Y THE JAMES K. MOFFITT FUND. LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. GIFT OF JAMES KENNEDY MOFFITT OF THE CLASS OF '86. Accession No. Class No. A SKETCH OF THE RISE AND PROGRESS OP CHRISTIANITY. ROBERT WILLIAM MACKAY, M.A., AUTHOR OF THE PROGRESS OF THE INTELLECT, AS EXEMPLIFIED IN THE RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT OF THE GREEKS AND HEBREWS;" ' THE TtJBINGEN SCHOOL AND ITS ANTECEDENTS." WILLIAMS AND NORGATE, 14, HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN, LONDON; AND 20, SOUTH FREDERICK STREET, EDINBURGH. mOFFlTt '\ PREFACE, The treatment of Christian Theology has hitherto oscillated between church authority and individual impulse and feeling. Reason has throughout played only an incidental and secondary part. The early misapplication of it in the endeavour to de- termine, by way of speculative inference,, the essential nature of the Deity, could end only in discomfiture. The Trinitarian controversy of the first centuries was a hopeless entanglement, in which the mind, driven from point to point by its own ingenuity, eventually registered the utterances of its torture and despair in the unintelligible jargon of the Athanasian Creed. Eeawakening after a long interval, it returned once more to grapple with the " Creed^^ or established articles of dogma which had obtained undisputed possession of the Chris- tian mind during the middle ages. But this new attempt turned out as unfortunately as the former one ; and, so far from establishing a satisfactory alliance between faith and reason, produced their formal, and, it w^ould seem, final separation. The only remaining alternative was that of an unmitigated dogmatism, or, if individual judgment were appealed to, an appeal strictly limited to Scripture and to feeling. A mystical coalition between the received dogma and the internal senti- ments was still possible ; if a man could not prove the truth of his position, he might at least feel himself to be in the right ; the dogma might be arbitrarily limited to meet the feeling, or the feeling enlarged to comprehend the mysteries of the dogma. This was the ground taken by the early reformers, the medi 109322 VI PREFACE. seval mystics, the school of Schleiermacher, and evangelical theology generally. The immediate aim of reform was not theoretical but practical ; it contemplated not speculative change, but a better assurance of salvation. Evangelism, or, as it has been called, ^' pectoral theology,*^ finds its infallible oracle in the spontaneous instincts of the soul ; it denounces science as athe- istic, and decries the unholy ^' propensions^^ of literary criticism. But a higher principle was tacitly implied in the Refonnation. The rejection of church authority, the substitution of a scriptural criterium for an ecclesiastical one, and the arbitrary sifting and reconstruction of doctrine, presupposed the rights of cultivated judgment and progressive thought. The appeal to Scripture challenged inquiiy in regard to its canonicity and interpreta- tion; and, in particular, if the Reformation were to be a revival of primitive Christianity, it was before all things neces- sary to determine what primitive Christianity really was. The question is an historical one ; and its importance must excuse the large, but still inadequate, space devoted to it in the fol* lowing pages. It may be answered with more certainty now than at any former period, in consequence of the more search- ing investigations made since the time of Eichhorn into the Christian literature of the first two centuries; investigations which have been studiously withheld by those whose duty it is to inform the public mind, but who prefer to live upon its " child-like simplicity" or ignorance. The inquiry, it is true, should be rather with a view to comparison than imitation, since Protestantism gains little by copying an absolute precedent, and indeed cannot be retrogressive without abdicating its na- ture. Yet in reverting to the past it is impossible to help wondering how it is that Christianity should have dwindled down to the " drivelling, feeble, desultory thing" which it now appears to be;* a distorted burlesque of the original, exhi- biting itself chiefly in Sabbatarian absurdities and a crazy infatuation about the prophecies. If Protestantism be really ^ See the " Times " of October 26, 1854. PREFACE. Vll destitute of any distinct intellectual principle, if it be only a pretext for sectarian discord, or a name for the many anoma- lous professions of dissent from the dogmas and discipline of Rome, it were better at once to recognise the fact of its failure, and, for the sake of peace, to accept the despotic rule which is sure to be the last refuge of mental imbecility. CONTENTS. Paet I. IDEA OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY. SECT. PAGE 1. Christianity a Reform 3 2. Literature 5 3. Jesus the Christ " 14 4. Christian Antecedents . . . ' 18 5. Jesus the Preacher of " Righteousness " 21 6. The "Second Coming" .25 7. Theory of Atonement 27 The Old Hebrew Sacrifices 29 8. The God of the Old Testament 31 9. The Hebrew Reform 3G 10. Continuance of the Sacrificial Idea 39 Part II. THE PAULINE CONTROVERSY AND ITS ISSUES. 1. The Pauline Theory of Christianity 46 2. Christian Universalism . . . . . . .60 3. Paul's Unpopularity 62 4. The Older Apostles 65 5 The Nicolaitans 68 (>. The Gift of Tongues 60 7. Expectations of the Second Coming 61" 8. The Apocalypse 62 <). The Millennium 67 10 Eventual Predominance of Judaism 70 I CONTENTS. Part III. IDEA OF CATHOLICITY. 8KCT. PAGB 1.. The Roman Church 77 2. Severance between Christianity and Judaism .... 80 3. The "Shepherd "of Hermas 84 4. Hegesippus . 86 5. The Conciliatory Process ; Peter and Paul .... 88 6. Petro-Paulinism at Rome 90 7. Luke's Gospel 95 8. The Acts 102 9. The Clementine Literature 105 10. Gnosticism 109 11. Gnostic Systems 113 12. Marcion 115 13. Jew-Christian Gnosis . 118 Part IV. ORIGIN OF THE CHURCH AND ITS CONFLICT WITH HEATHENISM. 1. Heresy and Orthodoxy 127 2. The Hierarchy 130 3. The Gospel of Mark 137 4. The Episcopate of Victor 139 5. Montanism 142 6. Severance of the Church from Montanism .... 145 7. Scripture and Tradition 148 8. The Conflict with Paganism 154 9. Celsus 157 10. Victory of Christianity 169 Part V. ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF DOGMA. 1. The Ebionitish and Gnostic Christologies .... 167 2. "Hebrews," "Colossians," and "Ephesians" . . .171 3. The Apostolical Fathers and Apologists . . . .174 CONTENTS. XI SECT, 4. The Asiatic Church 5. The Fourth Gospel 6. Pseudo-Ignatius . 7. Orthodox Gnosis in Alexandria 8. Irenaeus and TertuUian 9. The Holy Spirit . 10. The Monarchy 11. Origen 12. The Arian Controversy 13. The Humanity of Christ 14. The Monophy sites and Monothelites 15. Augustin and Pelagianism PAGB 177 181 189 192 197 200 204 210 215 217 222 223 Paet VI. RISE OF THE PAPACY. 1. Decay of Learning 233 2. Externalism of the Church 234 3. The Monks 240 4. Revival of Controversy 243 5. Disputes about Transubstantiation 246 6. Papal Supremacy 252 Part YII. THEOLOGY OF THE CHURCH. 1. The Scholastic Theology 269 2. Anselm 272 3. Nominalism and Realism 276 4. Abelard 278 5. Mediaeval Mysticism ........ 280 6. Peter Lombard 282 7. Aquinas and Scotus 284 8. Fall of Scholasticism 289 XU CONTENTS. Part VIII. DECLINE OF THE PAPACY. SECT. PAGE 1. Decline of Papal Influence 297 2. The Albigensian War and the Inquisition, &c. . . . 299 3. Progress of Schism 302 4. The Begging Friars 305 5. Rise of Nationalities 308 6. Beginnings of Reform . . . : . . . .311 PART I. IDEA OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY. PART I. IDEA OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY. 1. Christianity a Reform. If it be allowed that the principle best suited to human im- perfection is that of reform^ it seems a necessary inference that a principle so important ought not to be overlooked by religion ; and undoubtedly the Christian religion was originally a reform of that narrow Judaical formalism which^ wrapping the mind in its own devices, made it hypocritical or bigoted, and enslaved its powers of thought and action. But since Christianity strove rather to modify than to destroy the prevailing system, and could not at once eradicate the low tendencies of mankind, the old abuses, usurping the name of the religion which should have suppressed them, again crept in, continually calling forth fresh efforts for their reform. And when, from concurring moral and political circumstances, the Christendom of the six- teenth century was split into two camps, and a reformed faith became established through a large part of Europe, perfection was still unattained, and few will pretend, even now, that there is no room for further improvement. Protestantism^ is a good general name for religious reforma- tion. It is the protest of reason and conscience against those superstitious abuses which have ever tended to substitute human precepts for the laws of God; and to confound pure Chris- tianity with forms of worship and church government. To define Protestantism, then, is to define Christianity; it is to verify the possibility of effecting reform by restoration. This, of course, involves an appeal to history ; in which, however, it ' It seems unfair to use the word Protestantism in the sense only of its shortcom- ings and defects ; the application of it here made will be amply justified afterwards. Of course Lord Campbell's definition of the term in Abrassart v. Moysey, however good in law, is not conclusive in philosophy. b2 4 IDEA OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY. is especially requisite to guard against those influences of edu- cation and sentiment which always make it so difficult to disentangle the really historical from mere prejudice and pre- possession. The critical treatment of Church History begins with the Lutheran Reformation. It then became necessary for both parties to fortify historically the conclusions they had arrived at, conscientiously or logically; to trace back the opinions which they held to be those of the true Church to the earliest ages. Then it was that Lutherans, Romanists, Pietists, tried each of them to show that orthodoxy not merely was, but always had been, their own, and that heresy alone gave a pre- cedent to their opponents. The argument began with the Reformers ; since, finding Christianity already in existence, they were obliged to produce evidence to rebut the charge of arbitrary innovation. Catholic writers had been too closely involved in the action of their one church, to be able to look at it as a thing apart, and to suiTcy its development impartially. Catholicism denounced all change as heresy ; professing to be infallible and unchangeable, it treated novelties of its own adoption not as changes, but as developments of what impliedly was its own original meaning. Here, as in other cases, the first direction of thought was to the external or objective ; for we discern the peculiarities and eccentricities of others before we perceive our own ; and hence in early times there was no history of orthodoxy, but only the accounts given by Irenseus, Epiphanius, and Theodoret, of the various ramifications of heresy.^ Yet even now it may be difficult to form an impartial view of the exact natm-e of that faith which Jesus intended to intro- duce, and which reformers have striven to restore. Christianity, it is said, has regenerated the world; it is the life of morality and the basis of civilisation. Yet if it be asked what Chris- tianity is, few will give the same answer. Every one means by it the religious ideal of his own mind. The question is answered either by arbitrary assumption, or by a random appeal to Scrip- The same is also true of the fathers of Ecclesiastical History, Hegesippus and Eiisebius. To them the only history of the Church is the history of its conflict with external and internal foes. Orthodox dogma has no history; for history implies change, and Catholic truth must always be one and the same. Its only history is the enumeration of its successive teachers, the ascertainment of its authentic records, and its contests with its manifold adversaries. Heresy has no affinity with ortho- doxy : the two are not connected, bat contrasted. LITERATURE. 5 ture texts. Some make it consist in faith, some in works ; now purity of doctrine is the test; now uprightness of intention. Forgetting that the gospel itself recognises the doctrine of a re- surrection to have been already prevalent in the days of Jesus, many consider its grand constituent to be the announcement of eternal life ; or, unmindful of the widely-spread pantheisms of far more distant ages, attribute to it the first establishment of the idea which must, in some shape or other, form part of every religion, that of the union of the human and divine natures exemplified in the person of its Founder. Some consider Chris- tianity to be an avoidance of the consequences of the Fall, a re- conciling of God to the world through the sacrifice of his Son ; while others, repudiating the notion that God can ever have hated or cursed his creatures, or allowed wrong to be an atone- ment for wrong, contend that it is rather the reconciling of man to himself and to his own conscience, enabling him to discard those subjective fancies which, confounding error and imperfec- tion with depravity and sin, tended to crush all hope and energy under the conviction of an evil nature. The most advanced oi-thodox school in modern Germany endeavours to meet the difficulties of philosophical scepticism by practically abjuring reason, and resting religion exclusively on inward inspiration or feeling ; while, from the days of the ancient Gnostics down to the present, speculators have tried to account for the most re- condite Christian doctrines by metaphysical theories of their own invention. More candid and resolute inquirers have considered that such a proceeding makes Christianity the mere exponent of our own fancies; that we ought first to interrogate history, learning from facts how to distinguish the essence of reli- gion from its mere appendages; and that only through such an exact examination as to what faith and reason respectively require can we be sure whether there exists any real hostility between them, or whether the circumstances are such as to call for a renunciation of either. 2. Literature. But here a question occurs, which it is difficult to answer satisfactorily, or even at all, in a moderate space. Where are we to find the facts and the authentic records to guide our search for them ? Jesus himself did not write. His oral teaching. 6 IDEA OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY. which inculcated a new spirit or feeling, but no new system of doctrine, was enforced only by his living example. His sole Scripture criterium was, " Moses and the Prophets." Writings could only have reached a few, and must, in his day, have been far less impressive than personal intercourse. The spirit of " the Word" would have evaporated in writing ; and it is notorious that ancient Jewish prophecy degenerated from the time when it became customaiy to convey it in privately-elaborated compo- sitions, until it at last disappeared among apocalyptic visions, priestly formularies, and Rabbinical pedantry. His immediate followers preached, but did not write; the literary efforts ascribed to them having little or no claim to be considered genuine. The second Epistle of Peter is confessedly spurious ;* the first, though it has tradition in its favour, exhibits a subser- viency to Pauline views, and also an imperfect comprehension of them, which can scarcely be attributed to the great "pillar"^ of Jew Christianity. The Epistle of James is marked as supposi- titious by Eusebius' and Jerome ; and its presumed author is neither the son of Zebedee, nor, in all probability, the son of Alpheus, but James the Just, the " brother of the Lord " al- luded to in the Galatians, who was not one of the twelve. Jude himself admits that he was not of the number of the early Apostles ;'* and the Apostolic origin of the first Epistle of John must be given up, unless the fourth gospel, to which it stands in evident relation, be John^s also. But this has been shown by recent criticism to be more than doubtful. The fourth gospel is intelligible only when studied as a theoretic view of Chris- tianity founded on the Pauline and Alexandrian theologies, differ- ing widely in plan as well as in purport from the other gospels, which, indeed, it often contradicts. It is difficult to imagine that an eye-witness of the events should have, suffered them to be made so entirely subservient to a speculative idea ; or that he whom we read of in Galatians as an exclusive ^' Apostle of the Circumcision," and who at a later period wore the insignia of Jewish priesthood,* not only became a convert to views he had before opposed, but carried them to an extreme not contemplated even by St. Paul himself. His reputed authorship of the Apo- 1 Euseb. Hist. Eccl. iii. 3. * Gal. ii. 9. ' Hist. Eccl. ii. 23. He says, " It should be understood that this Epistle is spurious not many of the ancients say anything about it." ^ Ver. 1 7, 1 8. ^ "'I6/Jeus TO ir^raKov irecpoprjKws.