which, while they facili- 112 EXPANSION IN THE EMPIRE [PART n. tated the entrance of the new Teutonic races into the Church's fold, yet meant grave weakening of the tests and guarantees of real moral and spiritual renovation, and produced extension at lasting cost to intensive quality and power. The fact must be borne in mind as helping to explain much of the crudity of early and even later mediaeval Christianity. Thus, through the laudable instinct of its leaders to extend its saving benefits to as many as possible, Christianity underwent serious corruptions in its nature and distinctive values. That is the humilia- tion which a universal religion, with a redemptive heart of pity for all, must ever suffer more or less ; and experience won on the modern mission-field may well check hasty judgments as to how far Catholicism in the fifth century might have done other than it did. But it should also moderate our estimate of the age and its immediate successors, when interpreting Christianity as truth or as moral ideal for men to-day. Apart from the expansion conditioned by the con- nection of Church and State, Christianity continued to spread by the personal efforts of men of true missionary spirit, such as Ulfilas among the Goths on the lower Danube (c. 341-83), Martin, Bishop of Tours (c. 371-400), in Gaul, Severinus (d. 482) in Lower Austria ; all of whom helped to unite the new peoples in sympathy to the Roman Empire through religion and its higher culture. In this connection the work of St Patrick in Ireland (432-61) is highly significant. He blended in his own person the old and the new, Roman discipline and Celtic fervour, in a manner prophetic of the future. Thus he not only converted large tracts of Ireland, and organised Christianity there and in the parts where CHAP, i.] AND FRAUGHT WITH CHANGE 113 it existed before his coming ; but he also brought Ireland into living touch with the Latin Church, with its wider culture and outlook, and made it an integral part of Western Christendom. We have tried to show how, and in an historical sense why, Christianity won over and incorporated the Roman Empire as Western Christendom. In so doing we have traced how it came to express itself, as Harnack puts it, " so as inevitably to become the religion of the world," by conquering and taking into itself all the most vital elements in the thought and culture of the age. In the process Christianity underwent much change in standpoint, perspective, emphasis, forms of conception and usage. Broadly speaking, it became de-Hebraised, and so lost certain of its Biblical traits and took on others more akin to its new environment. In closing this survey of the expansion of Christianity, one is conscious that it has placed in undue relief the intellectual elements in the process : there were instinctive and emotional factors which played at least an equal part here, as in all real religious movements. But these are hard to describe in generalised form, and may best be studied in the concrete, in the picture of different sides of the Christian life and experience to which the next few chapters are devoted. CHAPTER II LIFE AND DISCIPLINE " It was the distinguishing characteristic of Christianity that its moral influence was not indirect, casual, remote, or spasmodic.'' LECKY. " Christ has made virtue a wholly new thing, an inward refining passion of the soul." CARNEGIE SIMPSON. THE problem of human conduct is that of a sufficient motive. What human life most needs for its up- lifting and progress towards perfection is not so much a moral law or ideals beyond its actual attain- ment, as moral inspiration ever available to overcome its vis inertice and egoism ; a something making it seem always worth while to choose the higher when seen, rather than follow the line of least resistance in one's nature ; a sanction which shall cause dis- satisfaction or remorse of conscience to supervene on choice of the lower good Conscience is there in most cases, but it needs something to keep it braced and vital. What is needed is the note of the Absolute in life, the authentic imperative that has the right to rebuke the lax, self-indulgent plea that "it does not really matter much, in this case at any rate," even though duty be admitted as right in general. That is the psychology of the moral problem. But how is this note, this sanction, this motive to be created ? Religion, in its higher or ethical forms, has always claimed to have the answer : 114 CHAP, ii.] THE SPRINGS OF CONDUCT 115 and there is little doubt that primitive Christianity justified its claim by its works. It had the note of the absolute in life, the absolute value of well-doing and its absolute issue in " Eternal Life," here and hereafter. The inward springs of this may reveal themselves as we proceed. All fresh, sincere conduct is the practical expression of man's faith, his general outlook. We may best judge, then, of the quality and power of Christian faith by beginning with its concrete and vital ex- pression in daily life, both personal and social. This depends directly on the spiritual atmosphere and inner motives created by that faith. Beneath all lay a sense of boundless indebtedness and obliga- tion to God as manifest in Christ, and of grateful and fervid love in response to the Divine love thus revealed. Resulting from this, and from the sense that one's whole life was interfused with the Divine presence manifesting itself to consciousness as " holy Spirit " actual inspiration in worship and daily " walk " was the " enthusiasm " or spiritual exalta- tion of temper characteristic of Christians in the first century, but persisting also in more limited and special forms throughout the second century and even much later. " The enthusiasm of humanity " was indeed the new power behind all the ethical ideals of the first Christians. These they shared in the main with the best Jewish piety, but as placed in a fresh perspective and revitalised by the creative words and example of Messiah himself. Such enthusiasm was due to the new vision of the soul's boundless value, even in the most despised and sinful, owing to relation to God as Father and Christ's attitude to such. The early Christians saw man, as it were, through the eyes of 116 LIFE AND DISCIPLINE [PART n. Jesus Christ : and this made all things new. They yearned with sympathy for the man that yet might be ; and their faith treated things that were not as though they were. Hence, as Clement of Rome puts it, there was given to them " an insatiable desire for doing good, and an abundant outpouring of holy inspiration " (" holy Spirit "). Solicitude " for all the Brotherhood " filled each and all. They felt themselves, as Paul phrases it, " fellow-workers with God," as " working in them to will and to do for His good pleasure." Thus they saw life sub specie ceternitatis : their ethical ideal had an absolute basis and value. Two changes of vital moment occurred when the religion of the Old Testament passed over into that of the New. The medium of fellowship with God was no longer the Mosaic Law, an impersonal and rigid manifestation of the Divine Will, but a Person, Jesus the Christ, in whom the Divine attained a form of expression at once more adequate and more flexible. Along with this change in the objective side of piety went another. In virtue of the deeply personal experience by which membership in the new Messianic People came about, fresh emphasis fell upon the individual units composing it. A more intimate and immediate consciousness of the Divine Father- hood was now possible to each soul, by the revela- tion of Divine Sonship in Jesus as " the first-born among many brethren." Further, this new sense of the sacredness of human nature applied not only to themselves, but potentially to all men. Here, then, were two religious ideas of immense potency for moral reform in every department of human life. The Christian idea of humanity in theory rises above the rival claims of the self and other selves ; CHAP, ii.] THE RELIGION OF PERSONALITY 117 and we have to see how far it has succeeded in doing so also in practice. Christianity is the religion of personality. It means salvation of the soul for its true destiny of " life " in union with God, the perfect Personality on whom all depend. Sin is that which by separat- ing from God cuts off from Life eternal and divine. Primarily it is self-will, secondarily it is worldliness. But both forms of " missing the mark " are culpable in the degree to which the Divine will is known and set aside. Such, in brief, is the profoundly ethical idea of salvation underlying the New Testament. It is rooted in the idea of man as potentially personal in a sense essentially one with that in which God is perfect Personality. It is what we should to-day call character. Man's destiny is spiritual likeness to God, so far as his creaturely and finite nature allows. Thus the absolute value of human per- sonality, amid all earthly values, is the presup- position of Christian Ethics, both individual and social ; and it governs the Christian notion of salva- tion and of the means by which it is achieved. Of course this is not the account which primitive Christians would themselves have given of the matter. But it is the high value of history that it enables us to discern by the comparative method, more clearly even than the actors themselves, the deeper meaning of the past. Looking back, we can better appreciate distinctive emphasis, which is what most matters religiously and practically. In the same light, too, we perceive how different was the conception of religion in the Hellenistic world, apart from Hebraism, the true parent of Christianity as the religion of moral personality. And what we have to ask ourselves during the whole period of 118 LIFE AND DISCIPLINE [PART n. Ancient Christianity is, How far did the new en- vironment and atmosphere modify the genius or specific quality of the original Christian Gospel of Life? To the early Christians life was a constant self- oblation to the Perfect One, the source and judge of all goodness. Sanctification, to use their word for life's discipline and perfecting, was just daily and hourly reaffirmation of the self-dedication of the will, which, as made once for all in a decisive act, " the obedience of faith " on repentance from sin, brought man into true relation to God. " He gave his heart to the Purifier, and his will to the Will that rules the world," is the final account of all religion of the higher type. The Christian type took its specific character from the Almighty Purifier, as defined in the soul and life of Jesus the Christ. "Be ye perfect as your Heavenly Father is perfect," that is, in love. To do justice to the Christian type of life, which confesses that the all-embracing virtue or grace of the soul is love, and on it builds its ideal of character, one must understand what is meant by Love. Even as a word with any deep moral suggestion, Love owes its currency to Christianity. But its true Christian sense is far larger, deeper, fuller of ideal meaning than is often realised. It meant a spirit of boundless good-will, directed to the highest good or perfection of its object, viz. human personality, in whatever stage or condition, viewed in the light of its divine destiny as revealed in Christ. It was far more than instinctive pity or sentiment. Love as Christian was evoked and inspired by a definite spiritual ideal, and was charged with moral purpose. CHAP, ii.] CHRISTIAN LOVE 119 It was ready to do, dare, and suffer for the ends imposed on it by conscience as God's good will. It was full of potential heroism, ready for inner and outer self-sacrifice. Those who think the Christian type of character feminine in genius, have never gained a glimpse of love as it burned in Christ's soul. It combined the positive virtues of manhood and womanhood when confronted by actual need and injustice, seen in the light of the human ideal thus frustrated. So early Christian faith was in a " strong Son of God " whose " immortal Love " made Him a Superman, mighty not for self-asser- tion over weaker natures, but for sacrifice with a view to their self-realisation, through a new stimulus of Hope and Faith caught from His own abounding Life. Christian Love, having itself been " out of weakness made strong," lived to make others strong in like fashion. It was the essential spirit of Re- demption, first of the individual and then of society, the deepest spring of the " humanity " or philanthropy which, as Lactantius the converted philosopher of the age of Constantine saw, is itself the true parent of justice and all right relations among men. It was such love which was the secret of the glad and cheerful spirit that marked primitive self-discipline and self-denial, in spite of all its other-worldly outlook. What, then, were the contents of the Christian ideal, and what the changes, in things held import- ant, which took place in the type of Christian living during the development of Christianity under the conditions of the Roman Empire ? The New Testament itself affords many passages bearing on the point, notably in the Pauline Epistles, where the organic relation between a holy love, one based on 120 LIFE AND DISCIPLINE [PART n. reverence for the image of God in man, and its in- finite practical applications, are brought out with un- equalled power. Witness the analysis of Love's behaviour in 1 Cor. xiii., supplemented by Rom. xii.- xv. ; Col. iii. 12 ff. ; Eph. iv. 1-vi. 9. His epistles also contain lists of typical virtues and vices. But the most vivid impression of the moral issues of life as early Christians at large saw it, is to be gained from " the type of instruction " which comes to our knowledge through recovery of what purports to be " The Instruction (DidacM) of the Lord through the Twelve Apostles to the Gentiles." The first por- tion of it, the instruction of candidates for baptism, can be traced far and wide in early Christian writ- ings, and may be treated as fully representative. It sets forth " The Two Ways," of Life and Death, an idea familiar to Greek moralists and probably for this reason adopted by Jews of the Dispersion as the form under which to draw up so much of the Jewish ideal of faith and conduct as was suited to the needs of Gentile proselytes. In its main features it was simply taken over from such Jewish instruction ; but in being baptized into Christ's service it gradually received additions, slight it may be in bulk, but significant of the more positive spirit in which the fundamental virtue of love was understood among the disciples of Christ. Such additions grew as time went on, and as the defects of the original form came home more and more to the Christian consciousness. As it stands in our Didach6, it already contains echoes of the Sermon on the Mount, along with some later developments of the same. These tend to correct the too negative sense given to the second great command of the Law in its current form for Jewish proselytes, viz. CHAP, ii.] BROTHERHOOD FUNDAMENTAL 121 " All that thou wishest not to be done to thee, do not thou also to another." But if Christian theory removed all limitations to the full positive Law of Love, to which the Epistle of James also bears striking witness, making it a universal principle of benevolence and beneficence, 1 did not limits remain in practice ? Only thus far, that there was the special tie between members of the Christian " family of faith." The duty of com- mending the Gospel to all, as saving truth also for " those without," was felt to be a sacred trust, and was sometimes referred to as an incentive to more devoted obedience. Still while Christians pledged themselves in baptism to the will of Christ in relation to all men, it was only within the com- munity itself, where mutual trust and intimacy was greatest, that Christianity had full scope. Thus the " Gospel of the Hebrews " ranked it a grievous offence " if one had saddened his brother's spirit " : similarly it cited as a saying of Christ the words, " Never be ye glad, save when ye have looked on your brother in love " words which . at least sum up most aptly what the primitive Chris- tians had learned of their Master. Hence we can hardly exaggerate the intense sense of " fellowship," as between true brothers, which prevailed among them. " Thou shalt share all things " with thy brother, and shalt not say that " they are thine own " : " for if ye are fellows hi that which is im- mortal, how much more in things mortal ? " That is how the Two Ways put it. Such brotherliness remained an axiom for the Christian conscience, 1 But charity towards the faith of others could co-exist with loyalty to Christ only on a more subjective view of fidelity to conscience than then obtained. 122 LIFE AND DISCIPLINE [PART n. honoured in many and various ways during the whole ante-Nicene period, namely, until the reality of spiritual brotherhood itself was gravely impaired by changed relations to the State, which made Christian profession mean much less than before. Striking expressions of brotherhood, the spring and bond of Christian virtues, still abound in the third century and even in the fourth. Thus about the middle of the third century a product of Jewish Christianity in Syria declares, " Every fair deed shall the love of man teach you to do, even as hatred of men suggests ill-doing." l It must be noted, however, that though the God- given claim of need upon the Christian's possessions, as a gift from God and held in trust for His uses an idea explicit in the unfolding of the Golden .Rule in the Didache was recognised generally, and honoured by lavish almsgiving; even before the fourth century the original motive of pure love was less evident than the self-regarding motive which appears already in the Two Ways, as part of its Jewish strain, viz. that one should give as " a ransom for one's sins." That is a thought alien to the New Testament. There "it is required of a steward that he be found faithful," else is he liable to dismissal or penalty : it is only extra zeal in God's service that meets with reward, and that not as wages but as of His bounty. Nor do we meet with the kindred notion of " supererogatory " merit earlier than in the " Shepherd " of the Roman Hennas (c. 140). In expounding as a fresh revelation the fasting truly pleasing to God, i.e. that which aims at saving what may relieve those in need a genuinely primitive 1 The " Letter of Clement to James " (c. 9), once prefacing the basis of our present Pseudo-Clementines. CHAP, ii.] DEGREES OF FIDELITY AND GIFT 123 touch he adds that in thus going beyond God's actual requirements a man's voluntary zeal shall be rewarded with special " honour " before Him. The point is not put strongly : but in going even so far, our prophet seems to draw his inspiration from some- thing less than an Evangelic source. For it savours of self-regarding moralism, which is really rooted hi legalism, not in love ; while passion for perfection as likeness to the heavenly Father, the ideal placed by Jesus himself before Christians as children of God, sanctions, as it knows, no supererogation. As the Christian additions to the Two Ways in the Didache have it : "If any one give thee a blow on the right cheek, turn to him the other also, and thou shalt be perfect " ; and again, " If indeed thou art able to carry the whole yoke of the Lord [His ideal of conduct], thou shalt be perfect : but if thou art not able, what thou canst, that do." Here is a fair facing of the facts as to varying moral ability, as between men, and as between different stages of moral progress of the same man : but that is all. Primitive Christianity knows no double ideal of obedience and merit among Christians as such, for " saints " and for the simply " faith- ful," in the later senses of these terms. All alike were at first called *' saints," consecrated to the Divine type of life the life of faith, hope, and love and with a radical bent of will, through the expulsive power of a new affection, to please God and His Christ. That remained the idea of the Christian life and the Christian society, " the holy Church," during the whole period of what we may rightly call primitive Christianity, down to the age of the Apologists and even after. Special vocation, indeed, as of spiritual gift, was 124 LIFE AND DISCIPLINE [PART n. recognised all along. Thus celibacy entered into the Christian ideal, and naturally so, amid the urgency of missionary duty in " the last days," before the new order was to dawn. But though advised, by Paul for instance, where the " gift " for it was present, on the score of expediency for oneself and for the Kingdom, it was no matter of command either by Christ or His apostles. In fact it was alien to the genius of Hebraism to make it otherwise than an ex- ceptional vocation, like the Nazirite vow ; asceticism for its own sake was no part of the Christian ideal : and there is every reason to trace the growth of the idea that full " purity " or " holiness " necessitated the " virgin " state, to influences originally external to the Gospel of Christ. These were radically Gentile and pagan, and had their main roots in Oriental dualism and mysticism. But by the Christian era they had already entered into alliance with Hellenism, and even with certain less native types of Judaism, such as the Essenes and the Therapeutse. It was natural, then, that they should soon react upon the ideals of Christianity, as we see was the case, to begin with, in the less normal circles, both Gnostic and those represented by Apocryphal Acts. There the idea of the " virgin " state as in itself " purer " than the married first emerges. This is the less to be wondered at that it found a footing in genuine Christian askesis, or self-discipline for higher efficiency, as also in the temper and practice proper to the age of " enthusi- asm " and urgent expectancy. Later the different principles behind the similarity of the Christian and non-Christian practice, so far as it existed, were easily forgotten or overlooked. Reference has just been made to the specially CHAP, ii.] THE ESCHATOLOGICAL MOTIVE 125 high-strung type of self-control fostered by the primitive Parousia Hope. Its heightening effect, especially upon the unworldly temper of Christian ethics, must be reckoned with all round. Human life was felt to be at its grand crisis ; the final hour was at hand ; " the saints " were on vigil : the soldiers of Christ were standing at their posts : prayer and " fasting to the world " in spirit was their abiding habit of mind ; and at times special fasts of vigil (stationes) were kept, in order to key the soul to its true level of spiritual loyalty and vision. The moral effect of this eschatological outlook has been char- acterised as analogous to the simplifying and clari- fying of issues when the end of life seems near. " The cloud of lesser interests was rolled away, and ultimate values and eternal issues stood out before them stark and clear, as never before or since in the history of our race." There was doubtless loss as well as gain in the perspective thus obtained, as in all human perspectives. A certain over-strung temper, oblivious of limited and relative interests of an innocent and wholesome kind, was generated ; a certain intolerance and inconsiderateness of the feelings, and even the consciences, of their Jewish and pagan neighbours was inevitable, side by side with passionate solicitude for those seen, in the intense light of Christian experience, to be " dead to God " and " without hope in the world." On the other hand the accompanying enhancement of spiritual vision, and the sense of responsibility for all persons and personal interests in life, did much to spur Christians to moral courage and self-sacrifice, the heroic aspect of the gospel. Socially, too, the expectation of a speedy Second Advent had a two- fold effect, Within the Christian community itself 126 LIFE AND DISCIPLINE [PART n. it fostered the immediate regeneration of all social relations of man and woman, husband and wife, parent and child, master and domestics (whether bond or free), rich and poor in the light of unity and equality in Christ. Towards certain features of society at large, on the other hand, such as slavery and the economic order, it tended to make Christians more acquiescent than they might otherwise have been. One might cite many passages to illustrate the early Christian moral ideal. But we have space for only one typical quotation, taken from the hearing of the Roman Senator Apollonius before the city prefect, c. 180 A.D. " He, our Saviour Jesus Christ, having become man in Judaea, in all things just and filled with divine wisdom, in love to men taught us who is the God of the Universe and what is the ideal (end) of virtue, directed to a reverent mode of life, becoming the souls of men. He stayed the beginnings of sins : for He taught men to stay wrath, to measure desire, to chasten pleasures, to cut up griefs by the root, to be ready to share, to increase friendliness, to purge away vain glory, not to resort to self-defence against in- justice, for the sake of God's ordinance to despise death ; further, to obey the law given by Him, to honour the emperor, to worship as God the Immortal One alone, to believe the soul immortal, to be assured of judgment after death, to hope for guerdon of virtue's toils to be given by God after the resurrection to those who have lived piously." To the broad outlines of the Christian life, as hitherto sketched, practice down to this time seems to have corresponded in the main. Hermas indeed implies much worldliness in the Roman Church of his day (c. 110-140). Also as numbers, especially of CHAP, ii.] PRACTICE AND DISCIPLINE 127 wealthy converts, grew in great cities like Rome ; as Christians by birth rather than personal conversion increased ; and as the Parousia expectation slackened ; the old simplicity and earnestness became harder to maintain. In fact, as time went on, it was not maintained save in a minority of cases. But any- thing like overt lapse from the essentials of Christian conduct was still checked, not only by the corporate conscience, but also by discipline in Church meeting. Tertullian describes in his Apology how there then took place " exhortations, corrections, and divine censures " : and " whenever any had so sinned as to be banished communion in prayer and assembly and all sacred intercourse," the penalty had the weighty sanction of all the brethren, assembled under the presidency of " tried seniors." But the fitness of the average Church member for his high spiritual functions was now (c. 200 A.D.) not what it had been. A moral dualism among Christians was more and more making itself felt from the third century onwards a phenomenon of great moment for the future of Catholicism in many ways, and not least in the present connection. The problem of the average man in the " holy Church " had become an increasingly pressing one ; and towards the end of the second century, and during the first half of the third, there occurred a momentous change of policy and methods to meet growing experience of it amid new conditions of Church life and changing views of saving faith. Christianity was more and more conceived as Divine Law ; and this law was defined, and imposed on the obedience of true believers, by the authority of the Church as a Divine institution, with a divinely given constitution in all things needful alike to its being and 128 LIFE AND DISCIPLINE [PART n. well-being. The exact degree of the growing change and its interpretation i.e. how far it was only making explicit what was implicit in the primitive Church, or was more than this is much in debate. In any case the individual was now regarded and treated as more dependent on the organised Church, even in his personal relations with God, and less immediately on the Spirit, than in early days. Among other things the Church assumed more official responsibility for its erring members. All along there had been a broad distinction between primary or mortal sins and those of less moment. The latter were left to the individual conscience in its direct relations with God. But as to the former the Church or brotherhood in its corporate capacity felt bound to intervene, in the interests of the purity of its own life, as well as the reformation of its diseased members. Apostasy, formal or con- structive, murder and fornication in all degrees, were treated as deadly sins, forfeiting Christian standing unless atoned for by tokens of true contrition, followed after a season by formal restoration or " reconciliation " to the Church as a final ratification of the forgiveness of God. Early in the third cen- tury the Roman bishop Callistus specified the exact terms on which he guaranteed the Church's forgive- ness of mortal sins of the flesh. Something in the manner, and as it seemed to them the spirit, of this declaration deeply shocked alike Tertullian of Carthage and Hippolytus, a leading Roman presbyter, as seeming to take from the gravity with which such sins had been viewed. No doubt both were apt to judge Callistus harshly, and were themselves inclined to rigorism. But his policy did mean a more formal recognition of the frailties of average humanity, CHAP, ii.] PENITENTIAL DISCIPLINE 129 _^ . ^.^ ^ and of provision in Church discipline for dealing with them remedially. Hence it was significant of growing experience of such cases of grave moral failure even after baptism, and of the need felt for affording them fresh help against the danger of being swallowed up of despair, if left to the older and more personal methods of attaining assurance of Divine forgiveness. The help in question consisted in a definite penitential discipline, ending in a declara- tion of absolution in God's name for all who satisfied its conditions external as these could not but be, as general rules for testing what could fully be known to God alone. In the Apostolic Age, to judge from Paul's treat- ment of the incestuous man at Corinth, the genuine- ness of such penitence was left to the general spiritual discernment of the brethren, each case being treated by itself on its merits. Later on we have the special " prophetic " message of Hermas, on the eve, as he believed, of the completion of the Building of the Church : that as an exceptional act of Divine mercy a single forgiveness of deadly sins, of the flesh and even of unwilling apostasy under trial, was open to the contrite under the auspices of the Angel of Repentance. But the forgiveness is a Divine act on the basis of a promise, and with a time-limit ; and it suggests that full restoration to the Church's communion of such sinners, as Divinely forgiven, was felt in Rome in the first half of the second century to be beyond the competence of ordinary Church discipline. 1 No one thought as yet of the Church as having power actually to grant forgive- ness of sins. Its function was to bring its sinful 1 Montanism expressed the same feeling more severely, and tried to meet the need in its own way through the New Prophecy. I 130 LIFE AND DISCIPLINE [PART n. members to a true conscience in the matter, with a view to themselves satisfying God's own conditions of forgiveness. 1 Then came what Tertullian calls " the edict " of Callistus, defining the conditions of peni- tential discipline on which his Church was ready to assume responsibility for God's forgiveness, as obtained by due repentance and " satisfaction " made to Him, and so readmit those guilty of mortal sin to " the communion of Saints." Here we have the germ of what later, under other conditions, was transformed into the " sacrament of penance," which involves real devolution to a priest ex qfficio of the Divine power of absolution. But already there is present the notion of satisfaction in relation to the Divine anger, through the actual penances imposed by the Church authority as fitting means of self- mortification, for the offences in question. This is a new element in the Christian theory of renewed for- giveness, such penal atonement being thought needful on man's side along with fasting and good works, particularly almsgiving, to " merit " Divine absolu- tion. Penance and " good works " were viewed as positive satisfactio, essential to making the prayer for forgiveness, such as the Lord's Prayer contemplates, have " merit " to avail with God. 2 So Ambrosiaster, a century later, makes love a meritorious ground of salvation (taking Luke vii. 47 in this sense), especially as the spring of good works. We ask ourselves whether this would not have struck Paul as a reversion to the legal mode of thought, and full of danger to the very genius of the gospel of forgive- ness by grace through faith all along " from faith unto faith." 1 Compare Firmilian's Letter to Cyprian, c. 4. 1 See especially Cyprian, On Works and Alms, cc. 5, 7, 23. CHAP, ii.] CYPRIAN HERE SIGNIFICANT 131 Of this new legalism within limits, as just de- scribed, Cyprian is the chief third-century repre- sentative. Here, as in so much of his thinking, Tertullian was his forerunner. But Cyprian was a thorough Roman in temper, without Tertullian's African heat and violence of feeling and expression, but logically thoroughgoing in his use of principles that seized his imagination and conscience ; always earnest and devout, though without profound or subtle insight into the psychology of religion. The Christian life, as it shaped itself to his Latin mind in the light of a vivid experience of the renewing power of Christ, is set forth with great clearness and succinctness hi Bk. III. of his Testimonia, a collection of proof -texts bearing on the main heads of Christian faith and practice. Here the basis of his thought is quite primitive ; yet there are not a few touches prophetic rather of future Catholic emphasis and conception. It was indeed the very intensity of his personal experience of what the grace of God had done for him, his sense " that the Lord's yoke which has been taken up by us is light," in contrast both to the yoke of sin and to " the yoke of the Law " of Jewish ordinances, which helped to hide from him how much real legalism he was unconsciously sanctioning and even increasing in ecclesiastical Christianity. His was the practical genius, which develops a few master ideas in relation to actual exigencies, as they meet the pastor and ruler of souls. Thus he worked out his policy touching those who " lapsed " from their Christian profession, in the Decian persecution c. 250, gradually as he went along. Starting from the older and more vigorous attitude to apostasy, as the unforgivable sin against the Holy Spirit of God, he passed cautiously to 132 LIFE AND DISCIPLINE [PART n. the humaner one due to large experience of the demoralising effect on most men of permanent doubt as to whether God's forgiveness for such breach of their baptismal Covenant would ever be theirs. So although a heading in his Testimonia had run, " that forgiveness cannot be granted in the Church to him who has sinned against God " ; yet later he came to insist that the Church should give the reassurance of its communion to those who had shown penitence by objective tokens, in satisfying the Church's, rules for testing its genuineness and depth. Another of Cyprian's maxims may be cited as bearing on a prime matter of principle for the Christian life, viz., " that in Christ there is given to us our exemplar of life." This proves that Harnack's statement, just as it is in the main, is yet too sweeping, when he notes x that "in the early Church the imitation of Christ never became a formal principle of ethics except for the specialist in religion the " spiritual " person, the teacher, the ascetic, or the martyr. It played quite a subordinate part in the ethical teaching of the Church." Those who tried consciously to " take up the Cross and follow " Christ " were always classed as Christians of a higher order, though even at this early period they were warned against presumption " as by Clement of Rome and Ignatius. This gives food for thought, for instance as to how for the imitatio Christi was conceived too much in the letter rather than the spirit, in keeping with the legal rather than filial temper 1 Expansion of Christianity , i. 107. Among other exceptions to be noted are the Apologists as a class, and Irenaeus, who, making the vision of God the transforming norm of human goodness, points to the Incarnate Word or Son as our visible and audible Master, set for our imitation (V. i. 1). CHAP, ii.] SOCIAL ETHICS 133 which we see growing in Christianity as the Apostolic Age recedes, so that the average Christian l would feel it above him to take Jesus as his exemplar at all. But in any case Cyprian shows that the tendency, as Harnack describes it, began to tell fully only after the middle of the third century, when dualism in Church life becomes more pronounced, not only between the " Two Lives," the higher and lower Christian types, as recognised by even the Alex- andrine school, but also between clergy and laity, and again between the ascetic and ordinary or secular type of holiness. But what of Christianity in relation to wrongs embedded in social custom and law, e.g. those affect- ing the family, both in its stricter and wider sense, in the latter of which it embraced slavery or bond- service ? The ideal and practice as to womanhood and childhood are also crucial for religion in relation to social ethics, testing its moral depth and power to transcend might by right. And here Christianity did very much to modify ancient ideals and usages. If, moreover, it did not fully reconstruct the family, though it probably helped to mitigate the despotism of the paterfamilias ; if it did not do away with slavery as an institution, though it ameliorated its working, and led to emancipation in a larger proportion of cases than where masters were non-Christians ; such limited results of its own principles were due largely to causes special to the provisional nature of its original outlook. Possibly also there was fear lest formal prohibition of slavery might add to the hostile attitude of the pagan State, already suspicious of Christians as foes of the 1 Hermas, Vis. v. 1-3, makes Christ the example for works of supererogation. 134 LIFE AND DISCIPLINE [PART n. existing social order. Otherwise the Christian idea of the transcendent worth of persons caused the idea of earthly possessions, as belonging to the natural and temporal order of things, to undergo a radical transvaluation. Such use of property as did not subserve, but rather hindered the realisation of the Divine image in man, whether in its user or in those lacking the necessaries of life, was essential sacrilege. At a single stroke, mercy in the use of material goods became simply a form of justice ; it was the bounden duty of the human owner, or rather trustee, to answer for his use of all things to God and His rights in manhood. Thus there lay a socially and economically revolutionary significance in the new valuation of humanity ; for it gave to the more sympathetic virtues that peculiar claim upon mankind which is denoted by the epithet " humane." Nor was this mere sentiment. In the third-century "Epistle of Clement to James" it was felt to be a duty to furnish employment for those who lacked it. " To the workman, work : to him who cannot work, mercy (alms)." So ran the rule. But many practical problems of readjustment were left over, particularly as regards the enlightenment of the Christian conscience touching the best means of applying its impulses and principles to actual con- ditions, especially in a world where slavery was part of the social and economic order, and industry was on an unsound basis. A prime factor retarding the progress of social regeneration, as also the abolition of slavery, was the false time perspective of the early Christians, who expected the end of the world in such a sense as to preclude their considering the amelior- ation of the general social or economic order as at all a practical question. By the time that this cause CHAP, ii.] CHANGING IDEALS OF HOLINESS 135 ceased to operate as strongly as before, the original vividness of the contrast between the Christian idea of humanity and actual social conditions, to which the Church had largely become naturalised, had already passed beyond recall, save where some special stimulus directed attention to this bearing of the new sacredness of manhood, rather than to others which were now more familiar. Very similar was the case in relation to war. This the early Christians viewed with utter abhorrence, as a virtual negation of a loving Divine Fatherhood and a brotherhood as wide as humanity. But by the time the Christian consciousness had power with the State, it had lost something of its fresh vision of its own principles. Yet the Church, while now it less " shudders at bloodshed " in war, still, as Church, stands aloof from it. The Roman Missal contains " no Mass to ask victory of God or even to thank Him for it." War was treated as strictly relative to human sin. The more reflective treatment of the matter, leading to the theory of the " Just war," inevitable under existing social conditions, came only with the mediaeval schoolmen, notably Aquinas, on the lines of principles already in Augustine. The Church as Body of Christ, the Society in which the distinctive life of Christ was visible, was for long confessed as simply " the holy Church," " the communion of holy men " (" Saints "). But holiness is not an idea of uniform meaning even in Christian usage : and broadly speaking, its positive aspect faded between the second and fourth centuries, while its negative one grew proportionately. At once a proof and a cause of this fact is the separa- tion which came about between the conceptions of 136 LIFE AND DISCIPLINE [PART n. holiness and love, the organic union of which had been characteristic of early Christians. They may have been austere in their ideal of unworldliness, especially under the awe of the " Parousia " Hope : but Walter Pater rightly pictured their life of fellow- ship, when seen from inside, as having a strange charm of chaste joy and peace. This was in virtue of the love which bound all the brethren together, on the basis of common devotion to the unseen Lord : they were sure of each other, and of the Divine presence as verily in their midst by this token. But a dualism already cuts deep through the Church of the fourth century, due not only to dogmatic differences grievous as were the breaches of charity these were allowed to cause and condone but also to different moral standards frankly accepted among Christians, the common sort, on the one hand, the truly devoted on the other. The former were for the most part no longer marked off clearly from their pagan neighbours by a distinc- tive love or holiness. This may be explained partly by the easier terms of Christian profession, and partly by the more intellectual sense now given to faith, so that " the faithful " had less moral meaning attaching to its use. As to the latter, while there were pious souls in every walk of life who were holy after the Christian type, and also loved the brethren and did good to all men ; both holiness and love tended to take stereotyped and ecclesiastical forms, and to be pursued as " good works " in rather a legal and merit-seeking spirit. The old spon- taneity and personal initiative, springing from gratitude for God's grace as already working liberty in the soul, was becoming rarer ; and within the devouter class itself a special type of " professed " CHAP, ii.] THE ASCETIC TYPE 137 holy men and women, under life-long vows of poverty and particularly of " virginity," followed a life of technical sanctity, largely negative in its " unworldliness " or, as it was often styled, " philos- ophy." The term reveals one main source of the ascetic ideal in the Church, the notion of "virtue " in the late schools of Greek philosophy. 1 Even among " the religious " as distinct from the mere " faith- ful " to use a regular mediaeval term for this con- trast love in its New Testament sense, especially love to all men, hardly entered into their ideal of holiness. It was one chiefly negative in spirit, a fighting down the desires of the flesh by means of prayers, and fastings, and bodily austerities. The Saint was self-preoccupied. This type was also liable to certain special morbid vices of body, soul, and spirit, springing out of unnatural self-imposed conditions ; against which in turn it fought by rule and prescribed method. All this meant immense diversion of earnestness and energy into unwhole- some and unfruitful channels, both for the ascetics themselves and for society, which was depleted of many of its potential regenerators. It was a non- Christian use for moral " salt " to be put to, grant- ing it kept its true spiritual savour, to be with- drawn from any but occasional contact with society. True the sight of such religious devotion even from afar, and often through the medium of ex- 1 Notably Neo- Platonism, which, while spiritualising the whole outlook on existence by the Divine values it gave to the ideas of Truth, Beauty, and Goodness, yet appealed to contemplative thought rather than challenged personality to realise its creative vocation in a Kingdom of God. It thus fostered a religious indi- vidualism which, as transferred to Christianity, became yet more negative and unsocial, owing to the darker view of this world, as marred by sin, taken by Christian "solitaries." 138 LIFE AND DISCIPLINE [PART n. aggerating rumour, did impress many with a sense of the reality of the unseen and Divine order, and set a higher standard of devotedness to some who remained faithful to their social duties and relations. But allowing for this, and still more for the mis- sionary type of ascetic the primitive and evangelic, because loving type it remains true that this specialised ascetic form of holiness turned men's minds from the distinctively Christian ideal of perfection, rather than pointed them to it. It meant, too, the desertion of social duty and despair of the regenera- tion of the corporate life of humanity. No doubt it was the easier for noble minds to adopt even the hermit form of the world-renouncing ideal, because the expectation of a speedy end of this world-order still prevailed. But many withdrew from the context of human society, its dangers and burdens including those of rearing a holy seed for God and His uses among men primarily to save their own souls from damnation or attain " the angelic life " of a passion- less vision of God. It is significant that in the fourth century, when the monastic ideal spread so rapidly, there was a revived interest in the Apocryphal Acts of the second century, which were certainly affected by non-Christian dualistic prejudices in their strong advocacy of the " virgin " life as alone worthy a Christian. 1 The Acts of Paul, the work of a Catholic presbyter of the province of Asia, c. 160-170, especi- 1 These Acts were not only prized by Priscillianists, who were accused of the Manichsean view of matter as essentially evil, but were also appealed to by the Manichseans themselves. And though the Catholics subjected the older Acts to revision in a good many respects, they do not seem to have taken offence at the utterly negative attitude to marriage which runs through them. CHAP, ii.] "ATHLETES OF THE SPIRIT" 139 ally in the episode of Thekla, is only one striking case in point. Further, there and in similar Acts which champion the Encratite ideal of complete self-restraint touching the most masterful of passions, we find a feeling that so alone can the Spirit be fitly honoured, and its enemy " the flesh " mortified, " in honour of the flesh of Christ " Himself. 1 This motive had appeared, in association with an over-strained Parousia preoccupation, in Montanism. Early in the third century, then, first in the Montanist Tertullian and then among Catholics at large, we find the order of Virgins, both male and female, taking its place alongside Martyrs, hitherto the moral heroes of the Christian conflict with the powers of evil. From the age of Cyprian the moral dualism between the " athletes " of the Spirit and the rank and file of the faithful, was an accepted fact in " the holy Church " : and its effect in slackening the sense of the Christian ideal as obligatory on all was serious. Pelagianism was largely a protest against such easy-going moral irresponsibility. The spirit indeed in which the Two Lives were viewed varied in different circles, from the philosophic spirituality of Clement, Origen, and his disciples, to the crude hermit type of the anchorites of the Egyptian deserts in the latter part of the third century. The latter were the real pioneers of full-blown monachism in the fourth 1 This idea came in course of time, at least in certain circles, to assume a specially realistic form in connection with a realistic view of the flesh or body of Christ as imparted to Christians in the Holy Communion (p. 164) ; so that their bodies became through sacramental union themselves " the flesh of Christ," and parts of the co-substantial Body of His Bride. By rights, then, all Christians ought to live as " virgins" to Christ. 140 LIFE AND DISCIPLINE [PART n. century, as it spread, first to Syria and the East generally where Basil brought the measured Greek spirit to bear on it and later to the West, where it became further modified in various ways, chiefly in practical and serviceable directions, by the Latin temper. There is no need to dwell upon the crude and often repellent forms which the ascetic impulse sometimes assumed, still less upon the abuses to which an ideal which broke so abruptly with both nature and convention was peculiarly liable. But it must be noted that the monk's artificial and un- social type of Christian life and discipline fostered and stereotyped a notion of the militia Christi, the holy warfare against sin, which was morbid and fanciful in its conceptions of the forces of evil against which it strove. This and the other-worldliness of its conception of piety, which spread also into wider circles, seriously coloured its devotions and often gave an unevangelic note to its hymns. Such aspects of the movement have their own sig- nificance. But it is of more moment historically to recognise the positive ideal, the religious aspiration, which was its deepest root and gave it its far-reaching influence. Its own account of its meaning was that it was " seeking first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness " better than could else be attained. They were giving fresh expression under new con- ceptions and in different forms, determined by their general environment alien as this was in many ways to the Hebraism of original Christianity to the primi- tive spirit of absolute rather than qualified devotion, which was in danger of being choked in an age when the Church was becoming more and more naturalised to life within the Roman Empire. The CHAP, ii.] GAIN AND LOSS HERE 141 ascetics in fact were the foes of Mr Facing-both- Ways and heirs to the ethos of primitive " enthusi- asm," with its profound idealism, however crude or reactionary might be their ways. Enthusiastic idealism was at the heart of the hermits, who went out from amidst the social means of grace practi- cally unchurching themselves in a way surprising at this late date to seek the Kingdom of God more perfectly within, solus cum Solo. Nor did the call for it cease when the ascetics ceased to be quite solitary, and organised their life on a co-operative (coenobite) basis. It was not, and could not be, a truly social basis. A " Monastic Society " is a contradiction in terms. But co-operative groups of monks and nuns, especially as organised under a Rule, like Basil's in the East or Benedict's, which embraced not only renunciation of the world in Poverty and Celibacy individualistic virtues but also Obedience to God in the person of one's fellows, and Labour fruitful to the good of others, as well as a means of health of body and soul to oneself such groups were a real step towards a corporate life. 1 It made monasticism the great organ in the spread of Christianity and of civilisation which it finally proved, however incidental these fruits were to its original purpose. Great, however, as were such services, monasticism was rather a violent cutting of the knot than a true solution of the problems which private property and married union between man and woman in the Kingdom of God present both for the individual 1 This brought mental and moral stimulus to genuine self- knowledge, so needful to progress in character ; often too an outlet for love in the care of the sick and the young, which Basil for instance advocated. 142 LIFE AND DISCIPLINE [PART n. and for society. While giving suggestions of the higher or ideal possibilities of humanity in both relations, it on the whole tended to propagate despair of the progressive realisation of the will of God in and through the material and natural sides of life, both personal and corporate. It obscured, when it did not virtually deny, the sacredness of all God's gifts of nature, whether material things as conditioning the welfare of persons or the power of procreating beings capable of showing the Divine image. Great indeed were the abuses of the married state when the celibate ideal actually rose to power : but it tended even to see in selfish worldliness and concupiscence the real and abiding roots of property and marriage. How strong this tendency was we see in the ambiguous attitude of the great Augustine to both questions. Here his ethics were, like those of other Churchmen of his day, too negative. But Augustine had also, beyond his contemporaries and equally with any of the earlier Catholic fathers Irenseus, Clement, Origen a strong grasp upon " that most excellent " grace of Love as the very principle of Christian virtue or even holiness. To him virtue was in brief " Love's order " (ordo) or realm, even as Ambrosiaster a generation before calls love at once the vital centre (capiU) and the basis of re- ligion. Yet he cast his weight on the side of a double standard of Christian life, with its implica- tion of inevitable sin l in the lower type. More, he too was for making celibacy and absolute personal poverty compulsory on the clergy. 1 Pope Siricius in 385 insisted on clerical celibacy, because " they who are in the flesh cannot please God," so implying (1) that the married life is " in the flesh," (2) that to " please God " is a distinctively clerical obligation (A. Robertson, Regnum Dei, p. 164). CHAP, ii.] LOSS OF CHRISTIAN LIBERTY 143 Yet celibacy was really a special " gift " of grace, in primitive parlance. " Now there are diversities of gifts ; " and Paul must have resisted in the name of Christ the imposition of any such burden upon all " spiritual persons," as the clergy were in idea. To destroy the freedom of faith, whether by com- pelling celibacy or by putting even voluntary ascetics under vows binding for life, was to destroy much of the very nature of Christian faith as a matter of personal conscience towards God. CHAPTER III PIETY, WORSHIP, SACRAMENTS I. THE FIRST Two CENTURIES " One of the clearest results of all religious history and religious psychology is that the essence of all Religion is, not the Dogma and Idea, but the Cultus and Communion, the living intercourse with the Deity an intercourse of the entire Community, having its vital roots in Religion and deriving its ultimate power of thus conjoining individuals from its faith in God." TBOELTSCH. IN keeping with the above words, we turn next to consider early Christian piety, and the changes which passed over it between the age of Paul and of Leo the Great (f 461). It is here that the common Christianity of all sorts and conditions of men expresses itself in specifically religious forms. Nor is there any real dualism between the Idea of a religion and the imaginative or symbolic forms in which it lives in corporate worship. Rather through the practical piety of the ancient Church we may most surely gain a true perception of the essential religious ideas underlying both it and the Church's theology. A religion is moulded by its idea of Salvation. It is in this that continuity of type mainly consists and may be brought to the test. Now Christianity began with a radically Hebraic notion of Salvation, viz. as a state of the whole man as in conscious com- munion with God, and primarily in the sphere of 144 CHAP, in.] IDEAS OF SALVATION 145 " the heart " or will, inclusive of the affections. The Salvation was both corporate and individual. It was " Life " in the full sense for which man was made a being capable of realising the Divine image in finite form : it was a matter of personal experience ; and the centre of its manifestation was conscience, in which the Divine Will was active and revealed. It is needless to cite proofs. The Lord's Prayer, the Beatitudes, the Great Sermon, the twofold Great Commandment, the Apostolic writings in every part, imply it. Its opposite is Sin, alike as perversion and bondage of the will, and as a sense of alienation from the Divine favour, " which is life." How then did it fare with this conception of Salvation, when it passed beyond the sphere of Hebraism into the very different Hellenistic world ? Of course the transition was not an abrupt one. Even the New Testament writers, though almost to a man Jews by blood and instinctive thought, were influenced in varying degrees by Hellenistic culture : and conversely, it was mainly among Jewish Hellenists and those influenced by the synagogue that the Gospel first took root. Yet ere long latent differences of race and training make themselves felt. Here we must remember, too, that the development of Christianity as a whole did not really begin with the religious experience of the New Testament writers themselves, but rather with what of it the average Christian consciousness had assimilated. This ap- pears in the element common to the sub-Apostolic writers known as the Apostolic Fathers. Such a Christianity is sub-Apostolic not only in date, but also in religious depth and quality. But beyond and beneath the important distinction between Apostolic piety proper and what of it had been assimilated by 146 PIETY, WORSHIP, SACRAMENTS [PART n. Christians at large, and so passed on in the living tradition of the Church, there was also the contrast between the Hebraic type of piety, which prevails in the New Testament, and the Hellenistic. It was the latter, in a form in which Hebraism soon ceased to be an element, which chiefly operated in the instincts of a growing proportion of Christians, even though the Hebraic New Testament writings quali- fied its effect in most circles. We may take as a sample of the still Jewish-Hellen- istic experimental piety of the sub-Apostolic Age a passage from the Alexandrine " Epistle of Barnabas," a few years after the Fall of Jerusalem. Contrasting the new and spiritual Temple for God's indwelling with the corruptible Temple once in Jerusalem, the writer describes how the Church was being " built on the Name of the Lord." What is here given is a strikingly experimental account of the genesis of salvation, by which the individual is led by God Himself into the Temple of His Church. The definite step by which this entry is made is penitent confession of faith in baptism, in which, " with hope set on the Cross," " we go down into the water laden with sins and filth, and rise up from it bearing fruit in the heart," with a regenerate moral consciousness, " having in the spirit our fear and hope directed towards Jesus." And this experimental note, on the whole, predominates in the Apostolic Fathers generally, and indeed down to the middle of the tnird century, when Cyprian gives us a most vivid account of what his own baptism meant to him in conscious experience. The knowledge of God, however, tended to present itself very differently to the Jew and the Greek. To the Jew God was above all the almighty and righteous CHAP, m.] HEBRAISM AND HELLENISM 147 Will behind creation and human history, and partly revealed through both. To the Greek God was the Absolute Reality behind all phenomena, whose nature could best be described in abstract terms, which stripped away from the notion of His essence every positive attribute of finite being or even thought. There remained, then, the bare idea of Being, unchangeable and above all incorruptible, the opposite of man's nature as transitory, changeful, touched by decay and death, because finite and material. Accordingly to the one, Salvation, or Life Eternal, meant full participation in the holy Will of God through the influence of His Spirit, quickening man's moral consciousness, and so delivering him from the bondage of sin as self-will in the pursuit of desires of the flesh. To the other it meant participation in the very nature of Deity, in its passionless incorruptibility in a word, the meta- physical "divinising" of the substance, more than renewal of the moral consciousness, of human nature. This contrast was, indeed, masked at first by the blending of Jewish and Greek elements in the Hellen- istic culture of the circles where the Gospel most took root such as come before us in the Apostolic Fathers. But as time went on, the Hebraic element was subordinated to the genius of the Greek spirit. Then later still, the Latin spirit, with its legal temper which had large affinity with Old Testament conceptions of religion, after being affected by Greek metaphysics in theology and sacramental doctrine, finally reasserted itself, ere it passed on the heritage of Catholic Christianity to the Teutonic and Celtic, as well as the Latin peoples, of Mediaeval Europe. But as regards sacramental piety, we have to notice 148 PIETY, WORSHIP, SACRAMENTS [PART n. another factor of great moment, namely, the specific form in which religion was now making its chief appeal to many pious souls in the Roman Empire. Such pagan religion was no cult of " dumb idols," but mystic belief in Deity as able to enter into active relations with men and communicate its own immortal nature to them by means of sacraments, which actually brought the very presence of the " Lord " to those initiated into the " mystery " cult. It was a religion which prepared men to respond to a purely religious impression ; for it appealed not to abstract intellect so much as to the immediate sense of the Divine, especially as bodied forth in the concrete terms of deeds or sufferings of heroism and pathos. It stimulated the imagination, the emotions, the mystic instinct in the sphere of religion, and so was, up to a point, a psychological preparation for such a message as the Gospel brought in " Christ and Him crucified." Further the enhancing effects of corporate experience in the common cult of such mystery religions, especially in connection with their sacred meals, must be taken into account in thinking of the spiritual atmosphere of much Gentile Christian worship and fellowship, with its mutual excitation of emotion and its mystic enthusiasm. Whilst, then, such "mystery " piety was no doubt a factor in the readiness with which many non-Jews received the Gospel of Redemption, there was a radical difference between the genius Of Hebrew and Hellenistic religion as just described, and between their respective notions of a sacrament. Jewish religion knew no realistic sacrament, no symbol con- taining in itself, and so conveying to the worshipper, the Divine nature or essence. The kind of presence CHAP, in.] N.T. SACRAMENTS HEBRAIC 149 it sought and found through religious rites was a conscious union with God in the sphere of will, or even of mystic experience, felt to be due to God's own action in grace or loving-kindness. It was simply an enhancement of the abiding relation of the holy or consecrated soul with God as Spirit. Christianity was continuous in principle with the higher piety of the prophets and psalmists. Only, in the climax of prophetic Hebraism Divine incar- nation in Messiah, looking on whom men should say " Emmanuel," " God with us " the presence of God in the personality of the Son of Man meant that Christ's own humanity became the essential and supremely natural expression of the Divine. Through Him the experience of God's active presence as the Spirit was, as prophesied, available in a new fulness and abidingness, whether normally, by pure vision of faith, or as specially mediated by appointed symbols. In the latter case "the symbolical was not," indeed, "opposed to the objectively real but to the merely natural " : yet, while mysterious, as being supernatural or "God-produced," the sacra- mental grace did not come actually in and through the symbols, but simply on occasion of their use. Thus in Baptism the gift of the Spirit through Messiah, which " sealed " believers for the Kingdom (still in the main future), was experienced sensibly as "the powers of the age to come." So too was it with the less ecstatic, more normal grace experi- enced in the recurrent sacrament of the Breaking of Bread in memory of Christ, when " worthily " ob- served, in faith and in love to the brethren. Its outward form was in fact, like all prophetic sym- bolism, a dramatic object-lesson, in the poetic spirit of Hebraic, and indeed Semitic psychology, to which 150 PIETY, WORSHIP, SACRAMENTS [PART n. the symbol remains nothing save in relation to its effect on the soul. In the New Testament, then, " the word " of revelation is the primary medium of the Divine life to men. Compared with this, sacramental rites are symbolic and secondary. It is as capacity for recep- tion fo God's" word " that the Divine image exists potentially in man (John viii. 35). In this light sacra- ments appear as special forms of the Word of the Gospel, " visible words," as Augustine styled them, through which " faith," the all-inclusive medium of " grace " on its subjective side, may take yet fuller effect. This is the Hebraic view of a sacrament. It is God's Truth expressed and brought home to the soul directly through the eye, rather than by way of the ear through speech. Yet there is no real dualism between what comes through " eye gate " and " ear gate." The content in either case is " word," uttered thought : and in both cases it is most revealing of God when it comes through personality, with the interpretative accent of the person's soul, as revealed in all we know of him through his life. Though truths in manhood darkly join, Deep-seated in the mystic frame, We yield all blessing to the name Of Him that made them current coin ; For Wisdom dealt with mortal powers, Where truth in closest words shall fail, When truth embodied in a tale, 1 Shall enter in at lowly doors. This is exactly the Christian idea of revelation, through an historic personality, whose speech and 1 Read " dramatic symbol '' for " tale," and here we have the Hebraic idea of Sacraments. CHAP, in.] " WORDS " FOR THE SENSES 151 action were alike " word of God." Of these forms of " word " each has its own strength and weakness. The spoken word is more explicit and interpretative of the speaker's real meaning : it is less ambiguous, and leaves less to subjective impression in the hearer. On the other hand it is less vividly expres- sive and manifoldly suggestive, because more abstract. But both Christ's spoken and symbolic " words " depend for their special virtue upon being heard or seen as His, on being connected in imagination with His whole historic personality as manifest among men, that is, as incarnate in " flesh " and "blood." "This" represents "my body " as Paschal Lamb 1 : such was the copula of thought between the two terms simply placed side by side, as virtual equiva- lents, in the Aramaic original. This is how a Hebrew was bound to understand it, and how in practice it has ever been taken experimentally, in spite of the various reflective theories by which it has been accompanied, not to say embarrassed, hi different circles and communions all down the ages. Now the experience of spiritual union with Christ through the medium of either symbolism of word or sacrament is in any case mystical, a matter of immediate personal sense of His presence. In neither case is that presence easy for a man to define to his own mind or to others. Both really involve a metaphysic of reality ; and few have the means of expressing any experience of reality let alone this with much exactitude. But seeing that there is, in the case of the sacramental symbol, an outwardly objective element, not usually present in 1 As shown above (pp. 18-19), the meaning of so undefined a phrase must be gathered from the contextual thought, which is clearly Paschal. 152 PIETY, WORSHIP, SACRAMENTS [PART n. the normal intercourse of the soul with Christ, there is a tendency to connect the special realisation of His presence, which it helps to condition, with the very nature of the elementTitself. And though any such idea was quite alien to Hebrew modes of thought, yet when such a sacrament passed into the essentially different psychological atmosphere of non- Hebraic Hellenism, as already described, it was sure to arise, just in proportion as the rite was mystic and undefined in its appeal. This becomes the clearer when we note that proper *' mystery " conceptions of the real presence of Christ, the Christian's saving " Lord," as coming in and actually through the sacramental elements, were at first most pronounced among Gnostic or fully Hellenistic Christians. Classical religion had in it little that could explain their Gnosis ; and efforts used to be made to affiliate its peculiar features either with Greek philosophy (after the example of some of the Fathers) or with Oriental religions. Neither of these, however, really fitted the facts, which now receive a natural explanation in the hybrid or " syncretistic " piety which sprang from the fusion of Greek and Oriental thought. For there was a pre-Christian Gnosis, largely sacramental in temper ; and this it was in the main which con- ditioned the rapid, what once seemed the strangely rapid, emergence of its Christian variety. Recently some have held that Paul himself accepted the Hellenistic conception of union with the Divine as begun and maintained mainly through Sacraments. To most, however, it remains in- credible either that this could ever seem to him of a piece with his general view of faith as mediating union with Christ, or that he could have adopted CHAP, m.] YET ANOTHER READING EASY 153 from the specific worship of " idols " any consti- tutive religious idea whatsoever, such as that of Divine "real presence" in material symbols. The same, in all respects, fcolds true of the Johannine type of Christianity, both as to its notion of grace and the means of grace. This is perfectly clear as regards the First Epistle, even if the concrete Hebraic symbolism of the Gospel lends itself more easily to ambiguity of meaning. Yet it too as a whole, and when read in jts true Hebraic atmosphere, excludes a realistic meaning. The " flesh and blood " of the Son of Man are symbols of Himself as the archetypal " new man," the Divine humanity which is to realise itself afresh in believers. Such seems to be the mode of thought even of Ignatius, 1 the earliest to show traces of Johannine influence though two readings of him are possible. The Christian dis- pensation, " God appearing human- wise unto new- ness of everlasting life," means " the new man Jesus Christ, consisting of faith in Him and love to Him, His passion and resurrection." This is realised hi corporate unity in Him among His members, as they " break one loaf, which (as shared in union) is medicine of immortality, an antidote that one die not, but live in Jesus Christ perpetually." Shortly before, he had spoken of " immortality " as " the gracious gift " which the Lord " breathed upon the Church," a gift to be enjoyed only through abiding in true union with the Church, in Christ- like love, as in the fellowship hi the one bread. For only so was there real " union both in flesh and spirit," i.e. outward and inward. 2 It may well be, 1 Compare Philad. iv., Smyrnceans, vii. 1, with Philad. v. 1, Romans, vii. 3. * Ephesinns, xvii., xix. 3, xx. ; Magnesians , xiii. 154 PIETY, WORSHIP, SACRAMENTS [PART n. moreover, that the language of John vi. is what it is for the same reason as explains the peculiar em- phasis in Ignatius, namely, desire to correct the Docetic tendency among many Christians about the end of the first century, who found it hard to admit the real humanity of the manifest Son of God. But this lay at the basis of the Sacramental communion of the Lord's Supper. We are now hi a position to trace the main lines of development in Christian piety outside the New Testament, including sacramental rites arid the religious ideas which enter into their use, viewed as the result of intense religious experience of per- sonal union with Christ " in holy Spirit," on the one hand, and current Hellenistic forms of interpreting it on the other. The Divinity of Christ as unique Son of God was the faith of Chris- tians in the sub-Apostolic Age, with the exception of some Jewish-Christian circles. It was a direct religious judgment, based on the impression of His personality as reflected in the Gospels, but also on experience of the new life received through trust in Him. The latter or experimental basis of Christo- logy was twofold, individual and social, the one strengthening the other. To the individual convert in the solemn hour of self-committal in baptism to the new Master and His allegiance, following on renunciation of the old, there often came an over- whelming sense of being visited and possessed by the Spirit of Him whose Name was invoked: and again in solitary conflict with an alien world he was often conscious of a new power with him, as of his Master's own mystic presence. This con- sciousness lies behind the words put into Christ's lips CHAP, in.] EXPERIMENTAL REALISM 155 in an early apocryphal Gospel : "If perchance one is alone, I say I am with him " ; and it breathes in many early Christian utterances. But the sense of the Lord as present in spirit with His own, was usually greatest when they were " gathered to- gether in His Name," to hear or utter the inspired " word," to pour forth their soul in common wor- ship, and to " remember " the Saviour in the symbolic bread and wine, which spoke more directly to the heart than vocal words. We find traces of both kinds of such spiritual presence in the Ignatian Epistles. But from at least the middle of the second century we find also another notion of Christ's presence in connection with Sacra- ments, as vouchsafed first in the material symbols through invocation and then to the recipients through bodily contact. The form in which this belief existed was emotional rather than reflective, and was variously and indeed confusedly conceived. Thus in the " Acts of Thomas " the invocation is now of Jesus, now of "the power of the Highest," now even of "the communion " itself of the Christ- nature, that gift of Grace which saves by transform- ing human nature by Jesus' divine-human essence, imparted as life or as food. 1 Even the bread is addressed (in the Syriac) as privileged "to receive a gift " and so become a medium of forgiveness of sins and immortaiity. Yet here we are still in the atmosphere of religious experience, rather than reflective theory : and though Christ is hailed as " wise Word " and " the heavenly Word," yet Word (Logos) has here no technical philosophic sense. Into the general forms of Christian worship we 1 Cc. 25-27, 49-52, 132 f., 157 f. There are some differences between the Greek and Syriac, but the effect is similar. 156 PIETY, WORSHIP, SACRAMENTS [PART n. need not go far. As the synagogue was the home of the faith which Jesus purified and revitalised, so it was the prime source of Christian cultus. Prayers, reading of Scripture and preaching consisting of exposition and exhortation these forms of worship, in which the Word or Truth of God was the sub- ject matter, were taken over from the Synagogue. The great exception was the Eucharist, 1 which however, as originally instituted, was on the lines of Jewish domestic piety. This is a highly significant fact, meaning as it does that Christ did not draw the forms of the religion He re-moulded from the Temple or its priestly ministry. It was the priesthood of the house-father that He himself exercised, and sanctioned within the New Ecclesia, even as He built theology on the lines of the same analogy. It was on these lines too that the Apostolic Church in Palestine and Syria developed its piety. It is in this aspect that the witness of the Didache is so valuable, as being free from Greek or other un-Hebraic influence. There the ethical spirit of Baptism, as pledging the Christian to " the Way of the Lord," is pronounced. There also we have apparently two types of Eucharistic " breaking of bread," the one more domestic, as in Acts ii. 46, the other more corporate or completely representa- tive of the Church local. The former continues the habits and even the phraseology of Jewish Bless- ings before and after food, adding allusions to their spiritual or mystical analogies in Christian and Church life, notably a prayer for the Consummation of the Church at large, expected soon to break on its longing vision. Here the fellowship took the form of a social meal, with sacred preface and 1 Reference may here be made to the appended Note, pp. 79 f. CHAP, m.] EARLY CHRISTIAN WORSHIP 157 conclusion. It survived mostly in the later Agape, to which by the force of circumstances, especially the increase of numbers, the original corporate Lord's Supper of 1 Corinthians xi. was gradually reduced. The other and more corporate form of Eucharistic fellowship and worship, as described in a later section, was confined to a weekly gathering on the " Lord's Day, " when the Church's pure sacrifice (cj. Malachi i. 11) of praise (without a meal ?) was offered up with prayer, probably borrowed in part from the synagogue Sabbath service. This appears from parallels with the great litany called " the Eighteen " supplications, afforded by the dignified prayer at the end of the Epistle of Clement of Rome, which probably draws largely on that in which the Church's " gifts " were offered to God. The next landmark in worship, beyond the rather obscure notice in Pliny's letter to Trajan touching Bithynian Christians, is Justin Martyr's account given to outsiders. The Eucharist was now, with the growth of numbers, entirely reduced from a meal to the purely ritual partaking of bread and wine ; and was associated with a service of the synagogue type, at the end of which it came as climax of the part for baptized Christians only. This embraced two long prayers, the former consisting of common intercessions for various classes of men, within and without the Church, followed by the kiss of " Peace " between the brethren, as symbol of the love upon which the purity of the coming sacrifice of prayer was felt to depend. This itself was uttered over bread and a cup of wine and water, taken from the whole body the Church's " gifts " of homage to God, for His special uses in the poor and needy, which were also solemnly offered in 158 PIETY, WORSHIP, SACRAMENTS [PART ri. prayer. It was " the president " or bishop who offered on behalf of the whole local Church, and in spirit also for the Church Catholic the " priestly " or even " high-priestly " people, as Justin views it the great Eucharistic prayer, " according to his ability," i.e. not as yet in a fixed form. It began with Adoration, in which the thought of Creation led on to that of Redemption, and this again to Christ's own act of self-oblation, on which their status as priests unto God, with such confident access in worship, was based. This gave natural occasion for citation of the Words of Institution. The people appropriated this high act of worship as their own with the response " Amen." The deacons administered the consecrated elements, and conveyed portions to those absent in body but present in spirit. The offering of " the gifts " for God's uses on His " altar," His needy ones, was regarded as integral to this Sacrifice of Thanks- giving, and hardly less sacred than the specific consecration of the elements for Communion. Further insight into the forms of Eucharistic worship will be gained from the earliest extant liturgies, which may date from about a century later, and will be cited after we have examined the ideas associated with the Sacraments down to the opening of the third century. Meantime we must consider current developments in the other sacred rite, baptism. The most vivid impression of the new spiritual covenant and allegiance involved in ancient Christian baptism may be gained from a Church Order repre- senting Syrian usage about the middle of the third century, but having affinities with other witnesses in East and West which carry back its substance CHAP, in.] EARLY CATHOLIC BAPTISM 159 almost as far as Justin's day. The candidate (Catechumen) facing the West, the quarter of sunset and darkness, cried " I renounce thee, O Satan, and all thy retinue (' pomp ')." Then, having dissolved his old covenant with the powers of evil, and turning in token of his new attitude of soul to the East, the quarter of Light and God's Paradise, he confessed " I believe and worship Thee and all Thy retinue, O Father, Son, and Holy Spirit." He then recited l the full baptismal creed, presupposed in his actual three-fold confession, when later, standing in the water, he said " I believe," in response to three questions by the baptizer, who performed the baptismal act thrice, with use of the fixed formula, " I baptize thee in the name of the Father," "the Son," "the Holy Spirit," uttered successively. The form of the baptismal act varied, and was never made a matter of moment. In the East it was generally immersion, in the West affusion over the head as the candidate stood in the water about to the knees. Moreover, the laying on of hands, which in the Apostolic Age was often 2 employed, after Jewish usage, to express the solidarity between the baptizer, representing the Church, and the new adherent, was now an integral and most important part, being reserved for the presiding minister, usually the bishop, though in the East presbyters could perform such " sealing " or confirmation. Though 1 Redditio Symboli, corresponding to traditio symboli made to him in the last stage of his catechumenate, and forming the central part of the sacred deposit of esoteric knowledge or " mysteries " to be carefully guarded from those without (disciplina arcani). 1 It was not apparently integral to baptism as a conditio sine qua non, and to judge from Paul's words in 1 Cor. i. 16 f. it was not reserved to an apostle, even when present : compare Paul's own baptism with this form by Ananias. 160 PIETY, WORSHIP, SACRAMENTS [PART n. no Spirit-manifestation seems now to have been its concomitant, it was yet conceived to confer per se the gift of the Spirit in all baptismal fulness. The whole service must have been most impressive ; and it is no wonder that great stress was laid on the grace actually received in the act and article of such an experience. Certain it is that sacramental ideas were a growing element in ancient Christianity. Originally there were but two rites which could naturally be called, though they were not actually called, sacraments. Nor were these on the same plane as to sacramental, as distinct from symbolic character. Whereas in primitive baptism a specific Divine gift or grace was contemplated, the ratification of forgiveness to faith by the " sealing " of the believer with his portion of holy Spirit, a sensible manifestation of the Spirit given through Messiah to God's " peculiar people " (to which the laying on of hands was relative), there was no specific gift connected with the holy Communion in " the breaking of bread." Ere long, development in ideas ensued, parallel with that in forms. It would be only natural if, as Christianity passed from a Jewish to a Gentile Hellenistic milieu with its realistic notions of the grace of sacraments as rites per se conveying a Divine somewhat fresh theories as to the relation of baptismal grace to faith, the biblical synonym of real regeneration, should creep in. The experience of the modern mission field illustrates both aspects of the matter as here set forth. The actual stages of the process are obscure : but by the end of the second century it is already far advanced, as we can see from Tertullian's treatise, On Baptism. As regards the Eucharist, the CHAP, in.] SACRAMENTAL REALISM 161 prime factors making for change of idea were two. There was the growing awe felt for the Words of Institution as a supremely sacred formula ; for in ancient religion generally, especially the Mysteries, sacred formulte were viewed as charged with mystic efficacy in virtue of mere recitation. Then there was the sacrificial type of the language used in the Eucharistic prayer over God's staple gifts of bread and wine. It was originally metaphorical language such as occurs in Hellenistic Judaism, where prayer and gifts of charity were viewed as the truest sacrifices. So Philo says that "the thank-offering (Eucharist) made by means of offerings of incense is far superior to that made through sacrifices of blood." But other meanings, both Jewish and Gentile, might easily be read into such terms, once psychological conditions favoured. The realistic interpretation of the Words of Institu- tion, " This is my body," is quite obscure as to its beginnings. Neither the Fourth Gospel nor pro- bably Ignatius teaches a bodily presence of Jesus in the elements symbolising His " flesh and blood," His humanity as sensibly manifest to " flesh and blood " men. The former is careful to exclude any such view, the opposite extreme to that of the Docetists and per- haps one cause of their abstinence from the Church's one Eucharist, when it says, "The Spirit it is that gives Life, the flesh profits not at all : the words that I have spoken to you are spirit and are life." The Johannine sacramental piety is indeed the media via of historical spirituality. What it values is spiritual experience, due to the Spirit revealing the incarnate Christ through the suggestive media of material symbols, by which the vision (theoria) of faith is conditioned. " He that hath seen Me hath 162 PIETY, WORSHIP, SACRAMENTS [PART n. seen the Father " : that is the core of Johannine piety, in which " Christ-mysticism " blends with " God-mysticism." In this the persistence of the Hebraic emphasis on personal moral experience can be felt, and gives every term, however concrete or mystic, its distinctive biblical meaning. Justin Martyr stands on the other side of the border line between the old and the new orders as to both baptism and Eucharist. Thus while he speaks of the Christian " washing of repentance and know- ledge of God " in contrast to the Jewish washings, and cries, " Baptize the soul from wrath and from covetousness, envy, and hatred, and lo ! the body is pure," he seems to believe that baptism, besides confirming the forgiveness of sins, communicates a " regeneration " qualifying the Christian as such for sharing in the life of the Millennial Kingdom, by conferring the germ of a resurrection body. This is perhaps how he read John iii. 3-6. As to the Eucharist, Justin explains that food when consecrated by Euchar- istic prayer containing (lit. of) the " word " or formula derived from Christ, is the , flesh l and blood of that Jesus who had formerly become incarnate in similar 1 This, instead of " body " as in the words of Institution, shows that again Justin has the fourth Gospel in mind, and is following a view of John vi. then current in the province of Asia (cf. p. 164)> whence he seems to have brought his theology to Rome. Here we see already the misunderstanding by Hellenistic minds of the Hebraic use of " flesh," which to the Jew was inclusive of soul and so denoted humanity, whereas to the Greek it was the mere physical basis or dwelling-place of the soul. This difference in psychology (cf. Ch. V.) had momentous results for the divergence of Catholic sacramental doctrine from that of the New Testament, alike touching " regeneration " of human " flesh " by the Spirit (as in Justin) and its nourishment by the Eucharistic " flesh " and " blood " of the Saviour. Both had reference to the body as subject of eternal life : compare Irenaeus and the Fathers generally. CHAP, in.] IN JUSTIN AND IREN^US 163 fashion, through a word of God. Here the parallelism between the method of Christ's original incarnation " by word of God," and of His sacramental embodi- ment in bread and wine, suggests that Justin saw in the words of Institution a formula of miraculous efficacy, occasioning the entrance of Christ, viz. the Word (Logos) as already become incarnate, into the elements. Such indwelling in them was a sort of secondary or sacramental incarnation. Thus the consecrated elements become by a process of in- terpenetration and assimilation actual " flesh " and " blood " of Christ in their glorified .form, exempt from corruption ; and so Christ's body, being sacra- mentally present as food that in due time becomes the body it nourishes, prepares the communicant's body for like incorruption and immortality. As suggesting the purely Hellenistic origin of such a view of the words of Institution a view relative, not to the conception of the Christ of the Synoptic Gospels, but to Justin's Logos Christology it is noteworthy that in Theodotus, his Gnostic con- temporary, we get a similar yet less crude theory. " Both the bread and the oil (in baptism) is hallowed by the power of God's Name, being the same to all appearance as they were when taken ; but dyn- amically they have been transformed into spiritual (i.e. supernatural) power. So, too, water, when exorcised and made baptismal. . . ." The physical realism of this sacramentalism becomes more marked in the next generation, in Irenaeus, c. 185, who also belonged to the Asian school. To him baptism is " regeneration unto God." Its effect is twofold, on body and soul, which together make up man. " For our bodies have through the laver received that unity (with 164 PIETY, WORSHIP, SACRAMENTS [PART n. Christ's body) which is unto incorruption, but our souls through the Spirit." The bodies of Christians were regarded as literally members of Christ's material body, 1 " of His flesh and of His bones " as the (Asian ?) gloss to Eph. v. 30, already known and quoted by Irenseus, puts it. " The Eucharistic cup is participation in His blood." But " blood is not derived save from veins and flesh and from the rest of the substance proper to man, which the Word of God really became, and so redeemed us with His own blood." As being His members, then, in this literal sense, "we are fed through the creature " (which Gnostics dissociated from the Divine order), the gift of the Word as Creator. So "that cup which is derived from the creature He owned as His own blood, whence He permeates our blood ; and the bread taken from the creature He surely declared His own body, whence He causes our bodies to grow. When, there- fore, both the mingled cup and the created bread receives the word of God, and the Eucharist becomes Christ's body, and from these elements the substance of our flesh grows and is constituted, how say they (certain Gnostics) that the flesh is not capable of the gift of God, namely, life eternal the Jiesh, I mean, which is fed from the body and blood of the Lord and is in nature His member ? . . . For we are mem- bers of His body, parts of His flesh and of His bones." Paul says this " touching no spiritual and invisible man, . . . but touching the system (' economy ') of genuine manhood, a system consisting of flesh and nerves and bones, such as is fed both from the cup, which is His blood, and grows from the bread, which is His body." It has been needful to give this summary of Irenaeus* sacramental piety ; for otherwise the modern mind might hardly realise how thoroughgoing it and much ancient Catholicism, from his day onwards, 1 Iren., V. 2. Compare Leo, Sefm., Ixiii. 6, " ut (by baptism) corpus regenerati fiat caro Crucifixi " ; arid see p. 186, note 1 . CHAP, m.] IN TERTULLIAN 165 was in accepting the implications of the literal realism with which it understood " regeneration " of the Christian's body, and the feeding of this regenerate or supernatural body by the risen body and blood of Christ (the Head of consubstantial members) present in the bread and wine. It was such food incorruptible that prepared a body for resurrection in incorruption in the Messianic King- dom, as distinct from the bodily resurrection of which non-Christians would be the subjects at the Last Judgment. The w r hole hangs together : and when we come across one element of this system by itself, we are apt to lose much of its real meaning, the more so that it is in terms of ancient Greek thought. Yet one must not take the full realism of Irenaeus as in his own day more than the theory of one school of thought, that of Western Asia Minor, with its special development of the Fourth Gospel as it was then understood there. Distinct from it stood not only the symbolic spiritualism of the Alexandrine school, in Clement and Origen (p. 186), but also a figurative theory of "bodily presence" found in Tertullian and even Cyprian, and probably that of the Latin West generally in their age. ' Tertullian, though, like Irenaeus, he held a realistic view of the sacramental principle, yet saw it in the light of his Stoic or monistic metaphysics, which suited his concrete Latin mind, whereas Irenseus shared the Greek Platonising tendency to at least a relative dualism between the operations of matter and spirit. Hence while Irenseus teaches a parallel regeneration of body and soul, Tertullian makes grace reach the soul through the body and the corporeal media. " The flesh is washed, that the soul may be cleansed : the flesh is anointed, that the 166 PIETY, WORSHIP, SACRAMENTS [PART n. soul may be consecrated : the flesh is sealed (with the sign of the Cross in holy chrism) that the soul also may be safeguarded : the flesh is overshadowed by the imposition of hands, that the soul too may be illumined by the Spirit. : the flesh feeds on the bod> and blood of Christ, that the soul too may fatten on God." This comes from one of his Montanist works 1 ; but it only echoes what he says in his early treatise, On Baptism. Tertullian's sacramental theory follows the lines of his theory of knowledge, which, like Locke's, emphasises the creative action of matter upon mind : material things become in the sacraments the actual media of the Divine Grace, first to man's body and next to his soul. 2 Hence water acquires " a sacramental power of sanctification." So, too, in the Eucharist, ** the flesh feeds on the (sacramental) body and blood of Christ, that the soul also may fatten on God." Here there is interpenetration of the elements by Christ's Spirit, but not by His body. Christ could style the bread His body, as being the " figure " of it, and the wine the " memorial " of His blood. The " daily bread " of the Lord's Prayer may refer spiritually to Christ Himself, as in John vi. ; but " His body also is thought of in terms of bread, ' This thing (bread) is My body.' And so, in asking for daily bread, our petition is for perpetual abiding in Christ and unbroken union with His body." 3 Here we have the religious feeling that for the fullest union with Christ, as the medium of the Divine to men, corporeal media are needed ; and 1 On the Resurrection of the Flesh, 8. 1 On the Soul, 18 ; On Baptism, 7 f., 14. 8 Against Marcion, iv. 40. On Prayer, G : " et corpus ejus in pane censetur . . . individuitatem a corpore ejus" : cf. On Modesty, 16. CHAP, m.] ANCIENT VIEW OF " SYMBOLS " 167 this made the Sacraments play so large a part in Christian piety in the age of Tertullian and onwards. For Tertullian the spiritual, e.g. a person, has no reality or efficacy save through a body as direct organic medium of action. Thus when he is met by the criticism, " How foolish and impossible that men should be re-created by water," he takes it that what is meant is that water was not a material of sufficient prestige (auctorilas) to deserve to be medium for so high a function. It does not occur to him that a Divine effect may be attained through simple material means by another method, more indirect indeed than the actual transmission of grace through matter, but more of a piece with God's usual psychological method of reaching the rational soul, viz., direct action of God's Spirit upon the soul from within, yet through conditioning sense-im- pressions produced by material objects from without. Similarly as to the Eucharist, Christians were pro- foundly conscious of spiritual quickening in and through the Holy Communion, the central act of which was partaking of bread and wine in remem- brance of Christ's passion. Hence those elements, as consecrated to this sacramental use, were to them as the body and blood of Him who suffered for men's salvation. The recurrent symbols " re- presented " what they commemorated, in a more objective sense than our use of the word usually connotes. On this theory of God's "mystery" action through matter a theory widespread in the Graeco- Roman world there was no practical distinction between the symbol and what it symbolised. Indeed, " as to the relation between the visible elements and the body of Christ, so far as we are able to judge, no one felt that there was a problem here, no one 168 PIETY, WORSHIP, SACRAMENTS [PART n. enquired whether this relation was realistic or symbolical. The symbol is the mystery, and the mystery was not conceivable without a symbol .... ' Symbol ' denoted a thing that in some kind of way really is what it signifies ; but . . . the really heavenly element lay either in or behind the visible form without being identical with it. Accordingly the distinction of a symbolic and realistic concep- tion of the Supper is altogether to be rejected, as an anachronism." l " The mystery " was essentially the union of the Divine and human, first in Christ as Head, then sacramentally, and as the fruit of the Incarnation, in His People, the members whether of His own glorified body or of His mystical Body of Divine-human eternal life. What is so instructive about Tertullian's handling of the sacraments on the lines of direct working of grace in and through the material symbols them- selves, is that he still shows consciousness of the difficulties involved. In particular, that of the relation of such conveyance of grace to personal faith comes out in his treatise On Baptism, where he discusses the objection to the necessity of baptism based on the general conception of faith, for instance the justifying faith of Abraham, already used by Paul as an analogy. Salvation " through bare faith " was well enough " before the Lord's passion and resurrection " : but where the nature of " faith is enlarged," as by the nature of its Chris- tian objects, " there is added an enlargement in the form of a sacrament, viz. the ratification of baptism, a certain clothing of faith, which before was naked, but cannot now be without its own law : for the law of baptizing has been imposed and its form 1 1 Ian lack, History of Dogma, ii. 144 f. CHAP, in.] TERTULLIAN AND HIS AGE 169 prescribed" by Matt, xxviii. 19, further defined in John iii. 5. One wonders what Paul would have said to the Gospel adding a ritual " law " to the exercise of " faith." To the Latin mind of Tertullian it presented no paradox. He goes on to discuss Paul's own baptism, and his words " Christ sent me not to baptize " (1 Cor. i. 17), as urged against the strict necessity of baptism. Next he turns to the difficulty as to baptism by heretics, which he promptly disallows in toto : and naturally on his premisses. Yet the issue divided the Church in the next generation, and Tertullian's and Cyprian's strictly consistent view was set aside. When, as above, Tertullian raps out his rejoinder in terms of a fresh ritual " law," in a naive and quite question-begging fashion as regards the dis- tinctive nature of the Christian Gospel, we realise that we are at a parting of the ways of supreme moment for the genius of Christian piety, and indeed of Christianity as a religious principle. The further developments of the sacramental principle and type of piety follow naturally from the decision then come to, particularly for Latin Christendom, with which in the sequel we are mainly concerned. Only, in thinking of Tertullian as here a mouth- piece and pioneer of the majority in the Church in his day and later, it is to be noted that he himself was not wholly satisfied with his own position. In view of the seeming expediency of postponing baptism until the tempests of youthful passion were past, so as not to forfeit by mortal sin the forgiveness once, and normally once only, given in baptism, he has to say that God takes the will for the deed in relation to the rite of baptism. Let none fear dying without chance of receiving it 170 PIETY, WORSHIP, SACRAMENTS [PART n. after all. For " full faith is assured of Salvation." In this bold emphasis on the experimental aspect of faith, 1 as really the one essential condition of salvation, he virtually raises the whole question of baptismal regeneration and even of the place of sacramental grace in the Christian life. This anomaly lay in his thought from the first. How deep it lay, however, is made apparent in his later development into Montanism through growing emphasis on the grace of the Holy Spirit, not as mediated through Sacraments per se, but as coming to the soul in more personal or prophetic ways. Hence his attitude to custom or tradition in dis- cipline, apart from the living authentication of the Spirit in the holy community, varied greatly ; until he could on occasion see in it only " hoary error " a very different finding from that of his De prce- scriptione hcereticorum, written earlier and in 1 full Catholic communion. "THE SERVICE OF THE FAITHFXJL," c. 200. (See pp. 157-158.) Common Intercessions for the Church and all men. The Kiss of Peace. Offertory of the Elements. Mutual Benediction of Minister and People, and Sursum Corda. The Eucharistic or Thank-offering Prayer (Anaphora proper). (Topics, later separated into sections, thus: ) Preface, to God as Creator. The Seraphic Hymn (Ter sanctus, of Is. vi.). Recital of the Work of Redemption. The Redeemer's Eucharistic Prayer and Words of Institution. The Anamnesis ("In memory, then, etc.) Oblation. [Invocatian on the Worshippers or their Oblations.] People's "Amen." The Communion. Post-Communion Thanksgiving. Benediction. 1 The opposite extreme of emphasis, on the sacramental principle of grace through material media, is seen in infant communion following on baptism, a strictly logical custom which appears in use from about this time, in certain Churches at least. CHAPTER IV PIETY, WORSHIP, SACRAMENTS II. THE THIRD CENTURY AND AFTER " All liturgies of every type agree in bearing witness to the fact that the original form of consecration was a thanksgiving " (Eucharist). W. C. BISHOP. CYPRIAN is here, as generally, transitional between the second century and the fourth. His Eucharistic theory is in the main Tertullian's, as regards tJie sacramental rather than the proper body of Christ being partaken of in Holy Communion. But as regards the prior offering of the elements in Euchar- istic worship, he lays new emphasis on this as a sacrifice analogous to, and commemorative of, the act in which Christ offered Himself spiritually, in symbol, at the Last Supper, and upon the Passion as the essence of the Lord's sacrifice thus spiritually offered. This view appears in a letter where he is arguing that wine, and not water only (which had been so used even by some Catholics, both in his day and earlier in N. Africa), was essential to the Euchar- ist, after Christ's own example. This is the real basis of the sacrament as such. Accordingly only " that priest truly performs his office in Christ's place (i.e. with his authority for the sacramental efficacy of his act) who imitates that which Christ did ; and what he offers in the Church to God the Father is 171 172 PIETY, WORSHIP, SACRAMENTS [PART n. then truly and fully a sacrifice, if he so begin to offer according as he sees that Christ himself offered " 1 (Epist. 65, 14). That is, it was the association of the supreme sacrifice of Christ's Passion with the worshippers' own sacrifice of homage, expressed in gifts from God's own bounties of bread and wine offered in Eucharistic prayer, which gave the latter their full sacrificial value. So " man's nothing per- fect " was hallowed by commemoration of the Lord's perfect self-oblation. This is what the context of the passage shows to be Cyprian's meaning. But his incisive language gave a footing for another sense being read into words like, " the Lord's passion is the sacrifice which we offer " (as " we make mention " of it in our " sacrifices "), or " offering the blood of Christ " in " the sacrifice of the Lord," as commemora- tively observed by use of the sacred words of institu- tion in the prayer of consecration (ib., 9, 14, 17). Thus in time " the blood of Christ " and His body were thought of as actually present and offered in the wine and bread, and that not only as the prototype of His people's self-oblation, but as a propitiatory sacrifice " for the sins of living and dead." It is a noteworthy fact, indicative of the con- servative instincts which cling about forms of public devotion, that the sacramental theories with which we have been dealing leave little or no trace on the Church's liturgy or order of Eucharistic service down to the middle of the third century and even later. There is about its earlier types a high spiritual simplicity, which comes out the more 1 In Cyprian's plea that sacramental validity depends on the priest's use of wine as he " begins to offer," after Christ's example in the Last Supper, we perhaps have the Latin feeling for correct ritual. CHAP, iv.] THE EARLIEST LITURGY 173 clearly the more we get back, by criticism and fresh discoveries, behind the liturgies 1 of the latter part of the fourth century. Here is a typical Eastern Anaphora, or prayer of oblation over the Eucharistic gifts, of the latter half of the third century. 2 We give-thanks to Thee, O God, through Thy beloved Child Jesus Christ, whom in the last times Thou didst send to us as Saviour and Redeemer and Messenger of Thy Will. . . . Who, when He was surrendering Himself to voluntary suffering, that He might dissolve death and break the bonds of the devil, and trample on Hades and illumine the righteous and fix a bound, and reveal the resurrection, Taking bread, He gave-thanks to Thee and said : " Take, eat, this is my body which is being broken for you." Likewise also the cup, saying : " This is my blood, which is being poured forth for you ; as often as ye do this, ye make my commemoration." In memory, then, of His death and resurrection, we offer to Thee bread and the cup, giving thanks to Thee in that Thou hast held us worthy to stand before Thee and do sacred ministry to Thee ; [and we beseech Thee to send Thy Holy Spirit on the oblations of this church] 3 ; joining them together into one, grant to all saints 4 who partake 1 Fixed forms of Eucharistic prayer were not de rigeur even in the fourth century. The Sahidic Church order, for instance, follows its earlier (Syrian) basis in saying : " Let each (bishop) pray after his ability. If indeed he can pray adequately and with a dignified prayer, well : but if he prays but moderately, let none hinder him ; only let him pray sound in right faith." 1 Now in Ethiopic, Syriac (Test. Domini), and Latin : probably of N. Syrian origin. 3 Not in Test. Dom. The Ethiopic reads as above : the old Latin version " on the oblation of the holy Church." * So the Lat., with some support from the other witnesses, which vary. 174 PIETY, WORSHIP, SACRAMENTS [PART n. that it may serve to fill them with holy Spirit, unto con- firmation of faith in truth, that we may praise and glorify Thee through Thy Child * Jesus Christ, through whom be to Thee praise and honour in thy holy Church 2 for ever and ever. Amen. Here observe the conception of the honour granted the Church as privileged to offer such a sacrifice of praise, in memory of the saving self-oblation of Christ, its risen Head; and that participation in God's spiritual grace in return is conditioned by the Church's spiritual unity in the act. This con- forms to the rationale of the Anaphora given by James of Edessa (seventh century), who emphasises the corporate nature of the act, so that the people with the minister, " and he with them, have been made one body of Christ and one mind." The same essential idea of all common worship appears in Cyril of Alexandria, who also calls " praise " and " doxology " " sacrifice " (thuma). The Anaphora itself, as James says, " in a few words commemorates the whole scope of the grace of God as touching man and his first creation, and his redemption thereafter, and as touching the dispensation which Christ wrought in our behalf when He suffered for us in the flesh : for this is the whole Access (Kurobho= Anaphora), that we commemorate and declare the things which Christ wrought in our behalf." The above liturgy there is good reason to regard as Syrian. The next is a specimen of Egyptian usage at a rather later stage, part of the Liturgy of Serapion, Bishop of Thmuis in the Nile Delta, 1 So the Lat. , with support from the others, which diverge. 1 So Lat. and Eth. ; Tett. Dom. has " with thy holy Spirit." With the former compare " in holy Spirit,' 1 as found in third century doxologies (see next Anaphora at beginning and end). CHAP, iv.] AN EGYPTIAN LITURGY 175 c. 350. It is a most precious witness, as being both dated and located. Its " prayer of oblation " is attributed to Serapion himself, a friend of Athanasius, and no doubt familiar with the Alexandrine rite of the period. Its essential points are as follows : It is meet and right to praise . . . Thee, the uncreated Father of the Only-begotten, Jesus Christ. We praise Thee, O uncreated God. . . . O unseen Father, provider of im- mortality. . . . Give us holy Spirit, that we may be able to tell forth thy unspeakable mysteries : may there speak in us the Lord Jesus and holy Spirit, and hymn Thee through us. For Thou art " far above all rule and authority . . . and every name that is named. . . ." (Eph. i. 21). Beside Thee stand thousands of thousands ... of angels, archangels . . . : by Thee stand the two most honourable six-winged Sera- phim . . . crying Holy ; along with whom l receive also our cry of Holy, as we say " Holy, holy, holy, Lord of Sabaoth ; full is heaven and earth of thy glory." Full is heaven, full also is earth of thy excellent glory, Lord of Powers : nil also this sacrifice z (thusian) with thy power and thy participation. For to Thee have we made 2 offering of this " living sacrifice " (Rom. xii. 1), this bloodless oblation (cf. Eph. v. 2) : to Thee have we made offering of 1 This gives the same thought as the sursum corda, which pre- faced the offering (Anaphora) of Thanksgiving (Eucharist), viz. that it was made as in the heavenly sphere. * That is, the Church's "sacrifice" has already been offered, in the gifts of bread and wine conceived as conveyed by angelic agency to the heavenly altar on high and graciously received during the earlier part of the Anaphora or Eucharistic prayer, which in the fuller form found in the Liturgy of S. Mark explicitly offers such gifts as the Church's ' ' rational and bloodless sacrificial service." It next goes on to ask for the Divine response, by the " power and participation" of God, which shall fill the elements, for the Church's communion, with the dynamic presence of the Logos. 176 PIETY, WORSHIP, SACRAMENTS [PART n. this bread, the likeness of the body of the Only-begotten. This bread is the likeness of the holy body : because the Lord Jesus Christ in the night in which He was betrayed took bread and broke and gave to His disciples saying, " Take ye and eat, this is my body which is being broken for you for remission of sins." Wherefore we also, making the likeness of the death, have offered the bread, and beseech Thee through this sacrifice l be reconciled to all of us and be propitious, O God of Truth. And as 2 this bread was (once) scattered (as grain) on the top of the mountains and being gathered together came to be one, so also gather thy holy Church out of every nation . . . and make one living catholic Church. We have offered also the cup, the likeness of the blood, because . . . God of Truth, let thy holy Word come upon (the verb before used of the Advent) this bread, that the bread may become body of the Word, and upon this cup, that the cup may become blood of the Truth : and make all who communicate to receive medicine of life 3 for the healing of every sickness and for the strengthening of all progress and virtue not for condemnation, O God of Truth, and not for censure and reproach. For we have invoked Thee, the uncreated, through the Only-begotten, in holy Spirit. Comparison with other forms of the Egyptian rite shows that behind Serapion's revision lay a basis more primitive in some respects than even the matter common to the fourth-century liturgy of S. Mark and a papyrus fragment recently recovered in Upper Egypt, a basis which may be the liturgy 1 Note this as before the Invocation for change in the elements. * What follows down to " out of" comes from the Didache. 3 Note that here, unlike p. 174 top, the fruit of Communion is benefit first for body, then for soul. CHAP, iv.] AN EARLY ALEXANDRINE FORM 177 of Alexandria itself, c. 300-350. It will be well to cite this Oxford papyrus fragment, as less generally known. As restored by the aid of the rite of S. Mark, part of it is as follows : Beside Thee stand the Seraphim, the one with six wings, and the other with six wings. All things ever hallow Thee ; but along with all that hallow Thee, receive also our hallow- ing, as we say to Thee, " Holy, holy, holy, Lord of hosts. Full is the heaven and the earth of thy glory." Fill us also with the glory that is from Thee, and vouchsafe to send thy holy Spirit upon these creatures and make the bread body of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, and the cup blood of the new covenant. For our Lord Jesus Christ in the night in which he was being betrayed took bread and gave thanks and . . . gave to his disciples and apostles. (Here the Words of Institution.) "As often as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye pro- claim My death, ye confess My resurrection." (We proclaim Thy death, we confess Thy resurrection.) * And we entreat 1 ... of Thy bounty, unto holy Spirit power, unto confirmation and increase of faith, unto hope of the eternal life to come, through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom . . . Amen. Here the transition from the hallowing of God by all creatures to that by His people is simple and natural, as is also the reference to the worshippers (in Serapion, their offering) as to be filled with God's glory in return, before that to the invocation of holy Spirit grace upon the elements. This latter may be a fourth century addition, as its form varies from that in Serapion, and the third century Syrian 1 The people's response. The prayer, as the Liturgy of S. Mark and two Coptic ones suggest, after "entreat," continued "Thee, send forth upon us and upon these gifts set forth before Thee, the grace." M 178 PIETY, WORSHIP, SACRAMENTS [PART n. rite lacks it. 1 So as regards the invocation after the words of Institution, where S. Mark refers to " us and these gifts " as recipient of God's grace. This may be a conflation of ideas, such as is traced below in connection with the Western type in the fourth century. The fragment's description of the fruits of communion is simple and spiritual, quite on the lines of the old Syrian form, viz., that " all saints who partake . . . may be filled with holy Spirit, unto confirmation of faith in truth." As to the absence of reference to the bread as " likeness " of Christ's body, this may be an early feature or a late one. A similar explanatory phrase occurs in one form of Western liturgy, viz. " figure," a term used in this connection by Tertullian. We turn, then, to the Western type. The part of the Mass (Missa=missio = anaphora) held essential to consecration (the " Canon "), as preserved in its oldest witnesses, especially the De Sacramentis, a fourth century North Italian work, rims as follows : " Make for us this oblation accredited, ratified, spiritual (Rom. xii. 1), acceptable, since it is a figure (Jigura) of the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ. 2 Who, on the eve of His passion, took in His holy hands bread ; looked up to heaven to Thee, holy Father, Almighty, Eternal God, giving thanks; blessed, brake, and handed what was broken to His Apostles and disciples, saying : " Take and eat of this all of you, for this is my body." 1 It appears in the old Latin and Etbiopic recensions, which here probably reflect the fourth century. * For this clause the Roman Canon has, " that it may become to us the body and blood of Thy most beloved Son, our Lord Jesus Christ." CHAP, iv.] EARLIEST WESTERN FORM 179 Likewise also the cup after supping . . . saying : " Take and drink of this all of you : for this is my blood. . . . As oft as ye shall do this, so oft ye shall make commemora- tion of me, until I come again." Therefore in memory of His most glorious passion and resurrection from Hades and ascension to heaven, we offer to Thee this spotless sacrifice, (hostiam, as in Rom. xii. 1), spiritual sacrifice, bloodless sacrifice, this holy bread and cup of eternal life : and we beg and pray that Thou mayest receive this oblation on Thine altar on high by the hands of Thy angels, even as Thou didst deign to receive the gifts of Thy righteous servant Abel, and the sacrifice of our forefather Abraham, and that which the high priest Melchizedek offered to Thee." Here there is no invocation and no prayer for change of the elements into the body and blood of Christ for purposes of communion, so far as this old form is known to us. Further, the last clauses, from " and we beg," appear in the Roman Canon in a different order, 1 a fact which suggests that we have here the same matter at different stages. Now, similar matter occurs also in Eastern liturgies, before the Anaphora or Canon, and where there is no thought of Christ's self-oblation in the sacrifice hi question, but only of the people's gifts, offered previous to the Canon proper. It may well be, then, that it has been attracted to its present connection in the North Italian and Roman Canons for a doctrinal reason. The solemnity of its language seemed, as time went on, to suit the supreme act of oblation i.e. the special offering of part of the gifts of bread and wine in commemoration of Christ's own offering of bread and wine, as symbols of His passion rather than what came to appear the less and less important 1 That of the Roman Canon was perhaps due to Pope Leo I. 180 PIETY, WORSHIP, SACRAMENTS [PART n. offering by the holy people of its gifts as such. But originally this too was priestly service to God, the ac- ceptance of which by Him " as from His friends " was, as Irenaeus put it, an honour for man. Yet even so, the very idea and imagery of the transferred petition excludes the notion that those who made the change in its use had any thought of " the real presence " in the elements after consecration. The nature of the sacrifice and its acceptance alike find their analogy in certain pre-Christian and even pre-Mosaic obla- tions, which God had deigned to accept in heaven through angelic agency. In the older form in the De Sacramentis the idea seems to be that God's acceptance of the Church's oblation of bread and wine was assured by covenant, in virtue of obedi- ence to Christ's command that so it should be offered, viz. as in " figure " commemorative of His oblation and its acceptance. In the Roman Canon, however, in its present form, God is asked to accept the oblation " that it may become to us the body and blood " of Christ ; and, after the words of consecration, the effect of its being raised to God's altar on high is that communicants in " the body and blood " of Christ are " filled with all heavenly- blessing and grace " of which nothing is said in the liturgy quoted in De Sacramentis. The fact is that from the fourth century the Western liturgy, like Eastern ones, here and elsewhere shows dislocation due to new conceptions of the Christian sacrifice and of the relations of the body of Christ's passion to the symbols, bread and wine. The net result was to give the Eucharistic commemoration of Chrisfs passion, by consecration of bread and wine as its symbols or " figures," itself the character of a sacrifice in which the realities of His body and blood CHAP, iv.] CHANGING EUCHARISTIC IDEAS 181 became somehow present in the symbols, with pro- pitiatory effects for the communicants, as also for departed members of the Church. A sign of the change of conception is the change in the place of the chief Intercession for " living and dead " so as to follow this atoning sacrifice which resulted in most liturgies of and after the fourth century. There is reason to trace to Jerusalem, which was the great centre of ritual change in the fourth century when it became, as the scene of the Passion, a centre of pilgrimage and " advanced " devotional senti- ment this momentous change of conception. It is significant that Cyril (c. 348) omits from explicit mention the old commemorative features so marked in the above liturgies, viz. commemoration of redemp- tion, the words of Institution, and the Memorial (Anamnesis] oblation, in order to dwell on the Invocation as that on which hung for him the essence of the matter, viz. a real change in the elements. The rapid spread from Jerusalem, the devotional centre of Christendom, of the changed type of Eueharistic doctrine and service, traceable in the second half of the fourth century, would be most natural. The Alexandrine was the great exception known to us (as James of Edessa notes) ; and there can be little doubt that the Alexandrine order represents the older custom and idea the commend- ing of the Church in and through its gifts (the donors being specially named) to God's gracious acceptance. James of Edessa notes, as the prime difference between liturgies in his day, that the Alexandrines first perform the intercessory " commemorations," and then after this the prayer centring in the words of Institution ; whereas elsewhere the commemora- tions follow the Canon. 182 PIETY, WORSHIP, SACRAMENTS [PART n. In this light the Roman Canon appears as a mingling of the earlier and later orders, and of their respective ideas of the sacrifice in the Eucharist. It begins (Te igitur) with reference to the Church's gifts or sacrifices of homage, followed by intercession for the Church at large, with explicit commemoration or commending of the living ; that for the departed follows the yet more sacred part of the Canon, where the consecration of the elements as Body and Blood of Christ has just taken place ; then on this follows intercession for the worshippers themselves as "sinners," in need of -atonement through Christ's passion thus represented of which there is no trace in fathers and liturgies before the fourth century. There are also other internal traces of the dislocation here involved, 1 notably the fact that the old Gallican and Spanish (Mozarabic) liturgies have the clear and simple Alexandrine order, whereas the Roman has a rudimentary " Let us pray " at this point, without a prayer to answer. Underlying all the changes here involved there is a change of motif in piety or religious idea. At first Christians offered their Thanksgiving sacrifice because they were already sanctified in Christ and entitled, as pure in conscience, to approach God in the worship of privileged communion, in grateful memory of the abiding basis of their new priestly standing, Christ's self-oblation, once for all offered for His people's forgiveness and consecration. Later, however, a feeling arose that the unworthi- ness now growingly felt, as the average standard of good conscience declined, needed to be atoned for, and God propitiated, by some fresh offering of 1 See the Comparative Tables in Hammond's Liturgies, xxvi. ff. CHAP.IV.] PROPITIATION & REAL PRESENCE 183 Christ's all-availing sacrifice. In Cyprian's day, indeed, the atonement for manifest sins, which made Christians as such unfit to stand and offer their pure sacrifice of praise and love, was made before they were re-admitted to " offer " their gifts, through acts of penitence and self-discipline, conceived to " make amends to " or " satisfy " God. But once the fresh psychological conditions were present, the general sense of an uneasy conscience, seeking relief not otherwise found in Christ, discovered a point on which it could fix in traditional Eucharistic language. It was found not only in the sacrificial terms used of the people's prayers and " gifts " to God, as offered for His acceptance, but particularly in the commemorative connection of part of these oblations with the One Perfect Oblation, recalled in " likeness " or " figure " in the bread and wine of communion. Here what was commemorated was, as Cyprian shows, increasingly the Passion proper. Further, there entered as a growing factor real- istic modes of sacramental thought, fostered by " mystery " associations. 1 Eucharistic grace came to be conceived no longer simply as increase of faith and holiness, as in the oldest liturgies, or even as this along with increase of bodily health and incorruption, but also as forgiveness of sins. All this became thought of not only spiritually, in terms of the symbolism of the Altar on high (the only altar, other than persons, known to primitive Christianity), but also semi-physically, as benefit derived from Christ's very body and blood, which underwent the Passion and then were raised in glory. That is how most 1 Justin felt the ritual resemblance to the mystic bread and water in the cult of Mithras, once the original Christian form of a social meal was dropped through force of circumstances. 184 PIETY, WORSHIP, SACRAMENTS [PART n. came instinctively to take the sacred formula, " This is my body." The same theory needed that Christ should be bodily present in the elements on the earthly table, which thus came also to be called an " altar " in a new sense, relative to the present body of Christ's passion. Hence we get a new awe- struck attitude towards the consecrated elements, as "mysteries to make a man shudder: hence adora- tion of the reserved Eucharist." During three centuries, however, the sacrificial or human part of the Eucharist was completed before the "real presence " of Christ was invoked upon the elements. Analogous to this change of conception, with con- sequent transposition of crucial parts of the service in the development of the later " Catholic " type of Eucharist or Mass, were the changes of form and idea in the Invocation (Epikksis) now the point at which change in the elements was in the Eastern Church supposed to take place. At first Invoca- tion was only implicit, asking for blessings to the com- municants from communion, not for any change in the elements. As to the various forms of Invocation, these as involving theological conceptions come rather under Doctrine. Here we may simply observe that explicit Invocations, when they developed, remained characteristic of the Greek East, in contrast to the Latin West. Later Latin theory, read already by the author of De Sacramentis into the liturgy he quotes, was that Christ's very words, as recited, wrought the change (cf. p. 172, note). But the sacramental " body " of Christ, while taken realistically in Hellenistic fashion, as something directly transmitting His life in the widest sense, could yet be so taken in more than one way. It CHAP, iv.] DIFFERENT TYPES OF THEORY 185 might be virtually or dynamically the equivalent of the fleshly body which suffered and was glorified, a bread-body transmitting the same life as once lived in a flesh-body. Or the substance of the bread itself might be conceived, as by Irenaeus, to undergo some ineffable interpenetration by the substance of Christ's flesh-body, made present by Divine power, so as to convey the specific benefits of the latter also, especially incorruption and the germ or guarantee of the resurrection body for Christians in the Messianic Kingdom. Or there might be no definite idea as to the relation of the body and the bread, though it was felt that the one was really tantamount to the other. This was no doubt the common attitude among the rank and file, as distinct from theologians, especially in the unspeculative Latin West. The first of these views, that of a purely " sacra- mental body," in which the Logos in Christ was " impanated," as He had been incarnated in a human body, was on the whole the prevalent one, under varying forms, down to the early part of the fourth century, i.e. just before Cyril and Serapion. At the opposite extreme was the theory of " change " or " conversion," radical transformation or re-creation, in the elements, which came to be felt by some needful l to satisfy both later ideas of Salvation and the words, "This is my body" once the purely symbolic sense proper to Hebrew, but not to Hellen- istic minds, failed to appeal to Christians. These influences were telling all along ; and apart from Justin and Irenaeus, the view meets us notably 1 The first traces of this are naturally found in extreme Hellenizing circles, as among certain Gnostics, the general Christian consciousness following more slowly, but towards a like issue. 186 PIETY, WORSHIP, SACRAMENTS [PART n. in Cyril of Jerusalem. 1 Between these two theories there was a vaguer and more mystic attitude, that of the Alexandrine theologians in particular, which was content to dwell on the symbolic value of the elements in their actual effect, as some- how the medium through which the Divine Grace in Christ Vas experienced. Such thought was wholly " spiritualising." In the eyes of Origen in particular " religious mysteries and the whole person of Christ lay in the realm of the spirit, 2 and therefore his theory of the Supper is not ' symbolical,' but con- forms to his doctrine of Christ. . . . The intelligent Christian feeds at all times on the body of Christ, that is, on the Word of God, and thus celebrates a never-ending Supper (c. Cels., viii. 22). Origen, however, was not blind to the fact that his doctrine of the Lord's Supper was just as far removed from the faith of the simple Christian as his doctrinal system generally." Yet as one thoroughly loyal to the underlying spirit or religious instinct of the Church's tradition, in life as in doctrine, " he was unwilling to dispense with symbols and mysteries, because he knew that one must be initiated into 1 Likewise in Gregory of Nyssa, Catechetical Oration, 37 : " Thus the body made immortal by God, passing into ours, makes anew and converts it all to itself" : so too the " Liturgy of Chrysostom " (the Byzantine Rite), and Leo, Serm., Ixiii.; Epist., lix. 2. 2 Harnack, History of Dogma, ii. 146, where he also cites the following : " That bread which God the Word owns as His own body, is the word that feeds souls, the word proceeding from God the Word and bread from the Heavenly Bread . . . not that visible bread which He was holding in His hands . . . but the Word in whose secret dispensation that bread had been destined to be broken.'' So, too, Clement distinguishes a spiritual and a material blood of Christ ; and " to drink the blood of Jesus " means to share the Lord's iucorruptiou. CHAP, iv.] GREAT CHANGES IN IDEA 187, the spiritual " experimentally, and so have one's intuitions educated. In a sense such a mystic view was the truest reflective counterpart of the simpler emotional attitude of the mass of believers already referred to, who in the Communion felt they were found and fed by their Living Lord, so enjoying spiritual union with Him more than under any other normal conditions. This, the truly catholic consciousness of Christian piety in the matter in all ages, supplied the atmosphere in which the reflective theories, varying with racial, local, and cultural mentality, could live and gain credence. 1 Yet, after all, while in ancient Catholic piety deep devotion is felt for the person and passion of its Lord, there is a comparative absence of reference to the devotional aspect of the Communion, the sense of personal communion, spirit with spirit, with the Christ of faith. This seems due to pre- occupation with the idea of His body present in the elements as conveying, apart from the communicant's consciousness, a mysterious " healing of soul and body." This is truer of the earlier than of the later patristic period, and perhaps of the East than the West, where the devotional associations of the Passion prevail in mediaeval piety. The persistence of the earlier emphasis, however, can be traced in the Mozarabic liturgy in Spain (perhaps reflecting the original Gallican rite), where the priest says : " The body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ pre- serve my body and soul unto eternal life." This appears also in the York rite, and passes on into the Prayer Book of 1549, and so even into the present 1 Tertullian, De Corona, 3, betrays anxiety as to what happened to all portions of the sacred bread or wine ; which already suggests an idea of " localized " presence. 188 PIETY, WORSHIP, SACRAMENTS [PART n. Anglican use, where it is combined with the devo- tional remembrance of Christ's passion for His People, in terms of Reformation piety. As one puts side by side the primitive Eucharist and its full Catholic development, one cannot but be struck by the immense difference both of form and idea. There is indeed a religious core of con- tinuity, namely, the consecration of bread and wine with " word of God and prayer," and partaking thereof in remembrance of Christ's passion in the body as an act of self-oblation to God for man's salvation. But how different the associations of the early and later forms of observance ! The one was essentially domestic and social, that of a sacred meal or " breaking of bread " between brethren, with no fixed forms on which anything depended not even the very Words of Institution. The other was hieratic and mysterious, couched in fixed, tech- nical, and esoteric words and acts ; portioned out into definite moments in a sacred drama ; and far from social in the outward form of actual participa- tion. In the end the aspect of brotherhood and mutual love lacked symbolic expression ; and the change of idea revealed itself finally in usages like non-communicating attendance and even purely sacerdotal " celebration." If we have dwelt thus fully upon the sacra- ments, it is because they are so typical of the piety of this period, and best illustrate the stages through which it went. Its trend might be traced also in other and more private forms of the devotional life. Prayer became fixed as to time, place, and set forms of words. The whole idea and practice of the devout life became specialised and organised as CHAP, iv.] AND IN THE PIETY INVOLVED 189 part of a great institution for fostering and training religion in man, the Catholic Church. It is not only that its apparatus, so to speak, became complex and systematised ; that was in a measure inevitable even for a religion of the Spirit, as it became reflective and matured, particularly as to its practical working in average human nature. What is of greater significance is the change of emphasis as to the char- acteristic nature and modes of the life consecrated to God's will as revealed in Christ. Nothing is more notable in New Testament piety, as compared with contemporary religion, than the personal and ethical forms, those of human life in its ordinary social relations, in and through which the religious impulse and motive expressed itself. " If any man seemeth to be religious, while not bridling his tongue, but deceiving his heart, this man's religion is vain. A pure and undefiled religion" religious devotion such as expresses itself in ritual acts " before our God and Father is this, to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unspotted from the world " as corrupt and perverted social life. The whole Epistle of James is a sermon on this text. The specialised sanctities of religion are at a minimum : the broadly human sanctities of life, the loyalties of moral rela- tionship between persons, viewed in the sacred light of common relationship to the heavenly Father, are at the maximum. The Christian's relations to God were placed on an abiding basis of filial access through Christ's atoning and consecrating self sacrifice. The Lord's Prayer, " Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive them that trespass against us," is the all-inclusive provision for every lapse from the fidelity of the regenerated will or person- 190 PIETY, WORSHIP, SACRAMENTS [PART n. ality. Need for any recurrent objective offering of sacrifice for sins in Christians, as God's children living in Christ's spirit of adoption apart from which a man was " none of His " was a notion alien to the outlook of such piety. Indeed, the very nature of Christ's one self-oblation, as of abiding efficacy, excluded any idea of objective re-presentation of that sacrifice for the forgiveness of fresh sins, as distinct from faith's fresh " reckoning " upon its efficacy for the status of union with Christ (cj. Rom. vi. 11), and contrite return in heart. Perhaps strangest of all to New Testament Christians would have seemed the corporate presentation of Christ's sacrifice for the sins of the Church's members in general, who were in idea " saints," and as such entitled to offer, as holy, their sacrifice of communion in praise and thanksgiving. For, as Irenaeus says, the sacrificial gift does not purify the man, but the acceptable man makes the gift pure and acceptable. " It is not sacrifices that sanctify a man . . . ; but the conscience of the offerer, being already pure, sanctifies the sacrifice, and causes God to accept it as from a friend." The offerer is " honoured " by having his gift of gratitude accepted as a token of friendship or communion. " There are sacrifices in the Church as well as sacrifices in the (Jewish) People : only the kind is changed, since now offering is made not by bond-servants but by freemen." Set along- side this 1 the idea that the oblations offered at the Mass propitiate God for the sins of the faithful, the special donors in particular ; while for full confidence in the Divine pardon, reliance is placed also on " the glorious merits of the saints " in heaven. The contrast is complete. Further, for the writer to the 1 Against Heresies, IV. xviii. 1 ff. CHAP, iv.] CAUSES OF SUCH CHANGE 191 Hebrews, it was not to be thought possible that " the heart be stablished " by things eaten, but only by " grace," a grateful sense of God's grace shown in the love which provided the redemptive sacrifice of Christ. Nor was that sacrifice of the kind in which one could participate through eating, as he shows in terms of the Old Tabernacle ritual. Its " altar " had associated with it no sacrificial meal : that sacri- fice had summary atoning power through its utter devotion to God and His uses. Hence there was left to the Christian only the sacrifice of self- oblation and of the sweet savour as of incense, the prayers and beneficent deeds of love which are well- pleasing to God. 1 To all this the Eucharistic ideas and practices of the Church of the fifth century offer a contrast explicable only by the intervening stages of gradual and insensible change in interpretative conceptions, due to change of environment from the New Testa- ment type of Hebraism to the piety general in the Graeco-Roman world. This first found seeming points of contact in the metaphorical use of familiar sacrificial terminology by the New Testament writers and the Church of their age. Then in the third century, as we see from Cyprian, it gained a fresh footing and influence from the mistaken way in which Old Testament analogies, in just those respects in which the Gospel differed from the Law, were taken over and developed by minds whose mental presuppositions had been moulded by religions at much the same ritual stage as that reflected in the less prophetic portions of the Old Testament. Hence growing change in the spirit and ideas of Christian piety from this time onwards. Its specifically ritual 1 Hebrews xiii. 9-16 ; cf. Eph. v. 1, 2. 192 PIETY, WORSHIP, SACRAMENTS [PART n. form gained in emphasis, while its more vital self- expression in the normal human relations of the good and devoted life domestic, social, civic, economic lost proportionally. Not that the latter was for- gotten ; but emphasis, which counts so much in practice with the average man, shifted. The change also affected the celibacy of the clergy, the com- pulsory nature of which was largely motived by the newer sacramental ideas. It was felt that they who offered the " awful " sacrifice of the Mass should be " pure " from all sexual relations, like the Old Testa- ment priests, in a partial sense but still more like the priests of certain " mystery " cults. Again, in marked contrast to the example and spirit of primitive usage, it was held that " the host " must be received by all fasting, and that there was even virtue in placing it in the mouth of the unconscious dying, not to say of the dead. Finally, as connected with ancient sacramental theory generally, in its objective metaphysical realism and animism, we may note exorcism of evil spirits and invocation of Holy Spirit over sacramental waters and other con- secrated materials. Such changes can development bring about. After all due allowance for the concrete, figur- ative language of popular cultus, it remains true that the average view of the sacraments had now become largely magical. Nobly ideal it was in its suggestions, no doubt, but yet a thing of sacred magic rather than conscious communion of spirit with spirit, the Divine with the human, the human with the Divine and with its fellows. This may have been partly inevitable in the absence of a philosophy adequate to the expression of the facts of Christian faith and experience in terms of person- CHAP, iv.] SACRAMENTALISM & THE GOSPEL 193 ality, the underlying idea distinctive of the Chris- tian view of God and man, and of their mutual rela- tions. Perhaps only in the light of such a philo- sophy, itself the issue of the new experience when mature, could Christian theory, whether of conduct or of sacramental grace in a material world such as ours, be made at once fully spiritual and true to facts. The nearest approach to this result on the lines of ancient Catholic Christianity was achieved by Augustine : but his sacramental views must be postponed to our account of mediaeval theology, of which his thought is so prime a factor. Again, it must not be forgotten that leading Churchmen of the fourth and fifth centuries taught that morally unworthy reception of sacraments conferred, not spiritual benefit, but added responsibility and penalty. Nevertheless there does seem to have been a loss of grasp on the vital nexus between specific religion, now conceived as sacramental piety, and its moral issues. The true Christian notion of faith as religious trust, and as itself the prime grace, was largely lost, apart from Augustine's personal recovery of it, for himself and those who really imbibed his spirit. It is a strange fact, hi view of such emphasis upon the sacraments as indispensable means of grace, that persons passed many years, even their whole life, as members in a sense of the Church militant, under its discipline and joining in much of its worship, yet apart from its primary sacraments, baptism and the Eucharist. They ranked as Christians in the main, but were not definitely such either in responsibilities or privileges, the fact being that they would not undertake the former for fear of mortal sin after baptismal forgiveness. But 194 PIETY, WORSHIP, SACRAMENTS [PART n. the situation of such " catechumens " was highly anomalous 1 ; for it struck at the very root of the idea that the Christian life could not be lived apart from special sacramental grace, and that it was bound up with baptism in particular. As has been justly said by a Roman Catholic scholar, life-long post- ponement of baptism reduced baptism very much to the significance of extreme unction or preparation for it. It seems, then, as though many Christians had no real confidence in baptism as a channel of enabling grace for the moral conflict of life. Some at least felt that until personal conversion had taken place it was better not to baptize their children one thinks of Ambrose, Chrysostom, Augustine as cases in point lest they should fall into mortal sin, much as Tertullian urged in his day. But another fear told the other way, namely, lest the child should die suddenly, ere the rite could be administered : and this fear told most in the long run. In any case the instance warns us to be prepared for mixed sentiments and theories, and certain re- serves, even when reading the strongest statements of ancient Churchmen as to the sovereign virtue of sacramental grace. Indeed, it looks as if Catholic thought was practically Pelagian before Augustine gave fresh reality and im- pulse to the conception of " grace " as prevenient and efficient in relation to the moral exercise of the will. There was a dualism between the spheres of religion and conduct . In the former piety was supernaturalistic in feeling and theory, particularly as to the meta- physical and even physical effects of sacraments; in the latter it \vas self-dependent and moralistic in 1 Another anomaly was the fact that hermit " saints " often went, for long periods at least, without the Eucharist. CHAP, iv.] CONCESSIONS TO "FOLK PIETY " 195 attitude. The two were not unified in organic fashion, as in the Apostolic and especially Pauline idea of ' ; faith " as a living attitude of soul, " taking effect through love." Harnack is surely right when he says, that " the real mystery of the faith, viz. how one becomes a new man (in experience)," " gave place to the injunction to accept obediently religion as a consecration of life, and add to this the zealous effort after ascetic virtue." Certainly this is very like the kind of piety Augustine seems to have had in his mind before his experience of the breaking in of the " Grace of God " upon his moral impotence. But how far Augustine's rediscovery of the Pauline experience, and his attempt to set it forth afresh, really affected Catholic piety, remains an open question. A word must be said, in closing, on a whole class of concessions to " folk piety." In Augustine's Con- fessions (vi. 2) we read how his mother Monnica discontinued a North African custom of feasting at the memorial chapels of martyrs, quite after the pagan manner (as Ambrose pointed out to her), particularly that of presenting offerings of food to the shades of ancestors at the festival of the Paren- talia. The rationale of Church authorities in con- doning such customs, on the principle of weaning rude converts from habits with pagan associations, by affording scope for such feelings in their new faith, is described by Gregory of Nyssa in his Life of Gregory Thaumaturgus. But in practice the converts were often not weaned, but rather left in semi- materialism of thought in religion by such a policy. The polemic of men like Claudius of Turin and Agobard of Lyons against various superstitions in the early Middle Ages is here significant. CHAPTER V CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE I. To "To sum up all things in Christ." "The Word became flesh." CHRISTIAN Doctrine in its technical aspects lies beyond our present scope. But only a quite ex- ternal and unreal view of Christianity could be conveyed by any sketch of its history which did not essay some account of its most distinctive doctrines and of their organic relations to thought, feeling, and conduct, at typical stages of develop- ment. Indeed, to those for whom the vital connection between ideas and conduct is the most significant thing in history, this aspect of our subject must seem in some ways chief of all. But on one condition : namely, that we keep in mind the dis- tinction between the soul and the body of doctrine ; between what an age or a type of Christians was striving to express and the actual expression attained, conditioned as this was by the forms of thought available in the culture of the day. Looked at in this light, the vigour and manysided- ness of its doctrinal development is a measure of the vital impulse which the religious consciousness received from Christ. This is most true of Chris- tianity in the Roman Empire, where it came into a CHAP, v.] IDEA OF SALVATION CENTRAL 197 culture rich in ideas, many of them originally proper to diverse interpretations of the universe and human life. Though the Gospel was in itself far from being intellectual in genius and outlook, yet it had implicit within it certain profound, if simple, ideas as to God and man, and as to human destiny in the light of their mutual relations. These not only made power- ful appeal to the intuitive reason and its emotional reactions, but challenged and stimulated reflection, once emotional balance was restored, to think them out and relate them to existing systems of thought. Thus intellectually as well as morally the Gospel worked as leaven, and showed its power by the degree to which the whole mass of thought, no less than the body of ethics and usages, was hi the end leavened. In this process three things went on side by side ; elimination, assimilation, development. Elimination of the totally alien, perhaps also of some things of value which the Christian consciousness was not yet ready to use constructively : assimilation, partly of and partly to the intellectual environment : de- velopment of the ideas latent in the Gospel as originally received. Doubtless this Gospel was a germ which already contained, like all human embodiments of divine truth, some elements of only relative worth. How far, in the further growth now to be traced, development was on the best lines then possible, is largely an insoluble problem. A good deal depends upon whether we have in mind the proximate or the ultimate results As to the former, the truth is to-day regarded as lying somewhere mid-way between the traditional Catholic and Protestant estimates. Christian doctrine, as the theory of a type of life 198 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE [PART n. or experience, must always be viewed as a unity, if it is to be understood. Now what gives unity to a religion is its idea of Salvation, the absolute good for man on which true happiness or satisfaction depends. This implies some form of fellowship or union with the Divine. Such fellowship may be conceived either on social or individual lines ; and the concrete religion will be interpreted differently as the one or other of these aspects prevails. The Christian Salvation was originally at once social and individual in idea. It was the holy and blessed Life enjoyed by the People of God in a state which, as perfected, was conceived as the kingdom or reign of God in humanity. Already in principle it was present in such as had the Spirit, the .essential nature or life of God. But so far God's reign was only in part. Salvation was waiting upon a wider transformation, both of man and man's physical environment. And this was expected shortly, at the Consummation of the Age or existing order. " We are saved in hope " ; such was the early Christian consciousness. This is what the first half of the Lord's Prayer brought to their minds. Hence much was viewed relative to the perspective of the Messianic Kingdom on earth, leading up, after a limited period, to the Final Judgment which fixed the destiny of all men, save those already members of " the Church of the first-born " at the First Resurrec- tion. This resurrection " from among the dead," when Christians received the degree of " glory " proportionate to their works, as " wages " for faithful service, was the prime concern among Christians for many a day. It was unto this resur- rection that baptism was sometimes thought to " regenerate " the body, as by those " baptised CHAP, v.] NEARER & FARTHER HORIZONS 199 for the dead," and later by Irenaeus, and possibly Justin. It was for this that the Eucharistic food was by such writers conceived to prepare the invisible resurrection body. Similarly it was the " incorrup- tion " or immortality of this Messianic Age (which came to be reckoned as a Millennium) ere " the Son should deliver up the Kingdom to the Father, that God might be all in all " by more immediate self- manifestation it was this which n on- Christians would surely forfeit, whether dead or alive at the Second Advent. This limited meaning of " perdi- tion," as distinct from the verdict on men's personal character according to light in all times and places, belonging to the Final Judgment at the end of the Millennium, often escapes notice, to the undue darkening of the outlook on human destiny attributed to the early Christians. But indeed the twofold perspective, the nearer and farther, the Millennial and the eternal, is the key to much of their thought and language ; and the effect of gradual change in this respect as the Millennial idea faded, while life in the invisible world bulked more largely, was far-reaching for Christian sentiment and ideals. In particular the Kingdom of God at last became identified with the Church ; while the Final Judg- ment was still to issue in eternal bliss or woe, but now simply according to acceptance or non-acceptance of the Church's message, rather than of light realty present in each man's conscience. Such writers as Cyprian and Augustine represent in various degrees transition to his later or familiar Catholic view. 1 What, then, has to be realised in studying the development of doctrine in the Ancient Church is this twofold horizon of Salvation, nearer and 1 See A. Robertson, Regnum Dei, esp. ch. v. 200 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE [PART n. farther, temporal and eternal, i.e. the Messianic Kingdom on earth still much as we know it and the eternal Kingdom of a more completely spiritual order beyond. These conceptions were not sharply dis- tinguished, but lay side by side and blended, the latter tending more and more to supersede the former. A real or historical reading of much special doctrine depends on viewing it as relative to these two aspects of the conception of Salvation. Similar allowance must be made for another factor affecting the general conception of Salvation, expecially on its imaginative and popular side ; namely, the opposite conception of perdition and of the power of evil behind this. Over against the Kingdom of Good, with God the Almighty as its source and guardian, stood both in the later Jewish and non-Jewish thought the supernatural powers of evil, conceived as personal, the world-rulers of spiritual darkness and of death, both physical and spiritual. It was the most obvious explanation of the facts of a world where good on the whole prevails, yet with a terrible strain of evil blending with it a problem which peculiarly exercised the world early in the Christian era, as we see from the Gnostics. Where the above conception existed in Monotheistic religion, as in Persia and Israel, it was natural that at the head of the counter-working spirits should be pictured a single supreme spirit, more powerful and subtle than any of his subordinates. But in Judaism, as distinct from Parseeism, this chief Adversary (Satan), or Slanderer of the Good (Diabolos, devil), was strictly subordinate to God and His final purposes : indeed, diabolic opposition would in the end but serve to set in relief the almighty goodness of the All-wise Creator and King of the world. Its power CHAP, v.] POWERS OF DEATH AND HELL 201 was limited to the function of testing human goodness by temptation to disloyalty, through self-assertion and self-will, with a view to bringing it forth the purer, like gold tried by fire. In this connection the devil was conceived to have a certain control over death; and to it men had been subjected through sin, which added to death its '* sting." But such control was mainly over its abnormal forms, sickness or sudden death, as distinct from simple dissolution of body and soul through natural decay. Normally the Adversary had but little power to harm the righteous. It was only as instigating special persecutions of the People of God, in order to subject their fidelity to intolerable strain, that a Hebraic writer like Peter conceived him as " walking about, as a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour." Here as elsewhere later thought, first in certain circles, then generally owing to the theory of verbal inspiration of Scripture, which made men work out prosaically the seeming logic of primitive Biblical conceptions went further, and developed a doctrine of " the devil and all his angels " out of proportion to the letter, and still more to the spirit, of the New Testament. The Apocalypse of John indeed has a good deal to say of such agency ; yet chiefly in relation to evil men and the trials of the righteous. But the perspective of Salvation in relation to the powers of evil gradually changed, largely under the unconscious influence of the non-Hebraic traditions which more and more moulded Christian thought. This is most apparent in the doctrine of future perdition in the unseen world, where wrong-doing in this world of probation receives its full due. The popular conception of Hell, from the second century onwards, owes to 202 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE [PART n. Hellenistic sources much of its crude colour, especially as to " demons," not to say the devil himself, as the executioners of the Divine final award ; which also, as already noted, lost certain temporal limitations once attaching even to the naive symbolism of primi- tive Christian thought on the point. This is plain from the " Apocalypse of Peter," and the literature akin to and largely derived from it, including the imagery of the mediaeval Hell of which Dante's Inferno is the classic expression and the modern tradition derived therefrom. Another issue of the exaggerated doctrine of the devil is seen in the typical patristic theory, from Irenseus onwards, touching the Death of Christ as a ransom for sin- enslaved men, which was largely occasioned by the loss of the true key to certain Biblical phases, especially Paul's touching the claims of the Law as needing to be satisfied ere God could be " just " in justifying and saving men. Among the New Testament ways of conceiving the work of Christ as Saviour of men, the most representative is that in the Epistle of Peter. It is free from that reference to the Law which conditions the Pauline theory. It appeals directly to ordinary humanity, conscious of having forfeited God's approval by wayward yielding to sinful impulses, as forms of self-will and disobedience to the holy Will of its Creator. Before the soul in such case it sets the vision of a Sinless One, sharing its nature and temptations, but sent of God to battle with and overcome all that in others leads to disloyalty and defilement of will, in the power of a uniquely Divine spiritual nature and of a vocation to do and to suffer for the redemption of his fellows. By a CHAP, v.] N.T. DOCTRINE OF SALVATION 203 supreme act of holy, self-sacrificing love, He laid the moral basis of a forgiveness of sin which struck at the very root of sin itself. As in his own person He had " suffered in the flesh," and thus died to sin, and to the flesh as prompting to sin ; so his Cross was calculated to produce in man a passionate reaction of soul against sin and the thraldom of the flesh. Thus His " stripe " wrought spiritual healing to those made through it utterly penitent and trustful. Accordingly in this act done on God's behalf for the sake of sinful men, and having at its heart a vicarious passion for the sin of those who as yet felt it not for themselves, lay the power of an abiding Atonement ; and that not only on God's side, from whom came the Divine-human Sufferer as a gift of grace, but also on man's, inasmuch as the offerer of the sacrifice was man. As Salvation was virtually achieved in Christ's representative humanity, so His death to sin, seen religiously as valid for all before God, is through faith appropriated as the very principle of the soul's own life. Through it, latent and partial penitence reaches its Christian issue in full repentance towards God and faith in Christ's redeeming grace. In this process, whereby the objective Atonement begets through the Spirit inward reconciliation within the heart, there is implanted a germ of life akin to that in Christ. It is in virtue of this that the Christian is called to make Him the abiding exemplar of his own life ; and Peter specifies patient suffering of wrong for God's sake and the good of men as conduct identical in principle with, and, as it were, an extension of, Christ's passion. 1 This account of the redemptive effect of the Cross 1 1 Peter ii. 20-25, i. 3, 18 f., iii. 18, iv. 1 f. 204 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE [PART n. of Christ is doubtless mystical, probably owing something here to Paul's mysticism ; but it is ethical mysticism charged with emotion, the most potent of moral dynamics : and at bottom it belongs to the essential nature of primitive Christianity. The separation from sin implied in Forgiveness of Sins is here achieved through the sympathetic appeal of personality to persons, uniting the soul in reverence, trust, gratitude, love in a word, Christian Faith to its true object of loyalty, and thereby dissociating it from the thraldom of the lower self, the flesh as a moral force. This comes about in repentance or radical change of will, such as the Hebrew prophets declared to be the sole and sufficient basis of Divine forgiveness. But for the genesis of this in adequate reality and depth and still more for full assurance of God's own attitude to the sinful there was hitherto no objective basis in fact for faith to rest on. It was such a revelation in historic fact, a Divine-human deed in which the two sides, the two points of view, were joined and harmonised without condoning of sin, that was provided by God's love in Christ and Him crucified. Such is not only the Petrine doctrine of the Salva- tion centring in Christ's atoning death : it is also common to the New Testament Epistles, though their writers' personal trainings and experiences, and those of their readers, caused them to emphasise different aspects of it. This was the case particularly with Paul, whose doctrine had an aspect which his brother apostle could not assimilate. We have already dealt with it in connection with Paul's specific contribution to Apostolic Christianity, especially his doctrine of the Law. It sprang from CHAP, v.] ITS SPECIAL FORM IN PAUL 205 this as root, and so from his technical training in Rabbinic Pharisaism. This gave much of his thought a peculiarly legal cast and emphasis. God's relations with men, Israel in the first instance, were seen primarily in a judicial light, His public or formal action being so far limited by govern- mental considerations, such as condition the freedom even of the most benevolent of sovereigns in the administration of public right. Accordingly the death of Christ was, in the juridical aspect peculiar to Paul, relative to his view of the Jewish Law behind which he saw any and every strict or statutory form of Law in religion. But this, the negative aspect of the matter, was not what Paul lived by, or expected his Gentile converts most to appreciate. He, more than any other, saw in the Cross the positive ground of mystical union of soul with Christ in his death to sin in principle, as self-hood in every shape and form, and life to God in filial loyalty of love. Here his mysticism, as already described (Part I.), penetrates beneath the level of Jewish legalism into the heart of universal humanity, just as later on Greek reason was driven beneath its own native intellectualism. But while Greek mysticism was either metaphysical or, in its more Hellenistic form, emotional in temper; in Paul, the Hebrew mysticism was ethical, animated by the impulse after perfect union with God's personal will. Returning to the Pauline theory of Christ's vicarious death as conditioned by the Law, we feel its logical difficulties when we try to reckon with the positive and negative, ideal and historical, aspects of the Mosaic Law, as well as its different effects upon different types of human nature. But if this be so for us, after ages of reflection and with some 206 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE [PART n. insight into Judaism, the task of grasping the meaning of Paul's anti-legal doctrine of the Cross was quite beyond Graeco-Roman Christianity gener- ally. Most took his bold anti-legal expressions as mere verbal mannerism, and redemption " from the Law " as applying merely to the Jewish ritual law. Thus the special accent of Paul's " Gospel " became only a sanction for polemic against Jewish ritual particularism or the " carnal " ordinances of an effete nationalism in religion. The great exception to this superficial view is Marcion, who saw that Paul had the whole legal principle and method in religion in view, in a moral as well as ritual aspect. He perceived the point of the anti- theses, Law and Grace, Works and Faith ; and that these went to the very roots of the Gospel as spirit rather than letter, and affected its superiority to Judaism. But he misunderstood Paul most gravely touching the positive historical place of the Law as preparatory to the Gospel of freedom in a word, its educative function. So he pressed the contrast between the strictly " Just " and the " Good " or kind person, in Romans v. 7, into an absolute one ; and applied it to Jehovah, the God of the Jews and their Scriptures, on the one hand, and to the Fatherly God revealed in Christ, on the other. As for the Church at large, its artificial exegesis simply evaded the issue. Nor was the ancient Church 01 indeed the Church of any age until quite recent times ever able frankly to face the grave problem of a moral and spiritual dualism within its body of sacred writings. It simply took over the Jewish Scriptures at the Synagogue's own valuation, on the basis of a theory of absolute inspiration ; and then extended it, uncriticised, to the New Testa- CHAP, v.] PAUL LITTLE UNDERSTOOD 207 ment, gradually and tentatively selected out of a larger mass of early Christian writings. The reason in either case was largely lack of the idea of historic development, the gradual education of humanity, as it was able to receive and bear spiritual truth. So closely is an adequate theology bound up with the general progress of human thought. No wonder, then, if Christians came to feel that Paul's Epistles contained " some things hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist, as they do also the rest of the Scriptures, to their own ruin " ; and that it was safest not to pry too closely into the meaning of those parts of his writ- ings. This applied specially to the " antinomian " reading which some of the Gnostics imposed on such passages by a tour de force, on principles derived from quite alien sources and in the face of the plain tenor of Paul's writings as a whole. Their use of philosophy was an abuse. But to draw out inductively a philosophy really based on the Biblical data, above all others, so far as concerns the religious aspects of experience, was a task in- volving a long process of reflection and much mental and moral discrimination : indeed, it is not yet complete, nor ever will be. A start, however, was made by the Apologists, who, while no less lovers of rational truth than the Gnostics, loved it more wisely as regards the conditions of finding it in and through a revelation centring in historic facts and needing to be read by the insight of moral personality. It was continued in truly Christian " Gnostics " like Clement and Origen, and the Platonising Chris- tian School of Alexandria which they founded. The striking fact remains, however, that neither type really entered into the Pauline doctrine, or 208 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE [PART n. into the distinctive Pauline experience that lay behind it, touching the place of Law in religion and in the meaning of the death of Christ, as deter- mining the consciousness of Justification or Peace with God. Much more was this the case with Christians at large, who tended to a certain moralism in religion, relative to the notion of Christianity as a " new law." The other New Testament conceptions of Salva- tion need only brief notice. The Epistle to Hebrews sets aside the Law as regulative of worship under ritual or sensuous forms : for it belongs to an order of religious reality altogether inferior to the spiritual or ethical worship of Christ-like piety, that of the filial will. For such Divine communion believers were qualified by sharing through faith in Christ's High-priestly sacrifice of Himself, or His holy filial will, in perfect homage to God. Thus their con- sciences were " sanctified " or consecrated " once for all " as by the touch of life-blood, the most purifying of all things, to an abiding holy service to God, as themselves living sacifices. This last conception is the same as the Petrine, though the way in which the Jewish Law is set aside is far more subtle and ideal. As to the Johannine Soteriology, it is continuous with the Petrine, but raises it to a higher power intellectually, turning its emotional and intuitive idealism into a reflective and con- templative one. This is of a piece with its more speculative Son of Man and Son of God Christology, to which -a fresh philosophic tinge is added by the prologue to the Fourth Gospel, in terms of a form of the Logos idea. Here it follows in the wake of Hebrews, which adopts like Philo a good deal of the later Platonic doctrine. But neither deals, any CHAP, v.] COMMON CHRISTIAN FAITH 209 more than does Paul, with the philosophical problem which such a transcendental Christology involves. How could the cosmical or universal functions of the Logos or Image of the absolute God coexist with a really human form of being, and vice versa ? This was the problem left over to later thought. But before considering this central problem for Christian reflection, let us see how the Christian doctrine as such was presented to the ordinary candidate for membership in the Church. In- struction prior to formal admission to the Society of Christian believers, through baptism, would vary with the previous ideas of those drawn to that self-surrendering trust in Jesus as Saviour which was the original meaning of " faith." Some shared, while others did not, in Jewish monotheism and its ethical conception of the service of God. Where this was present, all the new and distinctive element in Christian faith was summed up as trust in Jesus as Messiah or Lord, 1 God's authorised vice-gerent for rnan. The rest, even the Fatherhood of God and the grace of His holy Spirit operative in human souls, was taken as implicit in recognition of the Lordship of Jesus. At what stage these implicit elements of Christian faith became explicit in the baptismal confession " into the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit " cannot now be defined : probably not before the second or third generation. But almost from the first, pre- paration for baptism included committing to memory certain heads of instruction, both moral (like the " Two Ways ") and religious. Such 1 Rom. vi. 3 ; 1 Cor. i. 9 f., 12 f. ; Eph. iv. 5 ; cf. "the word in Rom. x. 8 f. 210 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE [PART n. caiechesis would vary in wording with different localities. To judge from 1 Cor. xv. 1 ff. it included the death of Christ and its connection with sins, as well as His resurrection. We first find a series of such heads, dealing with the historic manifestation of Christ, in the Ignatian Epistles (c. 110), which represent Antioch in Syria more particularly. No doubt these were, as we gather from the " Preach- ing of Peter " of about the same region and date, preceded by a head on the One God, the Creator ; and were followed by the practical issues of such a faith, possibly with some reference to the Holy Spirit of Grace. This at least is what we find in the next generation, in the Apologists, Aristides and Justin, and in Irenseus some decades later. Irenaeus in " The Apostolic Preaching " styles such instruction " the Rule (Canon] of Truth " or of Faith. To its contents at his date we shall return, after considering the actual forms assumed by the Baptismal Creed. It is natural that the two should be closely related. Both grew out of the Baptismal Formula or Divine saving Name, which, once it assumed its traditional triune form, was used by the baptizer without change. But the candidate's own confession of the Name came to be a rather expanded form of this, summing up tersely the main themes of baptismal instruction more fully set forth in what was later called the Rule of Faith. Such expansion was due to the reflex influence of the teaching Rule upon the baptismal Formula. As regards the threefold name to which Christians committed themselves in baptism, we must not think of its members as from the first conceived co-ordinately as a Godhead in Trinity a term first found c. 180, as applied to God, His Logos, CHAP, v.] THE BAPTISMAL CREED 211 and His Wisdom. When primitive believers con- fessed Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, they had in mind something less metaphysical, something more historical in form and more religious in character. They thought of the All-Sovereign God and Father of the Universe ; His Son Jesus Christ, in whom His character and love were revealed as active for men's salvation ; and the holy Spirit, that Divine energy within them, corporately and individually, especially in the " enthusiasm " or " holy Spirit " accompanying primitive baptism (John iii. 5 ; Acts xix. 1-6). In it the action of God and of the Lord Jesus was realised as grace, light, power, spiritual or eternal life in a word, the Divine inspiration (pneuma) involved in Christian experience and walk. It was in such practical aspects as these that the baptismal Name was viewed. Accordingly we find in the later and expanded forms, whether of Creed or Rule of Faith, that the Spirit is associated either with prophecy, as witnessing to Christ (so Justin), or with aspects of the Christian Salvation the Holy Church (the special home of spiritual graces), the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection and eternal life. It is hard to say how much of this was already in the baptismal Creed itself, as confessed at any given point in the second century. The Creed taught to those preparing for baptism, as cited by Justin (in terms of use at Ephesus ?) c. 150, involved belief : (i) " in God the Father Almighty : (ii) and in Christ Jesus, His Son, who was born of Holy Spirit and Mary the Virgin, who was crucified under Pontius Pilate and buried ; on the third day He rose from the dead, ascended into the heavens, is seated at the 212 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE [PART n. right hand of the Father, whence He is coming to judge living and dead : 1 (iii) and in Holy Spirit." 2 This, with its expanded account of the incarnation, may even have been the wording of Justin's bap- tismal creed, as recited shortly after the candidate entered the water for the rite of baptism. Whether, however, it yet included clauses dealing also with the saving effects of God's action among men, is an open question. As to the threefold Confession in the act of bap- tism, " sealed " by the baptizer's use of the triune Name, it was, at any rate in the Carthage of Ter- tullian's day, " somewhat fuller than what the Lord laid down in the Gospel," and almost certainly included references to the Church and to the forgiveness of sins, added to " and in Holy Spirit." In North Africa, c. 250, the third of the baptizer's ques- tions included, " Dost thou believe in remission of sins and eternal life through the Holy Church ? " In Rome, too, probably the earliest addition to the third question was a clause making explicit the faith in " remission of sins " implicit in baptism (as in Syria, c. 160-180, and in the creed of the Jerusalem Church, c. 350). It was soon preceded by one on " the Holy Church " (as in Syria, c. 160-180, see next page). The clause on "resurrection of the flesh" may be 1 This section is on the lines of Ignatius' Antiochene formulae ; also of the creed-like belief c. 180 of certain Asian presbyters in the region addressed in his letters, in " one God . . . and Christ, the Son of God, (as) having suffered . . ., died . . ., risen . . ., ascended into heaven, at the right hand of the Father, coming to judge living and dead." 2 " Which through the Prophets proclaimed beforehand all pertaining to Jesus, 1 ' adds Justin in one place, so defining the prime function of the Spirit as then conceived. CHAP, v.] ITS DEVELOPMENT 213 rather later That the Roman baptismal confession about the end of the second century had not got beyond this simple form, if it had got as far, is probable, not only from early extant interrogative forms, but also from comparison with Eastern docu- ments : for that theory is surely best which implies least dualism between early Eastern and Western practice. Now in a Syrian work, 1 seemingly of c. 160-180, we have a five-fold formula of Faith (com- pared to the Five Loaves hi the Gospel) " in the Father Almighty, in Jesus Christ our Saviour, hi the Holy Spirit the Paraclete, in the Holy Church, in the remission of sins " given as that of " Great Christianity," i.e. that of "the Great Church" as distinct from heresy. Again, in the common basis of a group of Eastern documents, going back to c. 250, if not to c. 200 (Hippolytus of Rome), we have an interrogative confession similar to the old Roman Creed. In its earliest traceable form it adds to belief in the Holy Spirit simply " and (or in) the Holy Church," in one document also "and in the resurrection of the Flesh." On the whole, then, it is doubtful if either in Africa or Rome the baptismal confession indicating faith's emphasis had (c. 200) more than four or five clauses. 2 No doubt the full baptismal Creed behind it, and recited previously by the candidate, contained not only much expansion of the second clause, de- scribing the incarnation and its sequels, but also clauses on forgiveness of sins and resurrection or eternal life. That such clauses passed into the con- fession itself, in close connection with " the Holy 1 The Testament of the Lord in Galilee, c. 16. 2 Even the interrogative confession in the Gelasian Sacramentary, with its brief second question touching Christ, tends to bear this out. 214 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE [PART n. Church," and this before 250 in North Africa 1 at least, we know from Cyprian. Later on the Creed of Mar- cellus of Ancyra in 341 implies that the form known as the " Old Roman Creed " was in its main features in use before that date ; further, about 400, Rufinus of Aquileia quotes also " descended to Hades " after " buried," and Nicetas "the communion of Saints," 2 in apposition to "the Holy Church" (Catholic), 3 as well as " eternal life " at the end. About a century later in S. Gaul these additions and a few expansions in the section on the incarnation occur in a creed like our " Apostles' Creed," though its Received Text took final shape only later still. It was not till this last stage that it claimed Apostolic origin. The following is the received text of the Apostles' Creed, additions to the older Roman basis being marked by italics. 4 I. 1 . I believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, II. 2. and in Jesus Christ, 5 His (only) Son, (our Lord), 3. who was conceived 5 of (the) Holy Spirit, born of Mary the Virgin, 4. suffered under Pontius Pilate, crucified, dead, and buried ; 5. He descended into Hades ; the third day He rose again from the dead ; 6. ascended into the heavens, is seated at the right hand of God the Father Almighty, 7. thence He is about to come to judge the living and dead. 1 Where the belief " in eternal life," as coupled with " forgive- ness of sins," first appears. 2 Peculiar to the Western Creed. 3 " Catholic '' appears in Eastern creeds long before Western. 4 Words not in its oldest traceable form (ii.-iii. cent.) stand in brackets. Justin, Iren., Tert., do not support " only," " our Lord." * Once, "Christ Jesus," "born of holy Spirit and Mary the Virgin." CHAP, v.] "THE APOSTLES' CREED" 215 III. 8. I believe in (the) Holy Spirit, 9- , the holy Church catholic, the communion of saints, 10. forgiveness of sins, 11. resurrection of the flesh, 12. life eternal. When we consider this Western Creed in the light of later types, \ve are struck by its simply religious and positive character. There is no theological definition, even little, if any, implicit negation of error, such as Docetism. Historical reality and moral responsibility were the interests in view, not metaphysical theory meant to " fence " religious faith, as Rabbinism fenced the Law, from the approach of danger. This religious emphasis, in all its self -sufficing power, persists even in the later form or *' Apostles' Creed," as though this were the very genius of the baptismal faith, as a confession of personal religion. We shall see that it was less so in the Greek East. There, in the course of the third century, metaphysics passed from the background of the interpretative Rule of Faith, which varied a good deal even in idea from region to region, into the baptismal Creed of Christians itself. This meant ultimately confusion of emphasis and vital values. The primitive conception was that expressed by Origen, one who highly valued speculative truth in its own time and place. " One should not commit to learners at the very beginning what concerns profound and more secret mysteries ; but correction of habits, improvement in method of life, the first rudiments of religious conduct and simple faith, are the things passed on to their keeping." Still it was not unnatural that as the Rule of Truth came to embody speculative ideas felt helpful for the under- 216 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE [PART n. standing and defence of the Church's faith, they should, where Greek intellectuality was strong, pass even into the baptismal creed. Experience alone could prove that loss as well as gain might result. We pass now to the Christological theories in the light of which the baptismal creed was viewed in different circles. All the chief New Testament types of reflective Christology those of Paul, the Epistle to the Hebrews, and the Johannine Gospel, especially the two earlier imply certain limitations condition- ing Christ's personal life and experience. Indeed Hebrews lays stress on the properly human nature of His moral training and perfecting in filial character, through psychological trials, springing especially from suffering and the natural dread of death. Who was the real subject of all this ? In which nature, the Divine or the human, was the seat of the Redeemer's personality ? The question brings us to the real water-shed of different types of Christology, from the first and onwards. Primitive Christianity was essentially Hebraic or Jewish in its thought touching God and man : and these ideas govern theories not only of salvation, sin, grace, but also of the Godhead and the person of Christ. We have already dealt with the Hebrew and Greek conceptions of God (Ch. iv.). But those of man are no less determinative. Accordingly, in tracing how such problems received answers in later Christian thought, it is vital to keep in mind some differences between Hebrew and Greek views of human nature. Under the Roman Empire these may be stated as follows l : 1 H. Wheeler Robinson, The Christian Doctrine of Man, 148 ff., is here freely drawn on. CHAP, v.] TWO TYPES OF PSYCHOLOGY 217 (a) The Hebrew view of man was " concrete, synthetic, and religious " : that of Greek philosophy was largely abstract and analytic. (b) The later Greek metaphysic was for the most part dualistic, contrasting mind and matter, and not referring both to one creative source in God. To Hebrew thought God was so essentially the Creator of all, that every kind of reality was traced to His will and action ; and therefore spirit and matter were con- ceived capable of constituting a unity in harmony, according to the Creator's will. (c) Hence the soul, as seat of personality, was viewed differently by Hebrew and Greek. To Greek dualism of the Platonic type, which was more congenial to religion than Stoic monism, the reason in man was the true soul, and the body its living prison, to which it was bound during life by the sensuous soul akin to the body. Here lies the root of the Gnostic denial of sin altogether for men who really " know " (1 John i. 8). To the Hebrew, however, the personal soul was the living unity of the " flesh " (or sensuous nature) and spirit ; and " spirit " was the principle of life, physical and psychical, directly derived from God or rather His Spirit, corresponding to man's " breath " (the primary sense of ruach, or " spirit "). Of this concrete unit of conscious experience no strict theory was attempted. But in its mixed sphere the will lived and had its being, growing into a moral personality, good or evil, according as it obeyed the Spirit or the flesh. For the soul yielded as a whole to the one or 218 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE [PART n. other element in it, whether in a single act or in the settled habit of the life : and the personal will leant by native tendency at first chiefly to the lower or physical side, the frail flesh. Hence man, as distinct from God, was to the Hebrew " flesh," with more or less bias to " the works of the flesh," and so to sin or the missing of his true destiny, conformity to God's will and nature. Actual human nature, therefore, could realise its idea only through supernatural or directly Divine grace of the Spirit. The Divine Wisdom as " Spirit " was viewed as an " effulgence from everlasting Light " ; and " from generation to generation passing into holy souls, she maketh friends of God and prophets." Again, according to an unknown scripture, cited in the Epistle of James (iv. 5), " The Spirit which He made to dwell in us yearneth (for us) even unto jealous love." (d) Thus there was ambiguity between the two aspects of Spirit in man, viz. spirit as human or dependent, and as Divine or transforming. In the New Testament, the community between them as to quality of life reaches completion in the conception of " Holy Spirit " or Divine inspiration in the soul. In connection with the bestowal of this, must be added the ancient conception of the action of a spiritual being at a distance, by way of efflux. 1 Thus Holy Spirit, both objectively and as experienced in man, was spoken of as " poured forth " or 1 This was common to Hebrew and Greek thought, being rooted in the same Animism, which everywhere forms the first stage of psychological reflexion. CHAP, v.] TWO EARLY CHRISTOLOGIES 219 " falling upon " believers from the exalted Christ, as Himself Spirit or Divine (2 Cor. iii. 17 /, Johniv. 24). (e) Lastly, and on the whole, " to the Greek, man is more or less self-contained : to the Hebrew, his higher nature is directly dependent on God. The most important aspect of this contrast is the Greek assumption of freedom, and the Hebrew (including the Christian) of . grace." Thus for the Hebrew there existed an ever-open door towards God, for Divine influence to play a decisive part in the making of personality, as the grace of the Spirit. Moreover, the above view of human personality its nature, seat, and genesis was not only distinctively Hebraic, rather than Hellenic or even Hellenistic ; it was religious and instinctive rather than philos- ophic or reflective in character. Such were the far-reaching differences in the conceptual forms under which Christianity came to the world through Hebrew minds, and the Greek forms through which the world at large Would tend naturally to receive it. But we must not overlook the fact that most educated Jews were no longer purely Hebraic in thought, arid consequently that some New Testament theories may well be in terms of at least semi-Hellenic psychology. With these dist met ions in mind we return to the development of Christology. To the question touching the seat of personality in Jesus the Christ, " Ebonites " or narrowly Jewish Christians replied without hesita- tion in the human nature, " flesh and blood " or " flesh." So far they were only true to Hebrew 220 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE [PART n. psychology. But for the Apostolic Church at large, as in the Synoptic Gospels, the quality of Jesus' personality was such as to imply a unique receptivity for the Divine in the very nature of his human " flesh;" which was the real secret of its actual holiness, wisdom, power. Thus even a section of second century " Ebionites," marked by strict adherence to the Mosaic Law and thereby separated from Gentile and liberal Jewish Christians, believed in a Virgin- birth for Messiah's flesh as postulated by the mystery of his personality. Still most believed that it was only at the end of a moral process that God adopted him as Messianic Son, whether at the Baptism or, as most New Testament writers suggest, rather as the risen Victor over sin and death. " Thou art my Son ; this day have I begotten thee," the formula in Ps. ii. 7 for the installation of Lord's Anointed King, was generally applied to the issue of a process of human testing and qualification. 1 This thought underlay all forms of Adoptionism. 2 Out- side the Apostolic Age, however, and Jewish Chris- tianity generally, it made but little appeal save where Gentiles .were already influenced by the Hebraic thought of the Dispersed Jews, particularly at Rome, as we shall yet see. The opposite and more Greek type of Christology started from Christ's Divine nature, viewed as a pre- existent Divine being or spirit whatever the exact 1 So in the Petrine speeches in Acts, Heb. i. 5, v. 5 ; cj. Acts xiii. 33-35, and Rom. i. 4. 1 This general idea at first implied no one conception of the Divine nature thus gradually realized as a human personality of unique quality, a new type of Divine-human Sonship. No special concern about definition on this head is shown in the New Testa- ment. The point was the uniquely Divine nature of the personality realized on earth as Messiah, through a moral process. CHAP, v.] NOT AT FIRST CONTRASTED 221 conception might be standing next in order of being, as of authority, to God Himself. This Divine person entered, wholly or partially, into human nature or flesh in Jesus, constituting his conscious personality from the first, and gradually assuming, as an added form of experience, all that emerged in the sphere of the flesh, in its physical and psychical development from birth to the Cross. This is the type predominating in the New Testament Epistles, as well as in the fourth Gospel. Plainly, behind these two types of Christology lie two distinct theories of human nature, particu- larly the nature and seat of human personality, as already described. Both agreed in their religious estimate of Jesus as the sinless Messianic Son of God, Divine in the fullest sense conceivable of human nature as each viewed it. In the one case the person of Christ was human-Divine, being " flesh," in the complete sense of manhood, inspired to its fullest capacity by the Divine nature, and therefore different from other men not in idea and constitution but in spiritual quality. In the other it was Divine-human, Godhead in some form indwell- ing human flesh, in the narrower or more physical sense, as its habitation and link with the suffering lot of men. In the latter case the humanity was rather a vehicle than properly personal, as in other men ; so that the likeness between the Saviour and the saved was not psychologically and morally complete. Yet though, when thought out, the two theories involved these contrasts, in intention and in practice they were at first, often at least, not mutually exclusive. They simply represented the aspects of an intellectually unanalysable fact which two types of mind most appreciated and dwelt on. 222 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE [PART n. Thus in human " flesh," as Hebrew thought con- ceived it, there must be an essential psychic re- ceptivity for Divine truth or " the word of God." This is implied by the argument: "If He called them gods, unto whom the word of God came," how could it be said " of Him whom the Father sanctified and sent into the world, Thou blasphemest " because He said, " I am Son of God " ? This recognition of the Divine aspect of humanity as such, hi virtue of the Divine element in personality, occurs in the very Gospel which emphasises the unique nature and authority of Christ as the Son, through whose revelation of God as Father, and of the filial life, others actually " become children of God." Conversely, it is in this Gospel of Christ as the Logos " become flesh " in a unique sense, that we read, " I can of Myself do nothing : as I hear, I judge : and My judgment is righteous, because I seek not Mine own will, but the will of Him that sent Me." It is of the very nature of sonship that " the Son can do nothing of Him- self, but what He seeth the Father doing." 1 Here we have the law of the filial life, Divine or human, as one of dependent receptivity in its knowledge and power, which applies both to Christ the Son of God in His representative humanity, as Son of Man, and to the sons of men, who through Him are brought to realise their potential destiny, as sons of God or Divine in a doubly dependent sense. Thus from the side of moral experience the dualism between the human and Divine natures fades away, 2 and therewith the mental and moral 1 John v. 19-30, x. 33-36. 1 This in the Epistle to Hebrews is the more important that for its author the pre-incarnate Son is as essentially Divine as in the CHAP, v.j AS THEY WERE LATER ON 223 Docetism to which non-Hebraic thought, both Greek and Oriental, naturally tended in Christology, even in circles not Gnostic or heretical. Hebraic psychology, in not treating man as a self-contained and closed nature in himself, apart from God, but as open and plastic on his higher side to the Divine nature or Spirit so that human personality was a Divinely conditioned spiritual product left room for a conception of incarnation as the genesis of a single personality by a genuine moral process. That is, the one Divine-human person might be gradually or historically constituted, as the Divine factor interpenetrated the human by reciprocal action within the conscious will. This is what the Gospels and Epistles generally imply touching Christ, who having been " in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin," became thereby " perfected " in Sonship and so fitted to be " cause of eternal salva- tion to all who obey Him." 1 But Greek and Oriental thought soon replaced Hebraism in the general mentality of Eastern Christianity. Accord- ingly the Divine and human natures came to be con- ceived mainly on metaphysical rather than ethical lines, viz., as " substances " mutually exclusive in essence ; and then there was no way of really uniting them in thought into a personal unity. Indeed, the very conception of personality, save in Stoic circles, was but feebly present to the Hellenistic mind, though more so to the Roman. We must now try to trace the course of Christ- fourth Gospel, which does not suggest that the historic Son was subject to human moral development ; further, too, his Hellenistic or Alexandrine conception of Christ's pre-temporal nature is nearest that of later Greek theology. 1 Hebrews iv. 15, v. 8 f. vii. 28, ii. 10, 17 f. 224 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE [PART n. ology in Graeco-Roman Christianity outside the New Testament. All early Christology was ex- perimental and devotional in spirit and origin. It rested on the broad religious impression conveyed by the Gospel story, confirmed by actual experience of Christ's power in human souls felt in corporate worship as well as individually. He was the medium of a knowledge of God and a spiritual quickening new in character and effects. He was, in fact, for Christians God manifest in the flesh. But this shaped itself to their minds in various ways conditioned by race psychology or reflective teaching. The influence of these factors went back to the very beginning in each locality, in some cases to dates earlier than the New Testament writings. Thus a local standpoint and emphasis marked the view of Christ current in Antioch, Alexandria, Ephesus, Rome, even as in Corinth. We can discriminate two distinct types of Christology from the first, as men pondered the great problems which would soon arise for thought. In what sense is Jesus the Son of God ? How was the Divine element entitling Him to that designation related to the humanity which the Saviour of men shared with them ? The answers laid stress on one or other of the two great aspects of Christ's person, the Divine and the human. At first emphasis in most circles outside Palestinian Judaism, where Ebionism was strongest, fell overwhelmingly on the former. So much was this the result of the religious impression produced on Hellenistic minds by the message of Christ's personality, words, and works, that we have prob- ably no adequate idea of the prevalence of Docetism in naive, undeveloped forms, in all Christian circles CHAP, v.] THE PRIMARY GREEK TYPE 225 not safeguarded against it by some infusion of Hebraism. Those who are known as " Docetists " were simply the thoroughgoing representatives of this mode of thought, applying it all round, in order to save the Saviour from contact with matter, assumed to be inherently evil or at least degrading to the Divine. He can only have " seemed " to inhabit a body and suffer with it. What held back the mass of Christians from this extreme was the sense that, as men were saved through Christ's sufferings on the Cross, these bodily infirmities at least must have been real ; otherwise their effect, the salvation, inclusive of the body, achieved by the Resurrection was equally " apparent " only and not real. This was decisive for most minds ; and so they recoiled from Docetism as to Christ's bodily experience as a whole, yet remained in vague- ness or doubt as to the reality of the psycho- logical limitations which seemed implied in the Gospel story, and were integral to the humanity that was to be saved by being shared by the Divine. It was within this debatable sphere that Christians at large held one or other of two alternative views. The type most prevalent in non-Hebraic circles in the Eastern Mediterranean conceived the Incarnation on dualistic lines. A Divine spiritual being or Spirit, God's fellow in creation when He said, " Let us make man in our image, after our likeness," entered " the vessel " of the body or flesh, in order to " become manifest " through it ; suffer through it, offer it as sacrifice on behalf of our sins, raise it out of death ; and so impart incorruption to it as first-fruits of human redemption, on the principle of Salvation in representative sample. This is the line of thought in the " Epistle of Barnabas," prob- p 226 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE [PART n. ably written in Alexandria about 75 A.D., and a work which we have good reason to regard as widely typical in this respect. Owing to emphasis on such a " Spirit " or Divine nature as constituting the whole personality of the historic, no less than of the pre-existent Son of God, this type of Christ - ology is styled " Pneumatic." It presented certain local varieties of conception, and in its later forms was qualified by the influence of the Apostolic Epistles and the Gospel of John. It appears most strikingly in the Homily known as 2 Clement (c. 120-130), also probably Alexandrine, where we read : " If Christ the Lord, who saved us, being first spirit, then became flesh, and so called us ; in like manner also shall we in this flesh receive our reward." And again, in a passage typical of the way in which New Testament thought, here that of Eph. v. 23 ff., underwent uncongenial development, it says : " If we do the will of God, we shall be of the first Church (prior to the Jewish), which is spiritual (transcendental), which was created before the sun and moon. . . . But I do not suppose that you are ignorant that the living Church is the body of Christ : for the Scripture saith, ' God made man, male and female.' The male is Christ, and the female is the Church. And the Books (Scriptures of the Old Testament) and the Apostles plainly declare that the Church existeth not now for the first time, but hath been from the beginning ; for she was spiritual, as our- Jesus also was spiritual, but was manifested in the last days that He might save us. Now the Church, being spiritual (transcendental), was manifested in the flesh of Christ, thereby showing us that, if any of us guard her in the flesh and defile her not, he shall receive her CHAP, v.] AS SEEN IN IGNATIUS 227 again in the Holy Spirit (i.e. the transcendental element, through which incorruption is imparted to corruptible flesh) ; for this (actual) flesh is the counterpart in form (dependent impress as of a seal) of the Spirit (i.e. the transcendental unity of Church and Christ, in whose ' likeness ' man was made, and of whose body the Christian becomes part). No man, then, if he hath denied the copy (the flesh) shall receive the original for his portion (share in Christ and His mystic Body). This, therefore, is what He meaneth, brethren ; Guard ye the flesh, that ye may partake of the Spirit (the Spirit Christ)." Next the preacher adopts another way of looking at the analogy of man's flesh and spirit, and continues : " But if we say that the flesh is (represents) the Church and the spirit (in man) Christ, well then, he that hath dealt wantonly with the flesh hath dealt wantonly with the Church ; such an one, therefore, shall not partake of the Spirit, that is, Christ. So excellent is the life and immortality which this flesh can receive as its portion, when the Holy Spirit (the nature of Christ as im- parted or immanent) hath adhered to it." This is a highly significant passage. It illustrates the different use of familiar terms and conceptions to be reckoned with. Indeed, it casts light on the whole conception of Salvation, although the way it works out its ideas is partly a local mannerism. Other specimens of Pneumatic Christology meet us in the Gospel of Peter and in several Apocryphal Acts, as well as in the Christian parts of the " Ascension of Isaiah," and persists well into the third century in less-known writings. Even Ignatius of Antioch seems to have thought in somewhat similar fashion, but along more biblical and especially Johannine lines. So we read of " Jesus Christ, who was with the Father before the ages and in the end appeared " ; "'who is His Word come forth from silence, who 228 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE [PART n. in all things was well-pleasing to Him that sent Him." But Word (Logos) has here a descriptive rather than technical sense, meaning God's full utterance or self-revelation out of comparative silence. Elsewhere he writes : " There in one Physician, of fleshly nature and of spiritual, be- gotten and unbegotten, in man God, in death true Life, both from Mary and from God, first passible and then impassible, Jesus Christ our Lord." Here " God " is applied to Christ in a way other than that of the fourth century Creeds, namely, qualitatively and in contrast to manhood, much as Ignatius, speaking for Christians, calls Christ " our God." Ignatius, too, gives " flesh " a wider and more Hebraic particularly Johannine and there- fore a more psychological meaning, than was usual in the Pneumatic Christology of this period. He refers to the dispensation (" economy ") of the In- carnation as " relating to the new Man, Jesus Christ, consisting in faith towards Him and love towards Him, in His passion and resurrection." Here Salvation appears, as usually in Ignatius, in its two related aspects, religious experience and its objective basis, side by side. " God made manifest human- wise unto newness of everlasting life," is Ignatius' definition of the essence of Christianity. 1 Christ's own person is human salvation in sample, the union of Divine Spirit -nature and human flesh-nature or sensuous consciousness, in such a way that the former determines the will or self-conscious life of the whole composite personality and makes it spiritual. This is the essential idea of Christian Salvation, in all its forms of Christology and piety. But when he calls faith the " flesh " of Christ and Eph. 17-20 j Magn. 6-8. CHAP, v.] "ADOPTIONISM" ITS OPPOSITE 229 love His " blood," he shows that his conceptions are of the genuinely primitive or experimental type, rather than the later Grsecised metaphysical kind. The opposite type of Christology to the Pneumatic was the " Adoptionist." This on Hellenic soil differed in spirit and emphasis from the Ebionite form, but agreed in placing Christ's personality in His humanity and in recognising complete incarnation, with the dignity of Messianic or delegated Lordship among men, as the final issue of a moral process covering the historic ministry. One centre of this type of thought as known to us was the Roman Church, where the Jewish strain was strong from the first. It was quite hi keeping too with Roman realism to conceive the title " Son of God " primarily as relative to Christ's historic person and its spiritual quality as shown in its work, whether on earth or subsequently at the Father's right hand of power in heaven, whence the gift of Holy Spirit influence was poured forth in the Church's experience. The Roman temper appreciated in the Saviour of men an achievement and example of victory over sin and death by perfect moral obedience, far more than the full revelation of Divine truth through the flesh, as simple medium of earthly manifestation for a trans- cendent Spirit-nature. This ethical rather than metaphysical Christology, that of the Servant-Son on the lines of the figure in Isaiah liii., appears already in Clement's letter (c. 95), the whole religious thought of which is mainly on the lines of the Epistle of Peter. " Have we not one God, and one Christ, and one Spirit of Grace that was shed upon us, and one calling in Christ ? " " Let all the Gentiles know that Thou art God alone, and Jesus Christ is Thy Child, and we are Thy people." 230 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE [PART n. But it is in " The Shepherd " of Hermas, brother of the Roman bishop Pius, c. 140, that this mode of viewing the person of Christ is most elaborated. The very manner in which the subject is treated l reveals the practical temper of Roman Christianity. His object is to enforce the true way of meriting the approval of God. Many were now seeking it by periodic facts, conceived as special watch-duty (statio) on the part of Christ's soldiers. To illustrate a more excellent way of acceptable service or sacrifice to God, the Christian " prophet " sets forth the Lord's own example, that of his self-denying service to the point of supererogation, seen in the toils and hardships crowned by the Passion which He voluntarily added to his original task, as sent to call men to Repentance. It was by such free devotion that Jesus attained to the dignity and power of the historic " Son of God " and co-heir to God's proper Son, the pre-temporal Holy Spirit. It was perhaps what Paul wrote in Phil. ii. 4-11, touching One " in the form of God " who assumed " the form of a ser- vant," and in that new character attained " the Name that is above every name " and universal homage as " Lord," which suggested Hernias' own parable of the devoted Servant in God's Vineyard. Only where- as Paul, on the lines of Pneumatic Christology, makes the transcendent Son Himself assume the servile estate of " flesh " proper to humanity, Hermas conceives the original seat of Christ's personality to be " the flesh which God chose," wherein to " make to dwell the Holy Spirit " (viz. the Spirit-Son, dynamically dis- tributed as Spirit), according to its capacity, even as in the case of other men. Then just as " this flesh (of Christ), having served the Spirit blamelessly," 1 For what follows, see Similitudes, V. and IX. xii.-xv. CHAP, v.] AS SEEN IN HERMAS 231 had as " wages " the position of co-sonship with the Holy Spirit or heavenly Son ; so " all flesh shall receive wages." to wit the eternal life proper to Spirit, if such flesh, " wherein the Holy Spirit came to dwell," be found undefiled and so " defile not the Holy Spirit also." And the greater the self-denial of the flesh or sensuous nature of Christians in chastity or fasting especially in order to feed those in need the greater the wages of " glory with God " for " good done outside the command of God." Thus Hermas distinguished the historic " Son of God," Jesus Christ, and the transcendent and supra- mundane Spirit associated with God as His Son. At first the personality of the former belonged most to the sphere of humanity as a being of sense, rooted in the flesh. But in the end, through gradual inter- penetration by the Spirit -nature (shared by Christians), in virtue of obedience and harmony of will (a moral process incumbent on " all flesh "), it was so assimi- lated to this indwelling Spirit that it was transformed into the Spiritual or Divine order of being, to such a unique degree as to share the Divine prerogatives of the transcendent Spirit-Son, from whom the indwelling Spirit in Christians is derived. This, then, was the sense in which Hermas believed " in God the Father Almighty, and in Jesus Christ His Son, born of Holy Spirit and Mary the Virgin." Similarly by " Holy Spirit." succeeded by " the holy Church," he would understand the saving inspiration or " powers of the Son of God " immanent in the Church what later theology would have called " the grace of the Holy Spirit." Now when we look at this Christology in the light of what has been said touching Hebrew and Greek psychology respectively, we see that it is continuous 232 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE [PART n. with the former. In this respect it is a theory of adoptive Sonship in that special " flesh which God willed " or chose. On the other hand it so far shares the Pneumatic Christology of 2 Clement that in Christ was uniquely incarnate, as the higher side of His person, a truly Divine and transcendent nature, here called the Son or first-created 1 Holy Spirit, a super-angelic Being. That is, the whole soul of the man Christ, as the sphere of moral consciousness, partaking both of " the flesh " or natural order and of the Spirit or Divine Order, was the seat of personality. But in virtue of perfect harmony with the promptings of the Spirit, the resultant moral personality finally became so assimilated to the Divine as to be qualitatively divine or Son of God in a unique sense, and so the principle, and moral basis of like transformation for His fellows. Thus He became the medium of Salvation to mankind, its Saviour and Lord in the Messianic sense. From all this we see that the Adoptionist and Pneumatic Christologies were trying each to do justice to one side of a twofold problem. The former witnessed to the fact that Christ's humanity was as real as ours, and that therefore his moral personality was realised under the same sort of psychological conditions. The latter felt that the spiritual quality and power of His actual person, as manifested in " the flesh " or sphere of humanity, was as Divine as that of God Himself ; that therefore the very basis or essence of his personality, its special principle, was the Divine nature or essence ; 2 and this it conceived 1 According to what seems the original text of the Latin version. 1 Thus in the Acts of Thomas Christ is viewed in simple religious fashion as "God from God Most High" and also "man despised CHAP, v.] REAL SYNTHESIS LACKING 233 as a pre-existent Spirit-Son, who simply added to Himself the capacity of suffering and experimental sympathy with men especially with a view to suffer for sins in assuming the flesh as the garment of sensibility. Each was strong in what it saw and asserted, but weak in what it failed to see as implicit in the historic facts and to provide for in theory. The main cause of this was that an adequate psycho- logy of the deeper nature of man as such, as a self- conscious moral being or person, was not to hand. Moreover, this defect was never supplied in ancient Christian theology, to say nothing of later times. This meant that a real synthesis for thought between the two aspects of the person of Christ was never attained. What we shall see is an oscillation between emphasis on one or other side of the problem, attended with controversial discussion, in the course of which attention becomes mainly fixed on the Divine element, to the neglect of the human in any complete or real sense. In the end the problem is virtually given up, and the mere data of it are laid down side by side, with a certain definition of the Divine factor made binding. The whole process is reflected in the correlative doctrine of human Sal- vation, once the Hebraic conception of the unity of personality as moral consciousness begins to fade. As the moral personality of Christ came to play less and less part in the theory of His person, so the kind of Salvation thought of as primarily communi- cated by Him became metaphysical, a mysterious new essence conveyed through sacraments, in which Christ secretly wrought on human nature below consciousness and will, i.e. personality. and slain": chh. xxvi. f., xlvii.-l., Ixxx., cf. the Acts of John, Ixxxv. f. 234 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE [PART n. This Hellenistic interpretation alike of Christ and of the salvation mediated by Him begins to appear more clearly, and on the lines it was henceforth to follow, about the middle of the second century, in the thought of Justin Martyr. Though he spent the close of his life in Rome, it was as an independent teacher, doing informally very much what the founders of the Cathechetical School of Alexandria did a generation or so later, namely, winning as a Christian philosopher disciples to the Master of Divine Truth. His thought had been formed before coming to Rome, probably at Ephesus, where the influence of the Johannine writings was dominant. It was there that he would naturally acquire that Logos Christ ology which he uses as something that could be assumed, as it certainly could not as part of the local Roman tradition. The rise and spread of the full philosophic Greek doctrine of the Logos, as distinct from the more Hebraic form in which it appears in the Fourth Gospel and in Ignatius, was a factor of immense significance for the future of Christianity. In the prologue to the Fourth Gospel the unique (monogenes) " Son " of God, the Likeness of God, and also the archetype after which man was made (possibly the sense of the " Son of Man " in this Gospel, cj. iii. 13, vi. 62), is described in a passage manifestly based on Gen. i. as " the Word " (Logos) or uttered Thought of God, Himself God or Divine in nature. The term Logos is there probably adopted as embodying a conception which would arrest and help Greek readers, rather than as congenial to the writer himself, who prefers the more concrete and personal " Son." Here we have the utmost bound to which Hebraic thought went, or could go, in carrying back the manifestation of CHAP, v.] EARLY LOGOS CHRISTOLOGY 235 Eternal Life in Christ into a doctrine of Godhead, as modified by the implication of the highest Chris- tology possible on the concrete, personal lines of the Hebrew genius. But while it boldly applied to the dependent or son-like manifestation of Deity the predicate " God," it reserved the personal use of the term, with the definite article, for the Father, and did not include the Logos within God in this sense. He was " unique (unicus = monogenes) Son, lying hi the Father's bosom." This maintains a distinction proper to the Hebraic conception of the Unity of God. But this distinction involved great difficulties for philosophic thought, both as to God and as to the Logos, as medium of creation and preservation of all things. Thus the Johannine theology, which crowns the reflective Christology of the New Testament as a whole, was a standing challenge to the Greek mind, with its more specu- lative bent, to carry its unity in diversity to a further point of intellectual synthesis. Of this new Grsecising tendency Justin was the first great example. He saw that " the Word " in Scripture meant one aspect under which " a certain rational Power," begotten from God Himself " as a Beginning (First Principle) before all creatures," was set forth, along with other aspects Glory of the Lord, Son, Wisdom, Messenger, Lord, or God. 1 But it was just this aspect which was most real to his own thought as a philosopher, and the one through which he felt the Divine nature of Jesus could best be grasped by men of Graeco-Roman culture. Hitherto Christology had been practical hi spirit and emphasis. It sprang directly out of religious intuition, verified in personal and corporate experi- 1 Dialogue tcith Trypho, the Jew, Ixi.