^'' Euseb. Hist. Eccl. v. 24. LITERATURE, 7 calypse ill accords with his having written a book so utterly dissimilar in spirit, so alien in its tone from that doctrine of a material millennium of which, according to the Ephesian presbyters, the Apostle John was the great propounder.' These difficulties, the absence of unequivocal citation by the fathers or apologists earlier than Irenseus,^ and several geographi- cal and historical incongruities, especially the variance from that practice of the Eastern Church as to keeping the Jewish passover which John is said to have sanctioned, have induced a conviction^ that the book comes to us, not from the Apostle, but a much later writer. St. Mark^s gospel is generally allowed to be a derivative one ; Luke himself admits that he was far from being one of the earliest compilers of a gospel narrative, and, moreover, frequently borrows from Matthew ;* so that we turn to Matthew as possessing comparatively the best credentials. But even Matthew's accuracy is far from being undisputed, nor is his account free from interpolation. He is said to have written the "Logia,^^ or "Sayings of the Lord,^^ in Hebrew. But we have no means of tracing the connection between these Hebrew memorials of the "Logia^^ and our Greek canonical Matthew. Many of his " necessary '' inferences from imaginary predictions too much resemble the forced applications of Scrip- ture in Rabbinical tradition to warrant any confidence in the accounts they apply to ; and it is remarkable that the earliest gospel citations, though generally agreeing with each other, do not tally with Matthew, but with a Petrinic gospel called the " Gospel of the Hebrews." It would seem that the earliest historical Christian literature consisted of records of the Lord's sayings or discourses {(Tvy-ypajUfiaTa Xoyiwv) ; that these were translated and variously enlarged into narratives, including time, place, and circumstance, until, out of many varying forms com- prehended under the general term of a "Gospel of the He- brews,''' one was selected, and, with several concessions to Pauline theology, reconstructed into our present Matthew. The agreement, as well as the inconsistencies, of the three first gospels, considered as varying compilations from one tradition, 1 Irene. Haer. Stieren's Ed. i. 809. 2 Comp. Zeller's Theol. Magazine, vol. vi. 144, sq. and vol. xii. 145, sq. Schweg- ler's Montanisra, p. 184, and Zeitalter, i. 218. 3 See Baur's Untersuchungen, p. 327. Schwegler's Nachapostolische Zeitalter, vol. ii., and the Tubingen Theol. Jahrbiicher, for 1844, 45, and 47. * Baur. ib. p. 512. 8 IDEA OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY. or one set of generally-corresponding memoranda, may be thus accounted for ; and it would appear from the greater Evan- gelical agreement in regard to the doctrines and discourses that these, though often interpolated with views of later de- velopment, were, on the whole, preserved with far greater accu- racy than the stoi-y of the life. The latter has been shown in the yet unrefuted work of Strauss to be largely mingled with Mythus (that is, with the conceptions and ideal imagery of the Jewish theological mind), and cannot be relied upon as an exact biography or History. Even considered as a mere record of doctrine, the gospels should be used with caution, and our proneness to believe them literally should be moderated and schooled by greater attention to information supplied by contem- porary circumstances and writers. Of illustrative writers, the earliest, and incomparably the most important, is St. Paul, the authenticity of whose four principal Epistles, Romans, the two Corinthians, and the Galatians, has (unless in minor details) never been questioned. It was, indeed, from the more edu- cated Hellenists, i. e. those converts from Judaism who were acquainted with the language and writers of Greece, that pro- ceeded the earliest Christian literature, as well as greater libe- rality in Christian ideas. But we often find in the gospels an anticipation of those liberal views in defence of which St. Paul had to undergo through his whole life a protracted struggle against Judaical exclusiveness, abetted, as his own remarks seem to imply, by the older Apostles.^ Even Matthew, who incul- cates that eternal obligation of Jewish law which St. Paul dis- claimed,'^ and would limit Christianity to the " house of Israel,^^* in other passages attributes to its author the very doctrines which his followers refused to entertain, and for whose sake St. Paul was persecuted, i. e. its character of novelty, independence, and universalism,'* the admission of the Gentiles,^ and exclusion of the Jews. The Christian scheme considered as a gradual invisible development, comparable to the expansion of the seed into the tree,* or to the secret process of fermentation in meal,^ will be recognised by any one familiar with the ideas and phraseology of the times to be the very contrary of that out- ward consummation which was to be effected visibly and speedily ' Gal. ii. ; 2 Cor. xi. 22. ' Matt. v. 18-23. ' Matt. i. 21; X. 5, 6; xv. 24; xix. 28. * ix. 16, 17. * xxiv. 14; xxviii. 19. xiii. 31. 'lb. LITERATURE. 9 by the second coining of the Messiah in glory ;^ and the story of the immaculate conception evidently implies a christojogical^ theory quite opposed to the genealogy and baptism. Again those traces of a more lofty and liberal Christianity, which seem like interpolations amidst the general Hebraic tendencies of Matthew, re-appear more naturally and consistently, yet with considerable Judaical qualifications, in the more finished artificial composition of the Paulinist Luke. Here we find the genea- logy, not so much of the heir of David and of Abraham, as of the second Adam, the Son of God. Here, too, the Prophet, rejected in his own country, prophetically refers in the very out- set of his career to the acceptance of the Gentiles, prefigured by the Syrian Naaman and widow of Sarepta -^ the proverbial reversal of worldly prosperity^ is made a type of the exchange of spiritual relations between Heathen and Jew;'* the late re- pentance of the prodigal son (the Gentiles) is contrasted with the hypocritical professions of the elder (z. e. the Jews) ; the Samaritan exhibits a charity unknown to the Levite and the priest ; the kingdom of heaven is open to all men^ without any wrong or depredation ; and as the Twelve were sent to con- vert the twelve tribes whom hereafter they were to judge, ^ so seventy other teachers, corresponding to the received number of the nations,*^ and eating indifi*erently the clean and the unclean, are appointed to superintend the impending conversion of the whole world. The sentiment here expressed is the very same as that for which St. Paul so long laboured with scanty success; and if these liberal views of Christianity were so tardily com- prehended by its teachers, they must, of course, have required a still longer interval before they could give the dominant tone to its literature. It were useless here to enter on a discussion which would more than fill a volume ; yet the reader ought to have an idea of the sort of evidence on which the authenticity of the canon rests ; and of the character of the several writings. The im- posing array of testimonies quoted on their behalf by Lardner and others from the fathers, loses its eiFect when other pas- sages show that the said fathers, being immoderately credulous and undiscriminatingj forfeit almost all claim to literary author- Matt.x. 23; xvi. 28. "^ Luke iv. 26. 3 Matt. xix. 30. * Luke xiii. 29, 30. * Luke xvi. 16, comp. Matt, xi. 12. * But comp. Luke ix. 6. ' Ch. x. 1. b3 10 IDEA OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY. ity. Orthodox apologists state one side of the case only ; the witness undergoes no cross-examination at their hands^ and the eiFect on the reader's mind is, of com*se, one-sided also. An impartial writer would allow it to be known that the reasoning of Irenseus in favour of the four gospels is geographical or meteorological, derived from the fact of there being four winds and four quarters of the globe. He would show that Tertullian, while vouching for the authenticity of John's gospel, recounts, with equal seriousness, the impassability of John's body in a vessel of flaming oil, and the consequent physical necessity for a commutation of his punishment. He would advert to the fact that the silence of the fathers is often as significant as their notice; and that if their attestations are to be considered authoritative in one set of cases, they must be equally respected in others, where they are brought forward to support the most palpable fictions, and the most questionable books. Trenseus, Clement of xllexandria, and Origen quote nearly all our present canon. But they do more than this; they quote with equal respect books long since abandoned by the Church, the Gospel of the Hebrews, the Shepherd of Hernias, the Clementine Epistles, and Peter's Kerugma. In their estimate the Apocalypse of Peter claims equal rank with that of John ; and the book of Enoch and the Ascensio Mosis defy the ban of the Church, being sanctioned as inspired authority by inspiration itself.^ The fathers had few resources for sifting literary evidence ; they used the only evidences of authenticity they had, but such as it would be ridiculous now to rely on. Their criterium was, in fact, no more than a general instinctive feeling of what was right and true ; they gave out as authentic those writings which they, or the Church, wished to be so ; and it might be shown in each case, that the method of selection was entirely arbitrary, measuring the canonical authority according to the doctrine, not the doctrine by the canonical authority. Ter- tullian, in his treatise on prayer,^ assumes the Scriptural dignity of the book called the " Shepherd," which Irenseus^ also places on the same footing; yet, in another place* where the text is against him, he treats the same work as '^^ impure, apo- cryphal, and scouted by all the churches." And yet, simulta- * In Jude. - "Imo contra scripturam fecerit," &c. De Orat. 12. ^ IrencB. Haer. iv. 20, 2 ; comp. Euseb. Hist. Eccl. T. 8. * De Pudicit. 10. LITERATURE. 11 neously with this unqualified reprobation^ seemingly implying the severe and watchful guardianship of an orthodox literature, the book in question was respectfully appealed to by Clement of Alexandria_, as it was also by Origen and Athanasius. Many books, which were perfectly orthodox when composed, fell into disrepute, while others, which were unacknowledged on their first appearance, were unexpectedly promoted in their place. This capricious formation of the canon is curiously illustrated in the opposite fortunes of the Second Epistle of Peter and the Apocalypse. The latter, the best-authenticated of all the New Testament books, lost in church estimation in proportion to the estrangement of orthodoxy from its doc- trines, which were those adhered to by the Millenarians and Montanists. The Second Epistle of Peter fared difi"erently. Unknown during the first two centuries, it is mentioned for the first time as of dubious authority by Origen; Eusebius describes it as uncanonical,^ but as having been very generally received on account of its practical usefulness. Its claims grow with time, until the Council of Laodicea quietly places the once-repudiated composition by the side of the first Pe- trine Epistle; the scepticism of Jerome is hushed, and the classification, avowedly based on expediency, is ratified by ge- neral assent. Perhaps it may be said, that we have no right to assume so wholesale a scheme of literary imposture as the above remarks imply. But a reference to the heading of the collections in Fabricius, where we find fragments of no less than fifty ApocrypJiaLGospels^six-and-thirty Apocryphal Acts, and twelve spurious Apocalypses, is sufficient to convince us that the editing of books under fictitious names was no exceptional case, but the habitual practice of the time.^ If a writer wished to gain acceptance for a particular line of argument, there was no more ready expedient than to borrow the name of some popular authority, whose voice, thus evoked, as it were, from the grave, seemed the more sacred and authoritative, although often made to assume a tone the reverse of that which it would in all probability have adopted when living Hist, Eccl. iii. 3 ; vi. 25. ^ In Euseb. Hist. Eccl. vi. 20. Caius reproaches the Montanists with their un- scrupulous impudence in literary forgery, yet many spurious books, as the " Acts of Paul and Thecla" (Tert. de Capt. 17), and the Epistle to the Laodiceans, continued to be used by the Church after their real character had been detected. 12 IDEA OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY, as when Peter vouclies for tlie wisdom of Paul^ while Paul pleads for High-Church principles. Irenseus and Epiphanius speak of myriads of forgeries (TTfTrXaajUEva ypacj^Ho) of this kind; and, indeed, pseudonymous writing had been in all ages fashionable among the Jews, who were in the habit of throwing back the advanced views of recent times by way of prophecy or otherwise to an earlier age, and making each spurious document eagerly assert its own genuineness.^ In the Old Testament, all Psalms go to the account of David, prophecies usually take the name of Isaiah, and Solomon is the general fountain of gnomic wisdom. The name of Daniel is raked up to herald the destruction of Antiochus Epiphanes, and even Abraham and En^ch appear upon the list of authors. The pretended correspondence of Christ with Abgarus, and of Paul with Seneca, the Gospels of the Infancy, the Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs, a number of false Pauline Epistles, and many other instances, exemplify the excess to which, in the post-apostolic age, this practice was carried. The idea of a New Testament Canon was slowly developed. No trace of such a thing is to be found until late in the second century. Circumstances then arose which made it clearly need- ful to have a written standard to appeal to. In the earliest Christian age the only record was tradition ; and the Gnostics had learned from their own practical experience^ of the facility of imposture how to put a right estimate on the pretended Apostolical authority of the writings which orthodoxy began to quote against them.''' The oral long continued to be esteemed above the Scriptural, and Papias, the oldest of Patristic autho- rities, values the " living voice " far more than the dead letter."* The scanty-written memorials of his day were hesitatingly used, and strictly confined to persons of approved discretion.^ Hints are thrown out that Mark's gospel was originally a surreptitious publication of the discourses of Peter,^ whose avowed prejudices against writing give way^ only when, after his death, the con- cession becomes inevitable. The early Christian Apologists argue almost exclusively from the Old Testament ; and Justin, when referring to his " Apostolic Memorials," usually considers * See Kostlin, Die Pseudonyme Litteratur der altesten Kirche, Tub. Theol. Magazine for 1851, vol. x. - Epiphan. Haer. xxvi, 12. ^ Irenae, Hjer. iii. 2, 1. * Euseb. Hist. Eccl. iii. 39, p. 382, Hein. Clem. Horn. Ep. Pet. 1. * Comp. Euseb. Hist. Eccl. vi. 14, with Dem. Esan. iii. 5. "^ 2 Peter i. 15. LITERATURE. 13 it proper to fortify their authority by Old Testament citation. The Epistle of Barnabas recognises no inspired written standard of Christianity ; its author, like St. Paul, claims an immediate transfusion from the divine fountain of the spirit, asserting the same privilege for every true Christian. Athenagoras and Me- lito, who strenuously uphold the inspiration of the Old Testa- ment, know nothing of the New ; and the uncertain condition of the contemporary Christian literature is illustrated in a rescript of Serapion to a Cilician congregation, in which the Bishop on maturer deliberation withdraws the assent he had before given to the use of the ^^ Gospel of Peter.^^ The first symptoms of attri- buting to certain writings of imputed Apostolic origin the inspired character already allowed to the Old Testament are found towards the end of the second century in the second Petrine Epistle,* and in Theophilus and Irenseus j yet Irenseus considers the conserva- tion and propagation of the faith to be secure independently of any written documents. Eusebius is the first who appears to have seriously addressed himself to the construction of a Canon; but his opinions are given so hesitatingly, and the usage to which he appeals is so fortuitous and fluctuating, that his attempt rather proves the rule of faith to have been still unformed, and that there existed no means except the fantasy of the churches for forming it. His vague notices respecting the " many,^^ or the " few," or the " majority," who approved of this book, or were unfavourable to that, and in many instances the inconsistency of his statements with what is known from other sources,^ leave us to infer that the present Canon is no result of critical research, but a deposit of capricious usage, and that the "standard" was formed, as in other instances of a "standard literature," by mere arbitrary preference or acquiescence. But we obviously desert the path of impartial inquiiy when, accept- ing as final the decisions of the second or third centuiy, we confound the orthodoxy of so late an age with the opinions of primitive Christianity, and resolve that no books, except such as were considered unexceptionable then, can possess historical value now. We have no right to single out the most meri- torious productions of the age, four, for example, out of many hundreds of gospels, and while paying unlimited reverence to 1 2 Peter iii. 16. ^ He says, for instance, that the Kerugma, which is often cited under the formula "nerpos A67t," by Clement of Alexandria, and which is allowed to be genuine by Origen, had been quoted by no church writer, ancient or modern. 