-lxii. 236 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE [PART n. ence : its philosophy, whether of God or of man, was mainly instinctive and implicit, and little store was laid by it ; it was fluid, and varied in different circles. Now, however, metaphysics began to enter more and more into the very texture of faith, trans- forming it into a definite theology, which ended in being made the test of Christian communion. The change first appears in the Greek Apologists of the Antonine Age (c. 138-180), an age when philosophy was widely diffused. Its central idea was the Divine principle of Reason (Logos) felt to exist in and behind all things. It was conceived on two main lines ; by the Stoics as a great Law of Nature, with its twin sides or aspects, bodily and mental ; by the Platonists, of one degree or another, as the archetypal cause of all the ideal forms which con- stitute the very reality of the world of experience for thought. But in all its forms the Logos was the great master idea of the higher thought ; and it was, like Evolution to-day, one in which cultured pagans and Christians both felt at home. It was thus the great middle term between them. Further, it begins to be used as the central category in Chris- tian theology about the time when Gnosis was making the Gospel appear as a philosophy of the Universe. Such Gnosis was only the " Christian " species of a wider pre-Christian genus found in pagan, and to a lesser degree in Jewish religion. It was marked by an eclectic mode of thought akin to modern Theosophy, and like it was indeterminate and variable in character. But it usually started from the radical dualism between matter as evil, the source of ignorance and vice, and mind or reason as akin to the Divine. The philosophy woven into its many systems was mostly amateur and sentimental CHAP, v.] IN THE APOLOGISTS 237 in type, expressing itself in dreams of the imagina- tion, clothed " in mythological shapes plucked from incongruous paganisms as well as from the Jewish and Christian Scriptures " (Hort). It was largely against this mode of thought touching the Gospel and its Revealer, that the Logos theology was developed by cultured minds more representative of the Christian consciousness, so as to attain a like philosophic end in a better way. We cannot trace in detail the history of dogmatic definition on Logos lines, with its manifold varieties of form in different circles and at different stages in the process. We can only indicate typical tenden- cies, keeping before our minds especially those aspects of the Logos already present in the Fourth Gospel, viz. first as pre-existent, then as manifest in the historical Christ, and afterwards in the repre- sentative function of t*he Holy Spirit. To these we must add, as due to Greek thought itself, the Logos as an integral element in Godhead proper. Between the two senses of " God the Father Almighty," namely, as distinct from and as inclusive of the Logos (as it came to be conceived), there was large room for confusion and misunderstanding. The latter aspect meant a kind of thinking back into the infinite and absolute being of God which the Biblical writers never essay. Even the Johannine theology does not try to explain how the Logos came to be " with God " and truly Divine in the pre-temporal " beginning," relative to creation. Much of the significance of the Apologists lies in the way they face the philosophy of religion as bear- ing on Christianity, and so the many-sided problem of general and special Revelation. They start with the idea of the Logos as germinal in every rational 238 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE [PART n. soul, and the source of moral freedom, and so of responsibility for its use with reward or penalty at the goal ; and consider how the Gospel, as the special revelation of Truth and moral Freedom, stands to this general background of human oppor- tunity. To begin with, the revelation through the Logos, present in all men in some degree, had appeared in concentrated fulness and clearness in Jesus Christ, " the Word in visible form in flesh." Relative to religious truth in particular, the differ- ence between the general and special revelation of the Logos that in other men, individually (a Heraclitus or a Socrates) or generally, and that in Jesus was one between Truth in partial measure and the whole Truth in balanced fulness. With the psychological conditions of this contrast Justin and other Apolo- gists did not deal. Doubtless they would, if asked, have correlated it with Christ's sinlessness. But they do not seem to have dwelt upon His own " filial consciousness," as we should phrase it. Herein lay a main source of the defects in their theology, as in ancient Christology generally. If we ask how Justin harmonised the universalism of his Logos theory of Christians before Christ, " like Socrates among Greeks and Abraham among rude peoples," with the unique saving grace of the Church's sacraments ; the answer seems to be that the latter were indispensable only to a share in the temporary millen- nial Kingdom on earth. This was still the prime object of hope with most Christians in the second century, as we see in Irenseus, who explains at length how during the Millennium the righteous will be prepared for the final order beyond. During it " the saved ascend through the Spirit to the Son, and through the Son to the Father." This temporal aspect of CHAP, v.] TATIAN'S DIVINE METAPHYSICS 239 the Kingdom of Christ, to which sacraments are also relative, is apt to be forgotten by us moderns ; hence we often fail to see with the real perspective of most ante-Nicene writers, but especially those of the first two centuries. In Justin we feel two streams of thought ; the one traditional Biblical in basis, but already modified, e.g. as regards Eucharistic realism the other more his own and marked by Greek philosophic Universalism of outlook. This latter element as it appears hi Justin is fresh and vigorous in its broad human sympathy, a trait which the Logos idea still retains in Clement and Origen at Alexandria its special home much as in Philo's liberal Judaism. Starting, then, from the fundamentally dual aspect of God as transcendent (God the Father) and as in contact with finite Creation (the Logos and Spirit of God) the Apologists grapple with the problems of Biblical revelation with great earnestness and subtlety. The latter quality of their metaphysics is nowhere brought home to us more than in Tatian, disciple of Justin Martyr. God is Spirit. But the perfect God, the absolute object of worship, is Spirit in a diviner sense than is true of the Spirit of God which pervades matter. This latter answers to the soul in animate bodies, like the Stoic Anima mundi ; and is not an object of worship on an equality with the perfect God. The transcendent God is the Creator of " material spirits " (through the Spirit), and of the forms hi matter (by the Logos). The first principle of creation is the power of the Logos, who is " Spirit produced from the Spirit (God), and Reason sprung from rational potency " in God. This Logos is " first-begotten product of the Father," distinct yet not separate, arising by an act of volition from the 240 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE [PART n. undifferentiated being of God, who is Himself the original substrate (hypostasis) of the universe. " But since all potency of things, both visible and invisible, was with Him, He himself constituted all things (in essence) within (lit. with) Himself through rational potency." Thus the Logos, already intrinsic to God's rationality, passes forth into distinct or substantive being, in order to be the principle of the world. As portioned off, the Logos attains relative or " economic " distinctness, without impoverishing its source, any more than does thought in passing from mind to mind. This Logos, when begotten, begot in turn our creation, Himself fashioning matter, derived by projection from God, the primal ground of all. As to the Spirit of God which pervades matter (being as it were God's animating breath), though one and the same in itself, it assumes various forms of vital energy in matter in the heavenly bodies, in angels, in plants and waters, in men, in animals. It is in fact God's power immanent in creation, attaining different degrees of the Divine under different finite conditions. In particular it appears as the Divine Spirit in souls that live justly or as obedient to Wisdom, and so draw to themselves the Spirit as akin ; while the disobedient reject the Spirit which acts as God's representative in man. The Spirit of God, however conceived, was regarded as subordinate to the Logos, the " second God " as some phrased it. For all theology was really on dual rather than trinitarian lines before Tertullian's day. Even the first use of the term " trinity " in relation to the Godhead, in Theophilus of Antioch (c. 180), shows how formal and little thought out was this mode of speech; for he describes the Divine triad (trios) as "God and His Logos and His Wisdom " (ii. 15). Or again, in the words of Hippolytus, we have ** One God, but two personal forms (prosopa), and by special dispensation, and CHAP, v.] IREKffiUS' THEOLOGY 241 in the third place, the grace of the Holy Spirit " ; while Tertullian says the Incarnate Logos sent from heaven "the vicarious force of the Holy Spirit, to lead believers." We have dwelt on doctrine in the Apologists, because they show so frankly the difficulties involved in the attempt to state the Christian faith, no longer in the naive symbolism native to Biblical religion, but in the metaphysical terms of Greek philosophy so different in certain respects even from our own. Nor did the new departure escape comment at the time. Tertullian remarks that the " more simple sort " were uneasy about the " economy " or Logos doctrine of a second being in Deity. The plain Roman bishop Callistus (c. 220) called it Ditheism. Indeed, he was theologically all at sea when it and the " Monarchian " theories proper (see next chapter), which strove to set aside the Logos theology, both reached Rome from Asia ; and like his predecessors Victor and Zephyrinus, he viewed the Son as God incarnate in a " medalist " way, which later would have been called Sabellian. It is in Irenaeus (c. 180-190), the pioneer of central Catholicism, that we first see the Logos idea entering decidedly into the Rule of Faith behind the baptismal Creed. His master idea is that man's destiny from the first was likeness to God (deificatio) ; that all lost in Adam is restored in more perfect form in Christ, the incarnate Logos-Son, in whose person the history of man is summed up afresh in a new Head (recapitu- latio). Thus His person was human salvation in sample and germ, viz. the union of Deity and the creature, the restored " image and likeness of God " in our flesh. Irenseus' importance lies in the fact 242 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE [PART n. that he represents more than one line of tradition. His youth had been passed in the province of Asia, in touch with Polycarp and his circle ; he spent some time in Rome ; and most of his life-work was done in Lyons, the centre of Christianity in South Gaul. In his work on Apostolic Preaching (cc. 5-7) he set forth this Church's Rule of Faith as follows : There is one God the Father, Creator of all. As a rational Being, He has through His Logos fashioned creation, and as Spirit has adorned all by His Spirit. To the one creation owes its objective fixity as nature, to the other the variety of forces at work in it. Thus the Word is rightly called the Son, the Spirit the Wisdom of God (these are the two " hands of God" wherewith He made man). In "the rule of our faith " the chiefest point is God the Father, the Creator of all : the second is the Word of God, the Son of God, who in the end, in order to sum up all, became man among men, to destroy death and exhibit life, and bring about a fellowship and union between God and man : the third is the Holy Spirit, through which the prophets prophesied and the righteous were guided in the right way, and which in the end poured itself forth after a new fashion on mankind, renewing men for God. Accordingly the baptism of our regeneration goes over these three points. For the know- ledge of the Father is the Son, and the knowledge of the Son is through the Holy Spirit ; while it is the function of the Son to apportion the Spirit, after the good pleasure of the Father, to those whom and as the Father wills. The deduction of the later realistic sacramental theory from the Logos Christology is very apparent. Irenseus, following in the wake of Justin, says that after the Eucharistic invocation the Word enters the consecrated elements in such a way that " the body and blood of Christ " is really but mysteriously present in them, as food for " the substance of CHAP, v.] LOGOS AND SPIRIT 243 our flesh," conferring on it incorrupt]' on. Or it was "the power of the Logos," as Serapion has it (c. 350) energy emitted from the Logos as Spirit, and so called the " Holy Spirit " of God or the Logos which was conceived to interpenetrate the elements and so make them Christ's sacramental body and blood. For " the Spirit," says Clement of Alex- andria, " is the strength of the Logos, as blood is of flesh " : and again " Spirit is a substance, subtle, immaterial, and which issues forth formless." So, too, Irenaeus says that it was from the Logos that the prophets had the prophetic gift, His prophetic Spirit or energy in their heart : for He gives form to the Spirit (as plastic power), being Himself the expressed form (figuratio) of the unconditioned Father. The application of such theology to man's salva- tion, as made by so typical a writer as Irenaeus, is as follows : "The Word of the Father and Spirit of God, united to the ancient substance of the creature, Adam, constituted a living and perfect man, fit to receive the perfect Father ; that as in the animal man we are all dead, so in the spiritual we may all be made alive." Thus " the Father anointed, the Son was anointed, the Spirit was the unction." This unction overflows from the Son to men as His fellows, having been " habituated " by dwelling with the Son in manhood " to dwell with mankind, God's creature ; working in them the will of the Father and renewing them into the newness of Christ," the new archetype of manhood. 1 1 It is interesting to note how, after two momentous generations of fresh interpretative thought, Irenaeus here recalls to us an earlier writer of Johannine type, Ignatius : but with significant differences. 244 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE [PART n. The Spirit is now given as the Spirit of Christ, in keeping with Christian experience. The Spirit's action is conditioned by the Incarnation, and is in turn the inner light by which the Son is truly seen, so as to lead men to the Father. Accordingly " where the Spirit of the Father is, there is a living man," as Christ was " a living and perfect man," and as Serapion prays that his people be made " living men." Again, " where the Church is, there is also the Spirit of God ; and where the Spirit of God is, there is the Church and all grace ; for the Spirit is truth." The Spirit, indeed, was felt to be the essence of the Church, 1 its life the " life-giving Spirit." Hence the sequence, "I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy Church," followed by a brief account of " all grace " as its birthright. To this idea fresh emphasis was given by the African form of Baptismal Confession quoted by Cyprian. " Be- lievest thou in the forgiveness of sins and eternal life through the holy Church ? " Here, at the end of the second century, when the emphasis of Christianity, seen in the Rule of Faith which interprets the traditional baptismal " Symbol " or Creed, is passing definitely from its primitive to its " Catholic " type, we may fitly pause, and take up the story of development afresh in a new chapter. 1 Cf. Tertullian, and Hippolytus in his work Concerning Spirit- gift*. CHAPTER VI CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE II. FROM IREN^EUS TO AUGUSTINE " For what He became in our nature, for our sakes, rectified for us all this." HIPPOLYTUS, Contra Noetum (ad fin.). <( He (the Logos) became human, that we might be made Divine." ATHANASIUS. " Faith is not an accuracy of logic, but a rectitude of heart/' COLERIDGE. IRENJEUS struck the key-note of Greek theology at its best, when he said of the Divine Son or Logos, " He for the sake of His own boundless love was made what we are, in order that He might render us what He himself is." But the form which this idea took became in the course of the next two centuries far less historical and experimental, far more metaphysical and abstract ; with results momentous for Christianity. The process by which this came about must now be traced. On the whole it is marked by tendencies (i) to press the analysis of the Divine and human aspects of the historic Christ to so sharp a contrast of " natures " in the abstract, that these could not be thought together again in a personal unity ; (ii) to carry speculation as to the Logos beyond its relation to human ex- perience, back into the Eternal Being of Deity ; (iii) to lose touch with the unity of the Saviour's moral personality the real unity for us men, and 245 246 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE [PART n. that which yields our religious knowledge of both Deity and manhood and so to realise less and less the saving power of His person as set forth in the Gospel narrative ; (iv) to conceive salvation as the divinising of human nature as nature, i.e. physi- cally rather than personally, through transfusion with the Divine nature. In tracing the operation of these tendencies we shall be growingly conscious of different emphasis as between the Greek East and the Latin West, in proportion as Greece relaxes its hold on the Roman mind, both as a language and as a spirit. Here the change is manifest from about the middle of the third century. But the distinct genius of each appears already in Clement of Alexandria and Tertullian of Carthage. Clement was " Christocentric " in his piety ; but his Christian experience was not profound enough to revolutionise his categories of thought. He was not fully mastered by the personality of the one Christ, as the Divine working in and through the human. His was the Christ of a true and tender idealism, hardly of a complete manhood, compact of passion and reason. There was something lack- ing in the reality of the humanity he attributed to the Saviour of men. He was obsessed by the Greek philosophic notion of the Divine as the opposite of all finite being. God in Himself, the Absolute, was beyond all forms of thought. Yet religiously Clement is the more glad to take refuge in reliance on the conditioned aspect of God's being, the Reason or Logos revealed in the Universe, and through Him to cry "-Abba, Father." This Logos appeared as Christ in such a humanity as was consistent with His own " passionless " nature. Christ was in fact the beau ideal of a loving Stoic " apathy." " He CHAP, vi.] GREEK AND LATIN THEOLOGY 247 Himself was entirely without passion, and into Him entered no emotional movement, neither pleasure nor pain." Clement would have found it hard to do justice to the language of the New Testament as to Christ becoming qualified as Saviour of men by filial obedience learned experimentally through sufferings. Indeed His body even was not as ours. " For He ate, not on account of His body, which was held together by holy power, but that it might not occur to those who consorted with Him to think otherwise of Him." This is worth noting as an extreme case of a semi-docetic tendency running through Greek theo- logy. It has an essential bearing on its idea of Salvation, namely the Divine essence metaphysically mediated through body, rather than Divine life as personality or character mediated by the Spirit through the psychological conditions of Christ's historical revelation. Only whereas Clement thought of body but as symbolism for the mystic self-communication of the Logos, Greek and Latin theology for the most part thought of it as real medium of the Divine nature, conveyed through sacraments to corruptible human nature, which was to be divinised and so share eternal life. Such a Christology, and its theory of Salvation, could make little of the Cross and its experimental treat- ment in the New Testament. To Clement " the blood of the Lord is twofold : there is the fleshly, whereby we have been redeemed from corruption ; and the spiritual, by which we have been anointed." This dualistic view is characteristic of his position, as determined on the one hand by traditional ideas, and on the other by his own mystic spiritualism. 248 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE [PART n. In Tertullian, with his Stoic realism and concrete Latin outlook, both Christology and the sacra- mental channels by which the objective fruits of the Incarnation are conveyed were less subtly conceived. He seizes firmly the plain fact of the historical person of Christ, but after a lawyer's external manner rather than from the inner or psychological side. To him the human flesh was no mere " mask " for the Logos to play His part in, but a real constituent of the incarnate Christ, no less so than the other " substance " (used in the legal sense of property, as well as in its philosophic mean- ing) possessed by the one person, to wit, " Spirit," the nature of the Logos as well as of God the Father. To him, again, " person " had the concrete sense proper to Roman law, that of a party to a case, as distinct from a character or role on the stage (re- presented by an acting-mask), as it tended to be in the usage of the Greek equivalent (prosopon). So he spoke of one person in two " substances," the Divine and human, each of which preserved its own peculiar properties even as united in one per- sonal experience broad, popular language, which reappears in Leo the Great two centuries later. Accordingly in Clement and Tertullian we see foreshadowed the tendencies of Greek and Latin theology respectively. Before passing on to Origen, who largely unites the positive features of both East and West, we may observe a chief difference between the " the- ology " of the Apologists and other Fathers trained in the second century, on the one hand, and of Origen and those after him. The former was mainly relative to Creation, including man ; the CHAP, vi.] " MONARCHIANISM " 249 latter to the nature of Godhead in itself, as implied in the language of Scripture touching Christ as the Son. Irenaeus stands rather apart, as being more purely religious in his interest, so that to him the incarnate Son was just the revelation of the in- visible Father, vision of whom confers immortal life. Tertullian and Hippolytus in the opening of the third century, however, herald the transi- tion, the former towards the later Western or Latin, the latter, a Greek living in Rome, towards the Greek or Eastern theology and Christology. Both had felt the stimulus of a new influence in theology, the " Monarchianism " which spread from the East, especially Asia Minor, to Rome towards the close of the second century. Itself stimulated by antithesis to Gnosis, with its doctrine of " aeons " or hypostatised powers between God and Creation, this tendency was jealous for the one Sovereign God : and this emphasis occasioned fresh reflection on the problems of the nature of the Divinity of Christ. The solution thus sought took two forms. According to the more usual one, most germane to the common Christian consciousness, the Divine in Christ was a mode of the One God, viz. as mani- fest in the flesh (Modalism) ; which seemed to involve the belief that " the Father suffered " on the Cross (Patripassianism). According to the other and more humanitarian view, the Divine element in Christ was per se impersonal, being simply a power or efflux from Deity inspiring Jesus, a perfectly holy man, after the manner of the prophets (Dynamism). Against the former type, which alone had attraction for any large body of Christian thought especially that of the Roman Church and several of its bishops in Hippolytus' day, in continuation of the Christo- 250 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE [PART n. logy implied by Hermas Tertullian and Hippolytus wrote, each in his own manner. Tertullian starts from the God of natural theology and from the historical person of Christ, viewed in the two obvious aspects, according to the flesh and the spirit, human and Divine. But, like the Apolo- gists, he used the Logos conception in explaining the threefold conditions, relations, modes of being, in which the one Divine " substance," Spirit, existed prior even to the Incarnation, as the Father, Son, and Spirit of the baptismal creed. But it was in a Stoic rather than Platonic sense that he used it. From this standpoint, then the Monarchy of the one Divine substance or godhood, rather than of one personal Deity he spoke readily of the one person, Christ, having two " substances," deity (as generate or derived) and humanity. But Ter- tullian's conception of the Logos-Son is open to serious criticism from the standpoint of later re- flection. " The whole substance " of Deity or Spirit belongs to the Father alone ; the Son is " a deriva- tion from and portion of the whole, as the shrub from the root " ; while the Spirit is as the prolonga- tion of the same substance into fruit. In this rather naive and modalistic type of thought (even in his work against the Modalist Praxeas) the emphasis is really on the unity of substance, which was ever the sheet-anchor of Latin Christology and explains its attitude to the Nicene theology, with its homo- ousios. Distinction, not diversity, is Tertullian's idea of the " economy " of Deity relative to creation : but the need of a basis in the eternal being of God for such an economy, was hardly felt by him. In Hippolytus, on the contrary, we have Greek theology in a form more on the line between the CHAP, vi.] THEOLOGY AT ROME 251 Apologists and Origen. He has the Apologists' distinction between the Logos immanent in God and only potentially other than the Absolute Source of all His determinate Reason, in which lay the Divine ideas (Philo's " intelligible world ") capable of creating an external universe and the Logos as uttered or as first-born Son (in distinct subsistence) through an act which made God " Father " by a volition taking effect in His own being. This was the pre-mundane, not eternal, act referred to in Proverbs viii. 22, " The Lord constituted me as the beginning of His ways, with a view to His works." Finally this Logos, an extension of the being of God the Father as light of the Sun becomes yet more distinctly or personally " Son " in the form of Incarnation. Here we have still the features in the Apologists which made them inadequate for later Christological thought. In him, as in them, the Logos attains distinct (not separate) subsistence by a definite act of God's will ; so that Fatherhood and Sonship (as distinct from Reason) in God, and the reciprocal relations of spiritual life thus made possible, might never have been. Again the volition in question was due to the pur- pose of creation, a contingent fact, yet one con- ditioning a development in Godhead. The theory also yielded a duality rather than a trinity, as it gave no co-ordinate account of the Holy Spirit. This was not indeed the reason why Callistus, who stood for the majority of the Roman Church, rejected Hippolytus' theory, calling it ditheism. He and his people were not prepared to go even so far towards a doctrine of distinctions in the Godhead, such as came to be regarded as "of faith "in the fourth century, at Rome as well as in the East. 252 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE [PART n. What he feared, like Dionysius, his successor a generation later who criticised his namesake of Alexandria on the score of subordinating the Son's being to the Father's was probably the danger of losing the sense that in the Incarnate Saviour men were in contact with the Divine nature in the fullest sense. As regards Hippolytus' impersonal con- ception of the Spirit, this was common to theology generally before Origen. The fact is that the Apologists, like the simpler thinkers who preceded them, were at a loss what function to assign to the Spirit alongside the Logos, as they conceived it ; and even Tertullian here shared their mode of thought. How far such theological reflexion as we have been describing had gone, particularly in the Latin West, before Origen's influence was felt, may best be seen in Novatian, whose work " On the Trinity " was even more representative than Tertullian's against the Medalist Monarchian, Praxeas. It voices the practical, common-sense Latin mind, refined by Greek philosophic culture, as it strove to do justice, neither more nor less, to the Biblical doctrine as a matter of things rather than words (on which the Monarchian logic largely based its polemic against " two Gods "). Thus it seems to have removed the distrust of Logos Christology hitherto felt in the Roman Church. It shares Tertullian's conception of the Divine " substance," so characteristic of Latin thinking. This was concrete, and in fact Stoic. While the Divine nature is " Spirit," it is material as well as mental ; and it is this " virtue of divinity " which is extended as the Son or Logos, who " proceeding from God constitutes a second person after the Father " very much the " second CHAP, vi.] NOVATIAN'S CHRISTOLOGY 253 God " of the Greek Apologists, though he shuns the term as ambiguous. Yet God, in order to be what He is, namely Father, must ever have had a Son, latent within Himself : howbeit the latter was re- vealed as " Son " for finite minds only through being " brought forth " into a fresh distinctness of being, as " that Divine substance whose name is the Word, through whom all things were made." Thus " Son " has two senses, both expressing the conditioned form of the one Divine substance of the unoriginate Father. The primary one for men is the scriptural or religious sense, expressive of this subordinate aspect of Deity in relation to Creation, " the Word with God " of John's prologue. The other, or purely speculative one, is this same subordinate or filial form of Deity as conditioned only by the unoriginate aspect or Fatherly being of Deity, quite irrespective of Creation. This strictly eternal form of the Son's being, to which he does not attribute personal existence prior to His pre-mundane birth, Novatian does not any more than Hippolytus refer to any generative process, but simply assumes as logically implied in the conception of an eternal God the Father. As regards the more conditioned mode of the Word's being, as the condition of Creation (the properly Biblical or Christian use), he says that He is " God, as coming forth from God, so constituting a second person (persona) after the Father, qua Son, but not thereby (in spite of Monarchians) depriving the Father of the attribute of sole Deity " (illud quod unus est Deus). This last is typical of Latin thought as a whole on the matter, and will explain its attitude to the Nicene Creed. In another point too, he, like Ter- tullian, is representative of the West, as seen in its 254 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE [PART n. tolerant attitude to Marcellus of Ancyra, who, early in the defence of that Creed, taught that the incarnate Son's mediatorial kingdom would one day fade into the Father's more immediate sovereignty (1 Cor. xv. 28). Finally, as regards the Son's Incarna- tion, Novatian tends like so much ancient theology, both Greek and Latin, to identify the humanity of Christ with human flesh or body, using these terms and even " Son of Man " and " that frail substance " as synonymous. On the whole, then, Novatian greatly helps us to realise the unsolved problems which confronted Christological thought thus far, and the difficulties in which its methods involved it. The foundations of later " orthodox " theology were laid in the East during the second half of the third century. This was the epoch when for other aspects of piety, too, the new tendencies, visible c. 200-250, rooted themselves so firmly as virtually to determine the final shape of the Catholicism common to East and West. But the tendency to reduce the varieties of thought once tolerated side by side within communion of the Church, to one intellectual type, was most marked in pure theology. The temper making for uniformity was in the main one of expediency, as then understood. The specific form chosen as orthodoxy was largely due to the intellectual supremacy of Origen, won during half a century of colossal mental activity, first in Alex- andria, then in Csesarea of Palestine. But the type was already fixed by the history of Greek philosophic thought. It was bound to be in terms of the Logos idea, now naturalised in Christianity by the Apolo- gists. At first it was adopted merely as an aid to CHAP, vi.] NEW THEOLOGICAL CONDITIONS 255 faith in its instinctive attempt to grasp its own implications, and so attain a harmonious view of the world from the Christian standpoint ; and for a time it was subordinate to the concrete, personal language of Scripture. But already in Clement and Tertullian emphasis was slipping from the Son's historic personality to the Logos, as a constituent or aspect of Godhead. Then came fresh development in the very philosophy to which the Logos, as it appealed to Christians, chiefly belonged. Platonism became, in Plotinus, Neo-Platon- ism, the final form of Greek idealism. 1 Here the Logos idea gained a more religious emphasis, on purely Greek lines. It hovered, as it had done in the Grsecizing Jew, Philo, on the borders of personal distinctness from the Unknowable aspect of Deity. In such a state of the higher thought generally, the form of Monarchianism which viewed the Divine in Jesus as a mere power or influence, attaining person- ality only in the complex unity of Christ's human consciousness, died a natural death in its older and simpler forms, though it revived in a quasi-Logos shape in Paul of Samosata, the able bishop of Antioch, deposed c. 268 by a synod drawn from a wide area. The same atmosphere was also un- favourable to Modalistic Monarchianism, now repre- sented by Sabellianism, which seems to have reduced 1 The great significance of Neo-Platonism for religious and Christian thought in general has been emphasised of recent years. In Plotinus, in particular, it has two aspects, connected with the immanence of the Divine throughout the graded hierarchy of finite being so that the whole world is a revelation of Deity and with the Divine as utterly transcendent in its own proper being. These are not harmonised in Neo-Platonism ; and their twofold influence on the mystic strain in Catholicism is very apparent. 256 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE [PART n. the " oeconomic " or revelational aspects of God's relations to mankind as Father, Son, Spirit to successive temporary modes of one Divine substance, styled " persons " (prosopd) or roles in the Divine world drama. The plausibility of this solution of the problem of diversity in unity in Godhead, as manifested in the Bible, made it the most dreaded of all heresies in the Greek East, where speculative attractiveness counted for more than in the West. It was in such circumstances that Origen's theology came upon the scene with its profounder meta- physics, alike of Godhead and of the person of Christ, in terms of the Logos idea. Origen was in fact the first Christian theologian with anything like an adequate philosophy for the task of outlining a con- sistent Christology on the basis of a doctrine of the Godhead. But his true greatness appears in that he also restored the balance on the other side, namely, the psychological reality of Christ's humanity, which had so far not been provided for by such theology. His characteristic contributions were two in number. The one was a doctrine of the " Eternal generation " of the Logos as Son within Godhead, the " Image " conditioned by the ab- solute and unexpressed rational nature (ousia) of Deity. Such begetting was, by the very notion of Deity as eternal in every aspect, free from all limits of time as well as space. This became the basis of orthodox theology in the East. The other was the subordination of the Son to the Father in His eternal being as God, and not only in His historical being as the Christ ; the latter was in fact rooted in the former. Here ordinary Christians had more difficulty in following him, as also in his theory of the doubly dependent Deity of the Spirit, on the Logos CHAP, vi.] ORIGEN'S THEOLOGY 257 as well as on the Father. Hence the Spirit was even less unoriginate than the Logos, the Only-begotten, because produced mediately through Him. That is, the Spirit was constituted by the Father in a less essential mode than the Logos or Son, viz. by act of will, and only with a view to become immanent agent in the created universe (like the Wisdom of Prov. viii. 22), both invisible and visible, but most of all as Spirit of holiness in the righteous. It was the ambiguity in the sense of the word used for such production " procession " was preferred later of Son and Spirit in the eternal being of God, apart from the world, that caused most mis- understanding, as well as real difference, among those who came after Origen and his immediate school. A being produced out of the Father's essence, like the Logos and the Spirit, and one pro- duced by mere fiat out of non-entity, could both be spoken of as constituted by the Father and so a " creature." But the dignity of relation to the Father, and so the fulness of Deity, in the two cases differed utterly. If, then, Origen himself, like some of his disciples, applied the term " creature " to the Son and the Spirit, it was with no thought of creaturehood in the ordinary sense, or even of a being intermediate between Godhead and the finite creation, with a view to the latter's coming into being. This is how Wisdom was conceived in Proverbs viii. 22 (LXX), " The Lord constituted me as begin- ning of His ways, with a view to His works." Arms was quite right as an exegete in so taking it, though his main premiss, that the Logos of Christian theology was the speaker, was an error and vitiated his argu- ment. When, however, Dionysius of Alexandria was taxed (c. 260) by Dionysius of Rome with a 258 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE [PART n. similar use of it, so making the Son a creature, he was seriously wronged; and -was able to show it by citing illustrations, like river and source, applied by him to the Logos and the Father. Still the term, used in any sense, suggested that the " eternal generation " within Godhead was not a matter of nature rather than of will, and so strictly essential, as it was later denned when once Arius, by making the process an act in time, made the distinction of religious moment. How differently the Origenists really conceived the matter appears from Origen's disciple, Theognostus, who writes : " The ousia of the Son . . . was the offspring of the Father's ousia, as the radiance is of the light, as vapour is of water. . . . The ousia of the Son is not the Father Himself nor foreign to the Father, but an efflux from the ousia of the Father, the ousia of the Father undergoing no division thereby. For as the Sun remains the same and is not diminished by the rays poured forth by it, so the ousia of the Father underwent no change, the Son being in fact its Image " or total equivalent. Here we have the Nicene theology, almost in Nicene language. Nowhere is Origen more striking than in his theory of the Incarnation. He faced as none before him, and few after him, the crucial, that is the psycho- logical, difficulty of the unique union in Christ of the Logos not only with human flesh or body with which alone, as he says, some reckoned but also with a human soul. A human soul was necessary both to satisfy the Gospel story and to afford a link between the Logos and the material body ; " for it was not possible for the nature of God to mingle immediately with body." But his theory was in terms of that part of his thinking which the Church CHAP, vi.] HIS CHRISTOLOGY AND SYSTEM 259 as a whole could not adopt, viz. the pre-existence of souls, and the sublimated nature of the resurrection body alike in Christ and in His members. " He is the first," says Dr Bigg, " to speak at large on the human soul of Jesus. Like other souls, it was," from the beginning of creation and before the material order was called into being, " unifced with the Logos," to which all souls owe their rationality. " From the first it received Him wholly, and clove to Him inseparably," by a free choice of good, before evil was known, as it was by all other human souls. Hence there had already taken place a complete inter- penetration between the Logos and this soul, even before the Incarnation. As Origen puts it, Christ's soul " had in principle been made one spirit with the Logos." The incarnation meant the assumption of body by this Logos-filled soul, which was already morally sinless, and only applied to new conditions its Divine-human life. As a result man's frail mortality was also inter-penetrated and divinised in Christ ; the final issue of which was the Resurrec- tion body and state. A consequence of the " union and mingling " of the Divine and human in Christ was that the glorified Christ was virtually ubiquitous, as seems implied in the general ancient notion of His sacramental presence in the Eucharistic elements. Origen's work On First Principles, i.e. of the philosophy of religion, was the first and greatest patristic treatise of systematic theology. It dealt with the nature of God, the Logos, the Holy Spirit, and the angels : the world and man, his restoration through the Incarnate Word, and his destiny eternal life : the freedom of the will, the conflict of good and evil, the final triumph of good the restoration of all things and the interpretation of 260 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE [PART n. Scripture as the basis of Christian doctrine. He in fact endeavoured " to construct a science of faith. The centre of Christian truth is the teaching of Christ and His Apostles, preserved and interpreted by the Church, and received by the Christian in simple faith which issues in holy living." l But round this revealed nucleus there stretches out to an undefined circumference an area of inferential, specu- lative truth, which it is the duty of Christian reflective insight (gnosis) to explore, tentatively and in loyalty to the vital principles given in the nucleus. Here he is developing yet further Clement's ideal of the true Gnostic, in continuation of the premature efforts of the earlier Gnostics, marred by self- sufficient detachment from the common conscious- ness of the Church, " to trace the how and the why of the simple that of apostolic teaching," and to probe those questions on which the Church's tradition was silent or indefinite. In pursuance of this ideal the great " Christian Platonist," in the Catechetical School or Christian University of Alexandria, as he hud made it, threw out his bold theory of the pre- existence of souls, in order to solve what he, like most Christian thinkers, felt to be the problem of problems, evil and unmerited suffering. Into the details of Origen's system it is beyond our scope to enter. Much of his thought, rightly or wrongly, was not taken up into the main current of the Church's theology, as this assumed ever more fixed limits from the fourth century onwards, be- coming in fact a closed system in which the distinc- tion between religious faith and the results of meta- physical speculation was more and more forgotten. Among the characteristics of Origenism in the third 1 See L. B. Radford, Three Teachers of Alexandria, pp. 8-10. CHAP, vi.] ANTIOCHENE TENDENCIES 261 century at which later theology looked askance, was its idea of special spheres and functions in the action of the Godhead. " The Father pervades all things," bestowing existence ; " the Son extends only to rational beings," bestowing reason ; " the Spirit only to the saved," bestowing holiness. 1 Yet Origen repudiated the inference that there was any " greater or less " in the Trinity. The Father's action was implied in those of the Son and Spirit ; while " what is called the gift of the Spirit is revealed through the Son, and wrought through the Father." At present, however, when the Kingdom of God is only in process, the full presence of Godhead is found only in an inner circle of sanctification by the Holy Spirit, within the Kingdom of the Logos-Son. Allusion has been made to the Christology of Paul of Samosata. He differed from the Apologists in rejecting the view that when the Divine Mind " came forth " from God the Father as the Logos, His medium of creation, this meant more than a functional dis- tinction from its prior, impersonal form of being. Thus the Logos could not exist as a distinct being (an ousia) in Christ, but only as a dynamic quality which the human personality of Jesus, by moral progress, gradually appropriated, and so gained the quality of Divinity beyond other men. To this historical Divine human person he restricted the term Son of God, as distinct from the Logos power, whether pre-existent or incarnate in Jesus. The Logos, in fact, attained personal distinctness from God the Father only as humanly conditioned in Christ. This the Council of 268 described as deriv- ing Christ " from below " ; and it rejected the de- 1 So Photius reports ; compare Radford, as above, pp. 31 ff. 262 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE [PART n. scription of the Logos as of one and the same substance (homoousios) with God the Father, in the sense in which Paul held such a view. The Christology of Lucian of Antioch, who belonged to the same locality and almost the same date as Paul, has certain affinities with his, notably the stress laid on the ethical development of Jesus as a factor in the Incarnation an aspect of the New Testament Christ which orthodoxy was apt to ignore. But the two were not identical. For Lucian recog- nised the personal distinctness of the Logos, as uttered or as agent in Creation. He was the perfect image of the Father's being. But this could not be said of the Logos as incarnate in Christ, to whom only at the end of his perfect human development, by which union with the Logos power or quality was con- summated, the title of Son of God properly belonged. This theory probably commended itself to Lucian largely as agreeing best with the language of Scrip- ture, of which he was a profound student not on the allegorical and elastic lines favoured at Alexandria, but on those of what we should call the natural contextual and historical sense, typical of Antioch. Here lay the difference of approach to theology- characteristic of those who owed their training directly or indirectly to the one or the other of these two great centres of Christian thought, each with its own theological School for Christian learning the one Platonist, the other Aristotelian in temper. If, then, as Newman alleged, " it may almost be laid down as an historical fact that the mystical (alle- gorical) interpretation and orthodoxy will stand or fall together," this would seem to mean that ortho- doxy has built too exclusively on a single, one-sided method of studying Scripture, and must be revised CHAP, vi.] THE SITUATION AT NIC^EA 263 in the light of that fact. Certainly the Antiochene method kept closer to the actual biblical conceptions : witness those great expositors of Scripture John Chrysostom of Antioch and Theodore of Mopsuestia. The labours of the latter, both as exegete and theo- logian, lie at the basis of Nestorius' emphasis upon the reality of the humanity of Christ, not only in a bodily but also in a psychological sense. That Arius had studied with Lucian does not prove that his theory of the Logos as not eternally con- substantial with the Father was due to Lucian : rather it is always treated as his own innovation, due to a shallow logic which carried the time-relations of human birth up into the Godhead itself. The fact is that Arianism proper was a mere episode, the fruit of a second-rate mind. The significant thing was the widespread and strong feeling of disinclina- tion, shown at Nicaea and long after, to go any further at all in giving official authority to speculative theories touching the Divine element in Christ. This was the attitude of Eusebius of Caesarea, the most representative man in the Church of his day, the most versed in its long past. He wished simply to rule out Arius' crude theory and maintain the status quo as expressed in existing local creeds. Such con- servatism was the inner mind also of the whole Council, apart from the policy which a small but justly influential minority preferred, once the issue had been raised. What they wanted to express was really vital to the Christian consciousness, viz. that Christ was truly one as regards His higher nature with the eternal God, and so able to unite man and God, rather than stand between them as different from both. But what they insisted upon as necessary, in order to symbolise and safeguard 264 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE [PART n. for the future this common experimental conviction, seemed to the majority to go further than was re- quisite, and indeed to introduce a fresh ground for misunderstanding. Why insert in a creed for the first time made binding in identical form on all bishops, as condition of intercommunion, a term which had for one reason or another been set aside by the very representative Council which condemned Paul of Samosata, and had for most a Sabellian ring ? They thought it best, then, to maintain the traditional position, further safeguarded by repudiation of Arius' theory ; to rely on the vital action of the common Christian consciousness under Divine guid- ance to defend itself from errors, as heretofore ; and not to innovate in method, or even in terminology of non-scriptural type, upon the Church's tried practice. In this conservative spirit Eusebius brought forward the Creed of his own Church as a specimen of the sort of faith held in common. Enough, said he, to affirm \his, and put it on record for future guidance, seeing that here for the first time a definite expression of the faith of the whole Church though the West was but formally represented was being put forth. This plea was over-ruled, largely through the Emperor's anxiety to obtain a united decision. To him the line of least resistance seemed to be to persuade the more hesitant majority to adopt the policy of the minority which had made up its mind to accept nothing less. The result was the famous Nicene Creed, which, however familiar, we must cite as a great historical landmark, showing how far we have already come from the beginnings, and com- pare it with the current type of creed in an ad- vanced quarter, the Church of Csesarea, where Origen had spent his later years (c. 230-254) and stamped CHAP, vi.] THE NICENE CREED 265 deep his influence. Some of the changes and ad- ditions made in the Caesarean Creed are shown by brackets and italics. 1 . We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of all things, both visible and invisible ; 2. And in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the Son [Word] of God begotten of the Father, only-begotten, that is, of the essence of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, [Life from Life], very God from very God, begotten not made, of one essence with the Father, through whom all things came to be, both things in heaven and things in earth ; 3. Who for the sake of us men and for our salvation came down, and was made flesh, and became in man, 4. suffered, 5. and rose on the third day, 6. ascended into the heavens [to the Father], 7. is coming to judge living and dead ; 8. And in the [one] Holy Spirit. Here we feel in a different atmosphere from that of the Baptismal Creeds quoted hi our last chapter. Those had gradually undergone change to this type hi some Eastern Churches during the third century ; but in the West remained much as before in kind, and so continued in baptismal use, though the Nicene Creed, originally meant for the Church's teachers, in course of time passed even there into the Eucha- ristic service. But as compared with the Caesarean type, the new creed is marked by omission of the philosophical term Logos and added emphasis on the idea of Divine Sonship, relative to the life of 266 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE [PART n. Godhead in itself. This idea is now put in the first place and iterated in several forms, with omission of the ambiguous phrases " first born of all creation " (Biblical as it is) and " before all the ages." All this leads up to the crucial phrase " of one and the same essence (homoousion) with the Father." What are we to say of the religious value of this historic phrase ? No doubt Athanasius' own interest in insisting on it was a religious one. But that settles nothing as to the fitness of the term to secure the religious truth that in Christ men have God's real presence in the sense requisite for redemption. Other ways might have been found of expressing this fact in a more religious form, as the Bible puts it, viz. as a per- sonal relation, had the kind of salvation in view and its means of communication not been now con- ceived as metaphysical or substantial in nature, rather than ethical and spiritual, in an experimental sense a matter of motive and will, and so homo- geneous with the whole personal life of the soul. A synthesis of the metaphysical and experimental aspects of Incarnation and Redemption was yet lacking, and so remained, though serious efforts after it were made by Theodore and Nestorius in the East and Augustine in the West. The above Greek rather than Hebrew conception of salvation, as related to the Incarnation, is very evident in certain writers of the latter part of the third century, in whom there blend with the Origen- istic theology features derived from the tradition of Asia Minor. Perhaps it is in Methodius, who repre- sents the Asian theology rather than Origen's, that the Greek realistic theory of Salvation emerges most typically. In Christ he sees ' redemption in sample ' realised in a physical rather than moral sense, CHAP.VI.] NOTIONS OF SALVATION 267 contrary to the emphasis of Irenaeus' recapitulatio. The Logos assumed our passible body, in order that the mortal and passible might be transformed into immortality and impassibility. The keynotes are life and death, incorruption and corruption. Christ and His Cross are " incorruption conquering death." At the same time he thinks of the mortal as " mingled with the Immortal " in Christ, in a naive sense, as already in Irenaeus, Tertullian, and Novatian. This helps to prepare us for what we find in Athanasius' own early treatise On the Incarnation of the Divine Word. It conceives of Redemption through Incarnation as something wrought in sample and germ in the actual body which the Logos-Son assumed as His " temple and instrument." Thence it emanates in turn to like human bodies, through sacramental channels, as " life " conveying " in- corruption " or " immortality " ; while the blurred image of God in man's " rational " nature is renewed by vision of the Divine Image Himself, the Logos, made visible by Incarnation. Compared with these two aspects, the moral element in the Saviour's humanity and its appeal to the believer as a person on which the emphasis in the New Testament idea of faith falls are alike quite secondary. Human holiness hardly exists at all in Athanasius' account of what qualifies Christ to be Saviour ; and little reference is made to appropriating faith on the part of the redeemed. In fact not only the Pauline but even the general New Testament mode of union between the Saviour and the saved is on quite another plane of thought from that of Athanasius. Yet it was relative to this latter that the homoousios had its special value. But granting the value of the crucial term in the 268 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE [PART n. Nicene Creed as formally excluding the Arian Chris- tology, once the issue was raised, the question occurs : What right had the majority at Nicsea or at any of the councils where either side excommuni- cated a minority to deny to others on the score of intellectual error all part or lot in Christ ? What authority had they for so grave a judgment ? When one compares the Nicene Creed with the conditions of true Christian discipleship in the New Testament, one cannot but ask whether the Church of the fourth century did not here exceed the commission given by Christ to His followers, and so unconsciously innovate in spirit as well as in letter. There is no need to describe the varying fortunes of the Arian controversy. Into it entered many second- ary and personal factors, such as eccentric supporters of the Nicene Creed, like Marcellus and Photinus, as well as changes in the Imperial influence, which mostly favoured its opponents At the Council of Sirmium in 357 an attempt was made to set aside all use of the term " substance " as ambiguous, un- scriptural, and going beyond human knowledge in relation to God, whether the formula was homoousios or homoiousios. But things had gone too far for this to be accepted by either side as a basis of peace and mutual forbearance. The extremists among the non-Nicenes, men of really Arian spirit, soon showed their mind clearly, and drove the true conservatives in the East more and more towards the Nicenes. This process was fostered by a deepened sense of the common Christian allegiance, during the brief but striking recoil of the State to paganism in the person of Julian (361-363). Meantime certain younger thinkers, particularly the three " Great Cappadocians," CHAP, vi.] NEW DOGMATIC 'ORTHODOXY' 269 Basil and the two Gregories, were working out a new nomenclature calculated to remove formal grounds for misunderstanding, by appropriating the term " substance " (hypostasis), hitherto used largely as synonymous with " essence " (ousia), for the specific form of the being of Father and Son respectively, within the essential nature of Deity common to them. The West, too, always as a whole loyal to Nicaea and Athanasius, had now come to understand the theo- logy of the matter more accurately through men like Hilary of Poictiers, who had spent some years of exile in the East in fellowship with the New Nicene leaders ; and its influence was telling more and more, especially since Ambrose of Milan had from 375 the ear of the Western Emperor, Gratian. When, then, in 378 Gratian chose as his colleague in the East the Spaniard Theodosius, himself a Nicene, the con- ditions were ripe for a reaffirmation of the Nicene Creed by the majority of bishops both in East and West, with clearer and more convinced mind than when the first hurried decision was made. This occurred at the Council of Constantinople in 381. There for the first time the policy of intolerance of conscience in religion was given in alliance with the State complete and definite form, as a principle bound up with the " Catholic " idea of religion as essentially dogmatic in its basis, and that by Divine will and authority. No longer, then, was religious faith to be a matter of personal adhesion ; rather was it to turn on assent to abstract propositions touching the Divine Nature in Christ or its relation to His human nature. How inevitably this must affect the very idea of the Gospel and its practical appropriation by the soul, and indeed its whole relation to human personality, hardly needs dwelling 270 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE [PART n. on. But it must be borne steadily in mind hence- forth, in considering the operation of Christianity on liberty and all that depends upon the free play of conscience, both at large and in exeeptional spirits. While the Creed as recited at Nicaea was now accepted afresh, the Creed cited at the Council of Chalcedon in 451 as the " Creed of the 150 " at Con- stantinople was a rather fuller one, and ere long dis- placed the other as a baptismal Creed both in East and West. This Nicaeno-Constantinopolitan Creed, which existed as early as 373-374 (or even 362), is found on analysis to be virtually the Creed of Jerusalem implied in the Catechetical Lectures of Cyril, c. 348, with the addition of anti-Arian clauses borrowed from the Creed of Nicaea, and with expansion of the part relating to the Holy Spirit. As already seen, while the God- head had during the third century come to be con- ceived as dual in constitution, Father and Son being equally essential personal correlative forms of the eternal life of Deity as Reason and Love, the Spirit going forth from both into the sphere of created being, material and rational, was down to the middle of the fourth century generally spoken and thought of simply as their immanent energy and not as equal with them in personal quality. This is very apparent in doxologies, which about the age of Cyril of Jeru- salem begin to show changes of form indicative of new sensitiveness on the point. Basil's work On the Holy Spirit, an outcome of such fresh reflection, while affording valuable data as to past usage, by no means gives an adequate account of their older meaning for those who framed them. Thus the phrase " in holy Spirit," often following " through Thy Son " in ascriptions of glory to God the Father, CHAP, vi.] THE 'TWO NATURES' 271 is shown by expressions in Serapion's Prayer-book, c. 350, like " able to worship Thee, the uncreated Father, through Jesus Christ, in holy Spirit," to describe the spiritual devotion of the worship rendered. It is not surprising, then, that the Spirit's full Divinity was now both called in question and explicitly asserted, over against its denial by Mace- donius, Bishop of Constantinople. Somehow or other this expanded Creed received informal sanction at the Council of 381. In its Latin form, now in general Western use, it contains a further insertion dating from the Council of Toledo in 589 (when the Visigoths of Spain, like other branches of the Gothic nation before them, re- nounced their Arianism), according to which the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Son (filioque) as well as from the Father. Of this the more accurate Eastern form was " from the Father through the Son." This theological difference was the formal basis of the Schism between Eastern and Western Christendom, which, existing in feeling even earlier, became explicit towards the end of the ninth century. Behind it, however, lay also deep ecclesiastical rivalries, especially between the great Patriarchates of Constantinople and Rome, complicated by corre- sponding jealousy between the Empires of East and West. Thus the Schism, with its threefold root, raises afresh the question as to the true basis of Church unity, and its relation to dogma, organisation, and the connection of Church and State. But even before nominal uniformity of belief on the Godhead was secured at Constantinople, there had arisen as a corollary a Christological difficulty, that of harmonising the Divine and human natures or substances in the one Christ, the incarnate Logos. 272 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE [PART n. In which nature lay the seat of Christ's personality ? This was a question more within the range of human experience and thought than the other ; but it was one on -which the Church, now as in the second century, reached less agreement. In the New Testament itself, as we have seen, there seemed to be two streams of thought, represented roughly by the Synoptic Gospels and the early chapters of Acts, on the one hand, and the Epistles and the Fourth Gospel on the other. In the one the idea of the Holy Spirit anointing Jesus as the Christ, and even conditioning His birth, prevails : in the other that of a distinct pre-existent Person becoming " flesh." It is note- worthy that the doctrines of the Holy Spirit and of the Logos have generally varied inversely in emphasis, where they have coexisted at all in reflective thought. This suggests imperfection in traditional Trinitarian doctrine, and the line on which possible advance should be sought. As regards the special Christo- logical problem then confronting thought in terms of the two " natures," Divine and human, the Arians had taught that their Logos took a human body with an animal, but not a rational, soul. Agreeing with them in psychology the typically Greek one Apollinaris, a leading Nicene theo- logian, differed simply as to the nature of the Divine Logos who took the place of the whole rational or higher nature in Christ's humanity. His view seemed indeed to guarantee completely the sinlessness of Christ, yet in such a way as to make His moral experience quite distinct from ours, and of no re- demptive value psychologically, since the "natural " conditions of His moral life differed from ours. In this he was but following out the logic of Athanasius' own language in his treatise On the CHAP, vi.] EFFORTS AT SYNTHESIS 273 Incarnation, where he makes Christ's person consist simply of the Logos in a human body as animated " temple." Only Apollinaris also faced the difficulty of the animal soul in manhood, which connects the Spirit or rational element with the body, on the current Platonic psychology. Behind this again lay the meaning of human " nature," which Apollinaris regarded as here equivalent to " person." But there could not be a single person made up out of two personal natures. If, then, a double personality, and the possibility of free choice of sin by the human person, were to be excluded, the human " nature " assumed by the Logos must be incomplete on the psychological side. In this way " the Word became flesh" by "a blending of God and man." The Council of Constantinople was content to reject this conclusion simply as not doing justice to the scrip- tural facts, without suggesting any way out of the dilemma as to Christ's humanity being like ours. It declared that Christ's humanity was complete, though not in itself personal, the centre of personality being in the Logos. On the latter point it agreed with Apollinaris, as did the two subsequent (Ecumenical Councils of Ephesus (431) and Chalcedon (451), which ruled out successive attempts to solve the resultant problems in opposite directions. The Christian consciousness would not surrender the normal psychological nature of the humanity which the Logos united to Himself, in order to redeem it to holiness and physical incorruption, whereas Apollinaris postulated a fresh and unique kind of " human nature," lacking something in ours. " Only that could be redeemed which was assumed," was the maxim on which it went. But how was the unity of these two complete 8 274 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE [PART n. natures to be conceived ? Nestorius, Patriarch of Constantinople, about 428 felt and expressed dis- satisfaction with the current theory of the Incarna- tion. This approached it from the metaphysical side of " natures " to be united, rather than from the experiential side, that of different aspects of Christ's consciousness, as existing in the psychological and moral harmony of a personality subject to the laws of human development. On the former lines no real synthesis of the natures was possible, only a " blending " which issued either in something different in kind from both or in the absorption of the lesser by the greater. But as aspects or factors of a rational and moral life, contributing to a single Divine-human personality, the Divine and human elements had inner homogeneity, and in fact blended into a spiritual unity or character. Accordingly it was against any theory of incomplete or docetic manhood * in t Christ, as if the Logos replaced the finite rational soul in Him, that Nestorius protested. He set aside Apollinaris' use of the analogy between the relation of soul to body and that of the Divinity to the Manhood in Christ. Such a conception, he argued, overlooks the psycho- logical and moral aspects of the problem, and destroys all parity between temptation and moral " perfect- ing " in the case of the Saviour Son and of His " many brethren " brought to glory through Him. 1 Even so careful a theologian as Basil treated as of no moment the question whether the manhood assumed was complete humanity or incomplete. Nor did the two Gregories take Apollinaris' position much to heart. On the other hand, Nestorius, like Theodore of Mopsuestia and Diodorus of Tarsus (who also represented Antiochene exegesis), went into the matter seriously. What follows is based upon recently recovered statements of his views in his own words, rather than upon the accounts of his opponents. CHAP, vi.] CYRIL AND NESTORIUS 275 And though Cyril of Alexandria, the champion of the opposite case, formally recognised that the human nature assumed by the Logos included a rational soul, Nestorius understood his theory of the " hypo- static union " of the two " natures " (i.e. in a single hypostasis, subsistence or individual being) to mean a fusion of natures or substances inconsistent with the abiding reality of any complete humanity. The New Nicene theologians had, since a Synod of Alexandria held in 362, come to speak of three hypostasesof the ousia of Deity. 1 Thus hypostasis became very similar to another term, also with a varied history, namely, prosopon (Lat. persona), which now connoted in theology a mode, aspect, condition, function of existence, as distinct from other forms in which the same nature or substance existed. But neither of these terms naturally bore the meaning of " person " in our sense, but rather of distinctive being. So when Cyril spoke of " one incarnate hypostasis of the Logos " as the Christ or Son, made up of two " natures," the Logos and His assumed humanity, Nestorius took this to mean a modified substance or nature resulting from the fusion of two "natures," the permanent distinction of which was essential to the reality of each and to the moral conditions of the spiritual victory of Christ's humanity, as the pledge of that of our man- hood. He himself distinguished the two " natures " as substances or realities, which remain unchanged and the two personce or functions proper to each of these, of which the opposite nature may " make use." It is in this functional sphere that the union of the Divine and human in Christ exists, in the form of a common character or moral experience. This comes * 1 Compare the Appendix Note on p. 288. 276 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE [PART n. very near to our conception of the unity of personality, embracing elements of consciousness due to a " higher nature " and a " lower nature " respectively. Nestorius, then, with all the obscurities of his language at different stages of his career and in the end he claimed to mean the same as Leo, whose treatise or Tome formed the basis of the Council of Ghalcedon (451), which condemned very much the errors with which Nestorius taxed Cyril had mainly in mind the psychological aspect of Christ's person, 1 while Cyril dwelt more on the objective or meta- physical side of the matter. In this each was influenced by the genius loci in which he was reared, the one amid the historical exegesis proper to Antioch, the other amid the metaphysical and a priori tradition of Alexandrine theology. Further, the conceptions of Salvation and piety were different. It was no accident that Eutyches, the thorough- going exponent of Cyril's tendency, was above all things a monk, and that among monks the Mono- physite Christology had its chief stronghold ; whereas Nestorianism appealed rather to men more in the full stream of normal human life and action. For the latter the great fact is will, as the real and effective essence of moral personality a conception but unsteadily realised by Greek and Eastern thought. For this Nestorius had a real feeling, though the existing categories of the Greek philosophic tradi- tion stood in his way in framing a theory of it. He saw at least that the problem of the God-man must be approached from the human side, the side of our experience, by which our thought, if it is to be real and not mere myth, must be determined ; and in "ethical terms, too, it can be most religiously stated, 1 He could not, he said, call an unconscious infant " God." CHAP, vi.] CYRIL FORMALLY PREFERRED 277 because in such a way as to appeal to human sympathy, love, obedience. Cyril, on the other hand, true to the emphasis of most Christological thought since the sub-Apostolic Age, like Apollinaris concentrated attention upon the Divine nature in Jesus, making it the seat of His personality even in consciousness or psychologically so far as he thought of this aspect at all ; and Christ was " the Logos along with His own flesh " or humanity. That humanity was ' ' animated ' ' indeed " by a rational soul ' ' ; but such human consciousness had for him no function save as a body of finite experiences of pain and limita- tion, which might serve as material of temptation (if such there could really be) to the Logos existing in full self-consciousness of His own Divine nature. Here was the radical religious failure in such Chris- tology, though it was preferred at Ephesus (431) to that of Nestorius ; and it was a grave one in rela- tion to a Redeemer, if He was to be the Leader of Faith and Example to His brethren. Nestorius, on the contrary, while seeing in the Logos the back- ground of subconscious higher nature determining the unique aspect * of the concrete consciousness of the Christ as Divine-human Son of God, treated Christ as really an historical person, developing, as the Gospels represent Him, in consciousness and character of Sonship. Such He could be only in virtue of the human aspect of His person. Yet " growth in favour with God " went forward in His case without break of mutual interchange between the " natures," the natural or metaphysical bases of the two aspects of the one humanly condi- tioned consciousness, in which prevailed perfect 1 This use of prosOpon was Nestorius' own, and perhaps was mis- understood by most. 278 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE [PART n. moral harmony or unity of personality. Thus the Son of Man became more and more manifestly Son of God. Difficulties remained, and could not but remain, especially on the traditional notion of the Logos as existing self-consciously in the historic Christ. Still in transferring emphasis from the Divine (i.e. inconceivable) nature in Christ, to the human personality unique indeed in quality but accessible to moral insight and love, and capable of inspiring like conduct in others Nestorius did much to redress the balance of Christian thought and piety. This appears historically from the acceptance of the Tome of Leo at Chalcedon. For it was viewed, and rightly, by the more ardent followers of Cyril as a victory for Nestorius, so that they preferred schism to its acceptance and were cast out of the official Orthodox Church as " Monophysite " heretics. But Chalcedon contributed no constructive theory of Christ's person. It simply ruled out one more aberration of one-sided emphasis, that of Eutyches, in addition to Apollinaris, no less than what was believed to be the opposite error of Nestorius. It thus denned more precisely the limits within which the solution must be sought : that was all. In a word, the general Councils, by rejecting premature theories, kept open the central problem of Christian theology for future days, when Christian experience and thought might be riper for its progressive solution. Such was the final issue of Christology in its official formulation as dogma in the Ancient Church. The later controversies raised by Monophysite persistency, including the Monothelite attempts at a compromise on One Will, as a Divine-human energy embracing both the elements of the Saviour's person, yielded CHAP, vi.] DOGMA AFTER CHALCEDQN 279 no fruit. The psychological and intellectual condi- tions of a more adequate theory were still lacking ; humanity needed to move on quite new planes of thought. Perhaps Theodore of Mopsuestia, Nestorius' master, one of the most modern minds of the Ancient Church in psychological insight as well as in historical methods of exegesis, came nearest to a true solution. To him, as to Justin and other early Fathers, notably Origen, the unique nature of the Logos' indwelling in Christ was proved by His sinless consciousness, the perfect moral freedom of His obedience to the Father. Thus as a fact actualised in an historic personality, the Incarnation was a moral process consummated only in the supreme moral act of the Passion, with its absolute filial loyalty of love, leading to the High Priesthood (Heb. v. 5-10) and Messianic Lordship (Phil. ii. 8-11) of Christ. But this was not a view germane to patristic theology, which was not Hebraic but Greek in its psychology. Hence its most logical issue was the theology of Cyril carried to the full extent in Mono- physitism. It was only the religious instinct of the Church at large which refused it, even at the price of intellectual consistency. The last of the official Creeds of the Ancient Church which calls for notice is a purely Western one, the so-called " Athanasian " Creed, dealing first with the Trinity and then with the Incarnation. Its original home was probably South Gaul, possibly the monastery of Lerins or some kindred circle. It certainly implies Apollinarianism : but whether it implies Nestorianism, or again Eutychianism, is still debated. In any case its Trinitarian part shows the influence of Augustine. It was framed to meet 280 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE [PART n. local conditions, but was found convenient as a summary of current Catholic belief ; and so it passed into wide use, though it never attained full sanction in the mediaeval and later Roman Church. Yet alike in its dogmatic precision on the most speculative themes, and in its confident denial of salvation to those unable to accept its doctrine, it is highly typical of the developed Catholic notion of orthodoxy and of the vital relation of this to saving faith. The later developments, starting from the Council of Chalcedon, though of no intrinsic value, have a certain incidental interest, as revealing the tendencies inherent in Greek theology and the new relations of Church and State. Not only did Mono- physitism take a permanent place in the East, but under the typically Byzantine or mixed regime of the great Justinian (525-565) it exercised pressure also on the West. On this occasion even the Roman bishop Vigilius gave way, though he later withdrew his assent ; and again on further pressure he agreed to the Fifth General Council at Constantinople, in 553, which confirmed the dubious " Three Chapters " position, as did successive Popes of Rome for some time. Similar was the story of Monothelitism, the modified form in which the same issue re-emerged. Only now the imperial edicts, the Ekthesis of 638 and the Typus of 648, were not formally sanctioned by the Church of the East. Here again the Roman see was gravely compromised, in the person of Honorius (625-638), who gave at least his passive approval to the heresy, as it was declared to be by the Sixth General Council at Constantinople, in 680, where Rome and the West were represented. Honorius was condemned by name, and again in more exact language by the next pope and in a CHAP, vi.] THE SACRAMENTAL SYSTEM 281 profession of faith which the popes of the Middle Ages were wont to recite. This incident caused much heart -searching in later times, when the doctrine of papal infallibility came to be discussed. Hitherto we have treated mainly of doctrine as theology proper, the nature of the Godhead and its relations to men in the Incarnation, and only incidentally of man and the conditions of his appro- priation of Salvation. This has coincided with the fact that we have been dealing mostly with Greek writers or at least those largely of Greek culture. Before passing on, however, to refer to Latin Chris- tianity, which concerned itself more with the human aspects of theology, as the more practical, a few words must be said touching the way in which Salva- tion, as rooted in the Divine nature and action, was conceived to reach man, so far as Greek and Latin were at one in the matter. This was the sacramental method ; Divine grace was conveyed to human need through sacraments, viewed as " extensions of the Incarnation." The Incarnation was the supreme " economy," " mystery," " sacrament " of the union of the Divine and human, the invisible and visible : and it was felt that sacramental means of grace were its corollaries. This idea is already visible in Justin's analogy between two embodiments of the Word, first in flesh and then secondarily and occasionally in the sacramental bread and wine, as media for His further incarnation in humanity at large : in Irenaeus, with his realistic notion of Christians as " members of Christ's body " ; and even in Athanasius. The theory is very evident in Cyril of Jerusalem, and still more so in Gregory of Nyssa ; while in Hilary of Poictiers (f 367), a chief 282 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE [PART 11. historical link between East and West, it emerges fully for Latin Christianity. Hilary states the view with Latin bluntness as follows : "If therefore Christ truly assumed flesh of our body . . . and we truly in a sacred rite (mysterium) receive flesh of His body . . . how can it be maintained that the unity is a unity of will, when the appropriation of nature effected through the sacrament is the sacrament of a complete unity ? " Here and elsewhere in Hilary, as in most patristic theology, our human nature which Christ the Word assumed is practically reduced to " flesh of His body." Moreover, it is in that sphere that sacramental union lies and operates in the first instance, though with spiritual and volitional after-effects. How deep this quasi-physical realism lay in patristic soteriology is shown by the fact that Augustine, with all his own emphasis on the ex- perimental side of religion, yet retains the traditional mode of language, though he takes " body " in a metaphorical way (secundum quemdam modum), the bread being an analogous embodiment of the Divine Logos nature. What helped to make credible the view that the Real Presence in the Eucharist was that of " flesh of His body," was such a Christology as Hilary's, which taught that while the historical Christ contained two personal natures, that of God and man, Christ in heaven was only Divine (ut, ante in se duos continens, nunc deus tantum sit) : so fully had human limitations been absorbed in the unity of Christ's person. This was not, indeed, a way of stating the matter which the Church finally adopted, as the Council of Chalcedon shows. But it remains questionable whether the sacramental ' theory of practical bodily ubiquity, or infinite capacity of ex- tension in the human body of the Incarnate Saviour, CHAP, vi.] LATIN THEOLOGY PROPER 283 which still persisted, could justify itself rationally on any other hypothesis than that of Eutyches. In any case the soteriology of the Ancient Church, from the third century at least, as moulded by Hellen- istic piety and sacramental theory, was metaphysical rather than experimental in form. As Latin Chris- tianity emerges, from the latter half of the fourth century, a change is to be noted in the topics and the way in which these are viewed. The practical and human aspects of religion receive more attention, as in Biblical religion itself. As in Hebraism, so also here, the will rather than the intelligence is primary : " knowledge " of Divine things is prac- tical in character. This being so, it is as natural as it is significant for the future of Western Chris- tianity, that whereas " no Greek-speaking people has ever felt seriously perplexed by the great ques- tion of Free Will and Necessity " to borrow words of Sir H. Maine this and kindred problems greatly exercised native Latin theology. Among such topics, Sin as a radical bias in human nature occupied a governing place. Thus Latin theology came more face to face with essential Paulinism than did its more intel- lectual sister. Though it was far from sounding their depths, it felt the tragic meaning of the Pauline use of " the flesh " and " sin in the flesh," and took a graver view of sin's enslaving action on the human will. Hence too it gave more weight than did Greek thought to the idea of racial sin, passed on as a fatal heritage by birth .from Adam, the first father of mankind. Here the Stoic view of human nature, which was materialistic in basis, was a co- operating factor, as we see from Tertullian's doctrine of the soul as " passed on " from parent to child, 284 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE [PART n. parallel with the body. Such " Traducian " psycho- logy gave a realistic basis for a thorough-going doctrine of Original Shi, though its very materialism may have repelled certain religious minds, as it did Augustine's. It led, too, very easily to the notion of original guilt, which appears already in Ambrose, a notion which deepened the shadow already lying over the Latin idea of human nature, as distinct from that of Greek theology. Indeed the Latin reading alike of Christian experience and of the Biblical writers, while marked by common sense, lacked depth of insight, until Augustine came on the scene. He, in virtue of his profound experience that true righteousness is a matter of motive, made in his own person the same discovery that had pre- pared Saul of Tarsus to be a Christian and shaped his doctrine of justification by grace as distinct from Law. What was needed was a new spirit, to quicken the impotent, because self-centred, human will to a new loyalty to righteousness, as obedience to the Will of God, by inspiring a new attitude of grateful love which should swallow up and transmute self-love in principle. To Augustine's mind, however, salvation pre- sented itself in a way coloured also by his Neo- Platonic idea of God as Reality, and of Sin as a form of its opposite, or defective being. Further he was born into a system of piety which had behind it a long and august Christian tradition, hallowed by the Church of the Christian martyrs and saints, through which it reached him. True he " left a permanent, an indelible stamp, upon ecclesiastical life and thought. The conception of grace was thenceforth never in the West so nearly limited to sacraments as it practically remained in the Greek Church. The sacraments were held in a deepened CHAP, vi.] THE AUGUSTINIAN FORM 285 sense, with a context of grace, preventing, predis- posing, concomitant, which conditioned the grace of the sacrament itself " 1 Yet he was not able to break with tradition sufficiently to make his personal re-discovery of the Evangelic principle of salvation by simple response to Divine Grace, through faith (with its accompanying love) rather than by works, clear and effective for others, save within the circle of his personal influence or among those who later on read his writings with sympathetic divination. It is largely through Augustine that Paul has spoken to myriads of kindred souls, especially within Catho- licism, who else would not have heard his appeal. True Augustinians in all ages and Churches under- stand one another. On average Catholic piety, however, he has had but little distinctive influence, save through his mysticism and certain secondary developments of his root ideas, such as his ascetic doctrine of concupiscence and his theory of the rela- tion of Church and State, which helped powerfully to mould the whole mediaeval conception of things. This distinction between the influence of Augustine's soteriology and of his sacramental, ascetical, and ecclesiastical thought, may be referred to two main causes. First, the momentum already attained by traditional religion before Augustine : and next, the repellent features of his predestinarian doctrine, and the radical antinomies, both moral and in- tellectual, which it involved. Such were the total depravity of human nature, individual and corporate (the massa corruptionis); absolute bondage of the will as regards good ; and absolute election and pre- destination to life and death. This " double pre- destination " caused the Church of his own and the 1 A. Robertson, Regnum Dei, p. 193. 286 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE [PART n. next generations much mental agony ; and many were the vain efforts to escape the logical and practical dilemmas forced on her in dealing with the greatest of her sons. But Catholicism was for the most part content to ignore and set aside the bearing of his thought on sacraments, as conditioning salva- tion and membership in the communion of saints, the Church of the saved. For on Augustine's theory of Election sacraments were no guarantee of any- thing that really mattered to the " faithful " individually, since they conveyed saving grace only to the elect, and were not strictly necessary to them. For others they were in vain, a delusion to those partaking of them. Truly an awful doctrine, and one which the Christian consciousness naturally rejected, as it has now come to reject also the Protestant form under which the reformed Augus- tinians of the sixteenth century adopted it. When we try to estimate what was and was not achieved by the doctrinal development in the Church of the Four Councils, we must distinguish sharply form and matter. In formal or technical precision there was marked progress. Christian doctrine was Hellenized, " translated out of the concrete, pictur- esque forms of Hebrew thought, into those of Greek metaphysics. This doubtless meant intellectual progress of a kind and had its own value, both for that age and for later ones. The dialectic process had been conducted with the highest ability, and through the communis sensus of the Church's leaders attained classic results in terms of the categories employed. But religiously the value of the results was more limited, especially for the mass of be- lievers, while the dangers involved were very great. CHAP, vi.] PATRISTIC DOCTRINE 287 The new credal forms meant fresh emphasis upon the intellectual aspect of faith, as expressed in abstract formulae ; and this in itself diverted attention from the more personal and morally moving aspect of the revelation of God in Christ, as set forth with Hebrew concreteness and imaginative appeal in the New Testament. But further the immense importance attached to assent or non-assent to such formulae, as conditioning the Christian status of individuals, greatly enhanced their effect in modifying the nature of the Christian consciousness and of the meaning attached to " faith " and " the faithful." Accordingly, although the philosophico-theological idea of the Godhead in itself was enriched and made more living by the Logos doctrine connected with the Divinity of Christ ; and the idea of manhood was elevated by that of the Logos become flesh and of the spiritual affinity between Him and men, his fellows in humanity ; yet as regards the Christian revelation, in the strict and original sense, there was loss as well as gain, since its characteristic contents were ethical, rather than metaphysical. " In con- tending for the Deity of the Son," the Nicene theology *' too much forget to conceive the Deity through the Son and as the Son conceived Him." " The meta- physical Trinity tended to supersede the ethical Godhead. The Church, when it thought of the Father, thought more of the First Person in relation to the Second than of God in relation to man ; when it thought of the Son, it thought more of the Second Person in relation to the First than of humanity in relation to God." l In other words the Fatherly nature of God, as it prevades the Gospels and Epistles, 1 Fairbairn, Christ in Modern Theology, p. 91 : see the whole passage, pp. 89-92. 288 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE [PART n. recedes into the background. It is no longer set forth primarily in terms of the consciousness of Christ, as reflected in His teaching and particularly in His parables, still less in His own experience as the Son of Man, in typical human relations with God. The new metaphysical emphasis, affecting theology at its fountain-head, affected it in all its branches. " The persons of the Godhead," being thus distin- guished metaphysically, " came, especially in Western theology, to be ethically distinguished " : and " transactional " theories of Atonement, as between the Divine persons, resulted therefrom, as we see most clearly in Anselm. Indeed the weakness of Patristic theology generally on the doctrine of Atonement and Reconciliation is most significant, pointing to a defect in its experimental apprehension of the Gospel ; for this doctrine is a touchstone of feeling for the personal aspects of religion. In its place we find a highly developed and realistic sacramental system, the correlation of which with a markedly metaphysical theology is no accident. NOTE ON SOME TECHNICAL TERMS Down to Nicaea the Greek terms ousia (essence) and hypostasis (Lat. substantia, substance) were largely synonymous ; while the Latins used only one term, substantia. But as debate touching the term homoonsios developed, hypostasis obtained a specialised mean- ing, as connoting the distinctive form of concrete being proper to the Father and the Logos-Son respectively, and ousia stood for the nature of Deity common to both Divine hypostaxes. The more special term in Latin theology all along was persona. But it (as primarily denoting an acting-mask, and so the role which an actor played) did not suggest any permanent relation to the substantia of which it was a special manifestation. So Greek theology, more alive to distinctions and with its eye ever on Sabellianism avoided the corresponding word prosopon until it could use this as the equivalent of hypostasis, in order to come into line with Latin usage, to which hypostasis was strange. CHAPTER VII THE CHURCH, ITS ORGANISATION AND MINISTRY " To each one is given the manifestation of the Spirit, to profit withal. " PAUL. " The spirituality and liberty of the Gospel have ever to develop, and to show, their full force in contact with, and through the transformation of, matter and law." F. VON HUGEL. No living religion is a mere matter of doctrine. It is a mode of life, involving the whole range- of human nature. From the first Christianity satisfied this test to a high degree, both individually and collec- tively. It was pre-eminently the religion of person- ality, of conscience towards God and towards human- ity, in the light of the Divine Fatherhood. " The Kingdom of God " was its central idea, implying the Divine presence at once in the individual snd in the community of kindred souls in which he lived and had his being. These two aspects of the King- dom existed in Christ's teaching in perfect balance. The criterion, then, by which the development of Christianity, as the realisation of God's Kingdom on earth, must on its own principles be tried, is the degree to which this vital equilibrium has been pre- served at various times and under various systems. " The Brotherhood " is the most significant de- scription of Christianity in its corporate being, as found in the New Testament : and by this idea its organisation was controlled in the Apostolic Age and 289 290 ORGANISATION AND MINISTRY [PART n. for long after. " One is your Teacher, and all ye are brethren." " Ye know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. Not so shall it be among you." That fixes the type of leadership among the Brethren, as one contrasting in genius and method with that of civil society, as one of loving service willingly accepted by those served. The* Cross is the symbol of authority in the Church. Such is Christ's teaching ; such, too, Apostolic theory and practice. 1 "We beseech you, brethren, to recognise them that toil among you, and preside over you in the Lord and put you in mind ; and to esteem them exceeding highly for their work's sake." " Now I beseech you, brethren," touching those who " have set themselves to do service to the saints, that ye also submit yourselves unto such, and to every one that helps in the work and toileth." Ministry as here conceived is toilsome service volun- tarily undertaken, even while in form it may include moral leadership. Again Paul treats it as based on the special endowment of some members of the social organism of which Christ is the vitalising Head ; and its exercise springs from the impulse of membership itself, in a body animated by brotherly love and the instinct to use all each is and has for the common good. "And having gifts of grace (charismata) differing according to the grace given to us, whether prophecy (inspired utterance), let us prophesy according to the degree of faith : or practical service, let us engage in our service : or he that teacheth, in his teaching: or he that exhorteth, in his exhorting. He that shareth his goods, let it be in singleness (of purpose) : 1 Matt xxiii. 8-12, xx. 25-28 ; 1 Thess. v. 12 f. ; 1 Cor. xvi. ]5 f. CHAP, vii.] EARLY CHURCH LIFE 291 he that acts as leader, with diligence : he that showeth mercy, with cheerfulness. Let love be without pretence. ... In brotherly love tenderly affectioned one to another, in honour preferring one another . . . ; fervid in the Spirit, doing bond- service to the Lord" (Rom. xii. 3-12). What we should regard as special ministries shade off into general ways of Christian living. Nor is this accidental. All Christian life as such was viewed as " fruit of the Spirit," the issue of the holy inspira- tion seething in believers' souls a living efflux, as it were, from Christ's own spiritual being. " For he that adhereth unto the Lord is one Spirit." Hence " as the body is one and hath many members, and all the members of the body, many^ as they are, are one body ; so also is the Christ (in the mystic, in- clusive sense). For in one Spirit were we all baptized into one Body . . . and were all made to drink one Spirit." It was the up-flow of this Spirit, as long as the believer did not restrain it by self-will or slack- ness, which qualified each Christian for service as a member in the Church or Body of Christ. '* Now there are diversities of grace-gifts, but the same Spirit," and " of ministrations, and yet the same Lord . . . But to each one is given the manifesta- tion of the Spirit unto profit " for the whole (1 Cor. xii. 4-13). Here we have the fundamental idea of life in the New Messianic Israel or People of God. The organ- ising principle of Judaism, as in all else, so in its cor- porate being as the Ecclesia or Congregation of God, was the Law : that of Christianity was the Spirit, in keeping with the New Covenant of internal, spon- taneous life. Yet Messiah's Ecclesia appeared as 292 ORGANISATION AND MINISTRY [PART n. an Israel within Israel, and naturally took over such forms of the old organisation as rested on use rather than Law. At first, and perhaps for longer than we usually realise, the Apostles did not think of setting up a system to replace the national one, including Temple worship and Sanhedrin. Rather were they simply keeping together, until the Lord's early Advent in manifest power, the Messianic part of that Israel which might itself as a whole yet repent and turn to Him whom it had, under blind leaders, rejected for a season. This provisional note must be kept steadily in mind in considering primitive Christian organisation, especially down to 70 A.D. ; and it makes the idea of a new polity, to regulate future generations of Church life, a sheer anachronism. During the genuinely primitive period, then, say the first century, the Messianic People or Church was organised mainly in virtue of Spirit-gifts, which carried their own credentials to the Spirit-possessed brotherhood, whether at large or locally. Yet the principle of continuity or order, resting on tradition, was also present more or less instinctively, especially in Jewish circles. To this must be added the patri- archal type of spiritual authority attaching natur- ally to the primary witnesses and missionaries of the Gospel, Messiah's commissioned ones or " Apostles," whose part it was to testify and administer the Word of Salvation in His Name. To such an authority there were no formal or a priori limits in the minds of their spiritual children, having as it had the obvious stamp of spiritual power, seen in marvellous deeds and elevation of character. None were in- clined to question the actions of Apostolic Founders of churches as stewards of the Truth committed to their charge, or to set bounds to their initiative and CHAP, vii.] FIRST ORGANISATION JEWISH 293 guidance in the policy and discipline of the Brother- hood. Theirs was the kind of unique authority con- ceded by converts to pioneer " Apostolic " mission- aries in all ages. Its peculiar nature in all such cases is much the same. " The seal of my apostleship are ye in the Lord. If to others I am not an apostle, yet at least to you I am " (1 Cor. ix. 1)^ It was in- trinsic to its possessors, one of spiritual paternity in relation to their own offspring, and, by parity, for Christians at large. Hence it was so far incom- municable (1 Cor. iv. 15). Such Apostles, 1 then, in a sense wider than the Twelve, were the primary media of the Divine Will not only as regards the Gospel but also in its practical applications to the collective life of God's holy People. And when it came to organisation, they seem to have followed the models afforded by the Jewish synagogue, the local form of Israel's being, as distinct from the Temple system. Thus we hear of " elders " of the Church, as of the ordinary syna- gogue community ; and while the institution at Jerusalem of seven almoners, to administer the Church's common bounty to its needy members, is described as due to the special life of Christian brother- hood, it followed general Jewish lines as to its form. So too, when in token of their approval of the new 1 i.e. " all the Apostles/' as distinct from " the Twelve," in 1 Cor. xv. 5, 1. This passage suggests that they were those " sent forth " by the risen Christ in virtue of their presence at the final appear- ance, recorded in Acts i. 4 ff., for which certain had been speci- ally " gathered " and had "come together." This is what seems meant by the summary reference in i. 2, where they are called " the Apostles through holy Spirit," i.e. by divine inspiration. For this wider meaning of the title, under which Paul himself also came, as well as Barnabas and others (Rom. xvi. 7, 1 Thess. ii. 7), compare 1 Cor. xii. 28, Eph. ii. 20, iv. 11, Apoc. ii. 2, Didache, xi. 294 ORGANISATION AND MINISTRY [PART n. departure, the Apostles set apart to their ministry those selected by the Church with prayer and lay- ing on of hands, the method used was one familiar in contemporary Judaism. There is no suggestion that this act was thought to add to those " full of Spirit and wisdom " anything but corporate recogni- tion in the public exercise of appropriate gifts. What is significant, is the thought that even poor-relief in the Church, in order to be what it should be, implied gifts of " the Spirit," to inform with inspired love men's natural aptitudes and so add to them a super- natural quality. This is highly typical of the Apostolic Age. No less so is the distinction between the ministry of " the Word " and all other forms of service to the Church, though these too, as we have seen, were " in the Spirit." But as between these two types of ministry the striking thing, by reason of contrast with later thought and usage, is that the higher one, that of the jWord, was not conferred by ordination ; while the humbler, that of practical service and administration or oversight (e.g. by elders), was so conferred, as soon as it assumed a fully recognised character in any locality. The ground of this was that, in so far as Spirit qualifica- tion for any ministry was self -authenticating as with Apostles, Prophets and Teachers (in a specially inspired and inspiring sense), persons styled charis- matic, or enjoying a Divine " Grace-gift " it was above the need of being ratified by formal Church recognition and setting apart, as in ordination. The ministry of the Word was a vocation, which came to men like that of the Old Testament prophets had come (cf. Acts ii. 15 ff) : the other partook more of the nature of an office, definitely devolved on its CHAP, viz.] ITS 'CHARISMATIC' BASIS 295 holder as representing the local Church for a given purpose. ** Charismatic " persons received their call, with and in their gift, direct from God. The Church could recognise or reject its genuineness : it could do no more. Prophets, the typical ministers of the Word, were sometimes, though not always, itinerant. But in any case the highest functions in worship, in- cluding lead in Eucharistic prayer, fell to them when present, i.e. to unordained men : they were the Church's " chief priests " in the Spirit (1 Cor. xiv., Didache, x.fin.). So Divine or supernatural was the commission inherent in the gift of prophecy or of Spirit -prompted prayer both forms of the higher ministry of the Word that it over-ruled even the Jewish custom and prejudice against women playing a public part along with men. Thus Paul allows this form of women's participation in Church meeting, while disallowing the more normal ones of reflective discussion and instruction, 1 where the ordinary social principle of man's lead seemed still to hold good. What was " in the Spirit " was on a super-human and so super-conventional level, where the principle " in Christ there is neither male nor female " had full sway. Such recognition of the transcendent element in Christianity, the ideal as already realised in principle in actual humanity within the Church, was at once the glory and the perplexity of primitive Christian practice. This appears in Paul's argument in 1 Cor. xii.-xiv., with its plea both for the freedom of the Spirit, lest the Spirit be " quenched," and for harmony and order as Divine and demanded by the supreme law of Love. It re-emerges, too, towards the end of the century in the Didache, and in the contrasted views of the Churches of Corinth and 1 1 Cor. xi. 5, 13, contrasted with xiv. 34 f. } 1 Tim. ii. 11 f. 296 ORGANISATION AND MINISTRY [PART n. Rome touching the replacing of ordinary ministers by men of " prophetic " gift in the Church's supreme act of worship, the prayer in which it offered its Eucharistic " gifts " to God. The Church's life, like that of Judaism, was actually realised in local communities or brother- hoods. But in both the whole was, in idea and even in fact, prior to its distinct embodiments, as the Church, once a centralised community in " the holy city," spread and developed, like the Jewish Dis- persion, even beyond the borders of the Holy Land. In spite of this growth a spiritual unity was felt to pervade all local " churches," like the synagogues of Judaism, making the Church one in all its outward forms. The whole Church lived in every part, and each church lived as part of the whole. This cor- porate consciousness was not due to organisation, but was rather the cause urging the actual Church units to ever more organised expression of the inherent spirit of unity. Yet this was never stronger than when organisation was loosest, as in the first age of the Church. The " plastic force " making the Church one, was none other than the " holy Spirit " in all. The Spirit's unifying influence was, indeed, fostered by the personal activities of the higher or missionary type of ministry of the Word. But Church unity was not strictly dependent on such a ministry, which gradually passed away and left no successor. The plastic force of the one Spirit itself held together the hearts of Christians, as we learn from the prayers for the Church Universal in the Didacht. If prophecy was that form of ministry of the Word which was held most authoritative, because it flowed so directly from God's Spirit in man, yet the CHAP, vii.] TEACHERS AND ELDERS 297 " Teacher," whose gift was more reflective and human in form, likewise ranked at first as an inspired or charismatic person. His gift, however, shaded off into the common inspiration of Christians, who also had a duty of mutual edification in the Word at Church meeting. Accordingly the function of the teacher came to form the chief link between the higher and the lower ministries, as organised in the Church. In the latter, emphasis fell not on the idea of lead in and through the Word, but on practical guidance and service to the needs of the saints " aids " rather than " governances," as it is put in 1 Cor. xii. 28. But as time went on, the Word of instruction (rather than " prophecy "), both theo- retic and practical, came to play a larger part in Church life ; and its special representatives became the leading ordinary ministers, under the names " pastors and teachers," as in Eph. iv. 11. Yet all ministers were still viewed as given to the Church through the Spirit-gift qualifying each for his function in the one Body of the Saints. So in Acts xx. we read of Ephesian " elders " whom " the Holy Spirit had set as overseers (episkopoi), to shepherd the Church of God," as true teachers of the Word. This term, " elders," had a flexible connotation, largely coloured by Jewish usage. First there was the natural distinction of " elders " or " seniors " from " juniors," which ran through the whole community ; the former of either sex having general oversight of the latter, and being entitled to special honour from them, as fathers and mothers in the faith. 