14 IDEA OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY. these as the sole inspired repositories of Christian verity^ to anathematise the rest as heretical. All have a value when con- sidered as indices of the mental life of the period of their origin. It was natural that the first attempts at rationalistic criticism should be negative and sceptical. De Wette came to the con- clusion that^ except the geuuixip Epist1es_ofJaul, all the New Testament writings are more or less suspicious; and Strauss unanswerably proved the matter of the gospels to be unhis- torical ; that the events recorded either happened not at all, or, at least, not in the way supposed. But we want a positive result. It is not enough to show that the authorship of a book is doubtful, or its contents fabulous ; we have to ascertain its true character as a literaiy document ; and if among contem- porary writings many appear to be fictitious, we have still to inquire how the fiction arose, and by comparison with circum- stances to deduce its historical import. The writing, proved to be deceptive in its common acceptation, may, when restored to its true place, resume its importance, and become a correct index of party disputes and doctrinal peculiarities. Com- mencing thus where the negative critics left off", F. C. Baur leads a new school of positive criticism, the aim of which is to restore, by laborious research, the literary history of the two first centuries, and from a commanding survey of all their memorials, to place each book in its true light in reference to the ideas connected with its origin. 3. Jesus the '' Christ:' Jesus appealed to a sentiment common to all men and all forms of religion, the desire for " salvation,^^ i. e. union and re- concilement with God. To those who accepted his claim to be the rightful Messiah he ofi^ered assurance of compensation, in the ideal wealth of a heavenly hereafter, for all the short-com- ings and discomforts of the world. The off"er was accompanied with only one external condition, expressed in the single word " righteouness" [^LKaiotjvvr]) , i. e. observance of the command- ments. But then it was. to be a sincere, not a hypocritical righteousness ; a theocracy of the heart, proposing divine per- fection as the pattern and climax of human effort. The pre- vailing Pharisaic Judaism was little more than hypocritical for- malism or puerile scholasticism, and was indebted for its con- JESUS THE " CHRIST." 15 tinuance not so much to a healthy correspondence with the re- Kgious instincts, as to the prospect it seemed to hold out of po- litical liberation to the nation professing it. Through a long series of misfortunes the Jews had been constantly supported by the expectation of a great deliverer, called, emphatically, the ^^ anointed''^ king, or Messiah,^ who would restore the ancient glory of their theocracy or " Divine Kingdom" as it existed under David and Solomon, inaugurating at the same time a new reign of righteousness. How far, or in what sense, these hopes were countenanced by Jesus, it is not easy to say. He lived when the Jewish mind was at the height of politico-religious excitement, and when it was almost impossible for a reformer to avoid being more or less connected with the prevailing Messianic expectation. Yet he seems to have commenced his public life in the character of an ordinaiy prophet, following in the steps of John the Baptist, and like him teaching that moral preparation or "repentance" which had been announced as the indispensable preliminary of Messiah's advent. It was probably by degrees only that his mission assumed the higher character, when long reflection had convinced him of its propriety ; at all events the project, if really entertained from the first, could not, consis- tently with the narrative, have been openly announced and re- cognised, since at a late period we find the faith of Peter ^ ascribed to immediate revelation, and distinguished as the only exception to the prevailing opinion that he was Elias, or one of the prophets. The new idea which had so suddenly flashed on the mind of Peter is said to have been immediately and carefully suppressed, as if from a conviction of the hopelessness and danger, even then, of assuming a title whose full import as commonly understood it was impossible for Jesus to realise. That part of the Messianic character which alone, for the moment, he ventured to profess,^ was that best suited to his humble fortunes; he addressed himself to the poor and meek in spirit, to those who hungered and thirsted, not for con- quest, but for righteousness. It is in all probability to later compilers of the traditions about him, and to their 1 " Christ," or " the Anointed," is a general title of the Jewish magistrates and kings, afterwards used in a specific sense to denote the great expected king. " Ut apud Persas Arsaces, apud Romanes Caesar, apud ^^gyptios Pharao, ita apud Judseos Christus communi nomine rex appellatur." Ps. Clem. Recognitiones, i. 45, p. 497. 2 Matt. xvi. 14, 17. ^ L^^e iv. 18. 16 IDEA OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY. wish to incorporate with his history all the Messianic titles and imagery found in the Prophets, that we owe the story of the supernatural conception, as well as the inconsistent genealogies laboriously deduced from David, the Star of Beth- lehem, and other points of glorification and coincidence. Jesus appears to have been considered by his contemporaries, and by his own mother, to be the undoubted son of Joseph the car- penter j^ and, indeed, if Joseph really had nothing to do with the parentage of his reputed son, how are we to explain the genealogies, which take so much pains to describe Joseph^s an- cestry, and Joseph^s only? How could the expectation of Christ^s being a son of David be answered by such a mock- fulfilment, or rather excuse for non-fulfilment, inserted, as if expressly for the purpose of its own confutation, in those gospels, and only those, in which the genealogies are present to contradict it ? But, then, if Jesus was really the son of him, who, with his mother, is said to have " sought him sor- rowing,^' it is clear that the inconsistent supernatural story must belong to a distinct and later circle of ideas, and that it must have been purposely transferred from some foreign source to its present incongruous place, when the definitive assumption of Messianic dignity made it desirable to meet the low conceptions of sensual persons, by expressing the attri- bute of divine sonship in a coarse physical sense. The so- called Immanuel prophecy, for the purpose of whose fulfilment we are told that the supernatural conception was contrived and executed,^ has long been allow^ed by the best critics to have no possible connection with the birth of Jesus. Ahaz could have derived no consolation, or "sign'' of deliverance, from an event which was to happen many hundred years after he was dead ; the word Almah does not necessarily mean " Vir- gin," as may be seen by reference to Gesenius, Knobel, or any respectable commentator; and Matthew's gospel, though ge- nerally of the early Jew-Christian stamp, is by no means exclusively so, and surely cannot be regarded as containing the ipsissima verba of Matthew the publican. Jesus certainly assumed a character coinciding, in popular acceptation, with that of a political innovator ; but there is no conclusive reason for thinking that his immediate views em- braced more than the spiritual unworldly kingdom which he 1 Matt. xiii. 55-, Luke ii. 48; comp. John i. 45. ^ Matt. i. 22. really founded, and to which he is related to have limited them. He fulfilled the office forced upon him by circumstances in an enlarged sense, converting it from a national peculiarity into the general heritage of mankind. The very existence of the Messiah theory was an acknowledgment that the old theocratic system, with its accurate adjustment of temporal rewards and compensations, had failed. It was, in fact, the theocracy postponed ; the adjournment to an ideal future of what could not be expected from the present. It was the public or po- litical expression of an inference which the Hebrew moralists had long before drawn in regard to the fortunes of individuals, when to the difficult, and to Hebrews, especially paradoxical problem ^^ Wherefore do the wicked flourish ?^^ ^ they could only reply as Solon did, by asserting a firm belief in ultimate compensation.^ The frequency and notoriety of the association of prosperity with crime even afi'ected language, and made it customary to speak of the rich and wicked as synonymous.''' Early Christianity was, in a peculiar sense, the living historical realisation of this hope of final retribution. It was an abne- gation of the present, a life in expectancy. It addressed itself especially to the poor,* or rather to those willing votaries of poverty,^ who withdrew themselves from the humiliations and disappointments of the outer world to the inner one of their own consciences and convictions. Ostensibly blending the future indemnification of the individual with the great national expectation, it assumed an entire contrast and separation be- tween the present and the time to come (the "mwv luiXXtov''), willingly accepting privation now, in assurance of obtaining the true riches, peace, joy, and glory hereafter. It said, " Blessed are the seeming poor, but really and spiritually rich ; blessed are they who hunger now, for they shall be filled ; blessed they who weep now, for they shall laugh. '^ It exhorted men to lay up treasure in heaven ; to take no thought for the morrow, to seek righteousness first, trusting that all other goods would be added. In short, the Christianas palladium is faith; it is an appeal from outer things to spiritual things; the practical assertion of a paradox which, expressed with equal ^ Job xxi. 7; xii. 6; Psalm Ixxiii. 3; xciv. 3. 2 Psalm xxxvii. 38; Iviii. 11; Ixxiii. 17, &c. ' Prov. xviii, 23; Psalm xvii. 14; Isaiah liii. 9. * Luke iv. 18; vi. 20, 26; x. 13, 21. * See Baur's Canon. Evangel, pp. 446-450 on the phrase irTw^oi t&j Trvev/xort. 18 IDEA OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY. emphasis in both the Pauline * and the Judaical writings of the New Testament^ constituted the central essence of early Chris- tian feeling. 4. Christian Antecedents, This feeling cannot be said to have been new, although in Christianity it assumed an unwonted form, and entered upon a new phase of development as a religion. Never, probably, was a religion propagated by mere argument; it requires a " demonstration of the spirit '' addressed to some unappro- priated blank in the convert's mind which instinctively accepts the faith adapted to its want. At the time of the first ap- pearance of Christianity, there notoriously existed, not only in Palestine, but throughout the Roman world, an unsatisfied religious craving for something superior to the eff'ete symbolism of antiquity. The conquests of Rome and the conquests of philosophy, by promoting a more enlarged acquaintance with the world and with the forms of thought, had each in a dif- ferent way contributed to subvert the picturesque conceptions inherited from nature worship, and the decay of superstition already indicated an aptitude for something better ; but while the educated found indemnification in the Epicurean or Stoic schools, in a stern independence of the conscience or the free pui'suit of pleasure or of knowledge, there was no consolation for the vulgar except in the exchange of one gross superstition for another, or in what they could derive from the resources of their own souls. There is certainly much in the rise and progress of Christianity calculated, at first sight, to defy the efibrt to explain them. That a conception emanating from a few obscure men in an obscure corner should spread, in spite of opposition, over the whole civilised world, until overturning all other religious establishments it victoriously installed itself in their place, seems to be one of those " stupendous ^^ events which can only be accounted for by a direct interposition of * Comp. 2 Cor. vi. 10, and the parable of the rich man. The writer of the Epistle to Diognetus seems to have had the passage from Corinthians in view, when he says of the Christians (Justini Op., Colonise, 1686, p. 497), " Though in the flesh, they live not according to the flesh; they love all men, yet all men persecute them; they. are killed, and yet they live; although pauperp themselves, they yet make many rich ; and while standing on earth, are citizens of heaven," &c. CHRISTIAN ANTECEDENTS. 19 the Deity. And yet, perhaps, few will deny that the most ordinary phenomena of natm-e are often as inexplicable, and always as really divine, as the most gigantic revolutions of history ; and that the disposition to account for the latter in a different way from what are now generally admitted to be natural processes, is chiefly owing to its being more difficult to investigate their causes, and to the impressive influence they have on that account over our imaginations. To ascribe the diffusion of Christianity to supernatural interference is not only to admit our ignorance of the means of its establishment, but to assert the utter impossibility of ever understanding them. Were this supposition true, no history of it could be consist- ently attempted. But it is clear that there are many things con- nected with its origin which may be accounted for ; and even the fact that history is confessedly a proper subject of study is in itself an admission that Providence acts through generally ascertainable means, and that its ways, though not obvious, are not wholly inscrutable. The religion of Greece, of which the Roman was a branch, may be said to have been doomed from the time when there arose collaterally with it a philosophy ; since we may be sure, that so soon as religion and philosophy became distinct depart- ments, the mental activity of the age is in advance of its faith, and that though habit may sustain the latter for a time, its vitality is gone. The Christian movement was, in many respects, analogous to the philosophic movement begun with Socrates. The privileges tendered by one were calculated to appease wants and aspirations already distinctly felt and ex- pressed by the other. The one effected practically what the other sought theoretically. The initial Christian requirement, repentance (juLeTavoia), the establishment of a condition of mind and feeling '^fit for the kingdom of heaven,^^ was the neces- sary practical result of the self-examination and self-knowledge insisted on by Socrates, and of the ethical direction given by him to the earliest systematic inquiry after truth. Ideal righte- ousness, the search for divine perfection, the endeavovir to be " as good and wise as possible,^^ ^ these were the true and only means of '' escape ''' {'^ aTro7roc (japKiKog or;/^uxtKoc),that he cannot act as the better principle prompts.^ He apprehends, but cannot realise, righteousness; and the very law which informs and should direct his conscience be- comes a snare or instrument of sin to him. This unhappy state of internal conflict, which under the law made righteousness imattainable, would have continued for ever had it not been for Christ ; who, at a certain pre-ordained epoch of the world's history, was " sent foi-th,'' as the Messiah, to establish a higher principle of union and peace. The example of perfect con- formity to the divine will personally exhibited by Jesus, had produced in his followers an entirely new feeling of assured sal- vation, evidenced by faith in his pretensions and adherence to his cause. St. Paul takes his stand on the famous prophetic axiom, " the just shall live by faith.'' His doctrine of faith and grace reflects in its theoretical connection with Christ's person the historical relation of Jesus to the older Apostles. The gospel is " the power of God for salvation," conditioned upon faith. Faith is the subjective condition of objective reconciliation; it is belief in the Atonement, the individual acceptance of those means which God, of his free grace or mercy, provided for the reconcilement of the world, and the satisfying of his off'ended justice. Man must be content to receive as favour what he cannot attain by efi'ort. Christ took upon himself the curse incurred by human short-coming, and man, by faith in the merits of his death, shares the resulting immunities. But faith is not- the mere external adhesion to a creed or theoiy ; it carries with it a revolution of the heart ; it is an absolute self abandonment to Christ and mysterious I "*0 vofios irvevixariKos eari, cyoo Se aapKiKos et/ttt." (Rom. vii, 14.) St. Paul, in this doctrine, follows cotemporary Jewish opinion; according to which there were tv/o mental dispositions, the evil being as impossible entirely to control as the " working of leaven in the lump." (Gfrorer, Urchrist. ii. p. 89, sq.) This evil pro- pensity, or " old leaven," was to be extirpated in the Messianic days. (lb, p. 291.) The Talmud says, " In futuro sseculo auferet Deus ab Israelitis praeputium cordis (figmentura malum), neque obfirmabunt amplius cervicem ad versus Creatorem suum, juxta id quod scriptum extat (Ezek. xi. 19); tollam cor lapideum e came vestra, et reddam vobis cor cameum." Comp. 4th Esdras vi. 26, 27. THE PAULINE THEORY OF CHRISTIANITY. 47 union with him ; it is not mere belief in his vicarious atonement and revival ; it implies^ beyond this, an inward change through which we too partake in his death and resurrection by be- coming dead to sin and spiritually alive to God. So that while freely opening to us that reconciliation or " justifying grace " which appears unattainable under the law, it contains in itself the mental regeneration securing our participation in it. For justification is not (what, in fact, it had been to the old pro- phets and to Jesus), forgiveness only, the mere reckoning a person innocent who is really guilty; it is the reckoning or estimation of God, and therefore the real objective estimate of a regenerated nature as altered by the righteousness of faith.^^* The Christian is baptised to Christ's death. Henceforth the " man of flesh,^^ the " old Adam,^^ or carnal principle, which could not realise righteousness by quantitative fulfilment, is dead and crucified with Christ ; but dying with Christ, we also live with him ; and if we indeed live^ in Christ^s spirit, sin be- comes impossible, since its cause is eradicated.^ St. PauFs Christology is a succinct expression of his Chris- tianity. The "saving power ^^ of the latter is personified in its Author, who regenerates the human breast by making it his own dwelling-place, the living theatre of his resurrection. Christ is not the man of flesh, the merely human Messiah having to complete, by a supplementary " second coming,^^ the technical outlines of his office ; he is the " spiritual man,^^ or " second Adam,^^ the " Lord from heaven,^^ the regenerating principle " sent forth into the heart,^'' that higher life by virtue of which the carnal principle in each of us,* together with the system of legal coercion provisionally adapted to it is for ever extinguished. The death of Christ is thus, to St. Paul, the death of Judaism ; the law sinks into the subordinate condition of a schoolmaster, Christianity is a new thing, and every Chris- tian " a new creature.^^^ He enjoys the prophetic promise of ^' power from on high," which may be represented either as an afflation of the divinity, or as a visible manifestation of the Son ^ Opposed to the " *5ta hiKaiocrvvi]'''' under the law. ^ Rom. viii. 9, 10. ^ Since he that is dead is free from sin (Rom. vi. 7), and this in two ways : 1st, as cleared by a vicarious infliction of punishment ; 2ndly, as purified by escape from a sinful nature. Thus was fulfilled the Rabbinical notion about the eradication of the evil propensity. * 1 Cor. xii. 12. 5 2 Cor. v. 17. Acts ii. 2: John xx. 22. 48 THE PAULINE CONTROVERSY. of God to the senses of tlie convert.^ The conversion of St. Paul is related thrice in the Acts, and is often alluded to by the Apostle himself. If in one passage^ the impression made upon him seem to have the sense of an objective appa- rition, parallel with those of Cephas, James, &c., others dis- tinctly indicate its subjectivity,^ and even in the Acts it is admitted that both voice and vision were manifested not to by-standers, but to Paul only.* In short, it was an irradiation of the spirit from within, not from the elements without ; it was not what Paul saw, but what he " discerned spiritually,^' and therefore believed at least as implicitly as if he had seen.* Either way, assurance was gained of the great fact of the resurrection, through which Paul became, not so much blinded, as aware of his former blindness,' and, by his eventual re-illumination, an Apostle, that is, a witness of the resurrec- tion,* and a new or regenerated man. ^' There fell from his eyes, as it were, scales (of prejudice)," and he received at the same instant both the sight of the eyes, and the insight of the Holy Spirit. Within his mind Christ had literally fulfilled his promise of destroying the old temple, and building it up again in three days f the true temple being the regenerated human mind 1 Cor. ii. 2; Gal. i. 12. '1 Cor. xv. 8; comp. ix. 1. Gal. i. 16; 2 Cor. iii. 17, 18; iv. 4, 6; v. 5; xii. 1. In Gal. i. 16, Paul de- scribes his conversion as an occurrence wholly within the limits of his own soul, independent of external circumstances and of communication with other persons. * The assertion (Acts ix. 7), that the attendants, though seeing no one, " heard the voice," is afterwards withdrawn (ch. xxii. 9); so that the objective vision is reduced to the " bright light," the customary accompaniment of celestial messages, in the present instance being the glorious light which was to " lighten the Gentiles" (Isaiah ix. 2; Acts xxvi. 23), whose splendour of course far exceeded that of the sun ; but which, physically speaking, was no unusual appearance at noon-day in the climate of Damascus. * 2 Cor. V. 7. Many, similar visions are on record, where a strong impression has been mistaken for an outward fact ; and in this sense the whole of ancient mythology may be called a splendid poetic vision. The biographer of Col. James Gardiner, who died in the rising of forty-five, says, that " in relating the history of his conversion, he imagined himself to have been as broad awake during the whole time as ever he was in his life; and he mentions it several times as what undoubtedly passed not only in his imagination but before his eyes." ^ Acts xxv. 19. ' Comp. Acts xiii. 11; xxvi. 18; 2 Cor. iii. 14. Blindness is a standing New Testament symbol of the unconverted state (see Acts xxvi. 18; xxviii. 27; John ix. 40; xii. 40; Rom. xi. 8, 25); and baptism was called by the ancient church "illumination," " <|)a;Tio-MOS." 8 Acts i. 21,22; ii. 32; x. 40, 41; 1 Cor. xv. 15. ^ Paul having been blind three days. Acts ix. 4; comp. vi. 14. THE PAULINE THEORY OF CHRISTIANITY. 49 containing the Holy Spirit within its precincts.^ The great Christian distinction is independence of the external, in inward assurance of possessing the divine spirit. Through this all moral estrangement is at an end ; they who have the Spirit of God are sons of God, intimately connected and united with Him ; they receive not, like the Jews, a task-work of servitude and fear, but the spirit of adoption ; and the Apostle reproves the folly of the Galatians for returning to the " beggarly ele- ments" of legal observance or Judseo-Christianity, instead of abiding by that faith which needs not the restraints of law, since it naturally brings forth fruits superior to law. Faith is the first in a series of links spiritually uniting us with Christ and with God ; and since all spirit is in close relation,'^ and man^s higher spirit a portion of the divine,'' our close relation to God is confirmed by his own infallible warranty, and our subjective conviction comprises the objective attestation of the universal spirit."* Christianity thus fulfils its mission by shifting its ground. What was before contemplated by means of effort, is here already accomplished by means of grace. St. PauPs Christianity differs from that of Jesus as an imparted influence from without differs from moral effort from within; the one proceeds (primarily, at least,) from man, the other comes down from God. St. PauFs explanations are vague and mystical ; the terms ^^ atonement," " death," and " life," shift perpetually from the literal to the figurative. But the deep things of God, we are told, can only be discerned spiritually ; the spiritually minded overleap these difiiculties ; and since to the spiritualised eye time and space exist not, the great Christian change which, with all its glorious consequences, is sometimes represented as the instantaneous result of faith, is elsewhere made an object of hope and distant expectation,^ appearing in its ordinary cha- racter of a prolonged process, through which the human mind is gradually brought into complete unison with the will of God. 1 1 Cor. ill. 16, 17; vi. 19; 2 Cor. vi. 16. ^ Comp. 1 Cor. xii. 4, 11, 13. Philo says, **The divine may be extended, but cannot be parted or separated." Hence the doctrine of divine emanation. 3 1 Cor. iii. 16. * 1 Cor. ii. 10; Rom. viii. 16. 5 Rom. viii. 24. " Rom. xii. 2. 50 THE PAULINE CONTROVERSY, 2. Christian Universalism, The change introduced hy St. Paul, though seemingly small, had important consequences. His system, though still Jewish, tended to subvert Jewish exclusiveness. It pronounced the law, as such, to be no longer binding; yet retained its beneficial results under the name of " fruits of faith/^ or " of the spirit." Although St. Paul did not create Christianity, he expressed more fully and elaborately what it implied. If it was a consciousness of divine reconcilement and reunion based on an inward moral change, the symbol of the atonement with its accompanying explanations was an apt and attractive illustration of it. Con- sisting from the first rather in uprightness of purpose than formal obedience to precepts, it adopted the former with its associated convictions as the religion of humanity, while the precepts which were too special to be generally applicable were dropped. In its moral scope, St. PauFs theory did not essen- tially difi'er from that of Jesus. Jesus knew as well as Paul that the moral value of the act depends on inw^ard disposition ; and, moreover, in advocating conscientious legalism he seems to have had natural morality in view, and unconsciously trans- ferred to the written objective law the enlarged conceptions of his own mind. When, for instance, he said, ^^ Moses allowed divorce on account of the hardness of your hearts, but from the beginning it was not so ;" he showed, by appealing from the formal rule to the natural, the real ^^ plant of his father^s plant- ing," that his meaning was to claim fulfilment of the latter, which, however, as a Jew, he could scarcely help in some mea- sure confounding with the former. So enlarged a view of religion could not but outgrow its original limits. Yet Jesus does not appear to have fully understood the universality of his mis- sion. In Matthew he twice emphatically restricts it to the " lost sheep of the house of Israel /' and this restriction must have really proceeded from Jesus himself, for, as Matthew makes him foretell the calling of the Gentiles, there is no reason why he should have gratuitously attributed to him the ex- clusive view, whereas the increase of Gentile converts ofi'ered to the other Evangelists a strong motive for suppressing it. The cases of the centurion and Syrophenician are apologeti- cally related as exceptions, allowed in consideration of the spe- cial faith of the parties or their good offices to the Jews j and CHRISTIAN UNIVERSALISM. 51 since to his followers after his death the first Gentile conversions seemed an anomaly and a surprise, it is certain that Jesus, though he may have anticipated the universality of his doctrine in the sense of a universal Judaism, could have had no idea of the possibility of becoming a Christian without being first a Jew. His followers continued after his death to practise, as of course, and to enjoin conformity to the Mosaic law, even miracle failing clearly to convince them of the propriety of the unconditional admission of Gentiles ; so that if Christianity had been strictly confined to its original shape, it would never have been more than it at first appeared,* a form or sect of Judaism. But with the increase of Gentile converts there arose a greater liberality of opinion, which, we are told in the Acts, soon led to an open feud between the Judaists and Hellenists, the former quietly remaining in Jerusalem,^ while the latter were persecuted and dispersed through the country. Stephen, the first victim of persecution, was accused ^ of blasphemy against Moses and against God ; of predicting the destruction of temple and law. He met the charge by justifying and even retorting it, showing that the real heresy was the perverted spirit of Judaism which, itself incapable of comprehending the divine acts and oracles, had ever scorned and persecuted those who would have explained them ; and in regard to the charge about the temple or " holy place,^^ that visible sign of Jewish exclusiveness, he showed that in this very matter the Jews had themselves been serving, not God, but Moloch, and that in reality all places are the same to God, all temples but artificial symbols of the real temple of Him '^ whose throne is heaven, and whose footstool earth.^^ "^ St. * Acts xxiv. 5, 14; xxviii. 22. ^ Acts viii. 1, says, all were dispersed except the Apostles. But we ask, why should the Apostles, even if unaccountably exempted from persecution, have chosen to stay in Jerusalem by themselves without any possibility of preaching, or of finding hearers ? And who are the " devout men " who bear Stephen to his burial ? Who those whom Saul haled to prison? In ch. ix. 26, too, we find the "disciples" already returned to Jerusalem. It is, therefore, probable that the Hellenists alone were dispersed (comp. xi, 20), and that the whole Jew-Christian party remained behind; it being the writer's object throughout to conceal the differences between Christians, and to excuse the calling of the Gentiles by dilating on the obstinacy and antipathy of the Jews. 3 The accusers are called in Acts " false witnesses" (vi. 13) ; the same " falsehood " is ascribed (Matt. xxvi. 61) to the witnesses against Jesus; but Stephen, at least, had evidently said enough to justify the charge. * Although we may not have in the Acts the actual speech of Stephen, we have, at least, the outline of the kind of argument which he may probably have used. See Zeller, in the Theol. Jahrbiicher, vol. viii. p. 80. d3 52 THE PAULINE CONTROVERSY. Paul, after his conversion, energetically took up the same line of argument. He showed Christianity from its very nature to be independent of national privileges, and open alike to all men. Yet he did not abruptly sever Christianity from Judaism, or altogether deny the Jewish prerogative ; the partialities in- separable from his origin and education occasionally mingled with his arguments, and somewhat perilled his consistency. If Judaism be the Mosaic law^s and institutions only, it was a dis- pensation temporarily adapted to the sinful condition of mankind inherited from Adam, and Christianity is a new^ thing absorbing and superseding it ; but if it be taken in a higher sense as a continuous divine revelation, then Christianity, instead of being new, is only the "gospel of grace" given antecedently to the law to uncircumcised Abraham, and rightfully inherited by his spiritual children. The apologetic tone adopted in Acts, and by Paul himself in the Epistle to the Romans,* excusing the exercise of his proper calling as Apostle of the Gentiles on the plea of the perversity of the Jews, seems not altogether consistent mth his earlier language, or indeed wdth his fundamental axioms. He says that "all," whether Jew or Gentile, have sinned, and fallen short of righteousness ; that, therefore, all, whether Jew or Gentile, are under the law's curse, for there was a moral conscience where there was no ^Mosaic law, and consequently the same law was virtually, if not formally, revealed to Gentiles also. All have sinned, but are conditionally redeemed, Christ taking the curse or consequence of sin upon himself, and by his own death extinguishing really as well as figuratively the fleshly infirmities and responsibilities of all the members of his body. And sin being extirpated with the flesh, the law, sin's universal concomitant, is dead also ; we are now bound only by the " law of love," " of Christ," or " of the Spirit," that divine fountain from which all, whether Jew or Gentile, may henceforth freely drink. ^ There are no more arbitrary distinctions, neither Jew nor Greek, neither circumcision nor uncircumcision. All died in Adam ; all live in Christ. 3. PauVs Unpopularity. The genuine Epistles of St. Paul give anything but a san- guine view of the prospects of his cause. His liberalism w^as Ch. X. 2 1 Cor. viii. 13. 53 disliked, his motives misrepresented, his apostolic authority denied. He was opposed by the Judaising Christians, who ap- pointed spies to follow his movements and frustrate his efforts.^ In Galatia and Corinth he was beset by " false teachers" and *^ false brethren," who, fortified with letters from Jerusalem,^ controverted his apostleship,'* impugned his disinterestedness,* derided his language and appearance;^ in short, spared no arti- fice or calumny to lower him in the estimation of those Gentile converts who by express agreement" had been committed to his charge. St. Paul certainly does not accuse the older Apostles by name of complicity in these attacks ; but the passionate complaint and sarcastic allusions of "Corinthians" and " Galatians," leave little doubt as to the parties really arrayed agains him. His proud assertion of independence and substantive apostolicity could only have been intended to rebut the exclusive claims of the immediate associates of Jesus ; who had they been, as they affected to be, sincerely desirous to second his views, might at once have silenced his adversaries by a pub- lic interposition of authority. In competition with the lofty reputations of these recognised "pillars" of the church,^ he might refer to his widely-extended labours, his sufferings for Christ's sake, his confidence in his own integrity of purpose ; but notwithstanding the extraordinary revelation in which he boasted to have " seen" Christ, he could not claim to have seen him in the same way as the older Apostles ; and he found with anguish that the vision which was conclusive for himself, could not exercise the same influence over others. His lessons, which had been far from triumphant while he lived, seem to have been nearly obliterated at his death. The churches of Antioch, Corinth, and Rome reverted to a Judaical forna of Christianity, and, guided rather by sympathy of opinion than by historical veracity, ungratefully substituted the name of Peter for that of their real apostolic founder. A story, too, was circulated that he was no real Jew, but by birth a heathen, who, having been circumcised in order to become qualified to many the daughter of the High Priest, had been disappointed in his ^ Gal. ii. 4, 12. ^ 2 Cor. iii. 1 ; comp. the Clementina, xi. 35. 3 2 Cor. xi. 5, 23; xii. 11. * Ch. vii. 2; xi. 9; xii. 14, 17. * lb. X. 10. Gal. ii. 9. '^ The use of the word " pillar" is a natural metaphor; but its application to the Apostles seems to have been founded on special Jewish precedent. See Proverbs ix. 1. 