1 But secondly it came to describe the official heads of the local brotherhood, set apart to their representative fatherly office by the Church's definite 1 1 Peter v. 1-5 ; 1 Tim. v. 1, 2, 17 ; Titus ii. 2 ff. 298 ORGANISATION AND MINISTRY [PART n. choice and act. This act of election and consecra- tion was one of the whole Church, and sometimes took place with the co-operation of its missionary and collective leaders, when these were at hand : otherwise the local church acted through its chief members or other " men of repute." The official Eldership figures largely in the Pastoral Epistles and the Epistle of Clement (95 A.D.). " Let those Elders who preside well be deemed worthy of double honour, especially those who labour in Word and teaching." This implies that some official or presiding elders did, and some did not, exercise the ministry of the Word in a regular way, as " pastors and teachers ; " and that those who added to pure eldership or presidential oversight of the community the more gifted functions of teachers in the Word, enjoyed double honour, apparently including claim to public support. 1 Further, we gather that the " over- sight " of an official Elder able to " take charge of God's Church " or household, turned primarily on qualities fitting a man to " preside " over his own household ; and that this ought to include some ability to exhort with sound moral instruction. 2 Such were official Elders or Overseers, the two being still largely synonymous. But when we come to the Epistle of Clement, combined with this sort of Elder- ship, one of presidency and discipline exercised by those also called " leaders " (cf. Hebrews xiii. 7, 17, 24), we find other functions attaching to elder- overseers. 3 For to the " appointed Elders " (liv. 2) or " overseers " 1 1 Tim. v. 18, Didache xv. 1-2. 1 Tim. iii. ff., Titus i. 5-9. 3 With them were now joined as assistants " deacons," as organs of Christian chanty to those in need of succour : compare Phil. i. 1, Did. xv. CHAP, vii.] PRIMITIVE PRINCIPLES 299 fell now by usage, as their most honourable duty, the leadership in that part of the Church's common worship which consisted in the offering of its " gifts " of thanksgiving (" Eucharist ") in solemn prayer. To deprive them of this part of their " oversight " was to extrude them from the highest privilege of honoured office : and in the view of the Roman Church, as voiced by Clement, this was a wrong to them and a breach of Divine order. The Church at Corinth, however, which had superseded them in this particular function by others " one or two persons," perhaps of spiritual gifts qualifying in a higher degree for offering prayer of the prophetic type contemplated in the New Testament and the Didache seems to have felt it was only exercising a traditional right, in deciding who should be the Church's organs for this service. Thus we have traces both of development in the regular representa- tive ministry, now gradually superseding the older charismatic type even in the higher " ministry of the Word," and also of the different rate at which the older order died out under the influence of the local genius of each community. While Corinth is conservative of the primitive " freedom of prophesy- ing," legal-minded Rome tends to stereotype the secondary usage, already customary, as a fixed " order " of the Old Testament kind to which Clement definitely appeals as the Divine type of ministry in worship. " Which things are a parable " of much yet to follow. Such were the principles of organisation in the primitive Church. Further, its religion was co-exten- sive with all human relations. As Dr Hort has said : l 1 The Christian Ecclesia, pp. 228 ff. 300 ORGANISATION AND MINISTRY [PART n. " According to the New Testament the Christian life is the true human life. . . . Hence the true life of the Ecclesia consists for the most part in the hourly and daily converse and behaviour of all its members. . . . While therefore matters belonging to what is called the organisation of the Ecclesia are undoubtedly an important part of the subject, it would be a serious mistake to treat them as the whole. There is indeed a certain ambiguity in the word ' organisa- tion ' as thus used. Nothing perhaps has been more prominent in our examination of the Ecclesise of the Apostolic Age than the fact that the Ecclesia itself, i.e. apparently the sum of all its male adult members, is the primary body, and, it would seem, even the primary authority. It may be that this state of things was in some ways a mark of immaturity ; and that a better and riper organisation must of necessity involve the creation of more special organs of the community. 1 Still the very origin and fundamental nature of the Ecclesia as a community of disciples renders it impossible that the prin- ciple should rightly become obsolete. In a word, we cannot properly speak of an organisation of a community from which the greater part of its members are excluded. ... So that the offices of an Ecclesia at any period are only a part of its organisation, unless indeed it unhappily has no other element of organisation.' 'In the Apostolic Age . . -. the offices instituted in the Ecclesia were the creation of successive experiences and changes of circumstance. . . . There is no trace in the New Testament that any ordinances on this subject were prescribed by the Lord, or ... were set up as permanently binding by the Twelve, or by St Paul, or by the Ecclesia at large. Their faith in the Holy Spirit and His perpetual guidance was too much of a reality to make that possible." So was it even as to the Apostles themselves, to whom 1 But even after the creation of such ' ' special organs," the Church itself remained for long the recognised seat of authority, letters being sent in the name of a Church to a Church, and not of any officer or body of officers. CHAP, vii.] NO DIVINE CHURCH ORDER 301 ecclesiastical authority 1 accrued " by the ordinary action of Divine Providence, not (so far as we can see) by any formal Divine command. . . . The Apostles were not in any proper sense officers of the Ecclesia." Their authority "did not super- sede the responsibility and action of the Elders or the Ecclesia at large, but called them out. ... Of offices higher than Elders we find nothing that points to an institution or system, nothing like the episcopal system of later times. In the New Testament the word episcopos mainly, if not always, is not a title, but a description of the Elder's func- tion. On the other hand, the monarchical principle, which is the essence of Episcopacy, receives in the Apostolic Age a practical, though a limited recognition, ... in the position ultimately held by St James at Jerusalem." As to the one permanent case of " the monarchical principle " just cited, it was strictly relative to the first age of the Church. James became the standing head of the central Messianic community in patri- archal fashion, partly as himself an " Apostle " in the wider sense (Gal. i. 19), and partly as Messiah's brother, and so specially fitted to preside over His people in " the holy city " pending Messiah's own return. The applicability, therefore, of the mon- archical principle in later periods was in no way prejudged by such a case. The fact is that the Parousia outlook excluded the very idea of a con- stitution given by the Lord or His Apostles for the Church's future history. This notion first emerges in the sub-Apostolic Age, and significantly enough in a letter of the Roman Church, which readily thought in legal terms. It is only much later that the idea 1 "Stewardship" of the Word, of which they were the first and primary recipients (see Luke xii. 42-46 ; cf. Matt. xvi. 18 f.), was quite another thing. Of special stewardship of sacraments there is not a trace, nor of any apostolic successors. 302 ORGANISATION AND MINISTRY [PART n. is carried back to the post-resurrectional teaching of Christ " touching the Kingdom of God " (Acts i. 3) an opening for free surmise, of which apocryphal writers made use both sooner and more freely than ecclesiastical tradition proper. Before the middle of the second century we have no evidence that Apostolic authority was thought to devolve on any ministry set up by or with the sanction of the Apostolic Founders of the Church ; nor yet that any given method of ordination was of the essence of episcopal office in any local church. This is the more notable, since high, even quasi-divine, authority is attributed by Ignatius of Antioch to the single or monarchical " bishop," when he first emerges, early in the second century, in his epistles. The Ignatian Epistles, a landmark in organisa- tion, were written to certain Churches in proconsular Asia, c. 115 ; and illustrate the way in which various local ideals and conditions determined the develop- ment of Church polity. Their great motive is the religious one of unity in Church life, which makes for a single head to the local ministry. Such a head existed in each of these Asian Churches as primus inter pares, the standing president of its elders or pres- byters, to which order he belonged, but with functions peculiar to himself in virtue of his embodying the idea of the whole local church in its corporate unity. To such a presiding elder, by local use, the title " bishop " or " superintendent " (episkopos) was now limited at Antioch and in these Asian Churches, though not everywhere in the Church at large, to judge from Polycarp's contemporary letter to Philippi and our evidence for Rome then and even later. But Ignatius was not satisfied with CHAP, vii.] THE IGNATIAN EPISCOPATE 303 the Asian attitude to such local bishops. The centrifugal tendencies making for coteries in Church life had probably been felt earlier in his own Church at Antioch. Originally partial grouping of Christians in " house churches " had existed without any sense of danger to solidarity between their members on the occasions when they could all meet together in general assembly as a city-church. But a time was bound to come when rivalry between the two forms of Church fellowship would reach a head, 1 and when provision must be made for safeguarding the outward unity necessary for fulness of inward harmony. It is to this end that Ignatius' fervid appeal is directed : and his panacea is simple and far-reaching. " Make the bishop," says he in effect, " the centre of all Church-fellowship. Let his representative authority sanction directly or indirectly (through devolution when he is absent) all that is done virtually as by the Church, such as baptism, love-feast, and solemn Eucharistic breaking of the one loaf of fellowship in eternal life." Thus it is in the interests of unified order, as the outward condition of full and abiding unity in Love the essential note of the Church as " the fellowship of saints " and not of any theory of orders conferred through ordination, 2 that Ignatius is zealous for the single bishop in the one local Church. In this sense, and this alone, he meant his maxim, which in other and later contexts has 1 Apart even from the tendency in which Jerome saw the main factor in the development of a single bishop out of the body of bishop-elders, viz. for each presbyter to use his personal influence, possibly with a special " house-church/ 3 in a sectional spirit of rivalry with colleagues. * Ignatius says nothing of ordination or of Apostolic succession, but assumes a sort of Divine providential selection of bishops, as does Cyprian later on : see below. 304 ORGANISATION AND MINISTRY [PART n. an exclusive and hierarchical ring : " Without a bishop such a thing as a Church cannot be even in name." Hence, when Ignatius virtually said " No bishop, no Church," he was not thinking of any other types of Church polity, such as Christianity has produced in the course of its history. He is simply providing against schism in the local church. What he has in view is consistent with Congregationalism; with which indeed the actual embodiments of his ideal in his own day had most in common as regards the ecclesiastical unit, the local church or congrega- tion. It is also consistent in differing degrees with Presbyterianism, the organised association of such units in ever larger units (with a graded control running throughout from top to bottom) ; and with diocesan Episcopacy, whether of the ancient and patristic species or the mediaeval and modern conditioned by the fresh territorial distribution of the New Peoples, as compared with those of the Roman Empire. All these in varying measure have their roots in the Ignatian episcopate, as regards its essential principle, the bishop as official head of a unit of Church fellowship and the organ of its cor- porate unity. Beyond this, differences due to his- torical conditions at once emerge : and in some respects each of the polities just characterised can justly claim the fuller conformity to type. The process of development and deviation from the Ignatian ideal which itself became fully established in the Church in the later rather than the earlier half of the second century can here be indicated only in barest outline. Within the ministry itself the chief formal changes were due to the growing CHAP, vii.] ITS FURTHER DEVELOPMENTS 305 numbers of each community. The church unit was originally the sum total of members of the heavenly Kingdom " sojourning " in the civil unit of Graeco- Roman organisation, a city and its rural district. But in a large city the numbers of this " sojourning " (paroikia) would soon render frequent, even weekly, meetings of the whole body impossible. Thus the old ultimate relations between the Ignatian bishop and his people could not survive unimpaired. What, then, was to be the line of development ? The parting of the ways came gradually ; but the principle of organised unity was the one felt most vital ; and that of close personal relations between the bishop and his people, and their joint responsi- bility for the welfare of each local church, had to suffer. The degree to which this was the case varied. But in the larger churches it was marked. Where several separately organised congregations met habitually in chapels of ease, as distinct from the bishop's special church or cathedral, in later parlance each was placed under its own presbyter, acting as the bishop's deputy. Such a presbyter became a " parish clergyman," as we should say ; and the conditions arose which might obtain in a cathedral city to-day, save that the bishop had still, as a rule, quite a small " parish " to supervise the city itself and its adjacent district. The alternative here set aside, on the principle " one city, one bishop," was presbyterianism, the parity of congregational pastors or bishops, whatever the area of their churches, wider local unity being provided for by conjoint authority over each and all such pastors in a city presbytery. This would have been virtually a return to the pre-Ignatian type of episcopate, one in commission in the hands of a 306 ORGANISATION AND MINISTRY [PART n. college of presbyters, as in Clement's day ; only it would have been also different, as all historical de- velopments must be, in that the whole presbytery would no longer be present at all normal meetings of the local church, but owing to the growth of numbers would be distributed as heads of separate congregations for ordinary church purposes. It was this formal division in the headship of the local brotherhood which the Ancient Church instinctively shunned in the interests of unity. That the choice was not at first made on any theory of one local bishop as indispensable organ for the transmission of ministerial " orders," seems proved by the fact that at Alexandria, and probably elsewhere, the local presbytery, as late as the third century, itself ordained the church's choice (usually from the body of pres- byters) as bishop or president. For in the Ancient Church the episcopate ranked normally as an office, not as a third " order." It was Cyprian's habitual 1 restriction of the use of ** priest " (sacerdos) to bishops, as distinct from their presbyteral colleagues in the Levitical order, that first gave an impulse to the mode of thought which in the end issued in " three orders " of ministry. 2 Still less was the line chosen due to a theory of " apostolic succession " in the traditional sense. The one reason Ignatius never gives, among all that he alleges for loyalty to the bishop, is that the authority of his office is due to succession by "orders" 1 Though he uses it also in the older and wider sense, of the whole presbyterate ; e.g. Ep. i. 1 and xl. 2 For the " two orders" in the Ancient Church, and the presby- teral power of ordination down to the fourth century (cf. the xiii. Canon of Ancyra, A.D. 314), reference may be made to Bp. J. Wordsworth, The. Ministry of Grace. But there is further evidence in the Ancient Church Orders studied comparatively. CHAP, vii.] APOSTOLIC SUCCESSION 307 from Apostles. Rather he claims for each bishop direct choice by God as His visible representative, the type and organ of unity in the local church, even as God Himself or Christ is bishop of the Church universal. And Cyprian, the next great champion of the episcopate, shares the same " high Provi- dential " theory of bishops, though he adds to it a high clerical notion of ordination and quasi-apostolic authority, vested in the united episcopate of the Church as a whole. But the rise of this conception cannot safely be placed earlier than the generation before Cyprian's own, save perhaps in Rome itself; and there it was bound up with the promise to Peter in Matt. xvi. Such ideas, moreover, were at first largely personal or at most local peculiarities, not part of really Catholic tradition, as it meets us in the earliest Church Orders, the more normal expression of such tradition. To these we refer in a moment. But it will be well first to deal with the view of Irenseus (c. 180), which no doubt had some influence in helping to mould later theory. While Ignatius' theory was motived by both disciplinary and doctrinal dangers to unity, and Cyprian's mainly by the former, it was the latter kind which evoked Irenaeus' reflection on the value of bishops as links in the chain of Apostolic tradition. The bishop, as he describes his function over against Gnostic innovations upon the Church's belief, was just the most representative presbyter in each church, in whose keeping local tradition, as partaking in that of the Church at large, was surest of being found. This w r as owing to the responsible nature of the bishop's teaching ex officio, in terms of his own church's creed, handed on by oral repetition in a more or less fixed form. Such a Rule of Faith, he 308 ORGANISATION AND MINISTRY [PART n. assumed, went back to the Apostles themselves. This is what he refers to when he describes Catholic bishops as receiving, along with their succession to office, " the gracious gift of the Truth in an assured form " (charisma veritatis cerium) sure by the very conditions of its transmission. 1 This sense is necessary to the cogency of his argument as against the Gnostics. For a claim that bishops had a special subjective gift for knowing the Truth a claim nowhere else made by Irenaeus would here be a begging of the question. So far we have been tracing the development of the official ministry, especially of the single city bishop. But there is another side to the whole subject of Church organisation, down to Cyprian's day and even later, viz. the persistence of the primi- tive charismatic idea of ministerial qualifications, con- ceived as a matter of personal endowment for any function. This comes out clearly in the work of Hippolytus of Rome, soon after 200 A.D., Touching Charismata, traceable in the "Canons of Hippolytus" and other documents as their common basis. Bishop, Presbyters, Deacons, Confessors, Readers, Gifts of Healing are dealt with in such a way as to imply that where Divine gift was most manifest as in Confessors, empowered by the Spirit to brave death and endure sufferings, and those with " a gift of healings, through revelation " there ordination was not in place ; " for the work itself shall make manifest " the Spirit's presence. The Confessor has ipso facto the rank of presbyter, because already "the spirit" of this honourable office. But if he be chosen bishop, and so represent his whole church 1 Against Heresies, iv. 40. 2, cf. iii. 3. 3 fin., v. 20. 1, " firmam habens ab Apostolis traditionem," said of the Rule of Truth. CHAP, vii.] CHARISMATIC CHURCH LIFE 309 in his ministry, he shall be ordained in due form. Thus " the manifestation of the Spirit " was for some two centuries determinative in Church organisa- tion. God was still felt to " set " or "give " ministers " in the Church " by giving them freely the qualify- ing gift ; while ordination added the Church's cor- porate commission for representative ministry, along with prayer for special grace in its exercise. The idea that the Spirit was very manifest in the martyr led also to the belief that such a divinely approved member had special prerogatives in the vital sphere of discipline, the restoration of lapsed fellow-members to the " peace " and communion of the Church. Christ was felt to dwell and speak in martyrs to a unique degree. Accordingly their recommendation of those guilty of deadly sin after baptism carried such weight with the Church that, ipso Jacto, it practically secured restoration, as in- volving God's forgiveness. But by Tertullian's day, in North Africa at least, the idea of the martyr's merit, availing for the atonement of sins in erring brethren, was already entering into the reckoning with which men resorted to him and besought his prayers, with tokens of contrition. Tertullian, in- deed, in his Montanist stage writes against the whole habit (which now extended the privilege to " con- fessors " of any degree), mainly on the score that " prophets " alone were such " spiritual men " as had plenary power to declare the Spirit's mind as to dis- cipline in and for " the Church of the Spirit." But in the Church at large the question as to the medium of Divine forgiveness was soon narrowed down to the issue, confessors versus the ordinary ministry, particularly the bishop, as representing the Church in its corporate capacity. The decision against the 310 ORGANISATION AND MINISTRY [PART n. former per se was doubtless wholesome. Yet incident- ally it gave an extra impulse to the tendency to confer all power and responsibility on "the clergy," as they were now called; and so to foster that dualism between them and the people the special standard of Christian conduct expected of them being but one of its forms which ended in the practical dis- franchisement and pupillage of the laity in Church organisation. Discipline was, indeed, one of the last spheres in which the brethren as a body retained their old full franchise of responsible privilege, on the principle " Tell it to the Church " (Matt, xviii. 17). A vivid picture of a church met for discipline is given in the Syrian Didaskalia (c. 250-270), a work which often shows how long the older order persisted in some quarters with little modification. There the sense that each church was indwelt and guided by the Spirit, and so had the mind of Christ its Head on religious and moral issues involving its own well- being as part of the one " Holy Church," is still strong and effective. And as regards the corporate nature of discipline, this largely survives even in the revision to which the work was subjected in the latter part of the fourth century. Returning to the idea of the episcopal office at different stages, a good deal can be gathered as to the third and fourth centuries respectively. The bishop was still chosen by the whole Church. But the forms of ordination prescribed vary in such a way as to suggest that usage changed a good deal in that period. Perhaps the " Canons of Hippolytus " here best preserves the original spirit, if not also the form. In it all pray for the bishop and say, " O God, this is CHAP, vii.] THE MINISTRY, c. 200-400 311 he whom Thou hast prepared for us." Then " one of the bishops and presbyters " is chosen to lay the hand on his head and utter the ordination prayer. Further, in our other earliest witnesses, representing Rome early in the third century and Syria for half a century or more later, the prayer over a presbyter is described as being the same as that for a bishop. 1 This agrees in principle with usage at Alexandria well into the third century, where the bishop was ordained by the local presbyters as a body. More- over, the rate at which difference in powers between him and them grew, until it became one of kind, and men thought of three " orders " in the higher ministry, seems to have been far from uniform. Broadly speaking, it was more rapid in the West than in the East. Till the end of the second century authority rested with the presbyterate as a whole, inclusive of its ex qfficio head, the bishop, who was also head or pastor of the whole Church. In the last quarter of the second century Noetus was tried before the presbyters, in the presence of the Church itself, at Smyrna. But convenience made the teaching func- tion, especially for doctrine rather than moral exhorta- tion, fall more and more to the bishop, as centre of unity and check on diversity. It was, however, his lead in worship and administration which made the bishop come to stand out most from his colleagues, and finally appear in quite another order of Divine authority. As presiding at the Eucharist he not only offered, as mouthpiece of the holy or priestly people of God, the Church's great prayer over 1 The actual prayer given in two of them, which is in fact different, is probably a secondary addition. See Journal of Theol. Studies, xvi. pp. 344 ff., and xvii. 248 ff. 312 ORGANISATION AND MINISTRY [PART n. its sacred " gifts " to God ; he also had control of the larger portion not used as food of com- munion, 1 but devoted to deeds of mercy and support of the Church's ministry itself. All this came to be spoken of as the spiritual fulfilment of the sacrifices of the Old Covenant. Thus in the Syrian Didaskalia, ii. 26 f. (c. 260), we read : " The sacrifices of that time are now prayers and supplica- tions and thanksgivings ; the first-fruits and tithes and earnests and gifts are now oblations which through the bishops are offered to the Lord God. For they are your [chief] priests ; while the [priests and] Levites of those days are now deacons, presbyters, widows and orphans." 2 The bishop is to be " honoured " (i.e. from the oblations), because he " presides as the type of God : the deacon stands by him as the type of Christ," as God's minister, and so is to be loved : "the deaconess is to be honoured as the type of the Holy Spirit : widows and orphans are to be reckoned as type of the altar " (so Polycarp), because on them gifts to God are to be lavished. " Offer, then, your oblations to the priest, and he will divide, as is fitting, to each ; for the bishop best knows those who are in trouble." Elsewhere it is said that oblations, as a means of pleasing God, are to be received only from Christians in full communion. Here we have the key alike to the original meaning of sacerdotal language applied to the ministry, and to certain factors making for the elevation of the 1 The tendency to concentrate the most sacred functions in the bishop is seen also in the administration of the Communion. " The older custom seems to have been for the deacons to administer in both kinds '' (Maclean, The Ancient Church Orders, p. 46, citing Justin, i. 65 and Test. Dom., ii. 10). Later the bishop, either by himself or assisted by the presbyters, did this entirely or as regards the bread. * I.e. as media of Christian oblations. Bracketed words are probably later additions, not suiting the context or the writer's usage. In what follows, ideas come from Ignatius and Polycarp. CHAP, vii.] A SPECIAL ' PRIESTHOOD ' 313 bishop into an order above the presbyters. " Priest " and its cognates were at first used in a metaphori- cal and purely spiritual sense ; of the prophets unordained men of gift who offered the people's Eucharistic prayer in the Didache or of the man of true moral insight (gnosis) and character, the typical Christian, in Clement of Alexandria. In the Didaskalia they are relative to the prayers and gifts of the priestly people of God. Their Eucharistic prayer is offered through their president or bishop, who thus officiates as priest to his own church. So in relation to alms, which in part came from the oblations conceived as offered to God's " priests " for sacred uses widows and orphans are God's altar of sacrifice. All such acts are " sacerdotal " as specially connected with God's service. The bishop's priesthood is purely representative, and depends on the authority of the Church which appoints him its representative, as one shown by spiritual fitness to be already chosen of God as His representative also to them. "It is the authority of the Church which makes a difference between the order (the clergy) and the people " : so where there is no clerical order at all, " thou offerest, and baptizest, and art alone priest to thyself." So says Tertullian, who is also the first to describe as sacerdotal the functions reserved by such Church authority to the clergy, and who speaks of the bishop as " high priest " in relation to giving baptism a right which, in its fullest sense, inclusive of confirmation, never ceased in the East to belong even to presbyters. But the new nomenclature, which assigned the term " priest " to the ministry as a special designation, was, as Lightfjoot observes, ambiguous, and " marks the period of transition from the universal sacerdotalism," 314 ORGANISATION AND MINISTRY [PART n. in principle, " of the New Testament, to the particular sacerdotalism of a later age." And, as he has shown once for all, this first happens clearly in Cyprian. Cyprian's ecclesiastical theory is so epoch-making for the Latin Church, that it must be described as a whole. He may be called " the Ignatius of the North African Church " as regards jure divino claim made for the bishop as vicegerent of God or Christ ; but he adds the idea of " apostolical succession " by ordination, and lays stress upon the whole episcopate as that on which the unity of the Church at large depends. Whereas Ignatius was mainly concerned about local unity, Cyprian bases all upon a doctrine of the Church Catholic and its unity. More than any other he determined the mind of the Western Church in this matter. Like his opponent Novatian, he could not recognise Divine grace outside the Church as a visible institution, and made no distinction between the two. " He who has not the Church for his mother, cannot have God for his Father." This seems to leave to God no direct and free relationship to men's souls. But Cyprian, as usual, was only crystallising and pressing in a rigid and legal spirit the traditional high sense of " the holy Church " as the covenanted sphere of the Spirit's energies. Tertullian had a like view of the Church, which he compared to Noah's Ark. But this fully spiritual Church he places in heaven (On Baptism, c. viii., cf. above, Ch. V. p. 226), the sphere from which the Spirit conveys grace, e.g. in baptism, to the Church on earth, which is in organic union with the heavenly the real basis of Church unity. Or as he puts it elsewhere (Modesty, 22), " The Church also is properly and in principle Spirit itself, in which is a trinity of CHAP, vii.] CYPRIAN ON THE CHURCH 315 one Divine Nature Father and Son and Holy Spirit." On this view baptism among heretics cannot reckon as such. Here Tertullian was, as in not a few things, Cyprian's master. But granted the true faith was there, Tertullian lays less stress on formal orders as marking out the Church as such, and in his later phase contrasts the Church of the Spirit with the Church of the episcopate in Cyprian's sense. For Cyprian defined the Church in a new way, not as Tertullian and those before him had done, and as Novatian still did, in terms of the Rule of Faith held in purity of life, but by the more formal and external test of communion with the Catholic Episcopate. Cyprian's doctrine in brief was this. Christ founded the Church in place of Israel, as the exclusive sphere of grace and divine favour. The Church was essentially one. The first symbolic expression of this fact was Christ's utterance to Peter, " Upon this Rock I will build my Church." But seeing that after the Resurrection Christ gave a like commission to all the Apostles, Peter's primacy in the Apostolic foundation was only one of priority in time and symbolic honour, as typifying the Church's unity. The successors of the apostolate are the episcopate in its aspect of solidarity, amounting almost to a metaphysical entity, in which each individual bishop participates and so gains his authority. The epis- copate is the nucleus of the Church, its principle of unity and its " cement." The whole Church inheres in the episcopate, and from it derives validity and vitality. In the episcopate, as in the final form of the apostolate, there are no real distinctions of authority. The collective episcopate is the true authority ; and the voice of a section of it, e.g. of a province, derives its authority from the presumption 316 ORGANISATION AND MINISTRY [PART n. that it represents the common consciousness more than does an individual bishop. Accordingly when a bishop goes wrong, it is for the adjacent bishops in the first instance to decide upon the fact ; and in that case he is treated as no longer of the episcopate. The grace committed to him has vanished. Again, not even the Roman bishop has in principle more authority than any other. But inasmuch as he is successor of Peter, and Peter had a temporary or symbolic priority of honour as the type of Church unity, so the Roman bishop is entitled to more consideration than another bishop, apart even from the influence of the Church of the imperial city. While holding so high a theory, Cyprian applied it to each local bishop in terms of use and wont, to which he is a weighty witness. Thus he regards a bishop as autonomous within his own church in respect to matters of administration or usage, as distinct from the faith, where the united episcopate was supreme. The local bishop, however, should not act in discipline without the consent of his people, who had also the main voice in the election of their bishop, 1 although Cyprian regards their selection as divinely guided, and the bishop's action as hence- forth jure divino. He was " judge in Christ's stead," and could depose from office other ministers, or excommunicate with plenary power, in case of heed : his were " the keys." Yet moral purity of life was essential to valid office. An immoral bishop ipso jacto lost the grace of his office, and his people were to withdraw from him, subject to the judgment of neighbouring bishops. This position later caused embarrassment to Catholics when arguing with 1 " Ik is the people in the first place which have the power both of electing worthy bishops and of rejecting the unworthy. '' CHAP, vii.] HIS TYPE OF CATHOLICISM 317 Donatists in the fourth century. Nor was this the only point on which Cyprian came to occupy a minority position. It was so during his lifetime as regards baptism by heretics or even actual schis- matics from the Church, which as being outside the Church was to him no true baptism. Here in principle he agreed with Novatian, though the latter defined the Holy Church by " purity " of conduct rather than constitution. But on the principle itself Cyprian was opposed by part even of the African Church, and, what was more serious, by a large part of the episcopate of the whole Catholic Church. 1 This presents a special difficulty for Cyprian's theory of authority as attaching to the united episcopate; for the issues involved were really more than those of practice, where he allowed diversity. They were theological, touching matters of faith. Did authority, then, attach to a simple majority of the episcopate, when there was a strong minority ? In any case Cyprian and the majority of the African bishops went their way, and let Rome and Italy go their way. Probably he believed that the majority of the episcopate was on his side ; with this justification, that the East continued, and still continues, to reject baptism by heretics. Thus we have reached a point of great interest for later Catholicism. We are in the presence of 1 Incidentally the decision, which in the West recognised both schismatic and even heretical baptism (if correct in form), created an anomaly in sacramental theory. For so the soul could be born again from on high through an invalid ministry, but could not through the same human medium receive other grace less essential in idea, because adding only to the growth of the new life, as in confirmation aud the Eucharist. Again it opened the door to doubt on the score of " intention " in the minister, which later became a vital matter in Roman Catholicism. 318 ORGANISATION AND MINISTRY [PART n. diversities of view, partly between East and West, partly between the African Church of the day under Cyprian's lead and later Latin Christianity. Both points raise grave problems for the classic formula of Catholic orthodoxy, " That which always, everywhere, by all, hath been believed." Hence Cyprian remains at once a prime foundation-stone and a stumbling-block for Western ecclesiastical theory. The fact is that elements blended in Cyprian's Church order which afterwards fell apart and have never again been found united in Catholicism, notably those connected with organic co-operation between bishop and people in joint responsibility for the realisation of a " holy Church," as living witness to the Christian ideal. He stood on the border between old Catholicism and that which was yet to be, one growingly influenced by the ideals and methods of the Roman Empire. Compared with the Church's past, his type of episcopate was no longer the same as that of the second century, even where the conceptions of Ignatius and of the Roman Clement prevailed. In its local form it had become more autocratic in idea, in virtue of a new theory of orders due largely to recrudescence of Old Testa- ment sacerdotal analogies, unconsciously favoured by kindred ideals in Graeco-Roman society. In practice, too, the tendency was the same way, owing to growing numbers and lessening touch between the bishop and his people in large churches. Then there was the notion of the Church Catholic as a single organisation, dependent for its unity upon the episcopate at large, itself conceived as a mystic unity in which the Church partook through union with its local members. This was a new notion, and made for a hierarchic rather than repre- CHAP, vii.] 'THE HISTORIC EPISCOPATE' 319 sentative type of Church government, which showed itself increasingly in the nature of synods, now a regular feature of the Church's organisation. Church conferences had originally been ad hoc, and in the latter half of the second century included, as far as possible, not only the ministers but also ordinary church members in the locality where they met. But as they became commoner, and tended to be drawn from larger areas, no steps were taken to preserve direct consultation of church-members as such, through lay representatives : instead of this, presbyters and deacons, who might have helped to voice the feeling of the rank and file, were themselves gradually deprived of a vote even when present. Cyprian, the great developer of the system, treats bishops alone as his colleagues in the synodal decisions ; and this came to be the prevailing view. If, then, Cyprian's episcopate may fairly be taken as the type of what is to-day called " the historic episcopate," it was the creation of a good deal of history, and that in a period when its alchemy of change was very active. It was the issue of an historical evolution, and must be judged accordingly as a relative product. It is clear that growth of numbers called for some change. But it is not so clear that the original close relations between bishop and people in a real unit of life, and their joint responsibility for the Church's welfare locally, need have been sacrificed to the other and more civic ideal, which made the territorial unit (civitas) deter- minative of the church unit and the episcopate. It was this, not mere multiplication of the clergy to meet growing numbers, which really broke up the old system. A number of congregational bishops in a city and its district could have formed, with their 320 ORGANISATION AND MINISTRY [PART n. ministerial colleagues, the elders, a local presbytery for common counsel and action, with a standing president. This would have been compatible with the Ignatian ideal of bishop and people, and so would a system of synods drawn from both ministry and people, which might have led further to provincial and even oecumenical synods as the need arose. As it was, the full working out of the Catholic idea of the Church, as one and holy in all its membership, was arrested ; and only the representation of part of its being, the clergy and this very partially was in the end really attempted. We have seen how the Church's growth in numbers which was specially marked in the period of " peace " from persecution between Severus and Decius (211- 249) affected the episcopate both in practice and in idea. But it had corresponding results for presbyters and deacons. As regards the collective authority of presbyters, any increase in it, as com- pared with that of the people, was only part of the increase in the power of the bishop. Thus when and where local growth involved subdivision into distinct congregations for ordinary purposes, each with its own presbyter (and deacon) as delegate of the bishop, the presbyter gained individually in dignity, especially as himself conducting Eucharistic service with which went also preaching, in theory at least. In fact, they became virtually assistant bishops, analogous to the rural bishops (chorepiskopoi), who had the formal status of bishops in country districts, and could ordain within certain limits. But, as we learn from a Canon of Ancyra in Galatia (c. 314), seemingly restrictive of older usage, city presbyters seem in some ways to have had even higher ministerial CHAP, vii.] OTHER MINISTRIES 321 status than such rural bishops. " Rural-bishops are not permitted to ordain presbyters and deacons, nor even is it permitted to city presbyters (to do so), without the commission in writing of the bishop in each diocese." This recognises the power, though not (now) the right, of presbyters as such to ordain. So later in the fourth century Jerome asks, "What power has a bishop that a presbyter has not, save the right of laying on hands ? " But even this, as regards confirmation in baptism a most solemn act, conceived to confer the Spirit's fulness belonged to presbyters in the East. As to deacons, the close association of their ministry with the bishop made their powers vary yet more directly with his. This association between the members of the executive or more official ministry presbyters being for a time conceived rather as counsellor-colleagues of the bishop in matters of policy is very marked in the Didaskalia. Later, especially as the fourth century wore on, there was a protest against deacons as trenching on the rights of presbyters, now become more official in their functions and that in their individual as well as collective capacity. Moreover, a leading deacon, the bishop's right-hand man, gradually became distin- guishable, acting as " the bishop's eye " in a special sense, and developing into a definite officer, the archdeacon, On the whole, then, it hardly accords with the facts now known to us to say that " from the time of the Apostles these three orders have existed in the Church " bishops, presbyters, deacons, in the Catholic sense. Each of these developed out of some- thing different in idea, functions, and relations to the Christian people, whose common life they helped 322 ORGANISATION AND MINISTRY [PART n. to organise. But this was specially the case with the bishop as a third " order," distinct in essence from the presbyterate. One other change in the ministry calls for notice at this point, as involving a religious principle integral to Christianity, namely, the equality of men and women in the Church. This Paul laid down as part of the newness in Christ, and it is implied in New Testament practice. What we know of its gradual dying out shows that it was a good deal conditioned by the feeling about women native to different races. They enjoyed more consideration in Macedonia than in Greece proper, as Acts itself suggests ; and in Asia Minor than in the adjacent Syria, not to mention Egypt and Rome. Even in Syria, to judge by the anxiety which the " Apostolic Church Order " (c. 300- 350) betrays to exclude them from the ministry of the Eucharist, certain women ministers had, far down into the third century, exercised that honourable function. But in the more Anatolian " Testament of the Lord " it is implied that as late as the close of the fourth century such a state of things still obtained in some degree, both in the public and private ad- ministration of the Eucharist, in the case of official " widows " with the rank of presbyteresses. Thus in describing the communion it says (i. 23), " Let the priests first receive, thus : bishop(s), presbyters, deacons, widows, readers, 1 sub-deacons. After these, those who have charismata, those newly baptized, 1 The lower place which readers now often held in the ministry corresponds to the dying out of the charismatic idea, connected with their original function of expounding the Word which they read in worship. When this died out, being viewed simply as qualified to read clearly they fell below sub-deacons and even " singers." CHAP, vii.] WOMEN. WIDER ORGANISATION 323 babes. The people thus : old men, virgins (male), and the rest. The women [thus] : deaconesses, and then the rest." A little before, official widows appear as part even of the ministry or priesthood, standing within the veil about the altar, and joining the bishop in offering. Such " widows who sit in front " in some parts of the East ranked as female presbyters, and so within " the priesthood." In the Testament (i. 40) they are set apart with prayer ; but a dis- tinction is (now) drawn between this and " ordina- tion " with laying-on of hands. Thus the tendency, from the third century onward and first in the West was to lower the dignity of widows of pres- byteral rank, and to bring them into the order either of " virgins " or " deaconesses," or else to subordin- ate them to these (cf. Apost. Const., ii. 57). There- with anything like equality between the sexes in the Church's ministry vanished, and, so far, has re- vived only in very limited circles, in modern times. Ministry of women in the Church to an extent ade- quate to the idea of Christianity, and even to early Church practice, is still a thing of the future. It may mark a fresh era in the spiritualisation of humanity. So much for the ministry in the local unit of Church life the sphere in which organisation proceeded for the most part during the first three centuries. Of regular organisation between the Christian communities, for formal expression of their catholic spiritual unity, there was for long no trace, any more than among synagogues of the Jewish Dispersion. Yet from the first there was profound solidarity of feeling and concern for common fundamental principles. " We have no such custom, neither the churches of 324 ORGANISATION AND MINISTRY [PART n. God," was a consideration which Paul expected to carry weight. But this, like all else, including in- tellectual forms of faith, was taken in the spirit rather than the letter : large allowance was made for local instincts and habits. Still the idea of unity tended, as time went on and experience brought home the diversity of usages, to urge Christians to aim at more uniformity. And this in turn led them to adopt formal methods of gauging the judgment and wishes of the majority, especially of the leading churches most of all those of reputed Apostolic foundation. This was done not only in the case of Montanism, with its claim to be a fresh " prophetic " revelation on Christian morals and discipline, but also as to the date and method of observing Easter. The effort to reach one mind on these problems of the latter half of the second century called into use the method of occasional synods ; and in the second case raised the vital problem of Christian toleration and its limits within the full bond of inter-com- munion. On the one hand, a legal temper showed itself at Rome in the person of Victor, a masterful bishop of Latin race and genius ; while the opposite ideal of unity found expression in Irenseus, who pleaded that the different forms of observance were but convergent lines of witness to the common faith expressed in the observance. Above all he censured as un-Christian the intolerant and coercive spirit which tried to force one church's way on a large body of conviction in the East, when clinging to its own traditions. Here already we have in germ the issues involved in the whole movement towards uniformity in organ- isation and usages, which thenceforth can be traced with something like continuity. Broadly speaking, CHAP, vii.] APPROXIMATION TO STATE 325 the degree of uniformity felt needful, as " body " or external form for inward unity, varied greatly, but tended always to increase and to be enforced by majorities intolerant of the consciences of minorities : and before very long the means devised for securing unity came often to appear of more value than the end itself. This meant that the kind of unity sought for really became other than it had been, a thing of the spirit, unfeigned love to others for the Love of God in Christ. Thus unity and uniformity became hopelessly confused during the fourth century and onwards : and machinery well enough adapted to the political ideal of ensuring uniformity by the methods of law, became part of Church organisa- tion in the name of the spiritual ideal of Christian unity. Towards this outcome the new relations of the Church and the Empire early in the fourth century contributed powerfully. The wonderful and, as it was felt, Providential change by which the head of the State became all at once the Church's protector, and personally sympathetic with it so far as imperfect insight into its meaning and the exigencies of his headship of an Empire still mostly pagan seemed to allow, not unnaturally threw the leaders of the Church off their guard and balance. An era opened of mixed Christianity in a new sense. The ways of the world, in the sense of its political ideals and methods, gained a footing in Church organisation, at a crisis of sudden relief and gratitude to the bene- factor raised up of God on His people's behalf. Already this had been prepared for by the more hierarchic forms of the episcopate, especially in the greater churches, whose bishops Eusebius de- scribes as already " prelates " in prestige and worldly 326 ORGANISATION AND MINISTRY [PART n. temper that dry-rot of religion. But hitherto there had been no regular means of forcing the de- cisions of an episcopal majority upon the minority or their people. The federation of the churches in synods was still a purely religious one, subject to the consent of conscience. Such synods did in truth largely organise the life of the whole Church, and did not impose on any part of it decisions without local con- sent or in legal fashion, to the loss of spiritual liberty. So used, they could educate and stimulate the Chris- tian consciousness by corporate thought along with mutual consideration ; and premature decisions were less likely where possibility of effective protest remained. But once synods met under the auspices of the State, often in the presence of its representatives, and with its ideals and methods more and more working in their members' minds through such co-operation, Christian ideals as to the manner of attaining unity in faith and practice were sure to suffer. Further, the coercive power of the State, at the disposal of a majority, offered a short cut to uniformity. The temptation was great, and the Church had no experience of the results of the new methods, to make it closely scrutinise what the Emperor offered, and even urged, from the standpoint of a politician rather than a Christian. It is a most suggestive fact, as showing the mood in which those methods were adopted one of opportun- ism rather than of principle that Constantine, who was here conceded so large a part in shaping the Church's policy, was not even a pledged member of the Church by baptism until he lay on his death-bed. Yet it was to his policy that intolerance between Christians was largely due. The actual working of the new system was such as to confirm the presump- CHAP, vii.] SOME OF ITS RESULTS 327 tion that what had been adopted without due testing, in the light of fundamental Christian principles, had in fact deviated from the lines of genuine develop- ment. Its verifiable fruits, in the moral and religious temper of the episcopate, were evil, often scandalous. Gregory of Nazianzus, in the light of more than half a century's experience of the new type of councils, testified that they were " rather an addition to, than a remedy of evils : for the love of strife and the thirst for superiority are beyond the power of words to express." Of course in all such matters there is generally a vicious circle, as between a method and the men who use it. The leading bishops and clergy, from the very nature of their duties, were now less representative of the best Christian piety in their churches. Similarly the average church member was becoming less a Christian by conviction, with insight into the Gospel, and so less fit to count in the councils of a self-governing Spiritual Society, even on a representative basis. Yet it was also the less direct part played by the corporate mind of the more serious Christians that facilitated admission of un- satisfactory members to the community. In both these ways, then, there was a certain correlation of the Church's spiritual state and its easy acquiescence in the new organisation growing out of the new relations between Church and State. But while this should affect our judgment as to the gain and loss at the time in what seemed most expedient, and was no doubt the line of least resistance, it must also affect our judgment as to the absolute value of the system. It was opportunist; possibly even in the minds of Churchmen of that day, when the end of the world was still assumed to be at hand. No one dreamt of the persistence of the Church's organisa- 328 ORGANISATION AND MINISTRY [PART n. tion after the Roman Empire, first as men knew it and then in other forms, had long ceased to exist. But besides the organisation of the Church by councils with the resulting body of Dogma and Canon Law to which they gave ever more definite and uniform shape there arose for administrative purposes a permanent system of super-bishops, in a graded hierarchy parallel to the organisation of the State. Thus a " bishop of bishops," an idea applied satirically by Tertullian to the autocratic manner of a Roman bishop of his day, became a common phenomenon. Over the bishop of the civitas rose the archbishop or metropolitan of the province, seated in its capital or metropolis ; over all of these within a great ecclesiastical unit roughly answering to an imperial " diocese," the patriarch or bishop of a world centre like Constantinople, Alexandria, or Antioch in the East, and Rome in the West, came to exercise a vaguer but growing control : then finally a primacy over East and West respectively was claimed and largely exercised by Constantinople and Rome. Here again, though the system had an older religious and racial basis, political condi- tions had much to do with its full development and with the varying powers actually enjoyed by these pre-eminent bishops, especially those of the two latter sees. Particularly was this true of Constantinople, which became during the fourth and fifth centuries the real Imperial city of the world, first in fact and then in form also. This fact, however, while it favoured the rapid rise and prestige of the bishop of New Rome, made his actual jurisdiction a far more mixed matter than that of old Rome in the West. He was overshadowed and often dominated in his policy by the Emperor, so that the semi-civil or CHAP, vii.] A DUAL PAPACY 329 Erastian rule in the Church, even in things of faith, known as Caesaro-Papism, of which the reigns of Zeno (474-491) and Justinian (525-565) furnish striking examples, became characteristic of the Eastern or Byzantine Church. Here the idea of Church unity took on a form most continuous with the spirit of the Roman Empire ; the religious and civil, the World-Church and World-State, were but two aspects of one all-embracing organisation of human life. But such practical identification of the two really jeopardised even formal Church unity, since what told against unity in the one sphere tended also to disturb it in the other. Thus in Egypt, Syria, Armenia, the recoil of national and racial instincts and cultures against an over-centralised State, Greek in culture, helped to produce and perpetuate the schisms in the Church which expressed themselves in Monophysite and Nestorian vernacular Churches. A like factor entered also into the later and greater schism of the Eastern and Western Churches. The patriarch of the Roman Church, on the other hand, after having his claims to general super- intendence of Western Christendom sanctioned and enforced by Imperial authority in the days of Leo the Great and Valentinian III (445), was soon emancipated from possible imperial interference in the exercise of those powers and what gradually grew up round them. The fall of the Western Empire as such, in 476, gave the sole patriarch in the West an enormous advantage over his rival at Constantinople. When Constantine founded New Rome, the Emperor, as Dante puts it, "To yield the Shepherd room, passed o'er to Greece." 830 ORGANISATION AND MINISTRY [PART n. In time the bishop of Old Rome became the prime representative in the West of the civilisation and prestige of the Roman State, as well as of the spiritual status and traditions of the Roman Church, already for intrinsic services, as for foundation, held facile princeps in Latin Christendom. When to this is added the developing Petrine theory of supremacy in the Church at large, one easily sees how the Roman Papacy, first in practice and then in theory also, seemed to be the predestined key- stone of the arch of ecclesiastical unity, conceived as dependent on unified organisation, and that on hierarchical rather than conciliar lines. This develop- ment of an absolute primacy in the Western Church, as distinct from that of Constantinople in the East, always limited by the claims of sees which had once been its equals and remained in feeling its rivals, was so gradual and so prepared for in the deeper trend of Latin ecclesiastical sentiment and theory since Cyprian's day, that it came about for the most part by general consent. Of course there were exceptions, particularly the African Church, where Cyprian's example of independence towards Rome kept alive the remembrance of his special minimising view of the Petrine primacy in the apostolate, as the predecessor of the Catholic Episcopate. But the broad logic of his theory told against this part of it, and made it work in the main for papal supremacy, in the existing mental atmosphere of the Church of the Latinised West. How far either form of the dual papacy, of New or Old Rome, was really the logical issue of the instinct for unity as understood on the lines of Catholic Chris- tianity from the fourth century onwards, apart from the actual historical conditions, it is not our task to CHAP, vn.] THE LATIN FORM 331 attempt to decide. Enough here to have traced these two forms as the actual issues of organisation in the interests of iinity for the Catholicism of the Ancient Church, the Church of the Roman Empire in so many and deep senses. The differences of form in East and West were partly due to political conditions. In the East the Empire was embodied in a person, the Emperor, who controlled the State Church much as he had done as Pontifex Maximus in pagan times. In the West the Christian Pontiff was head of a more autonomous ecclesiastical organisa- tion of the Empire ; but the temper and principles, indeed some of the forms, of the old Roman tradi- tion lived on in the Papal Church. In the striking words of Hobbes, the Papacy was *' the ghost of the Roman Empire sitting enthroned on the grave thereof." What it promulgated in the name of Christ was Divine Law, defined ex cathedra, with an authority which demanded unquestioning obedience, and to be enforced, if needful, by legal coercion. "Tu regere imperio populos, Romane, memento." It was a nobler pax Romana that was in view, but the tone and methods remained peremptory and master- ful : parcere subjectis et debellare superbos. CHAPTER VIII THE ONE HOLY CATHOLIC AND APOSTOLIC CHURCH "The Church, which is Christ's Body." "The Catholic Church is that form of Christianity in which every element of the ancient world has been successively assimilated which Christianity could in any way take up into itself without utterly losing itself in the world.'' HARNACK. A FEW words of epilogue seem desirable, in order to remind us of what passed over from the Christianity of the Roman Empire to Mediaeval Europe. It was a heritage moulded in its forms at least by a complex civilisation. When we think of the New Testament, particularly of the Synoptic Gospels, and then of the Church of the Four Great Councils, whether in the Graecised East or the Latinised West, how far apart do they not seem ? We have traced the develop- ments which bridge the chasm : and yet, we ask, Is the continuity complete ? If so, at what level of life does it lie ? Is it at more than at the deepest of all, the spirit which reveals itself as a common attitude to the Church's Founder himself, and the general ideal of life which He embodies for faith ? Everywhere else we see transvaluation of typical terms, such as Gospel, Church, Faith, Saint, the Communion of Saints. Before coming to matters where form and substance blend inextricably, we may point to the CHAP, viii.] CHANGE IN FORM AND SPIRIT 338 contrast even in the literary forms proper to primi- tive Christianity, on the one hand, and developed Catholicism on the other. In place of the Hebraic Gospel and Apocalypse, and that universal, informal, personal medium of written communication, the Letter or Epistle, we have a multitude of forms taken over from the later culture of the Graeco-Roman world. Apart from the Gnostics, pioneers in all forms of premature assimilation of Christianity to non-Hebraic thought and usage, the process began with the Apology, especially of the more philosophic type, at the end of the age that had been in direct contact with the apostolic. It continued specially in the catechetical school of Alexandria ; and during the third century one form after another passed into the service of the Church ; until in the fifth century the ancient heathen literature practically died out, being superseded by the patristic, which had served itself heir to all living forms of the classic tradition. This process admirably illustrates Rothe's aphorism : " The ancient world built up the Catholic Church on the basis of the Gospel, but in doing so it built itself bankrupt." But while this is the most obvious case, the principle holds good also of the contents of patristic literature also the doctrine, cultus, organisation of the Church, which finally replaces the Roman Empire as the home and mother of civilised humanity in Europe. By this power of assimilation the Gospel had established its claim to be universal religion, at once the most conservative of vital values and the most transforming. What were the elements of change where change really mattered ? None can fail to feel the con- trast of perspective and emphasis. It lies mainly in what occupies the centre of the picture and most 884 THE HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH [PART n. engages attention. In the one presentation Christ overshadows all else, in the other the Church. Both are present to mind in either case ; but in all- pervasive influence on thought and feeling, the two have almost changed places. When Augustine said, " I should not believe the Gospel, unless I were moved by the Church's authority," he did but formulate the general principle of Catholic faith, however qualified it really was in his own case. The Church, or Community of Salvation, is an idea so many-sided that it might well receive differing emphasis at different times. It was from the first the practical equivalent of the yet larger and more flexible idea " the Kingdom of God," the Messianic Sovereignty of God inaugurated by Christ, which in the New Testament occurs mostly in an ideal sense, either eschatologically or on its immanent Divine side as human life in the Spirit. The Church, then, was the Kingdom of God as actually conditioned by human nature, with all the imperfections which this involves in process of moral realisation. It is only at the end, when presented to its Head as bride to bridegroom, that the Church appears as " without spot or wrinkle." Meantime its proper attributes, those of the Kingdom which is " righteous- ness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit," apply to all its members in a partial sense ; they are true of its essence, though not of its whole being. So taken, the Church on earth may be regarded either as it is essentially really, yet ideally as to its full possibilities or concretely, with all its present alloy of sin and ignorance. In both aspects the Church came in time to be conceived less experi- mentally, more theoretically and as an object of faith. This change was natural and necessary up CHAP, viii.] THE CHURCH : HOLY AND ONE 335 to a point. The Church became an immense realised fact, virtually " Catholic " in actual extension, and not only in idea. But there was more than this. The Church was now regarded largely in a new light, as a sacred and wonderful " mystery " or sacramental entity, bodying forth a system of Divine energies, in which men shared primarily through material means of grace. The Church was in fact the all-embracing Sacrament or channel of Salvation, as an institution and apart from its actual members. In this mystic yet concrete aspect it more and more possessed the Catholic mind and imagination, 1 being seen fore- shadowed in many and strange Old Testament types. Next, to the Church so conceived was transferred the fundamental attribute of the Church in the New Testament, that of holiness, in proportion as it ceased to apply personally to the mass of the baptized. " Holy " it must be, " the salt of the earth " ; if not in the persons of all its members, 2 then corporately, so that the holiness of a part might avail not simply as salt, even for the rest, but also as transferable merit, for the sanctification of the whole. But if so, it must be " one " in the fullest and most objective sense possible to a social organism. It must be " Catholic " not only in the original sense, universal in fact and idea, but also in a sense which from the latter half of the second century more and 1 Especially after it had felt the full effect of Neo-Platonism through the Pseudo - Dionysian depiction of the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy as counterpart of things in Heaven. For, as Eucken says, this " fused sensuous and supersensuous in such a -way that the sensuous appears now as a mere reflection of the spiritual, now as inseparably united with it. 1 Callistus of Rome, early in the third century, said that " in the Church, as in the Ark, are both clean and unclean.'' 386 THE HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH [PART n. more added a new and more technical connotation universality in creed, ministerial orders, sacraments (as conditioned by these), and fully unified organisa- tion. Into this conception of Catholicity entered also Apostolicity, as ground of the Authority upon which such uniformity came in theory to rest. Here, then, we have all the essential " notes " of the Church, as conceived from the fourth century onwards ; and the greatest of these is " oneness " in a strictly objective sense. But the type of its unity was no longer the same. It had lost in vital and personal quality ; it had gained in formal solidarity as an institution, being an organised union of terri- torial units called " Churches " a sense ignored in the Epistle to the Ephesians, the great New Testament exposition of the Church's unity. Such change was natural and wholesome in fact, true development up to a certain point, namely, so far as growing organisation afforded truly organic forms for the free and orderly expression of all the fulness of the Church's vitality. But there was a danger lest this point should unconsciously be passed, in zeal for the prime end in view, namely, corporate unity to the loss of stimulus and exercise to individual spirituality, which requires liberty and responsibility for its development to the degree contemplated in the New Testament. The claims of these two aspects of a religious community, the institutional and external, on the one hand, and the personal and inner that is spiritually real on the other, are hard to harmonise, and indeed cannot be harmonised by any system as such. Yet in fact the system was growingly viewed and applied in an absolute rather than a relative light. It was now assumed that the Church had had from the first CHAP, vin.] SACRAMENTAL VALIDITY 337 a legal constitution, as well as a fixed intellectual creed, both determined by an authority in the Church possessing legal right to the obedience of individuals and even of large minorities. When one places this " One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church " side by side with New Testament Chris- tianity, on the one hand, and both Jewish and Roman legalism and institutionalism in religion, on the other ; one feels that in its formal and concep- tual aspects, and presumably also in formative ideas and even temper, the ancient Catholic Church in the Roman Empire shows no little reversion to pre- Christian types. What determined the limits of this visible Church as a corporate unity, and gave validity or assured virtue to its sacraments, was the Divinely instituted ministry, propagated by ordination in due form. Validity and regularity were the categories which, after Cyprian's day, alone counted for sacramental grace. Personality came in only in the ministry of the Word, with its prophetic rather than priestly conditions of efficacy in mediating the Grace of God to others. The priestly function was an act, something done in the right way (opus operatum). It required in the doer only intention to be the medium of the grace which God was pledged to bestow through this means ; and in the recipient only intention to receive it with due obedience to the covenanted conditions. Beyond this, even the degree of personal receptivity or " faith," in the New Testament sense, was a secondary matter. This idea of the Church and of the conditions of sharing its Salvation appealed to the average mind of the ancient world. It offered strong security that all was right on the objective side of religion, the means 338 THE HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH [PART 11. of grace entrusted to the charge, the exclusive charge, of a single world-wide organisation. Such a Church made itself responsible for its members, here and hereafter, if only they remained in a dutiful attitude to the authority of its priesthood or at least passed away in its communion. The practical fitness of such a Church for its task of leavening the masses of humanity that were suddenly drafted into its membership is obvious. It had itself very largely assimilated what was best in the life and culture of the society around it. But the question ever recurs how far the assimilation may have been too complete to safeguard adequately the distinctive spirit and features of the original Gospel of Christ and the Apostles, in the interests of the future ages. Such, broadly speaking, from the fourth century onwards, was the conception of " the Holy Catholic Church " ; and such some of the other conceptions most closely bound up with it. We have dwelt upon it because Catholic thought all hangs together and varies directly with its central conception. What this is, may appear differently when the whole is viewed from different standpoints. We have taken the Church as the most significant for Catholicism, as compared with primitive Christianity. But a like result would be gained if we took Salvation or Eternal Life. The corporate and objective aspect of religion whether of grace, faith, reason, authority, worship, or piety generally rather than the indi- vidual and subjective, would equally stand out in relief. The Salvation preached alike by Jesus and his Apostles was personal and experimental in character and emphasis, whether as corporate or individual. It was an " eternal life " consisting in knowing God CHAP, vni.] IDEAS OF SALVATION 339 in His veritable character of Father, as revealed in Jesus Christ whom He had sent ; but in the peculiarly personal and inclusive sense of the word " know " in Hebraic religion. It was an attitude of the moral personality, involving all the soul and showing itself in grateful gladness as at "good news" received. This attitude was generally described as " faith," from the main element in its genesis and nature ; and those in possession of such new life were " believers " or " saints," i.e. consecrated to God and His will. But after the second century in particular, faith became less personal in nature, and more belief in " the faith " as a creed the official form into which reflection analysed the contents of experimental faith. By the fourth century the crucial part of that creed, the knowledge of God and of Christ, was further denned in more abstract and metaphysical, that is in less personal and personally verifiable, terms than before; yet assent to it too was made essential to a place among " the faithful." Mani- festly this meant change in the conditions of Chris- tian Salvation. Moreover the term " regeneration " as a synonym for Salvation, or forgiveness of sins and essential sanctification, when applied to infant baptism greatly stimulated the notion of Salvation itself as a change of " nature " rather than of consciousness. How far the regeneration or saved state of infants and of conscious believers was equated, is shown by infant communion. Again, the action of sacramental grace being conceived thus objectively, the conception of ministerial " orders " as conditioning it became correspondingly objective. Similarly the ** ministry of the Word," which was more obviously a matter of personal spiritual gift, 340 THE HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH [PART n. manifest in experience prior even to ordination, came to be treated as secondary, compared with the awful power of regenerating souls and feeding them with the sacramental food of eternal life. So determinative is the conception of the nature and method of Salvation. What is less obvious, but no less real, is the corre- lation between the changed conception of Salvation and theology proper, particularly Christology. God was no longer thought of in terms of the character of Christ as " God manifest in the flesh," but, in keeping with Greek rather than Hebraic thought, ontologically rather than personally ; in terms of " essence " or spiritual substance changeless and incorruptible, over against man's change and decay rather than of moral relations with dependent personality. Hence the Atonement, which rectified the abnormal relations of God and man due to sin, was little dealt with or only in such a way as to suggest that Christian thought was here going far astray. Finally, the person of the Divine-human Saviour, in whom normal relations between God and man were once for all or in archetype re-established, on a higher and more permanent basis than before the Fall from innocence into sin, was conceived in similar terms, those of " natures " the Divine and human, as sharply contrasted entities. It was only in the region of personal experience, of rational and moral consciousness conscience, in the sense which Christianity itself has done so much to define and indeed create that an idea of real union between the Divine and human, one truly spiritual or seen by spirit as from inside, could be attained. Yet it was just this method of approach which Christian thought more and more lost in its effort to solve the CHAP, viii.] AND SAVING FAITH 341 mystery of Divine-human union, 7 first in Christ the Saviour, and then in like manner in Christians as the members of His mystical Body, to whom the principle of the Incarnation derivatively extended. Catholic Christology as formulated by the Church of the Four Great Councils, like all Christology since, was correlative to its own conception of Salvation ; and vice versa. The one is no more adequate or final than the other. Men had ceased to think about Christ and His Father in terms of moral character, of which they might know much from the analogy of their own moral experience, and dogmatised in terms of " nature " in a metaphysical sense, one alien to New Testament religion. How great was the loss to the religious temper and charity of Christian life during the period of acute controversy in the fourth century and its sequels in the fifth, is matter of common knowledge. The Greek intellect, once aroused, was eager and partisan for logical subtleties : it took its fill of them right down to the end of the patristic period. In the process it developed a temper and tradition as to the very conception of faith which proved most harmful, particularly to the Greek or Orthodox Church. Orthodoxy, as a test of membership in the Church Catholic, did more than injure conscience in religion, hinder the development of moral individuality a vital element in personality and narrow the range of love, the cardinal Christian virtue; it also tended to arrest progress in theology, which depends on fresh thinking rooted in original religious experience. Augustine's personal religion did much to modify and enrich with more primitive elements the Latin variety of Catholicism, ere it passed on into its 342 THE HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH [PART n Mediaeval phase. Yet not even he could change its dominant trend, which persisted through all local vicissitudes, down to and through the great revival of the opposite or subjective type which led up to and marked the Reformation era. Since then the two contrasted types have existed side by side, and together, though not in co-operation, have made modern Christendom what it is. The habit of mind which lay behind the theory of salvation by orthodoxy was largely the child of Greek intellectualism. Thus sons of the one Catholic Church in the fourth century anathematised each other, and could attribute to nothing but moral causes the fact that others did not see eye to eye with them touching the inner constitution of the Godhead. Later the usual Catholic excuse for treat- ing non-belief of orthodox dogma as sinful, came to be the pride of indocility in not simply bowing to the voice of Church authority. But when the Christian world was itself divided, and no final objective authority yet existed to be invoked, the principle on which one theologian judged and con- demned another was as just described, and rested on an intellectualist conception of the nature and contents of saving religious faith. It meant the victory of Hellenism over Hebraism in this regard. The corresponding change in the Conception v of Salva- tion and its conditions in Latin Christianity, was the legalism which appears already in Cyprian's idea of " satisfaction " to God, rendered by Christians as such for sins that weighed on the conscience. As we see from various services of the Mass, this took the form not only of penal discipline but also of propitiatory gifts to God, offered in connection with Christ's oblation of His body and blood. In these CHAP, vni.] THE ELEMENT OF CONTINUITY 343 two tendencies lies the chief reason for the most striking of all contrasts between Patristric theology proper and Christian doctrine both before and after. This is the absence from that theology of the idea of Justification by- Faith in any experimental sense, such as stamps the New Testament as a whole, and not only the Pauline Epistles. From the patristic standpoint any such doctrine became unintelligible. Yet to the Catholicism of the fifth century it seemed that the Church had always believed no other than it did then. 1 Its criterion of the true faith was, as Vincent of Lerins phrases it, " that which always, everywhere, by all, hath been believed." That there was a certain historic truth underlying this con- sciousness of continuity, . few will deny : but it is no less certain that, as it was meant, and still more as it soon came to be taken, it was untrue to facts. It is not ours to attempt to appraise the relative pro- portions of the two main aspects ot the development we have traced, the continuity of spirit in Christian piety and the changes in its conceptual and institu- tional expression both forms of symbolism. But it was a grave error both in fact and in idea to overlook the distinction itself, as did the Vincentian notion of Catholic faith. His test is indeed worthy of acceptance. But what beyond personal faith in Christ, such as Peter's confession at Csesarea Philippi implies, does it really yield ? Nothing, if history is to be the judge. Conceptually the test really confuted the very notion of Orthodoxy. Continuity was not, and never has been, complete in the sphere 1 A highly significant comment on this belief is the fact that the work of Pseudo-Dionysius, in spite of its Neo-Platonic outlook and forms of thought, was soon accepted as a product of the Apostolic Age, and as such largely coloured Mediaeval piety. 844 THE HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH [PART n. of theology, but only in that of religion, the devotion of the Christian heart to the Christ of the Gospels. It lives in the Church not of the Doctors, but of the Saints, of every degree and kind. Its true expression is not in formal creeds, but in a chant like the Te Deum. When we realise the Catholic notion of faith, as belief such as can be tested by the Nicene or " Athan- asian " Creed, we cease to wonder at the gradual disuse of the Bible in the private religious life of ordinary Catholics. As long as it was felt to be the most direct source, other than the Gospel as preached, for the kindling and feeding of the faith that " cometh by the Word of God," it was sedulously read and pondered. Thus personal faith was fostered by the sacred literature that is most charged with religious personality and personal religion. But once it was believed that the essence of revealed and saving Truth had been extracted from Holy Writ ; that this most precious metal had been refined, as it were, from the historical and personal alloy in union with which it is there found, and minted into the current coin of the realm of Salvation, as dogmatic theology and moral precepts ; the zeal for personal quest in the mine of the Word naturally slackened. For had not faith already the saving Truth in a more com- pact, safe, and authoritative form, as prepared and guaranteed for general use by the collective wisdom of the responsible teachers of the Church ? Hence, after drawing its own doctrines in large part from the mines of the Scriptures, Catholic theology in effect sealed up those original and abiding stores of Christian experience and thought, to the unspeak- able impoverishment of mediaeval piety. CHAP, viii.] THE RESULTANT PIETY 345 True, the Church had favoured Bible-reading by Christians at large. But it had also taught men to think of God and Christ in different aspects and relations from those which appeal more directly to faith, hope, love those visible in the Gospel story and Apostolic experience. The metaphysics of the Godhead and Incarnation had replaced the per- spective of the Gospel Parables and the personal religion of the Epistles. Nay, even as an aid to the devout life, the Bible was. becoming superseded by writings more expressive of the prevalent ideals of piety, especially of the ascetic type. Legends of the Saints and special manuals of devotion and penitence more and more pushed even the New Testa- ment into the background, both in practice and in the spiritual and disciplinary directions of ghostly advisers, as the fifth century, which completed the dogmatic process, wore on. Further the conception of sacraments as the prime media of Salvation, media now regarded in a semi-magical light, to no small degree assisted that issue ; and so helped incidentally to render possible the dying out of the art of reading which use of the Bible ever tends to foster and keep alive. Had the primitive Christian conception of the Word of God preached, expounded, and read by the believer as the prime medium of grace, prevailed instead of the Hellenistic and Roman emphasis on dogma and sacrament, the history of European civilisation, as well as Christianity itself, might have been other and more progressive than it has been. In particular moral individuality, both in religion and in social and political life, would have matured sooner and with less revulsion than occurred when the Bible came once more to its own at the end of the Middle Ages. 846 THE HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH [PART n. As it was, the people passed into a state of spiritual pupillage, for which the metaphor of shepherd and flock afforded an all too complete simile. Govern- ment by a hierarchy became the form of Church organisation from top to bottom, and obedience to the clergy the prime mark of " the faithful." Such piety was often very dutiful ; but it was rather that of the good child than of free men and women. Accordingly the Ancient Church left over the problem of ordered liberty unsolved, both in practice and theory, for the ages to come after. Of such relative failure to realise the true Christian type on a large scale, under the system of the fourth century and onwards, the rapid spread of the ascetic life as the typically Christian one so that monk and nun, the " virgins " of Christ, become " the religious " par excellence is a most striking proof. Its rise is too coincident with the changes both of outward conditions and of ideas within the Church which marked this era, to be other than causally connected with their general effect. The ascetics and " solitaries " or monks, of one degree or another, were " in retreat " from the world not only outside the Church but also within its borders, now that Church and society at large stood in new and more mutually interpenetrative relations. In this they represented a form of the " puritan " idea of the Church ; whereas the rest of their fellow-Christians for the most part embodied another one which also kept certain ascetic clergy, by conscience or the constraint of others, at the post of duty, if of danger also, as shepherds of the common flock. Many felt that the Church must be as Catholic as possible in extent and content, meeting human nature for its salvation half-way at least : and the attempt often led further than CHAP, vin.] VIEWED COMPARATIVELY 347 was intended or realised. These contrasted principles and policies emerge again and again in history. But in no later case was the policy adopted as momentous for the future, or for the genius and institutions of historic Catholicism, as in the age when the Church entered into new relations with the Roman Empire. For then the spiritual fashioner of Mediaeval Christendom, and through it of Modern Christianity, was itself moulded in many ways for weal and woe. Thus for real approximation to a normal harmony in the Church between the spiritual tendencies, principles, ideals, and methods involved in Chris- tianity, no period of the Ancient Church's life can claim classic value or authority. Different ages had their special strength, and also corresponding weakness. In many ways the balance of principles and fidelity to the distinctive New Testament type of piety were never more general than in certain parts of the period 100-250. Within that period leadership was conceded mostly to spiritual character and gifts of mind, whether theoretic or practical, as we see them in a Polycarp, an Irenaeus, a Clement, an Hippolytus, an Origen, a Cyprian ; large co-operation too existed between each church and its leaders, especially in discipline and government ; and scope was still left for the play of spiritual gift outside the official ministry itself, where naturally it tended to be concentrated. After c. 250, however, the balance between ministry and people became disturbed. The clergy were more and more viewed as an order of inherently higher sanctity, attaching to it by Divine law ; and so Church organisation became clerical and sacerdotal in a new sense and spirit. Salvation, too, was by 348 THE HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH [PART n. orthodoxy and discipline, on a basis of hypothetical, as distinct from experimental, sacramental grace. Such was the emphasis of Catholic piety from the fourth century. The gain and loss in real Catholicity, in adaptation to the abiding needs of humanity as distinct from a period in its life, involved in the whole phase of development above described, is hard to determine. In the period following the Fall of the Empire in the West (476) the Catholic system, as conditioned by that Empire, achieved its most striking successes. It leavened and instructed the new peoples during their natural stage of tutelage, before their higher native possibilities attained maturity on any scale, and began to react with interpretative originality upon what had been received as the tradition of the past. Its system operated with very different emphasis in East and West respectively, as indicated by the epithet which each added to those already denning or characterising the Church. The East was above all " Orthodox," and gloried in its conservatism both in doctrine and usage. The West came to boast the title " Roman," in a sense more and more one with " Papal." Here the Catholic Church was conceived primarily as a Divine Society or Institu- tion of Salvation, with an organised unity dependent on its ministry or Priesthood (Sacerdotium), and centring in a Divinely appointed head on earth, even as the whole civil Society or Holy Roman Empire (Imperium) had its visible vicegerent of God's authority among men. The Western Church, while in a sense more centralised in its organisation than the Eastern, was more flexible in its doctrinal forms and usages. For here the Church's authority CHAP, vm.] CHURCH IN EAST AND WEST 349 existed in the living present as well as in the past, and so was able within limits to develop fresh inter- pretative forms in which faith and piety might legitimately find expression. Accordingly Western Christianity has for the future a more real and vital history than its Eastern sister. To it in the sequel our sketch must in the main be confined. PART III THE MIDDLE AGES CHAPTER I INTRODUCTORY " No one will think meanly of the Middle Ages who justly appreciates Dante." EUCKEN. IT is of great importance in considering the history of mediaeval Christianity to recall to ourselves the conditions into which the Christian religion origin- ally came, and under which the Christian Church was formed. The Christian Church was born into a world which was very highly civilised, a world whose civilisation is indeed comparable only with that of quite modern times. For the Grseco-Roman world was characterised by a very fully developed intellectual and artistic life, and the political con- ditions of this world were those of a highly organised and perfected system of government. The Christian religion brought into this world new spiritual and moral apprehensions, and a new spiritual and moral force ; but it cannot be too clearly remembered that it contributed directly but little to the intel- lectual and nothing to the artistic or the political civilisation of the ancient world. Indeed in all these matters the Christian Church had nothing to teach the Roman world, nor did it make any such pretention. 351 852 INTRODUCTORY [PART in. There is, therefore, a very remarkable contrast between the relation of Christianity to the ancient society and civilisation, in which it first took shape, and its relation to the mediaeval world. In the development of mediaeval civilisation the Christian Church played a very important part, in all these respects political, intellectual, and artistic. For to the mediaeval world the Christian Church was not only the centre of moral and religious life ; it was also to a very large extent the instrument of the education of the new races in the elements- of civilisation. It did something to help forward the development of a new political order, and this in a variety of ways. For many centuries it was the main channel of the intellectual training of Western Europe ; and it is at least in connection with the Church that, in a large measure, we have to trace the development of mediaeval sculpture and painting. We must now ask ourselves how this came about. How did it come about that a religious society whose fundamental characteristics were derived from a comparatively obscure Semitic people ; which had so many characteristic traditions separate from, some perhaps alien to, those of the civilised ancient world in the West how did it come about that it became the guide and educator of the civilisation of the Western world ? Are we to think that the Christian society as such had characteristic prin- ciples of social order, or of the intellectual life, or of the aesthetic apprehension of the world, which it handed on to the northern and the western bar- barians ? Are we to think of the civilisation of the Middle Ages as being controlled and dominated by conceptions and ideas proper to and characteristic of a Semitic people ? We must not altogether CHAP, i.] CHURCH AND CIVILIZATION 353 exclude from our mind the possibility that in some respects the Christian Church may have im- posed on the West conceptions of civilisation, as distinct from religion and morals, which in their nature were rather Oriental than Western. There are probably one or two aspects at any rate of mediaeval life, traces of which are left even in the modern world, of which we may say that they do represent the influence of Oriental ideas, influencing the Western world through the medium of the Christian Church. But after all, these are com- paratively unimportant, at any rate they are not the most important aspects of mediaeval and modern civilisation, political and intellectual. It was not in virtue of any body of ideas, of any conceptions of civilisation, which were the peculiar prerogative of the Christian societies, that the Church was, as we might say, the schoolmistress of the Middle Ages. This was in reality due to the fact that the Christian Society, which had been born into a world domin- ated by the Graeco-Roman civilisation, had taken into itself so much of the elements of this civilisation that it became at once the repository and the channel for the Middle Ages of such elements of the ancient order as actually survived the downfall of the Western Empire. We must be careful to notice at this point that we have to draw a very sharp distinction between the relation of the Western Church to the Western civilisation in the Middle Ages, and that of the Eastern Church to the Eastern or Byzantine civilisation. In the East the Christian society continued to live within the bounds of the civilisation, however decadent that may have been, into which it had first been born. It had nothing to teach the Byzantine Empire of the principles of 354 INTRODUCTORY [PART in. the intellectual, artistic, or political world. In the West the case was wholly different. Before the fall of the Empire in the West, the Christian Church had taken into itself so much of the Roman system of organisation that it actually was able to hand on to the Western nations, when they were ready for it, something at any rate of the methods of a civilised, as distinct from a barbar- ous government. The Christian Church preserved, partly through its respect for the Roman law, and partly under the terms and characteristics of its own law, a good deal at any rate of the tradition of a civilised legal and juridical system. Again, the intellectual education of the Western world was for many centuries almost entirely the work of the Church. Christian ecclesiastics and monks never wholly lost the tradition of the education of the ancient world. It is, of course, quite true that an immense amount of the ancient learning and the ancient intellectual discipline was lost. It is quite true that the intellectual methods and conceptions which the Christian Church handed on to the mediaeval world, were in many important respects far below the level of the higher intellectual civilisa- tion of the ancient world. But still the Church was the channel through which what survived of ancient thought and culture came to the Middle Ages. Much of ancient literature and ancient philo- sophy perished ; but much of it was preserved and highly valued in the ecclesiastical schools of the earlier Middle Ages. And here it is important to observe that this aspect of the influence of the Church in the Middle Ages must be regarded from two points of view. In the first place the Church handed down to the CHAP, i.] EDUCATION OF THE FATHERS 355 Middle Ages a good deal of the literature of the greatest period of Latin civilisation ; and although it did not do this directly for the Greek literature, yet it did preserve the influence of the Greek philo- sophical ideas and systems, so far as they were contained in the Latin philosophical writings. In the next place, and this is yet more important, the ancient civilisation which is directly and immedi- ately represented in the Christian tradition of the Middle Ages, is that of the Latin world in the period of the later Empire. We must not indeed fall into the rather superficial mistake of supposing that the mediseval ecclesiastics were indifferent to such parts of the great classical literature and philosophy as they possessed ; but no doubt their attention and their interests were directed chiefly to the literature and thought of the last centuries of the ancient world, as represented in the writings of the great Fathers. Until towards the end of the second century the Christian writers were largely uneducated men : but from the end of the second century to the sixth the Christian writers were mostly men who evidently had enjoyed what we might call the higher education of those centuries. No doubt as these writers differed greatly in their personal characteristics and qualities, so they differed greatly from each other in the particular character of the educational process through which they had passed. Some Christian Fathers, like Basil the Great or Gregory of Nazianzum, in the fourth century, had been educated in the best schools of the time. Other Christian writers, like the great Augustine, were probably trained more especially in the fashionable but con- ventional and artificial rhetorical system then pre- valent. But they were all educated men, as 356 INTRODUCTORY [PART m. academic education went in those days. Other great Christian writers, like Ambrose, may have had an education rather more of a professional or official kind ; but they also were what we should nowadays call educated persons. Thus the educa- tional and intellectual ideas which the Middle Ages inherited from the Fathers, are closely related to the educational methods and intellectual ideas of the later Roman Empire. In one way or another, through the Fathers the Christian Church of the Middle Ages was always in real contact with the intellectual habits and life of the ancient world. Again the Christian Church had a very close relation to the development of the artistic life of the Middle Ages, because in Church building and decoration a great deal of the traditions of ancient art survived and supplied the elements out of which, in a large measure, mediaeval architecture and the mediaeval arts in general were slowly developed. We must indeed be careful here, because there are elements in mediaeval art which have probably no relations at all to the art of the ancient world. Especially in the vernacular poetry of the Middle Ages we have an art which owed, for many centuries, little or nothing to the ancient world. And there are aspects of mediaeval painting, and still more of mediaeval sculpture, which represent very little indeed of the influence of ancient art. But if we omit these things, it is obvious that the influence of ancient art, so far as it continued at all in the Middle Ages, continued almost entirely through the Church and through churchmen. The truth is that the clergy of the Middle Ages never altogether lost the tradition of ancient in- tellectual and artistic culture. Thev were for CHAP, i.] LATIN CHURCH AND BYZANTIUM 357 centuries, speaking broadly, educated men living among barbarians. And this had an immense effect on their relation to the new peoples. It is an obvious fact that for centuries even the most intelligent and powerful mediaeval ruler or noble was usually an " uneducated " person, often not able to read or write, while often even the humble ecclesi- astic had at any rate the elements of a literary, and often in some degree of a philosophical, education. It is easy to see that for a considerable period the Church in Italy was very conscious of the fact that it belonged to the ancient civilisation ; and that it was only very slowly and very reluctantly that it separated itself from the Eastern Empire, which still represented the traditions and fashions of the ancient civilised world. It is very significant to observe how in the eighth century, in the height of the great Iconoclastic controversy, the Bishops of Rome, while actually the leaders of the revolt in Italy against the Iconoclastic decrees, were yet extremely reluctant to acquiesce in any political breach with the Empire. And it is very interesting to find them writing to outlying parts of the Latin civilisation, like the people of Venetia, imploring them to remain faithful to the sacred Roman Re- public, as they called it, and not to unite themselves with the Northern barbarians. 1 But what is true of the Italian Churchmen, was true in a large sense of Churchmen all over Europe. In Northern Europe the clergy were of the same race, and grew up under the same traditions as the great mass of their fellow- countrymen ; but in virtue of their education they were related to the older world. These are conditions and circumstances which 1 Gregory II., Ep. 11. 358 INTRODUCTORY [PART in. must never be forgotten if the real position of the Church in the Middle Ages, especially of course in the earlier Middle Ages, is to be understood. It was in the nature of things impossible but that the educated Churchman should occupy a position of superiority towards the new barbarian races, which was not due so much to the effect of his religious position as to the characteristics of the civilisation which he represented. If we want to find an example of this, it is very well worth while to compare the tone in which a great ecclesiastic like Gregory the Great writes to the Roman Emperor at Constanti- nople, and the terms in which he writes to the rulers of the new Teutonic States. To the Emperor in Constantinople Gregory writes as one who is fully conscious of his place and authority as a minister of the Church, but at the same time as one who is conscious that as a Roman citizen he is the humble subject and servant of the Roman Emperor. To the Teutonic rulers Gregory writes as one who is naturally the adviser and guide of men for whose official position he has every respect, and whom he treats with courtesy and urbanity, but who were also clearly enough persons to whom it was proper he should give his advice, and for whom it would be well that they should take it. On the whole, then, the position of the Church in the Middle Ages, and especially in the earlier Middle Ages, was in a considerable measure determined by the fact that for many centuries it was through the Church and churchmen that the civilisation of the ancient world was handed down. Thus, to appreciate the position of the Church in the Middle Ages, we must turn from the position of the Church as we see it to-day among ourselves, and think CHAP, i.] CHURCH AND RENAISSANCE 359 rather of the relations of Western Christian mission- aries settled among the peoples of the Asiatic civil- isations, or, more exactly, of such missionaries among barbarian people of Africa or other continents. The position of the Christian missionary to-day is, and in the nature of things cannot but be, deter- mined not only by the nature of the religious and moral Gospel which he has to preach, but by the fact that he represents another and a more com- pletely developed civilisation. The great change in the position of the Church which came in the period from the fourteenth to the six- teenth century, was due, first of all, in large measure to the fact that European civilisation had become by that time self-dependent, and did not need as be- fore the help of the Church. The new nations had in theory learnt everything which the church- men had to teach them. The layman had by that time become possessed of the culture which had once been the prerogative of the clergy, and the older relation had necessarily therefore come to an end. In the second place, the great change of the Renaissance was due to the fact that men were now able to go back for themselves, and not merely through the Church, to the ancient civilisation, and to take over from this such elements as they thought desirable or suitable, without any reference to the Church's tradition. Apart altogether from the movement of the Reformation, it is now clear to us that a great change in the relation of the organised Christian Church to the Western world was inevitable. For nearly ten centuries the Church had been in the position not merely of a great spiritual and moral power, but of the repre- sentative of a great civilisation. By the seven- 360 INTRODUCTORY [PART in. teenth century the task which it fulfilled in this character was completed. In modern times the Church is once again in something of the same position which it occupied from the first century to the fifth. CHAPTER II THE ORGANISATION OF THE CHURCH "Arbitrary authority was unknown to the Middle Ages." WHEN we endeavour to form for ourselves some conception of the nature of mediaeval Christianity, we find ourselves at once compelled to give a much larger place to questions of ecclesiastical organisation than we generally do in considering the Christianity either of the first centuries or of the modern world. Not that the social aspect of religion is ever a thing unimportant -that would be to mistake the nature of religion. We cannot talk of the Christian faith as being at any time a thing relative merely to the individual ; and therefore the history of Christianity must always be the history of a community, or communities. At the same time, this is true of the Middle Ages in a special sense. And we must there- fore consider with some special attention the char- acteristic principles and forms of the organisation of the mediaeval Church. We have in earlier chapters considered something of the earlier stages of the development of the order of the Church. When we now deal with its structure in the Middle Ages, we must begin by observing carefully two points which sharply distinguish the mediaeval Church from that of the earlier centuries. The first distinction, and it is a very important one, is this. The primitive church was a little congrega- 361 362 ORGANISATION OF CHURCH [PART in. tion of Christian people, living together in one place in close and intimate relation with one another. And when the government qf the community assumed the episcopal form, the diocese was in the first place nothing more than a local congregation under the direction of one head, while there were a certain number of ministers of other kinds, who were both the colleagues and in a certain measure the sub- ordinates of the Bishop. In all the early Christian Churches, until we come to the extension of Christi- anity among the northern peoples and the bar- barian races, the Christian organisation was related to small areas. In mediaeval times, and among the northern races, the unit was from the first a huge one ; and that continually affects one may almost say, dominates the character of church organisation. For we can see that these huge areas made the participation in government of the great mass of the Christian people, and even of the great majority of Christian ministers, practically impos- sible without the development of some kind of representative system. This development did come ultimately in some parts of Europe, but it came very late and very slowly. The second condition which distinguished the mediaeval Church from the primitive, is related to the circumstances with which we dealt in the last chapter : the clergy and especially the superior clergy represented a different culture from that of the Christian people as a whole. There was no longer an educated clergy settled among educated people, but a clergy, representing an older civilisation, living and working among a people who were in most cases on another level of culture. When we have recognised the influence of these CHAP, ii.] NATURE OF CHURCH AUTHORITY 363 two circumstances on the character of the mediaeval Church, we must be careful not to allow ourselves to fall into a confusion about the nature of Church authority. Some people have the impression that in the mediaeval Church, and to the mediaeval mind, the clergy were the authors of Church law, and the irresponsible rulers of the Society. This impression rests upon a misapprehension. We shall deal with the subject of Church law and the system of ecclesi- astical discipline in later chapters : but it will be well at the outset to recognise the general principles which lie behind the forms of legislative and administrative authority in the mediaeval Church. Broadly speaking, the law of the Christian Church in the Middle Ages is, first and foremost, the author- ity of the Divine law, which was binding on the Church. This divine law is contained in the Holy Scriptures, and in the principles of the Natural law which are apprehended by the human reason and conscience. And secondly, but this is on a lower plane, the law of the Christian Church consists of the custom of the Christian people, normally no doubt, but not necessarily, expressed in the decrees of Councils and Popes. Church law is either simply the declara- tion of divine law which is binding on the Church, which the Church cannot touch or alter, of which the Church is not the author, and over which no one Pope, bishop, priest, or layman has any power ; or it is the custom of the Christian people. These are the principles of the great canonists, and cor- respond with the whole mediaeval conception of law. To the mediaeval mind positive law always was primarily custom. In the strict theory of the canon law, every decree of Council or Pope is finally sub- ordinate to custom. Custom is the supreme master, 364 ORGANISATION OF CHURCH [PART in. and the custom of the Church is the custom of the Christian people. It may be said that this is a vague and indeterminate principle, but it is not therefore insignificant. Of this law the clergy were normally the adminis- trators. But that does not mean to say that they, and they alone, had power to determine what it was or to declare it. Here is a phrase which is significant of the attitude of the mediaeval Church on this matter. It is contained in the letter of Pope Nicholas to the Emperor Michael of Constantinople in the ninth century a letter which emphatically repudiates the claim of the Byzantine Emperor to have a share in a great case of Church discipline. " Where do you read," Nicholas writes, " that the emperors, your predecessors, took part in Synods, unless perchance in those in which the faith was discussed, the faith which is a universal thing, which belongs not only to the clergy, but also to the laity and indeed to all Christian people." 