54 THE PAULINE CONTROVERSY. suitj and was tlius induced to vent his spleen in abuse of circum- cision and Mosaical institutions generally. The book of Reve- lations, indirectly excluding him from the number of the Apostles, stigmatises him as an intruder and deceiver ;^ he is apostrophised by the writer of the Epistle of James as a " vain man/^ the Judaising Papias denounces the propagation of vague doctrines alien alike to Christ and to truth. ^ Justin, who cer- tainly could not have been unacquainted with the writings of the Apostle/ reminding his interlocutor of the wolves in sheep^s clothing who were to come in Christ^s name/ reprobates those teachers who permitted the eating of meats oifered to idols as unworthy the name of Christian, and as disseminating the sug- gestions of deceiving spirits ; and in an early writing of the Petrinic class,^ Peter is made to ask, with characteristic illibe- rality, " Why are we to believe that the Lord, who so long fami- liarly conversed with us, has appeared to you, if your doctrine does not agree with his? why, if really an apostle, do you contend against me, the great pillar of the church, supplanting me in the opinion of the people V The allusions in this work, which are generally admitted to point, under the name of the great archetype of heresy, Simon Magus, to the Pauline doctrine, and to Paul himself, offer a very painful view of the state of Christian feehng. The author, who writes in the interest of a Jewish form of Christianity, invidiously transfers to Peter the true apostleship of the Gentiles, in opposition to a false pretender. '^ Many of the Gentiles,^^ says Peter, " have rejected my preach- ing of the law, having adopted the naughty antinomian doctrine of that detested individual {-)(6pov avOpw-rrov), so that I, the fimi rock and foundation of the church, the ear witness of the Lord^s teaching, instead of being believed, am treated as dam- nable !^ Why, to call me damnable is to accuse God who revealed Christ to me, and Christ also, who pronounced me to be blessed on account of that revelation. Certain persons are attempting by artful interpretation to distort my words in spite of me, to make me out a subverter of the law, while hy- pocritically suppressing my real opinions / but God forbid I should so act, for this would be to contend against God^s law ^ Ch. ii. 2, and xxi. 14; comp. 1 Cor. xvi. 8, 9. ^ gus. H. E. 3 See Tryph. ch. xcii. p. 316, Otto. * Tryph. ch. xxxv. p. 114, Otto. ^ The Clementine Homilies, xvii. 3. ^ " Kanyvaafjievos,'''' the very word used in Galatians ii. 11. -^ Introductory Epistle, p. 5, in Schwegler's edition; corap. Galatians, ut supra. THE OLDER APOSTLES. 55 given to Moses, whose eternal obligation was attested by Christ. These persons would seem to know my mind, and to understand my words, better than myself; and if they presume to tell these falsehoods during my life, how much farther will they not go after I am dead ! Beware then, and whenever a teacher or prophet comes before you unprovided with letters of recom- mendation from James, take heed lest it be a machination of the devil/^ ' 4i. The Older Apostles. The conduct of the older Apostles in regard to St. Paul is very remarkable and more than questionable. The agreement entered into at the conference alluded to in Galatians was evi- dently a hasty concession to his unquestionable success, the full importance of which they did not understand. The "right hand of fellowship '' proffered at Jerusalem was immediately followed by the altercation at Antioch ; and, indeed, that the offer either meant nothing or was insincere, is proved by the bitter opposition he everywhere met with, and which leaves us to infer either that the acknowledged heads of the church were utterly insignificant and powerless persons, or that, like the dissembling Peter and time-serving James,^ they acted a double part, secretly conniving at the persecution of one whom they affected to treat as a fellow-labourer and friend. Singularly enough, the moment that any Christian conversion is effected beyond the limits of Judsea, emissaries from Jerusalem appear 1 Horn. xi. 35. The allusion to Paul in the above expressions is unraistakeable. The suppression of his name only the more betrays the bitterness of the writer. In the introductory Epistle, Peter especially requests that his discourses may be withheld from the heathen, and communicated only to true men of the circumcision; and for this reason, that the consequences of unguarded preaching among the Gentiles had already been made but too evident by the successful artifices of a certain " hated individual." Who this hated person who preached antinomianism to the heathen in opposition to Peter could have been, if not St. Paul, it would be difficult to say. The application is made still clearer by the objection taken to apostleship founded on visions (Hom. xvii. 19) ; and by the mode exactly corresponding to that mentioned in Acts (viii. 14), in which the true Simon is made to follow the false impostor (Hom. ii. 17). The pseudonym of the Samaritan sorcerer may be explained by the fact, that Samaria was an especial object of Jewish " odium theologicum ;"" that it was the scene of the first extra- Judaical conversions; and thus became the standing type of heathenish apostacy and heresy. (Comp. Hegesippus in Euseb. H. E. iv. 22 ; Baur, Die Christliche Kirche, p. 83.) 2 As represented in the Acts xv. 21 ; xxi. 20. 56 THE PAULINE CONTROVERSY. upon the stage/ not, surely, for the pui'pose of effecting what had been ah'eady completed, but in order to traduce the teacher/ to spy out the liberty of his flock/^ and to lead them back again into bondage. The letters of recommendation borne by these emissaries* must have been issued by some per- sons of recognised authority in the church ; and it is difficult to imagine who these could have been if they were not the ^^ seeming pillars," or the Apostles themselves. In Galatians, as well as in Acts, Peter is supposed to acquiesce in the Pauline maxim of salvation by grace only ; yet he shrinks from a direct avowal of his sentiments, and not only truckles to Jewish prejudices himself, but would enforce submission to them on others.* It may be possible that, at the first inter- \dew, the Apostles, pleased at the gratifying news of Gentile conversion, accepted the fact without having any clear appre- hension of the consequences; but it is impossible to believe that, after being made aware of them, they alone continued to be deliberately neutral, or that, coinciding from the first with the theories of St. Paul, they had already prejudged the con- troversy whieh so long continued to agitate the church. The account in Acts is clearly unhistorical. The writer attributes to Paul w4iat Paul expressly disclaims, the acting in close corre- spondence with the older Apostles, and by their authorisation. Immediately after his conversion and preaching at Damascus, he is said to have proceeded at once to Jerusalem, and to have there conferred, not with James and Peter only, but with the general Apostolic body. His mission to the Gentiles is not allowed to have been, as it is in Galatians, his original calling, but only resorted to after the failure from some unexplained cause of an attempt to preach in Jerusalem.'^ Paul proclaims to the Gala- tians the absolute independence of his office ; whereas the Acts would represent it as ministerial or delegated; and, with a similar view, gives to PauPs private conference and arrangement mth the Apostles * the character of a general council and decree 1 Comp. Acts viii. 5, 6, 14; again, Acts viii. 40; x. 1, 5; and again, ch. xi, 20, 22, 27. 2 2 Cor. xi. 12, 13. ^ Gal. ii. 14. * 2 Cor. iii. 1. 5 Gal. ii. 14. Gal. i. 19. 7 His motive for quitting Jerusalem is variously accounted for, either as dictated by self-preservation, or commanded by a vision in the temple; and it is only at the entreaty of Barnabas that he is prevailed on to go to Antioch. 8 Gal. ii. 2. THE OLDER APOSTLES. S7 of the church.^ The writer seems not to be aware that the decree ostensibly issued on Pauline principles is, after all, no more than the Levitical regulation for strangers or proselytes of the gate, whose conversion, exemplified in the precedent of Cornelius, could be no warrant for the general admission of Gentiles ; and that the secondary subservient part ascribed throughout the transaction to Paul, whom he affects to treat as a missionary agent instead of an independent labourer and original thinker, is negatived by PauFs own written contradiction. Moreover, he does not see that by making the Apostles speak like Paul, and Paul subscribe a decree to which he could not have con- sistently and sincerely assented, he is destroying the character of both parties, and exhibiting them as traitors to their own convictions. Doubtless the Apostles may have been weak, foolish men, since they were pronounced to be so by Jesus him- self.^ Nor can any great improvement have taken place when they became known to St. Paul, who professes to have seen little of them, and evidently neither likes nor values what he did see. On the contrary, he says that "they who seemed to be something '' added in conference nothing to him.^ They appear to have boasted of their Israelitish descent, and of being the true ministers of Christ,* exhibiting a petty jealousy of others while commending themselves,^ and vying amongst each other who should be accounted the greatest. But the narrative, which would convict them of falsehood as well as folly, is evi- dently not to be relied on. For how can we reconcile the mild conciliatoiy demeanour attributed in Acts to James, who, to make things pleasant, counsels a Jesuitical compliance with observances for which he entertains no real respect,^ with the sudden alami and altered conduct of Peter and all the Jewish converts at Antioch, including even Barnabas, upon the arrival of his emissaries ? The cause of Christianity is ill served by a writer who represents its leaders as destitute of serious convic- tions, or, still worse, without the honesty to confess and main- tain them. Peter^s dissembling and vacillation must be ad- mitted; but in regard to the other Apostles, it is a more probable, as well as a more creditable supposition, that they are ^ Had such a decree as that mentioned in Acts xv. ever been issued, St, Paul could not have failed to appeal to it. Comp. the Tubingen Theol. Jahrbiicher, vol. viii. p. 34. ^ Matt. XV. 16; Luke xxiv. 25. ^ (jal. ii. 6. * 2 Cor. xi. 23. * 2.Cor. X. 10, 12, 18. Ch. xxi. D 3 58 THE PAULINE CONTROVEKSY. belied in tlie Acts, and that they in reality never distinctly abandoned their original Jewish leanings. It is only thus that we can understand the terror inspired by their missionaries at Antioch, the influence of the false apostles w^ho boasted against Paul at Corinth/ or that of the false brethren who bewitched the Galatians. It is preposterous to suppose that this influence could have existed if it had been counteracted by the authority of the Apostles, or that the community of " faithful Hebrews" which was governed by fifteen successive circumcised bishops,* should have thought and acted Judaically in direct opposition to the opinions of its earliest teachers. 5. The Nicolaitans. The sect of the Nicolaitans, twice stigmatised as "hateful^' in the Apocalypse,'^ has been the subject of much controversy. The Fathers confound them with the Gnostics, assuming their name to be derived from Nicolas, the proselyte of Antioch, one of the seven deacons of the infant church.* This, how- ever, is only an arbitrary application of Scripture data to later heretical appearances ; and if there really w as any Gnostic tendency in the sect referred to, it can only have been such un- developed antecedents of Gnosticism as existed in the first cen- tury. Many critics have even doubted the existence of a sect bearing this name. It has been conjectured that the Apoca- lyptic writer may have adopted here, as in other instances, a symbolical term used at the time to designate heresy. Nico- laus, and Eremolaus or Armillus, mean '^ destroyers of the people," and are Greek translations of the word Balaam, the name of the great Jewish type of false and adverse prophecy.^ Balaam was admitted to have been a prophet, but one who deliberately chose evil instead of good, and who, by opposing the people of God, was guilty of the inexpiable crime against the Holy Ghost. It has, therefore, been presumed that the " KparovvT^Q Tr]v StSa;)(rjv Nt/coXairwv" in Rev. ii. 15, are one with '^ KparovvTEg Tr}v didaxnv BaXaajUL " in the preceding verse ; the imputation of loose morality being generally super- 1 2 Cor. X. 12; xi. 13,22. ^ E^ggij ^ j;. iv. 5. 3 Ch. ii. 6, 15. 4 Acts vi. 5; Winer, R. W. B. * 2 Pet. ii. 15; Jude 11. 'See Gfrorer, Urchristenthum, ii. 402. THE NICOLAITANS. 59 added to that of laxity of opinion. It is observable that in verse 6 the deeds of the Nicolaitans are condemned, in verse 15 their doctrine. There is a generality of character in the. opinions attacked, and the wiiter evidently espouses the cause of Judaical Christianity against 'those who " pretended to be Jews, but were not ;" who, like the false prophet, threw a stum- bling-block in the way of the children of Israel -^ and since it is impossible to apply the reproof to the Gnostics of the second century, the doctrines complained of must be those adverse to the Jew-Christianity of the first, and it is difficult to conceive what these could have been, unless they were those of St. Paul. St. Paul himself confessed that his preaching was a " stumbling- block '' to the Jews. He claims for all Christians that very knowledge of the " deep things of God" ^ which these heretics are said to have pretended to ; for when the Apocalyptic writer alludes to ^'^ knowing the deep things of Satan, as they say," ^ he evidently speaks with contemptuous irony, changing the great boast of the adverse party by a slight verbal altera- tion into an invidious reproach.* St. Paul, too, like the false teachers in question, vindicates, as an act in itself indif- ferent, the eating meats offered to idols ;^ at least, for those who had sufficient "knowledge" to understand its real harm- lessness. So far there is nothing in these charges against the Nicolaitans that might not presumably have been urged by a zealous Jew-Christian against Paulinism, whose liberality, as its author himself admits, was apt sometimes to degenerate into licentiousness. But in order to explain the seemingly inappli- cable charge of fornication, it is scarcely necessary to have re- course, in this instance, to the possible corruption and libertinism of the Pauline Christians. Every convert who did not adopt the " customs" or Jewish observances was looked upon by Jew- Christians as an unclean liver. '' We do not eat or live with Gentiles," say the Clementine Homilies,^ " their mode of life being impure." Now the Pauline antinomianism was regarded by strict Judaisers as essentially impure and heathenish. The eating sacrificial meats was a participation in the sacrifice, a " ^eroxQ rpa7reZr]g Sat/xovwv," ' and according to Old Testament phraseology, a sort of fornication. It was not only that par- 1 Ch. ii. 9, 14. M Cor. ii. 10. 3 Ch. ii. 24. * See Zeller's observation on this passage, Theol. Jahrbiicher, i. p. 714. * 1 Cor. viii. 10. ^ xiii. 4. ' 1 Cor. X. 21 J Clem. Horn. vii. 4j Orig. Cels. viii. 30. 60 THE PAULINE CONTROVERSY. taking the offerings often led to actual pollution in excesses connected with them, the implied idolatrous concession was itself a coquetry with demons, or, as expressed in Revelations, a desertion of the " first love," * and, consequently, the two offences were classed together.-^ Of course, complete proof can- not be expected in so obscure a problem ; but when we find the Ephesian Christians, who hated the Nicolaitans, congratulated on having unmasked and successfully counteracted the preten- sions of certain " false Apostles," ^ it is impossible not to be reminded of the quarrel between St. Paul and his adversaries as to the claim to apostleship* which the Apocalypse would evi- dently deny,* and that only a few years earlier he had been zealously labouring, in his apostolic character, against a for- midable opposition among these very Ephesians.^ 6. The Gift of Tongues. The primitive Christian sentiment, however noble it might be, was easily perverted. Its movements, unswayed by intel- lect, were irregular and fanatical. The Corinthian church became a scene of utter confusion^ from this cause, eveiy one coming forward with a revelation or a doctrine,* and all clamouring together. The gift of the Spirit (and to be a Chris- tian and to possess the Spirit were the same) manifested itself chiefly in two ways : prophesying, and the gift of tongues. Prophecy, as we know from the Old Testament,^ included, among other things, that ecstacy and frenzy which in the East was always ascribed either to divine or to dsemoniacal in- fluence ; and the character of the " gift of tongues " may be inferred from the severity with which the Apostle rebukes the * Comp. Eph. V. 12, 23, &c. ^ Acts XV. 29 ; Rev, ii. iropveia, as standing at the head of heathen offences, may stand for heathen immorality and profligacy in general, as opposed to Christian *' SiKotocri/j'T7," "justice," or moral purity; and the Apocalypse, which exhibits the austere spirit of early Christianity in regard to celibacy, ( xiv. 4. " Homines illi qui Christian! vocantur," says Galen, " ab usu rerum venerearum abhorrent,") may have used it in this sense. A more special meaning has been also attributed to iropviia, as an infringement of the Levitical regulations as to marriage. See I Cor. V. 1 ; Ritschl, Altkatholische Kirche, pp. 117, 140; Baur's Paulus, pp. 141, 142. 3 Rev. ii. 2, 6. "1 Cor. ix. 1; 2 Cor. i. 1; Gal. i. 1. ^ Ch. xxi. 14. 6 1 Cor. XV. 32; xvi. 9. 7 1 Cor. xiv. 33. 8 i]j. 26. 1 Sam. xviii. 10: Jer. xxix. 26. EXPECTATIONS OF THE SECOND COMING. 61 disorderly proceedings of his favourite flock. He speaks of the practice^ which seems to have been especially in vogue among females/ as indicative of childishness in understanding, and as nearly akin to madness.