1 This is a very significant phrase, and it is embodied in the great collections of the canon law. 2 I think it is not merely a phrase, but that the words represent the actual conviction of the mediaeval Church. We must now examine the organisation more closely. There are surely few things more start- ling than the development from the little Christian society of the first or second century to the great northern diocese of the Middle Ages. Here, in its earliest form, is the little Christian society of plain, simple people, with some rudimentary order and discipline a little society of friends and companions 1 Pope Nicholas I. , Ej>. 86. - e.g. Gratian, Decretum, D. 96. 4; Deusdedit, Coll. Can., 4. 164 CHAP, ii.] CONGREGATION AND DIOCESE 365 and brothers in Christ. It is indeed strange to think that this is represented in the Middle Ages by the diocese covering a great area, almost a province, the administration of which is centred in one man, the Bishop. It is very difficult indeed to conceive that the Bishop of the early Church had grown into this great public official. Further, we must observe that not only had the original little congregation grown into the great northern diocese, but that these great dioceses were only the primary elements in the system of the organisation of the mediaeval Church. The first de- velopment of the provincial system of the Church, that is, the grouping together of a number of dioceses in one system, belongs also to the period before the Middle Ages, but it is a fundamental part of the mediaeval system. That is to say, the government of the Christian community was not merely the busi- ness of the little congregation, or even of the large diocese, but it was conducted in a large measure by a combination of the dioceses in provinces ; and the organisation of these provinces was centred upon, and found its method in, the machinery of the provincial Synod, and the person of the Metropolitan. Fin- ally and beyond all this, the Western Church in the Middle Ages was conscious that ultimately all Church authority and Church discipline centred in the Primacy of the Roman See. That is, broadly speak- ing, the Western Church was conscious of a great ascending scale of authorities, from the diocese to the province, and finally to the supreme authority of the Bishopric of Rome. The mediaeval Church, then, had grown from a loosely organised federation of little Christian com- 866 ORGANISATION OF CHURCH [PART in. munities into a great hierarchical system, of which the primary unit was strictly the diocese, which outside of Italy was a great territorial area. It is indeed worth while to observe that the Italian Church pre- serves to this day much of a primitive character. Italy is crowded with small dioceses, which corre- spond much more clearly than those of Northern Europe with the characteristics of the primitive Chris- tian communities. The normal characteristics of the mediaeval Church organisation are, however, better seen north of the Alps, where the diocese covers a great area, and includes a very large number of parishes. The diocese was in the strict sense the unit of eccle- siastical organisation ; it did in strict constitutional tradition represent the original Christian community. But the scale of the northern diocese was so great, that in fact the district which came to be called dis- tinctively, the parish, did rapidly become the normal unit of religious organisation. Speaking historically, the parish was only a district of the diocese, and the minister the delegate or representative of the Bishop : but in actual fact the religious life of northern Europe found its primary form in the parish. Thus by a process of devolution from the diocese the little original Christian community reappeared. It seems clear that the Parishes were created largely by the Bishops, who being unable to maintain a close and intimate relation between themselves and the people, delegated their functions to parish ministers : but apparently it must also be recognised that there is another origin to be found for the parish in the northern countries. In a good many cases it is fairly clear that the parish of the northern countries has grown out of the private chapels of the lords of the manors or estates ; that is, that CHAP, ii.] DIOCESE AND PARISH 367 the great landowner or nobleman frequently got permission to have a little chapel at or near his house for the use of himself, his tenants and serfs and servants ; and that in a good many cases these chapels grew into parishes, often conterminous with the areas of the manors. This is not inconsistent with the principle that the care of the parish was a delegation from the Bishop : for those who were appointed as parish priests were ordained by the Bishop, and the spiritual function of the priest in such a private chapel was still a delegation of the pastoral function of the Bishop. But it has this very important consequence, that it was, in the main, out of this system that there grew that great system of private patronage, of private appointment to the parish, which was so remarkable a feature of the general organisation of the Christian Church in the later Middle Ages. It is important to observe that even late in the Middle Ages this was looked upon with great suspicion, and, on the whole, with con- siderable dislike by many churchmen. It is quite clear that, to the canonists, the appointment of a Christian minister was really a matter for the Christian people, and that it was to their minds a grave abuse that this appointment should be vested in any single person. Still, gradually the custom prevailed, and became an important factor in the constitution of the mediaeval Church ; and it has left profound and important traces in the or- ganisation of the post-Reformation Church. It is extremely difficult to make out very clearly the character of the parish priest, or minister, in the Middle Ages. No doubt it was constantly vary- ing ; but for the most part we may conceive of these ministers as being humble and in a large measure 368 ORGANISATION OF CHURCH [PART in. unlettered men. The correspondence of some of the bishops in the ninth century, especially of Agobard of Lyons, throws a rather gloomy light on the position of the Christian minister at that time. He complains in language which suggests the position of the English clergy as described by the novelists and essay writers in the eighteenth century, that the Frankish or Burgundian nobleman or gentleman usually looked upon the position as being a very suit- able one for some emancipated slave or serf, whom he would bring to the Bishop, demanding his ordination. The truth is that among the parish priests of the Middle Ages there were often no doubt a great many good, religious, and hard-working men; but taking them broadly and generally, the conditions and circumstances of their education and training were not of a kind which enabled them to exercise any very great influence in the councils of the Church. Still, when all is said, it probably remains true that the ordinary religious life of the Middle Ages was a good deal more like that of a Christian congre- gation at the present time than we think. The great mass of the parish clergy might be not very well educated or trained ; but we gather that they were often respected and beloved by their people, and that their ministrations not only their formal ministrations in the Church services, but their pastoral ministrations were often carried out with much real devotion and zeal. The normal religious life of the Christian community probably always centred in the little rural or town parish. We do not hear very much about it in the Middle Ages, mainly because the history of the religious life of the plain Christian folk was overshadowed by the growth of monasticism. And no doubt, the more intense CHAP, ii.] THE MEDIAEVAL BISHOP 369 religion of the Middle Ages tended to find its ex- pression rather in the monastic than in the ordinary parochial system. But the interest which has natur- ally been directed to the monastic system in the Middle Ages, has really tended to a large extent to obscure the normal character of the Christianity of the Middle Ages. We must now deal with the Diocese, which, as we have seen, was strictly speaking the primary unit of Church organisation, representing the primitive Christian congregation. We have to look at it now mainly from the point of view of administration and order ; but that does not mean to say it was of no importance from the point of view of religion. It is clear that the religious character of the Bishop of the mediaeval diocese did exercise an enormous influence on his people. It is easy to see in the many biographies which have survived, the extraordinary influence which individuals of a real religious enthusiasm and conviction and of a strong person- ality were constantly able to exercise. If we wish to see an example of this we cannot do better than read the life of the English Bishop, St Hugh of Lincoln, one of the best, and, on the whole, one of the most sincere and natural biographies of this kind which has survived. But, no doubt, when all is said, we cannot get away from the fact that the enormous size of the diocesan areas in Northern Europe made it very difficult for the Bishop to have any very close relations with his "people. It was only a man of exceptional personality and excep- tional religious power who was able constantly to make himself felt in these great and scantily populated districts. 2 A 370 ORGANISATION OF CHURCH [PART m. The first question we want to ask about the diocese is, how was the Bishop appointed ? Whom did he represent ? This may seem a very formal question, but it is not so formal as it looks. The funda- mental point about the mediaeval Bishop was this : that he was the chosen representative and pastor of the people and the clergy of the diocese. There is no principle which is more firmly embedded in the canonical legislation of the Middle Ages, than the principle that a Bishop could not be legitimately appointed without the consent of the people and the clergy of the diocese. It may be very diffi- cult to say exactly how this was to be secured in the absence of anything like a representative machinery, and in view of the large area of the mediaeval diocese. And no doubt the conception can be treated as merely formal ; but it is not at all wise thus to minimise the importance of the principle. At the same time under the mediaeval system, the people and clergy of the diocese were not the only persons to be consulted in the appoint- ment of a Bishop. In the earlier Middle Ages, while the rights of the people and the clergy were very clearly recognised, it was also recognised that the other Bishops of the province had to give their assent and approval. It was sometimes said that they appointed, while the clergy and people approved. It was also generally assumed in the canonical system of the Middle Ages that the assent of the Metropolitan, the Bishop who was head of the whole province, was required. And again in the Middle Ages, at any rate until the period of the great conflict over the investitures between the Papal See and the Empire, it was normally the case that the assent of the secular power of the country or the nation was also required. CHAP, ii.] DIOCESAN SYNOD 371 How far this position of the secular power, of the King or Emperor, was due to the fact that he was the principal layman, how far it was due to the idea that the secular authority, as secular, had a voice in the matter, is difficult to say. It is fairly clear that the matter must be looked at from both points of view. And finally we must recognise that in the later Middle Ages the assent of the Pope became gradually a matter of importance. Yet after all it remains that the fundamental principle we have to remember is, that the mediaeval Church never lost sight of the fact that the chief minister of the Christian people must be the representative of the people themselves not a person imposed from outside, but a person representing the judgment and desire, and having the recognition, if we may use such a phrase, of the Christian people themselves. Our next question is how was the diocese governed ? The order and government of the Christian society in primitive times has already been dealt with ; and we only need here to remind ourselves of some principles. The letters of St- Cyprian give us a very clear light on the conception of the government of the Christian community. By the third century, the position of the Bishop as chief minister was firmly established : but it is also perfectly clear from St Cyprian's precise and definite statements, that, although he was the chief officer of the community, the community was a self-governing body. St Cyprian was not a person who was inclined to over- state this, because his own tendencies were often in the direction of magnifying his office ; his whole tendency was to claim and exercise as much authority as he thought he reasonably possessed. Yet nothing 372 ORGANISATION OF CHURCH [PART m. is clearer than his statement, 1 that he had always set before him, from the time he became Bishop, the principle that he would do nothing without the counsel of the clergy and the consent of the people ; he did not consider himself as having a right normally to act in grave or serious matters without the counsel or consent both of the people as a whole and of the clergy in particular. The earlier Christian community was a self-governing community, although no doubt the power of the central officer of the community was gradually growing, so as to tend to overshadow this fact. The same principle lies behind the structure of the organisation of the mediaeval diocese, though it is difficult to say how far it was carried into effect. The Bishop of the mediaeval diocese was the supreme pastor and supreme administrator of the community, but the government of the diocese was also a matter for the diocesan Synods. It would be impossible to sum up the long and very obscure history of these bodies. There is no doubt, however, that the mediaeval principle, embodied in the canon law, was that the diocesan Synod should meet once or twice in the year to consider the common affairs of the whole Christian community in the diocese. The diocesan Synod was composed of the following people. First of all, the Bishop or his representa- tive ; in the next place the parish priests, in theory, all the presbyters of the diocese. No doubt, in view of the great areas and difficulties in movement, this must not be taken as implying literally that all the ministers of the Christian community were actually present, but in principle they were present. Then thirdly, the diocesan Synod included some 1 Cyprian, Epistle XIV. 4 (ed. Hartel). CHAP, ii.] ON ST CYPRIAN'S LINES 373 of the laity. Again it is difficult to say what pre- cisely this meant. We cannot imagine the whole lay people of a great northern diocese coming together in the Synod twice, or even once, in the year. But what is quite clear is that the presence of the lay people was a regular part of the Synod. What precisely they were permitted to do, how far pre- cisely they were expected to speak, is rather uncertain. One can see that there was a tendency to maintain that the layman should not speak unless questions were put to him ; but he was a regular member of the Synod and his assent had to be obtained. The truth is that St Cyprian's phrases are very close to the principles of the Middle Ages. No doubt in mediaeval history we must always be on our guard as to the exact relation of the principles of government to the practice. These were often very far apart, but that does not mean that the principles were negligible. No doubt the mediaeval Bishop was continually acting on his own authority. It was, moreover, extraordinarily difficult for a diocese to resist a stiff-necked and obstinate Bishop ; he had a very large and undetermined power of making his authority felt, both in a spiritual and a secular way; and no doubt it was very difficult to know exactly what to do if he was obstinate and wilful. It was indeed the critical problem of mediaeval society how such situations should be dealt with. Mediaeval society was continually attempting to bring the obstinate and arbitrary person under the control of law and principle. The mediaeval King for instance was the administrator of the law, but in fact he was constantly breaking the law. And therefore the whole tendency of constitutional progress was to bring the King under control, and to establish 374 ORGANISATION OF CHURCH [PART HI. some machinery, some kind of order, which would secure that the King should act in accordance with the law. The same thing was the case with the Bishop. The Bishop was the administrative officer of the diocese. His business was to administer the universal law of the Church, with the assistance and advice of his Synod. If the Bishop was a wise and sensible man, that is what he would do. If he was obstinate, and chose to neglect the general law of the Church and the particular wishes of his diocese, sooner or later he would be called to account. Sooner or later the man who broke the law of the Church would get into serious trouble, even if he were a Bishop ; and if he wilfully and persistently neglected the views and wishes of his people, in spite of all their respect for his authority, he would be called to account. We must not suppose that, because the organisation of the mediaeval con- stitution in this matter of the diocese was often very. loose, the principle which lay behind the con- stitution was a dead letter. If we want to understand the Middle Ages, we must get rid of the notion that the men of that time were willing to tolerate arbitrary authority. The one thing mediaeval people were always trying to do was to control arbitrariness. Indeed the danger of the Middle Ages was not the danger of arbitrariness but the danger of becoming stereotyped. We have been considering so far the development through which the original unit of the Christian society, the diocese, passed. We must now consider the development of that system of organisation which represents the sense of unity between the original units the organisation of the provincial or CHAP, ii.] THE METROPOLITAN 375 Metropolitan and the Patriarchal areas, and finally of the Papal authority ; for all of these represent the growth of the conception of the unity of the Chris- tian congregations with each other. It seems clear that in the Apostolic and primitive Church the separate Christian congregations were formally in- dependent of each other. There was no organised unity of the Christian Church as including the little separate communities. It is, on the other hand, equally obvious that while there was no formal dependence of one Christian congregation or another, yet all these congregations were conscious of a very real and close unity with each other. The aspect of the organisation of the Church we have now to consider grew out of this sense of community, this real unity, between the Christian congregations. Whatever view we may take of the propriety of later developments, it is easy to see that the development of some system of organisation corresponding with the sense of unity was in the nature of things, and under the conditions of those times inevitable. The early history of this develop- ment has been dealt with in previous chapters ; but in approaching the later conditions we may recall briefly what we then considered. The first organis- ation of a larger kind which we have to consider, is that which in later times came to be called technically the Province, which included a number of churches, each of which had its own episcopal chief. The head of this provincial area was called the Metropolitan. We have seen the beginnings of something of this kind about the middle of the second century, arising at first, not out of the recognition of some one Bishop as superior to the other Bishops, but out of an informal synodical 376 ORGANISATION OF CHURCH [PART in. system that is, out of the meetings of the represen- tatives of certain districts for the purposes of deliber- ation and of action on matters concerning them all. By the third century we find a system of meetings of the Bishops of a group of churches clearly estab- lished in different parts of the Christian world. Especially we have a large amount of information in regard to the African Church in the letters of St Cyprian, which are full of references to these meetings of the Bishops for the purpose of common consultation. It was out of this pro- vincial synodical movement that there gradually seems to have grown the recognition of some one Bishop as being normally the president of such meet- ings, and as being recognised as having some kind of authority over the other Bishops of the province. This is clearly indicated as being recognised in the 6th Canon of the Council of Nicaea. When we come to the Middle Ages we must realise that this is more or less completely developed. In the mediaeval Church, speaking broadly and gener- ally, we have an administrative area larger than the diocese ; and this is the area of the Province, the area whose authority or government was in a certain measure vested in the Metropolitan, that is, the Bishop of the see which was recognised as the principal one. This Metropolitan had always certain powers. He had some voice in the appoint- ment of the Bishops, as it was usually his function to consecrate them ; he had a certain jurisdic- tion in questions of appeal either by the clergy or by the laity from the decisions of their own Bishops ; and he had, with the assistance of the other Bishops of the diocese, a certain jurisdiction or judicial authority over those Bishops. The Bishop of a CHAP, ii.] PROVINCIAL SYNOD 377 province could be brought before the Metropolitan, if he was accused of ecclesiastical or moral offences ; but the Metropolitan had this jurisdiction only with the assistance and advice of the whole body of the Bishops. We have begun with the person of the Metro- politan, although the supreme authority of the province after all was not the Metropolitan, but the provincial council or Synod. Just as the full and proper authority in the diocese was the diocesan Synod, so the full constitutional authority of the province was the provincial Synod, of which the Metropolitan was the president and of which he was the executive officer. Just as the Bishop acted in the diocese in, through, and with his diocesan Synod, so the Metro- politan acted in, through, and with his provincial Synod. The composition of this Synod was again very analogous to that of the diocese. Primarily the constituent members of it were the Bishops of the province ; but it also seems clear that, in the traditional constitutional conception, the clergy as a whole were entitled to a place in the provincial Synod ; and it is fairly clear that the laity also had some, if a rather obscure and undetermined, place in the provincial Synod. No doubt in the absence of anything like a representative system in the earlier stages of mediaeval history, and in view of the immense areas of v the mediaeval province, this representation of the laity could in the nature of things be very little more than formal. This was then the general system of the province. The representative system, which grew up in the thirteenth century, was applied in England to ecclesi- astical affairs a little earlier than to civil affairs ; and the two provinces of Canterbury and of York both 378 ORGANISATION OF CHURCH [PART in. developed very interesting and remarkable represen- tative provincial Councils for the administration of the affairs of these provinces. This development contained nothing in it at all irregular, because the inferior clergy had always had some place in the provincial Synod, however vague and indeter- minate this might be. These Councils, which are called the Convocations of York and Canterbury, were not exactly the same as the original provincial Synod. It can even be maintained that the older provincial Synod may be thought of as existing alongside of them. In other countries there were movements in this direction, but they did not come to such a full development as they attained in England. We have seen then that what were originally the independent dioceses came to be organised in groups under the leadership of the Metropolitans, and under the government of the provincial Synod. The tendency towards the consolidation of Church government did not stop here ; and there are two larger areas which we must consider briefly. The first of these is the Patriarchate. As early as the fourth century it is clear from the 6th Canon of the Council of Nicasa (325 A.D.) that it was recognised that the Bishops of Alexandria, of Antioch, and of Rome occupied a different position from all other Bishops ; and a little later, the Bishop of Constantinople came to be reckoned with them. The title of Patriarch came to be used of these Bishops, and expressed some kind of authority in relation usually to a number of ecclesiastical provinces. Later the title Patriarch came to be used of other and less important sees. Accordingly the mediaeval Church recognised certain CHAP, ii.] THE PATRIARCH 379 great areas as being under the supreme direction of Patriarchs, and the Patriarchal position of the Roman Church in the West had special importance. The second area which gradually came to have a great importance was that of the nation. The National Church in the full sense of the word did not exist until after the Reformation ; but its beginnings can be traced far back in the Middle Ages, and its development forms an important part of the ecclesi- astical history of the Middle Ages. It would be im- possible here to describe fully the exact significance and importance of the development ; indeed it would be impossible to deal with this properly except in relation to the gradual development of nationalities and the national idea in mediaeval and modern Europe. There can, however, be no doubt that as the great European nations were gradually built up, the sense of national homogeneity tended to extend itself over the religious and ecclesiastical field ; and that, while a formal ecclesiastical organisation which should correspond precisely with the national areas was usually wanting, yet the sense of a national religious life became real and important. CHAPTER III THE UNIVERSAL CHURCH AND THE PAPACY l/'Servus servorum Dei." WE have come to the point when we can consider the last important aspect of mediaeval Church organisation. We have left it to the last, be- cause we must fix these other developments clearly in our minds before we approach it. These eccles- iastical areas and this ecclesiastical machinery, which we have been considering, arose out of the sense of a community of interest and of life as existing between the various dioceses or parishes in particular districts. The same instinct of unity of purpose and character which produced these provincial organisations, in the end produced the sense of the necessity of some kind of universal organisation of the whole Christian society. We cannot speak of anything like a method or form of the organisation of the whole Christian Society until the fourth century. When it came, it arose out of the great controversies which vexed and distracted it, and the sense that it would be necessary to deal with these matters by some authority which should represent the whole Church. These were the conditions and the ideas out of which the universal councils arose ; and it is from the calling together of the great Council of Nicsea in 825 A.D. that we may perhaps date the begin- 380 CHAP. m. I UNITY UNDER ROME 381 nings of the conception of some kind of definite organisation of the universal Church, including all its areas of jurisdiction. It was the general council which was the foundation of the system of the organisation of the universal Church. This system of general councils represents some kind of federal system of the Christian Churches the idea of a great confederation which should provide a method of organised unity. That is the point at which the development of the Eastern Church has stopped. The Eastern Church as a whole remains to this day rather a federation of great Church areas, than a centralised legislative and administrative system. The history of the Church in the West was different. In the West the system of unity tended in the end to find for itself one definite centre, and that centre was Rome. We must examine the position of Rome from a good many different standpoints in order to make ourselves clear about the matter ; and much turns upon their being taken in proper sequence, and in their connection. The first thing we should notice about Rome is that Rome was the only see which occupied anything like a Patriarchal position in the West. The references of the Canons of Nicaea do not define the position of Rome in the Western Church, and do not give us any clear indication of what pre- cisely people thought was the relation of Rome to the Western Church as a whole : but this is clear, that Rome stood alone in the West, in a pre-eminence which was parallel to that of the three great sees of the East Alexandria, Antioch, and later, Constantinople. If there was any Church which from the fourth century downwards had a precedence, a priority, a place of pre-eminence in the Western world, it was the Roman Church. This position of Rome was greatly 382 CHURCH AND PAPACY [PART in. strengthened in the course of the fourth and fifth centuries by the fact that Rome was for the Western world obviously, but even for the Eastern world in a measure, the centre of what may technically be called the Catholic tradition, which, without being unduly dogmatic, we may fairly call the normal tradition of the Church. We do not discuss the reason why it was that the Roman Church actually came to occupy this position. Some people put it down to the special illumination of the Roman Church ; some people take a more historical view, and say it was due to the fact that the Roman clergy were not theologians but only persons of reasonably good common sense, and that in those difficult times reasonably good common sense was perhaps better than great intellectual subtlety. It is obvious enough, that the Roman Church only occasionally wavered in the perplexities of these times, and remained stable while almost all the other great sees hesitated between different views. This had an immense influence, specially in the West. To the West, Rome was the centre of the Catholic truth. In the next place in the times we are now considering Rome became the centre of the evangelisation of a great part of the Western world. We are not dealing with the history of the conversion of Gaul or Spain, which belong to an earlier period. But it was from Rome that England was converted ; it was in relation to the actual system of which Rome was the centre that the Franks were converted ; and it was Rome again which played a great part through St Boniface in the conversion of Germany. Rome was in a very real and important sense the centre of the evangelisation of the W T estern world in the earlier Middle Ages. CHAP, in.] GREGORY THE GREAT 383 If we would estimate the position of Rome at the beginning of the seventh century, we must make ourselves acquainted with the position of Gregory the Great. Apart from any dogmatic controversy, his position in the Western world was wholly unique. There can be little doubt, for instance, that Gregory looked upon the question of an appeal to him in the case of any offence by a Bishop as being a regular and a natural thing. This is only made more clear by the way in which he deprecated any improper use of this authority. Writing to the representatives of the Roman Church, he rebukes them for presuming to listen to ecclesiastical cases which belonged properly to the Bishops of the particular places where they were resident ; x while he looked upon himself as having some real and legitimate authority in cases where complaints might be made against the Bishops themselves. 2 It would be difficult indeed to say how far this conception extended ; but there can scarcely be any doubt that this position of the Roman see was not only main- tained by Gregory the Great, but probably accepted by everyone in the West at that time as more or less normal. When we read his correspondence we have the impression that he had, like St Paul, the care of all the Churches on him. The position of the Roman Church at the opening of the Middle Ages is not easy to define : but one cannot consider it carefully without recognising that the Bishop of Rome, if he was a man of force and character, exercised already an immense if undefined authority over the whole of Western Europe. This authority was increased in the next two centuries by the great historical events of 1 Gregory the Great, Ep. XI. 37. * Ibid., Ep. IX. 59. 384 CHURCH AND PAPACY [PART ra. the times. In the course of these centuries Italy passed out of the ancient Empire. The dis- appearance of the Empire in the West left a great place unfilled ; and there can be no doubt of the immense importance of the position occupied by the Bishop of Rome as the one person who might be said to represent the ancient civilisation, the ancient traditions in the Western world. We cannot here consider in detail the circumstances which brought about the final separation of East and West. Justinian in the sixth century had for the moment re-united Italy to the Empire, but the re-union was short-lived. The Ostrogoths had been driven out of Italy, but they were succeeded by the Lombards, who gradually extended their power until only the exarchate of Ravenna and some districts round Rome and in Southern Italy remained under the government of the Emperor. It is clear that the Bishops of Rome, with the other Italians, disliked and despised the Lombard barbarians, and were very anxious to maintain their place as members of the Roman Empire. Even when Italy under their leadership rose against the Iconoclastic decrees of the Isaurian Emperors in the eighth century, the Roman Bishops were most reluctant to take any step which would cut them off from the community of the ancient civilisation, which was for them represented by the Empire ; but cir- cumstances were too strong for them. It was only when the Emperor of Byzantium failed to give them protection against the Lombards that the Bishops of Rome at last turned to the Franks, and that the West was finally cut off from the East. The attitude of the Roman see in the great Icono- clastic controversy indicates very clearly its actual CHAP, in.] ICONOCLASTIC CONTROVERSY 385 relation to the development of the independence of the Western Church. The position *of Rome was already developed when it came into relation with the new Empire in the West, the great European system built up by Charlemagne. It has been sometimes suggested that the status of the Papacy was sharply and definitely raised by the fact that it was the Bishop of Rome who in a sense created the Empire of Charlemagne ; and no doubt the action of Pope Leo III. in the coronation of Charle- magne as Emperor was extremely important and significant. It is true to say that it was the Popes who gave a sort of quasi-legal or constitutional position to the Franks as the successors of the ancient Empire in the West ; and there can be little doubt that the action of Leo III. in crowning Charlemagne did at the same time place the Roman Church in a new relation to Western civilisation. We must, however, very clearly dis- tinguish between the actual facts and later theories which were founded upon them. Dealing with the matter historically, all that we can say is that the action of the Popes in recognising the Franks, in giving their sanction to the notion that the Frankish Emperor was the legitimate and proper successor of the Roman Emperors, had an important effect on his position and on their own. The position of Rome in the mediaeval Church has often been presented under the terms of a deliberate and long-continued attempt on the part of the Popes to establish an illegitimate or usurped authority ; and this line of argument has often been used especially with regard to the development of the appellate jurisdiction of the Roman see. There 2s 386 CHURCH AND PAPACY [PART in. is no doubt that the authority and power of the Roman see in the West does very largely centre upon the fact that finally, at any rate, Rome came to be recognised by Christian people all over Europe as being the supreme Court of Appeal in all ecclesi- astical cases. Now we are very far from wishing to say that the Roman Church and the Roman Popes did not often press this claim in a fashion which was not wholly constitutional, or wholly in accordance with the traditions of Western Christendom ; but on the other hand it must be recognised that the develop- ment of this appellate jurisdiction of the Roman see really arose out of the fact that it was an immense convenience and advantage to the Western Church. The history of mediaeval Christianity shows that it was constantly a matter of great advantage that serious questions in regard to Church order could be carried outside of merely local conditions, and beyond the influence of merely local preferences or prejudices, to a Court where all these merely local matters were of small consequence. The appellate jurisdiction of the Roman see did constantly tend to protect the local Churches against what often were the arbitrary or personal views of particular Church authorities ; and, what is perhaps more important, it did constantly protect the Church in all European countries against what would often have been the disastrous consequences of the interference of the national or civil authorities. The service rendered to the independence of the spiritual society in Western Europe, by the possibility of invoking an authority superior to and outside of the influence of the secular authorities of particular districts or countries, was probably quite inestimable. CHAP, in.] PSEUDO-ISIDORE 387 This leads us therefore immediately to the consider- ation of that great body of literature which took its origin in the ninth century, and which contributed so much to the development and the establishment of the position of the Popes ; that is the Pseudo- Isidorian Decretals. It will be realised from what has been said that we are not inclined to agree with those who look on these Decretals as being the real source of Papal authority in the West : that is a superstition which it is time we gave up. It is just as necessary to get rid of the superstition that these Decretals created the Papal authority, as it was in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries to prove that they were spurious. What exactly then were these Decretals, and what was exactly their purpose ? We must speak in general terms and cannot discuss the matter in detail. Fortunately the criticism of these Decretals has now reached a point at which we are able to lay down certain general propositions without the necessity of any serious discussion. The Pseudo- Isidorian Decretals were not produced in Rome, nor under the suggestion of Rome, nor probably primarily with the view of enlarging the authority of Rome. They were produced in what we call France, and probably in their present form shortly before the middle of the ninth century. They were produced that is by the Frankish Church ; and it is quite clear from any analysis of them that they were produced in relation to the special conditions and circumstances of the Frankish Church of that time. Speaking in general terms, their first object was to exalt the position of the clergy as a whole, and of the Bishops in particular, in relation to the laity, or rather in relation to the secular power, so as to 388 CHURCH AND PAPACY [PART in. secure them against the interference of secular persons and secular authorities. Their second object is rather a curious one. It was to limit the authority of the Metropolitans. They represent the feeling of the diocesan Bishops that the powers of the Metropolitans or Archbishops were increasing and had to be diminished, that the Metropolitan was becoming a local tyrant, and the diocesan Bishops were determined to resist this. It is therefore primarily in order to secure the independence of the Church as against secular authorities, and of the Bishops as against the Metropolitan, that they insist so much upon the supreme authority of the Bishop of Rome, and that especially they develop to such a high point the principle of the appeal to Rome in ecclesiastical causes. It would be absurd to say that there were no other and more general concep- tions in the minds of the authors of the Pseudo- Isidorian Decretals ; but there cannot be any doubt whatever that the character of the work is primarily determined by those practical considerations. We can now judge how far these Decretals merely confirmed and strengthened existing conditions or tendencies, or how far they introduced new elements into the Church order of the Middle Ages. In the strict sense of the word, the principles represented by them were not novel. Actually the Roman Church had long occupied in the West a position of the kind which is presented in the Decretals, and had served such purposes as those which they were intended to promote ; but on the other hand it is quite true that the Decretals drew out all this in a much more precise and technical form, and fur- nished the grounds on which the further extension of the position of the Papacy could be carried out. CHAP, in.] SUPREMACY OF ROME 389 From the ninth and tenth centuries onwards there is no doubt whatever that the authority of the Bishop of Rome as holding supreme administrative jurisdiction in the Church was universally recognised in the West. No one seriously doubted it. There are some who try to maintain that the national churches were independent. That is an impossible view ; for all Christian people in the West held that the Church was one, with authority over all its dioceses and provinces ; and of that one Church the Bishop of Rome was the supreme head. What exactly the recognition of Papal jurisdiction meant in detail is an immensely difficult question. It is greatly complicated by the relation of the Church to the State in the Middle Ages, which we shall have to discuss later. And yet, speaking broadly and gener- ally, there is no kind of reason for supposing that anyone in the West doubted that the Bishop of Rome was the head of the Church, and that it was legitimate and proper that, in all serious cases of ecclesiastical order and government, he should be recognised as the final Court of Appeal ; and, as arising out of this, that he was recognised as having an immense general authority in the Western Church. The last stage in the development of the Roman Church is represented by the recognition of the Bishop of Rome as having not merely an administrative and judicial authority but a definite legislative authority in his own person. This represents the culmination of the development of the position of the Pope in the Middle Ages. But with that we shall have to deal under the terms of the nature and history of Church law. CHAPTER IV CANON LAW " In his enim rebus de quibus nihil certe statuit scriptura divina, mos populi Dei, vel iustituta maiorum pro lege tenenda sunt." AUGUSTINE. o WE have so far been considering the nature of the forms of Church order in the Middle Ages. We must now consider briefly the nature and development of the system of Church law. The first and greatest principle of the Church order of the Middle Ages was that the government of the Church was in no sense an arbitrary government. Its first characteristic was that it was dominated by the conception of the supremacy of law. The law was supreme over all authorities. Whatever may be the value of the modern theory of sovereignty, the theory of sovereignty has no place in the system of the mediaeval Church, if we mean by this that there is some person, or body of persons, which is supreme and absolute. What is Church law then ? We must bear in mind that the mediaeval theory of Church law developed very slowly and gradually, and the history of this development cannot be written in a few words. Here we can only deal with the con- ception of Church law as represented by the more or less fully developed theory of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. We shall here consider the 390 CHAP, iv.] WHAT IS CHURCH LAW ? 391 theory of Church law primarily in the Decretum of Gratian, in the commentaries on the Canon law of the twelfth century, and in the Decretals of the Popes, as they were compiled hi the thirteenth century. The fundamental mediaeval conception of law is expressed in some words of the Decretum of Gratian. " The human race," Gratian says, " is ruled by two things, namely, by natural law and by custom." This is related by Gratian to a statement of St Isidore of Seville, a Spanish writer of the beginning of the seventh century : " All laws are either divine or human. Divine laws exist by nature ; human laws by custom." 1 The natural law, in the mind of Gratian, and of the mediaeval Church, is divine law ; and this natural or divine law is partly contained in the Law and the Gospels, that is, in the Scriptures ; but not all law which is in the Scriptures is natural law. There are laws in the Scriptures which are divine laws, but not natural ; these are, to use the phrase of later writers, positive laws. They are not immutable ; they may be of temporary application and validity. The natural law is contained for Christian men in the Law and the Gospel, but not there only. Human law is custom custom either written down, which we may call law in the narrower sense of the word, or unwritten. Church law may be taken in a wide or a strict sense. It includes the natural law of God, whether in the Scriptures or elsewhere, and also something which is not natural law, that is, the laws or customs of the Church ; and it is these which in the stricter sense are called Church or Canon law. 1 Gratian, Decretum D. I. 392 CANON LAW [PART in. Canon law in this sense is subordinate to the natural law and to the Scriptures, and has no validity if it is contrary to these. It is, strictly speaking, nothing but the custom of the Christian people. This conception is stated by Gratian and is derived from Augustine. 1 This custom of the Christian people may be contained in written canons or it may simply exist as unwritten custom ; but this is the main point, the custom of the Christian people always remains supreme. This is so im- portant that we should notice the precise way in which Gratian puts it. In discussing the nature of law, he gives as an illustration of the supremacy of custom the fact that even a decretal letter of a Pope, if it is not recognised by custom, has no validity. This may well seem an extraordinary phrase for a writer to use, who, in many respects, obviously belonged to the extreme Papalist Party of the twelfth century ; but there is no doubt that this is his doctrine. The example which Gratian gives of the principle, that all law requires to be confirmed by the custom of those who are concerned, is a regulation about fasting, which, as it was thought, was issued by Pope Telesphorus and sanctioned by a letter of Pope Gregory the Great. This latter was spurious, but that does not matter for our purpose. This Papal decree, that the clergy should from Quinquagesima abstain from meat, because it was not confirmed by the custom of those who were concerned, had never become law. 2 The authority of custom in Church law could not be more emphatically recognised than it is here by Gratian : but lest we should think that after all this may only represent the opinion of one indi- 1 Gratian, Dec. D. XII. 7 (St Aug. Ep. 3.61.2). 1 Gratian, Dccretum, D. IV. CHAP, iv.] CHURCH LAW AS CUSTOM 393 vidual canonist, we should observe that the principle of the supremacy of custom was laid down by the Popes themselves. Gregory IX lays down quite clearly in the De- cretals that custom is always supreme. He is com- menting on a passage in the Code of Justinian, and states that the authority of long-standing custom is not to be despised, while it is not valid against posi- tive law, unless indeed the custom is " rationabilis " and has a legitimate prescription. 1 That is, custom, if it is "rationabilis," and it if has a reasonable period of prescription, does over-ride positive law. This statement is the more remarkable because the first part of this section is taken from a rescript of Constantine in the Code, which states that the authority of custom is not to be pressed against the actual positive law. 2 The phrase of Constantine seemed to mean that custom was not supreme. The fact that Gregory makes an addition, which destroys the- sense of Constantine's phrase, makes it more significant. These are the general principles of the nature of Canon law in the stricter sense of the word. Behind this system of law, which represents the custom of the Christian people, there stand the Divine Scriptures and the Natural law; and the authority of custom only applies to those matters which are not already determined by the permanent element of the law of God as revealed in the Scriptures or as known in the Natural law. Within the proper sphere of Canon law the custom of the Christian people remains supreme. The Canon law of the mediaeval Church, then, presents the same constitutional principles of the 1 Decretals I., 4.11. > Cotter VIII. 52 (53). 394 CANON LAW [PART in. supremacy of the whole community, as those which are reflected in the government of the mediaeval Church : and certainly in the case of law we are not dealing with a mere ideal but with something which was recognised in the constant practice of the Courts. We have seen then that Canon law, as distinct that is from the Scriptures and the Natural law, to which it is subject, is in its most general sense the custom of the Christian people. This law, how- ever, actually exists in written as well as in an un- written form ; and in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries the written law was embodied in those great collections which form the Corpus Juris Canonici. What is the nature and the authority of the written Canon law which is thus embodied in the great law books ? In order to deal with this question we must deal very briefly with the history of these collections. The first collections consisted of compilations of the canons of local and general Councils, but to these materials there were soon added selections from the writings of the more important Church Fathers. We must pass over the earlier stages of these collections. For our present purpose it is enough to observe the very important compilation produced by Dionysius Exiguus, an Eastern monk, who settled in Rome at the end of the fifth century, and compiled a collection which included some of the so-called Canons of the Apostles and the canons of various general and local Councils, to which he added a selection from the letters of the Bishops of Rome. The Pseudo- Isidorian Decretals of the ninth century we have already considered ; and we must only here observe that they came into use in the ninth and tenth centuries, and in part were received into the general CHAP, iv.] GRATIAN'S "DECRETUM" 395 body of ecclesiastical law. We cannot here deal with the history of the many minor collections produced between the sixth century and the eleventh : the history of these is written in Maassen's work Die Geschichte der Quellen und der Literatur des canonischen Eechts. These collections are of all sorts and kinds, some of them merely local in their character, some of them of much general significance. What is important to understand is that during all this time the materials out of which the complete system of Western Church law was ultimately to be constructed were gradually accumulating, in the decision of Councils and the letters of the Bishop of Rome. It was in the eleventh and twelfth centuries that this immense accumulation of legal material was at last reduced to a systematic form, and a number of collections made which were intended to represent the whole body of Ecclesiastical law. Among the most important of these are the Decretum of Burchard, Bishop of Worms, composed between 1012 A.D. and 1022 A.D. ; the Decretum of Ivo, Bishop of Chartres, who died in 1115 A.D. or 1117 A.D. ; and the Panomia by the same author, a hand- book founded upon his Decretum. Finally Gratian of Bologna produced between 1139 and 1150, mainly on the basis of earlier compilations, the great syste- matic collection (Decretum Gratiani) which very soon superseded all earlier collections, and was finally recognised as forming the first part of the Corpus Juris Canonici. The method of Gratian is that schol- astic method which Abelard had already developed ; Gratian lays down some general legal principle, and cites a variety of canons, Papal letters, etc., which seem to support it ; then a number of other 396 CANON LAW [PART in. passages which seem to controvert the principle ; and finally draws out what appears to him the true conclusion. It must be noticed that Gratian's own conclusions are only private opinions, and have never been recognised as having the force of law. In the latter part of the twelfth century a number of col- lections of the Decretals of the contemporary Popes were issued. In 1232 A.D. Pope Gregory IX caused to be published an authoritative collection of Decretal letters of the Popes, mainly of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and this is the collection which is known as the Decretals of Gregory IX. In his introductory letter he expresses his will that this collection should be used in the courts and hi the schools, and he forbade anyone to make any further collection without the authority of the Apostolic See. In 1298 Boniface VIII issued a selection of Decretals of the Popes after Gregory IX which is known as the " Sixt " ; in 1314 Clement V issued another collection which is generally known as the " Clementines." In the latter part of the sixteenth century a Parisian publisher included in his edition of the Corpus Juris Canonici a number of Decretals of Pope John XXII, under the title of Extravagantes Johannis XXII, and a collection of Decretals subsequent to that of Boniface VIII under the title of Extravagantes Communes ; and these were recognised as forming part of the Corpus Juris Canonici by Pope Gregory XIII, in his bull of 1580. We must now examine the materials of these great collections. What is the relative authority of these materials ? These collections embodied first the canons of general Councils, secondly an immense number of canons of local or provincial CHAP, iv.] MATERIALS OF CANON LAW 397 Councils, thirdly a great mass of citations from the opinions of the Church Fathers, and fourthly selections from the letters of the Bishops of Rome. These materials are very heterogeneous, and as we can see easily enough they must have very varying degrees of authority. In examining them, we shall still take the view of Gratian, as representing the normal view of the Middle Ages. The first body of materials is composed of the canons of the general Councils ; that is, primarily Nice, Constantinople, Ephesus, and Chalcedon. These have the first place, and their authority is supreme in theory. It is even doubted by the canonists whether any later authority could alter these canons ; they were, however, aware that these canons were not all actually in force. One may doubt whether mediaeval canonists had any complete theory upon the subject : but it may be worth while to notice its treatment by Rufinus, one of the first commentators on Gratian. Rufinus says rather emphatically that the decrees of the great Councils can under no circumstances be violated, but it is possible that the severity of their regulations may in some measure be relaxed ; and gives as an illustration the Nicene Canon against the ordination of a man who has been twice married. He adds that the canons may also be made more stringent. It is by this means that he explains the fact that, while the Nicene Council permitted the clergy to be married, this was now prohibited in the Western Church. He holds that this was legitimate because the Church has authority to alter what are merely permissions of general Councils. 1 The second body of materials which goes to form 1 Rufinus, Summa Decreii, D. xiv. c. 2. 398 CANON LAW [PART in. the Canon law is found in the canons of local or provincial Councils. Of these Councils Gratian says that they had in themselves no power of making laws, but only of applying and enforcing them. 1 The third element in the Canon law is formed by a great number of citations from the writings of the Fathers ; and of these Gratian maintains that they are not strictly speaking authoritative law, but that as the opinions of great Christian teachers, they must always have much weight in the Church. 2 The fourth element is formed by the Decretals of the Popes. Gratian maintains emphatically that the Pope has legislative as well as judicial authority ; and that this legislative authority of the Popes is embodied in the decrees of the general Councils, for no decrees, even of general Councils, were in his opinion valid without the authority of the Popes. It would be impossible here to discuss all the historical questions connected with this view. We can only observe one or two points of special importance. It is quite clear that we should misunderstand the history of the Middle Ages if we were to say that this was a new view ; it is quite evident that the view that the Pope had a legislative, or quasi-legislative authority, goes back for many centuries before the twelfth. We have seen that something of the kind was anticipated in the canonical collection of Dionysius Exiguus, when he put alongside of the canons of Councils passages from the letters of the Bishops of Rome. The view of Gratian must not be taken as representing a new principle, although perhaps it does represent a development in the clear and 1 Gratian, Decretum, D. xviii. Part I. Ibid., D. xx. CHAP, iv.] POPE AS LEGISLATOR 399 definite recognition of the principle. Moreover, Gratian's treatment of the subject suggests that even in his time men were not all quite clear about the legislative position of the Papacy. There is much work still to be done in this matter by a complete investigation of the canonical literature of the latter part of the twelfth century. 1 Finally, we must remember, first of all, that all this written authority, of which we have spoken, is subject to the principle that new legislative decrees must be in reasonable agreement with the earlier law : even a Papal decree which is contrary to the decrees of earlier Fathers is of doubtful authority. 2 And secondly all written laws are in the end sub- ject to the authority of the custom of the Christian People. As we have already seen, Gratian lays down the principle that all laws must be approved by the custom of those to whom they are issued ; 3 and Pope Gregory IX states clearly that a reasonable custom, which has a lawful period of prescription, does prevail against positive law. 4 We must remember this as representing the fact that, behind all this mass of written law, there lies a more general con- ception of what one might call in a large sense a constitutional kind, of which we must take account not as a mere theory, but as actually representing the principle and the practice of the mediaeval Church. 1 Those who wish to study Gratian's position will find it especi- ally in two parts of the Decretum, in Distinctions 18, 19, and 20, and again in an important section of the second part of the Decretum, in Cause 25, Question 1, Part 1. 1 Gratian, Decretum, D. xix. 7. 8 Ibid. , D. iv. 4 Decretals, I. 4, 11. CHAPTER V RELATIONS OF CHURCH AND STATE Church and State " were not pictured as two separate societies, but as one society : and the struggle was as to the relative dignity and position of its two functions, sacerdotium and regnum, and their respective officers." CANON HOBHOUSE. WE have so far dealt with the character and principles of the organisation and law of the Church in the Middle Ages. We must now briefly examine the relation between the mediaeval Church and the mediaeval State. It is perhaps true to say that the most significant distinction between the ancient and the mediaeval world is to be found in the fact that in the Middle Ages men recognised that they lived under two author- ities, that they owed allegiance to spiritual as well as to temporal authorities. Such bare phrases, however, are almost more misleading than illuminating. In order to consider their real meaning, we must bear in mind the principle of life which lies behind them. Too often the history of the great disputes between the Church and State in the Middle Ages has been discussed without any serious attempt to understand their meaning. In earlier chapters we have dealt with the immensely significant fact that the Christian religion is related to a new conception of personality or indi- viduality, a conception of the independence and 400 CHAP, v.] FREEDOM IN RELIGION 401 responsibility of the individual human life, which was both new and revolutionary. It is no doubt true that this conception did not appear suddenly and without preparation; the history of the emergence of the individual from the primitive group is the history of a long process. We can in part study the development of this in the later prophets of Israel, especially in Ezekiel and the Psalms, and in the distinctive character of the later philosophical systems of the ancient world, and especially in Stoicism. The Christian religion here as elsewhere came not to destroy but to fulfil. The sense of the independence of the religious life was in a large measure overshadowed in the Middle Ages by the authority of the Church, but it was never lost. We cannot deal with the matter com- pletely, but we can find an important illustration of this where we might least expect it. The authority of the Church over the individual reached its highest point in the development of the system of excommunication. The Church, by the great weapon of excommunication, established what might seem an almost despotic authority over the individual conscience. But we must notice that, even in the very centre of the Middle Ages, the great mediaeval writers are very careful indeed to explain that excommunication, taken by itself, is an external thing, and that it has no ultimate force against the human conscience. Here, for instance, is a summary of some phrases of a great Papalist, a friend of Hildebrand, Cardinal Deusdedit. An unjust excom- munication injures rather him who inflicts it than him on whom it is inflicted ; the Holy Spirit, by whom men are bound or loosed, will inflict on no man an undeserved punishment ; justice annuls all unjust 2c 402 CHURCH AND STATE [PART m. sentences, and the man who is unjustly sentenced will be recompensed. 1 This view is re-affirmed by the great canonist, Gratian. He is clear that, if a man is excommunicated by a properly constituted authority, that sentence must be respected by everyone until it is overruled by some superior authority; but he points out equally emphatically that a sentence may be unjust, and therefore in the strict sense, before God, invalid. 2 This principle is again set out by Innocent III, who of all great Popes perhaps carried the idea of the authority of the Church to its highest point. In two Decretal letters of Innocent III, which are embodied in the Canon law, the matter is dealt with very carefully, but also very clearly. In one letter he points out that there may be cases when a Christian may know that a certain action will be a mortal sin, though it may not be possible to prove this to the Church, and that in such a case he must rather submit to excommunication than commit the mortal sin. In the other, he states explicitly that, while the judgment of God is always true, the judgment of the Church may be erroneous; and that thus a man may be condemned by God who is held guiltless by the Church, or may be condemned by the Church who is held guiltless before God. 8 We must remember such phrases. We must remember that in spite of all the emphasis laid by the mediaeval Church on the authority of the Church over the individual, the mediaeval Church never actually doubted that in the end the individual was 1 Deusdedit, Collectio Canonum, iv. 72. 2 Gratian, Decretum, Cause x. Question 3, and Cause xi. Question 3. 8 Decretals, v. 39, 44 and 28. CHAP, v.] CHURCH AND ANCIENT EMPIRE 403 himself responsible to God, and must act in the end on his own responsibility before God. It is quite true that the conception of the individual's liberty and responsibility was overshadowed in the Middle Ages, but we must not think of it as being destroyed. , It is, however, true that, for practical purposes, in the Middle Ages the independence of the religious life was represented not so much by the independence of the individual, as by the independence of the Church. We must consider the history of this conception. The position of the primitive Church requires no exposition. It is clear that the primitive Church stood for the principle of obedience to God against any commands of the State. The centuries of persecution show that the Christian community was conscious that, in the sphere of the religious life, there could be no notion of submission to the authority of the State. There has, however, been much dispute about the position of the Church when Christianity became the religion of the Empire. It is possible to find phrases in some Church writers, which would seem to indicate that they had in some measure lost their sense of the necessary independence of the religious life and of the religious society. There are phrases relative to the controversies between the schismatics or heretics of those times and the orthodox Church body which might seem to indicate this. Optatus of Milevis, in a work related to the Donatist controversy in the fourth and fifth cen- turies, uses phrases about the authority of the State which would almost satisfy the most extreme Erastian. The Imperial authority had interposed in the controversy between the Catholics and the Donatists, and the latter very naturally said that they did not see what right the Emperor had to 404 CHURCH AND STATE [PART in. meddle in their religious affairs ; it was no concern of his they said, and they protested against it as being an improper interference with religious matters. Optatus answers them by saying that they ought to remember Paul's command to pray for Kings and those who are in authority ; for the State is not in the Church, but the Church is in the State that is the Roman Empire ; and that Donatus ought to remember that there is no one over the Emperor except God. 1 It looks, too, very much as if something of the same kind was meant by a strange phrase of that strange writer whom we know as Ambrosiaster. In one place he speaks of the Emperor as the vicar of God (a common mediaeval phrase), and in another place he says that the King or Emperor has the image of God, and the Bishop the image of Christ. 2 In the ninth century a parallel phrase is used by Calthulfus, and he seems clearly to mean that the King has some supervisory authority over the Church. 3 What the phrase meant exactly in the fourth century we do not know ; but one cannot help having the impres- sion that the phrase is related to some conception of the authority of the Emperor even over the Church. The real truth is that, whatever the theory of the Western Church might be, the Church did compromise its independence seriously when it in- voked the power of the State to suppress those whom it looked upon as enemies, whether pagans, heretics, or schismatics. 1 Optatus of Milevis, De Schitmate Bonatistarum , in. 3. 1 Ambrosiaster (Pseudo-Augustine), Quaestiones Veteris et Novi Testamenti, xci. and xxxv. * Calthulfus in Mon. Germ. Hist. Epist. vol. iv. ; Epist. Var. Car. Regn. Script. 7- CHAP, v.] " DIVINE RIGHT " 405 All this was probably connected with a tendency in some great ecclesiastical writers to exaggerate the authority of the State to a point which we now see could only be mischievous. This was done specially by the greatest of the early Popes, Gregory the Great. It is he who was the real source and author of the theory of what is called the " Divine Right " of Kings ; and from his correspondence with the Emperors in Byzantium, it seems clear that Gregory the Great once or twice did come very near to saying that, after all, if the Emperor chooses to interfere in Church affairs, he must be obeyed. 1 No doubt he would not have admitted this for a moment with regard to the religious belief or the moral principles of the Church ; but he did admit it to a certain extent about ecclesiastical discipline. In spite, however, of the ambiguous phrases of men like Optatus, Ambrosiaster, or Gregory the Great, the position of the Western Church on the whole was perfectly clear and quite emphatic. The normal position of the Western Church is represented by Ambrose ; and we have only to read his letters, to see at once that Ambrose clearly, emphatically, and continually repudiates the notion that the secular power, as such, can have any authority in Church matters. To Ambrose the Emperor was the son of the Church, the Emperor was within the Church, and not over the Church. 2 When he excluded the Emperor Theodosius from the Com- munion, he was not acting upon the impulse of the moment, but upon what was his deliberate judg- 1 Cf. Gregory the Great, Reg. Past. III. 4 ; Libri Aforalium, XXII. 24 ; Ep. iii. 61, xi. 29. 2 Ambrose, Ep. xxi. 36 ; Enarr. in Ps. xxxvii. 43. 406 CHURCH AND STATE [PART in. ment, that even the Emperor was subject to the spiritual authority of the Church. The principles of the Western Church were stated very clearly by Pope Gelasius I in the fifth century. Before the coming of Christ, he says, there were some who were both kings and priests, such as Melchizedek ; and Satan imitated this among the unbelievers ; hence it was that the pagan emperors held the office of Pontifex Maximus. The true King and Priest was Christ himself, and in that sense in which his people are partakers of his nature they are a royal and priestly race. But Christ knowing the weakness of human nature separated the two offices, giving to each its peculiar functions and powers, so that the Christian emperor needs the priest for the attainment of eternal life, and the priest depends upon the government of the emperor in temporal things. There are therefore two authorities by which the world is governed, the sacred authority of the priest and the authority of the king : but the burden laid upon the priests is the heavier, for they will have to give account in the Divine Judgment even for kings. 1 That is, the secular and the ecclesiastical authorities are both derived from the divine order, and rest upon the divine institu- tion and sanction ; each is independent of the other within its own sphere ; and in spite of some ambiguities which may be traced in earlier Chris- tian literature, the normal position of the Christian society is summed up in these phrases. The principle is clear; the difficulty has lain in the working out of the principle. The conflicts of Church and State in the Middle Ages, and for that matter in later times, have arisen, not so much from 1 Gelasius I., Tract, iv. 11 ; Ep. xii. 2. CHAP, v.] POPE GELASIUS I. 407 any great doubt about the principle, but from the difficulties which have arisen in its application to actual circumstances. The principle is simple, the Church is independent of the State, and the State is independent of the Church. The matter becomes extraordinarily complicated when we remember that the persons who compose the State are the same as the persons who compose the Church ; and that it is very difficult to distinguish with precision and clear- ness between the characteristics of life under eccles- iastical, and under secular terms. It is probably true to say that a solution of the questions concerning the relation of Church and State can only be found in a perpetual readjustment of their relations. Such a famous phrase as that of " a free Church in a free State " sounds admirable ; but there are great difficulties in its application. We begin our closer study of the great question of Church and State in the Middle Ages, by con- sidering their relations in the ninth century. For the history of this century brings out very clearly the difficulty of adjusting these relations even for men who were quite convinced that each authority had its distinct sphere. It is very important to notice a modification of the phrase of Gelasius which was made by the writers of the ninth century. Gelasius had spoken of the two authorities by which God governs the world : the writers of the ninth century speak of the two authorities by which God governs the Church. 1 They think of the Christian society as one society with two aspects, a secular and a spiritual ; and therefore with two sets of officers, the King or Prince on the one side, who has to deal with the Christian 1 Cf. Jonas of Orleans, De Inttit. Reg. 1. . 408 CHURCH AND STATE [PART in. society in its secular aspect, and the Bishops and clergy, on the other, who have to deal with the Christian society in its religious or spiritual aspect. When in this light we examine the actual charac- teristics of the society of the early Middle Ages, especially in the ninth century, we find that, while this recognition of the two spheres and the two authorities was constant, there was also a perpetual overlapping of the two authorities. A few illus- trations will make this clear. Although these writers accept the conception of the division of function, and insist upon it, it is quite clear that the King or Emperor of the ninth century was recognised as having a real responsibility for the good order of the Church. The King who was the Vicar of God, as much as the Pope or Bishop, had it as part of his duty to maintain good order and piety in the Church. If, for instance, the King saw anything wrong in the order of the Christian Church, it was his duty to reprove or correct it. 1 We find the recognition of this conception embodied in capitularies, which represent not only secular, but often ecclesiastical legislation. 2 We must not imagine that any King or Emperor thought that he was making Church laws, but he conceived it to be his duty to set them out, and to see that they were respected. This principle reached its highest point in the feel- ing that the Emperor was responsible even for the conduct of the Pope. This comes out on several occasions in the ninth century ; in the purgation of Pope Leo III in 800 before Charlemagne, and again in the similar case of charges made against Leo IV 1 Smaragdus Abbas, Via Regia, 8. 1 e.g. Mon. Germ. Hist. Leges, Sect. ii. vol. i. 72 and 150. CHAP, v.] AUTHORITY OF KINGS 409 about 853. 1 In both these cases, the Popes recognised that in some sense it was the Emperor's function to see that Church affairs were in good order, and that it was proper that they should make the statement of their innocence in his presence. Pope Leo III was very care- ful to say that he was not submitting himself to the Emperor's judgment, and moreover to insist that his action was not to be taken as a precedent. But the fact remains that the Emperor was thought of as having some responsibility for the good order even of the Papacy. Another, and a very important point, is that all through the ninth century it is clear that the King or Emperor was recognised as having some share in the appointment of the more important ecclesiastics. The greatest and most vigorous ecclesiastics of the ninth century, like the great Hincmar of Rheims, were quite clear in recognising that, while the King had no right to make appointments at his arbitrary will, he had his proper place in all appointments, and that without his consent an election or appointment was incomplete. 2 It is admitted, even by Florus Diaconus, who maintained that there was no neces- sity for the royal or imperial consent, that it was actually the general rule that this consent should be asked for. 3 These are examples of the fact that in the ninth century the secular authority did actually in some respects intervene in ecclesiastical affairs. If, however, we are to understand the whole situation, we must also observe that in the ninth century the ecclesias- 1 Mon. Germ. Hist., Epist. v. ; Ep. Select. Pont. Rom. vi. ; Ep. Select. Leonis iv. 40. 1 Hincmar of Rheims, Ep. xix. 1. * Florus Diaconus, De Electionibus Eplscoporum, 1, 3, 4, 7- 410 CHURCH AND STATE [PART in. tical authority frequently intervened in civil affairs. The foundation of this was the principle that the ecclesiastical and disciplinary authority of the Pope, or Bishops, was a universal authority; that the authority which he exercised in the name of the Church was an authority over every class of person in society ; that no man, even in the most exalted station, was exempt from the law and authority of the Church. 1 In the second place it is important to notice that the law of the State was thought of as being sub- ordinate to the Divine law. Possibly men in the ninth century were not quite clear as to what con- stituted Divine law; in the later and more com- pletely developed theory, the Divine law was not taken as identical with Canon law it was the law that lay behind Canon law, the law of Nature or the law of the Scriptures. It is not clear how far these distinctions were present to the minds of the men of the ninth century. They were however clear that State law could never be acknowledged if it were contrary in any way to Divine law. 2 In the third place it was, doubtless, frequently recognised in the ninth century that the ecclesiastical authorities, that is especially the Bishops, were in some measure responsible for the proper conduct of the secular authority, just as the secular was for the ecclesiastical. In some of the legislation of the sixth or seventh century, and again in the legisla- tion of the ninth century, we find it very clearly indicated that if a man, who was tried by his proper judge, complained that he was unjustly treated, he was entitled to go to the Bishop, who was to 1 Cf. e.g. Mon. Germ. Hit. s Leg., Sect. ii. vol. ii. no. 299. ' Cf. Hincmar of Rheims, De Ordine Palatii, 21. CHAP, v.] AUTHORITY OF BISHOPS 411 endeavour to secure justice for the oppressed man, and, if necessary, to excommunicate the secular judge or authority who did not do justice to his people. 1 We cannot discuss in detail the history of the intervention of the Bishop for the protection of the oppressed and poor : it is long and complicated. There can be little doubt that it has some relation to the legislation of Justinian, by which the Bishops were made responsible for the protection of citizens against unjust exactions. 2 Finally, it is quite clear that in the ninth century the Bishops, and especially the Popes, were recognised as having a great deal to say in the appointment of Kings or Emperors. Even Charles the Great recognised the great importance of the position of the Pope in regard to the succession to the Crown. In the provision for the partition of his dominions between his sons, made some time before his death, it is especially provided that when the magnates of the Empire had sworn to this arrangement it was to be sent to the Pope, that he also might sub- scribe it. 3 And constantly in the latter part of the ninth century, we find that the Popes and Bishops are referred to as playing a very important part indeed in the appointment of Kings. 4 We have examined the relations of the ecclesiastical and secular authorities in the ninth century with a little care, first because if we understand these rela- 1 Cf. Jonas of Orleans, De Instil. Regia i. ; Man. Germ. Hist. Leg. Sect. ii. vol. i., no. 8 ; vol. ii., no. 222. 2 Cf. Cod. I. 3. 45 ; and I. 4. 26. 3 Einhard, Annals, 806 A.D. 4 Cf. Man. Germ. Hint. Leg. Sect. ii. vol. ii. nos. 220, 279, 289, 297, 300. 412 CHURCH AND STATE [PART in. tions we shall be better prepared to understand the real nature of the great conflict between the Papacy and the Empire, which lasted with brief intervals from the middle of the eleventh century till the middle of the thirteenth ; and secondly because the complex, and, if we like to say so, the illogical character of these relations represents very correctly the real nature of mediaeval society. One must not think that men in the Middle Ages normally doubted that each authority had its .proper sphere; but it was then, as indeed later also, very difficult to determine the limits of the two spheres. We can see that all the materials for a great conflict were present even in the ninth century ; the relations between the twp great authorities were so complicated and difficult that some collision was almost inevitable. At the same time it is probably true to say that the conflict between the Papacy and the Empire does not represent the normal conditions of mediaeval society. These conditions are really better represented in the relations of Church and State in England or in France ; the principles at issue were the same in these countries as in the Empire, but the conflict assumed a very different and probably a more normal form. When we now turn to the great conflict of Papacy and Empire, and its significance, we shall do well to remark that there are at least three well marked stages in it. First, the restoration of Church order and life by the Saxon and Franconian Emperors ; second, the vindication of the freedom of Church elections by Hildebrand and his successors, culminating in the Concordat of Worms in 1122 ; third, the great struggle between the Hohenstaufen Emperors and the Popes from Adrian IV to Innocent IV, which ended in CHAP, v.] RESTORATION OF CHURCH 413 the destruction of the Hohenstaufen and the great Interregnum. The Papacy seemed to have triumphed ; but in half a century it fell before the new national power of France, and with the death of Boniface VIII, in 1303, the mediaeval system of society passed away. The development of the situation must first of all be traced in the re-establishment of Church order and discipline by the Saxon Emperors, Otho I, II, and III, in the tenth century. In the downfall of the Carolingian Empire, not only the political civilisa- tion, but also the whole ecclesiastical system of Europe had fallen into intolerable confusion. There was no time when Europe was so near relapse into barbarism as in the early years of the tenth century. And that relapse affected the Church as much as, if not more than, the State. From this chaotic condition the European world was rescued largely by the great Saxon Emperors ; and they re-established, not only the general system of political and social order, but also some kind of decent order in the Church. But in doing this, they naturally did not stop to ask what precisely was their constitutional position. There does not seem to be any reason to say that in deal- ing with the Church, as they did, rather violently, they had any notion of making themselves masters of the Church. They acted as practical men would in those circumstances. Things were in an in- tolerable confusion, and had to be put straight; and they could not stop to ask whether the methods they used in doing this were strictly constitutional or not. The same thing was done again by Henry III in the eleventh century. The work of the Saxon Emperors, important though it was, fell to pieces, especially in Italy, in the beginning of the eleventh century ; and it was re-done by Henry 414 CHURCH AND STATE [PART in. Ill, very largely under the influence of the great revival of religion, which had begun from the monastery of Cluny in Burgundy. The intervention of Henry III culminated at the Councils of Sutri and Rome in the year 1049, when three rival Popes were .deposed. The intervention of the Emperors in the reform of the Papacy does not, however, represent the whole situation. The Emperors, from the tenth century to the time of Henry III, had normally appointed to Bishoprics. This does not mean that they had usually acted in a merely arbitrary fashion; as a rule they were perfectly willing to consult the proper electors, the people and clergy of the diocese, but they were also clear that they had the final voice in the matter, and if they did not approve of the person whom the electors wished to appoint, they would put in someone else. The normal custom in the Empire at the time was, that when the Bishop died, the Chapter of the diocese sent the ring and the pastoral staff, which were taken as the symbols of the office, to the Emperor by delegates, who, as representing the diocese, announced to the Emperor the person whom they wished to succeed. If the Emperor thought proper, he invested this person with the ring and staff, and sent him back to be consecrated. If he did not approve, he would himself, with the advice of the ecclesiastics of the royal chapel, and the principal men of the Court, select a suitable person, invest him with the ring and staff, and send him to be consecrated. This was an arrangement which worked fairly well because the great Emperors, Henry II and III, were genuinely concerned for the wellbeing of the Church and the State, and they did a great deal to raise the position of the clergy CHAP, v.] HILDEBRAND AND HENRY IV. 415 and Bishops by appointing capable and honest men. The work of the Emperors in restoring order to the Church had been well done, but the methods they used had been irregular, and were liable to grave abuse. With the death of Henry III in 1056, the Imperial Government passed into the hands of men who, during the minority of Henry IV, used the Empire very largely for their profit. We must not take the statements of the time too literally, yet perhaps it was not altogether an exaggeration when it was said that in those years every office in the Church was bought and sold. If they were not bought for money, they were bought by secular work. The clergy of the Imperial Chapel were the civil servants of the time, and were appointed to Bishoprics not because they were competent ecclesiastics, but because they were efficient political administrators. Between the outrageous growth of simony, and the disastrous results of treating the Bishoprics as the means of maintaining the Imperial authority, there is no doubt that things were rapidly coming to a very bad pass. These were the circumstances out of which the great conflict between Gregory VII (Hildebrand) and Henry IV arose. Gregory VII was determined to put down simony, the buying and selling of ecclesiastical offices, and to restore the spiritual in- dependence of the Church as represented by the freedom of election to great pastoral and adminis- trative offices. It was this which lay behind the great conflict. There may be doubt as to the im- mediate circumstances out of which this arose, the immediate motives of the great antagonists : but behind these there lay the question of the freedom 416 CHURCH AND STATE [PART in. of the spiritual life of the Church. It is impossible in a few words to deal with the situation of the year 1076. It must suffice to say that Gregory VII summoned Henry to appear before him in Rome to answer various grave ecclesiastical charges. Henry IV met the attack of Gregory VII by calling together the German Bishops, and deposing the Pope. Gregory VII replied by the excommunication and deposition of the Emperor. We cannot here attempt to trace the history of the great struggle which was thus begun. The dispute about the appointment of Bishops was adjusted by the Concordat of Worms in 1122, on the basis of a reasonable compromise. It was recognised that the right of election belonged to the diocese or its representatives, but it was also recognised that it was for the Emperor to invest the Bishop elect with the temporalities of his see. The larger questions which had been raised in the struggle between Henry IV and Gregory VII could not however be settled so easily. For after all, as we have seen, it was easy to say that the two great powers, the temporal and the spiritual, were each indepen- dent of the other in their own sphere, but the inter-relations of the two spheres were actually very complex; and when once the two authorities were at issue, it was difficult to avoid a struggle for supremacy. There can be little doubt that, at least in his later years, Hildebrand came to assert something very like the principle that the Papacy was supreme, not only over all persons, but over all authorities. It is very doubtful whether this conception was really accepted by his successors in the Papacy ; but there is no doubt that from the middle of the CHAP, v.] INNOCENT HI 417 twelfth century to the beginning of the fourteenth, they claimed an immense authority. The settlement at Worms was followed by some years of comparative tranquillity, but the struggle between the two great powers broke out again in the latter part of the twelfth century. The Empire reached its highest point under Frederick I (Barbarossa), and was confronted by a great Pope, Alexander III. Frederick found arrayed against him not only the Papal authority, but the Lombard League of the great towns of North Italy, and had to accept defeat. The Papacy reached its highest point with Innocent III in the early years of the thirteenth century, and certainly he was a majestic and imposing figure. He controlled the succession to the German Empire, he compelled Philip Augustus of France to submit to Church authority with regard to his attempt to divorce his wife. He mediated between France and England, and for a time he compelled the English King to hold England as a fief of the Papacy. And finally the Papacy, in a last great conflict with Frederick II, destroyed the Hohen- staufen and the great Empire itself. There are many who consider that the history of these centuries represents the deliberate attempt of the Church and the Papacy to make itself supreme over all other authorities. And for such a judgment there is much to be said. It is, however, necessary to distinguish very carefully between the things which men say in the height of controversy, and their sober and deliberate judgments and purposes. No doubt in the height of the great struggle for the independence of the religious life, and of the organisation in which that was represented, some 2D 418 CHURCH AND STATE [PART in. great Churchmen at that time put forward a claim which was equivalent to one for the supremacy of the spiritual power over the temporal. And no doubt the Popes laid hold of every opportunity for increasing the power which they possessed. But it is at least very doubtful whether we can say that the mediaeval Papacy formed any deliberate policy of supremacy. It is certainly very noteworthy that the Canon law, which represents the deliberate as distinguished from the merely controversial judg- ment of the Church, does not seem to make any such claim, and even includes statements of Pope Innocent III which expressly repudiate the claim, to interfere with the political authority of the State. 1 In this chapter we have endeavoured to consider the principles which determined the relations of the Spiritual to the Temporal power in the Middle Ages. We have seen enough to recognise that the great conflicts of these centuries cannot be fully under- stood unless we make clear to ourselves that they represent one aspect of the great historical process through which the modern world is reaching out to the appreciation of the autonomy of the spiritual life of the individual that is, one aspect of the development of individuality. For it is only very slowly that the individual is emerging from the primitive group. The process is indeed one, perhaps the chief, characteristic of the great movement of life which we call civilisation. It is, perhaps, true to say that the great ideals which are represented in the New Testament and in the Stoic philosophy were in a measure lost in the Middle Ages ; that we can see at least in a measure a 1 Cf. Decretals, I. 6. 34 ; I. 33. 6 ; II. i. 13. CHAP, v.] FREEDOM'S CAUSE INVOLVED 419 reaction from the spirit of liberty; and that the Church itself, which should have been the bulwark of liberty, became its most dangerous enemy. We do not think that any one can now reasonably doubt the disastrous effects, as well as the intrinsic immorality, of the policy of persecution and coercion to which St Augustine lent so fatal an authority. And yet we shall fail to do justice to the Middle Ages unless we recognise that the principle of the freedom of the spiritual life was actually represented during these centuries in the long and apparently doubtful struggle for the freedom of the Church. CHAPTER VI DOCTRINE AND SCHOLASTIC THEOLOGY "Perfects Scientia deum scire." THE nature of mediaeval doctrine, as compared with patristic, was due in the West to the special genius of Latin Christianity. During the creative period of the undivided Ancient Church the Greek mind did most to shape theology proper ; and here its influence remained fundamental, even in the West. But in the realm of religious experience, and its issues in the doctrine of man in relation to the grace of God, the Latin temper was of primary import, and laid stress on the more proximate or psychological aspects of all problems. Its typical product was not metaphysics but jurisprudence ; and it was from this standpoint that man's rela- tions even to God were regarded. This is how the matter struck a trained jurist like Sir Henry Maine. 1 Almost anybody who has knowledge enough of Roman law to appreciate the Roman penal system, the Roman theory of the obligations established by Contract or Delict, the Roman view of Debts and of the modes of incurring, extinguish- ing and transmitting them, the Roman notion of the con- tinuance of individual existence by Universal Succession, may be trusted to say whence arose the frame of mind to 1 Ancient Law, p. 358. 420 CHAP, vi.] ST AUGUSTINE'S INFLUENCE 421 which the problems of Western theology proved so congenial, whence came the phraseology in which these problems were stated, and whence the description of reasoning employed in their solution. Dean Stanley applies these principles to Christian theology in the West, as follows : l The subtleties of Roman law as applied to the relations of God and man, which appear faintly in Augustine, more distinctly in Aquinas, more decisively still in Calvin and Luther, and, though' from a somewhat larger point of view, in Grotius, are almost unknown to the East. " Forensic justification," " merit," " demerit," " satisfaction," " imputed righteousness," "decrees," represent ideas which in the East- ern theology have no predominant influence, hardly any words to represent them. The few exceptions that occur may be traced directly to accidental gusts of Western influence. In the greater Western Fathers of the fifth century the Greek influence was still a living factor. This is notably true of the greatest of them all, Augustine, whose unique position in Christian thought lies largely in the fact that he stood in so many respects between two worlds, closing the past order, inaugu- rating the new. In him not only Paulinism but Platonism lived a new life of reality, in however modified a form. Thereafter even the Neo-Platon- ism of Pseudo-Dionysius (c. 500) appealed to the West mainly by the imaginative mysticism of its parallel between the Heavenly and the Ecclesiastical hierarchies ; while a true Neo-Platonic genius like John the Scot (Erigena) appeared in the ninth century as one born out of season. In fact, mediaeval theology can usually be stated in terms of agree- 1 Lectures on the Eastern Church, p. 24. 422 DOCTRINE AND THEOLOGY [PART in, ment with or difference from Augustine. More even than Origen in the history of Greek theology, he gathered up in himself such of the past as really passed on, largely through the medium of his writings and those of the other great Latin Doctors Jerome, Leo, Gregory 1 into the working capital of the Western Church. This was true even of the Biblical element in its religion, which came to it mainly second- hand through the Fathers. Disuse of the Bible in the religious reading of the laity in particular even where they could read was a factor of serious import, especially for the earlier and formative stage of mediaeval piety. For thus the prime source of personal contact with the authentic Gospel in its religiously vital form, as well as the great guarantee of continuity in spiritual ideals and principles, was withdrawn from direct influence upon Christianity, both individual and collective. This was the case most of all with so personal and distinctive a type of Christian faith and life as the Pauline. Yet it is here that Augustine's influence, for good or ill, is so striking. For though his interpretation of Paul's religion to his own age, like that of Marcion in the second century, was doctrinally one-sided and exaggerated at some points ; yet as based on a recovery of the Pauline type of religious experience one going to the roots of moral personality, and making the soul aware of the Divine grace as present and active at its very core it was of abiding value 1 The doctrinal significance of Pope Gregory the Great (590-604), in whom is visible the growth of the ecclesiastical and penitential system distinctive of the Middle Ages, is the transformation of Augustinianism, by retention of most of its formulae but such change of emphasis, proportion, and interpretation, as to convey a quite different impression and generate a largely different type of religion. CHAP, vi.] ITS TWO-FOLD NATURE 423 for Latin Christianity, with its native bias to legalism and externalism in religion. But, as Harnack says, 1 Paulinism has ever been '* a ferment in the history of dogma, never a basis. Just as it had in Paul himself that significance with reference to Jewish Christianity, so it has continued to work through the history of the Church." This is certainly true of Catholicism as a theological system. Paul was rather the inspiration of " the great Reformers in the Middle Ages, from Agobard to Wessel " ; and he reached them mainly in and through Augustine. This modified Paulinism emerges again and again in a succession of kindred souls, numbering many of the greatest and most devout members of the mediaeval Church : but it never reached the rank and file. As soon as this began to be the case, the new wine burst the old wine-skins, and too often was lost. 2 1 History of Dogma, i. 136. * The Paulinism of Augustine which entered as a leaven into Catholicism, had in it a strain of Neo-Platonism. This appears in the account in The Confessions of his own thought before and after conversion, as well as in his earliest writings after that event ; and it had an abiding effect on one aspect of his doctrine of Justification and Salvation by Grace, as well as upon his sacra- mental doctrine. To it was due his metaphysical, as distinct from his experimental, conception of Salvation, as one in terms of human nature as substance rather than consciousness. To the Neo-Platonism which had helped to emancipate Augustine from the Manichaean dualism in which his thought had been involved largely under the sway of the moral dualism of which he felt himself the victim God was the true Reality, as opposed to all that was alien to His nature and, as such, " non-being " : and it was in terms of this antithesis that Augustine largely thought of the believer as a " new man," regenerate or re-made by infused grace. On this side his thought had also affinities with the traditional theory of the Church's sacramental system for the mediation of salvation , viewed primarily as transubstantiation of human nature, more than as its renewal in spiritual experience as faith. 424 DOCTRINE AND THEOLOGY [PART m. Augustine's sacramental doctrine had something peculiar to himself and needs careful discrimination. Like its author, it is many-sided and varies with the context. In his exposition of certain verses in John vi., participation means, now, union with Christ's passion as a sacrifice through devout " remembrance of " Him (v. 54) the memorial view : now, union with Christ as the Divine Son or Word (v. 57), an " eating Christ's body not merely sacramentally (i.e. symbolically) but in very truth " a realist view, in a sense which he explains : now, as suggested by the words "it is the Spirit that quickeneth, the flesh profiteth nothing " (v. 63), the same viewed in terms of spiritual thought in the participant, as determining its life-giving efficacy. Christ meant to say, " Understand spiritually what I have spoken. It is not this body which you see, that you are to eat. ... It is a sacrament (sacred sign) that I have commended to you : spiritually understood, it shall quicken you." The " sacrament of Christ's body " is the bread which has received the ' word ' of Christ as benediction. Moreover, there is a certain natural likeness between bread and a body, fitting the one to be sacrament or symbol of the other : and " from this likeness " sacraments " generally receive also the names of the things themselves." Hence " after a certain fashion the sacrament of Christ's body is Christ's body " ; i.e. is His bread-body, is tantamount to it for the purpose in view, to be vehicle of Christ the Word as food to the believer, when " spiritually understood." Thus his view seems to be one of Christ's *' dynamic " presence, the Word whose body is in heaven being re-incorporated in a symbolic bread- body : but the historical flesh-body, whether as it CHAP, vi.] AUGUSTINE'S DUALITY 425 suffered or as glorified and spiritualised in certain respects, is not present. So Augustine can say : " When He gave His own body and His own blood, He took in His hands what the faithful know ; and in a certain fashion He carried Himself, when He said, ' This is My body.' ' There is an objective presence of Christ in the elements, but a purely spiritual and not a corporeal one, the substance beneath the species or visible nature of the bread and wine remaining unchanged, but being somehow charged, as it were, with the Word or Wisdom of God, sacramentally embodied. This objective Divine presence passes into even the unworthy, but not so as to convey its spiritual grace, to which faith, as inspired by the Holy Spirit, is essential. Accordingly, while Augustine adopted the traditional notion of an objective presence, in the sense of some Greek Fathers, his own emphasis is expressed in his famous saying : " Wherefore prepare teeth and stomach ? Believe, and thou hast eaten." This was due to his profounder and more subjective conception alike of Grace and of Faith, as due to the inner operation of God in the soul, in which he excelled not only the Fathers before him, both Greek and Latin, but also most of those who came after him in the West. 1 To himself the reality or virtue of sacraments, their " fruit," was the subjective experience due to 1 But the variety of other aspects in which he refers to the Eucharist, especially in traditional language for which he really had a deeper interpretation as just explained including his Receptionist view of "eating" or receiving "to profit," i.e. with lively faith inspired of God makes it easy to see how Augustine was later taken to teach not only an objective Divine presence in the element but also a corporeal or " carnal " one, like Hilary of Poictiers and Ambrose before him, and Gregory the Great after him. 426 DOCTRINE AND THEOLOGY [PART in. the immanent Holy Spirit. When this living action of God falls out of real account, the religious genius of his system is altered. It was the Neo-Platonising and ecclesiastical Augustine rather than the Pauline, the author of The City of God and the champion of the One Holy Catholic Church as a visible Institution, rather than the author of the Confessions or of the anti- Pelagian treatises, who became the ruling influence in mediaeval Christianity. There remained, however, a real dualism between Augustinianism seen from above, through the idea of God, and from below, through the Church as the Divine system of grace mediated in sacraments and other sensible channels. It was impossible to harmonise absolute predestination, demanded by the Neo-Platonic absolutism of his idea of God as the unconditional and all-conditioning Reality, with baptismal regeneration through a contingent rite, administered to all members of the Church alike, yet with differing results as regards a final salvation l due to grace " irresistible and indefectible " in the elect. For Augustine's Pre- destinarianism was more absolute than the Pauline, which it stripped of the qualifications which belonged to it in Paul's Epistles, where it stands in close connection with national election to general accept- ance or rejection of the Gospel " for a season,", and is in any case relative to the privilege of sharing in the Messianic temporal Kingdom, rather than to the individual's final destiny. And for Augustine man's moral inability for good was absolute, owing to total corruption of nature by inheritance from his 1 Hence for Augustine baptism as such can only give a certain external " character " of quasi forgiveness of sins and renewal, contingent on election, as his critic Julian justly urged. CHAP, vi.] HIS PREDESTINARIANISM 427 fallen progenitor, Adam. This led to the un-Pauline deduction that even the virtues of the non-elect (whether inside the Church or outside, whether baptized or not) were not really virtuous, because not the issue of a good will, but rather ** splendid vices." Augustine, indeed, himself did not originally go much beyond Ambrose and other Westerns, from Tertullian 1 onwards, who asserted prevenient grace without denial of a real freedom to obey or disobey the inward call of God. It was Pelagius' challenge of even such emphasis on Divine Grace evoked by abuse of it in those who alleged practical inability to conform to the Divine will as set before them by this zealous monk that drove Augustine to push the logic of his position to what seemed its inevitable conclusion. But this involved him logically in making God responsible for human sin by with- holding enabling grace, 2 and also tended to reduce sin to a matter of physical nature through heredity earnestly as he struggled to avoid both these results. 