^ It was not, as afterwards represented in the Acts, a speaking in foreign languages, for a foreign lan- guage is not a jumble of inarticulate sounds,^ and might readily have been interpreted ; and since, in the eleventh verse, St. Paul compares it to speaking in foreign languages, it could not have been the same thing. The speaking with " other," " strange," or '' new " tongues, was the gi\TLng utterance to ecstatic, unin- telligible sounds, the speaking, as it were, " not to man, but to God," which, though mistaken for inspiration by believers, was not only entirely unedifying, but among unbelievers gave occasion for scandal and ridicule. This " Pneumatic " endow- ment of the primitive church was afterwards expanded, in the altered sense of speaking foreign languages, into the description of a figurative vision, purporting to fulfil ancient prophecy by the visible promulgation of a new spiritual revelation on the very day* which had been signalised by the old revelation upon Sinai. The miraculous story of the fieiy tongues of Pentecost may be traced in all its details to traditional Jewish ideology. It is the public establishment of the Christian law, or " new covenant," accompanied with a corresponding spiritual or fieiy baptism,^ on the day and under a form analogous to that attri- buted to the announcement of the old law, which being assumed to be obligatory on the whole world, was supposed by the Jews to have been enunciated in all the seventy languages of the world at one and the same instant. 7. Expectations of the Second Coming, An eager expectation of Christ^s second coming to judge the world and vindicate his elect was the great moral lever of early Christianity. We find it expressed in every vaiying tone of hope, impatience, disappointment, and may form a near esti- mate of the date of a given composition from the degree of assurance or despondency assumed on this subject. We are at 1 1 Cor. xiv. 34. ^ ^^^ 23; comp. Acts ii. 13. 1 Cor. xiv. 7, 8. "* "The day of Pentecost." Comp. Gfrorer's Urchristenthum, ii. p. 392; Wett- stein to Acts ii. 3 ; Philo, De Decalogo, Mangey, ii. 1 85. 5 1 Cor. 10, 2; xii. 13; Matt. iii. 11. M Pet. i. 7, 13; iv. 7j 2 Pet. iii. 11. 62 THE PAULINE CONTROVERSY. first told that the Lord is near^ at the very doors ; that it is " the last time/^ St. Paul expects to survive the end of the world, and the immediate cotemporaries of Jesus would not pass away until all was fulfilled.^ In Matthew the second coming is to take place immediatehj after the destruction of Jerusalem -^ Luke" finds it necessary to allow a certain interval of time during which Jerusalem is to be " trodden down of the Gentiles ;^^* yet all is to be fulfilled within the actual genera- tion. Meantime the Christians are urged, as " strangers and pilgrims/^ * to abstain from fleshly lusts, to avoid encumbering themselves with superfluous houses and delicacies,^ their real home being a far-ofi* and better city.'^ Jesus is most distinctly made to assert that there were some standing near him who should not taste of death until they should see him coming in his kingdom.* The Epistle to the Hebrews requests a little patience : " Yet a little while, and he that shall come will come, and will not tarry." The Second Thessalonians^" endeavours to account for delay by alluding to some mysterious suppres- sion or hindrance of the final series of revelations." Mark** finds it necessaiy to omit one of the corresponding passages in Matthew,*" and disposes of the other** by adopting an opinion prevalent at the time,** that an earnest, or even virtual fulfilment of the second coming might be found in the transfiguration. The Second Epistle of Clemens* tries to still the uneasiness which began to prevail as to whether the event so long delayed would happen at all; and in the Second of Peter*^ protracted dis- appointment is found to have degenerated into downright in- credulity and scoffing, which the writer can only meet by appealing to the Scripture maxim, that to the Lord a thousand years are but as one day. 8. The Apocalypse. When these expectations were at the highest, the dreadful persecution under Nero, described by Tacitus, produced a pro- ^ Matt. xxiv. 34. ^ Ch. xxiv. 15, 29. 3 Ch. xix. ] 1. * Ch. xxi. 24. 5 I YQi, ii. n, 12; Epist. Diogn. v. ' Hermas, Simil. i. ' Hebrews xi. 10, 14, 16; xiii. 14; comp. 2 Clement ch. v. Matt. xvi. 28; and see x. 23. Heb. x. 37; comp. Rev. vi. 10, 11. 1" Ch. ii. 26. " See Baiir's Paulus, p. 487. ^^ Ch. vi. 7, ff. 13 Ch. X. 23. " Matt. xvi. 28; comp. Mark ix. 1. ^5 2 Pet. i. 16, 17. i Ch. xi. 12. 17 ch. iii. 3, 4, 8. THE APOCALYPSE. 63 found and lasting impression on th^Christians. In these horrible events, the first that had occurred of the kind, they recognised the woes and tribulations^ which were to precede the ^' second coming/^ and saw in the perpetrator of them the great Adversary or Antichrist, the idea of whom they had adopted from Judaism and its prophetical descriptions. In great ca- lamity men^s thoughts turn fearfully from common routine to scan the inscrutable counsels of the Eternal, and the startled imagination offers a ready ear to prodigies and prophecies. The Sibylline verses speak of Nero as " the great Italian King," the runaway, the dire serpent, the murderer of his mother, who for a time would be preserved unseen, but, soon reappearing with the pretensions of God,^ would cross the severed Euphrates with many myriads of men, ravage Judaea, and burn the temple j then would the wrath of the Almighty be revealed; there would be earthquakes at Salamis, Cyprus, and Paphos, the innocent would fall, and destruction burst upon the West."' A strange notion prevailed extensively, not only in Rome, but in Achaia and Asia,* that Nero was not actually dead, but only concealed; that he was beyond the Euphrates among the Par- thians, whence he would return with the assembled forces of the barbarians to plunder Rome. The impression continued for many years after the tyrant^s death,* and adventurers used it for their own purposes. Why Nero should have been singled out to be made the subject of such a story, is not explained ; but is was very probably owing to some fancied resemblance of his terrific, yet fantastic, character to the Christian notions about Antichrist. As the false prophet Balaam had opposed Moses ; Goliath, David ; Sennacherib, Hezekiah ; and Antiochus Epipha- nes, the ideal deliverer of Daniel, Nero now appeared as the personified power of this world, the great public enemy of Christianity, who was to reappear before the ^^ second coming " of Messiah, and from him receive the recompense of his iniqui- ties. The Jewish prophecies were greedily caught up by the ^ The '^ wSti'es," or Messiah woes. ^ Comp. 2 Thess. ii. 4. ^ Comp. Liicke, OfFeiibarung, i. pp. 253, 255. The Ascensio Isaiae, a book of later date, gives a similar prophecy of the return of Nero under the form of *' Berial, rex hujus mundi, interfector suae matris." * Suet. Vit. Ner. ch. Ivii. ; Tacit. Hist. viii. 2; Augustin de Civit. xx. 19; Lac- tant. de Mort. pers. ch. ii. ' Dio Chrysostom, in the second century, mentions it as still subsisting. 64 THE PAULINE CONTROVERSY. gossips (the ^' rumoruirStvidi^' '^) of the day; and it was gene- rally expected that persons issuing from Judaea would obtain universal dominion/ a presage which Vespasian endeavoured to make available for himself. Nero, it appears,, had been informed by the astrologers that, after a temporary defeat, he should recover the " empire of Jerusalem and the East," ^ and was actually projecting an eastern journey for some wild purpose* at the time of his death, so that his sudden disappearance might readily be connected with those glowing ideas of an approaching deliverance of the Jews which had already kindled a formidable insmTcction in Palestine. The book of ^' revelations" is gene- rally allowed to have been written about this time.^ Its appa- rent date seems to coincide with the short reign of Galba,** and it must, at all events, have been composed soon afterwards. In symbolical language borrowed from Daniel, it describes^ a beast rising out of the sea with seven heads and ten horns, each horn bearing a crown, and on his heads the name of blasphemy. In the 1 7th chapter the description is repeated ; but here a woman sits upon the beast arrayed in scarlet and gold, drunken with the blood of the saints and martyrs of Jesus. The woman is explained * to mean the city of Rome ; the beast on which she rides is the Roman empire ; the seven heads are the seven hills f they are also seven successive kings or emperors," five of whom are fallen, the sixth still is, and the seventh is yet to come. In both descriptions there occurs a remarkable incident of analo- gous import. One of the heads is wounded to death, but is suddenly healed ; and in the 17th chapter "the beast that was, and is not, and yet is," is placed eighth in the list of kings, though not as additional to the rest, but one of the already enu- merated seven." Each of the seven heads may be said to be the beast himself, inasmuch as each king is only so in reference to the kingdom which he represents and governs; and the sin- gular extinction, abeyance, and revival of the particular king in question, can only be understood of Nero^s self-inflicted wound and expected return as Antichrist.*'^ The fifth on the list of 1 Tacit. Hist. i. 5. ' gyg^^ yggp^ j^^ 3 gygt. ch. xl. * " Secretis imaginationibus." Tacit. Annal. xv. 36. ^ Baur, Tubingen Magazine, vol. ii. p. 305; De Wette, Einleitung, p. 382. Ch. xvii. 10. 7 Ch. xiii. 1. 8 Ch. xvii. 18. 9 Ch. xvii. 9. 10 Ver. 10. " Ver. 11. ^'^ Tacit. Hist. ii. 8. A report was spread through Asia, " velut Nero adventaret, THE APOCALYPSE. 65 Caesars ^ corresponds exactly with the fifth king of the Apo- calypse, and Snlpicius Severus expressly refers to him the enigmatical attribute of simultaneous existence and non-exist- ence.* Even Lactantius applies to Nero the Sibylline oracle above cited, and Augustin explains the " man of sin/^ in Thes- salonians, in the same way. But when Nero^s return was out of the question, and lapse of time had made impossible the literal accomplishment of the prophecy in its original meaning, every kind of arbitrary exposition was resorted to in order to preserve its credit, and it was variously explained of Chosroes, of Saladin, of worldly power in general, of the kings and dic- tators of ancient Rome, or the Roman Catholic enemies of Pro- testantism. Liicke admits that the Revelations never have been, and never can be, fulfilled in their original sense ; but what of that ? A fulfilment may be discovered which was never con- templated, and the evangelical theologian need never be discou- raged.^ The time allowed for the continuance of the beast or Roman monarchy is forty-two months. This, again, is the period of woe assigned in Daniel. It is the same " time, times, and half a time,^^ or 1290 days, during which the Gentiles are to tread under foot the holy city,* and the woman representing the Chris- tian Church to take refuge in the wilderness.^ The only diffi- culty is to determine the length of the "/cafooc/^ or higher unity in which the months and days are comprehended. All these chronological reckonings are founded on the seventy years vario super exitu ejus rumore, eoque pluribus vivere eum fingentibus credentibusque." It has been pointed out (see Zeller's Magazine, as above, p. 364), that the Hebrew letters of the words Nero Caesar together make up the mystic number 6^6 thus: ^ 50, -) 200, T 6, ] 50 = 306 ; p 100, p 60, -^ 200=^360. The first beast repre- sents the physical force of antichristian Rome, either as an aggregate monarchy or particular king ; the second beast " out of the earth " is the false prophet accom- panying Antichrist as Elias did Messiah, and representing the spiritual side of the adversar}" : for example, the soothsayers, magicians, Chaldaeans, &c. who swarmed at Rome. (Tacit, ii. 22.) Balaam, with whom the Egyptian sorcerers opposed to Moses were afterwards arbitrarily connected under the names of Jannes and Jambres (2 Tim. iii. 8; 2 Pet. ii. 15; and the Jerusalem Targum to Numb, xxii.), was the standing type of this ideal personage, who, like Simon Magus (see Clem. Homilies ii. 34; Recogn. iii. 47), made statues speak; and it may possibly be to him that the mystic number refers. See ZuUig's Commentary, ii. p. 247 ; Gfrbrer's Urchristen- thum, ii. 410. ^ " Ex quo Divus Augustus res Caisarum composuit." Tacit, Hist. i. 89. 2 Hist. ii. 29. " Secundum id quod de eo (Nerone) scriptum est : et plaga mortis 3 Offenbarung, 2nd edit. pp. 943, 944. * Ch. xi. 2. ^ ch. xii. 6, 14. 66 THE PAULINE CONTROVERSY. originally assigned to the Babylonish captivity of the Jews by Jeremiah. In order to extend the time of expectation down to Antiochus Epiphanes^ the writer of Daniel treats the seventy years as seventy sabbatical periods or weeks of years, the last half- week, or three and a half years, being the critical interval, at the end of which Messiah was to appear. In llevelations, the "ca/jOot," or unexpired terms of calamity, are dated from Messiah's translation to God's throne ;^ i.e. from the death of Jesus. This event was itself a striking instance of the " power'' given by the dragon (or Satan) to the beast,^ and might be regarded as the commencemert of a last period of oppression in regard to the holy city, as well as to the Christian Church. The period so begun would, probably, in the view of the writer, end about A.D. 70; and, supposing the death of Jesus to have been about A.D. 33-35, would consist of thirty-five years. As Daniel, in his construction of a " time," or Kaipog, changes each individual year of Jeremiah's period into seven years, so the writer of llevelations, in order to adapt Daniel's phraseology to the case before him, may have divided the years elapsed, since the na- tivity, into seven decads of years, half of which will be three decads and a half, or thirty-five years. In order to complete the sacred number of seven kings (answering to the seven hills) from Augustus, under whom Rome began an impious rivalry with divine power,*'' he requires only one more short reign, after which the millennium and end of the world take place immedi- ately. The writer's point of view places us unmistakeably at the extreme verge of earthly things, and the essence of the pro- phecy is the rapidity with which the few remaining events follow each other, one short intervening reign, Messiah's instant arrival, and the hurrying of Antichrist to destruction. There is abso- lutely no room for postponement; and orthodox interpreters, finding it impossible, with any plausibility, to substitute Papal for heathen Rome, are obliged, in order to keep the prophetic interest still in suspense, to sever the horns from the beast they belong to, to make them allies of the Lamb instead of enemies ; and there being no one left for them to conquer, to make them conquerors of themselves. In spite of the precision with which the writer carefully limits the time and scene, every one now thinks himself at liberty to give to vaticinations, long ago falsi- fied, a chance of fulfilment, by appropriating them to actual 1 Rev. xii. 5, 6. 2 ch. xiii. 4, 5. ^ cjj. xiii. 4. * Ch. xvii. 10. THE MILLENNIUM. 67 circumstances. Strange,, that after the frequent and notorious failures of the Jews in their attempts to define the exact time of the end of the worlds their baffled prognostications should still be employed for the same foolish purpose ; and that after the Almighty has repeatedly declared, "It is done/^ "It is finished/' in the first century of the Christian era, there should be persons sufficiently bold and visionary to make the con- tradictory assertion, that the trumpets and vials are still pouring forth their mischievous influences in the nineteenth. 9. The Millennium. But if Nero never returned, and from the very falsification of the prophecy in its original meaning, the evangelical theo- logian is now, as Liicke pretends, the better qualified to develope its spiritual significancy, to understand the Apostle's words better than he could himself,^ and to obtain from them a satisfactory insight into the mysteries of God's kingdom, the same premises may justify the rational theologian in denying the existence of any mystery at all, and in asserting the " Reve- lations" to be little more than a reflex of Judseo-Christian ideas and current eschatological conceptions. The tone and feeling of the book, its imagery and language, are all unmistakeable. Its Christianity may be " a new song," ^ but the rhythm is Jewish ;^ heaven is a new Jerusalem, the elect belong exclu- sively to the tribes, and instead of the Christian liberality and charity of the Gospel ascribed to John,* we find all the petty partiality and bitter vindictiveness of the Old Testament.^ Almost all the apocalyptic imagery may be traced either in the Old Testament or other Jewish writings, such as the Targums and New Testament Apocrypha, to familiar types and ideas, which the writer has skilfully adapted and combined ; thus the beast representing the worldly power of Rome is a compound of the four beasts or monarchies of Daniel, carrying, in happy correspondence with the seven-hilled city, their aggregate amount of heads. The Millennium, or reign of Christ with the saints on earth, is a peculiar limitation of the Old Mes- sianic theoiy. It is the materialised felicity of the just viewed See p. 313. 2 qy^^ xiv. 3. 3 Ch. ii. 9; iii. 9, 12, &c. * John iii. 16; xii. 47. ^ Ch. vi. lOj xi. 12; xviii. 6; xix. 13, 15; compare Ps. liv. 7; xcii. 11, &c. " 68 THE PAULINE CONTROVERSY. as a cosmical Sabbath/ and made terminable in order to leave room for ulterior eschatological proceedings. To the original tbeoiy contemplating the renewed reign of David under a victorious successor there had been superadded a resurrection in favour of those faithful Jews who died too soon to witness the event. This partial resurrection afterwards required to be either expanded or repeated; and it then became a question whether there should be two resurrections, or only one. If the idea of the theocracy was to be realised in the original sense of an earthly kingdom, it was necessaiy that there should be two, the first including only the just, or " saints of the Most High," who would reign on earth a thousand years before the general resurrection. St. PauP seems to leave no room for such an interval, since he devotes the whole period from the coming of Christ down to the " Ti\oq" or final establishinent of God^s empire, to a continued struggle between good and evil ; whereas, in the Apocalypse, the Millennium forais a period of repose between two resurrections and two great battles between Christ and Antichrist. The two notions, that of a palpable Messianic restoration and that of an eternal immortality, were to be reconciled ; and it was necessary to determine whether the " days of Messiah " ^ belonged to the " anov ovtoq," or " aiwv fieWtJv/^ to this world or the next. The reconcilement might take place either by union or succession; by throwing the Messianic period into futurity, in which case Messiahs coming would only be the instant of entering on a new world ; or it would have a prolonged duration interposed between the pre- sent and future. Its duration was variously calculated -j^ but the prevailing opinion was an inference from the assumed great cosmical period of 7000 years. This inference, which has already been cited from Irenseus,* is explained at length in the Epistle of Barnabas.^ "Consider, my children, what that signifies," ' he finished them in six days.'' The meaning is this, that in 6000 years, God wall bring all things to an end. For with him one day is a thousand years, as He says Himself,'' ^ behold to- day is as a thousand years/ Therefore, children, in six days, that is, six thousand years, shall all things be accomplished. ^ " Quotquot enim diebus hie factus est mundus, tot et millcnis annis consumma- tur." Irense, bk. v. ch. xxviii. 2 1 Cor. XV. 23. 3 Luke xvii. 22. * See Gfrorer, Urchristentlium, ii. p. 206, seq.; Liicke, Offenbarung, p. 311. * Bk. V. 28. 6 Ch. XV. 7 Psalm xc. 4. THE MILLENNIUM. 69 And what is that He saith^ ' and rested the seventh day ?^ He means that when the Son shall come to abolish the season of the wicked one and judge the ungodly, he will gloriously rest on the seventh day."* Orthodox interpreters are unwilling to admit early Christianity to have been generally Chiliastic. Cerinthus and Papias were Chiliasts ; but then, it is said, they were heretics, and being at variance with present orthodoxy, cannot have ever held aposto- lical truth. Liicke seems to regard the fire and brimstone of the Apocalypse, the gorging of the fowls with human flesh,^ the precious stones of the heavenly city, and the monthly fruc- tification of the tree of life, of which the nations are liberally allowed to use the leaves,^ as matters of high spiritual import, entirely subservient to the moral purpose which he considers the writer to have discreetly kept in view throughout. That second coming which to common apprehension bears the semblance of an external event, heralded with the voice of the archangel and the trump of God, a revelation in flaming fire,* like the light- ning streaming from one end of heaven to the other, is reduced by the spiritualising interpretation to the silent operation of the spirit, gradually but continuously expanding its healing influ- ences to the end of time.^ Christ^s millennarian reign on earth is no vulgar sovereignty intrenched in Jerusalem,^ but the sabbath of the soul, the moral peace and joy which Christ even in this world assures to his elect. But if this be all meant by the apocalyptic descriptions, why refuse the same latitude of figu- rative expression to Papias and Cerinthus, or else candidly admit that Chiliasm in its common acceptation was a general doctrine of the faith professed by the early Christian teachers, not only those already mentioned, but by Justin, Melito, Ire- nseus, and Tertullian ? Justin, who makes the Millennium an essential element of correct orthodoxy,^ understands it in the gross sense of eating and drinking with the Messiah,^ and Irenseus and Tertullian countenance upon this subject the most fantastic notions. Tradition makes Jesus himself a Chiliast ; for we are told by Irenseus that the Ephesian presbyters who had seen the Apostle John, heard him relate how the Lord taught about those days, saying : " Behold, the days are at ^ See also Lactantius, Inst. vii. 14. ^ Ch. xix. 21. ^ qt^^ jj^ii. 2. * 2 Thess. i. 8. ^ Lucke, Offenbarung, p. 313. Rev. xx. 9. ' Tryph. Ixxx. lb. ch. li. 70 THE PAULINE CONTROYERSY. hand when there shall be vines having each three thousand bunches." This only repeats the Rabbinical idea of Paradise, in which each grape would be a load for a waggon, and the trees fructify daily.* Such notions, rightly designated by Jerome as Jewish, were general, yet not universal. We know from Justin, that many disowned them even in his time, and they were discountenanced by the church, which found its stability endangered by the disquieting idea of the speedy termination of the world. Moreover, the belief in a literal fulfilment of the apocalyptic eschatology lost ground, in con- sequence of the allegorising interpretations of the Gnostics introduced into church theology by Origen ; some disputed the genuineness of the book ; others assigned in the above- mentioned way a spiritual meaning to its predictions, as that the first resurrection w^as the awakening of the spirit by the gospel, or that Christ^s second coming was, ipso facto, verified by his spiritual presence in the consciences of sinners. The church asserted its own reign to be the actual accomplishment of the ^lillennium, and that the saints were enjoying already the society of Christ in his kingdom.^ Yet the literal con- struction was never formally abandoned; and in consequence of an opinion that the Millennium actually began with the appear- ance or death of Christ, a dread of the approaching end, suggested in part by the horrible depravity of the times, was generally spread at the beginning of the 11th century through- out Christendom.^ 10. Eventual Predominance of Judaism, St. Paul's unpopularity was a natural consequence of the illiberal and unapprehensive character of those whose Chris- tianity, far from implying an abandonment of Judaism, was only a stricter and more enthusiastic adherence to it.* In all outward respects, except the acknowledgment of Jesus as Messiah, his followers w^re like other Jews, anxiously keeping the obsei-vances which St. Paul renounced as "beggarly ele- ments," frequenting the synagogue and temple, and attending to clean meats, circumcision, and Sabbaths. Comparing the 1 Gfrorer, Urchrist. ii. 243, 247, 257. ^ August, de Civ. xx. 9. 3 Gieseler, ii. p. 268. * Rev. ii. 9; iii. 9. PREDOMINANCE OF JUDAISM. 71 immediate results of Christianity with its real objects and ten- dencies, we are forced to conclude that the immediate associates and followers of Jesus were incapable of properly comprehend- ing either his character or his teaching. And indeed the same feeling, differently instructed and guided, might produce either the ascetical idealism of the early Christians or the political fanaticism of the Jews ; for although, in the point of its closest approximation to Judaism, i. e. the idea of a Messiah, Chris- tianity distinctly contradicted Jewish instincts by the provi- sional adoption of a crucified one, the breach appears to have closed almost as soon as it was made by the transference to the " second coming ^^ of what was uncompleted in the first. '^ The Jews,^' says an early Christian writer,^ " erred respecting the Lord^s first coming ; this is really the only difference be- tween us and them ; for that a Messiah is to come, they believe as well as we ; the only point of disagreement is as to his having already appeared in humble guise.^^ In the Acts, Christianity is supposed to be in the minority, and is therefore called a Jewish " heresy ;" but most of the early Christian writers retort the imputation of heresy upon other Jewish sects, and treat their own way of thinking as the only true Judaism.^ St. Paul, too, declares Christianity to be the true inheritance of Abraham, though he does so in a peculiar sense ; claiming the inheritance of the "believing" as contrasted with the circumcised Abraham, and thus transferring it to a wider sphere by considering its vital essence to be the promise given before the law, and to which the latter had only a subservient and temporary relation. The religion of the Old Testament, which had always been a system of expectancy, was thus absorbed by a more comprehensive one, and proved in its original provisions to have anticipated its own overthrow ; in- deed, the more carefully it was studied, the more it seemed to discountenance triviality, and to blend with the universal dic- tates of nature and conscience. But this comprehensive esti- mate, though undoubtedly latent in Christian feeling, was slowly apprehended, and by many never attained. The liberal * Recognitiones, i. 43 and 50. 2 Hegesippus, for example, speaks of the Essenes, Pharisees, Sadducees, &c. as distinct from the genuine "tribe of Judah which believed Christ;" (Euseb. H. E. iv. 22, with the note of Valesius). Comp. Rom. i. 3j ii. 29; Rev. ii. 9; James i. 1 ; and Hebrews, passim. 73 THE PAULINE CONTROVERSY. tendencies whicli coexisted with the original community in Jeru- salem, appear to cease from the time when the Hellenists were persecuted and dispersed,' after which we hear of the Jerusalem Christians only as strict Judaists, " zealous of the law/^ * Their belief in a resurrection is said to have made them disliked by the Sadducees, but the Pharisees befriended them ; and if, as alleged, the authorities really wished to silence them, the attempt was soon abandoned. The reactionary perversity of the Galatian Christians, the exclusive jealousy deprecated by St. Paul among the Roman, the childish attachment to Jewish observances of meats, di-inks, &c., long combated by Christian writers, such as " Hebrews,^^ Barnabas, and Justin, abundantly prove that the religion was still cramped by the forms and habits of thought which determined its earliest expression. The true spiritualism of Christian sentiment was ridiculously travestied by the fanatical Corinthians, and the prolific idea of holiness, purity, and imitation of divine perfection,^ was per- verted, even by St. Paul,* into needless asceticism.^ A general notion of early Christian practice may be formed from the tra- dition related by Hegesippus about James " the Just," ^ which must, of course, have been in general correspondence with the spirit of the times. The " Lord^s brother " and immediate successor as head of the church at Jerusalem is described as a Jewish Nazarite, holy from the womb, eating no animal food, and drinking no wine or strong drink. " No razor came upon his head, neither did he anoint himself with oil, or use a bath." " He alone might enter the holy place ; he wore no woollen, only linen garments;" he also, according to Epiphanius, wore the sacerdotal mitre, and was chaste unto death.'^ In this 1 j^cts viii. ^ Acts xxi. 20. 3 1 Pet. i. 15; 2 Pet. iii. * Rom. viii. 13; 1 Cor. vii.; Gal. v. 24. 5 See Athenagoras, Leg. xxxv. : " ro iv Trapd^PK} nnvai ixaKhov irapiaTricn rep Euseb. H. E. ii. 23. " Justice," " operari justitiara," or " BiKaioavvr), are the conventional names for early Christianity. See 1 John ii. 29. Christ is called the *' Just One." Lactantius says, " Petrus convertit multos ad justitiam" " Nero prosilivit ad excidendum templum et justitiam," &c. 7 The object of the tradition is to show, that as Christianity was the true Judaism, so James was the true High Priest. The Jewish priest wore linen alone in the temple, but might wear woollen in other places; not so James, who might at all times enter the holy of holies, whereas in general it was entered only once a year. It proceeds to relate the martyrdom of James, who, when the Scribes and Pharisees applied to him, as a man highly esteemed by the Jews, to disabuse them of their in- creasing infatuation about Jesus, boldly proclaimed before them all the specifically PREDOMINANCE OB J\)^ISBit3^ -. ;. V' 73 account^ and in several early writers^ asTfeTmas, the Homilies, and the Epistle to James, there is much reminding us of the sect of the Essenes, who, among other customs, never changed their shoes or dress until ragged or worn out, avoided the use of oil as a defilement, and despised riches and pleasure, esteem- ing continence above all virtues. Dwelling in the veiy soU- tudes where Christianity first announced the beatitude of the poor, they claimed, like the Christians, to be the true Jews ; and it is curious that this claim, seemingly clashing with their own, should have been conceded by Christian writers,^ con- firming, apparently, the indications contained in the history of the Baptist, and elsewhere, of the wide-spread influence of those ascetics. It might perhaps be expected that the Gentile converts would better appreciate the views of St. Paul, and faithfully second his lofty spiritualism. It appears, however, that his proposals were unsuited to their wants, and obscured the very boon which, as " lawless " Gentiles, they most needed.^ They stood in need of that clear demarcation between right and wrong which an irregular life and a multifarious external symbolism had almost obliterated; they could not compass '' righteousness '^ without a rule for ascertaining it ; and indeed St. Paul, whose abrogation of law was not so much the object as the preliminary postulate of his teaching, had himself in some measure provided for the self-evident requirement, by substituting for the superseded '^ letter [' a free and " spiritual law,^^ ^ better adapted, as he thought, for Gentile wants. But then his vindication of Christianity as the true Judaism,* and his anxiety to insist on every essential requirement of the law, showed that the change which he proposed was more verbal than real;^ at all events the form of its expression was too Christian tenet, that " Jesus was the Christ, and that he would come a second time in the clouds of heaven." Tradition here indicates the sole apparent distinction between Jew and Christian, i. e. who the coming Saviour was to be. * Valesius (to Euseb. H. E. iv. 22) rightly ascribes the omission of the Essenes in the enumeration of heretical sects given by Justin and the Clementine " Recog- nitiones," to the favourable light in which they were viewed; and the Apostolical Constitutions explicitly state that the Essenes, " separating themselves from heresy, kept inviolate the religion of their fathers." (Bk. vi. 6.) ^ 2 Cor. vi. 14; Gal. ii. 15. ' 1 Cor. vi. 9; vii. 19 ; Gal. v. 14 ; vi. 2 ; Rom. xiii. 8-10. * Gal. vi. 16; Rom. ii. 28. ^ He uses the word " law," as he does the word " life," in two senses, so that the " law " is abrogated, and yet still binding. Rom. iii. 31 ; Gal. iii. 25, &c. E 74 THE PAULINE CONTROVERSY. mystical to be generally understood, and could not .become popular. The Gentiles could not estimate conceptions which transcended their experience, and were little interested in being liberated from a bondage they had never felt ; so that when told by the Jerusalem emissaries that they could not be saved without Mosaic law/ the ethical tendency which had been con- current with conversion, whether taking the formal direction as in Galatia, or the ascetic and fanatical, as at Corinth, every- where relapsed into an external legalism. In St. Paul himself all religion was summed up in an intense faith or feeling which made duty spontaneous, and seemed to enthrone Christ within his own soul ; but the generality of men, in whom this feeling was undeveloped or incomplete, required an objective faith ; and this the detei-minate rule of a modified Jew-Christianity was better able to supply. The Gentiles were but imperfectly weaned from old habits and connections ; they required, as novices, the initiation of strict discipline ;^ and St. Paul, whose antinomian idealism would have overleaped, by a sudden self- abandonment to God, all the usual gradations and conditions of human amelioration, was himself obliged to find an equiva- lent for the instrumentality he had subverted, to recall his con- cessions, and to deprecate the natural consequences of the pre- mature liberty confeiTcd by his own system.^ Hence it was that the Pauline churches soon became avowedly Petrinic; and that the permanent results of the Paulinic teaching were con- fined to the idea of catholicity, the general development of the free Christian consciousness, and an instinctive separation be- tween morals, or the "holy" " spirituaP^ law, and the "beg- garly elements " of ritual. ^ Acts XV. ^ It will be recollected, that in order to check heathen practices among the ancient Jews, it was found requisite to assume the discovery of a positive law prohibiting them. 2 Kings xxii. 8. ' 1 Cor. viiii Rom. iii. 31, and ch. vi. PART III. IDEA OF CATHOLICITY, e2 PART III. IDEA OF CATHOLICITY. 1. The Roman Church. Salvation through a Messiah had been immemorially con- sidered to be "of the Jews;" that is, a strictly Jewish pri- vilege. To offer it to Gentiles, and, moreover, to offer it apart from Jewish obligations and qualifications, seemed to the first disciples a flagrant abuse and an astounding impiety. Hence the memorable altercation at Antioch ; from which it appears that during the seventeen years elapsed since St. Paulas con- version, the older Apostles had scarcely advanced beyond their first limited ideas: they still insisted on circumcision;^ and even after having formally abandoned to St. Paul the control of the Gentile churches, kept up a vexatious system of espionage and interference,^ tending to subvert the liberty they had osten- sibly conceded. In Galatia and Corinth a reaction took place, producing in each a peculiar phase of Judaising intolerance ; in the one Mosaic formalism, in the other, -hostility to the per- sonal claims of St. Paul. The latter confronted his Galatian adversaries with a direct contradiction, asserting the funda- mental convictions of the faith against pretensions which he felt to be utterly incompatible with true Christianity.