1 To Tertullian, On the Soul, 21, Salvation depends on " the force of Divine Grace, more potent indeed than Nature, finding in us a faculty of free choice subject to its own influence " ; while free- will in turn determines the resulting change of nature in the soul. 1 Augustine was not in theory a strict determinist, as giving to the will freedom of self-expression (as between alternatives) within the limits of its capacity, though this in fallen man excluded capacity for good volition. He distinguished a " free will " (be- tween alternatives of like kind) and a "freed" will, one choosing Divine good as distinct from evil. "The free but not freed (liberatum) will " is " free from righteousness but the slave of sin." On the basis of this mere psychological, but not moral freedom, he made man the efficient cause of evil and so tried to relieve God of it. But his theory fails to provide moral continuity between the self before and after the action of liberating grace. 428 DOCTRINE AND THEOLOGY [PART m. So much needed to be said touching Augustine's system, in order to explain why the mediaeval Church, after many hesitations due to the prestige of his name, set aside his " double predestination," to death as well as life however hard it was to hold to one without admitting the other also, as full Augus- tinians, like Gottschalk and others in the ninth century, felt bound to do. By a sound instinct * for some real freedom as a postulate of moral re- sponsibility the latter being, as even Augustine felt, the presupposition of all human life worthy the name the Church at large reverted to the status quo ante, the theoretic paradox, but practical postulate, of prevenient grace and human freedom, which had satis- fied the Latin religious consciousness from Tertullian to Ambrose and Jerome. In theory it did so with due recognition of both factors ; in temper, however, it tended to a virtual Pelagianism, owing to emphasis on " merit " in one form or another (but on a basis of sacramental grace), for want of a sufficiently vital idea of " faith," as distinct from orthodox belief on the basis of Church authority. The exist- ence of this tendency is implied by the constant recoil in the opposite or Augustinian direction at most periods of religious revival during the Middle Ages, as well as in Jansenism after the reaffirmation of the mediaeval doctrine at the Council of Trent. Indeed, it was the partial footing which the idea of " merit " as conditioning " Salvation " and not only its degree found in Augustine's own writings, which often adopt the categories of current Catholic 1 The expedient of making predestination of the "few" elect contingent on the Divine foreknowledge of their obedience to the call addressed to the " many," and of the others' disobedience, was no real solution of the problem on the premisses admitted. - CHAP, vi.] DIVINE ABSOLUTISM 429 tradition, that helped him to sway the Middle Ages in spite of his more distinctive utterances. To this must be added his strongly ascetic and celibate ideal of " the religious " life par excellence, to which his doctrine of " concupiscence," as the type of sinful egoistic desire, gave a fresh sanction. As we look back, we see that already in Augustine, its great forerunner, Latin Christianity was en- tangled in a preliminary assumption of an abstract kind, namely, God's Absolutism at every stage in the process of realising His all- wise Will. This had not as a rule been felt necessary by the religious consciousness on Greek or even Hebrew soil. The Hebrew mind had been content if only God be All- Sovereign over finite, dependent creation, so as to realise certain ends worthy His nature as a spiritual Being. On any other basis, indeed, a Theodicy seems impossible. Yet the effects of the notion of God as the All-powerful, unconditioned even by the general nature of His own creation, have made themselves felt all along the history of Christian thought, as of human thought generally ; and that in many ways. It has possessed and kept in bondage alike the simple and the cultured mind. It lay at the root of the mediaeval notion of the supernatural and the miraculous ; and it was relative to this and its related conceptions that the Middle Ages have been called " the ages of Faith " however mis- leadingly, when one recalls the proper Christian meaning of faith, judged by New Testament usage. This primitive notion of God as absolute Ruler colours deeply the mediaeval doctrine of Atonement, a very testing aspect of religious truth, as involving the relations of God and man at their most difficult 430 DOCTRINE AND THEOLOGY [PART in. and tragic point, where they are most abnormal and most tax the spiritual reserves alike of God and man. Now it is a fact, explain it as we may, that nowhere was patristic doctrine less satisfying than at this point. It failed to go to the root of the matter in terms of moral personality either in God or man ; and so it remained external and alien to the atmosphere of the Gospels and even of the Epistles, read in a vital way. We have seen how Athanasius reduced Christ's sacrifice almost to bodily terms : and there is no need to quote the crude ways in which the metaphor of " ransom " was applied immediately to the relations of man and the devil. The missing key was Law, primarily the Jewish Law, as conditioning sinful man's relations to God, the Righteous and Holy or Perfect One. So far as it was not a mere metaphor for liberation at cost to the deliverer, it was relative to law that " ransom " had its special or Pauline meaning in the New Testament. But the historical key to Paul's use of " law " was now largely lost. Hence when Anselm took up the problem afresh at the end of the eleventh century, seeking a solution worthier of Deity than the hypothesis of ransom to the devil, as real or seeming compensation for losing his lien on sinners, he fixed indeed on the legal aspect of the relations of God and man, but as relative to Roman Law or to Teutonic feudal law rather than to that of the Jewish theocracy. In this light sin was to Anselm personal outrage on God's honour, robbing Him of the homage or absolute obedience to which He was entitled as Creator and Over-Lord of all. To atone for this there must be not only restoration of the homage withheld, but also " satisfaction " for contumely done to the Infinite CHAP, vi.] ANSELM ON THE ATONEMENT 431 Majesty. Such satisfaction must include penalty, which it would be unjust or out of rational order for even God to remit on mere penitence. Neither this nor future obedience could make good the past. Nor can any penalty by way of fine suffice. For and it is a typically scholastic touch an offence against an Infinite Lord is an infinite offence. But man cannot pay an infinite penalty. Even the whole world, if it could be offered by the sinner as ransom, would not avail to compensate for a single sin. No, only an infinite being can render an infinite satisfac- tion. Hence only a Divine Being can do so ; yet, on the other hand, it must be as man that He makes amends. Ergo, God must become man to atone for men. This God the Son or Word did voluntarily ; for only so could His transcendent act of homage as man merit reward, by giving God the Father some- thing that was not already His due. True the Son's ordinary obedience as man was only what was due from Him ; His voluntary suffering unto death, however, was something beyond what was due, and therefore " supererogation " of infinite merit and entitled to infinite reward. This reward, then, was available for transference to the credit of men who become united to the Incarnate Son. " Nothing more rational, more sw&t, could the world hear." Such is an outline of the famous treatise Cur Deus homo, set forth as a new rationale of the Incarnation. It was, its author tells us in his opening section which reminds one of Bishop Butler's preface to his Apology elicited from him by many urgent requests for his solution of a problem which deeply exercised both learned and unlearned in his age, viz. " for what reason or necessity God was made man, and by His death restored life to the world." 432 DOCTRINE AND THEOLOGY [PART in. In some respects Anselm's theory was an advance on previous ones ; but in others it introduced fresh moral difficulties. It was, in fact, so relative to the thought of its age that its author felt his solution to be " intelligible to all," and beautifully rational to those who have already implicitly grasped its principles by faith. For the psychological order is through faith to reason in such matters ; " Credo ut intelligam." But relative to such faith, he claims that he proves his doctrine " by necessary reasoning," first negatively and then positively. Such optimism touching the competence of reason even for so high an argument, was common to him and the great thinker who in the next generation gave a classic exposition of the rival theory of Atonement, which has since tended to divide theological thought on the subject. This was the Breton, Abelard, author of the " Moral theory " of Reconciliation to God through Christ's Cross. To him it was a supreme manifestation of the Divine Love to the unworthy, which tends to kindle gratitude and win the sinner to heartfelt obedience to God. With this he con- nected the idea of Christ's love as meritorious in the sight of God, and so a basis for His effectual inter- cession on behalf of sinful men. In the sequel, touching the doctrine of the Atonement, as also of the Trinity, Abelard's disciple, Peter the Lombard, tried to combine his master's fresh teaching with the best in current theology. This was Anselm's as modified by Hugo of St Victor, a school near Paris founded by William of Champeaux from whose teaching Abelard had struck off an independent course a school which had a strong mystic strain and tried to mediate between the older and newer tendencies of thought. And beyond the Lombard CHAP, vi.] SCHOLASTICISM 433 mediaeval doctrine here, as often, made no real advance. It has seemed better to give a typical specimen of mediaeval theology, rather than summarise its positions on a number of points. For it is the method that is distinctive and significant of the genius of the epoch, and not in most cases the actual result reached. Here indeed the two coincide. Anselm's " Satisfaction " theory of the Atonement was at once new in many respects and epoch making for the future history of the doctrine, both in Catholic and Protestant theology. Yet it equally deserves attention as a striking example of the new method marking the mediaeval off from patristic theology, on the one hand, and from really modern theology on the other. It is so systematic, so strong in the logical nexus between the members of its syllogisms ; so weak and often question-begging in the premisses themselves. But these are among the notes of the method now beginning to dominate mediaeval thinking ; though as time went on it became more critical of its own premisses, the ideas which it assumed as admitted data. That method was Scholasticism, as to which something must be said. Scholasticism was the specialised form of an element of the mediaeval system of Education, itself an outgrowth of the Classical curriculum, consisting of the Seven Liberal Arts. These fell into two groups. The one comprised the elements of general liberal education, Letters as distinct from Science ; the other was made up of the technical disciplines, which then most nearly answered to Science to-day, but had also in view practical use as Arts. The former were the Trivium, or Grammar, Rhetoric and Dialectic, i.e. Literature and Logic : the latter 2s 434 DOCTRINE AND THEOLOGY [PART in. the Quadrivium, or Music, Arithmetic, Geometry, Astronomy. All these were studied as parts of a classical education, mainly in the Benedictine monasteries, until the more strictly academic revival of the twelfth century. The seeds of a less monastic type of learning were sown in the Cathedral Schools founded by Charles the Great, with the aid of his minister of Education, Alcuin of York, who as the head of the Palace School gave a great stimulus to learning. From the ninth to the twelfth century the Trivium was the prime form of intellectual training, with Dialectic as its crown. But at first this study, i.e. Philosophy as then understood, was mainly formal, based on Aristotle's deductive or syllogistic logic. Its chief philosophic material for discussion was Plato's doctrine of Ideas, along with Aristotle's criticism of them, to stimulate reflection on their wider and metaphysical bearings. From this emerged the problem of the nature of " Universals " or general ideas as related to particular sensible embodiments of them, which was the typical and absorbing interest of scholastic philosophy. Here thought passed through three main stages : Realism, Nominalism, Conceptualism. Universals, that is, existed prior to actual " things," posterior to them as conceptions of the mind or terms or only in them (ante res, post res, or in rebus}. We have first a realistic, a priori, deductive mode of thought, of which Anselm may be taken as the early type; followed shortly by its antithesis, Nominalism, of which Roscellin of Compiegne was the contemporary champion. This latter type was more critical and rational in temper, and for a time divided the field with realism, which still, however, best suited the CHAP, vi.] ITS PHASES AND ISSUE 435 spirit of the age, seeking as it did the Divine in the most objective forms possible. Then, in the thir- teenth century, Conceptualism, a sort of modified Realism of which Abelard was a forerunner, came to the front, 1 largely with the recovery of Aristotle's metaphysical works as a whole. 2 It was, in fact, a sort of harmony of the two earlier modes of thought : its chief names were the Dominicans, Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas, and the Franciscan Duns Scotus. Finally, Nominalism revived afresh, after the failure of the great Scholastic theologians of the thirteenth century to satisfy the human mind of the harmony of reason and faith, as based on revelation and authoritative tradition ; and continued to act as a solvent of the view that objective truth in things Divine was accessible to human reason in the subjective form of intelligibility. Here the great name in the first half of the fourteenth century was William of Occam, who placed will above intellect. 1 Roger Bacon (c. 1214-92), the Oxford Franciscan, a wonderful universal genius, applied Aristotle's inductive methods of research in various branches of " natural " as well as mental philosophy. But he is an almost isolated instance of this spirit in the Middle Ages, anticipating curiously the temper of his namesake Lord Bacon, the forerunner of the New World issuing from the Renaissance and Reformation. 1 Their effect was at first unsettling, particularly when read in the light of Averroes, their great Moslem pantheistic interpreter, whose dualism between knowledge and faith was adopted by some Christian thinkers, like Siger of Brabant, early in the thirteenth century. The Papacy was alarmed, and forbade the application of Aristotle to theology, until Albert the Great showed how the two could be harmonised by a gradation of spheres, faith completing reason. The fresh synthesis of Reason and Faith attained classic form in Aquinas, who also absorbed the mystical tendency, which .in its own way threatened at times to undermine dogma. 436 DOCTRINE AND THEOLOGY [PART in. Scholasticism had now run its course and dis- credited itself. As a method it meant the working out of every principle to its full logical issues : and .as a philosophy it rested on two primary assumptions, the adequacy of the human reason to re-think the thoughts of the Divine Mind, and its own possession of the ultimate truths or premisses of Reason, as revealed to faith in Holy Writ and drawn out as Catholic doctrine by the Fathers of the Church. These assumptions when tried by its own method had been found wanting. The only part of them that stood, was the religious conviction that Divine truths were revealed in Scripture, but as mysteries to be appropriated by pure faith without relation to the intellect, and to be verified in experience only by the obedience of the will. The decay of Scholas- ticism, then, was a nemesis on intellectualism in religion, due to confusion between orthodoxy and religious faith, or between their respective objects and the way in which each produces its own proper conviction. Its fall cleared the field for the new type of faith which emerged into clear self-consciousness in Luther, whose attitude to Scholasticism and its theology was as significant as his attitude to its opposite, the experimental religion of the mystical Theologia Germanica. But while it lasted, Scholas- ticism illustrated the variety and, within certain limits, the freedom of thought existing in the Middle Ages far beyond what is usually realised. Another striking thing about it is, that this effort after intel- lectual unification on the basis of authority was closely coincident in time with the stages through which the authority of the Church as a great unifying institution likewise passed, from the age of Hildebrand to the break up of the Papal System first in fact CHAP, vi.] SCHOLASTIC THEOLOGY 437 under Boniface VIII, and then more completely in the minds of men at the end of the fifteenth century. It is a leading case of the solidarity of human thought in the speculative and practical spheres. But what concerns us most in Scholasticism is its application to theology, which Anselm of Canterbury handled in a new way. Such theology, formally at least, was constructed on the basis of certain Divine data, taken as revealed in Scripture and interpreted authoritatively as dogma by the corporate conscious- ness of the Church of the Fathers : but it needed to be elaborated into systematic or rationalised unity by the human mind, working on the logical methods taught by scholastic or technical philosophy. Use of this method was most needful in the case of the central intellectual mystery of the faith, as handed down in the formulas of the General Councils, viz. the nature of the Godhead as Trinity. Here the manifoldness in unity was a challenging idea, and one directly related to the central philosophic problem of Universals. Thus Anselm himself applied the Scholastic method not only to the Incarnation and Atonement but also to the Godhead, in his Mono- logium and Proslogium, striking out a new line of proof of the being of God. This was the Ontological, based on the very idea of God as the perfect Being, one therefore who could not lack the attribute of real existence. It is an admirable instance of the way in which the mediaeval, like the ancient, mind approached reality, viz. without staying to consider the subjective medium of knowledge, the mind itself, sufficiently to be able to argue to the objective validity of its product in any given case. Yet Anselm's argument has seemed to many modern speculative thinkers not only suggestive, but also 438 DOCTRINE AND THEOLOGY [PART ra. capable of being restated in a form which goes behind Kant's sweeping criticism of it as invalid. A more thoroughgoing application of scholastic philosophy at its central point, the problem of Universals, was made from the Nominalist side by Roscellin in his De fide Trinitatis, with results compromising to any real unity in Trinity. He spoke of " three individual things " (res) united only in " name " or abstract generic idea. His acutest critic was Abelard, his former pupil, in a work De Trinitate which follows the lines of Augustine's psychological treatment of the subject. He holds that in the one Divine substance or essence there are inherent three personal attributes (proprietates), Power, Wisdom, Goodness (or Love, as Thomas Aquinas later has it). The main differ- ence of terms between Abelard, on the one hand, and Augustine and his disciple Aquinas, on the other, was that the greater Realism of the two latter enabled them to speak of these " persons " as sub- stantice, although Augustine describes the Holy Spirit as the love of the Father for the Son. Abelard's doctrine shocked his own age a good deal, particularly Bernard of Clairvaux ; but in the end it won its way, as restated by his disciple Peter the Lombard, whose doctrine was approved by the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215 which also gave authoritative form to Eucharistic doctrine by the dogma of Transubstantiation, in terms of scholastic philosophy. Peter Abelard was the true father of scholastic theology as a system. Possibly he was the greatest mind of the Middle Ages, to whom as yet full justice has not been done. He aimed at a genuine philos- ophy of faith ; not setting aside authority in principle, CHAP, vi.] ABELARD 439 but on the other hand ready to uphold the rights of God-given Reason to go as far as it can, unhindered by the tendency of mystic piety to obscurantism. Thus he stood up against Roscellin on the one score, and against Bernard on the other. His method, seen especially in his Yes and No (Sic el Nori), a collection of typical passages from the Fathers and Schoolmen 1 set over against each other as thesis and antithesis, was meant to sharpen his students' powers of reflection and distinction, and so make them penetrate deeper, to the truth which had so far escaped adequate expression. The intellect can only unfold the contents of revelation, appropriated by the Church's faith. But faith, without coming to reasoned consciousness of its own true nature, lacks stability and full efficacy. Thus his emphasis was more subjective than Anselm's, 2 viz. " I under- stand in order that I may (the more) believe " (Intelligo ut credam). He had a sublime confidence in the capacity of reason to unfold the thoughts of God implicit in the revelation given by His Spirit, and most of all in the Incarnation. In this connec- 1 His method was adapted in more positive fashion, and in a fresh form, by Peter the Lombard, whose Sentences or " Findings * was a textbook in which the various Church doctrines were ex- plained by the aid of typical extracts from the Fathers, especially Augustine. * Augustine had distinguished two kinds or stages of belief. The one rested on Authority, as understanding on Reasoning : the other, a maturer sort, rested on vision of the Truth itself, inhering in it, in union of mind with God such that nothing inter- venes ; for God is Truth. This " belief in Truth itself" was con- nected with his Neo-Platonism ; and it is the issue of the search of the understanding, starting from belief in the first sense. Anselm emphasised belief as passing into understanding : Abelard, such understanding as passing on to the final form of faith, the fruition of Truth as such. 440 DOCTRINE AND THEOLOGY [PART in. tion it may be noted that he understood, " The Word became flesh," in much the same way as Apollinaris, the Incarnate Logos becoming the reason of the human soul of Christ : that is, there was no humanity in Christ as distinct from the Logos in Him only the added finite limitations proper to man's creaturehood. This " Nihilianism," as it was called by its foes, passed to Peter the Lombard, from whom perhaps the Middle Ages consciously adopted the view that Christ's human knowledge was unlimited, a view which became thenceforth the traditional one till modern times. How little mediaeval thinkers generally were fit to weigh the historical and psychological evidence for such a theory in relation to a supernatural person, is proved by the fact that Albert the Great in the thirteenth century gives what he considers proofs that the Virgin Mary herself possessed " summary " knowledge of all the Seven Liberal Arts and the Three Superior Faculties, i.e. Medicine, Civil and Canon Law, and Theology including the Bible and the Sentences. 1 Such was the abstract or unconditioned way in which the notion of Divine Power was applied to any case in which it was felt to be specially present. In such an atmosphere we may be prepared for surprising developments of supernaturalism in the doctrine of the Sacraments. Indeed, its theory of Christ's presence in the Eucharistic elements was so typical of mediaeval theology, that by it mainly we shall try further to illustrate the genius of mediaeval religious thought. Here, again, we see the tendency to fall back upon the bare notion of Divine 1 See Rashdall, Universities in the Middle Ages, i. 464 f. CHAP, vi.] EUCHARISTIC THEORY 441 Omnipotence at any point where the theory of religious facts or present experience was felt to break clown under reflection. But even so, the forms of philosophy were duly observed. Its technical cate- gories, substance and attributes, were used to formulate the methods of the Divine miracle, which in this case was boldly assumed to be daily, if not hourly, enacted, as the central mystery of the Church's earthly communion with heaven. A few words are needful to resume the history of Eucharistic theory from the point reached in our account of the piety of the Ancient Church. In the East a motive for fresh emphasis on the material side of the " real presence " appears in the eighth century, viz. protest against the opponents of a qualified worship or veneration of images, as material symbols or embodiments of persons in whom the Divine was specially manifest. Thus John of Damascus exclaims, " Above all these, are not the body and blood of our Lord material ? " Here he reproduces the strain in Chrysostom's teaching according to which " what is in the chalice is what flowed from the side " of Christ on the cross. More- over he limits, as ancient Greek theology and liturgies did not, the use of " image " for the body of Christ to the elements before consecration, after which they become His actual body, being " trans- made," as Gregory of Nyssa put it. The Eastern idea of the " sacrifice " in the Eucharist, during the mediaeval period, was mostly " that of one sacrifice pleaded on the cross, in heaven, and on the altar ; though in the latter part of it the connection " between the last two ** is but seldom expressed." The whole ritual action was also viewed as a Divine drama, " the setting forth of the stages of Christ's 442 DOCTRINE AND THEOLOGY [PART ra. earthly life, passion, resurrection, and ascension ... as a sacrificial presentation." 1 In the West, along with much parallelism, there were also differences. Theory emerged also into controversies, indicative of the greater vitality of thought in the Romano-Teutonic Church ; for since 1054 there were formally two Catholic " Churches," the "Orthodox" Eastern and the "Roman" Western. Thus we have the new realistic emphasis of Paschasius Radbertus in the ninth century, the opposite tendency of Berengar's doctrine in the eleventh, " varying types of scholastic thought in the thirteenth, and the questionings and denials and reassertions of mediaeval doctrine in the fourteenth and fifteenth " (Stone). As bearing on the mediaeval tendency to cut every knot of theoretic contradic- tion involved in traditional doctrine by simply invoking the Divine Omnipotence, we may note the statement, touching the problem whether the body as given to the disciples at the Institution was passible (as Peter Lombard held) or impassible, that Christ " gave it as He willed : for, if He willed to give it to them in the immortal state, He could well, even at that time, assume impassibility." Again, another twelfth-century writer, 2 who argues that the real presence of the body of Christ implies that it is really broken in the sacrament on earth, in replying to the objection that " it predicates of one and the same body that it abides unbroken and that it is broken," falls back on the marvellous capacities of Christ's body and on the power of 1 Darwell Stone, History of the Doctrine of the Holy Eucharist, i. 192. 1 Abbot Abbaud, c. 1130, see Darwell Stone, as above, i. 296 f. CHAP, vi.] TRANSUBSTANTIATION 443 God. The same tendency is seen in a writer later in the eleventh century, in An Exposition of the Canon of the Mass, under the name of Peter Damian, where we first meet both the terms transubstantiatio and transubstantiare. 1 A further instance of the boundless assumptions possible on such a mode of thought is the principle, formulated already by Isidore of Seville in the seventh century, and made a dogma in the course of this period, that Christ is wholly present, with both body and blood, in either species, bread or wine. This was made to justify withdrawing the cup from the laity in the thirteenth century and onwards, a step originally taken to minimise the danger of dropping some of the wine in general distribution. The same motive also led to the cessation of child communion. By the thirteenth century, then, through the development of Scholasticism and of a religious habit of mind ready to accept on authority any doctrine that seemed required by the greatness of 1 He refuses to say whether in the Eucharist " the body of the Lord is local." But he boldly says that "the whole Christ is in the whole species of bread, whole under every separate part, . . . whole in what is unbroken and what is broken '' ; that just as at a point in time "the body begins to be in the sacra- ment, so after a fashion there is a miraculous withdrawal, when it ceases to be there," as the bread corrupts or is devoured by a beast. He adds that the l( different species," or phenomenal nature, under which Christ's body and blood are received, was instituted "to increase merit, because in this one thing is seen and another thing is believed " ; also " to help feeling, lest the mind should be repelled by what the eye would see." All this is very characteristically mediaeval. Nothing shows more clearly the physical manner in which the Diyine body and blood were conceived to reside in the elements, than the not uncommon habit of consecrating fresh wine by mingling with it consecrated drops or dipping "the host" in it. 444 DOCTRINE AND THEOLOGY [PART in. the Divine mystery in the Eucharist, the way was already prepared for the authoritative formulation of current Eucharistic theory which became the official dogma of Roman Catholicism on the subject one hitherto not dogmatically defined. That dogma, with all its atmosphere of incredibility and miracle about it, is stated with great clearness in one of the earliest writers to use the technical term transubstantiatio, Hildebert of Tours, 1 some century before the Lateran Council of 1215 gave it formal authority. He utilises " the Realistic distinction between the substance the impalpable universal which was held to inhere in every particular included under it and the accidents or sensible properties which came into existence when the pure Form clothed itself in Matter," when he writes : The force of human reason seems to fail more in the Sacrament of the Lord's body and blood than in any other work of divine power. ... Is it able to grasp in what way the substance of the bread and wine is converted into the substance of the body and blood of the Lord, while never- theless the accidents of the bread and wine are not in like manner converted but remain unchanged, without the sub- stance of bread and without the substance of wine ? How are these accidents without a subject, or these accidents without the subject in which they had their origin? . . . Reason here is ignorant of all, but faith seizes on what reason grasps not. Here we have scholastic categories utilised for a theory, yet a theory which places them in relations contradictory to their normal ones ; that which apprehends this as a truth is called " faith." Surely 1 See Darwell Stone, op. tit. (i. 277), in which all the citations in the next few pages may be seen at greater length. CHAP, vi.] VARIOUS FORMS OF THE IDEA 445 a striking instance of the transvaluation of terms in the course of development, when we think of the Biblical uses of faith. The wording of the Lateran decree defining the dogma is as follows : Christ's " body and blood are truly contained in the sacrament of the altar under the forms (species) of bread and wine the bread being transubstantiated into the body, and the wine into the blood, by Divine power so that, for the accomplishment of the mystery of unity, we may ourselves receive from His (nature) what He Himself received from ours." * The closing words reveal what was and ever has been the religious kernel within the husk of this, as of every Eucharistic theory ; 2 to wit, the idea of real union between God and man achieved in and through the person of the Redeemer. Christ. Doubtless, with most theo- logians at least, it was a spiritual union that was 1 " And, moreover, no one can consecrate this Sacrament except a priest who has been duly ordained according to the Keys of the Church, which Jesus Christ Himself gave to the Apostles and their successors. 3 ' Hugo and the Lombard add that an ex- communicate or heretic priest forfeits this power. 2 The definition is as general as it could well be. The mode of transubstantiation is not indicated, as when Hugo of St Victor says fc the substance of the bread is not annihilated, but is con- verted into the substance of the body of Christ " : there is no reference to the accidents as related to the new substance, or even to the nature of the body present, whether " carnal" or rather "spiritual" in a strange and paradoxical sense defined by certain twelfth-century theologians (e.g. Hildebert, below). In this last connection may be noted a further distinction of Hugo and others, following Augustine, between the reality of the body, shared by all communicants, good or bad (to their judgment), and its efficacy (rem) and virtue as spiritual grace, which only the good receive. This latter effect of the sacrament Peter the Lombard styles " the mystical flesh of Christ," as distinct from " Christ's own flesh and blood." 446 DOCTRINE AND THEOLOGY [PART in. primarily conceived of as secured by receiving through the mouth the human body of Christ, in indissoluble unity with His spiritual and Divine Life. This the Exposition of the Canon of the Mass, already cited, means when it says : " Christ passes from the mouth to the heart : it is better that He go to the mind than that He descend to the stomach [as the species of bread and wine do]. This food is not of the flesh but of the soul." The alternative here hinted may seem painfully realistic ; but it is necessarily suggested by the conception of Christ's corporeal presence, when thought out ; and the inconceivable metaphysics of Transubstantiation, with attributes divorced from substance, was simply an attempt, the only one seemingly possible to thought besides Consubstantiation, as put forward by Occam the assumption of two substances coexisting under the attributes of the elements, 1 which the Lombard, for instance, explicitly rejects to safeguard the pious imagination against the cruder 2 consequences of this kind of theory. Of course such a conception was bound to take different forms to minds varying in refinement and subtlety of thought. Theologians anxiously explained that " the flesh and blood," as 1 Thus the consecrated bread is and remains " at once bread and body of Christ." So taught Wyclif and John Wesel and other reformers of mediaeval religion on mediaeval lines, though under the new impulse to make the Bible itself, rather than tradition, really supreme and determinative. 1 To some of these not even the subtlest intellect had answers. Thus to the question " What is eaten, if the sacrament, with its one Divine substance, is eaten by a beast?" the Lombard could only reply, "God knows." Again the Divine Omnipotence is called in to save a special theology. To doubt the exegesis of the Biblical data with which the theory started, did not occur to the Schoolmen. CHAP, vi.] ITS MIRACULOUS METAPHYSICS 447 those of the Risen Christ, had about it " nothing carnal and nothing bloody," and that it was " spiritual " and spiritually received : in fact, all was relative to the spiritual or supernatural sphere, to which carnal categories were alien. And yet they con- stantly spoke in terms not only of " body " but of " flesh," language seemingly inconsistent with such caveats, but imposed on them by a literalistic reading of the words of Institution and of the Johannine discourse on the Bread of Life. What could the laity make of such language, both in speech and symbol, but something far more material and carnal than the official theology would acknowledge ? So it was, and so it was bound to be on such lines. Returning, however, to Transubstantiation as a special theory of the miracle in question, its boldly paradoxical nature comes out strikingly in Hildebert, when he says : "What is more divine than that the body of Christ, though it is flesh and not spirit, is nevertheless the food not of the flesh and the body 1 but of the spirit and the mind? " It " enters into the spirit in a spiritual and divine manner, not converting itself into spirit but feeding the spirit spiritually and divinely. . . . This body is among us, and it is in heaven : 2 it is among us also in different places, ... it is 1 It may be doubted if Hildebert here duly represents Catholic thought. His is at least the opposite of much Patristic doctrine, as it meets us in Irenaeus onwards, which taught that immortality of the body was the primary or specific effect, not otherwise to be enjoyed in the Christian sense. This emphasis survived in the formula " preserve thy body . . . unto everlasting life." 8 The Lombard puts it thus : " The body of Christ is in heaven/' " visibly in human form " ; " His reality (or ' real body '), that is His Divinity, is everywhere" dynamically, as we should say, yet as body identical with the finite body in heaven ! Here we have already the puzzle of the Ubiquity of Christ's body, which re-emerged for the Lutherans. 448 DOCTRINE AND THEOLOGY [PART in. on every altar whole and complete. . . . Nor is it only in sacramental symbol, but in its own very nature. For it is itself in one place only after a natural manner, but it is in many places after a manner of power. ... It is in one place after a bodily manner ; it is in many places after a spiritual manner. For to be at the same time in more places than one is not an attribute of body but of spirit, though not perhaps of any other spirit than Divine spirit, that is, of uncreated and uncircumscribed spirit. . . . Not only is the body of Christ wholly present after the manner of a spirit at the same time ... on many altars ; but it also has on each separate altar a certain spiritual way of existing. For, though it is everywhere in itself an object of sense because of the properties of body, yet it is present to us on the altar not as an object of sense in the form which it takes [i.e. the sensible properties of the Eucharistic form are those of the elements, not of Christ's body]. Wherefore also it can be said to be there both as an object of sense [i.e. potenti- ally so in itself, as body, and actually so under the assumed form of the elements] and not as an object of sense " [in itself, actually]. Here Hildebert asserts the corporeal, not properly spiritual, nature of what is present. It is " flesh," with " the properties of body," " an object of sense." Whether the accidents, concealing the reality of the body present under them, inhere in it or only '* remain in the air " or " without a subject " as Abelard and the Lombard held was often discussed ; and it is very characteristic of scholastic theology that, touching even the most devotional object of Chris- tian piety, such was the case. Another and more practical aspect of the theory may also be noted : it tended greatly to confirm the tendency to adore the consecrated elements. Seeing that it got rid of all purely creaturely substance as coexisting with the Divine body, it afforded a fresh apology CHAP, vi.] THE LATER SCHOLASTICISM 449 against the charge of idolatry with which Wyclif and others taxed this practice. The later mediaeval period does not call for extended notice. The genius of scholastic theology is to be seen as clearly in its great early representatives as even in the authors of complete systems, such as the Dominicans, Albertus Magnus, the Doctor Universalis, and Thomas Aquinas, the Doctor Angelicus, in the thirteenth century when nearly everything mediaeval came to its bloom. What was then added was mainly formal perfection, due largely to Aristotle, whose complete system now furnished better cate- gories for scholastic purposes than those hitherto to hand. Aquinas' Summa Theologica covered in plan the field of Ethics as well as of Theology proper, but all as related to the idea of God from first to last. It was essentially Augustinianism revised in the light of subsequent thought, including the recovered Aristotle, and with Augustine's less Catholic features pruned away the whole being reduced to perfect scholastic form by a mind of great vigour and balance. After him Scholasticism passed, in the Franciscans, Duns Scotus (f 1308), Doctor Subtilis, and William of Occam (f 1347), Doctor Invincibilis, into a growingly critical stage. Little of positive value was added to the mediaeval system of doctrine. On the other hand, new subtleties tended to bring into increasing doubt the objective truth of any dogmatic system, as really reflecting to the intellect the realities adumbrated in the mysteries of revelation. Under the relentless critical examination of Scotus no argument and no result of a rational process seemed more than probable, rather more probable perhaps than the rival thesis 2 F 450 DOCTRINE AND THEOLOGY [PART in. in debate. Hence faith was shut up to viewing revealed truths as all alike inscrutable mysteries, accepted on sheer authority as presented by the Divine will for man's acceptance passive accept- ance in the last resort. The practical result was to enlarge the sphere of the Church's authority as sole guarantee of what was to be believed. Scholasticism had undermined itself as a method of reaching a conscious grasp of truth by the reason. Since the later Middle Ages most Catholic thinkers have fallen practically into the two schools or methods of thought known as Thomism and Scotism, from their great mediaeval protagonists ; and from time to, time one or other has been favoured by Papal or other authority. But along with this difference of attitude went at first specific differences in doctrine, some of which have persisted down to to-day. The most noteworthy related to Grace and Free- Will, and the Immaculate Conception of the Mother of Jesus. In both cases Thomas showed himself Augustinian, Scotus the opposite. As regards the latter doctrine, the Dominican was echoing the negative view not only of Anselm and Bernard, but also of the Franciscan Bonaventura, who held to " the common opinion " that Mary's unique sanctification followed her participation in original sin, as a retrospective effect of grace due to the Redeemer's work. Scotus, on the other hand, affirmed the other as a " probable " truth, one as to which more could be said for than against though, as Bernard had pointed out, there was no positive evidence for it. On both these issues the Dominicans held to their Thomist position even after the Council of Trent, while the Franciscan case passed largely into the hands of the new order CHAP, vi.] THE MYSTICS 451 which sprang out of the Reformation period, the Jesuits. Side by side with the bankruptcy of Scholasticism, 1 further hastened by the pronounced Nominalism of Occam, went a new growth of personal religion, particularly of the mystical type, and in circles wider than those of " the religious." In fact it passed at times even out of touch with the mediaeval Church system altogether, becoming " heresy." But we may note that such inward meditative piety was one in root with the active and critically constructive spirit, which tried and found wanting the imposing structures of scholastic theology on a traditional basis. Both meant that the Teutonic mind, which had always been the main factor in the aspiring and bold efforts of Scholasticism to think things into unity while using the instruments of classic thought put in its hands by the Latin Church was now adolescent and trying to' apprehend Christianity for itself and in its own personal, free, and inwardly experimental way. Here some words of Meister Eckhart (t 1327), the Dominican preacher-prophet, are instructive. " Shall I make God with thee ? 1 A prime cause of this was the lack of an essentially Christian philosophy, springing 1 out of the distinctive new experience in Christ. As Augustine depended too largely on Neo-Platonism, so did Aquinas on Aristotle, "the least religious among the greater Greek philosophers/' "as to the intrinsic, ultimate trend and affinities" of whose thought he had "no adequate sense" (Fr. von Hugel, Eternal Life, p. 102). Hence Christian theology was, as it has remained down to our own day, too much a mixture of elements not really of one kind, instead of a garment woven throughout of one stuff. The Reformation here gave a new he- ginning, but became involved in the categories and methods of the long tradition already behind it, and so failed for centuries to carry through the work of thorough renovation or even realise the need of it. 452 DOCTRINE AND THEOLOGY [PART in. Then must thou first become as nothing, must give up all thy willing and thinking, and offer up thy soul pure to God, must not will anything excepting what He wills. Then hast thou no need to be anxious about righteousness, but let God be active in thee ; and then in thy love of God art thou certain of thy bliss, which can never again be de- stroyed by the evils of the age. Ever and ever therein goes on the incarnation of God as in Christ. For the Father did not bear the Son only in eternity, but ever and ever does He give birth to Him in the soul of him who offers himself to Him ; and what the Son has taught us in Christ is merely this, that we are the selfsame sons of God." In more guarded language, and with an emphasis more strictly confined to the religious aspect of the immanence of God in the soul, as it dies to self that it may live wholly unto and in God, John Tauler of Strasburg (t 1361) and the Theologia Germanica (c. 1400) sound the same note ; and the note is one of a contemplative piety that is free both morally and intellectually, in a word, spiritually adult and not in pupillage to authority. During the fifteenth century the two processes, decay of scholastic theology and spread of a freer mystic piety, were converging upon the birth of a new type of theology and a new theological method. These sprang from a fresh religious experience more individual in its consciousness of direct rela- tions with God in the sphere of conscience, and of His direct action in the 'remission of sin, alike as guilt and moral bondage. Or rather, there was a renewal of the original Evangelic experience, particularly on Pauline lines of emphasis. Here lay the significance of Wyclif and Huss, and other pioneers of the coming change. This new theology CHAP, vi.] MEDIEVAL PIETY 453 went back behind scholastic inferences of all kinds, behind even the conflicting opinions of the Fathers and Doctors of the Church, to the fountain-head of the Gospel to which all appealed, the authentic utterances of the men on whom first broke with emancipating spiritual life the vision of God in Christ. It was in a return to the New Testament writings, the classic embodiments of such experience in all its " fresh rapture," that theology, as well as religion, found a renewal without parallel in the Church's past reformations, so that it has rightly earned the title " The Reformation." For this fresh stage of development in the appropriation of Christianity by half Europe, and that not the least spiritually vigorous and thoughtful half, mediaeval theology, no less than mediaeval piety generally, was the historical preparation, at once positive and negative. If at first glance the negative aspect of the relation, that of recoil and protest against errors and superstitions, arrests the student's eye ; further reflection reveals how large was the element of continuity between the new and the old, e.g. as to the principle of intolerance towards heterodoxy as soul-destroying. Nowhere was it more so than in theology, both in its material and formal aspects. Hitherto we have considered the theoretic rather than practical aspects of mediaeval theology. That is our special task in this chapter. But the practical bearings of theology, ever the most important, were equally typical of mediaeval religion, which was for most people not a matter of reflection but of custom, of pious rites making for Salvation through dutiful obedience to Mother Church and her priesthood. Even in the Mass it was perhaps " the power of 454 DOCTRINE AND THEOLOGY [PART in. obtaining specific results as the direct outcome of the offering of the sacrifice " of Christ's body and blood, that chiefly appealed to the faithful at large. The sacramental idea in religion meant that what was wrong in a man's relations with God might for the most part be set right by the good offices of the Church's priesthood, whose mysterious powers were typified by ability to bring about by the appointed means the miracle of the Real Presence of God at any given place and time. Verily an overwhelming prerogative. " Visible signs of invisible grace," sure channels conveying to the Church's members a special grace from God, through the Incarnation but as conditioned by the priesthood such exactly suited the mediaeval mind and imagination. As a man found himself in a social system, that of the feudal type, where his well-being depended mainly on the will and action of those in authority above him ; so he found himself in an ecclesiastical system which guaranteed the supply of all his religious needs, if only he were docile to authority and fulfilled its recognised requirements. Yet its very perfection as a system external to the individual tended to dull the sense of personal responsibility, let alone moral initiative. That theologians did not face this tendency of the sacramental system (as necessitated according to Aquinas by human frailty), was largely due to the fact 1 hat it was not the natural and symbolic, but the supernatural and realistic aspects of sacraments, that really appealed to and fascinated mediaeval piety. Yet Scholasticism sought to work out the rationale of sacraments, both generally and severally, as it did that of every object of faith ; and gradually they grew in number and definiteness of conception. The CHAP, vi.] THE SACRAMENTAL SYSTEM 455 old looser usage, which covered anything specially sacred the Incarnation, Holy Scripture, an oath was set aside in favour of outward signs viewed as means of conferring grace 1 : and the number of these was enlarged from two or threje according as Chrism or Confirmation was included in or dis- tinguished from Baptism first to five, as in Abelard and Hugo (reckoning also Unction of the sick 2 and Marriage), and then to seven, as in the Lombard, who adds Penance and Orders, while he narrows Unction to Extreme Unction (which he and later Schoolmen refer to an inner unction and healing remission of sins and increase of virtues). This number became accepted by authority, as also in the Eastern Church, and was sanctioned by the Council of Trent. 3 But the two original sacraments, Baptism and the Holy Communion, remained pre- eminent as " generally " or universally " necessary to salvation." Further, Baptism, Confirmation, and Orders were held to impress on the soul an " indelible character " or stamp, and could not be repeated ; but the Schoolmen were not agreed as to the exact sacramental gift in Ordination, and wherein its Form and Matter consist. So much for the sacraments, severally and as a system for the sanctifying of humanity through the operation of material media charged with objective Divine Grace, working like an embodied physical force. But what were the other ideas 1 The Schoolmen defined the word of institution as the " form," the element as the " matter " of a sacrament. 2 As the outward sign of prayer for recovery (James v. 14 if.), and perhaps including Confession ; see Synod of Aix, 836. Hugo also uses " sacraments" in a wider sense, in three degrees. 3 Even making the institution of them all by Christ a dogma. Sess. vii. 1. 456 DOCTRINE AND THEOLOGY [PART in. common to the sacramental system ? First as to the conditions of its efficacy, a sacrament rested on Divine institution, which made its operation inde- pendent not or^ly of the moral fitness of its minister, 1 but also of that of the recipient, save as regards quality (benefit or harm) and degree. This objec- tivity of communication came to be known as action ex opere operate, a phrase not yet in the Lombard, but found in his disciple Peter of Poictiers (f 1205). Albert the Great defined opus operatum as " an external fact," e.g. sacrifice or circumcision under the Law ; and Aquinas uses the contrast between the Old and New Covenants in the matter in a surprising way. " The sacraments of the Old Law had no efficacy of themselves (ex opere operato) but only by faith," whereas those of the New Law " of themselves confer grace." What would Paul have said to this mark of the superiority of the New over the Old ? Naturally the subjective qualification was gradually reduced to a minimum. It was made to consist merely in the mental posture of acqui- escence in the operation of the sacramental act, although its effect might be enhanced by a pious disposition. As to the underlying idea of " grace " always a crucial one for types of religion it was realistically simple, after the analogy of physical things. Yet, when thought out, it resulted in a complexity of theory, as of epicycles needed to help out a wrong curve in astronomy, which recalls most strongly the pre-Copernican system, before the right centre and point of view were discovered. Here already were tendencies sure to arouse 1 The force of the sacrament, however, depended on the priest's intention "to do what the Church does'" which admits of an element of doubt as to its objective value in a given case. CHAP, vi.] THE IDEA OF " MERIT " 457 criticism from the awakening spirit of enquiry and of more subjective experience in religion, which marked the Renaissance of learning and mental activity in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. But we have yet to note the idea, ingrained in all mediaeval religion but especially visible in one of its sacraments, which was destined to cause radical recoil from its genius, and to evoke in antithetic emphasis the idea proper to the great revolution in Christianity known as the Reformation, viz. Justifi- cation by Faith, not Works. The idea of merit in religion was part of the heritage of Latin Christendom and connected closely with its legal temper. It was overshadowed, rather than set aside, in Augustine by his emphasis on grace as rendering all merits a form of God's gifts. Thus while in spirit he is Pauline in his emphasis on salvation as of grace through faith, " yet in his dogmatic expositions . . . the organic relation of faith to works, or its necessary relation, does not appear " in Paul's manner. 1 The faith that justifies was indeed no mere belief of what God says, but vital trust in Him with the will, involving also hope and love : yet the inclusive and creative aspect of faith as the parent of these, which in turn inevitably become tests of its vital quality, is not fully maintained in all contexts. 2 Thus his own idea of faith as a 1 Fisher, History of Christian Doctrine, p. 180. * Augustine himself left no room for " merit " as a ground of justification. It was all due to grace from first to last ; and "grace, save it is gratis, is not grace." Nay, "without Him, either working that we may will or co-operating when we will, we have no ability for good works of piety." On the other hand, he did not set aside traditional language as to "merits" entering into final justification, as distinct from the initial act which " justified the ungodly." The will " freed" by grace for good 458 DOCTRINE AND THEOLOGY [PART m. personal response to God's grace, one inspired by the Spirit's prevenient operation ; and of this as the sole condition of justification or the state of accept- ance with God ; was not widely shared by scholastic theology, even among Augustinians. The way to mixed Augustinianism was shown by Gregory the Great. Human co-operation with God's grace suggested human " merit " though the very term belongs to another plane of thought than that of " grace " ; and merit was the basis of the penitential system and its related ideas. Anselm taught that faithful use of the " freed " will " merited " fresh grace. So too Thomas Aquinas, who distinguished frankly " grace operative " or " prevenient," seen in the " justification of the ungodly," and grace " co-operative," seen in " merit." The former pre- ceded all good works by aid of the latter, and could not be deserved. But the latter could be, in a sense, by fidelity in the use of existing grace, to which he unhappily conceded the title, inappropriate on Evangelic and Augustinian principles, of merit. For in fact such fidelity is no more than man's bounden duty towards God, on pain of sin. " For merit lives from man to man, And not from man, O Lord, to Thee." The two ideas, grace and merit, belong to different planes, and should not be co-ordinated in the language of theology. volition could make choice of lower and higher goods, with corresponding " merits " : only, as dependent on grace for their possibility, such were still God's own "gifts."' Hence on the whole, Augustine left the door open for confusion as to the ground of Justification, as between grace and merit, faith and works ; and so for the undoing of his own special witness. CHAP, vi.] PENANCE AND INDULGENCES 459 The idea of " merit " had effects differing in degree in various classes of mind : but its broad result in religion was most mischievous. A subtle legalism came to pervade both theology and piety in relation to forgiveness. It also paved the way for the distinction between binding " precepts " of the Gospel and " counsels of perfection " such as issue in works of supererogation, the surplus " merit " of which, so far as not needed by way ot *' satisfaction " for the sins of the Saints who performed them, went to swell a common " treasury of merits." Of this the merits of Christ Himself, beyond those needful for His Atoning Sacrifice, were the basis and nucleus ; but the merits of His saints could add to its fulness. On that boundless fund of merit the Church militant, as one Body with the Church triumphant, had the right to draw in its need for " satisfaction " to cancel its members' sins, especially mortal sins, beyond or instead of their own works of penance. Thus this treasury of supererogatory merit formed the basis for Indulgences, 1 the characteristic point at which the genius of the later mediaeval religion worked itself out, and so produced protest from the new spirit of personal and inward experience in Northern Christendom, where Teutonic rather than Latin tendencies were coming to their own. Indulgences were an outgrowth of the Sacrament of Penance ; and Penance was in practice the centre of later mediaeval piety, its chief means of grace. As Baptism cleansed from the guilt of original sin, and the Mass from venial sins, so Penance dealt with mortal sins as jeopardising the soul's final salvation. It was the mediaeval develop- 1 For references bearing on what follows, as also on much in pp. 465 ff, see H. Schmid's Dogmengeschichte. 460 DOCTRINE AND THEOLOGY [PART in. ment of this institution from public sorrow to auricular confession to a priest, from evidences of a penitent heart to " satisfactions," from restoration by the brotherhood to Papal Indulgences and the ideas which crept in during the process, that tended most to nullify the Augustinian, not to say the Pauline, doctrine of Salvation by Grace through Faith, even while its formulas were still honoured in word, not to say strict theory. The " matter " of Penance, as summarised by Pope Eugenius IV (c. 1430), consisted of these elements : (1) contrition, (2) confession to a priest, (3) satisfaction for sins com- mitted, at the discretion of the priest, especially by works of prayer, fasting, and alms. The " form " of the sacrament lay in the words of absolution, uttered by the priest and conveying its specific effect, viz. absolution from sins. In the earlier period the words took the form of a prayer for or a declaration of God's forgiveness of the truly contrite. From the thirteenth century the forgiveness seems rather to be pronounced by the priest in the character of a judge administering the Divine Law with plenary powers ; " I absolve thee." In both cases the Divine penalty of eternal death was, on contrition and confession, commuted into temporal penalties or satisfactions, to be adjudged by the priest. It was relative to these that indulgence strictly had its place, effecting by superior authority, that of the Pope as earthly Head of the Church, a further commutation even of the " satisfactions " ordinarily requisite for absolution, by a draft on the Church's "treasury of merit." Thereby the usual temporal penalties or mortifications were dispensed with, if only penitence even of the lesser kind known as " attrition " were present, together with a correspond- CHAP, vi.] THE COMING RECOIL 461 ing act of satisfaction or penalty, such as to create a presumption that the will to satisfy God's claims was present. This might vary, from the toils and dangers of a crusade the occasion of the first plenary indulgences or a pilgrimage, to a money payment for an object specified by the Pope. But in practice indulgences, as administered, often went further than strict theory allowed, being understood to extend even to the remission of future penalties, both for living persons who obtained the privilege and for departed friends in purgatory. The working of general indulgences, especially as purchased by money, became the abuse against which reformers like Wyclif, Huss, John Wesel, and Wessel, most earnestly protested. But the authorities of the Church at Rome adhered alike to the theory and the practice : and an anti-Wyclifite Bull of Martin V (1418) speaks broadly of " indulgences for remission of sins " as within the Pope's power. No wonder, then, if the original protest of Luther which occasioned the German Reformation related to this matter; as to which he argued for the most strict and limited theory of their scope, against the official view of them and of the Papal prerogative in things Divine bound up with them. But behind both Indulgences and the Sacrament of Penance and priestly Absolution lay, as we have seen, the deeper question of " works of merit " as the basis of Justification or the appropriation of the redemption in Christ by the soul. And here, once more, we are confronted by the fact that Augustine, though the most honoured name among the Fathers in the mediaeval Church, never really communicated to it the most essential part of his religion. Especially was it so with the later mediaeval 462 DOCTRINE AND THEOLOGY [PART ra. piety, based as it was on the institutional or external aspect of the Church. Over against this, reformers like Wyclif and Huss, whose main dissatisfaction was with the life rather than the dogma of the Church, were driven in the end also to theological opposition to the mediaeval system, in connection with the pure Augustinian conception of the Church as the real but not externally organised unity of the Elect or truly regenerate the basis of the Protestant doctrine of " the invisible Church." Indeed, it was the study of Augustine's writings which pre- pared most of the men who, in the attempt to go behind it to a more Biblical piety, found themselves compelled to break altogether with mediaeval Chris- tianity. 1 Yet it is no accident that it was not the study of Augustine with his two voices as to works of " merit," and especially his high estimate of the special merit of the asceticism and celibacy of the monk but rather of Paul himself, the fountain-head of the Christian experience and theory of Salvation by Grace, that brought the Augustinian monk Luther out into the full " libertv of the children of God." 1 A chief merit of those writings was their organic rather than agglomerative view of character, in its inmost reality, as accepted in the Just and Merciful eye of the God of Truth. A true attitude of soul towards Him, the source of all Goodness, was the one thing essential, the root, as it were, from which good deeds were bound to grow, as fruits partaking in the good quality of a tree. This vital and profoundly Christian idea had again and again been obscured by a doctrine of " merits," as if entitling the doer to eternal life as " reward.' 5 But the vital view transcends all this. Fruits do not constitute Life, though they are its products, and are in turn an outward test of the degree of its vitality. So is it with faith and works in relation to Salvation or .Eternal Life. PART IV THE GREAT TRANSITION CHAPTER I THE DECAY OF MEDIEVALISM " What was built up in obedience to the impulse of life, was taken down in reverence to the same impulse." IF we have given much space to the organisation of the mediaeval Church, it is because the religion of these centuries finds its most complete expression in the terms of a great organised society. It is not that the individuals, or their ideals and judgments, were unimportant, but that they cannot be under- stood without constant reference to the society. Something of this is no doubt always true, but it is true of the Middle Ages in a special, perhaps an exaggerated, sense ; and until the end of the thirteenth century the most vital elements of the religious life were able to find a place and expression in the general system of the Church. The mediaeval Church showed the power to take into itself elements of life and thought which might at first sight seem alien to it. Abelard was con- demned ; but much of his doctrine is actually re- presented in the Sentences of Peter Lombard and in St Thomas Aquinas ; the exquisite and poetic idealism of St Francis found a place and home hi the great Church ; and even Dante, with all his 463 464 DECAY OF MEDIEVALISM [PART iv. uncompromising hostility to some of its tendencies, represented more profoundly perhaps than any other the principles and ideals of mediaeval Catholicism. The same is true of the great statesmen of the Middle Ages. They often had their differences, sometimes acute differences, with the Church ; but they were also aware that their work, in reducing to some order the anarchical, elements of life, was parallel to the work of the Catholic Church in taming the barbarous and pagan elements which were still so strong in mediaeval society. We have come to the time when this gradually ceased to be true. Slowly men outgrew the tute- lage of Churchmen : slowly they absorbed the ele- ments of the ancient civilisation which the Church- men had preserved ; slowly and dimly they began to feel that they, both morally and religiously, could judge for themselves. The changes of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries are indeed very complex, and we must not suppose that all were good. Those centuries represent the period when the whole structure of mediaeval civilisation began to fall to pieces. If society gained in some respects, it also lost. The political structure of the Middle Ages had great faults : it was too legal, it tended too much to fixed forms and rights ; nevertheless it was in the Middle Ages that the principles of political freedom and of the self-government of the com- munity first found for themselves their best and most enduring form, in the development of constitu- tionalism and of the representative system. The bad mediaeval ruler was often violent and tyrannical, but the men of the Middle Ages never confused a king with a tyrant ; for the tyrant they had short CHAP, i.] LOSS AND GAIN 465 shrift, and they knew nothing of a legal despotism. Some of the Fathers had indeed talked unguardedly about the absolute divine right of the monarch ; but the Middle Ages, while they respected the divine nature of political authority, repudiated emphatically the conception of an authority which was unlimited and irresponsible. It is the same with moral civilisation. Even the discipline of the mediaeval Church and State had only very imperfectly controlled the brutality and licentiousness of the barbarian world. Those ac- quainted with the Penitentials of the early Middle Ages will not find it surprising that the Romance literature, while it has a thin veneer of religious phrases, is fundamentally pagan and unmoral. But against this the Church had as a rule manfully striven ; it had upheld ideals of decency and morals ; and in some measure had succeeded in imposing them upon society. It is not an accident that some of the most famous disputes of the Middle Ages turned upon questions of divorce. From the case of the Emperor Lothair and Tetburga, down to the time of Philip Augustus and Innocent III, the Church had striven in its own way to protect the position of women. While the dissoluteness of European morals in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries might be the price which men had to pay for liberty, it was a heavy price. No, the change was not all, or immediately, for good. But the change had to come ; the order of society had grown old ; the traditional type of authority was becom- ing a burden, and men had to find their way towards some newer order. And what was true of European civilisation as a whole was true of the Church. It is difficult 26 466 DECAY OF MEDIEVALISM [PART iv. to say how far the great revolt of the sixteenth century was directly connected with the move- ments of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries ; but these movements do undoubtedly indicate the fact that the religious system was growing inade- quate and that a serious reconstruction was inevit- able. We have to deal with this subject briefly ; and in order that we may at the same time deal with it clearly, we will treat it under various heads, while we must also keep before our minds the fact that all these aspects of change are interrelated. For this purpose we may divide our subject as follows : (1) The injury inflicted upon the position of the Papacy by the " Babylonish Captivity " in Avignon. (2) The Great Schism and the Conciliar move- ment. (3) The grave discontent with the financial demands of the Papal Court (4) The development of nationalism in religion. (5) The beginning of religious and doctrinal revolt. (1) The Papacy seemed to have triumphed over its enemies when the last of the Hohenstaufen Emperors died in the year 1250. And indeed the great mediaeval Empire was at an end. For another century it seemed a reality, but in truth it was a mere shadow. Dante's splendid apology was really out of date. The descent from the great Hohen- staufen to the new and parvenu family of the Habs- burgs was symbolical of the change. The Papacy had triumphed, but the triumph was fatal. The methods to which it had been com- CHAP, i.] BABYLONISH CAPTIVITY 467 pelled, perhaps, to have recourse, had seriously injured it, and the destruction of the Empire only left it face to face with the new and vigorous nation- alism of England and France. For fifty years the Popes held their heads high, and in the closing years of the thirteenth century Boniface VIII seemed an even more majestic and imposing figure than Innocent III. But against the French monarchy he was helpless ; he could not even command the obedience of the French clergy in his attempt to forbid their taxation without his consent ; and when he shortly after died (1303), it became evident that the Roman Curia had come under the control of France. This received its formal and outward confirmation when Clement V fixed the papal seat at Avignon (1309). It would be difficult to cal- culate the injury which was thus done to the authority of the Popes. Men might have had their differences with the great Popes in Rome, but at any rate they had represented an impartial and supra-national temper. When they became, as men thought, the creatures of France, they lost this position, and it was only slowly, if indeed ever, that they recovered it. Unfortunately, too, for the papal authority, when at last the captivity came to an end, and the Popes returned to Rome, the great schism did almost more to shake their authority. (2) The rapid development of the Conciliar move- ment, the demand, that is, for a general council to settle the affairs of the Church, and to carry out a thoroughgoing reform in its head and members, is indeed only to be explained by the temporary downfall of the papal authority. It is true that, from the tenth century to the thirteenth, the Popes 468 DECAY OF MEDIEVALISM [PART iv. had frequently held Councils, with whose advice they issued their most important decisions ; but it is also clear, as we have seen, that in the general theory of the Canon Law of the twelfth and thir- teenth centuries the Pope was the supreme legis- lator, and there is little doubt that this view was generally accepted. In the fourteenth century the theory of the Pope's supremacy was attacked by writers like Marsilius of Padua, who maintained that the general Council was the supreme organ of government in the Church ; and whether or no this principle was in theory accepted by any number of theologians, the fact of the great schism did for the time at any rate make the recourse to a general Council necessary. Gregory XI finally brought the Papal Court back to Rome in 1376. Unfortunately he died in 1378, before the new conditions had grown familiar to the Cardinals, who were for the most part French- men ; and though the Cardinals in Rome pro- ceeded to the election of an Italian, Urban VI, a number of them left Rome and proceeded to elect the Archbishop of Cambrai under the title of Clement VII. The schism thus begun continued till the Council of Constance in 1414, and for the time being broke the power of the Papacy. Urban VI was recognised as Pope in the greater part of the Western world, while the Church in France recognised Clement VII ; but almost from the first a third party appeared, advocating neutrality be- tween the claimants and urging that the only remedy would be the convocation of a general Council of the whole Church. The leadership in the movement was taken by the University of Paris ; and during the following years the movement CHAP, i.] THE GREAT SCHISM 469 was led by three of its most eminent members Nicholas of Clemanges, Peter d'Ailly, and Gerson. After fruitless negotiations a Council finally met at Pisa in 1409, which deposed both the existing Popes and elected the Archbishop of Milan as Alexander V, who was in 1410 succeeded by Bal- thazar Cossa as John XXIII. This only made things worse, as the former claimants still had some authority, and John XXIII himself was a man of scandalous character. At last he was compelled to join with the Emperor Sigismund in calling a Council at Constance (1414-18). This Council de- posed John XXIII, and succeeded in procuring the abdication of Gregory XII and the withdrawal of all allegiance from Benedict XIII. There was a long struggle on the question whether the Council should proceed to the reformation of the Church before the election of a new Pope. At first the German, French, and English nations united in in- sisting upon this ; finally the French and English joined the Spaniards and Italians, and the Council proceeded to the election of Cardinal Colonna as Martin V. Thus ended the Great Schism. The position of the Papacy was formally re-established, but the Conciliar movement was the forerunner of the more radical revolutionary movements of the sixteenth century. The Conciliar movement failed because men were not yet clear as to the nature of the re- forms which they desired, or as to the principle of those reforms. Great French Churchmen, like Gerson, were clear as to the need of some power in the Church which could act in case of failuife on the part of the Pope ; and while they did not conceive themselves as attacking the legitimate authority 470 DECAY OF MEDIEVALISM [PART iv. of the Pope, they wished to establish some more constitutional form of government. The Germans, in the letter of protest before they finally accepted the postponement of reform to the election of the Pope, urged that it was even more necessary to pro- ceed to a thorough reform of the Church in all its parts than to fill at once the vacant throne. But the constitutionalism was uncertain and the desire for reformation very indeterminate ; and it was not till the movement of the sixteenth century had thoroughly destroyed the apathy of the Church, that reformation of the abuses of the Church order was really taken in hand by the Council of Trent. It was probably intended that the thorough re- form, which was postponed when the Council of Constance was dissolved, should be taken up in later Councils for which provision was made ; and it was to this work that the Council of Siena, which met in 1423, and the Council of Bale (1431-49), should have addressed themselves. But in spite of many excellent intentions, this last lost itself in disputes with Pope Eugenius IV, who in a rival Council at Florence reached a formal and temporary reunion of the East with the West in face of the danger from the Turks (1439). Hence no solid results were achieved in the way of reformation ; and by the middle of the fifteenth century the Con- ciliar movement was practically at an end. It had succeeded in terminating the great schism, and the Popes had resumed their normal place at the head of Western Christendom ; but the grave question's which had been raised were postponed, not settled. To the historian the Conciliar move- ment is significant above all as indicating the CHAP, i.] FINANCIAL TROUBLES 471 fact that the Church system of the Middle Ages no longer satisfied even the most loyal sons of the Church. (3) Nothing is clearer than that a good deal of the discontent of the times, in Northern Europe especially, was caused by the financial demands of the Papal Court ; nothing was more constant than complaints as to its greed and avarice. The ques- tion cannot be understood unless we begin by recog- nising that the immense organisation of the Roman Church could not be carried on without a large revenue. We must therefore say a word touching papal finance. In developing a system for maintaining the ministry of religion and the places of worship, the Christian Church at first depended upon the freewill offerings of the faithful. But by the fourth century the Church had begun to claim that the Christian should contribute at least a tithe of his revenues, as had been required of the Jews. Gradually this rule came to be recognised as binding upon all Christians ; and in the ninth and tenth centuries the duty began to be enforced by the secular law, with respect to property in land. In addition to this, from an early date the churches received large benefactions of property in land, and these provided large annual revenues. But it must be observed that these revenues were strictly local in their character. Tithe was originally paid to the diocese and distributed by the bishop this will be readily understood when we bear in mind that, as we have seen, the diocese was the original unit of Church organisation but at some indeterminate time the payment was transferred generally from the diocese to the parish. The grants of land were also local. 472 DECAY OF MEDIEVALISM [PART iv. and were made to the individual diocese, parish, or monastery. This financial system was no doubt adequate to the needs of the Church so long as the wider systems of organisation were not highly developed. But clearly it could not meet all needs when the diocesan administration grew into the provincial, and especi- ally when the Church of Rome came to be the centre of an ecclesiastical organisation which covered the whole of Western Europe. It is thus easy to understand that the Papacy of the Middle Ages had to develope some further system of finance ; and this is where many troubles began. Yet the truth is that popular discontent with papal exac- tions is very nearly parallel to the discontent with national systems of taxation. Just as men in the various European nations demanded that the King should " live of his own," and complained against national taxation as unreasonable ; so men wished the Pope to live and to maintain the central organ- isation of the Church out of his own revenues. But the thing was impossible in the one case as in the other. Here then is the origin of that financial system of " Peter's pence," of fees, of " Provisions," of first fruits or Annates, which the mediaeval churchman found so burdensome, and against which his com- plaints grew more and more insistent with each century. The papal demands for money arose out of the extension of the administrative work of the Roman See in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, though no doubt they were greatly increased by the necessity of maintaining the papal position in the long struggle with the Empire. Complaints of the exactions of the Papal Court begin to be CHAP, i.] NATIONALISM 478 constant in the twelfth century, and take the form naturally, though not perhaps always reasonably, of charges of greed. In the thirteenth century the history of England is full of such complaints. How far the denunciations of luxury and extravagance, brought against the Papacy and the Roman Court in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, were justified, we cannot here discuss. There was, no doubt, often much truth in the accusations : the constant protests of good men against the needless pomp and state of the great officials of the Curia cannot be explained away. We must, however, also make large allowance for the necessary expenses of a vast administrative system, dealing with the whole of Western Europe. The truth is that the financial system of the Papacy suffered from its want of principle and real system ; it grew up more or less at haphazard ; and while circumstances compelled the development of a great financial system, its methods were both irregular and vexatious. (4) It is in relation to these financial troubles that we can in large measure trace the gradual develop- ment of the collision between the rising national feeling and the Papacy, a collision which has great importance in the sixteenth century. The conflict between nationalism and the international authority of the See of Rome grew up naturally along with the growth of the national systems of Europe. This is the truth which lies behind the often exaggerated conception of national churches. The Christian religion has in its essence nothing to do with nationality ; but it is inevitable that just so far as national organisations represent a distinctive genius or temper, this will have some place in the 474 DECAY OF MEDIEVALISM [PART iv. religion of the community, and even more certainly in the forms of Church organisation. It was only very slowly that nationality devel- oped in mediaeval Europe. The great nations of to-day represent not so much definite and intrinsic distinctions of race or blood, as the gradual develop- ment of unities whose final distinctiveness is due to a complex of causes, political and economic at least as much as racial. The conception of the unity of Europe under one Imperial head had not indeed much significance in the Middle Ages ; but mediaeval civilisation was much more homogeneous than modern, as can easily be seen if we consider the character of mediaeval art and literature, or its political organisation. Slowly, however, within this homogeneous life there grew up certain varying forms of what was still one civilisation ; and in a measure these corresponded with the national units of modern Europe, each with a distinct moral and spiritual, as well as political character. And here it is worthy of note that when, at the Council of Constance, conflict arose on the question how the votes should be counted, it was decided, in spite of the opposition of some, that votes should be taken in each separate nation, and that the judgment of the majority of nations should be accepted as that of the Council. The nations were Italian, French, German, English, and Spanish. The reasons were no doubt mainly practical, but the recognition of the principle was probably related to the fact that by this time the ecclesiastical body in each nation was conscious of a certain distinctiveness. Thus the failure of the Council of Bale to carry out any serious reform in the Church was followed at once by the most important of agreements between an CHAP, i.] DOCTRINAL REVOLT 475 individual State and the Papacy, the Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges (1438), which adjusted the relations of Church and State in France on the basis not of abstract principle but of practical convenience. The same nationalist principle really lies behind the great English statute of " Praemunire " in 1393, touching papal bulls, etc., affecting the King's prerogative. In such actions we see clearly a growing jealousy in the national societies of the power of the Roman Church, looked upon as international ; and in all European countries, not only Protestant but also Romanist, the organisation of religion has been profoundly affected by this since the Reformation. While in Protestant countries the organisation of religion became primarily national, in Romanist countries the relations between the Roman Church and State were regulated by particular agreements or Concordats, which have the nature of treaties. (5) We must now briefly consider the movements of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries which represent a more intrinsic breach with the system of mediaeval life and religion. While no doubt there were even before this minor religious movements distinct from the general life of the Church, on the whole the religious and moral life of the Western nations found room and appropriate form in the official Church system. But now this was ceasing to be the case. The new and penetrating criticism of the Papacy was accompanied by theological and religious movements which rapidly took many men outside of the recognised limits of Church order. We cannot examine these movements in detail. It is enough to observe that from the thirteenth to 476 DECAY OF MEDIEVALISM [PART iv. the fifteenth century such unauthorised movements were so serious that the Church thought itself com- pelled to assert its authority by the most violent methods. Throughout the Middle Ages indeed we hear from time to time of the suppression of opinions declared to be heretical ; but it was not till the thirteenth century that the machinery of suppres- sion took formal and distinctive shape. With the crusade against the Albigenses and the organisation of the Inquisition a new era began. The violence and cruelty of the measures taken by the Church is significant of the disintegration of the religious or ecclesiastical unity of European life, as well as of a melancholy decline in the moral and spiritual apprehension of Christianity. The history of religious persecution is indeed the most tragic page in the history of Christendom; and we can only wonder that the Christian religion survived so lamentable a contradiction of the first principles of the Gospel. It was a fateful moment when the religious faith of St Augustine so failed that he threw the weight of his authority upon the side of coercion. Thereafter the method of coercion gradually developed and was at last formally sanctioned. The Albigensian movement is too complicated to be treated here ; indeed its story still awaits a complete study of the civilisation of Southern France. The Waldensian movement, in its original form among the Poor Men of Lyons, seems to repre- sent a purely religious stirring among devout and pious souls who found the system of the Church too rigid and its piety too remote from the example and spirit of the Christ of the Gospels. It is, how- ever, in Wyclif and Huss that the general character CHAP. i. J WYCLIF AND HUSS 477 of these movements becomes clear. They repre- sented a definite revolt against certain aspects of the doctrine of the mediaeval Church, and, what is perhaps more important, against the authority of the official Church even in spiritual matters. Wyclif began as a representative of the position of Marsilius of Padua and Occam, in their defence of the Imperial cause against the Papal. He took some part in the repudiation of the papal claim to feudal superiority in England, and seems to have maintained with Marsilius that the authority of the Pope was not directly of divine institution but was rather a creation of the Church. But he rapidly went further than this, and from attack upon the ecclesiastical authority of the Papacy passed to criticism of some at least of the leading doctrinal conceptions of the mediaeval Church, in- cluding transubstantiation in the Holy Sacrament. The effect of the Lollard movement in England was very great. It is clear now that it gained a hold among all classes, and not least in the universities ; and it was only gradually and with difficulty that it was suppressed. Indeed it is not yet certain how far it was really suppressed, and did not, under the surface, still continue till the sixteenth century. Whatever may have happened in England, the revolt spread to Europe as the Hussite movement in Bohemia, which represented the same principle of revolt not merely against the ecclesiastical posi- tion of the Papacy, but against the doctrinal system of the Middle Ages. The attempt to suppress it involved the revolt of the Bohemian nation. The movements of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries were tentative and incomplete ; but it is 478 DECAY OF MEDIEVALISM [PART iv. evident, when we consider them as a whole, that the old system no longer corresponded with the actual needs of men. The mediaeval Church, even at its height, had no doubt many defects. Yet it had been able to make room for the varieties of religious experience, the varying religious ideals, of Western Europe. This was now ceasing to be true, and the perplexed movements of these centuries witness to the change. Individuality was awaking on a new scale and seeking expression in various directions. In the sphere of religion it was appearing as in- dividual conscience towards God, and challenging the authority of current tradition. But the Church showed itself lacking in reverence for the voice of conscience, and killed the prophets who arose in its midst, a Huss and a Savonarola, in defence of " the tradition of the elders " or the credit of official authority. Meantime the moral authority of holi- ness was ebbing in the quarters where it was most to be looked for. The monasteries, which had once been the centres of reform for the whole Church, were now too often sources of scandal to the pious, rather than an inspiration ; and even where this was not the case, the monks were commonly charged with superstition and ignorance. All this was going on in a new psychological and intellectual atmosphere far more capable than the old of sustained criticism, that generated by the New Learning. On its literary and artistic side the Renaissance found patrons in the Popes of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth century. But apart even from the immorality of an Alexander VI (1492-1503), the father of Caesar Borgia, it did not raise the religious authority of the Popes that, in the words of the Roman Catholic historian F. X. CHAP, i.] THE NEW LEARNING 479 Funk, " the eminence of the Papacy consisted in its leadership of Europe in the province of art." On its more serious side, however, as an organ for the attainment of Truth rather than mere tradition the form in which it took root specially north of the Alps the New Learning wrought as an ally of moral reform and reality in religion. And it was in circles touched with it in this sense, that there arose and took root, with startlingly sudden vigour, a religious force which made for the dis- solution of the more decadent elements in the old order, and called into being a largely new one. CHAPTER II \ THE NEW RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE AND ITS FIRST RESULTS " Lest one good custom should corrupt the world.'' "The innovation wrought by the Reformation lay in the fact that between the two elements which had hitherto peacefully existed side by side, that is, between a religion of pure inwardness and the religion of the ecclesiastical system, there had sprung up an irreconcilable opposition ; and this opposition was due to the fact that that inwardness had become far more an affair of the whole man, indeed, an all-dominating force. . . . Hence the Reformation does not restore the old, but inaugurates a new Christianity." EUCKEN. THE instinct marking the Middle Ages was de- ference to authority in the Church. It had its sources far back in the mental and moral imma- turity of Western Christendom, when the Teutonic peoples had received the Gospel from a priesthood representing the superior Latin civilisation. It was this custom, good in the main as regards an age of pupillage, that now tended to retard the further spiritualisation of the world. The organisation of European society had been rapidly changing during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries ; and the attitude of men to religion also was changing. The authority of the Church in matters of religion, which had once been questioned, if at all, only by a few, was beginning to be seriously disputed ; and there were Christian men who no longer found an adequate expression of their con- 480 CHAP, ii.] FAILURE OF RELIGION 481 victions and ideals in the Church's beliefs and usages. Whatever may be the complete truth about the Lollard and Hussite movements, at least they re- present the beginnings of a serious revolt against the mediaeval system, whether in order or in doctrine. The Conciliar movement had failed to effect any serious change hi the Church. The Papacy had been re-established, and had recovered something of its earlier position as the religious head of European Society ; and some of the Popes of the fifteenth century were men of character and religion. But the new settlement of Europe and of Italy, while it emancipated the Papacy from the control of the Empire or France, left the Pope as one of a group of Italian princes ; and this proved very mischiev- ous to the Papacy. In the last years of the century, in particular, it fell on evil days. Some of the Popes were little better, some perhaps even worse, than other Italian princes of the age of Macchiavelli ; and the chief aim of more than one was to carve out principalities in Italy for their families. It is indeed no easy matter to measure the re- ligion of the Middle Ages ; it is evident that it was in many respects very partial in its in- fluence. The vernacular and secular literature, whether epic, romantic, or lyrical, was almost wholly non-religious if not immoral. The European peoples were still largely pagan ; their virtues as well as their vices were at least as much pagan as Christian. Still, the relation of Christianity to this half -pagan society was a relation of life and power ; the great Christians often had grave faults, but they com- manded a real respect ; they received and deserved reverence. Further, the religious history of the Middle Ages exhibits a succession of revivals and 2n 482 NEW RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE [PART iv. reforms, in which the vital power of the Church was renewed. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries this was changed. There were, it is true, new religious movements, such as the further development of the mystical sense of religion ; there were some new orders. But the Church as a whole was but little affected, and by the end of the fifteenth century religion was at a low ebb, perhaps throughout Europe, certainly in Italy. And if we are to understand the great events of the sixteenth century, we must recognise that in its first and most essential characteristics it represents an im- mense revival of religion, a revival which we can trace from the beginning of the century, till finally it had spent its force in the latter half of the seven- teenth century. What we call the Reformation, that is the revolt of a great part of Northern Europe against the papal religion, is one direct result of this great revival ; -but it does not represent the whole ; 'for the revival was hardly less powerful, and no less far reaching in its effects, in Southern Europe, and in those countries which finally adhered to the Papacy. It cannot seriously be doubted that a great re- ligious revival was needed, and that such a revival took place, both in Northern and Southern Europe. The religious history of the sixteenth century is in fact the history of that revival, and of the break- ing up of the unity of Western Christendom. The time has passed when we can assume that the whole truth or right lay upon one side. We may be very confident that substantially the revolt of Northern Europe was both necessary and justifiable ; but this must not prevent us from recognising the high ideals or the sincerity of many who took the other side. CHAP, ii.] POLITICS AND RELIGION 483 There is much in the history of this time which is squalid and ugly ; but the sixteenth century is also dignified by great men on one side and on the other. It is in one sense impossible to separate out the religious movement of the sixteenth century from its general political history ; and yet they must not be confused. The Reformation did not de- termine those political relations as much as once was thought ; it ran through and sometimes across them, but only in a measure did it modify them. The political history finds its centre in the begin- nings and development of the long struggle between France and the House of Habsburg, which soon after the beginning of the century controlled both the Empire, including the Netherlands, and Spam. The great struggle began with the contest over Italy, and developed finally into a general European contest which only reached a decisive result at the Peace of Westphalia in 1648. This conflict began before the Reformation, and continued hi spite of it. The Reformation contributed to the final issue mainly by furthering that disruption of the Empire which left France during the latter part of the seventeenth century the chief power in Europe. The revival of religion in Europe began before Luther, and can be traced in various forms. The development of mystical religion, the rise of the Brethren of the Common Life (c. 1380) and other like societies, the Puritan movement of Savonarola and the Piagnoni in Tuscany, the demands of the New Learning for a better understanding of the Scriptures, the reformation of older Orders, the new religious societies in Italy like the " Oratory of Divine Love " (c. 1521) and the kindred Theatine Order (1524): all indicate the beginnings of a wide-spread move- 484 NEW RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE [PART iv. ment. The real question was how far the Papacy and the organised Church would make room for the new movements, and accept a thorough reformation both of its religious life and traditional doctrines. It is at least possible that had the Papal See at the beginning of the sixteenth century been occupied by men of a more religious temper, this might have come about. Such at any rate was the hope of Erasmus ; and it is clear that Luther had at first no thought of breaking with the system of the mediaeval Church. It was only when his attempts at reform were met by the mere appeal to authority, that the movement for reform became a movement of revolt. It was, indeed, no mere accident that the revolt was occasioned by the question of the Indulgences. Whatever might be their theory, many earnest Churchmen had long recognised that in practice they had grown to be a scandal of the most serious kind. They were the subject of grave complaint at the Council of Constance ; and the traffic hi them for the purpose of raising money for the new Basilica of St Peter in Rome was carried on, in Germany especially, in a scandalous fashion. When Luther affixed his ninety-five theses to the door of the church at Wittenberg, he had no intention of attacking the traditional doctrines of the Church, but only of combatting abuses connected with the preaching and sale of these Indulgences. This is fairly evident to anyone who reads the text of these theses. But it is also evident that the evils at which Luther was aiming went deeper. The real question at issue was the value of the external as contrasted with the internal in religion ; and it was out of this that there grew the great and funda- CHAP, ii.] JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH 485 mental dispute about "justification." To Luther this was the supreme form of the principle that the internal produces the external ; and this "conviction was the result not merely of intellectual reflection but of a deep and moving religious experience. We have, indeed, for some time past been so much occupied with the historical criticism of the events and controversies of the period of the Reformation, that there has been a tendency to neglect its religi- ous side. But this will have to be reckoned with once more at its true value. Justification by Faith, with its corollaries the Liberty of the Christian man as a child of God, and 'the Priesthood of all believers was for Pro- testants the " article of a standing or falling Church " ; and Luther was its prophet. To him, as to Paul, justification meant the sense of peace with God, of right relations on an abiding basis, those of a child with its father ; this was the one thing that could make life a joy and not a fear. He had been brought up in the ordinary mediaeval piety of his country, on the nature of which sacred paint- ings and the language and usages of every-day religion cast a vivid light. They show it to have been largely legal hi temper ; and, again like Paul, Luther had taken the traditional beliefs with a simple, thorough- going seriousness which, in a vivid imagination and a sensitive conscience, worked out the current theory of sin and salvation to an intolerable impasse as regards assurance of acceptance with God. In so far as " merit " entered into the account which the Divine Judge kept, even after remission in baptism of the guilt of original sin, and " infusion of grace " to do good works and so earn merit, so far a man's 486 NEW RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE [PART iv. standing with God remained a source of anxiety. For all must at the crucial point turn on the calculus between mortal sins and adequate contrition, this being the soul of real penitential " satisfactions " for an enlightened conscience. In his own experience as a monk Luther 'had sounded the depths of the whole system of " pen- ances," prayers, fastings, mortifications, and alms whereby penal satisfaction and merit to atone for the temporal aspect of mortal sins was thought to accrue to Christians. Nothing could bring out more clearly the confusing effect of the current theory of forgive- ness than the form of Absolution which he and his fellow monks used. It is quoted by Luther in his commentary on Galatians ii. 18. " God forgive thee, my brother. The merit of the Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ, and of blessed St Mary always a Virgin, and of all the Saints ; the merit of thine order, the strictness of thy religion, the humility of thy confession, the contrition of thy heart, the good works which thou hast done and shalt do for the love of our Lord Jesus Christ, be unto thee available ftr the remission of thy sins, the increase of merit and grace, and the reward of everlasting life. Amen." What would Paul have said to this ? Luther was as good a monk as Paul a Pharisee ; and the recoil, when the system failed to attain its goal, was in both cases proportionate. What the monk reached by aid of the ex-Pharisee was Justification by Faith alone, in a sense going behind the ambiguities of Augustine's language touching works of merit as entering into the life of obedience, that life in which Faith, as personal trust (fiducia) in the God of Grace and Christ's work for men, unfolded itself as Hope and Love. To Luther, as to Paul, to talk of merit CHAP, n.] LUTHER 487 in connection with the obedience of grateful love, love like that in the parable of the Two Debtors, was to fall back into legalism of thought, and even of spirit. So he nailed his colours to the mast in the phrase " Justification by Faith alone," distin- guishing Justification as a state or relation, like son- ship by adoption, from Sanctification as the inevit- able living out of the spirit of the relation, once it was inspired by Grace hi the responsive attitude of Faith. Thus the Christian life became homogeneous and Evangelic hi conception throughout. The con- sciousness of grace inspires gratitude ; and this in turn works by love, as the impulsive and expulsive power of a constraining affection that lives to do the will of God as revealed in Christ. Such in effect apart from his frequent onesidedness and paradox of statement was the gist of Luther's new ex- perience and message, as we see from his writings as a whole, and not least his letters, as well as from the impression made on his friends and disciples, notably Melanchthon. And so far his revolt against Rome rested, as has been well said, " as much on truth and reality, in opposition to authority, as did the revolt of Galileo against the Mosaic cosmogony." With this recovery of the experimental emphasis and point of departure in the Christian life, also fell away in principle all the old confusing interplay of hetero- geneous thought and expression, now in tlft objective terms of sacramental theory, now in terms of the religious and moral consciousness, which came from the mixture of Hellenistic with Hebraic modes of thought. It is essential to an understanding of Luther and his abiding contribution to Christianity, to distin- guish his personal religion from his theology. The 488 NEW RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE [PART iv. former was original, prophetic, distinctive, being in fact the most powerful re-interpretation since Paul of the religious experience of Salvation as regards its abiding principle, " the spirit of adoption whereby we cry Abba, Father." His theology, on the other hand, is open to criticism on almost every score. It is not original, is marred by exaggerations of ex- pression, and is entangled in traditional categories, particularly in the Nominalist " irrationalism," or the arbitrary nature of the Divine relations with man. This explains, for instance, the cruder turn which he gave to the Anselmic idea of Christ's passion as penal satisfaction to God, albeit Christ Himself was the gift of God's forgiving attitude of Grace. But Luther's real interest lay hi the theology of the heart rather than in that of the doctors, e.g. in what was common to Augustine, Bernard, and the Theo- logia Germanica to which, next to the Bible, Luther confessed most indebtedness. Here he was a master. In attitude, then, the Lutheran theology, because the Lutheran experience, could justly claim to be " Evangelical." In this respect half the truly re- ligious men hi Christendom came to share Luther's essential religion, and not only in Protestant circles either then or later. But when it came to the work- ing out of the liberating principle which had dawned on his prophetic soul, his limitations soon appeared. He was n& systematic thinker, though he touched life at all points in virtue of his broad humanity. He lacked the calm vision and judgment needful to the harmony of diverse aspects of truth. His natural tendency, too, was a genial conservation all round, and especially in the sphere of Sacraments and ritual forms of devotion. Thus it was left to his great helper, Melanchthon, to work out the Lutheran CHAP. H.] MELANCHTHON 489 theology in its best and most reasonable form. The Augsburg Confession is only one specimen of the sure insight and Catholic intellect of this great scholar, " the Teacher of Germany." But as time went on he deviated from the Lutheranism of Luther in the direction mainly of the Swiss and South German Reformers, and ultimately of Calvin. This applies especially to the Lord's Supper. On the other side he leant towards the more Evangelically- minded Romanists in his doctrine of Synergism the real, but dependent, co-operation of the human will with the Divine in the process of Salvation yet with- out giving way to the idea of merit. There is no reason to think that Luther, hi setting out the views of religion which had shaped themselves in him through his own experience and the study of the Scriptures, thought that he was contradicting the doctrine of the Church. If his convictions rested primarily on experience and on St Paul, they were also rooted in his Augustinianism, and represented in some measure a return to patristic as distinguished from mediaeval theology. And it must always be remembered that the opinions of the Schoolmen were private opinions and on many points divergent. Thus it is probably true to say that with goodwill and open mind it might have been possible to find a means of reconciliation. But the Roman Church made the fatal mistake of appealing to authority instead of to argument and experience ; and so the movement of reform became a revolt. Luther appealed from the Pope, and from the Church, to the Bible. The appeal was, indeed, justified by the whole tradition even of the mediaeval Church ; but no doubt it did practically mean something very like a revolution. At the Diet of Worms in 1521 Luther 490 NEW RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE [PART iv. refused to withdraw from his position ; and though the majority of the Diet was against him, yet the minority included already some of the most power- ful elements in the Empire, and rapidly grew in numbers and influence. Later the new opinions were expressed, in their most moderate and con- ciliatory form, in the statement of their faith pre- sented by the leaders of the Protestant party at the Diet of Augsburg in 1530 ; but even this was repudiated by the leaders of the other side. The Protestant party was now so strong that it was a serious matter to attempt to suppress the re- formed opinions by force. The Emperor Charles V was indeed in a very difficult position. In his own opinions he was a convinced Romanist, but he recog- nised the need of serious reforms in the Church ; and politically he was frequently, perhaps normally, at issue with the Papacy, which was very jealous of the growing power of the Habsburgs in Southern and Northern Italy. He was also continually menaced by the power of France on the west and of the Turks on the east, and was anxious to unite the whole power of the Empire. The political situation in Germany, too, was highly complex : leading Catholic princes were anti-Imperialist, while the foremost of the Protestant princes, especially the electoral house of Saxony, were very loyal to the Imperial system. Charles was therefore most reluctant to face an open breach with the Protestant princes, and hoped for some other solution ; and even when it came to open war and he achieved a temporary success, he endeavoured to follow a mediating policy. But the movement had gone too far ; and he was in the end defeated by Maurice of Saxony and compelled to accept the Peace of Augsburg in 1555. By the terms CHAP, n.] ZWINGLI 491 of this Peace the religious settlement was left to the decision of the individual German states (cujus regio ejus religio). The religious movement had become a national or territorial one; and, for good or ill, the final settlement of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries took the form of nationalism in religion. We have so far considered the movement of the Reformation in relation to Germany and Luther. But the revolt which began with Luther and in Germany spread rapidly over Europe. In Switzerland its beginnings were coincident with those in Germany, and were also largely conditioned by its own distinctive political environment in a loosely federated group of cantons, often dominated by a leading city. Here Zurich under the masterful guidance of Zwingli at first played the chief part ; and its type of " Reformed " religion, as distinct from the Lutheran, became very influential not only in Switzerland but also beyond its borders on every side, including South Germany. Agreeing as it did with the Lutheran type hi em- phasis on Justification by Faith as the fundamental principle of original or Scriptural Christianity, it dif- fered from it on several points of moment, both in theological background and ecclesiastical usages, and particularly in the doctrine of the Lord's Supper. Zwingli's contribution to the Reformation was not on the same plane as Luther's, but for that reason the more supplemented his deficiencies. Zwingli had not the gifts of profound religious experience so much as of clear reflective insight and analytic grasp of principles. A humanist, like Erasmus, he had at once a wider outlook on human life, both pre- 492 NEW RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE [PART iv. Christian and Christian, than Luther, and a more balanced and critical judgment in conceiving and expressing what he saw. In fact, he had a singularly modern mind. In virtue of his literary sense he pierced behind the traditional literalism to which Luther adhered when he chalked on the table at the Marburg Conference on the Lord's Supper (1529), " This is my body," and refused to discuss its mean- ing in the light of its historical setting. Once he broke with papal authority he was critical of the mediaeval system all round, and went back rigorously to the original Christian classics, which he also accepted as inspired. Thus while Luther allowed all not repugnant to Scripture, Zwingli disallowed what could not claim its positive sanction. To him more than any leading reformer the purely symbolic not merely the commemorative l view of the Lord's Supper in modern tunes goes back. But his early death caused his influence to pass as a leaven rather than a definite theology into the Protestant movement. His spirit told on its maturer stages mostly in a form modified by other elements, in such men as Bullinger, who took the lead after him at Zurich, Bucer in Strassburg, and above all Calvin at Geneva. / In France the reformed opinions began to make way soon after 1520, and found supporters even among members of the royal house. Francis I wavered between a policy of ferocious persecution and of toleration, sometimes seeming determined 1 His emphasis, due largely to antithesis to the doctrine of corporeal Real Presence, may be on this ; but he also recognises other aspects, including spiritual or mystic feeding on Christ as the Bread of Life. CHAP, ii.] CALVIN 493 to suppress the new opinions, sometimes in his anxiety to be on good terms with the Protestant princes in Germany, who were gradually tending to draw together against the Emperor, holding out expectations of tolerance. The attempts at sup- pression had no real success, and by the middle of the century a large and powerful minority had adopted the reformed opinions. It was from France that Calvin (1509-64), the second great leader of the Reformation, sprang ; and it was his genius which produced the more rigorously systematic doctrine and organisation of the Reformed churches. Luther and the German reformers had been so closely associated with the princes of Germany that they had tended to look upon the religious organisation as something subordinate to the secular power. Calvin held to the great tradition of the Middle Ages touching the independence of the Church, and he embodied this in a highly organised system of government, built upon the idea of the self- government of the Christian community, subject to the supreme authority of the Word of God. It was this organisation which contributed hi a large measure to the power of the Reformed party in France, as later in Scotland and Holland. After the death of Henry II of France hi 1559 the Protestant party was so strong that the various attempts at suppression finally provoked an armed rising. Catherine de Medici for a little time suc- ceeded in establishing a system of toleration ; but it was too late ; and the wars of religion began in 1562 and lasted with intervals until 1598. Then Henry IV, the leader of the Protestant party, who had succeeded as legitimate king in 1589 and had become a Catholic in order to conciliate opposition, issued the Edict of 494 NEW RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE [PART iv. Nantes and established a system of toleration which lasted for about a century. In the Low Countries, in the meantime, the reformed opinions had spread with equal rapidity, in spite of the efforts of Charles V. The attempts of Philip II to suppress them, and to interfere with the constitutional liberties of the Provinces, ended hi the great rising led by William of Orange and the establishment of the Dutch Republic. The history of the English Reformation is highly complex and not always very edifying. Thus in a greater degree than elsewhere in Europe it was con- trolled by the belief and policy of the monarchy. Yet this does not represent the whole truth. The re- sistance to Henry the Eighth's repudiation of the papal supremacy was sufficiently determined to show that a large part of the English people were still attached to the old system ; and this resistance was renewed when the government of Edward VI carried the work of reformation into the field of worship and doctrine. On the other hand the attempt of Mary to re-establish the Roman obedi- ence by violence met with an equally determined resistance, and evidently roused deep resentment in the English people. Thus while the settlement of Elizabeth might at first sight seem as though simply imposed from above, it is probably true to say that in the main it corresponded with the temper of the country. The failure of the extremer reformers under Edward VI and of the thoroughgoing Roman- ists under Mary suggests that the English people were prepared to accept the Reformation, but were averse to a complete break with the past. The settlement no doubt represented Elizabeth's own^ preferences and policy, but it also corresponded CHAP, n.] ENGLAND 495 with the general feeling of the country. The result was that, while the reformed Church of England was in the closest relations of friendship and communion with the reformed churches of Europe, it also repre- sented the most successful attempt of the sixteenth century to mediate between the old and the new, and so achieved, in some measure at least, what Melanchthon and Cardinal Contarini had tried to effect at the Colloquy of Ratisbon in 1541. At the same time, the seeds were sown of that unhappy conflict between the more advanced party of reform and the official Church of England which produced the religious strife of the seventeenth century, and has divided the Christians of England down to our own tune ; and on the other hand the Elizabethan settlement was met by a determined resistance on the part of the revived and devoted Roman Catholicism of a minority. The devotion of the Roman priests in England in the latter part of the sixteenth century brings us to another side of the revival of religion in Europe. We have so far dealt with this as producing the great revolt of the Reformed Churches. We have now to recognise that the revival affected the Roman Catholic countries as profoundly as it did the Protestant. It is true that the actual course of the Protestant Re- formation suggests that the revival developed more rapidly in Northern Europe than in Southern ; but when it came, it was in many respects as powerful in the South as in the North, and as far-reaching in its consequences. The Popes of the early years of the sixteenth century must not be indiscriminately included in one general condemnation. It is, however, outside the Vatican that the first signs of a real 496 NEW RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE [PART iv, revival in religion in Italy are to be found. It was in 1524 that a group of young men formed the new Society of the Theatines ; and it is significant that we find among its members the names of several of those who became the leaders of a Catholic type of revival, e.g., Caraffa, afterwards Paul IV, Contarini (a Venetian senator, later a Theatine), Reginald Pole, and others. But it was a good many years before the new men were powerful enough to control the Church. The election of Adrian VI, on the death of Leo X in 1523, has generally been thought to represent the growth of a feeling that the work of reformation in the Church must be seriously taken in hand. But his pontificate was too short to effect much, and with his death the prospect of serious reform was again postponed. It was under Paul III (1534-49), that the new men began to come into power. He made several of them cardinals and put them on a Commission 1 De Emendenda Ecclesia (1537). In another twenty years they, along with the Jesuits, controlled the Roman Church. Some of them, indeed, like Contarini and Sadolet whom we may perhaps style the North rather than the South Italian type were anxious to come to terms with the Reformers across the Alps, as was also the Neapolitan circle of Juan de Valdes ; but it was the other school, that of Caraffa, which finally prevailed, the men who, while sincere in their desire for thoroughgoing reform, were yet determined to admit no modification of the mediaeval doctrinal system. In 1540 the Society of Jesus had been taken under the 1 This issued a criticism of abuses, coupled with practical suggestions, so frank that it was later felt to play into the hands of Protestants and was finally placed by Caraffa, one of its authors, on the Index of Prohibited Books, in 1659. CHAP, ii.] REVIVAL IN PAPAL CHURCH 497 patronage of the Papacy, to which it was specially devoted ; and in 1542 Caraffa was largely instrumental in the revival of the Roman Inquisition on the lines of that in Spain. Shortly before this the last serious attempt at conciliation between the Northern and Southern types of reformation had failed at the Colloquy of Ratisbon in 1541, where Contariai worked for peace. Caraffa was now working largely against his old allies ; and with his election, as Paul IV, to the Papacy in the year 1555, this conservative party of reform gained complete control. Its work may be studied in the decrees, both doctrinal and disciplin- ary, of the Council of Trent. In these we find firstly a very careful re-statement of mediaeval doctrine and an emphatic repudiation of the Reformed opinions, but secondly a drastic correction of practical abuses in the Church. We may lament that the mediating principle, which had some force especially among German Catholics, was thus emphatically repudiated ; but we must, on the other hand, recognise how seriously the work of practical reformation was carried through on the lines actually adopted. The truth is that the Roman Church was now possessed by a zeal for re- ligion and the reformation of manners not less real than that of the Northern Protestants, if on its own traditional lines. The nature and depth of the movement can best be understood through the char- acter and work of men like Ignatius Loyola and Philip Neri. The intensity and passionate devotion of Ignatius and his followers were the dynamic force which lay behind the marvellous organisation of the Society of Jesus, and rendered it so powerful in the reformation of Romanist countries and in winning back much that had been lost, not so much by per- 2i 498 NEW RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE [PART iv. secution as by self-sacrifice, education, and policy. Added to this, the simple and unaffected devotion to works of mercy of men like Philip Neri had im- mense effect in Italy. It is only necessary to com- pare the Roman Church and the Papacy in the first years of the sixteenth century and in the latter half of it, to see the change. It seemed at first as though the revolt of Northern Europe would leave the Roman Church weak and helpless : but actually, hi the latter part of the century we find it narrowed indeed in extent, yet animated by a life and devo- tion not less than that found in the Reformed countries. When we look back on the history of the sixteenth century, we are able to see that the revival of religion was something greater than the revolt of Northern Europe. The indifference of some countries, the semi-paganism of others, had in a large measure passed away, and European society was again governed by a profoundly religious spirit. We must not indeed hide from ourselves that this had its ugly as well as its fair and gracious aspect. The revival of religion had come, but not as the gentle spirit of the New Learning had hoped. Men were once again devout, their religion was deep and serious ; but it was also often harsh, intolerant and fanatical. And yet the revival meant real progress in the moral sentiment and civilisation of Europe. This becomes clearer as regards Protestantism, which is most criticised on this head, when 'we look beyond what it was able at once to realise under difficult conditions, theoretic and practical, to the new spirit and principles implicit in its positive aspects, which gradually worked themselves out. CHAP, ii.] EFFECTS OF REVIVAL 499 Not that it is other than clear from the first in the teaching of responsible reformers generally. 1 " All the elements for a new Christian social order might almost be gathered from Luther (Letter to the Pro- testant Princes) or Butzer (De Regno Christi) " ; as for Calvin, " the Christianising of the social order was his main interest." " But political events made any approach to a really thoroughly Christian reforma- tion impossible," while the economic problems of the new social era were unparalleled. " The value of the Reformation," as has been justly said, " is not so much in what it did as in what it made possible." All here centres in the new idea of personality and its supreme value. This was felt at the time mainly in the sphere of religion, especially as regards the ascetic ideal. The order and degree in which the corollaries of the new consciousness towards God were realised and acted on varied with individuals and communities. But the germ of all that marks off modern Christendom from mediaeval was there, in the new kind of faith-relation, which brought religious individuality to birth on a large scale. This afforded the deepest and most powerful dynamic to moral individuality in every sphere of thought, motive, and conduct. Of course the first results were often chaotic. New vision of the world of reality in any far-reaching aspect means at first seeing out of perspective. Yet constructive results in certain directions began at once to appear, first in personal and social ethics, and next in economics and politics. The sharp distinction between life as secular and sacred, " in the world " and " in religion," which made the monk the typical Christian, in prin- 1 See Dr T. C. Hall, in Christ and Civilisation, 403 f. 500 NEW RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE [PART iv. ciple faded away. To the " new creature," in Paul's language, " all things became new " and sacred in the one realm of motive, where all may be done as unto God or unto self. Naturally a large price had to be paid for so sudden a breaking-down of such an artificial middle-wall of partition, like that of the Jewish Law in Paul's day. 1 But it was inevitable in the emancipation of humanity from the non- natural both in holiness and social ideals, and in progress towards a more positive and enlarging ideal of Godlikeness. For, in this sense, " asceticism implies less than the demands made upon us by the Gospel." By restoring to its true sanctity the Christian home the Protestant Reformers laid the surest basis for the regeneration of society at large, as sacred in con- stitution and not a mere second-best, conditioned by man's fallen nature. True, the reformers were mostly Augustinians ; and the Augustinian theory of man, with its exaggerated doctrine of total corrup- tion and its dualism between those predestinated to life and death, hindered the full working out of this idea. Yet the Kingdom of God to them, as to Wyclif, existed within ordinary society as an in- visible organism of life, working as " leaven " and " salt " through all human relations, economic and 1 This analogy goes to the root of the matter. Luther and others, like Paul the ex-Pharisee, did not fully realise the value of the moral preparation, negative as it largely was in form, which even a legal type of religion had brought them for a true apprecia- tion and use of the "liberty of the sons of God." Efforts after holiness on the old lines had tested religious seriousness and awakened conscience. When " liberty in Christ '' was offered to all and sundry on the same terms, it was abused by many who were not personally ready for it. Hence much religious unreality and moral laxity. CHAP. H.] EDUCATION 501 civic, educational and social. Highly characteristic of the reformers was their zeal for education, a zeal which the Counter-Reformation on Catholic lines emulated in the persons of the Society of Jesus. But Protestant education had here a wider ideal, including the people at large, in keeping with the place given to the Bible hi the Christian life. It was their reliance on the discipline of life as outlined in the Bible that made them dispense with much traditional Church discipline, as taught and adminis- trated by the priesthood ; and the Biblical ideal of living was outlined in the Catechisms and Books of Discipline drawn up in various local churches. In such discipline the " Reformed " or Calvinistic order went further than the Lutheran, hi virtue of its start- ing-point, the Will of God as Sovereign in all man's life, individual and collective. John Knox's Book of Discipline (1560) is but one example how alive to the people's social welfare leading reformers were. Naturally, however, the rights of free personality, rather than its duties, were at first realised most vividly. Yet it would be an error to suppose that affirmation of individuality meant to Protestants, as such, individualism in the later sense, or a temper of social irresponsibility. It was mainly those who adopted only the negative side of Protestantism as a method, that of " private judgment " and of revolt from the control of the mediaeval system nominal " Protestants," on the political principle sanctioned by the Peace of Augsburg, mere non-Catholics who brought the Protestant name into discredit on this score. There were also enthusiastic " sects " so called both by Papists and Protestants, and by both often persecuted as " Anabaptists," " Anti- nomians," etc. who did run into excesses and 502 NEW RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE [PART iv. much rash experimentation in conduct, both per- sonal and social. Here much was due to hasty read- ing of the Bible, on the traditional theory of the equal authority of the Old Testament with the New. But Protestantism as a whole was not to blame for such errors, especially in people emerging suddenly from age-long illiteracy and ignorance, any more than was primitive Christianity for its aberrant types under like religious enthusiasm. Other indirect issues of the new religious spirit, its bearing on in- tellectual and political freedom, on industrial life and organisation, ideas of property, the growth of the middle classes, the spread of the democratic idea both in Church and State, can here be only named. Some of them will emerge incidentally as we proceed. CHAPTER III THE EARLY ISSUES OF THE REFORMATION " Protestantism, like Catholicism, is a method in religion/',; ' THE Reformation led men to distinguish between Christianity as religion and as Church institution. In the latter aspect the transformation was sudden and startling. The formal unity which had been its distinctive mark under the Papacy was Tr gone. For centuries, it is true, the idea of one Catholic Church, as an organised institution and hierarchy, had really been compromised by the schism between East and West, not to say within the Eastern Church itself. Now, however, even for the West it was further discredited by division into two great com- munions, the Roman and the Protestant, apart even from totally separate bodies. The Cyprianic Church order was in ruins ; by its standards all Christendom was hi schism. What modifications, then, of the Church idea ensued in Protestantism, and what new types of polity ? To begin with, fresh emphasis fell on the Church as invisible. Yet in essence it was " but the Augustinian idea of the Communio Sanctorum, sharpened by an exclusive insistence upon the predestinarian doctrine which Augustine certainly held," though as qualified in effect by the traditional side of his teaching. The idea of the transcendent nature of the true Church was carried out fully by Zwingli alone of typical 503 504 ISSUES OF REFORMATION [PART iv. reformers. It allowed him to attach the less sanctity to the visible Church, recognisable by certain external signs. Thus he, like Wyclif, was free to merge it " in the Christian State, which represents the Kingdom of God on earth." The other Reformers " treat the invisible number of the elect or communion of saints simply as the core of the visible Society, which is concentric with it. The Church to them is one only, not two. It is at once invisible and visible ; invisible in respect of the bond which unites its true members to Christ, visible in the external notes of the Word and Sacraments, the presence of which denotes the body in which they are found as a true portion of the Church of Christ." This more fully Augustinian doctrine 1 is common to the Augsburg Confession, Calvin's Institutio, and the Anglican Articles. But in Calvin it was applied in a High Church rather than an Erastian fashion. " Practically his system issued in a subjection of the civil to the ecclesiastical organisation as complete as that of the Middle Ages, but differing from it in aim and spirit. Political freedom and self-government were enlisted in the en- forcement of personal morality, and of the realisation of the Church as the visibly holy society united by the express aim of religious regeneration." That is, Calvinism as a concrete system is the exact antithesis of mediaeval Catholicism, moving on the same mental plane but at the opposite pole. In it the experienced Grace of the Holy Spirit takes the place of hypo- thetical grace, acting through sacraments as vali- dated by external Church authority. This relation 1 Contra Faustum, xiii. 16, " cum paucis haereditatem Dei, cum multis autem signacula ( = sacramenta) ejus participated a," quoted in Robertson's Rcgnum Dei, p. 355, from whom the above quota- tions are taken. CHAP, in.] PROTESTANT UNITY 505 has been strikingly illustrated in their historical opposition. Further, *' while Roman Catholicism makes the visible hierarchy an object of faith, as a divinely- instituted system of government, Luther and Calvin," with the English Reformers, " point to the visible Society as the casket which enshrines the reality, visible to faith, of the true Body of Christ." The ** notes " of the visible Society, however, the preach- ing of the Word and the due ministry of the Sacra- ments, admit of great variety of opinion as to what constitutes them. Here has lain the difficulty in realising the larger and more inclusive idea of the Church Catholic, proper to the Protestant view of its nature and its relation to personal salvation. Yet Cranmer's scheme for a pan-Protestant Council, the counterpart of the Council of Trent, to define the faith and order of a Catholicism based immediately on the Gospel rather than the papal system, might have taken effect but for the political difficulties of the times. Protestants were usually content to base inter-communion on the principle of Justification by Faith, as a fact of religious experience, along with acceptance of the Apostles' and Nicene Creeds, and leave the rest to local usage, as falling within " the Liberty of the Christian man," i.e. Freedom of Conscience as to things unessential (adiaphora). But they had no clear theory of authority in terms of their new idea of living faith as of a personal or experimental type. They were entangled in the traditional notion of authority, as at once intellectual in form and to be enforced on the believing conscience as truth external to a man's spiritual self. Hence ere long there resulted in effect a simple substitution of certain dogmatic articles (variously phrased in 506 ISSUES OF REFORMATION [PART iv. the several territorial churches) as patent in the Bible, the infallible authority, containing explicitly the body of Divine truth, in place of the Papal Church in its teaching aspect. The idea of authority, and of supernatural exclusion of error in the ultimate human medium, whether Church or Bible, was the same both in Romanism and in the Scholastic or semi-traditional Protestantism which took shape in the course of controversy, both external and internal. The point where difference first emerged among Protestants was the doctrine of the Lord's Supper, which gave rise to the widely ramifying " Sacramen- tarian " Controversy. As to the different types of theory, some churches inclined to toleration of both the Lutheran and the Swiss or Reformed theories. This was the attitude of the Anglican Church in its Articles and the writings of leading Elizabethan bishops. But in the later decades of the century the eirenic movement was frustrated from the Lutheran side, on the score of Christological speculation as to the Ubiquity of Christ's body, involved in its Real Presence in the elements. The drift of the Anglican Church away from its Protestant sisters on the Continent was more gradual. It sprang from tradition, that touching the Ministry rather than the Lord's Supper. Matters of Church order and " orders " were in its distinctive doctrinal basis, the Articles, treated as adiaphora, as to which each Church founded on the Word of the Gospel was free to decide for itself what was nearest to Scripture as final court of appeal. But in applying this test, it deferred more than others to the practice of the post-apostolic Church, in proportion to proximity to the Apostolic Age. And as it read this to favour Episcopacy, even in the diocesan form, due largely CHAP, in.] CHURCH PRINCIPLES 507 to mediaeval conditions which seemed also best to accord with personal monarchy it went its own way in this matter, yet without treating the orders of other Protestant churches as invalid. The Eliza- bethan Reformers of all schools knew that the English Church, like its Continental sisters, was by traditional Catholic standards in schism from the Papal or Roman Church. But this latter had become for them a Communion which, like the Greek Church (only in a higher degree), had for doctrinal reasons, as well as papal usurpations, forfeited any right to allegiance in virtue of size or formal continuity of organisation. It erred de fide in its doctrine of the Mass, and of Salvation and its conditions as centring therein. Underlying the breach with Rome, and especially in England, were two main factors, one semi-re- ligious, the other wholly religious. The one affected the form of the new Church order, the other its spirit. The one was connected with growing nationalism, with or without the addition of the Divine Right of Kings ; the mixed jurisdiction of papal monarchy was met by the mixed claims of the civil authority. The other and more radical one, though in England it told only gradually, was a deep difference in the interpretation of Christianity and the Christian Society. In justification of the startling step of maintaining a new, or rather a restored interpreta- tion of the Christian Gospel, all Protestants knew they could appeal to nothing short of the written origins of Christianity. This was not only in keep- ing with the New Learning and its methods ; it was also a logical necessity. Only on strictly primitive standards could they clear themselves of the charge of schism in the light of formal Catholic principles, 508 ISSUES OF REFORMATION [PART iv. which Papists consistently urged against them. Even in the light of Cyprian's De Unitate Ecclesice they all were equally guilty of that sin. Thus it was only as the Anglican Church stood as part of the whole body of those who claimed justification in a common fidelity to the Gospel going behind Catholic development, that it could escape the charge of Donatism by challenging the relevance of the maxim, " Securus judicat orbis terrarum," to a case where the weight of competent religious conviction was so equally divided. But as time went on the formal or institutional side of religion came to occupy attention to a greater extent, and the sense of spiritual unity faded. Then emerged, in Presbyterian circles even before Episco- pal, the idea of exclusive jus divinum inherent in the Church polity which could most claim Apostolic sanction. But even so, it was long before it was asserted that Episcopacy was the only valid form of government and ordination. The fact is that everywhere the official Churches within the whole Protestant Confederation long tended to mutual toleration in ecclesiastical polity and usages, if at times on rather Erastian lines, i.e., as matters within the competence of the Civil Magis- trate under God to determine in consonance with the wishes of the bulk of the Christian people under his jurisdiction. Those who took the most ideal or High Church line in such matters were small com- munities, formed on a voluntary basis of full affinity in religious convictions. Here consciences were so " tender " as to force men to try to realise the Divine pattern, which they discerned in the inspired record of the Apostolic Church, even at the cost of separa- tion from the " mixed multitude " of the local State CHAP, in.] PURITANS AND SEPARATISTS 509 churches. The motive for such separation was the desire for full " purity " of Christian life through purity of communion and discipline. In England this appeared about the second decade of Elizabeth's reign in a semi-separatism, or partial non-conformity to the State forms of worship, which derived its own models from Church life as established in Geneva and elsewhere, viz., the Presbyterian order and discipline. But its aim was so to leaven the national Church order as gradually to supersede it by another uniform, authorised polity, superior in purity of religious life and fellowship, as more conformed to the New Testament pattern. In contrast to this, and largely evolving from it by experience of failure to realise " Puritan " ideals hi this way, emerged definite Voluntaryism and Separatism, working on the lines of Wyclif 's " poor priests " and of local Lollardy, but particularly of more recent experience under Mary and later, as also in more or less Anabaptist circles abroad. In Robert Brown, the first classic exponent of revived Congre- gationalism to use the term by which it came later to know itself it did not yet regard the Civil Magis- trate as exempt from all positive duty in relation to the Church and its purity. But ere long, by painful experiences and further reflection on the problem of the civil and religious spheres, some Congregation- alists, including now those of the Baptist species, reached the essentially religious and High Church idea of the complete autonomy of the Covenanted People of God, meeting in such units as the needs of mutual fellowship demanded. These Congrega- tional units stood in purely fraternal relations each to the other, bound by the bond of Christian Love and its duties of mutual aid, but under no coercive 510 ISSUES OF REFORMATION [PART iv. authority of a collective kind. Between the local Church of realised fellowship and the Church Uni- versal the sum total of true churches and then* true members there was no authoritative Church unit sanctioned by Scripture or " pure " Christian principle. There were indeed wider courts of moral authority, the consciences of sister churches or of the whole Brotherhood. But in the last resort, to its Master alone each Church, each particular embodiment of the Church idea, the fellowship of Christ's covenanted people, must stand or fall. Presbyterianism first took firm hold in Scotland, and only later gained a more artificial footing in England, where after the Commonwealth it again dwindled. The Act of Uniformity in 1662 was fatal to its unified organisation, and forced Presbyterians to become in practice Congregationalists. It was among the section of them which adopted a " non- subscribing " or non-credal basis of membership that Arminian and Unitarian theology mainly spread, late in the seventeenth century and during the first half of the eighteenth. So much for the change wrought by the Reforma- tion on Christianity as Church or organised institu- tion. As religion expressed in theology, the change was not quite so great. The fact is that Protest- antism broke with Catholicism, as a religious view of human life, at only a few points. These bore chiefly on the experience of Reconciliation with God and entrance thereby into an abiding filial status, rather than one of legal relations in terms of " merit," on the basis of sacraments dependent on priesthood with " valid " orders. In particular the Mass appeared as the focus of Roman error. At bottom this meant a CHAP, m.] THEOLOGY: CALVIN 511 revolution in attitude and method relative both to God and to human authority in religion, since the subjective experience of Adoption became the final touchstone of all objective media of revelation and of the Eternal Life conditioned thereby. Nevertheless the traditional notions of God and man, and of their supernatural relations under Grace, largely persisted in Protestant theology as unquestioned presuppositions. A quite new em- phasis, indeed, especially as compared with patristic theology, fell upon the doctrine of Justification, as central for the appropriation of Salvation in re- ligious experience. From this standpoint, too, the sacrament of communion with Christ, the archetype of Salvation as the union of God and man, was rein- terpreted, especially by Reformed theology ; and in denying the ubiquity of the body of Christ, im- plied by the Lutheran as well as the Roman theory of Real Presence, this raised in a new way the problem of Christology. But apart from matters directly bearing on the experience and theory of Salvation, the differences of Protestant from Roman- ist theology long remained chiefly implicit. If the religious experience at the root of the Re- formation was most manifest in the elemental soul of Luther, while it took more humanistic and rational form in Zwingli, in Calvin all the positive tendencies of Protestantism met and blended in a unity of great consistency. A scholar of the class of Erasmus and Melanchthon, his strong, lucid mind was filled with a commanding sense of the sovereignty of God, as revealed in the conscience of the individual and of an elect people. His piety went back to a crucial, but secret, experience of conversion in early man- 512 ISSUES OF REFORMATION [PART iv. hood, which made it his passion to see all things in the light of God as Him " who worketh all in all." So approacjiing religion, in the spirit of Kant's " Categorical imperative " sounding in Duty, Calvin fell more than Luther under the spell of Augustine as theologian. To him the latter's Neo-Platonic idea of God, as the Absolute and Perfect Being on whom all finite creatures depend for all they are and can do, appealed immensely ; while the doctrine of unconditional Election, to which it led, was sup- ported by the analogy of Jehovah's exclusive choice of Israel on the plane of Old Testament revelation. The first form, indeed, of his " Institution of the Christian Religion" the Protestant equivalent of Aquinas' Summa Theologica, in the form of an un- folding of the Apostles' Creed had but little dis- tinctive " Calvinism." Once, however, Calvin was set on these lines, his logical mind worked things out with its wonted lucidity. The illusory conditionalism of Augustine's ecclesiastical and sacramental language was stripped off ; and the absolutism of his theology proper, the " awful decree " of predestination, stood out in its native horror for humanity, to which equity is essential to justice. But " without Augustine we should never have had Calvinism, which is but the principles of the anti-Pelagian treatises developed, systematised, and applied." Calvin's real service to theology was not his system but his method, in deliberately making the idea of God determinative in theology. It required only that this idea should be derived from Christ's own teaching, in terms of God as the sovereign Father, for it to become the living centre of a really Christian theology, turning on moral personality both in God and man as the deepest revelation of reality in the CHAP, in.] CALVINISM 513 sphere of religion. But hardly anyone in that age or for long after save Erasmus, the trained critical scholar, or Juan de Valdes, with his personal, lay piety dreamt of distinguishing one element in New Testament teaching, be it even Christ's own special manner of stating things Divine, as more funda- mental than another. Protestants took over the Bible in the main on the traditional view of it, as wholly inspired, just as the Catholic Church had taken over the Old Testament from the Synagogue. Not that Calvin, any more than Luther or other leading Protestants of the first and creative period, viewed the Bible as the final authority in itself, after the externally authoritative manner in which Catholic theology viewed the Church's official tradition, and the Bible guaranteed thereby, as infallible. When defining carefully, Protestants rested faith on a basis within the soul itself, namely, the Word of the Gospel, the saving message of the whole New Testa- ment, made self-evidencing in its vital power by the Spirit of God, " witnessing with our spirits that we are children of God " (testimonium Spiritus Sancti internum). Yet this restored conception did not transform their whole thinking and method. Hence a certain dualism, not unusual with religious re- formers ; and in course of time it increased under the stress of controversy, until to most Protestants the Bible became, as an objective authority, very much what the Pope was to Romanists. Similarly, even Calvin's treatment of Servetus was only too true to mediaeval principle, and had the approval alike of Papists and Protestants. Patristic authority, too, weighed much with Calvin, as with other leading Protestants of the six- teenth century. Indeed, the weight which he gives 2K 514 ISSUES OF REFORMATION [PART iv. to Augustine probably explains his doctrine of the Lord's Supper. It stands between Catholic corporeal realism and Zwingli's symbolism ; and represents a dynamic presence of Christ's body as distinct from Luther's late mediaeval Consubstantiation theory. In his doctrine, too, of the Church, by which he con- tributed so greatly to the stability and order of the Protestant Reformation so that it was able to bear the shock of conflict with the reformed Roman Catholicism of the latter half of the century he was largely Augustinian (as Wyclif had been). Yet it is in his ecclesiastical system, rather than either his theology or his doctrine of the Lord's Supper, that his original genius is most apparent. Here he left his most lasting heritage, as the founder of modern Presbyterianism, much as Cyprian was the founder of the theory of the " historic Episcopate." In par- ticular he profoundly modified the notion of the " City of God " by the part he gave in it to the " lay " element. After all, however, one cannot describe Calvin's great place in Christian history, in his own day and later, better than by calling him the Augustine of Protestantism, or at any rate its Aquinas. His counterpart in Anglicanism, which had its own distinctive temper among Protestant communions, especially in the sphere of practice, where compromise between old and new principles was most possible and most expedient for national unity, was Richard Hooker. Himself an Augustinian, he spoke of Calvin with great respect, differing from him hardly at all in pure theology, as distinct from " ecclesiastical polity " and usages. The latter he reckoned among the adiaphora which each national Church had the right to order for itself. In his massive theology, CHAP, m.] TRIDENTINE THEOLOGY 515 both the patristic and the philosophic or rational aspects witness its emphasis on Law in things Divine and human were more pronounced, as com- pared with the Biblical, than hi Calvin's. In his sacramental doctrine, too, though he does not differ from Calvin in substance decisively rejecting any " sacrifice " or corporeal presence in the elements, as well as any sacrament of Penance he is more at pains to conserve patristic language, and its emphasis on the two sacraments which he traces to Christ. Unlike Calvin he founded " no especial school," but has proved a moderating leaven in Anglican theology at large. We turn- next to the reformed Catholic theology of the Council of Trent, which was formulated rather later than Calvin's, between 1545 and 1563. It represented the effort of the Papal Church to set its own house in order, partly in view of abuses long felt by its best sons, and partly in antithesis to the reform that had taken shape as Protestantism. Here the domestic struggle between Thomist and Scotist tendencies, especially on the topic of Divine Grace and human initiative, as bearing on meritorious works, is very evident. Its theology was mainly hammered out hi the early sessions (hi 1546-7), under the lead of able* Jesuit theologians. The net result was that the dangers to Catholicism latent hi Augus- tinianism, even as modified hi Thomism, were neutralised by concessions to Scotism and to semi- Pelagianism behind it. All was conditioned by the idea of a corruption of nature from a positive original righteousness, a conception dependent on a literal reading of Genesis, but one in which the Reformers as ex-Catholics were also involved. What distin- 516 ISSUES OF REFORMATION [PART iv. guished the use made of it at Trent was the manner in which the council built on the quasi-physical aspect of sin and its transmission, as of a " taint " received like a bodily disease or defilement, and so in like manner to be remedied. The remedy was thought to come literally through material media. This was strictly so in baptism ; whereas in the Mass there was no natural substance left after Consecra- tion through which the Divine-human substance could operate on body and soul, though it did act by external contact. It is on ** infused grace " in the above sense that Justification through baptism depends, ere yet there is personal faith or any probable human response to the Divine. Naturally subsequent increase and renewal of Justification, viewed as one with Sanctification, conforms to the same conception of objective, ex opere operate grace, apart from but stimulating conscious receptivity, whether in the Mass or in Penance. While all parties at Trent rejected the Protestant doctrine of Justification by Faith, it was largely because all had in mind different spiritual facts from those which it emphasized. Thus they anathema- tised the view that " justifying faith is nothing but confiding trust in the Divine Mercy as remitting sins for Christ's sake, or that this trust alone is that whereby we are justified." Their eye was fixed on final justification before the bar of God, as conditioned by the human merit of good works, conceived other- wise than as the inevitable fruits of true Evangelic Faith. This notion of Justification as a thing of degrees is characteristic of Catholic as distinct from Protestant thought, and affords an important point of comparison as to relative continuity with the New Testament idea. Each represents at bottom CHAP, in.] ITS SIGNIFICANCE 517 a difference of emphasis in experience, interest, and reflexion. The Tridentine assertion of a moral freedom in unregenerate man "by no means extinguished, though weakened hi strength and debased " (in- clinatum), is one which commends itself as a whole- some correction of Augustinianism, and as implied in all instinctive judgments on human responsibility. A similar assertion of a real, if limited, moral freedom in all men, appeared both in certain less official Protestant circles and in the Reformed theologian Arminius, one of the finest spirits of later sixteenth century religion (t 1609). A Melanchthon in balance of mind and eirenic temper, his teaching shaped the Five Articles in which the Dutch " Remon- strants " opposed the main points of Calvinism in 1610. Armmians held that all good in man comes indeed from Divine Grace, but is not irresistible ; and that such grace suffices for the believer's victory over sin. But just as the Arminian view reminds us that the development of Augustine's doctrine of Grace into self-consistency finally evoked protest in certain Protestant circles ; so within the Roman Church the verbal compromise at Trent, which covered the rejection of distinctive Augustinianism, did not long pass without challenge. After individual Augustinians, like Bajus (1513-1589) and the Jesuit Molina (t 1600), had stirred some discussion, Jansen, bishop of Ypres (t 1638), supported by the Port- Royalists, including Pascal, caused a larger revival of Augustine's doctrine of Grace. Jansenism was repudiated by papal authority ; and therewith the tendency to set aside that in Augustine which belied the mediaeval idea of merit, and tended even to undermine its sacramental system, reached its 518 ISSUES OF REFORMATION [PART iv. natural term. The truth is that the mediaeval view of Justification ran back into baptism, and was here profoundly affected by the fact that baptism had for long been mainly relative to infants. With the re-emergence, then, of the older emphasis on experi- mental religion, as conversion of heart to God, the difference between the Catholic and Protestant con- ceptions of Salvation, of which Justification is a crucial aspect, was seen to turn on one as to sacramental grace and its relation to Faith. The notion of " Baptismal regeneration " is, in fact, the real watershed determining the different directions in which Christianity has chiefly flowed since the Reformation. The new dualism of " Catholic " and " Protestant," added to that between East and West, marks a fresh epoch in the history of doctrine. For with the break-up of the formal unity of the Western Church " dogma " of all sorts further loses its universal or authoritative meaning. The Council of Trent was not " Catholic " in the old sense. It was anti- Teutonic in spirit, and essentially Roman, even as it makes the Latin Vulgate the inspired text of Scripture. Hence its decrees were the doctrines of the Roman Church, in much the same sense as those of the Synod of Dort (1618) were the classic form of Calvinism. As regards types of thought which broke not only with mediaeval religion and with certain patristic beliefs such as the conveyance of sacramental Grace in the material elements themselves but also with the Catholic Creeds proper, that of most historical moment was Socinianism. Its peculiar feature at the time, which it shared with the later Nominalism, was a CHAP, in.] SOCINIANISM 519 combination of rationalism with extreme super- naturalism x in its theory of revelation, as the only way by which man could know God, conceived mainly as will. But, unlike Occam, the Socinians rejected all dogmas which, while not amenable to the under- standing, did not seem plainly revealed in Scripture. Such were the Trinity and the Divinity of Christ. It also criticised the Anselmic doctrine of the Atone- ment as expiation or " satisfaction," on grounds widely admitted to-day as valid. But its view of Justice as a matter of Divine Will, rather than as inherent in God and in the nature of things, makes much of its criticism purely relative to its special theistic idea. Retributive Justice is not a property of God's nature any more than Compassion. Both depend on His will. On the other hand Forgive- ness and Satisfaction are incompatibles. Penalty is something purely personal, and hence not transfer- able. Their chief opponent was Hugo Grotius (d. 1645), the great jurist and Arminian theologian, who elaborated his Governmental theory of the Satis- faction rendered by Christ's passion, in terms of public law and the relation of God to man as Ruler, rather than as Feudal Lord whose honour had been outraged. Rex is one with Lex for the purpose of Satisfaction ; and the Cross may be viewed not as actual punish- ment but rather as a symbol of it in principle, accepted as equivalent in its effect on sinful men. As to the other conditions of pardon, Grotius agrees with 1 Seen also in the Spaniard Servetus, whose studies in natural science, however., gave his thought a more Pantheistic colour. Thus his Christology recalls Medalist or Sabellian Monarchianism^ whereas the Italian Socinus exhibits the Dynamic type. But Servetus, while suggestive, was an erratic thinker, and his "Restoration of Christianity " had little effect on his age. 520 ISSUES OF REFORMATION [PART iv. Scotus and the Socinians in leaving God freedom of choice. The theory seemed to Calvinists to sur- render too much of the " Catholic doctrine " of Satisfaction, which its author aimed at vindicating. Yet it contained valuable moral elements for a fuller solution. After the middle of the seventeenth century there was little or no fresh theology in any official circles. Theology had become intellectualist in temper, an orthodox rationalism rather than a vivid, experi- mental faith. And in the end the rationalist spirit proper acted on it as a critical solvent. This spirit raised issues more radical than theologians, either orthodox or heterodox, had perceived to be necessary. Such were the true idea of human nature, as dis- tinct from the Augustinian ; the nature and need of Revelation ; and, above all, the value of the dis- tinction between Natural and Supernatural, both in the psychological and physical spheres. In a word, the meaning of Nature, as a fixed, objective order intermediate between God and the human soul or Reason, became the battleground of thought, and has so remained for the modern world. The transition to more modern ideas touching such fundamental matters came along two lines the religious and the intellectual. Development along both was opened up by the Protestant emphasis and method, with its new sense of the autonomy of individual experience hi the deepest things, and the consequent reduction of external authority to a relative and educative function. On the whole its foes perceived this, its. more general effect on men's religious outlook, more clearly than its friends. Romanists fixed on the principle CHAP, in.] NEW INTELLECTUAL LEAVEN 521 of Private Judgment as the essence of the change, which to them was a revolt of mind and will against divinely constituted Church authority. To the Protestants themselves the intellectual aspect was secondary. What filled their souls was the new discovery of an all-sufficing, divinely given relation between God and the individual, mediated of neces- sity (as distinct from brotherly help) only by Christ and His Word. But among them there was much difference in the degree to which the immanence of God in the human soul, as the Spirit of Life and Truth and Love, was taken seriously and developed to its full consequences. Here we reach the saddest aspect of the Reform- ation, the way in which the principle of intolerance on behalf of orthodoxy, as the Divine medicine of Truth entrusted to the Church " for the healing of the nations," caused various evils not only between Catholics and Protestants but also among the latter themselves. It was a grave error of nearly all post- Reformation theology, one inherited from long habit become second nature in the mediaeval mind, that it continued to treat serious doctrinal aberration as itself fatal to salvation alike in communities and individuals. This was to identify the perception of truth with its definition, and faith with credence. Dogma was doctrine treated as Divine Law, to be externally imposed. Yet on all sides it was forgotten that dogma had a history, and was relative in form at least and dogma as such is formal to the Church's changing culture. Thus it came about that great wrong was done to many who were morally the salt of the earth, and carried in their bosoms some of the deepest, most progressive, and in the end most fruitful, ideas to which the new attitude in religion gave birth. 522 ISSUES OF REFORMATION [PART iv. Tardy justice is at last being done to such men, 1 both of the earlier and later stages of the Reformation period. The central aim of such " Spirituals " was none other than what the chief Reformers had in view, namely, the restoration of Apost^ic Christianity. But they approached it, as reflected in the New Testament sources, more purely in the light of re- ligious experience, apart from the long intellectual tradition which lay between the first century and their own day, and in which the leading Reformers were largely involved. The latter also sought the Gospel too exclusively in the Pauline Epistles, and even in certain aspects only of these ; and they ignored the " enthusiastic " elements of primitive Christianity, along with the Eschatological and more world-renouncing features. But besides the common " Faith-tendency of the Reformation," there were the Mystical and the Humanistic or Rational ten- dencies. In the greatest of the Spirituals all these were blended in the attempt to " widen the sphere and scope of religion and to carry it into the whole of life, to ground it in the very nature of the human spirit." Many of these more radical reformers were simple, unlettered folk, with no gifts save the " opened " inner spiritual sense. But others rejoiced in the conviction that " deep in the central nature of man an inalien- able part of Reason there was a Light, a Word, an Image of God, something permanent, reliable, uni- versal, and unsundered from God' Himself. They all knew that man is vastly more than ' mere man.' ' Hans Denck spoke of a witness to God in the soul 1 Notably by Rufus M. Jones in his Studies in Mystical Religion (1908), and Spiritual Reformers in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (1914) : the ensuing quotations are from the latter work. CHAP, m.] THE "SPIRITUALS" 523 of every man, and " declared that without this inward Word it would be as impossible to bring men to God by outward means as it would be to show sunlight to eyeless men." He anticipated Pascal in saying, * He who seeks God, already in truth has Hun.' " Most of these men were in revolt against schol- asticism and all its works. They speak often very slightingly of ' Reasoning,' the attempt to find a way to ultimate Realities by logical syllogisms ; but they, nevertheless, believed great things of man's rational and moral nature." They shared, of course, the conceptual limitations of their age. Yet they had a wholesome sense of religious experience and the intuitions latent in it as far transcending the cate- gories of " notional " orthodoxy. The spirit, then, of these Spirituals, like that of kindred mediaeval mystics, has greater significance for to-day, as an element in a rich and truly Catholic idea of Chris- tianity, than it seemed in that age to possess. They were often more before their time than those who, as more in touch with existing conditions, were able most to influence and mould them. This applies not only to their thought, but also to the Church fellowship hi which they tried to embody it. Their Church idea, limited as was its range, was often very real and close to the New Testament type. What has been said of the early " Spirituals " holds good not only of Jacob Boehme (1575-1624), inspired cobbler and Christian theosophist, but also of the Quakers. They arose when Protestantism had hardened a good deal into a system of doctrines, or, as Fox put it, *' notions " about things Divine. Hence not a few " seekers " for experimental reality above all things, were forced to seek it for 524 ISSUES OF REFORMATION [PART iv. themselves, and found it in some fresh personal intuition of the " word " of God hi Scripture itself, which became inner Light and bread of Life to their souls. Such " openings " or revelations of the Truth latent in the letter of the Bible, Fox and his " Friends " " saw in the Light of the Lord Jesus Christ and by His immediate Spirit and power, as did the holy men of God, by whom the Holy Scrip- tures were written." Here we have the special emphasis common to the Friends and many groups of seekers and finders of personal religion. Most of these Anabaptist and other enthusiastic types in the end discredited by exaggeration the truth for which they stood. But the Friends, thanks to Fox and the ethical and philanthropic temper of his religion, escaped the common fate, and continued to testify, hi growingly sober form, to the Christian life as an inspired life. This they even took to exclude a special " separated " ministry and sacraments. They did not, however, succeed in framing a clear or consistent theory of the seat of authority, as between the Spirit in the individual conscience, on the one hand, and the Bible on the other the unique inspiration of which they admitted. They had in theory no objective Rule of Faith by which to discriminate the Divine Light as variously manifested to individuals alike conscious of being " moved by the Spirit." But in practice they treated the corporate consciousness of " the Friends," as uttered hi the local meeting and in ever- wider circles, up to the annual meeting representative of the whole Society, as the ultimate earthly authority a principle " high Church " in the primitive sense. They were careful, too, to satisfy the spiritual conditions of a truly corporate judgment, by preserving the spirit and methods of fellowship CHAP, m.] QUAKERISM 525 in all their procedure, and postponing a definite find- ing rather than force a mere majority vote. The theoretic flaw in the Quakers' position as to ultimate religious authority, " by which they made the Spirit the witness to Scripture, and Scripture the judge between different findings of the Spirit " in individuals, has been justly traced x to a dualism which they, like seventeenth-century thought gene- rally, had inherited from the long past. " The * natural ' world was sharply divided from the ' Spiritual,' the human from the Divine. . . . Moreover, for the Quakers, no less than for their more orthodox opponents, the world of ' nature ' and of human life had been wholly ruined by the Fall of Man. . . . The Quakers had recovered the Divine immanence " so strong in some of the Greek Fathers, as distinct from the Western " but they tried vainly to express it in the terms of dualism." Thus " they refused to identify the Light of the Spirit with the * natural ' conscience of man : but they never clearly explained the relation between the two." It was not only that they had no just appreciation of history and what it meant for " revelation," both general and special ; they also tended to a dualistic view of human nature even on its higher side, its sense of the True and the Beautiful, as well as the morally Good. They were " afraid to use their minds, at least in relation to the things of the Spirit, because the mind for them was natural and not Divine." Hence in spite of their profound sense that " every man was enlightened by the Divine Light " (which they simply identified with Christ), even though he refused by self-will to become 1 E.g., by Edward Grubb, in his account of "The Society of Friends " in Evangelical Christianity, pp. 200 ff. V 526 ISSUES OF REFORMATION [PART iv. a " child of the Light," they yet did not give up this traditional dualism, and so did not think con- sistently in terms of the Divine immanence in the mind of man as man and in all truth as truth. It was here that the Cambridge Platonists and the more rational mystics of the century saw deeper, in making " the image of God " in man co-extensive with his whole ideal or rational nature. To this same end viz., transcendence of the tradi- tional dualism of the Divine and human, as the " supernatural " and " natural " respectively other and more purely intellectual influences also contri- buted. But these, being independent of religion, or at any rate of Christianity, appeared at first as foes rather than as allies. Still in the long run it was the positive, not the negative, aspects of the purely intellectual outlook on Nature and man which most affected the central stream of Chris- tianity. As, however, this development so largely conditions the modern mind in its distinctive atti- tude and ideas, our account of it must form the prelude to the next period. PART V THE MODERN PERIOD CHAPTER I NEW IDEAS OF NATURE AND HUMAN REASON : RATIONALISM " The religion of all men of vigorous intellect is one." NICHOLAS OP CUSA. WE have traced the history of Christianity in those centuries in which it may fairly claim to have in- spired and expressed the spiritual side of Western civilisation. The conflicts of Church and State in the Middle Ages may indeed be represented as a revolt against the principles of Christianity ; but the truth is rather that these conflicts merely repre- sent the inevitable difficulties attending the attempt to co-ordinate the complex elements of a new and tumultuous life. So too with the intellectual life of the West. The Christian Church did not con- tradict but rather expressed that interpretation of the world which seemed to the men of those ages most just and rational. It is not true that it had during the Middle Ages shown itself incapable of development ; indeed, the intellectual movement from the eleventh to the thirteenth century is still immensely underrated. We have now also considered the characteristics of the great revolt against the authority of the 527 528 NEW IDEAS : RATIONALISM [PART v. mediaeval theological and ecclesiastical system. This was not, however, primarily a revolt against the Christian view of the world, but rather one aspect of a great revival of religion, in which unhappily the old order proved unequal to the assimilation of certain elements of life, new in then* form, yet related to its own profounder experience and principles. In a word, the great movement of the sixteenth century was not a revolt against the religious prin- ciples of historical Christianity, or even against the mediaeval conception of it as a whole, but rather against the organised system of authority which had for so long controlled man's relations with God. It may, however, be said, and with truth, that when the reformers challenged the authority of the Church, they raised questions which would inevitably be pressed much further than they themselves intended. The time was coming, had indeed already come, when the whole traditional system of knowledge and thought was to be shaken. This was inevitable ; and the beginnings of the process may be traced back to the age of the Re- naissance. The science of the Middle Ages, whether physical or historical, was in substance built up on that which had survived from the latter centuries of the ancient world. Though there had been pro- gress, that progress had not until the end of the fifteenth century been marked by any revolutionary discoveries ; not because mediaeval society was hostile to the advancement of knowledge that idea is largely a confusion but rather for lack of any ad- equate methods of investigation, together with an exaggerated respect for such literary records of ancient knowledge as had survived. This condition of things could not last. The great enterprise of CHAP, i.) THE NEW KNOWLEDGE 529 setting forward the science of the world was certain to be resumed in a living intellectual society such as that of the West, especially after the revival of Ancient Learning and the discovery of a New World beyond the ocean in 1492. It was inevitable, therefore, that sooner or later men would question the foundations of the older systems of thought ; and that, if the Christian religion were to survive, men should find out how it stood to a new world of science, physical and historical, and to new systems of thought related to these. Already in the fifteenth century, in Ray- mond of Sebonde (f c. 1434), Nicholas of Cusa (t 1464), and Laurentius Valla, without conscious breach with the Church's Creed, and in Pietro Pomponazzi (1464-1525) with clear preference for the principles and methods of experience in natural science, as seen in the true Aristotle, we discern a new attitude to the world of Nature and of history. 1 Faith and 1 Raymond's Theologia Naturalis sive Liber Creaturarum forecasts the future not only in its first title but also in its notion of Chris- tianity as, in later phrase, a " re-publication of the religion of Nature" viewed in an idealistic and artistic spirit. Nicholas, starting from a like attitude to Nature as the rich and living garment of the invisible God, dwells, as Platonists and Mystics had done in earlier ages, on the potential infinitude of the human spirit seen in its craving for ever wider knowledge of this ideal order. This view suggests a more optimistic and progressive notion of human nature than the prevalent mediaeval one, which issued in monastic world-renunciation as the ideal of " the religious life." Valla (1415-65) exposed the Donation of Constantine, one basis of papal claims to temporal sovereignty, as a fiction. Pom- ponazzi upheld Aristotle's " Positivism " or Naturalism against Supernaturalism, not only in its mediaeval form, but in any Christian form. This he applied to Miracle, but also to the Immortality of the Soul, on the basis of Aristotle's distinction between Active Intellect, as one and eternal, and Passive Intellect or sense-perception as bound up with man's transient body. For most of the above, see C. C. J. Webb's work cited in a later note. 2L 530 NEW IDEAS: RATIONALISM [PARTY. Reason were no longer felt to be natural allies but rather at cross-purposes ; and the Church's authority, as committed to the former, was involved in the issue. For many centuries the Church had been the teacher of the West, not only in matters of religion, but in the elements of the intellectual life. It was through the ecclesiastical writers that the philo- sophical and scientific inheritance of the ancient world ,had been handed on to the new races and the new nations. But all this was now over ; the Church had handed on all that it knew ; and by the sixteenth century Western civilisation no longer needed its help for such purposes ; laymen were now often better educated than the clergy. Thus the Church, as an organised body, was once again in the position which it had occupied under the ancient Empire. It was still the representative organ of the religious spirit of Europe, and in some respects, not in all, of the moral principles of Western civilisation ; but it was no longer the schoolmistress of the West. It is thus that there begin those new conditions under which we still live, conditions under which the Christian interpretation of life must make its account with a growing world of knowledge and of thought. There is nothing more shallow than the notion that the new criticism of religion was merely wilful or irresponsible. A new world was opening out on men, and they could not but ask how religious convictions, which had taken their intel- lectual forms from the older conception of the world, were related to a new and widely different one. It is impossible here to do more than indicate in CHAP, i.] IN ASTRONOMY AND HISTORY 531 the briefest way the elements which combined to produce the great intellectual changes which devel- oped so rapidly after the beginning of the sixteenth century. But it is only in proportion as we under- stand them that we can fully enter into the temper of the modern world. The discovery of America by Columbus enlarged men's conception of the world ; but its effect was small compared with that produced by the new conceptions of the real natural order of the universe by Copernicus (1473-1543), Galileo (1564- 1642), and their successors. Men had thought of the earth as being the centre of the universe ; they discovered that it was only an insignificant planet in the solar system, itself one out of innumerable systems. And everywhere in the universe men dis- covered the control of physical laws, an apprehen- sion so revolutionary in its character that it could not but profoundly influence men's conception of the whole nature of the world and life. It affected, indeed, men's imagination perhaps even more than their reason. If already in the later Renaissance era God seemed to Aristotelians like Pomponazzi little more than the first agent in a series of motions Aristotle's " prime mover " much more was it so now, when the astrological outlook, with its reference of earthly events to the Intelligences ruling the celestial bodies, was replaced by Copernicus' scientific astronomy. Of the newer attitude in its bearing on religion Giordano Bruno (1548-1600) was a pioneer. God is by him seen through the world, rather than vice versa. Law reigns in all. The idea of arbitrary will in God is set aside : the Divine nature wills freely by inherent necessity of its own being. Nature is the true Kingdom of God ; and as man enters ?nto this by knowledge, he is conscious of the exaltation 532 NEW IDEAS : RATIONALISM [PART v. of affinity of mind with the Divine, not of self- renunciation. If the progress of astronomical science profoundly affected the temper of men's minds in regard to religion, not less influential were the beginnings of a new historical criticism. The Renaissance and Reformation scholars had challenged the historical data upon which the mediaeval organisation of the Church had rested ; they had overthrown the authority of the spurious Decretals, had questioned the traditional view of the position of the Roman See hi the Church, had insisted upon a new examina- tion of the text and interpretation of the Holy Scrip- tures. It was therefore no wonder that men insisted upon pressing their historical criticism even further, and asking whether the historical data of the Christian religion as a whole were verifiable and satisfactory. The Protestant theologians might for the most part resist this new development just as stoutly as the Romanists ; but their attempt to restrain inquiry was just as ineffectual. They had appealed from -the Church to the Bible ; men insisted upon appealing from the Bible itself to the light of reason and to the probabilities of history. Authority was shaken to its foundations, and presently we find many edu- cated men feeling as if they had been imposed upon by priests and had been asked to accept legends as history. To this questioning tendency the very diversity of organised religious opinions, in place of the nominal uniformity of dogma hi the mediaeval Church, gave special occasion. Men sought to dig down to something below the conventional and historical. Something must be found within veri- fiable human experience, even that of the individual, something self -evidencing, which could defy the new CHAP, i.] PHYSICS AND METAPHYSICS 533 doubts. This was sought first in an appeal to the 44 nature " of things, judged by common experience and reason, very much as the Stoics had taught ; and next hi an analysis of the thinking faculty and subject, to ascertain what was inherent hi mind as such. The former method was mainly objective in atti- tude ; it thought of the nature of things as an order of reality governed by operative laws, which it was man's part to discover and obey. In such laws lay the inherent authority of Truth, the reflexion of the Creator's mind, as man thought God's thoughts after Him so Kepler put it whether in Nature or in human affairs. Lord Bacon represented this form of the new spirit. To him man was the 44 minister and interpreter of Nature," called to con- form his thoughts to the Laws impressed by the Creator on things and discoverable by man's kindred but finite reason, through induction from experience checked by experiment. This was the one method proper to knowledge hi the realm of Physics, the sphere of second or efficient causes. But there was a further kind of interpretation open to human Reason, that proper to Metaphysics, with its " final causes " behind phenomena or scientific experiment. Here 4 ' the light of nature or the dictates of Reason," tested by common consent, formed the organ of discovery, supplemented and confirmed by special Revelation in the Bible as the Word of God. Thus there were several kinds of authority educative of the human reason, each being a revelation of the Divine mind in its own sphere, so far as rightly appre- hended by man ; but there was no infallible human interpreter such as Romanists saw in Church authority, able to impose the Truth as from outside. 534 NEW IDEAS : RATIONALISM [PART v. Such was the philosophy of Law, human and divine, underlying Richard Hooker's Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity and Hugo Grotius' treatises On the Truth of the Christian Religion and On the Law of War and Peace, the last of which applied the law of nature to international relations. In these writers of the new age, yet of conservative spirit, emphasis is laid on natural laws, as distinct from positive or mutable, ones ; and their validity is tested by superiority to the variations of individual judgment, their catholicity in a non-ecclesiastical sense. But the other new approach to certitude, that through reflection on the thinking subject, even in the individual, was yet more significant of the modern outlook as compared with the ancient and mediaeval. In it philosophy becomes subjective in starting-point, beginning with a theory of know- ledge as it arises in human experience. Psychology, with its states of mind sensations passing into sense-perceptions, and then into clear ideas pre- cedes and conditions Ontology, the science of Reality as verified by reflective tests, able to satisfy the mind itself that it has detected its own errors and its misunderstandings as to the sort of reality it is deal- ing with. As it becomes more subjective in this sense, the human mind attains autonomy, in that all the contents of thought, including religion and even Divine revelation, must, so far as they exist for man, conform to the psychological laws of his conscious- ness. Thus purely external authority in the realm of Truth is a contradiction in terms ; real receptivity involves activity as well as passivity ; subjective interpretation conditions more or less all real belief of what the soul vitally receives into itself, so as to act upon it in will. CHAP, i.] DESCARTES 535 The founder of modern thought in the fundamental sense just indicated was Descartes 1 (1596-1650), a pupil of the Jesuits, who became dissatisfied with the scholastic philosophy on account of its com- plexities and unproved assumptions. His clear and mathematical mind longed for simplification and harmony of thought, starting from some sure and self-evident basis. Such an Archimedean point he found in the axiom " I think, therefore I am " ; for a thinking subject or ego is involved in a doubt no less than in a conviction. The true path of re- constructive thought, then, lay in realising by analysis the essential ideas by means of which the mind does its thinking and makes the world in which it lives and moves intelligible to itself. Here Descartes was on right lines ; but his mathematical genius made him too apt to make clearness and distinctness of ideas the criterion of their truth. This principle applies indeed to the abstract sciences, of which mathematics is the type, but becomes misleading in proportion to the concrete richness and many- sidedness which facts of the organic and vital order present to experience. It was here that another great mathematical genius, Pascal (1623-1662), supplied a corrective to the Cartesian method, especi- ally hi the realm of religion, where he laid stress on " feeling," or direct intuition of the ideal and mystic type, as the special form of the deepest receptivity. " The heart," he said, " has its own reasons " for 1 "The modern tendency to start from the thinking suhject, the establishment of a rationalistic culture, the precise investigation of nature with its leaning toward mechanical conceptions, the self- centredness of the psychical life with its exaggerated appreciation of the intellect these things all owe their philosophical founda- tion to Descartes." Eucken, The Problem of Human Life, p. 358. 536 NEW IDEAS: RATIONALISM [PARTY. believing in and loving God. In Pascal, that is, we first find in modern form the sharp contrast of " heart " and " head," the emotional and intellectual aspects of our consciousness, a just harmony of which is the final test of anything like adequacy to reality in a philosophy or theology. Descartes himself, though he gave the dry light of intellect the pre- rogative place in manhood which really belongs to reason only in the more general and immediate sense of rationality, allowed in practice for the emotional element in life and in religion. But his emphasis prepared the way for Rationalism as a temper and system of thought, one marked by much one-sidedness and limitation of human experi- ence ajid insight ; and his passion for clearness and simplicity well exemplifies the positive motives and significance of the Enlightenment. We are not called to trace the one-sided develop- ment of Cartesianism in Spinoza (1632-77), whose philosophy of a single Substance, with the twofold Attributes of Extension and Thought, called God, was in fact a more rigorous because modern Stoicism, with no place for personality either in God or man, and therefore no valid basis for religion ; nor its more legitimate but rather superficial issue in the empiricism of Locke (1632-1704). to which Berkeley (1685-1753) added the needful corrective, if in a too one-sided way. The problem of the transition from the thinking human subject to the world external to him and all his fellows, which largely entered into these developments, is one which does not here greatly concern us. We shall meet it again at a later point in Kant, who dealt with it more fruitfully as connected with the practical problem of Ethics. And so we may turn at once to consider the religious CHAP, i.] DEISM 537 applications of the new attitude of mind thus far described, in the natural theology of Lord Herbert of Cherbury in the early seventeenth century, and in the rationalism and deism which succeeded it as that century passed over into the eighteent^. " Deism " is defined 1 as " belief in a God known by the light of nature apart from revelation." In this sense the name " deist," as distinct from " athe- ist," was used by certain persons described by Viret, a colleague of Calvin at Geneva, who would " seek for the religion of nature in the element common to the positive religions known to them." While the Latitudinarians of the middle of the next century and onwards sought their creed in what was common to most Christians, or at least most Protestant bodies, the Deists further reduced the contents of religion by enlarging the field of induction so as to include other faiths as well. The earliest representative of English Deism, Lord Herbert of Cherbury (1583-1648), treated Christianity as the truest of historical forms of religion, and the Bible as the chief re-publication (with certain special supernatural sanctions) of the principles of natural religion, itself ascertainable by " the light of nature." He differed also from later Deism in his belief in particular providence and in direct com- munion between God and the soul. His, then, was a qualified or transitional type of deism, in which the older habit of thought which made the idea of Grace integral to religion still persisted in a measure. Yet the main features of historic deism were already 1 E.g. by C. C. J. Webb, whose chapter on Lord Herbert in his Studies in the History of Natural Theology has here been drawn on time and again. 538 NEW IDEAS : RATIONALISM [PART v. present. His five truths of Natural Religion are classic, viz. the existence of a supreme God, the duty of worshipping Him, that His worship consists mainly in moral virtue or the right use of our faculties, that faults or crimes are to be expiated by repent- ance, that rewards and punishments are to be ex- pected of God here and hereafter. Moreover, his philosophy of natural religion, as something rooted in human nature and able to stand by itself, apart from the historic religions, was based on a general theory of human knowledge, laid down in his treatise On Truth as distinct from Revelation, probable, possible, and false (1624). This has much in com- mon with the Cartesian view of the thinking subject. The human mind has certain ideas connate with it, which as " common notions '* show themselves valid for reason as reason ; and among these are such religious ideas as rest on " universal consent." In this new, non-ecclesiastical, would-be catholic religion the subjective and personal note is manifest, replacing in principle Church authority or reducing it to a purely educative function. But no adequate allowance is made for the gradual and corporate nature of the realisation of the contents of reason, albeit native to man and governing his experience as it arises. In a word, scant justice is done to the place of history and historical revelation in the genesis of the individual's religious experience, even as regards the ideas of Natural Theology. In particular the place of Christ's personality in the Christian religion was ignored. It was here, rather than in the " intellectualism " visible in the later Deism which did not recognise that the Divine light came through the whole man that Lord Herbert's theory was defective and out of accord with experience. CHAP, i.] RATIONALISM 539 It " mistook the result of reflection for the primitive germ of religion " in historic fact, and was impatient of what seemed needless or superstitious elements in the organic growth of concrete religious experi- ence, even in historic Christianity. " Natural Theology," as has been well said, " had won its freedom," and was no longer forced, as in the Re- naissance period, to evade final issues with historic Revelation by a theory of " double truth," and pre- tend with Pomponazzi that what was false as phil- osophy might be true as theology. Indeed, in the coming age of Rationalism it " was to take its revenge upon ' Revealed Theology,' and treat it as a hand- maiden rather than as a jealous mistress. But this is not the last stage." Rationalism in its zeal for clear and simple ideas really ignored the rational content and implication of a great body of human experience. " A later philosophy will claim for itself the right to take this also into account." Such were the main characteristics of the new age. It was not so much that men intended at first to throw away the traditional religious interpretations of life, or to deny the value of Christianity ; but they were becoming clear that all the presuppositions and premisses of the older system must be re-examined, and that there was nothing in life or religion which could claim to escape from the searching examina- tion of reason. We can see the beginnings of this mood in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries ; but it was only in the course of the seventeenth century that it became fully conscious of itself, and then, strictly, only in the latter half of the century. When men became conscious of the new mood, the results were very rapid. It might have seemed as though 540 NEW IDEAS: RATIONALISM [PARTY. Christianity was firmly entrenched in men's minds : the Protestantism of England, the reformed Catholi- cism of France, seemed immensely strong ; but they crumbled at the touch of the new spirit. When Montesquieu came to England in the eighteenth century, he is said to have found in many circles that the very idea of religion seemed absurd ; and Bishop Butler's witness in the Preface to his Analogy is to the like effect. Voltaire is the incarnation of the new spirit in its most destructive mood. He stands for the critical temper in its sharpest and most harshly denned form ; and before his mordant ironical criticism the prejudices and presuppositions of a great part of European society melted away. The religion which Voltaire criticised had indeed in a large measure become formal and arid. The great imaginative enthusiasm and conviction of the revival of religion had spent its force, and English Protestantism was worn out just as much as the revived Catholicism of France. Men will differ greatly in their estimate of the final significance of the work and temper of Voltaire. But most would to-day acknowledge that the work had to be done, that religion had to be purged of much superstition and unreality. Mere traditionalism had to be broken down, if men were to see once again with their own eyes. It must also be remembered that criticism had work to do in almost every field of life. The Christian Church had indeed never ceased to maintain in form the principle of the equality of human beings ; but the doctrine had often become little more than a formula. Christians had acquiesced in conditions of social life which could not really be reconciled with its own principles. In spite of the fact that CHAP, i.] VOLTAIRE 541 the general influence of the Church's theory in the Middle Ages had been on the side of political liberty, and that this tradition had found powerful support in Puritanism on one side and among the Jesuits on the other ; yet it must frankly be recognised that the organised Christian Churches as a whole had drifted into the position of defenders of the existing social and political order, and that the Anglicans and Galileans had been mainly responsible for reviving the mischievous conception of the divine and irre- sponsible sovereignty of the King. The new criticism was necessary in order to destroy this superstition and enable men once more to recognise at its proper value humanity itself, behind the accidents of birth and the trappings of rank. CHAPTER II i THE REVIVAL OF RELIGION AND THE NEW IDEAS OF HUMANITY " And like a man in wrath the heart Stood up and cried, ' I've felt/ " THE scepticism of the early eighteenth century, the age of the Enlightenment, as it was called abroad, had its work to do, and did it ; and its effects were in some senses abiding. Men can no longer think as they thought before. Whatever may be the place and meaning of authority in religion, few educated people now really imagine that the human reason can accept upon authority historical or scientific or philosophical presuppositions, or even the interpreta- tion of these presuppositions. We may use the same phrases as Christian people did before the great scientific discoveries, and before the new philosophical movements ; but we use them in different senses and with a new connotation. While this is true, it is also true that the rationalism and scepticism of the eighteenth century are as dead as the superstition which they destroyed ; it is in the long run impossible for men to continue to be content with the spirit of denial or mere scepticism. Der Geist der siets verneint is an agent of destruction, but not the spirit of life ; and as early as the middle of the eighteenth century we see the beginnings of a new movement which is directly related to the spiritual conceptions of our own time. Ml CHAP, ii.] HUMANITY 543 The great sceptical and rationalistic movements compelled men at least to see things clearly and with- out illusion. A thing could not be true in religion which was absurd in life, nor good in religion which was immoral in life. Bigotry, and fanaticism, and superstition were not to be defended because they might be related to good things. There is no depart- ment of human thought or action which can claim to be exempt from the scrutiny of the human reason. Such are some of the principles which have trans- formed the whole modern conception of the world, and which, even when men have resisted them, have gradually altered the standpoint from which they consider and judge the meaning of history and of life. Again, it is true to say that the sceptical move- ment which stripped away the somewhat tawdry trappings and decorations of rank and class, which reduced the magnificent king of the seventeenth century, like Louis XIV, to an ordinary mortal not necessarily either wiser or better than his fellows, did contain in itself the rudiments of much which we generally associate rather with the enthusiasm of the Methodist revival or the French Revolution. It was Voltaire, with Fenelon and the Quakers, who was the first apostle of modern humanitarianism. It may be difficult to say which represented the principle most profoundly ; there is no doubt as to which it was that for the time represented it most effectively. The cynical humour of Candide was after all only the mask under which Voltaire hid that passionate hatred for the stupid and brutal cruelty of European society which made him the almost heroic defender of the murdered Galas. No doubt the attitude of a hero was the last that he wished to assume, and he would have hated to be identified with the 544 RELIGION AND HUMANITY [PART v. rhetorical humanitarianism of Rousseau and the missionary fervour of the Evangelicals ; but none the less he was in reality very near to them in that he did think that a man was a man, neither more nor less. And yet between Voltaire (1694-1778) and Rousseau (1712-1778) there lies an immense gulf, a gulf which is the measure of the change from the rationalism of the beginning of the eighteenth century to the idealism of the new world to which we belong. The difference has been admirably expressed, though in the rhetorical terms appropriate to the period, in one of the fragments of a life of Rousseau which Bernardin de St Pierre left unfinished. " The aim of both men alike was one which was worthy of great souls, the happiness of mankind. Voltaire, his mind entirely filled with the thought of the influences which may harm men . . . thundered against fanaticism, superstition, despot- ism, and the love of conquest ; but his one thought was to destroy. Rousseau, on the contrary, con- sidering always what might be useful to mankind, strove without ceasing to raise and to build up. When he had cleared the ground by his two academic ' Discourses,' he offered a refuge to the repentant, he brought forward arguments which overthrow atheism, he drew a picture of idyllic love, he presented us with a scheme of reform, a system of education, a social contract. " Both men in the bold flight of their genius dealt with those principles on which depend the happiness of mankind religion, morals, government. But when they had recognised and radically set aside what they saw to be the mere workmanship of man, the one re-examined and strengthened their CHAP, n.] WILLIAM LAW 545 foundations, while the other ended by overthrowing everything." The religious revival of the eighteenth century developed very suddenly, but it had the closest rela- tion with the general movement of European thought and feeling. We have said that the enthusiasm and energy of Puritanism and of the revived Catholicism had lost its force by the end of the seventeenth century, There were not wanting, however, some embers of life which might be fanned again into the flame of a new movement. In German Pietism and that of the Moravians, hi the spiritual religion of the Society of Friends, hi the mysticism of France and Germany, in the grave and serious temper of certain circles in England like those of the Non- jurors, or of Isaac Watts there were elements of life and hope. The development of the new movement is closely related to all of these ; and its history can be well understood by us in England, if we consider the circumstances under which John Wesley set out on his great work. The first impulse came from the school of the Non- jurors, and especially from William Law's Serious Call. This work is marked by a grave and even stern view of religion, very different from the easy optim- ism of the fashionable religious rationalism. It has indeed some of the character and quality of the religion of the seventeenth century, but is expressed in the more direct and humane terms of the eighteenth century. For it was not only by its profound force and conviction that the book produced so powerful an effect, but also by the fact that it was written in a style of the most effective and vivacious kind. It is full of wit and penetration, full of a genuine know- ledge of human nature, and not only on its deeper 2M 546 RELIGION AND HUMANITY [PART v. side. William Law belongs to the same school in literature as the essayists, only his criticism of life is more severe and biting than that of Addison and Steele. In one sense, however, the Serious Call belonged to the prevailing tendency of thought. Its conception of religion is rather rational than imagina- tive ; it appeals rather to the enlightened practical judgment and good sense than to the profound instincts and sentiments which are stirred by religion. The truth is that religion, like all the finer and deeper sensibilities of men throughout Europe, suffered under the predominance of that superficial reasonableness which is characteristic of the earlier part of the century ; and even the grave and penetrating spirit of Law did not until later emancipate itself from the prevailing temper. John Wesley came up to Oxford from a home in which he had received a strict religious training of the older fashion, and in Oxford all these impressions were deepened by reading the Serious Call. He and his brother Charles, with a small group of friends in different colleges, set themselves to arrange and organise their religious life in a fashion so strict and methodical as to earn for themselves the name of " Methodist." But it was not until John Wesley came under another religious influence that the new religious movement began. This influence was that of the German Pietists and the Moravians, through whom the inner experience of St Paul as reproduced in Luther came home to him, and he learned (1738) the supreme significance in religion of internal experience. From them he took his principle of conversion, and his apprehension of the meaning of faith ; while to these he united his older conviction of the value of order and method in the religious life. CHAP, ii.] JOHN WESLEY 547 We cannot here describe in detail the revolutionary force of this great movement and its effects upon English society. We are concerned rather with its intrinsic character, with the conviction which inspired Wesley and Whitefield in preaching the Gospel to men and women of every condition. They knew no difference of class or of education, but appealed boldly to the equal capacity of every human soul for the life of communion with God. It was indeed just that " enthusiasm " which the men of the earlier eighteenth century had looked upon with so much suspicion, which was the driving power of the new movement, the appeal not to the mere reasoning faculty, but to the conscience and imagination, and the profound emotions of the human heart. It may seem paradoxical to say it, but it is true that the spirit of the Methodist movement is the same spirit as that which inspired the French Revolution ; that hi many respects it did for England what the Revolution did for France. It emancipated the in- dividual, it represented the principle of equality, and taught men the meaning of brotherhood. The effects of this upon English society can be traced in the relation of the Methodist and Evangelical movement to many of the most important aspects of social reform. The great sentimental movement had indeed already begun to produce a development of humanitarian feeling ; but the Methodist and Evangelical movement greatly strengthened this and gave it force and direction ; and we find the men who represented it, along with the members of the Society of Friends, leaders in the attempt to mitigate the poverty and miseries of human life. The crusade for the reform of the prison system, the passionate but patient struggle against the slave trade, and the 548 RELIGION AND HUMANITY [PART v. long continued toil required for the development of the system of the regulation of labour in factories and mines all these movements in England reflect the principles and represent in great measure the impulses of the new religious movement. Again, the sudden development of Foreign Missions at the end of the century was the direct result of the Evangelical fervour and conviction. It is not always understood how closely this development was related to the revolutionary doctrines of human equality and fraternity; but indeed the missionary impulse rests upon the profound and immensely significant conviction that all men everywhere are really capable of the life of communion with God, the life of reason and morality. It was no accident that the anti-slavery movement found its strongest supporters among the same men and women as were possessed by the missionary temper. The relation between the revival of religion and the general movement of European life and thought was indeed very close and organic ; and therefore, if we are to estimate it aright, we must consider, how- ever briefly, those changes in the life and temper of Europe which in the course of a century transformed the world. For the eighteenth century begins with Louis XIV and Pope and Voltaire, and ends with Rousseau and the French Revolution, with Goethe and Wordsworth. It is impossible to find any one phrase under which we can describe the great change ; it has been called by many names the revolt of idealism against rationalism, of realism against convention, of enthusiasm against, common- sense, of democracy against despotism. But by CHAP, ii.] THE SENTIMENTAL MOVEMENT 549 whatever name the change is called, it was immense and significant and revolutionary. The truth is that it affected life under every form. In philosophy the development of idealism ; in art the triumph of the imagination ; in social and poli- tical life the proclamation of liberty, equality, and fraternity ; in religion the recovery of the sense of the equal capacity of all men for the Divine communion ; all these are but various aspects of one movement. It is only when we take account of this that we can understand and measure the significance of the religious revival of the eighteenth and nine- teenth centuries. As we shall see later, the revival of religion itself assumed very different forms and expressed itself in different terms ; but behind the differences which separate the Evangelical and Pietist movements hi England and Germany from Tract- arianism and the revived Catholicism of France, there are common elements which to the historian are far more significant than their differences. The first signs of the new movement can be seen in that strange transformation of European literature which in a few years changed it, from the witty but sober art of common-sense, into the tumultuous, turgid, often morbid, and yet also profoundly real art of the emotions. It is truly a strange thing that Europe should have passed so suddenly from the one extreme to the other ; strange, that is, at first sight ; but indeed the revolt of the emotions against common-sense was inevitable and represented the recovery of life itself. It is in the nature of things impossible that man, who lives and moves in his emotions and passions, should continue to imagine himself to be a creature simply of reason and common-sense. These are no doubt regulating 550 RELIGION AND HUMANITY [PART v. and directing forces, but they are not life. And it is no wonder, therefore, that the reaction should express itself in somewhat ludicrous and exagger- ated forms. The sentimental novels and poetry are often overstrained and ridiculous, or worse still, simpering and maudlin. We find it difficult to take the tragic woes of Clarissa Harlowe, or the moral or immoral rhapsodies of Julie and St Preux quite seriously : we even feel that Crabbe's rage at the sentimental grace of Goldsmith's " Deserted Village " is just. The mood was indeed often over-strained and absurd ; and even when Goethe in Werther raised the sentimental novel to the level of great tragedy, we hardly know whether to admire more the humane art which depicted the unavailing struggle of a gracious but morbid nature against its own effemin- acy, or the penetrating judgment of the wise man who saw that " this way madness lies." Yet after all is said, the sentimental mood of the eighteenth century does represent the first element in the recovery of the reality of life, and this is one aspect at least of the new religious movement. For German Pietism in some measure, the Methodist movement in larger measure, recalled men to them- selves, taught them to understand that religion was not to be thought of primarily as a thing of the intellect, a theory of the universe, but as an emotion, a passion, a driving and compelling power, which could transform life. We do not suggest that the religious temper of Rousseau arose only out of the sentimental movement. But it is at least very sig- nificant that it should be the greatest of European sentimentalists who is also the first great artist in whom we can see the development of a new and religious interpretation of the world. In his Vicaire CHAP, ii.] GOETHE 551 Savoyard we have the expression of a new mood, of a temper which is wholly different from that of the frigid Deism of the earlier part of the century. It is, however, true that the emotional mood was often foolish and exaggerated, and represented but a part of the reaction towards life. To understand the whole movement we must look further, and must turn to greater artists than Rousseau. It was only a few years after Rousseau wrote his Emile (1762) that Goethe, while still in Frankfurt, produced the substance of the first part of Faust. And if we wish to understand the new mood of Europe, it is in Faust that we must study it. For in Faust Goethe has expressed in the greatest poetry, and also in the largest and most profound terms, the whole temper of the revolution. Here is the picture of a man who knows everything, who has studied everything, whose reason has enquired into every- thing ; but who feels that he knows nothing, that he is nothing, for life itself has escaped him ; and who turns therefore to the supernatural and magical arts, that he may enter into communion with the infinite Life itself. " Habe nun, ach ! Philosophic, Juristerei und Medizin Und, leider ! auch Theologie Durchaus studiert, mit heissem Bemuhn. Da steh, ich nun, ich armer Thor ! Und bin so klug, als wie zuvor. Drum hab' ich mich der Magie ergeben, Ob mir durch Geistes Kraft und Mund Nicht manch Geheimniss wiirde kund 552 RELIGION AND HUMANITY [PART v. Dass ich erkenne, was die Welt Im Innersten zusammenhalt, Schau' alle Wirkenskraft und Samen, Und thu' nicht mehr in Worten kramen." 1 He turns from his books to the symbol of the universe, and sees and feels in all things and every- where the one living Spirit, and feels himself united to the universal life. " Wie alles sich zum Ganzen webt ! Eins in dem andern wirkt und lebt ! Wie Himmelskrafte auf und nieder steigen Und sich die goldnen Eimer reichen ! Mit segenduftenden Schwingen Vom Himmel durch du Erde dringen, Harmonisch all das All durchklingen ! " 2 1 " I've studied now Philosophy And Jurisprudence, Medicine And even, alas ! Theology From end to end, with labour keen ; And here, poor fool ! with all my lore I stand, no wiser than before. Wherefore from magic I seek assistance, That many a secret perchance I reach, Through spirit-power and spirit-speech. That I may detect the inmost force Which binds the world, and guides its course ; Its germs, productive powers, explore, And rummage in empty words no more." Goethe, Faust, translated by Bayard Taylor. 1 " Here each the whole its substance gives, Each in the other works and lives ! Like heavenly forces rising and descending, Their golden urns reciprocally lending, With wings that winnow blessing From heaven to earth I see them pressing, Filling the All with harmony unceasing." CHAP, n.] WORDSWORTH 553 And when the spirit of the world appears to him, it is as the embodiment of that universal Nature which forms the living vesture of the Infinite Spirit Himself. " So schaff, ich am sausenden Webstuhl der Zeit Und wirke der Gottheit lebendiges Kleid." 1 How far have we moved from the merely critical and rational temper, how different is this view of the universal and infinite Life to which man is related, or rather, of which he is a part. And the new mood is perhaps best described as being the spiritual apprehension of the world. Goethe summed up and represented in his poetic work almost the whole conceptions of the new world, and anticipated nearly all the various aspects of the great revival of poetry. But in order to understand the unity of the movement we must turn from Germany and consider the character of the new poetry also in England. After Goethe there is no one who represents so completely or so profoundly as Wordsworth the new world, the reaction of the spiritual and religious temper against the merely mechanical conception of the world. To him the world is not dead but living ; it' is not merely something upon which man looks, the place in which he lives ; but it is also, with man, the dwelling-place of the infinite Spirit, the form of the infinite Life. The simplest things are to him as significant as the most complex, for everywhere and in all things he found the spirit of life. We may say of him what he says of Clifford 1 " Thus at Time's roaring loom 'tis my hand prepares The garment of life which the Deity wears." 554 RELIGION AND HUMANITY [PART v. " His daily teachers had been woods and rills, The silence that is in the starry sky, The sleep that is among the lonely hills." And the mood of Wordsworth is also the mood of Shelley ; for what used to be called his " atheism " is really nothing more than the natural revolt against a mechanical God, outside of man, alien to man, the mere cause and ruler of the world. To him the human spirit is one with the Spirit of the Universe, his life is part of the universal life. In his great lament on Keats he reminds himself that in death he is living " He is made one with Nature : there is heard His voice in all her music, from the moan Of thunder to the song of night's sweet bird ; He is a portion of the loveliness Which once he made more lovely : he doth bear His part, while the one Spirit's plastic stress Sweeps through the dull dense world, compelling there All new successions to the forms they wear." If there were time to consider the matter, we should find the same development again hi France. Whether we look at Chateaubriand, or at Lamartine, or at Victor Hugo, we find the religious or spiritual mood, hi various forms no doubt, but still always a spiritual interpretation of the world and of life. The truth is, that we may look where we will, and we find every- where the same transformation of human thought and feeling. The world had seemed to men so reason- able, the operations of nature so merely mechanical, that while some men, like Voltaire, might continue to postulate the existence of God as prime mover, or as the great First Cause, others had thought not unreasonably that such a postulate was really un- CHAP, ii.] THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 555 necessary. And for a time something of the kind had been thought of human nature also : men's emotions and desires had been conceived of as being quite intelligible, quite measurable by some in- tellectual rule. The psychological realism of La Bruyere in France, or of Defoe in England, seemed to give a sufficient account of human nature. Then, before the end of the century, the world was changed ; and for the passionless reason and the frigid sensuality of the earlier tune, we find a confused, turgid sensi- bility, a bewildering chaos of half emotional, half sensuous feeling, as well as a superb imaginative passion of idealism. It would be idle to pretend that all this change was for the good ; for the time being men seemed often to lose their sense of proportion, the very power of lucid and sane thinking and feeling. The great Revolution in France is hi some ways the most vivid counterpart of the whole temper of European life. The contradictory judgments which have been passed upon that great convulsion of nature are easily explained by the immense complexity of its characteristics. On the one side we see its ideal humanity, the rapturous joy with which men greeted the new principles of liberty and equality and fraternity, the heroic scale of the passions which animated men, the re-creation of the French nation, that re-creation which deeply impressed not very friendly critics of the Republican armies. On the other side we see also the ferocity of the passions which were let loose, the unchaining of secular hatreds, the blind violence, the reckless indifference to the organic continuity of civilisation. The spectacle is indeed still so confusing, so perplexed, that it is no wonder that the contemporary observers, 556 RELIGION AND HUMANITY [PART v. who were themselves actors in the great crisis, could not see clearly or speak very articulately ; so that it is difficult to say which was more irrational or partial, the frenzied loathing of Burke, or the passionate enthusiasm of Shelley. And yet out of all this chaos there came the new life of Europe. The great artists, like Goethe and Wordsworth, rapidly transcended the mere tumul- tuous passions, and began again to see life clear and whole ; and gradually there arises also the structure of a new civilisation in Europe, a civilisa- tion which is not irrational, but which is animated by the sense of the spiritual realities of life, and of the divine quality in human nature. CHAPTER III THE ROMANTIC MOVEMENT AND THE CATHOLIC BEVIVAL " These three poetry, religion, and imagination are one, and are never found singly. When man has most religion, he has also most poetry and is fullest of imagination." A. M. FAIRBAIRN, on Romanticism, as characterised in his Catholicism, Roman and Anglican, p. 97- WE have endeavoured in the last chapter to describe the great change in the temper of Europe, the change from the sceptical and unimaginative mood of the beginning of the eighteenth century, to the idealism and enthusiasm of its close ; and to point out how significant was the relation of this to the revival of religion. The sceptical criticism was indeed inevitable, for it represented the influence of a new scientific apprehension of the world, and a new and independent philosophical attempt to interpret it. But it is also clear that a temper of mind which was mainly critical of enthusiasm, of faith, of the imagina- tive apprehension of the world, was impossible as a permanent thing ; and by the end of the century the spiritual conception of the world had again gained the supremacy. The world was again becoming religious. In the next chapter we shall consider the terms under which in the nineteenth century the new mood, the new conviction, took shape and form ; but before we go on to this we must take account of another aspect of the religious revival, 567 558 THE ROMANTIC MOVEMENT [PART v. which took effect as late as the first half of the nineteenth century. If we are right, the revival of religion finds its most significant example in the Methodist or Evan- gelical movement in England. For its bold appeal to the equal capacity of men of all kinds and conditions for the divine life corresponds very closely with the Revolutionary doctrine of equality; while its prin- ciple that faith is the method of the new life is closely related to the conception of the place of the imagination in literature and hi all art. On the other hand we see that in the early years of the nineteenth century the religious movement was developing new characteristics ; and these express themselves under the forms of the revived Catholicism of Europe, and of the Tractarian movement in England. Not indeed that these movements were in their essential character contradictory to the revival of the eigh- teenth century; but they represent other and dis- tinctive aspects of life. There are two supremely important conceptions which had hitherto played comparatively little part in the religious revival ; the one was the sense of the historical continuity of religion, and the other the principle of the unity of human life and experi- ence. Hitherto the religious movement had reflected in the main the characteristics of the political and social movement of the eighteenth century ; for the Revolution was in the first place a revolt against the tyranny of the forces and traditions of the past, and in the second place the demand for a full and free development of the individual. These were great and just conceptions, and yet also obviously inade- quate and incomplete. For while men do well to throw off the tyranny of the past, it is idle to CHAP, m.] THE HISTORICAL MOVEMENT 559 suppose that the past does not live in us ; and while it is wholly right to demand the emancipation of the individual, that emancipation cannot be found in soli- tude, but only in society. The great service which the Romantic and Catholic movements have rendered to the religion of the modern world is that they have helped to bring back the sense of continuity and the principle of society. The truth is that the Romantic and Catholic movements are closely related to the great scientific development of the historical method. The founda- tions of this had been slowly laid by the great scholars, primarily of France, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and especially by the Benedictines ; but it was not till the latter part of the eighteenth century that the movement began to be conscious of itself. Montesquieu and Herder had contributed in different ways more than any other men ; while in England the publication in 1774 of Warton's History of English Literature, with its careful treatment and appreciation of the nature and value of our early literature, was perhaps the most significant indication of the new temper. It would be impossible, however, here to enumerate even the more important forms of the new movement : we must be content to fix our attention on its char- acteristics. The classical revival of the Renaissance had no doubt done great service to European civilisa- tion, and to the recovery of a saner and more scientific temper ; but it had two very disastrous effects. It had cut off modern European civilisation from its immediate past ; and it had imposed upon men the impossible and mechanical conception of a single and uniform standard of perfection. It is laughable enough now to think of the absurd ignorance of the 560 THE ROMANTIC MOVEMENT [PARTY. men of the New Learning both of the art and of the intellectual and political life of the Middle Ages, and to see even great and penetrating critics driven to a half apologetic defence of Shakespeare. But the effects of this upon men cannot easily be calculated ; and it was only with great difficulty that the his- torical sense of the continuity of progress was able to break its way through such superstitions. It has been the work of the historical movement to dissipate these confusions, and to enable us once again to claim both continuity and freedom for European civilisation continuity with the past and freedom for the future, freedom for the development of the apprehensions of truth and beauty under any and all forms. The Romantic spirit was really an aspect of the historical movement. Men had looked upon the mediaeval world as merely barbarous and repulsive ; they began to discover that it had really been animated by great and living principles, and that it had expressed its genius in forms of singular beauty. It is no doubt true that the Romantic conception of the mediaeval world was in some respects as absurd as that of the Renaissance, though in a different way. It created a ludicrously unreal world of knights and ladies, inhabiting beautiful castles, going out on strange adventures, occupied with nothing but love and religion and chivalry. All this was foolish enough, and had little relation to the actual historical conditions. The Middle Ages of the Romanticist were indeed an artificial compound of elements drawn on the one hand from Malory and Ariosto and Spenser, and on the other hand from the ruins of mediaeval castles and abbeys. And yet, with all this foolishness, the Romantic movement CHAP. ni.J CHATEAUBRIAND 561 enabled men to recover and to understand the past, and therefore to reverence and respect the past. It is here that we find the historical significance and justification of the revived Catholicism. We can see some of its characteristics most clearly in the work of Chateaubriand, and especially in his Genie du Christianisme. In many respects Chateaubriand was simply a disciple of Rousseau and of Bernardin de St Pierre ; he shared with them, in some measure he derived from them, his rather morbid sensibility or sentimentalism, and it was from them that he learned the significance of Nature, though he often goes far beyond them. For indeed he was sensitive to every impression of nature : he found in nature the reflection of all human moods, the counterpart of human experience, and his de- , scriptions of nature are much larger and more intense than theirs. Even his religious mood is closely related to theirs, but with one difference. While they represent a profound but vague religiosity, he was moved not merely by an aesthetic sense of religion in general, but found in the Christian religion, and especially in its mediaeval forms, both the true interpretation of life and the greatest inspiration of Art ; that is, he felt Christianity profoundly, not only as true but also as beautiful. It is true that Chateaubriand was deeply influenced by Milton ; but in the end it was mediaeval religion as expressed in mediaeval art which moved him. The work which Chateaubriand began was carried on by others in many ways ; but there is perhaps no work which more completely represents the growth of the new religious movement than Mont- alembert's Monks of the West. Montalembert was not a great sentimental artist like Chateaubriand, 2N 562 THE ROMANTIC MOVEMENT [PART v. but he had the same sense of the significance and quality of mediaeval religion, and in his work he set out to try and present a living picture of that which he rightly recognised as one of the greatest and most significant aspects of mediaeval life. His work was, no doubt, from a scientific point of view premature, but it served its purpose : it did compel men to see that the religion of the Middle Ages was not irrational and meaningless, but rather that it represented a living power. We cannot attempt here even to indicate the many forms which the new religious movement assumed both in France and in Germany. In England it was represented by the Tractarians, and their great and enduring influence is within our own immediate experience. It is very important to observe in the English movement how the Evangelical tradition was blended with new elements. The piety of the great Tractarians was the piety of the older move- ment, the austerity of its temper was very close to that of the Methodists and ^Evangelicals ; but upon that foundation there was built a great fabric of romantic sentiment and historical tradition. The great popularity and influence of Keble's Christian Year was due hi almost equal measure to the reality and simplicity of his religious emotion and the charm of his romantic imagination ; and the same qualities are found again in the religious poetry of Faber, and in such a poem as Newman's "Lead, Kindly Light," which has the romantic note in almost every line. It is this strain in the Trac- tarian movement which connects it closely with Scott and also with Coleridge, the greatest of all the European artists of mediaeval romanticism; for what they constantly endeavoured, he achieved. CHAP, m.] THE TRACTARIANS 563 He created a world of mystery and of the super- natural which is convincing in its truth, because it is an organic form of real human experience, and which possesses a beauty which other romantic writers very rarely attained. It would, however, be a very incomplete estimate of the Tractarian movement if we were to treat it only as representing an aspect of the aesthetic side of the Romantic movement, or if we were to measure its whole significance by its relation to this ; for as poetic artists the Tractarians do not belong to the first rank. It is indeed difficult to say whether the new mediaevalism represented a really and permanently valuable element in art : but that is a large question with which we cannot here deal. There is no doubt about the permanent significance of the Tractarian sense of the continuity of the present with the past. The reformed religion of Europe has suffered very greatly from the breach with the traditional religious ideas and forms of the Middle Ages. We may be con- vinced that the great revolt of the sixteenth century was indeed justifiable and necessary, and we may yet feel that its consequences were in many ways disastrous. We may be firmly convinced that the religious experience of mankind cannot be subjected to the forms of the past, and yet we cannot seriously think that the religious experience of former ages meant nothing, or even that its forms are to us insignificant. Even the man who is most clear that for him the religion of the spirit is best expressed in the simplest terms, cannot be unmoved by the words which have expressed the devotion of far more than a thousand years, and the rites and ceremonies which have slowly grown round this devotion. 564 THE ROMANTIC MOVEMENT [PART v. The Catholic and Tractarian form of the revival of religion has, then, brought back to men something of the unity of the past and present : but it has rendered an equal, indeed almost a greater service, in helping us to recover the sense of the unity of human life and experience. The revolt of the individual against the tyranny of the society was necessary and inevitable. Men had to recover the conviction of the independence of the human soul ; they had to apprehend for themselves that there is, not merely for the man of exceptional religious experience, but for the normal human soul, a direct experience of God. What was begun in the Reforma- tion was carried on in the great scientific and philo- sophical movement of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, in that great movement which shook to its foundations all the traditional conceptions of authority, whether Roman or Protestant. All this was necessary ; and yet it is also true that the result of it all was to leave the individual human soul bare and solitary, isolated from his fellows, unsupported by society. The Evangelical revival, with all its profound significance, did not counteract this ; rather in some ways it only made it more marked. For the in- dividual Christian did indeed find himself in the society of God, but the very greatness of the con- ception seemed often to make the religious society of men a thing unnecessary and superfluous. And yet this is not a possible condition. Man does not and cannot isolate himself in his religious experi- ences, any more than in any other aspect of life. It is this which gave its real significance to the revived conception of the meaning of the Church in the Tractarian movement, and in the revived Catholicism CHAP, in.] THE VALUE OF THE PAST 565 of Europe. The individualism of religion must find its complement in the conception of the solidarity of the Christian society; the liberty of the individual soul cannot be held in such a sense as to make it impossible for the individual to find his place in the community of faith. Again, in order to understand the full significance of these movements in the Christian Church, we must observe that they are the counterparts of great movements which have profoundly affected and are still profoundly affecting the whole character of Western civilisation. For, if in religion there was great need to recover the sense of the continuity and unity of life, there was just the same need in social life as a whole ; and the change which has come over the religious spirit is the same as that which has come over all European life. The great Revolution was necessary. It was impossible that the living spirit of man should be tied and bound in the political forms and by the social conventions of past ages, just as it was impossible that the poetry and art, the science and knowledge, of the present should be bounded by the insight and the methods of the past. And yet, as Lessing had warned the young poets of his time, men must not wilfully throw away the experience of the past, nor ask of the artist that he should for himself discover over again the whole of art. 1 The experience of the world is our own experience, and the wise man builds the palace of the present on the foundations of the past. The great men of the Revolution thought at first that there was nothing so simple as to destroy the old world and to build a new one ; but they learned and we learn by 1 Hamburgische Dramaturgic, 101. 566 THE ROMANTIC MOVEMENT [PART v. painful experience that human nature is very constant, and that if it is a new Jerusalem that we are to build, it is with the same stones and timber as that which made the old. In the first flush of the new dawn men might think that there was no need to take account of the past, but we have learned that the old world had truth and beauty which we would gladly recover and cherish. It is thus not difficult to understand how it came about that the century which began with the great Revolution, which was indeed a century of revolu- tions, was also so profoundly affected both intellectu- ally and aesthetically by the recovery of the past. The revival of Gothic architecture, the poetry and painting of the English pre-Raphaelites, may seem to us now to have been in some respects on wrong lines ; but they represent the natural results of the discovery of the beauty and significance of the mediaeval world. And the work of the historian has gradually trans- formed our conception of the past and made clear to us the nature of the foundations on which we are building, and has taught us understanding and respect. In the great words of Burke, " Society is indeed a contract . . . but the state oupht not to be con- sidered as nothing better than a partnership agree- ment in a trade of pepper and coffee, calico or tobacco, or some other such low concern, to be taken up for a little temporary interest, and to be dissolved by the fancy of the parties. It is to be looked on with other reverence ; because it is not a partnership in things subservient only to the gross animal existence of a temporary and perishable nature. It is a partnership in all science, a partnership in all art ; a partnership in every virtue, and in all perfection. As the ends of such a partnership cannot be obtained CHAP, in.] UNITY OF LIFE 567 in many generations, it becomes a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born. Each contract of each particular state is but a clause in the great primaeval contract of eternal society, linking the lower with the higher natures, connecting the visible and invisible world, according to a fixed compact sanctioned by the in- violable oath which holds all physical and all moral nature, each hi then* appointed place." 1 It is clear that the modern world has been greatly affected by the recovery of the sense of continuity ; it is even more certain that it is dominated by the revival of the principle of the unity of life. Men continue to argue about the relative merits of in- dividualism and socialism, but at the bottom of their hearts they know that these principles are com- plimentary. And because the individualist principle had won such great triumphs hi the latter part of the eighteenth century, our main task has been to recover the complementary truth. The typical representatives of the individualist movement were the English economists from Adam Smith to John Stuart Mill ; they had their work to do and they did it. But the results were evil as well as good, and we have been compelled, and are being compelled, to restore the authority of society. The nineteenth century began with the emancipa- tion of the individual ; but its characteristic develop- ments have been the Trade Union, the Co-operative Society, the Socialist parties, even the Joint-Stock Companies. We do not any longer believe that the individual can realise himself hi solitude ; we are 1 Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France. 568 THE ROMANTIC MOVEMENT [PART v. convinced that it is only in and through society that he can live and grow. We do not believe that the State is the enemy of the individual ; we think of it rather as the necessary instrument of his life and progress. The principle has never been better ex- pressed than in the words of Rousseau, who antici- pated, but also far outran the Revolution. *' This transition from the state of nature to the state of civil society produced in man a very remark- able change, by substituting in his conduct justice for instinct, and by giving to his actions a morality which they had previously lacked. It is only when the voice of duty takes the place of mere physical impulse, and the conception of right that of appetite, that man, who until then had only considered himself, finds himself compelled to act on other principles and to consult his reason before following his desires. Although he loses in this condition several privileges which he derived from nature, yet he acquires in compensation such great advantages, his faculties are developed, his ideas enlarged, his sentiments en- nobled, and his whole soul is raised to such a degree that, if it were not that the abuses of the new con- dition often degrade him below that from which he came, he should never cease to bless that happy moment which delivered him from it for ever, and turned him from a stupid and limited animal into an intelligent being and a man." 1 Rousseau, Contrat Social, i. 8. CHAPTER IV THE NINETEENTH CENTURY " Men err in what they deny, rather than in what they assert." To understand the Nineteenth Century, and the changes in the conception of Christianity which mark it, return must be made to the philosophical development of the later seventeenth century and the early eighteenth. The rational and deistic tendency of that period became more and more radical, in England down to the Evangelical Revival, in France down to the eve of the French Revolution, notably in the person of Voltaire. He helped to strengthen it . in Prussia also, through his influence on Frederick the Great, whose reign (1740-86) was essentially the age of the so-called Enlightenment. But its philosophical basis was already being under- mined, first in England and France whence it had spread, and then in Germany, where Kant gave it its death-blow, though he replaced it by a nobler and more ethical kind of Rationalism. The new era, which really brings to birth the modern mode of thought, was opened and conditioned by a new way of regarding all objects of knowledge in relation to the human mind. Locke's theory of knowledge, in terms of sense-impressions clarifying by reflection into ideas, was unsatisfying as philo- sophy, which must also render account of the nature of the " things " known and of the mind which 569 570 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY [PART v. knows them. Berkeley argued that the hypothesis that ideas are produced by God in finite minds was an all-sufficient explanation of human experience. Hume further simplified the matter by ruling out reference either to things or to a mind, so reducing all to a stream of sensations or states of consciousness, in which a certain order can be traced, so far as some invariably follow others. Such sheer sensa- tionism, which could yield no knowledge of anything not part of the stream of phenomena, awoke Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) out of the " dogmatic slumber " of Rationalism, with its too easy assump- tion of ideas such as cause, substance whether matter or mind the soul and God. He felt that if Hume's all-devouring scepticism as to any know- able reality behind sensations, and so as to the possibility of rendering human existence and destiny intelligible, was to be overcome, it could only be by profounder analysis of actual experience, to discover the conditions of its rational possibility, which Hume had passed lightly over. He found that the general forms under which experience presents itself in consciousness necessarily implied, and so proved the existence of, a moulding activity of thought or reason which left its stamp upon all that passed through it. By this method of drawing out what is involved in the very structure of mental experience, Kant not only justified the emphasis of Berkeley and all those before him who had made the subjective factor in knowledge determinative ; he also did so in such a way as to create an era in philosophy analogous to that which Plato inaugurated by his theory of Ideas. In particular, he realised more fully the activity of the human mind as a unity or CHAP, iv.] KANT'S CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 571 subject of idealising functions rather than as a receptacle of ideal types. The " Critical philosophy " did in fact form Prolegomena to all future Meta- physics to use the bold title of one of his essays. For instance, the materialism and dogmatic atheism of the Encyclopaedists, like Diderot, and of Baron d'Holbach's System of Nature, at once passed out of date. Since Kant, philosophy has realised that even physical science, like unified knowledge of every sort, exists only in virtue of the organising activity of mind ; and that to reduce the mind to the rank of a by-product of the " material " aspect of things, as cognised through the mind, is sheer paradox. The only forms in which a virtual materialism has had a footing among philosophic thinkers since Kant's day, have been Monism of the Stoic or Spinozistic type, and in more recent times Agnos- ticism, whether Comte's Positivism or other. The Agnostic tendency, so far as it marks modern philosophy in its relation to Christianity, has, indeed, its roots in the subjective emphasis of Kant's own doctrine of the Pure Reason. He taught that what we perceive is not the thing as it is in itself, apart from our perception, but is made what it is to us by certain " forms " of our perception, viz. space and time. Similarly the " categories " or concepts (e.g. of causation) by which the under- standing, the faculty of judging, connects the objects of perception in its ordered experience, are simply modes of relating phenomena due to our thought as such ; no corresponding relations in the ultimate world of reality suggested by sensation can validly be inf erred from the phenomena as known by us. In both cases Kant seems to identify reality or validity with adequacy or completeness of know- 572 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY [PART v. ledge. But later thought has tended to set aside the negative side of his analysis. This it has done partly under the influence of the cumulative proof afforded by experimental science that our categories, such as " cause," do really operate in the objective world of things, seeing that we can often, but not always, anticipate Nature by hypothesis ; and partly owing to more exact and discriminating reflection, e.g. the distinction between " clock time " and real tune, that involved in actual development. The tendency, then, is to assign to all forms and concepts of the human reason at least a relative correspondence with objective being, which is really, though only partially and progressively, revealed in all abiding or normal " appearance." The like may well hold in the third and highest sphere of Reason, to which also belong religious ideas. These are found to be implicit in all attempts to unify the sum total of experience, as underlying ideal presuppositions. Such are our own ego, the subject of all our consciousness ; the world, as a whole, objective to this self ; and God, the supreme con- dition of " the possibility of all realities." Kant, however, held that such transcendental ideas, when thought out rigorously, issue in mutual contradic- tion, so showing that they lie beyond our mind's proper sphere. To this realm belong the alternatives of human liberty and necessity, also of " beginning " and "no beginning " in relation to the world and to God Himself. Thus they have for Pure Reason no more than the value of regulative ideas, constantly suggesting themselves as involved in all "thinking things together " into unity, but of no objective reality. So far, God and immortality for man, as related to CHAP, iv.] ITS TWOFOLD ISSUES 573 God and sharing His Eternal Life the great distinc- tive ideas of religion such as the Christian were ruled out of the ken of Reason by Kant's idealism hardly less than by Hume's sensationism. But here begins a great difference. For what Kant denied to the Pure Reason, that he conceded to the Practical Reason, active in the realm of Conduct or Ethics. The testimony of our moral nature, with its sense of unconditional obligation face to face with the " categorical imperative " of Duty, was to be trusted when it claimed that the reality of God, freedom (to will the moral ideal), and immortality, was involved in the voice of Conscience. I ought, therefore I can. I am made for virtue ; but also for happiness, if consciousness may be trusted. These two ends can only be realised if there be a Moral Ruler whose Will speaks in the voice of Duty and who, as demanding unconditional obedience, irrespective of Desire, is pledged to make the two harmonise some day in our experience. Hence immortality is postulated as a condition of this. To Kant, then, religion is the taking of pur duties as Divine commands. To this austere Stoic con- ception Kant reduces religion, and sets himself to expound Christianity in keeping with the restrictions imposed by his Critique of Pure Reason. These allow no place for Adoration and Love to God as a person, or indeed for access to Him along any line fitted to awaken and justify emotion or worship proper, such as our sense of the True and the Beau- tiful, as well as the morally Good. Against this artificial restriction to one only out of several lines by which man's higher nature has been wont in- stinctively to seek and find God, the course of later idealistic thought poetic and artistic, no less than 574 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY [PART v. philosophic has afforded constant protest ; while the religious consciousness insists on its experience of Grace. Kant's distinction in point of validity between the witness to the great religious ideas involved in the Practical Reason, and the corre- sponding witness of the theoretic Reason, including its aesthetic function, has justly been criticised ; and the resulting dualism of his system has been set aside in* two opposite ways. Some have advanced to a completer and more constructive idealism, admitting of both types of witness : others to complete scepticism as to any witness touching what is not actually matter of experience as finite or conditioned. As regards the more positive developments of Kant's thought, these have for the most part had affinity with Christianity. His view of " the thing in itself," as unrelated to the rational forms imposed on it by the human reason, was in 1794 set aside by Fichte in such a way that distinction between the laws of thought and the laws of things vanished, and ideas were everything. All that is, is the direct product of a t hulking subject or ego, for man primarily of his own finite mind, but ultimately of the impersonal universal Mind, the Absolute, working in and through all individuals as an Intelligible and Moral Order. Schelling started from this Absolute, viewed chiefly as manifested in Nature, and made it neither subject nor object of thought, rather the common ground of both, the living principle of rationality, undergoing development alike in Nature and self-conscious man. Hegel (1770-1831) took up the problem left over as to the true conception of the Absolute. This for Schelling was most absolute when most abstract and undeveloped, as CHAP. iv. J HEGEL : THE ABSOLUTE 575 undifferentiated Being, which to man is next to non-being. For Hegel, on the contrary, rational content and reality are identical. But the Absolute Idea only gradually unfolds or realises itself explicitly in the Universe or World-process, which consists of an all-comprehending series of concepts, evolving in strictly logical relations to each other. It is in the finite thinking ego that the Absolute becomes fully self-conscious. Thus the story of the Universe, which is one and the same with the life of God, is the self-unfolding of the inmost nature of things as Thought. The method of this development, starting with the more abstract and moving onward to the more concrete, is that of thesis, followed by its implied antithesis, the two finally issuing in a higher unity by a synthesis of both. In this way Kant's dualisms are resolved in a kind of unity, but only a very partial one, while full self -consciousness in the Absolute or God is postponed to the end of the world-process. The unity remains largely abstract, a skeleton logic of reality. It fails to satisfy experi- ence as known to the man of Science, but also to humanity at large, for whom personality, with its centre hi will, is the supreme reality. Yet inadequate as Hegelianism is to the manifold- ness of human experience not only in its Christian form, of which Hegel professed to give the first true philosophic interpretation, but also that of human culture, as Goethe for instance knew it it yet contained a new and fruitful conception of the Absolute, an aspect of the Divine nature hitherto most embarrassing to vital religion. 1 According to 1 This has been shown most clearly by Dr W. Adams Brown in his Essence of Christianity (T. & T. Clark, 1903), particularly in the section on " Historic Conceptions of the Absolute in their bearing upon the Definition of Christianity," of which use is here made. 576 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY [PART v. nearly all pre-Hegelian conceptions, the Absolute, while the source of all that is, remains aloof from the world of relative and finite being, though acting upon it by certain intermediary agencies. In par- ticular the Logos idea, in all its phases, did give the Divine Absolute some sort of immanence in the world. Still the root notion of the Absolute as the unrelated tended ever to reassert itself. Religion was thus either supernaturalism, furnished with exceptional divine media, or rationalism "reason " being an unexplained " natural " endowment of humanity, testifying to an absentee Deity. From such a dilemma permanent deliverance was possible only through a new and truer conception of the Absolute, reached by fuller insight into the nature of human knowledge, one which sees more positive revelation of reality in and through and on occasion of sense-perception than Kant allowed. Starting from the use of " absolute " to denote finality, something ultimate beyond which one cannot go for explanation, but relatively to which alone things receive such ex- planation as they attain in our minds, we recognise an element in all experience not derived from phenomena, but rather governing our knowledge of the objective universe, and making it progressively a coherent unity. Here we have a positive and psychologically given conception of the Absolute, as not outside experience but in it, 1 " the master-light of all our seeing," a revelation of God, imperfect yet real as far as it goes, and suggestive of more. That more, which fills out the idea of God as the Absolute, 1 Even in its particularity ; for as Von Hiigel, in his Eternal Life (p. 167), justly says, the soul's sense of the Absolute is often deepest and keenest in its "closest contacts, its most loving- familiarity, its most heroic struggles, with and for the Concrete, Historical manifestations of such Eternal Life." CHAP, iv.] RENEWAL OF THEOLOGY 577 revealed both in the world and in OUT whole person- ality, it falls most of all to religious experience to supply progressively. And here comes in the testimony of history, as the record of " the education of the human race " by the gradual self -communication of the Divine as Absolute Spirit, ever more explicitly known as active within the kindred spirit of man. In this great idea, thrown out by Lessing, which idealistic philosophy, along with parallel movements in poetry, helped during the nineteenth century to unfold and define, we have the basis of the modern conception of the relations of God and us men. This may be styled Natural Supernaturalism, to use Carlyle's phrase, a mode of thought which gives the human " spirit." as our finite receptivity cor- relative to the Divine nature, so far as communicable, a far larger range of meaning than the traditionally religious one. Such a view has renewed and is still renewing the forms of Christian thought and practice. The renewal of theology on an experimental basis may be illustrated by two commanding instances, one of more general, the other of more Anglo-Saxon scope. In Schleiermacher (1768-1834), the most influential name in modern theology, there met most of the tendencies of post-Reformation thought, save the Rationalistic, against which he pleaded the self-evidencing nature of religion as the deepest thing in the soul. This was the burden of his " Speeches (Reden) on Religion, to the cultured among its despisers " (1799), which mark an epoch in the philosophy of religion. Twenty years younger than Goethe, he lived amidst a culture best symbolised by that many-sided mind. . Compared with current 2o 578 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY [PART v. and more partial views of life, Goethe's ideal of self- realisation through a culture embracing all human interests in an ever more balanced harmony, and issuing in a calm self-mastery akin to the pre-Christian classic type, represented an advance towards a solution of the problem of unity and completeness in human life, as an absolute end in itself. Schleier- macher had many qualities in common with Goethe as a man of all-round culture and sensibility, but grafted on to a truly religious nature. While he shared Goethe's feeling for Spinoza's pantheism, and had difficulties about God as personal which give his system a too subjective emphasis, he was full of a personal piety, first fostered among the Moravians, which linked him to the Evangelical Revival and its deeply experimental religion. Equally a man of heart and head, he set aside alike Rationalistic dogmatics, even in its Kantian form, as identifying religion with rational ethics, and Orthodoxy, as not springing directly enough from a single master-principle and as including much not involved in experimental faith at all. In his search for the essential principle of religion, he went back behind all traditionalisms Catholic, Protestant, Rationalist to the original spirit of the Reformation. The Church is a Society based on a common experience of Piety the feeling of absolute dependence on the Divine, lying deeper than any sense of relative dependence on the actual world, as we usually know it, in its diversity. Christian piety, in its distinctive quality, depends consciously on Christ. Christian theology, then, is an account of the contents of this Christian experience, the doctrine of Faith (Glaubenslehre), as it knows itself by reflection. The standpoint is frankly subjective, CHAP, iv.] SCHLEIERMACHER 579 and remained too exclusively so in his own thought, owing largely to hesitation about the personality of God. Had he, with Jacobi, viewed the disclosures in man's spiritual nature, especially his ethical personality, as truly, if inadequately, revealing God Himself as personal which is what Christian Faith had always held he would have but given its full effect to his doctrine of absolute dependence on God. He aimed in principle at setting religion free from bondage to philosophy ; yet he himself was hampered in his religious faith by a pantheistic philosophy of God, which applies as a law conditioning the Divine nature the limitations inherent in finite personality. This was in part rectified in his actual theology by his personal perception that " History, in the strictest sense, is the highest object of Religion.*' This helped him really to rise above Kant's view of religion. For history is the realm of personality, which is thus recognised as the most adequate revelation of God a fact to which Spinoza also, with noble inconsistency, did homage in his Ethics, as the true worship of God. Beyond his emphasis on Christian experience as affording the true data of Christian theology, Schleiermacher showed deep insight on not a few points of that theology. Thus he dwelt on Redemp- tion in its properly religious aspects, including the fact of conversion ethically conceived. The historic person of Christ is to him the greatest of miracles ; and faith in Him is logically, as well as often experi- mentally, prior to faith in the Scriptures as inspired. Love is the supreme Christian force and the principle of the Church's life as a fellowship in the Divine. As in religion man feels his dependence on God, so in morality he realises the mutual dependence of 580 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY [PART v. men. Finally, in his whole idea of humanity and its ideal vocation, Schleiermacher transcended what was then and for long after a prime cause of cultured detachment from religion, viz. an other-worldly and negative outlook, which failed to relate self-renuncia- tion to any form of self-realisation. He showed its essential affinity with all the ideal activities of the soul, including the poetic and artistic impulse, so dear to the Romanticists, whose culture he had largely in view. The form of Schleiermacher's presentation of the contents of Faith was due largely to recoil from Rationalism. " The Essence of Religion is neither Thought nor Action, but Intuition and Feeling." " All Intuition proceeds from an influence of the thing contemplated upon the contemplator : it is an original, independent action of the former, received, collected, and understood by the latter, according to the latter's nature." " Intuition with- out Feeling, and Feeling without Intuition are both nothing : only then and therefore are they something, when and because they are one and indivisible " in the " indescribable moment " when " sense and its object have become one " in our consciousness. But, if there be such objective contact, then religious feeling will owe its special quality to the kind of intuitions which evoke such emotional reaction in the soul, and these again on the nature of the reality contemplated. This last aspect of the case, ignored by Schleiermacher in his emphasis on the contents of religious faith as purely psychological, came in turn to need emphasis ; namely the objective or metaphysical element in the intuitions of Reason implicit in Faith as feeling, prior to and distinct from reasoning or discursive CHAP, iv.] COLERIDGE 581 reflection that which Rationalism mainly meant by " reason." Such a distinction between the receptive or creative aspect of Reason, as Intuition of the super- sensuous or Divine order, and the logical Understanding which works out the finite rational relations of experience as parts of a whole, is charac- teristic of Coleridge. It is one which played a large part in the emancipation of religion in the nineteenth century from Rationalism alike in philos- ophy and science. It has had the virtual support of the poets, notably Wordsworth, Shelley, Tennyson, Browning, as well as of prose poets and prophets, like John Henry Newman, Carlyle, Emerson, and Ruskin. But it was the special message of Coleridge (1772-1834), at once poet and philosopher, a man of profound insight, though achieving little worthy his powers. His influence in stimulating others, however, was immense, notably by his Aids to Reflection and Confessions of an Enquiring Spirit. He had the idea of a spiritual philosophy in the fullest sense, of the material world of Nature as akin to man's mind and as subserving ideal ends throughout. He recognised both aspects of the Absolute Mind revealed to man in the Universe and in himself ; as immanent or naturalised, the principle of order and unity amid diversity in the finite ; but also as transcendent or independent of relative modes of being, with an inner life of its own, deeper and fuller than all that is manifest in the Universe analogous to the inner life of the human soul, but not conditioned from without itself, and so absolute, self-sufficient, self-explanatory. More fully even than Wordsworth, Coleridge regarded God as personal, though after a mode beyond our finite experience. Thus he laid down the lines and 582 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY [PART v. gave the emphasis which a Christian philosophy as such, one which views all ultimately in terms of personality and moral relations, must maintain. Coleridge treated religious truth, like spiritual things generally, as self-evidencing, like light to normal vision : and he so emphasised the native spiritual constitution of man, underlying all moral perversions through sin and its root in egoism, as to reduce the traditional dualism, both Catholic and Protestant, between man's natural and super- natural capacity for such vision. Throughout he relied primarily on the intrinsic appeal of Revelation as spiritual truth to the human spirit, though obedience to the truth seen implies moral conversion. Special revelation, in historic religion, rests upon general revelation in the soul, taken seriously. Thus the authority of Christianity, whether in Bible or Church, is the intrinsic truth embodied or objectively witnessed. This authenticates itself to the higher instincts of man's spiritual capacity, or instinctive reason, and to the deepest needs of his moral con- sciousness. "Whatever finds me," he wrote, " bears witness to itself that it has proceeded from the Holy Ghost. In the Bible there is more that finds me than in all the other books that I have read." That in the Bible, or in Church doctrine and Christi- anity generally, which does not find the real or deeper soul, may be either beyond its present insight or due to an imperfection in the human medium itself. The latter alternative need not compromise the presence in Bible or Church of Divine or absolute truth for man, limited as he is in his understanding or conceptual forms of discursive thought. These always contain a figurative element, inadequate to the fulness of reality, as the symbolic, whether CHAP, iv.] KINDRED THEOLOGIANS 583 in speech or vision, must ever be. Thus Coleridge made current in English-speaking religion the dis- tinction, so vital to higher thinking in every field, between " ideas " and " conceptions." The very richness of reality and meaning in the former is shown by the latters' inability to express them save by progressive approximation, and that mainly by a combination of analogies. Hence change hi form is inevitable in theology, and that for positive as well as negative reasons, in virtue of the Divine nature of the treasure in earthly vessels of the intellect. Coleridge's type of thought, which changed the balance between the external " proofs " of Christi- anity and its internal and subjective appreciation by religious faith or immediate intuition, lived on in men like Erskine of Linlathen, M'Leod Campbell, Bushnell, F. W. Robertson, Martineau, and above all F. D. Maurice. Of course it had representatives also in the land of Schleiermacher and Jacobi, as well as in Western Europe at large. Among the Germans there was an influential school of " Mediating theology " which sought to harmonise the positive interests alike of Confessionalists and Rationalists. To it belonged men like Rothe (1799-1867) and Dorner (1809-84), the latter of whom had a strong strain of the more positive type of Hegelianism, as had also certain Roman Catholics, such as J. A. Mohler. Equally alive to the vital relation between religion and ethics, the Gospel and the 'conscience, was the Swiss thinker Alexander Vinet (1797-1847), who left an abiding mark on French-speaking Protestantism. A man with a religious experience akin to that of Pascal, and like him finding the 584 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY [PARTY. grand proof of Christianity in its meeting the " misery " of human nature, divided against itself by the voice of conscience, he presented the religion of the " twice-born " to the attention of thoughtful and cultured men in much the same human and elevated way as Schleiermacher had done a genera- tion before. As rooted in conscience conceived as Divine authority immediately revealed in the human soul, and challenging its spontaneous homage, Christianity was to Vinet the religion par excellence of moral individuality, and therefore of a faith autonomous, as regards external or human authority, in virtue of its very submission to the Divine Voice within as supreme. This made all historical media of external revelation, whether Bible or Church doctrine, ultimately relative to authentication within the conscience. Such thought, at once primitive in its emphasis and modern in its psychological justification, has gradually become determinative of progressive Evan- gelical theology in all lands. Apart from Vinet's special school, the tendency found most constructive expression in J. H. Frank of Erlangen. His Christian Certainty and Christian 'Truth built theology upon the Christian experience of moral regeneration, as taking us to the very roots of immediate spiritual consciousness, where, if any- where, the objective and subjective factors in human life, the Divine and the human, must be most intimately and therefore really revealed. Starting from such ideas as are necessarily implied in this central experience of the specific Christian consciousness, face to face with Christ as conditioning it, he made them the nucleus around which and controlled by which the rest of Christian thought CHAP, iv.] ROMAN CATHOLIC THEOLOGY 585 stood in concentric circles of importance and validity. The general effect was to distinguish with more method than before between the primary and secondary elements hi Christian belief, the " essentials " and " non-essentials,-" which many have felt, especially since the Reformation, to need discrimination Jboth in theory and practice in view of the broad facts of Christian unity amid diversity. Here the modern note is the experimental criterion, that of organic relation to really saving faith, rather than the speculative test of orthodox metaphysics as to the nature of God and of His Christ, or the Five Points of Calvinism. Thus a new definition of the Essence of Christianity underlies the modern emphasis and classification of doctrines : and this has more and more become the central problem among Christians. But to all such recognition of the subjective standpoint or the individual conscience official Catholicism took up a non possumus attitude. Not only did it uphold the traditional dogmas in an unbending spirit, but in 1854 it promulgated the fresh dogma that the Virgin Mary was from her conception free from original sin a doctrine which many great Catholic doctors had rejected. Pius IX, also, largely under Jesuit influence, issued in 1864 a famous Syllabus against the main tendencies of modern thought. Finally, the method of official Authority was consolidated by a dogma of yet wider scope, when in 1870 the Vatican Council defined Papal Infallibility as "of Faith " a dogma which challenged both history and the prophetic and ethical view of the conditions of revelation. Its first effect was a fresh schism in the Papal communion, through the extrusion of Prof. Dollinger and " the 586 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY [PART v. Old Catholics," consisting mainly of scholarly and cultured German-speaking Romanists. In England the trend of liberal Christianity appeared most influentially in Maurice. While more Protestant than Catholic in his emphasis on the Word that reaches the soul as revelation, rather than on the Sacraments which convey grace more externally, Maurice felt sympathy with the historical Christian past, and so did all justice consistent with his principles to its symbolic forms, whether dogmatic, sacramental, or liturgic, and to the Church idea as expressive of the social and corporate aspects of human life. Thus he was able, along with Westcott, to leaven with more philosophic ideas the Anglo-Catholic movement, as appeared from Lux Mundi, Studies in the Religion of the Incarnation, in which leading thinkers of its second generation denned their working faith. Here we find traces of the new scientific results and of the literary and historical criticism of the Bible, treated " like ariy other book," which had created such an outcry against Essays and Reviews a quarter of a century earlier. So penetrating and well- established were the principles of scientific and historical study which had silently been making their way into theology from other fields. There is no need to describe the process by which the methods and leading conceptions of Physical Science developed during the century, especially from about 1860, when Evolution in its Darwinian form laid hold upon thoughtful minds. But the growth of the historic spirit and method, by which new accuracy and objectivity have come into the study of man's past, including its religious aspects, is a less familiar story. History, like physical CHAP, iv.] HISTORICAL SCIENCE 587 science, had been slowly coming to its own as a serious element in human culture during the eighteenth century. Naturally it was influenced by philosophic presuppositions, being rationalist hi temper with Gibbon, and romantic in the period after the French Revolution. Then came a period when the Hegelian philosophy of history dominated history, and especially religious history, and with good reason ; for living ideas are the life-blood of history, as of individual experience. But the Hegelian reading of history tended to one-sidedness and obsession by fixed ideas. So was it with Strauss' mythical theory of the Gospels in his Life of Jesus, and Baur's " tendency " criticism of the New Testament writings as a whole. Much of the historical and literary criticism of Baur and the Tubingen School has been set aside or modified by later and more historical, because more inductive, research. The restrained and objective method of a Ranke, a Gardiner, an Acton, and many another, has gradually passed into ecclesiastical history in all circles, whether traditional or critical. The true historic sense, which sees facts in then- own relative context one largely different from our own issues in relative and thereby juster judgments. On the other hand, the function of personality as more than a vehicle of " tendency " ideas, and as endowed with a certain power of free and antecedently undeterminable initiative, has gained fuller recognition. But Baur's School did much to define the real problems of Early Christianity, and contributed also to their solution. It largely created historical, as distinct from dogmatic, theology. This is a distinction of immense moment both for a just 588 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY [PARTY. study of the Church's doctrinal past and for mutual understanding among Christians, by bringing out the relative and developmental rather than absolute values of the points on which they differ. In par- ticular it gave a more vital and experimental meaning to the Pauline theology, and to the Person of Christ as the centre and secret of His religion. Lessing had distinguished " the religion of Christ," that which He as a man. lived by, and "the Christian religion," in which He is an object of worship. The former he saw in the Synoptic Gospels, the latter in the rest of the New Testament. The Hegelian view of Christ as the embodiment of the idea of Divine incarnation in humanity the true ideal destiny of mankind at least transcended this antithesis and raised the problem of Christology in a new and far-reaching manner. For this the way was prepared by the less deistic conception of God, as also immanent in man. In such a Christ- ology the psychology of the moral consciousness counted for more than heretofore, resulting in new emphasis on the human holiness of Jesus, as that in which He was at once akin to and yet distinct from other men. Towards the close of the century Christian thought was increasingly concerned with men's social and economic conditions, as affecting both the individual and society at large. Such concern was due, on the one hand, to the slow working of the idea of human equality which came to passionate expression in the French Revolution though followed by conservative reaction in all countries and, on the other, to the new social and industrial results of the factory system and the general growth of com- CHAP, iv.] SOCIAL CONCERN 589 petitive conditions in the economic world. Burns' poetry, with its " A man's a man for a' that," struck a genuinely human chord which found some response in all ranks of society. But while the cause of political liberty and equality made on the whole steady though uneven progress, especially in Britain, real equality of opportunity and fraternity were hindered by the operation of economic laws un- controlled by an enlightened social conscience and the legislation needful in the interests alike of humanity and of the common good. In England Chartism and Carlyle's Latter Day Pamphlets helped to open men's eyes. In certain Christian circles in particular the evil due to the drifting apart of labour and capital, with loss of local contact and the sympathy which depends on personal intercourse, was realised, and its economic causes and social effects taken seriously to heart. The Christian Socialists of the middle of the century did a good deal to arouse the Christian conscience and bring together, especially in the quest of know- ledge, working-men and those in other classes most alive to their aspirations. Trade Unionism too began to make itself felt. But the general attitude of Individualism, alike in religion and politics, retarded progress towards an all-round grappling with the social problem on any adequate scale, until quite the close of the century. To this we shall return in our final chapter. CHAPTER V THE PRESENT SITUATION "A new world dawns, transcending the merely natural domain the world, namely, of the spiritual life." EUCKEN. " In essentials unity, in non-essentials liberty, in either charity." LOOKING back over the century since 1815, one feels that the chief ideas now directing thought were already present in germ to the great thinkers at its beginning ; but they have at length leavened educated thought at large, yet in a form influenced by ideas and methods which emerged in more special fields of knowledge. Now as then, the master-idea, giving unity and continuity amid all diversity, is Development. But emphasis to-day falls, far more than then, on the process as an evolution in things themselves rather than in and for Mind. It is on this more concrete side, as approached by the historian and the student of the physical and social sciences, that the idea of development possesses our generation as an instinct of thought. This is due chiefly to Physical Science, which has helped to make Historical Science increasingly rigorous in spirit and method, but has also touched the popular imagination and brought home to the average man, as nothing else could do, the idea of a reign of Law and the method of gradual evolution. It has made men realise as never before the natural - 590 CHAP, v.] RITSCHLIAN THEOLOGY 591 istic and mechanical aspects of life, which condition the action of personality, and seem often to reduce it to the position of a mere animated link in a chain of causation in which matter and force are the real ultimates. Thus the rivalry between the scientific and the religious view of the world, which emerged in the Renaissance, has become a standing element in modern thought ; and the problem of their reconciliation has growingly occupied those who feel the indefeasible reality and appeal of both the world of things ruled by quasi-mechanical necessity, and the world of persons swayed by conscious ideals and boundless aspirations. The most influential of recent re-interpretations of Christianity in correspondence with the modern view of the world was that of Ritschl (1822-88). Arising, as it did, when its author was professor at Gottingen in 1864-74, it bears traces of a period of criticism and intellectual difficulty. It shows both recoil from Hegelian speculative metaphysics and a desire to conform theology to the scientific instinct for reality as known to and verified by broad human experience. Discarding meta- physics as not proper to religion, Ritschl concen- trated attention upon the soul's religious reaction to things and its attitude to life. These yield judgments as to value, in relation to the Supreme Good, and particularly spiritual peace and victory over the world so far as alien to the moral and religious ideal. Thus he developed Schleiermacher's tendency, but with a sharper ethical emphasis, also with less regard for other aspects of religious feeling and the intuitive ideas within it. Further, in recoil from pietism on its sentimental and imaginative 592 THE PRESENT SITUATION [PART v. side, he subordinated individual experience more rigorously to the two objective standards of true religious judgments which his great predecessor had recognised. These were the personal religion of Jesus and the consciousness of the Christian com- munity as possessed of a corporate religious mind, the Church of loyal souls rather than of official dogmas. The two were, indeed, closely related, in that the unique validity of the former was con- firmed by the universal moral experience of the latter. But while Ritschl's emphasis on revelation, as in this sense historical and objective, was whole- some as a check on undue subjectivity in the " mysticism " which was his bug-bear, it was really arbitrary in that it isolated specific Christian experi- ence from religion at large, and allowed it alone to rank as revelation. The growing comparative study of religions has made such a position impossible, apart from its philosophic agnosticism as to the truths once thought to constitute " Natural religion " God, the soul, and its destiny. These are really presupposed as valid, in that it is by appeal to them as latent in the religious consciousness that Christian revelation is recognisable as true and commanding, became their fulfilment. This holds especially of the organic relation between Christianity and what is most akin to it, Old Testament religion. Ritschl's points of positive emphasis were marked by religious insight ; but his negations were often one-sided and arbitrary. Among the former was his dogmatic method. This starts from the known, as the experienced, and advances towards the Unknown, though he stops prematurely in his ideal construction. His great work is entitled " The Christian Doctrine of Justification and Reconcilia- CHAP, v.] ITS HISTORICAL FORM 593 tion " ; and all is grouped round these as facts in the soul, alike of the individual and the Christian community in history, facts which have far-reach- ing implications. Thus, like some other sciences, Christian theology begins with man in certain relations. " It notes the fact that men, when awakened, usually have the sense of not being in harmony with the life of the universe. ... It notes the fact that many men have had the consciousness of progressive restoration of that harmony." Inquir- ing as to the process, " it discovers that the power " by which it comes about " is a personal one. Men have believed that this power has been exerted over them ... by one Jesus, whom they call Saviour. They have believed that it was God who through Jesus saved them. Jesus' consciousness thus became to them a revelation of God. The thought leads on to the consideration of that which a saved man does, or ought to do, in the life of the world and among his fellows ; of the institution in which this attitude of mind is cherished ; and of the sum total of human institutions and relations of which the saved life should be the inward force. There is room even for . . . the little that we know of anything beyond this life," lived here and now as part of an eternal order, the Kingdom of God. Such is the Ritschlian line of thought. 1 It confines the Christian doctrine of salvation to its experimental aspects, yet as wrought by God through the power of Christ's personality : it also gives an emphasis and significance to the social idea of the Kingdom of God new to modern theology. Here we are reminded of the fidelity with which Ritschl strives 1 Prof. E. C. Moore, History of Christian Thought since Kant, p. 96. 2P 594 THE PRESENT SITUATION [PART v. to reproduce the Christian revelation as historically given in Christ as at once its form and content. " He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father " might be taken as the motto of his system. Of course he distinguishes the essence of that revelation from the local and temporal forms of conception, scientific and otherwise, in which it was necessarily couched. Similarly in the witness of the Community through the centuries, a soul of religious meaning must be distinguished from the body of changing conceptions and institutions in which it has found expression. But by what test is such discrimination to be made ? Broadly speaking, only one valid answer is possible, namely Christian experience itself, whether in the individual or the community. " The Spirit witnesses with our spirit." " Ye have an unction from the Holy One and know all things " essential : " the spiritual man judgeth all things." Such knowledge of the vitally religious does not extend to the intellectual or conceptual defini- tion of dogma, but it does cover the essentials of personal religion. Thus Ritschl gave a new and more accurate meaning to the maxim " Securus judicat orbis terrarum " : final religious assurance belongs to the universal Christian experience, the implicit conviction common to loyal disciples of Christ touching the life-giving element in His personal revelation of God and His Kingdom among men. Nor is such assurance a matter of numbers, but is valid in a single authentic individual experi- ence. The ground of this is already stated in the Fourth Gospel, where personal recognition of the " voice " of God in the soul is treated by Christ as the ultimate ground of certitude as to His own essential message or " word." CHAP, v.] CATHOLIC "MODERNISM" 595 When we further ask touching the adequacy of the conceptions under which even Christ's personal message was historically given, and still more the Church's intellectual interpretation of it, we reach a problem which has gradually become the centre of theological thought. Harnack's Essence of Christianity in particular has stimulated discussion, now made more radical by the emergence about the same time of the eschatological problem, viz., the degree to which Jesus' teaching was in the categories and time-conceptions of Jewish Apoc- alyptic, which are confessedly relative and not of the permanent essence of Christianity. Recoil against Harnack's Liberal Protestant Christianity helped to fix the form assumed by the so-called " Modernist " movement within Roman Catholic thought, represented first and foremost by Loisy. Insisting strongly on the eschatological and apocalyptic aspects of Christ's teaching in the Gospels, Loisy argued that the " historical Jesus " was no final religious authority, but was to be supplemented and practically superseded for Christian faith by the development of doctrine in the Church, issuing in the Christ of the Catholic creeds. Loisy's development, however, to a position outside Catholicism, not to say all historic Christianity, showed the true logic of his thought. Indeed, Catholicism as a system of supernatural ecclesiastical authority, transmitted from Christ by commission to Apostles, and particularly to Peter, is really more dependent on the exactitude of the New Testa- ment records than Protestantism. Be this as it may, Modernism in a more moderate form than Loisy's has in the last decade continued to work as a leaven in Catholicism in Germany, France, and 596 THE PRESENT SITUATION [PART v. Italy, as well as in England, where the biologist St George Mivart and Father Tyrrell suffered excommunication. Recently it has been driven under the surface by an encyclical of Pius X. ; but the tendency still exists, a striking proof of the need for radical revision of traditional Christian conceptions in the light of modern knowledge and changed views as to the relations of God and man. While Ritschlianism and Catholic Modernism are the most marked movements in this direction, they are by no means the only ones ; nor is either perhaps the most important. For there has been a more central movement in Christian thought, continuous with the spiritual philosophy of Coleridge and the poetry of Tennyson and Browning in England, and with like tendencies elsewhere. It has lain deeper than all ecclesiastical distinctions ; developing lines of thought common to Maurice, Horace Bush- nell, and R. W. Church, more than those of any other three theologians of the generation preceding; but relating its thinking with growing thoroughness to the assured findings of the historic spirit, both critical and ideal. Its distinctive note is firm assertion of personality and moral freedom alike in man and God the cosmic significance of human or finite personality being dependent on the reality and action of the Divine or absolute and self-suffic- ing type. For such thinkers personality in God is implied by the intrinsic necessities of constructive thought working on our most human experiences, viewed as most akin to the inmost nature of reality, because explanatory of most and also most able to control and mould the objective world about us. Above all, moral personality is involved in the idea of God reflected in Christ's person and conscious- CHAP, v.] A " CENTRAL " THEOLOGY 597 ness. Thus supreme emphasis falls on the historic Christ, as One whose spirit reigns in nineteen centuries of human history, especially as Redeemer from sin and mediator of assured relations with God, in the experience of all Christians. This appears alike in the title and general treatment of the book perhaps most typical of the trend of constructive theology from 1880 to 1900, Fairbairn's Place of Christ in Modern Theology. Development as the mode of the Divine working both in Nature and human life is frankly recognised, but as directed by Mind in God and qualified by a real, though con- ditioned, power hi man of self-determination through ideals. Recognition of the severely limited nature of effective liberty of choice, together with its boundless capacity for growth especially when consciously surrendered to the initiative of the Divine Source of all upward aspiration, and above all to the Grace of God in Christ is characteristic of the realism of recent Christian thought. It marks Temple's Bampton Lectures on the " Relations of Religion and Science " (1886), and has been yet further brought home to many by the growing preoccupation with social phenomena. The above mode of thought may be described as Personal Idealism, 1 as distinct from the Pragmatism which views human life and progress as due to a blind and instinctive type of will to realise itself in action. As regards reasoned justification of a knowledge of God, and of God as personal, it tends to go beyond Schleiermacher and Ritschl. The argument that the validity of the ideal elements converging in human experience, and there unified 1 Not used in the same sense as in a recent volume of essays so styled. 598 THE PRESENT SITUATION [PART v. in the degree to which personality is developed, presupposes their similar unity, though in incon- ceivably higher form, in the Divine or Absolute Life revealed in the Universe, has great metaphysical force, and has recently found striking expression in Von'Hugel's Eternal Life. Not less, impressive, however, for the ethical consciousness, is a fresh form given to the argument from Conscience on Kantian lines, which, starting from Vinet's emphasis oh the sovereign tone in which Duty speaks to un- spoiled souls, has found a yet more psychological expression. In particular Gaston Frommel, late Professor in Geneva (^ 1906), has directed atten- tion to the sense of duty as an experience stamped (imposee), as it were, upon human nature with an immediacy, and evoking an inevitable homage to its authority, analogous as regards objectivity to the experience of ordinary sense-perception, which is the basis of belief in external reality generally. Here we have Schleiermacher's sense of " absolute dependence " in its most religious form, as applied to the experience of moral obligation. " I made no vows, but vows Were then made for me : bond unknown to me Was given, that I should be, else sinning greatly, A dedicated spirit." The preoccupation of the Christian consciousness with what is known as the Social Problem is most characteristic of our time. It was fostered hi England and the United States by the rise towards the close of last century of Social Settlements in great cities, a movement in which universities led the way. Further, the results of trained study of social conditions began to appear in books, of which CHAP, v.] CHRISTIAN SOCIALISM 599 Charles Booth's Life and Labour in East London was the chief ; and in a more popular way the Social Work of the Salvation Army, outlined in General Booth's In Darkest England, brought the facts, so shameful to a nominally Christian civilisation, home to the public mind and heart. The subject began to command the attention of the press ; and a politician's phrase, " We are all Socialists now," has a certain meaning, though the economic methods by which Socialism proper aims at the gradual equalising of opportunity are far from being generally understood or accepted. Christian Socialism about 1900 was very different in outlook from that of 1860, even as was the Labour movement, soon to give birth to the Labour Party in politics ; definitely Socialist principles, too, were more and more gaining a hold in various quarters. A social philosophy which emphasised the Common Good, and collective control as the means of securing it through complete organisation of national resources, both material and human a method involving large limitations of the in- dividual's power to use persons as mere means to his own ends this was now spreading from many centres of influence. Such a view of human society has inherent affinities with the Christian idea of the Kingdom of God. But this ideal had largely failed to rule the economic and social life even of sincere Christians, owing partly to defective apprehension of Christian principles, and partly to the alien principles of the business world as such, viewed as a world apart, to which ordinary standards of humanity and honour were necessarily inapplicable. There was a dualism in most Christian minds between religious and business conceptions and methods, 600 THE PRESENT SITUATION [PART v. summed up in what Was felt to be the conclusive maxim " Business is business." And, in fact, the individual is terribly impotent in a system of com- petition " free " only for him who has power both to resist and to exert economic pressure by capital or combination, so as to carry out his own ideals as he would. Behind all, too, there is at work a non-Christian conception, worldly, or at least legal and negative, in nature touching property as held by absolute right on an individual basis, rather than as relative to the good of society as a common- weal. That rights and duties are here, as in all relations between persons, correlatives ; that the true wealth of a body politic consists in the quality of the persons composing it, to which the use of all forms of property should be subservient : and that these principles are direct corollaries of the Christian view of God and man all this has only recently been dawning upon the common Christian conscious- ness with any clearness. 1 Here once more the idea of personality, as that in which the Divine image is to be reproduced, appears as governing the Christian view of life. And by its ability to make this idea prevail in all social relations, including the econ- omic, will Christianity's claim to be specially of God largely stand or fall for this and coming generations. It is evident from every side, both in theory and practice, that the idea of Personality, which has recently received enlargement and deepening by 1 Evidence of the degree to which such principles, which under- lie the Christian doctrine that life, with all its goods and powers, is a "stewardship 5 ' for God's uses among men, are rooted in Christian thought throughout the centuries, may be found in Property, Its Duties and Sights (Macmillan, 2nd Ed., 1915). CHAP, v.] PERSONALITY : CHRISTOLOGY 601 being viewed not in abstract, individual isolation, but as developed in and by the stimulus of a personal environment, is ultimate for religion. As men think of the one, so in the long run they think of the other, in assigning to each its place in the Universe. Naturalism or supernaturalism, in one's attitude to both, is the only choice possible. As Eucken puts it, " The struggle for man's spiritual self-preservation must end in one of two ways : either his nature will become stronger and richer, or he will be reduced to the desperate course of abandoning all his ideals " through regarding his ideal nature as a by-product of his physical organism and its life. The nature of the microcosm, man, taken seriously, means ultimately a kindred source for the macrocosm. Personality as realised in an order of holy love is the subject-matter of the Kingdom of God, which is the final goal of human life on earth, under whatever time and space forms it may be conceived. Even the apocalyptic conception of the mode of the Kingdom's " coming," which the Fourth Gospel largely supersedes, has its constantly repeated fulfilment in historical crises at which the Divine order and action break forth in the human, through the receptivity and consequent power of inspired persons. So a new stage of progress on a fresh level is made possible for humanity at large. The primary medium of such gradual realisation of God's super- natural Kingdom is the Church, as the community of persons in vital religious union with Christ, " the image of God " in man, the prototype and Head of a humanity regenerated to world-transcending or " eternal " life. The climax and final confirmation of the relations of the natural and supei natural orders as meeting 602 THE PRESENT SITUATION [PART v. and blending in man, is Christ. Christology is typical of the whole religious view of any stage of Christianity. And to-day there is a strong convergence of thought upon a theory which should transcend the dualism of the " two natures " Christology, on its traditional basis of abstract Greek metaphysics rather than the psychology of personality, which the- modern subjective emphasis has brought to light. For a time this trend took the form of " Kenotic " theories, as though the fully human and historically conditioned conscious- ness of Jesus were due to a prior self -emptying by one mode or form (" person ") of the triune God, as regards actual possession of certain of His proper metaphysical attributes (e.g. omnipotence, omni- presence, omniscience), in order to become the nucleus of the personality of Christ. Latterly, however, this has been felt to involve more difficulties than it promised to resolve ; and theories have taken more truly psychological lines, based on Christ's actual consciousness. Some incline to emphasise the Divine element, some the human, as the proper seat or centre of the personality in " the one Christ" as did the Apollinarian or Cyrillian Christology, on the one hand, and the Nestorian on the other. But, unlike ancient attempts to meet the Evangelic facts by a theory of concealment or voluntary hold- ing in abeyance of full Divinity actually present in Christ's self -consciousness, most agree that the limita- tions to be accounted for were real and not merely apparent. Thereby the likeness of the Saviour to His " brethren " whom He sanctifies and brings to the glory of their true destiny, " the image of God," is made more real and the moral power of His sinless example enhanced. " The human in Him is divine. CHAP, v.] SOME RULING IDEAS 603 When He is most truly human (Son of Man), then He is most truly God." This would have seemed to the fourth and fifth centuries sheer paradox. But most moderns could accept, as far as it goes, this conception of the homogeneity of personality in God and man. At the same time the idea of the Holy Spirit as real medium of the Divine both in " the man Christ Jesus " and in Christians in their case under forms determined by His historic manifestation as Son of Man and Son of God is coming to its full rights. 1 This survey of the perspective in which Christianity presents itself to the modern mind to-day, as compared with the past, illustrates several ideas which help to harmonise differences between the ancient and modern types of the Christian con- sciousness. First, the distinction between an Idea and the various Conceptions in which it clothes itself in history as expounded for instance in Carlyle's Sartor Resartus is a vital one for construc- tive thought. It lifts us above the intellectualism of an exaggerated emphasis on doctrinal differences, and allows attention to dwell on the common attitude of soul to God in Christ, and on life or " fruit " as test of the real operation of Christian ideas in loyal believing souls. Next, the relativity of formal doctrine ; which lays stress on varying aspects of the same idea, proper to various species of the Christian type each witnessing to some element in the rich 1 In both of these connections the later work of Dr R. C. Moberly, a contributor to Lux Mundi, is significant ; while of the whole present theological development a volume of essays by a younger generation of Oxford Churchmen, entitled ' ' Foundations '' (1912), affords constant illustration. 604 THE PRESENT SITUATION [PART v. fulness of final or absolute truth. Finally, such differences witness also to the many-sidedness of human subjectivity as receptive of the truth given in Christian experience. Native gifts of vision and temperament determine the line of natural approach for men, as individuals and as grouped by selective affinity in corporate fellowship. It is a special task of Christians to-day to accept with reverent humility the practical issues of such limited aptitudes, not blaming each other for seeing from different angles and obeying what each sees, and not breaking Christian unity of spirit by refusing mutual Christian recognition and communion pending the reduction of specific differences. Here we touch on urgent problems of the hour. For many minds certain conceptions and institutional forms expressive of the Church idea are essential to its assured realisation, and so to true unity. One must sadly admit in the light of the recent past, as well as of the long persistence of the exclusive, often mutually exclusive, attitude of the several forms of " Catholicism " Roman, Orthodox, and also Anglican that divergent conceptions of " Apostolic " orthodoxy and authority, of orders, and, above all, of valid Sacraments, 1 are likely long to keep the bulk of Christians apart for conscientious reasons. Nor do we see any way round the difficulty on such objective rather than experimental criteria of fellow- ship. Yet the tide is setting towards Reunion, 1 It is strange that even a large-hearted Roman Catholic like Baron Von Hugel fails to see that what Protestants here deny is not that the spiritual is mediated to the soul by aid of material symbols, but that it is conveyed to ' l body and soul " literally through material elements as actual vehicles, and that in the Mass it is "body" and not only spirit that is so transmitted. CHAP, v.] CHRISTIAN UNITY 605 first in spirit, and then in tentative and partial forms of Christian comity, especially on the Mission Field. In this sphere of pioneer work, often equalling in heroic faith that of Apostolic days, perhaps the most vital and truly supernatural energies of the Church have appeared afresh during more than a century, and in growing volume during the present generation. The Edinburgh Missionary Conference in 1910 is a land-mark in modern Christianity, and not least as a foretaste of the reflex influence missionary effort is likely to exercise on home prob- lems, including unity and co-operation. It brought to the front, too, the importance of a common vital or missionary definition of Christianity that is, of the essential Gospel on which Christian faith and life as such can be built so as to be corporately recognisable by those differing in points of ecclesi- astical doctrine and order, which bulk largely in the traditions of Western Christendom. Such definition l is also of moment both for movements towards reunion and for a common testimony to those out- side all Churches, many of whom do not recognise that a common Christianity exists, or are at least unimpressed by it in its unacknowledged form. Besides the intrinsic forces making for Christian unity, there from outside is the steady pressure of the overwhelming social tasks which Christians must essay in common, if these are to be achieved at all adequately. Many of the present barriers 1 This in its theological bearings, especially on the kind of Authority primarily that of intrinsic appeal to the soul which should belong to and determine the nature of a truly religious "Rule of Faith," is brought out in Prof. W. P. Paterson's note- worthy work under that title. 606 THE PRESENT SITUATION [PART v. are crumbling 'at the touch of the historic spirit, and of the growing sense of relative values, which it brings to mind and conscience. Possibly the process will be hastened by the present " shaking of things which can be removed, as of things made " by men's hands ; and in the new world after the War new ecclesiastical values may appear. Meantime a tend- ency towards growing mutual sympathy between all Christian types exists. A symptom of this may be seen in The Constructive Review, an inter- national and interdenominational medium for the appreciation of the common Christian heritage, but also of the special testimony which each communion feels committed to its charge, in a spirit of mutual respect for conscience and of true charity. It is the first case of such fellowship in thought between mem- bers of all Christian communions, and may be the harbinger of yet more practical tentatives for a com- mon Christian testimony by the Church universal to the world. Having come really to trust and love one another, in spite of not seeing eye to eye, Christians would then be in a position to say with new assurance and impressiveness to others, " There is a Kingdom of God among men : Christ is its one and all -sufficient Head : Christianity in history does not nullify itself." INDEX ABELAKD, 432 et seq. Absolutism, 128 et seqq., 309, 459 et seqq., 486 Adiaphora, 505, 506 Adrian IV, Pope, 412 Adrian VI, Pope, 496 Agobard of Lyons, 195 Albertus Magnus, 435, 440, 449, 456 Alexander III, Pope, 417 Alexander V, Pope, 469 Ambrose of Milan, 269, 405, 428 Ambrosiaster, 404, 405 Anabaptism, 501, 509, 524 et seq., 521 Anglicanism, 504, 506 et seqq. Ahselm, 430, 431, 432, 433, 437 Apollinaris, 272, 273, 274, 278, 440 Apollonius of Rome, 126 Apollonius of Tyana, 103 Apostles' Creed, 214 et seqq. Apostolic office, 292 et seq. " Apostolic Succession," 306 et seqq. Aquinas, St Thomas, 435, 449, 463 Arianism, 263 et seq., 268 Arius, 263 Aries, Synod of, 85 Arminius, 517 Athanasian Creed, 279 et seq. Athanasius, St, 104, 266 ; On the Incarnation of the Divine Word, 267, 272 Athenagoras, 99 Atonement, The, 288, 340, 429 et seqq., 459, 488, 519 Augsburg, Confession of, 504 Augsburg, Diet of, 490 Augsburg, Peace of, 490, 491, 501 Augustine St, 55, 102, 110, 142, 193, 194, 195, 245 et seq., 279, 282, 284, 285, 286, 341, 355, 392, 422 et seqq., 439 footnote, 457, 512 Augustinianism, 285 et seqq., 421 et seqq., 449, 450, 457, 458, 460, 462, 489, 503 Authority, 527 et seq., 532 ; see Bible, Church, Papacy, Spirit, Word. BACON, LORD, 533 Bacon, Roger, 435 footnote Bajus, 517 Bale, Council of, 470 Balthazar Cossa, see John XXIII Baptism, 45-46, 149 ; early Catholic, 158-160, 193 et seq. ; Baptismal creed, 210 et seqq. Barbarossa (Emperor Frederick I), 417 " Barnabas, Epistle of," 146 Basil, 139, 141, 269, 270, 274 footnote, 355 Baur, F. C., 587 Berkeley, George, 536, 570 Bible, Use of the, 344 et seq., 391, 513, 524, 532, 582 Boehme, Jacob, 523 Boniface VIII, Pope, 396, 413, 437, 467 Book of Discipline (John Knox), 501 Booth, Charles, 598 Brown, Robert (Congregational- ist), 509 Bruno, Giordano, 531 Bucer, 492 Bullinger, 492 Burchard, Bishop of Worms, 395 Burke, Edmund, 556, 566 Bushnell, Horace, 583, 596 Butler, Bishop, 540 CALLISTUS, BISHOP, 128, 130, 335 footnote Calthulfus, 404 607 608 CHRISTIANITY IN HISTORY Calvin, 492 et seq., 504, 511 etseqq., 537 Campbell, M'Leod, 583 Candide (Voltaire), 543 Canon Law, 390 et seqq. Caraffa (afterwards Paul IV), 496, 497 Carlyle, Thomas, 27, 589, 603 Catholicism; Ancient, Pt. II., ch. viii., passim ; Mediaeval, Pt. III., ch. vi. ; Modern, 505, 518, 604 Celsus, 100 Chalcedon, Council of, 270, 273, 276,279,282 Charismatic Idea, The, 290, 294 etseq.,2Ql, 308 Charlemagne, 385 Charles, Dr R. H., 8 Charles V, Emperor, 490, 494 Chateaubriand, 554, 561 Christian Year (Keble), 562 Christology, 68 et seqq., Pt. II., ch. v.-vi., passim, 440, 511, 519 footnote, 597, 602 et seq. ; two main types of, 221, 224 Chrysostom, John, 263 Church, Dean, 596 Church, The, Pt. IL, ch. viii., 463 et seqq., 480, 503 et seqq., 513, 564, 578, 586, 592, 594, 604 et seq. City of God, The (St Augustine), 110 Claudius of Turin, 195 Clement V, Pope, 467 Clement VII, Pope, 468 Clement of Alexandria, 76, 99, 103, 165, 186 footnote, 243, 246 et seq. Clement of Rome, 80, 116, 132, 157, 229 Clement, Second Epistle of, 226, 314 Coleridge, 581 et seq. Colonna, Cardinal, see Martin V, Pope Columbus, Christopher, 531 Commodus, Emperor, 86 Comte, 571 Conceptualism, 435 Congregationalism, 304 et seq., 509 Constance, Council of, 470, 484 Constantine, Emperor, 105 etseq. ; death-bed baptism, 326 Constantinople, Council of, 269, 273 Consubstantiation, 446 Contarini, Cardinal, 495, 496, 497 Contrat Social (Rousseau), 568 footnote Copernicus, 531 Cranmer, Thomas, 505 Creed, Apostles', 214 et seq. ; " Athanasian," 279 et seq. ; Baptismal, 210 et seqq. ; Caesarean, 264 et seq. ; Chalce- donian, 273, 276, 278 ; Nicene, 264 et seqq. 9 270 et seq. Cyprian, St, 130, 131, 132, 133, 165, 171, 172, 183, 191, 244, 303 footnote, 306, 307, 314 ; on the Church, 315-316; and Catholic- ism, 317 et seq., 330, 337, 504, 508; on the people's consent, 371 et seq. Cyril of Alexandria, 174, 275-278 Cyril of Jerusalem, 186, 270, 281 DAMIAN, PETER, 443 Dante, 463, 466 Decretals, 391 et seqq. ; the False, 387 et seq., 532 Defoe, Daniel, 555 Deism, 537 et seq. De Sacramentis, 178, 180 De St Pierre, Bernardin, 544, 561 Descartes, 535 et seq. Deusdedit, Cardinal, 401 De Valdes, Juan, 496, 513 D'Holbach, Baron, 571 Didache, The, 45 footnote, 48, 49, 120, lib footnote, 295, 296, 299, 313 Didaskalia, 310, 312, 313, 321 Diderot, 571 Diocese, 366 et seqq. Diocletian, 86, 102 Diodorus of Tarsus, 274 footnote " Diognetus, Epistle to," 89, 94 Dionysius Exiguus, 394, 398 Dollinger, Professor, 585 Dorner, 583 Duns Scotus, 435, 449 et seq., 519 EBIONITES, THE, 67, 82, 219 et seq. Ecce Homo, 34 INDEX 609 Eccleaia, The,. 300 Eckhart, Meister, 451 Edward VI, King, 494 Elvira, Synod of, 85 Emile (Rousseau), 551 Ephesus, Council of, 273 Epiklesis, The, 177, 184 Episcopacy, 304 et seqq., 506 et seqq. Erskine (of Linlathen), 583 Essays and Reviews, 586 Essence of Christianity (Harnack), 595 Essenes, The, 4, 124 Ethics, Christian, 65, 115 et seqq., Pt. IL ch. ii. Eucharist, The, 46 et seqq., 79-80, 154, 161 ; early liturgies, 171 et seqq. ,311; doctrine of St Augus- tine, 424 et seq., 441 et seq. Eucken, 100, 535 footnote, 601 Eugenius IV, Pope, 470 Eusebius, 263, 264 Eutyches, 278, 283 " Evangelical " Christianity, 488, 546 et seq. Experience, Christian, 41, 154 et seq., 182 et seq., 224, 457, 488, 546, 578 et seq., 584, 592 et seqq. FAIRS AIRN, 287, 597 Faith, 14 et seqq., 49 et seq., 57, 62, 150, 193, 195, 204, 209, 339, 343, 486 et seq. ; Rule of Faith, 210 etseqq. Faust, 551 Fenelon, 543 Firmilian ; letter to Cyprian, 130 Fisher, G. P., 457 Florus Diaconus, 409 Fox, George, 523, 524 Francis, St, 463 Franciscans, The, 41 footnote Frank, J. H., 584 Frederick I, see Barbarossa Frederick the Great, 569 French Revolution, 555-556, 565 et seq., 569 Frommel, Gaston, 598 Funk, F. X., 479 GALILEO, 531 Gelasius I, Pope ; on Church principles, 406, 407 2Q Genie du Christianisme (Chateau- briand), 561 Gibbon, 83, 94 Gnostics, The, 71, 207, 236 God, Hebrew and Greek ideas of, 146 et seq. ; see Personality Goethe, 550 etseq., 577 Gottschalk, 428 Grace, 50, 62 et seq., 194, 284 et seqq., 455 et seqq., 515 et seqq. Gratian, Emperor, 269 Gratian, and his Decretum, 391- 392, 395, 396, 398, 401, 402 Greek Theology, 246 et seqq., 280 et seqq., 341 j Gregory VII, Emperor, see Hildebrand 1 Gregory IX, Pope, 396, 399 i Gregory XI, Pope, 468 Gregory XII, Pope, 469 ! Gregory XIII, Pope, 396 ' Gregory of Nazianzus, 327, 355 v Gregory of Nyssa, 186 footnote, 195, 281, 441 Gressmann, H., 22-23 footnote Grotius, Hugo, 519, 534 Grubb, Edward, 525 i Gwatkin, H. M., 106 HABSBTJRG, HOUSE OF, 483, 490 i Hall, Dr T. C., 499 Harnack, 87, 96, 104, 113, 132, 133, 186 footnote, 195, 423, 595 | Hebraism, 145 et seqq., Pt. II. passim Hell, 201 et seq. Hellenism, 145 et seqq., Pt. IL passim Hellenists, Jewish, 51 et seqq. Henry II, King of France, 493 Henry III, King of England, 413, 414 Henry IV, Emperor ; conflict with Gregory VII (Hildebrand), 415, 416 Henry IV, King of France, 493 Henry VIII, King, 494 Herbert, Lord, of Cherbury, 537 Hermas, 122-123, 126-127, 129, 133 footnote, 230, 231 Hilary of Poictiers, 269, 281, 282 Hildebert of Tours, 444, 447 610 CHRISTIANITY IN HISTORY Hildebrand (Pope Gregory VII), 401, 412 ; conflict with Henry IV, 415-416 Hillel, School of, 3 Hincmar of Rheims, 409, 410 footnote Hippolytus, 128, 213, 240, 249, 250, 252, 253, 308 ; Canons of, 310-311 Historical Method, 528 et seqq., 588 et seq., 590 History of the Doctrine of the Holy Eucharist (Darwell Stone), 444 Hobhouse, Canon, 107 footnote Honorius, 280 Hooker, Richard, 514, 534 Hort, Dr, 299-301 Hiigel, Baron von, 576 footnote, 598, 604 footnote Hugo of St Victor, 432, 455 foot- note Hugo, Victor, 554 Hume, David, 570 Hu3s, 476, 477, 478 IGNATIUS, ST, 47, 132; on the Eucharist, 161, 302, 303, 304, 306, 307, 314 Incarnation, The, 281 ; see Christology Individuality, Moral, 117, 345, 584 Indulgences, 459 et seqq. , 484 Inge, Dean, 69 Innocent III, Pope, 402, 417, 418 Innocent IV, Pope, 412 Intolerance, 106, 209, 342, 476, 493 et seq., 521 Irenaeus, 142, 163, 164, 165, 185, 199-e< seq., 245, 249, 281 Isidore of Seville, 443 Ivo, Bishop of Chartres, 395 JAMBS OF EDESSA, 174, 181 Jansen, Bishop of Ypres, 517 Jerome, St, 321, 428 Jesus Christ ; and Judaism, 1 et seq. ; and the Messianic tradi- tion, 12 et seq. ; use of title " Son of Man," 20 et seq. ; and the Mosaic Law, 34 et seqq. ; see Christology John XXII, Pope, 396 John XXIII. Pope, 469 John the Baptist, 8, 9, 10, 11, 15 John, St, Gospel of, 73 et seq. John the Scot, 421 Jonas of Orleans, 407 footnote, 411 footnote Jones, Rufus M., 522 footnote Judaism, 1 etseq. ; and Christianity, 34 et seqq., 51,291 etseq. Julian, Emperor, 108 Justification, 61 et seq., 343, 485 etseq., 511, 516 Justinian, Emperor, 280, 384 Justin Martyr, 99, 103, 157 ; on the Sacraments, 162, 163, 183 footnote, 185, 199; his Logos doctrine, 234, 235 et seqq. KANT, 536, 569, 570 et seq. Keble, John, 562 Kepler, 533 Kingdom of God, 28 et seqq., 593, 606 Knox, John, 501 LA BRTJYfeRE, 555 Lactantius, 119 Lamartine, 554 Last Supper, The, 18-19; see Eucharist Latin Theology, 246, 248, 281, 283 et seqq., 341 Law, the Jewish, and the Gospel, 50, 55 et seqq., 204 et seqq. Law, Natural and Positive, 391 et seqq. Law, William, 545, 546 Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity (Hooker), 534 Legalism, 56 et seqq., 130 et seq., 205 Leo III, Pope, 385, 408, 409 Leo X, Pope, 496 Leo the Great, 144, 329 Lessing, 565 Life and Labour in East London (Booth), 598 Life of Jesus (Strauss), 587 Lightfoot, Bishop, quoted, 313 Locke, John, 536, 569 Logos-idea, The, 98 et seqq., 163, 208, 237 et seq., 241, 287 et seq. Loisy, 595 Lollardy, 477, 509 INDEX 611 Lord's Prayer, The, 33-35 Lord's Supper, 48 footnote, 79 et seq., 492 Louis XIV, 543 Loyola, Ignatius, 497 Lucian of Antioch, Christology of, 262 Luther, 27, 436, 483, 484, 485 et seq., 512, 513 Lux Mundi, 586 MACEDONIUS, BISHOP OF CON- STANTINOPLE, 271 Maclean, Ancient Church Orders, 312 footnote. Maine, Sir H., 283, 420 Manichaeism, 102, 138 footnote Marcellus of Ancyra, 214, 268 Marcus Aurelius, 100 Marsilius of Padua, 468, 477 Martin, Bishop of Tours, 112 Martin V, Pope, 469 Martineau, James, 583 Mass, The, 178, 446, 453, 459, 510 Maurice, F. D., 583, 586, 596 Melanchthon, 487, 488, 489, 495 Merit, 457 et seqq. Messiah, The, Doctrine of, 6 et seq. , 39 et seq. Messianic Age, Pt. L, passim, 198 et seq. Methodius, 266 Michael, Emperor, 364 Milan, Edict of, 86, 105 Mill, John Stuart, 567 Millennium, 198 et seq., 238 Mithraism, 102 Mivart, St George, 596 Moberly, Dr R. C., 603/ootoofe Modalism, 249, 519 footnote " Modernism," 595 et seq. Mohler, J. A., 583 Molina, 517 Monarchianism, 249 et seq. Monks of the JFes<(Montalembert), 561 Monophysitism, 279, 280, 329 Monothelitism, 280 Montalembert, 561 Montanism, 129, 139, 324 Montefiore, C. G., 16 footnote, 54 footnote Montesquieu, 540, 559 Moore, Professor E. C., 593 Mosaic Law, 3, 4, 5, 34, 35, 56, 57, 58, 116 NASAB^IANS, THE, 4 Natural Theology, 529 footnote, 537 et seqq. " Natures " in Christ, 271 et seqq., 602 Neo-Platonism, 103, 137 footnote, 255, 421, 423 footnote, 427 Neri, Philip, 497, 498 Nero, 89 Nestorius, 266, 274, 275, 276, 277, 278 Newman, Cardinal, 562 Nicsea, Council of, 106 Nicene Creed, 264 Nicholas, Pope, 364 Nicholas of Cusa, 629 Noetus, Trial of, 311 Novatian, 252, 254, 314, 315, 317 On Truth as distinct from Revela- tion, probable, possible, and false (Lord Herbert of Cherbury), 538 Optatus of Milevis, 403, 404, 405 Opus Operatum, notion of, 337, 456 Origen, 99, 100, 103, 142, 165; and the Creed, 215, 248, 249, 252, 254 ; doctrine of the God- head, 256 et seqq., 264, 266, 279, 422 ; On First Principles, 259 Orosius, 110 Otho, Emperor, 413 PAPACY, Pt. IIL ch. iii., 532, 585, 592, 598 Pascal, 535 Paschasius Radbertus, 442 Paterson, W. P., 30, 605 footnote Pater, Walter, 136 Patrick, St, 112 Patripassianism, 249 Paul of Samosata (Bishop of Antioch), 255 ; Christology of, 261 Paul III, Pope, 496 Paul IV, Pope, see Caraffa Paul, St, 40, 41 ; and Baptism, 45 ; and the Eucharist, 48 ; and the Law, 54 et seq., 204 et seqq. ; his conversion, 61 ; his Gospel, 62-64, 65 et seq., 94 ; Christian 612 CHRISTIANITY IN HISTORY love, 119-120; doctrine of sal- vation, 205 et seqq. ; of ministry, 290 ; of Women in the Church, 295, 322; and Augustine, 422 et seq. Pelagianism, 139, 194, 428, 515 Pelagius, 427 Personality, 117, 189, 192, '219, 336, 340, 536, 596, 600 et seq. ; of God, 536, 578 et seq., 581, 596 et seq. Peter, St, 17, 53; his type of teaching, 202 et seqq. Peter the Lombard, 432, 439 foot- note, 463 Pharisaism, 3 et seq. Philo, 161, 255 Philosophy, Modern v. Ancient, 534 et seq., 569 et seq. Photinus, 268 Pius IX, Pope, 585 Pius X, Pope, 596 Place of Christ in Modern Theology (Fairbairn), 597 Pliny, letter to Trajan, 84, 89, 157 Plotinus, 103, 255 Polycarp, 242, 302 Porphyry, 103 Pole, Reginald, 496 Pomponazzi, Pietro, 529, 531, 539 Praetextatus, 109 Praxeas, 252 Presbyterianism, 304 et seq., 509, 610, 514 Presence, Real, 152 et seq., 155, 180,282,441 etseqq., 511 " Prophets," Christian, 294 et seqq. Protestantism, 505, 510, 511, 518 Psychology and Theology, 150, 152, 160, 216 et seqq., 224, 283 et seq., 598 QUAKERS, 41 footnote, 523 et seq., 543 RABBINISM, 3, 51, 55 et seqq. Radford, L. B., 260, 261 footnote Rashdall, H., 440 Raymond of Sebonde, 529 Reflections on the Revolution in France (Burke), 567 Regeneration, 160, 162 et seqq., 194, 339, 518 ; see 584 Renaissance, The, 527 et seqq. Resurrection and Judgment, Doc- trine of, 7, 198 et seqq. Revelation, Idea of, 237 et seqq., 523, 538, 582 Ritschl, 591 etseq., 597 Robertson, A., 199, 285, 504 et seq. Robertson, F. W., 583 Robinson, H. Wheeler, 216 foot- note Roman Catholicism, 348, 505, 518 Rothe, 583 Rousseau, 544, 551, 561, 568 footnote Rufinus, 397 SABELLIANISM, 255, 288 footnote Sacraments, the Seven, 455 Sacramental Doctrine, Pt. II., esp. chh. iii., iv., Pt. III. ch. vi., 492, 510, 511, 516, 518, 604 Sacrifice, The Christian, 80, 157 et seq., 161, 171 et seq., 174 et seq., 179 et seqq., 184, 190 et seq. Sadolet, 496 Salvation, Idea of, 144 etseq., 198 et seq., 203, 228, 233, 281, 338 et seq. Sanday, Dr, 12 footnote Sartor Resartus, 603 Satan, 200 " Satisfaction," 130, 430 et seq., 459 et seq., 488, 519 Saul of Tarsus, 55, 56, 60, 284 Savonarola, 478, 483 Schleiermacher, 577 et seq., 597 Schmid, H. , 459 footnote Scholasticism, 433 et seqq. Science, Physical, 528 etseqq., 586, 590 Serapion, Bishop of Thmuis, Liturgy of, 174-176 Servetus, 513, 519 footnote Severinus, 112 Shammai, School of, 3 Siena, Council of, 470 Sin, 55 et seq., 117, 145, 147; Original, 283 et seq., 426 et seq. Siricius, Pope, 142 footnote Sinn in in , Council of, 268 Smith, Adam, 567 Social Reform and Christianity, 133 et seqq., 499, 501, 547, 588 et seq., 598 et seqq. INDEX 613 Socinianism, 519 " Son of Man, The " ; when first used, 6; Jesus' adoption of title, 20 et seqq. Spinoza, 536 Spirit, The, 41 et seq., 65 et seq., 155, 170, 176 et seq., 218, 227, 229 et seqq., 240, 243 et seq., 438, 513, 525 " Spirituals, The," 522 et seq. Stanley, Dean, 421 Stone, Darwell, 442, 444 footnote Strauss, 587 Symbolism, Jesus', 12 Symmachus, 109 System of Nature (d'Holbach), 571 TACITUS, 83 Tatian, 99, 239 et seq. Tauler, John, of Strasburg, 452 Temple, Archbishop, 597 Tennyson, 99 Tertullian, 83, 127, 128, 130, 131, 139, 315; on Baptism, 160, 314 ; sacramental doctrine, 165 et seqq. ; on the Eucharist, 166, 171, 178, 187 footnote ; on Christology and the Godhead, 241, 248, 249, 250, 252, 253; on Original Sin, 283 ; on Absolution, 309 ; on the " Priesthood," 313 ; on a " bishop of bishops," 328 ; on prevenient grace, 427 Theatines, The, 496 Theodore of Mopsuestia, 263, 274 footnote, 279 Theodosius the Great, 109, 269, 405 Theophilus of Antioch, 99, 240 Therapeutae, The, 124 Torah, 3, 12 Tractarian Movement, 558, 562 et seq. Transubstantiation, 443 et seq. Trent, Council of, 455, 505, 515 Turner, C. H., quoted, 87 Tyrrell, Father, 596 ULFILAS, 112 Unity, Christian, 296, 604 et seqq. ; Catholic, Pt. IL ch. viii. ; Protestant, 505 Urban VI, Pope, 468 VALENTINIAN III, 329 Valla, Laurentius, 529, and footnote Victor, Bishop, 324 Vigilius, 280 Vincent of Lerins, 343 Vinet, Alexander, 583, 584, 598 Viret, 537 Voltaire, 540, 543, 544, 554, 569 WEBB, C. C. J., 529 footnote, quoted, 537 Wesley, Charles, 546 Wesley, John, 546 et seq. Westcott, Bishop, 586 William of Champeaux, 432 William of Occam, 435, 449, 477 William of Orange, 494 Women and the Church, 295, 322- 323, 465 Word, the Divine, 155, 176, 234 et seqq., Pt. II. ch. vi. passim, 522 et seq. Word and Sacrament, 150 et seq., 348 et seq. Wordsworth, 553, 554, 581 Wordsworth, Bishop J., 306 foot- note Worms, Diet of, 489 Wyclif, 476, 477, 500, 504, 509 ZENO, EMPEBOK, 329 Zwingli, 491 et seq. 514 503, 511, 44352 UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY A 000 807 221 7