^ To the Corinthians he justified his apostleship by appealing to his suf- ferings and labours, as well as to his more than usual share of divine gifts and revelations. But even were the apostolic claim and the difficulty about circumcision conceded, the two Chris- tianities ^the Jew and the Gentile remained in principle un- reconciled; and the growing preponderance of Gentile converts * Acts XV. 1 , agrees with Gal. v. 2-4. But Acts xv. 6, &c. and xvi. 3, 4, is utterly at variance with St. Paul's own declarations : for instance, in Gal. i. 8 ; ii. 5, 6, 14. See Zeller's JahrbUcher, viii. p. 436, seq. 2 2 Cor. xi. 13; Gal. ii. 4; iii. 1; iv. 9, 17; comp. Phil. i. 15. 3 Gal. i. 8; V. 2. 78 IDEA or CATHOLICITY. increased the discontent and jealousy of those who considered themselves already to he God^s elect hy right of birth. In his Epistle to the Romans, St. Paul modifies his original position, and while maintaining justification by faith freely ofiered to all men, endeavours hy explanation and concession to reconcile his Jewish kinsmen to more liberal views. He evidently pleads a difficult cause before an unwilling audience; nor could any doubt have existed as to the description of converts addressed, had it not been gratuitously assumed that the Christianity of the Gentile metropolis must have been Gentile, and also that this Gentile Christianity must have been Paulinic. Doubtless the Roman Church consisted partly of Gentiles; and St. Paul founds on this fact* his claim, as Apostle of the Gentiles, to interfere for their advantage. Both classes of converts which, since the apostolic conference at Jerusalem,^ had been recog- nised as distinct the ^' circumcision^^ and the '^uncircum- cision^^ and, moreover, the liberal and illiberal, are addressed in the Epistle ; but its arguments chiefly concern the Judaisers and the Jewish. To these is directed the advice about observ- ing meats and Sabbaths, the elaborate apology for Christian universalism, the anxious substitution of a new theocratic theory for the old, and the concihatory i*emarks, asserting, in spite of appearances, the real permanence of Jewish privilege. The second part of the Epistle would have been superfluous for Gentile converts to Paulinism, and useless for unconverted Jews; only for Jew-Christians is it relevant, although the Apostle, presuming the assent of his hearers, naturally ad- dresses them as " Christians,^^ leaving the less palatable part of his explanation to fall upon the unbelieving Jews. The Acts would insinuate that St. Paul, on his arrival in Rome, ad- dressed himself to the "Jews'' only; and, indeed, that the Roman Christians, whose " good report,'' we are told, " was known to all the world," ^ were almost unknown, or known only by hearsay, to their Jewish brethren in that city;* a suppo- sition wholly inadmissible, but hazarded by the writer in order to carry out his general design of veiling Christian disunion and St. Paul's antagonism. He employs St. Paul's own apo- logy for Gentile conversion, but applies it unhistorically. Paul speaks of the calling of the Gentiles as a consequence of Jew- ish blindness and perversity; the Acts would show how the ' Ch. i. 13. 2 Gal. ii. 9. Rom. i. 8. * Acts xxviii. 17. THE ROMAN CHURCH. 79 Apostle's own experience everywhere illustrates his theory, and, in spite of his primary calling of Gentile missionary,^ makes him everywhere address the Jews frst,'^ in order in each in- stance to authorise his turning to the Gentiles. St. Paul's own plea to the Romans is different. The apology for Chris- tian universalism is anterior and distinct from that for his actual address. He addresses the Roman Christians not be- cause they are Jews, having, as such, a legitimate right to his first overtures ; but for the contrary reason, that they are, in fact, extra- Judaical,^ and that, whatever their peculiar bias or extraction, they are geographically, at least. Gentiles. That their Christianity, however, was mostly Judaical, is clear from the general scope of the argument ; and it appears, moreover, that many of them were of those extreme Judaisers who looked on worldly authority and the principalities of this world as de- moniacal,* and who conscientiously abstained-from animal food as an unclean and unholy thing.^ But there were also many in the Roman community more liberally minded;^ and the object of the Apostle in writing to them appears to have been that which at the time he had most at heart to heal the dis- sensions unhappily prevailing among Christians. His efforts in this direction naturally turned to Rome, which, from its varied population, its independence of Jerusalem, and its me- tropolitan importance, seemed to offer the best opportunity for the attempt. He pleads the cause of universalism by showing that since all men stand alike before God in regard to sin, so all are alike susceptible of favour and redemption ; and that the calling of the Gentiles is a happy incident providentially re- sulting from the perversity of the Jews, intended not to exas- perate, but to stimulate them to honourable rivalry, until the accomplishment of the gracious purpose of God in the general salvation of mankind. Under these circumstances, he depre- cates Gentile presumption as much as Jewish irritation or de- spondency; admonishes the liberal and strong-minded convert to respect the scrupulosity of the " weak," and advises the ascetic and Sabbatarian not to judge harshly and uncharitably the liberty of his brother.^ The chief remaining link between the 1 Gal. i. 16. 2 Ch. ix. 20; xiii. 46. 3 Rom. i. 5 and 13. * Comp. ch. xiii. 1, which maintains the contrary position that " the powers that be are ordained of God." Comp. also Luke iv. 6; Eph. vi. 12; Rev. xiii. 2, where the beast supported hy the dragon is the Roman empire. Epiphan. Haer. xxx. ] 6 ; Clem. Hom. xv. 7; Baur's Paulus, 387. 5 Ch. xiv. 2. lb. 5^ Ch. xiv. 80 IDEA OF CATHOLICITY. two great Christian denominations seems to Lave been the alms forwarded from time to time to Jerusalem* for the use of the original community in that city, who appear as legalised pau- pers (or " Ebionites"), living on gratuities sent to them by those ^ whom in return they perplexed and led astray by their jealousy and bigotry. St. Paul hoped to the last that their illiberal prejudices would cease, and that the supplies muni- ficently contributed by his own churches for their wants might soften the arrogance and intolerance of their disposition.^ His last journey to Jerusalem was undertaken, not for the purpose suggested in the Acts, of performing his religious duties as a Jew in the Temple,* but to make a final efibit to conciliate by conveying in person the contributions of the Gentiles.* When these benevolent intentions were replied to by a threat of assas- sination and an attempt to tear him to pieces, he might have wholly despaired of accomplishing a pacification, unless he were to execute his long-cherished purpose of visiting Rome.^ There, at least, amidst a freer interchange and circulation of ideas, he might hope to efi*ect in part what was impossible in Palestine. But the later Pauline letters, whether conveying the Apostle^s own testimony, or only the tradition about him, afford a pre- sumption that the reception he there met with was anything but favourable : they intimate a continuance of those bitter animosities which made his life almost insupportable through the machinations of the " dogs of the circumcision,^^ disappoint- ing every hope of generous co-operation and sympathy.' 2. Severance between Christianity and Judaism, The dissensions which so severely tried the patience of St. Paul, and which he so earnestly deprecates in ^' Romans,^^ could 1 Gal. ii. 10. 2 Acts xi. 29; Rom. xv. 26, 27; 1 Cor. ix. 11, 12, 15; xvi. 3; 2 Cor. viii. 4; ix. l,&c.; xi. 12,2a. 3 2 Cor. xi. 12, 13. * Acts xviii. 21 ; xx. 16; xxiv. 11. * 1 Cor. xvi. 4 : a motive which, though evidently known to the writer of Acts (eh. xxiv. 1 7), he as far as possible suppresses, substituting another more in harmony with his own representation of the Apostle's conduct. Rom. i. 13. ' Phil. i. 15; ii. 20, 21 ; iii. 2; 2 Tim. iv. 16. The two last chapters of Romans have been shown to be interpolated; they, however, by their apologetic tone, make it probable that the Epistle, or the sentiments contained in it, had not been weJl received. SEVERANCE Bi;TWEEN CHRISTIANITY AND JUDAISM. 81 only gradually subside. The two last chapters of the Epistle are admitted to be a conciliatory appendix, added in order to pacify animosities still prevalent, by showing how the unpopular Apostle carefully confined his labours to the highways and hedges of heathenism, and by representing him in his character of alms- collector for the benefit of the " poor saints " ^ in Jeru- salem. It was, however, inevitable that the increase of conver- sions should at length break down the barriers of prejudice, and that the privileges once so zealously defended against Gentile intrusion by Judaists should become common Christian pro- perty. St. Paul himself, when protesting (though certainly in am- biguous terms) against the imputation of being a destroyer of '' the law," ^ seemed himself to have pointed out a basis of com- promise and pacification. He renounced the law in the old contracted sense, but restored it in a higher one. By means of this alteration, Jew-Christians were brought to renounce national prejudice and obsolete ritual, while Gentiles, unapt to compre- hend the Pauline metaphysical refinements, adopted a Chris- tianity consisting in moral amelioration and obedience to the essentials of the law, rather than in passive justification and mystical atonement. The prevalent Christian doctrine thus became an improved modification of the Mosaical, and the Pau- line controversy was forgotten in a partial adoption of its infer- ences. It was not so much a compromise attained by the deliberate arrangement and mutual concessions of two hostile parties, as the internal self-development of Christian feeling, spontaneously extruding the inapposite, and assimilating and incorporating every extant idea in harmony with its instincts. This was the unconscious, but all-controlling aim of the post-apo- stolic writers. It seemed before all things necessary that the new faith should be distinctly appreciated in its magnitude and meaning, and guarded against misapprehension and indifi'erence. The Epistle to the Hebrews, whatever the place or date of its composition,^ is an early efi'ort to rouse the Jew-Christian mind to a comprehension of the full import of its peculiar calling. Its object is to assert the paramount superiority of Christian salva- tion against those who, from indifference or disappointed hope, ^ If the Acts (ii. 42, 44, 45; iv. 32, 34) correctly represents the economy of the early Christians, their poverty might easily be accounted for. 2 Rom. iii. 31; vi. 14; vii. 12. * Schwegler and others suppose it to be Asia Minor. (Th. Z. ii. 295.) Some, referring to xiii. 20, derive it from Rome. E 3 82 IDEA OF CATHOLICITY. were ready to apostatise to Judaism/ or from dulness and su- perficiality were unable to rise from the Old Testament rudi- ments to a " higher gnosis " ^ or loftier ideas to see how carnal ordinances of meats and drinks had been superseded by the new Christian covenant, with its heavenly priesthood, its spiritual atonement, and its law written on the heart. ^ Professedly emanating from Pauline sources,* and conveying views which may be tenned either a spiritualised Judaism, or a Judaised Paulinism, it gives the earliest distinct intimation of a split within Jew- Christianity itself, claiming (as does also the Epistle of Barnabas) for Christians alone, not only the privileges, but, in a spiritual sense, the institutions of Judaism. The first Christians, it will be recollected, were " zealots for the law,'^ ^ and were visibly separated only by a slight speculative difference from unconverted Jews. Though sectarian, they were not so isolated as some other sects ; they were in favour with the Pha- risees, and the execution of James the Just by the Sadducean High Priest, Ananus, was disapproved by the more considerate of his countrymen. The story of Peter having founded the Church of Rome means only what we learn from St. PauPs epistle, the Judaical character of early Roman Christianity ; and the silence of Josephus, as well as the inaccuracy of other writers in ascribing Christian characteristics to the Jews, may have arisen from the real difficulty of seeing a distinction. The early Christian bishops, both at Jerusalem and Rome, were all cir- cumcised ;' indeed, all Christians, we are told by Sulpicius Severus,* held the faith Mosaically. Even Gentile converts swelled at first the number of the Jew-Christians, and, in gene- ral, esteemed themselves secure of salvation only by adopting, to its full extent, the " evvo/jiog TroXireia/* or bonds of legalism. The practical difficulty of enforcing punctuality in this respect, Ch. X. 23, 35-38; comp. vi. 6, 11. ' " TcXetoTTjs," or " irAfiuv yvcoais.''^ Heb. vi. 1 ; 1 Clemens xli.; Phil. iii. 10. Ch. viii. * Ch. xiii. 23. Actsxxi. 20. Suet. Claud, ch. xxv; Acts xvii. 2; Dio. Cass. Xiph. Ixvii. 14. The distinctive name of Christian is said^ in Acts xi. 26, to have been assumed by the early Gentile converts of Antioch; this, however, is extremely doubtful (Baur's Paulus, p. 90; Zeller's Magazine, viii. 418), and the namfe, which is for the first time recorded as openly assumed in the Epistles of Ignatius, had been for a long time a term of reproach. Schwegler's N. Z. ii. 166, note. 7 Euseb. H. E. iv. 5. " Non nisi ex circumcisione habebat ecclesia sacerdotem." " Pcene omnes turn Christian! Deum sub legis observatione credebant." Justin, Tryph. xlvii. 1.52. SEVERANCE BETWEEN CHRISTIANITY AND JUDAISM. 83 combined with the general expansion of free sentiment, reduced the comparative number of the extreme Judaisers, ultimately- compelling them either to quit the community, or to modify their opinions. Many chose the former alternative, and were disclaimed by their associates as heretical Ebionites ^ or Naza- renes ; although their heresy consisted rather in the obstinacy of their external orthodoxy, and their refusal to move with the age ; so that Jew-Christianity became heretical, not because its creed had changed, but because the general church had advanced beyond it. But the same reasons which made Christianity more accessible to Gentiles rendered it less palatable to the un- converted Jews, who now began to look on its professors in a different light ; to treat them as renegades from the faith, and to curse their religion as a profane mockery in the synagogues.^ Henceforth the Jews took an active part in persecuting Chris- tians,^ sending emissaries to accuse them wherever they could hope to get a hearing.* The feud seems to have begun on the Christian refusal to take part in the Jewish insurrection, under Barchochba, who revenged himself by a bloody persecu- tion; subsequently to this, we find the Christians sending pro- tests to the Emperor Hadrian, disclaiming identity with the culprits. The cotemporary Roman bishop, Xystus (a.d. 120- 129), is mentioned as the first who dropped the Jewish Passover observance ; and about the same time were composed a number of writings, under the form of controversial dialogues between Jew and Christian, that, for example, of Justin with Tryphon, and the " antilogy^' of Papiscus and Jason, all calculated to bring home to men^s minds what as yet was imperfectly understood, the essential difference between the religions, and to substitute for the dispute between Jew and Gentile Christianity the oppo- sition of Christianity in general to unbelieving Judaism. This is the ground taken by the writer of Acts, who strives to identify the modified Christianity of his own day with that of antiquity, and to conceal the protracted discord of Christian parties, under their common enmity to the Jews, those ideal ^' lovdaioi " of the fourth Gospel, who, as the type of hopeless perversity and blind- ^ The word means " poor men." This epithet was afterwards turned into a con- temptuous reproach by orthodox adversaries in the sense of poverty of intellect. See Euseb. H. E. iii. 27. * Justin, Tryph. ch. xvi. 47, 96^ 108, 117, 127. Jerome, Comment, on Isaiah, ii. ch. v., says that the chief of the Jews blaspheme to this day, anathematising in every synagogue the Christian name three times daily, under the name of " Na- zarenes." ' Euseb. H. E. iv. 15. * Justin, Tryph. ch. xvii., xlvii,, and cviii. 84 IDEA OF CATHOLICITY. ness, are no longer the heirs of the promise, but the children of the devil, bitterly opposed to Jesus as well as to St. Paul, and indeed to everything Christian and good. 3. The ''Shepherd'' of Hernias. The Book of Hernias is an ancient production of the Roman Church, probably of the time of Hadrian. Written in the antique apocalyptic form, it presupposes a degenerate state of Christianity, in which primitive fervour had been chilled by the distractions of worldly interests. The writer, whose name, as well as that of Clemens, is probably only a covert claim to apostolical connection,* tries to revive the ancient strictness, beginning with general repentance and penance. It is unques- tionable that many of the early Christians, like other rigorists claiming to be the " genuine Jews," exceeded in their ascetical practice the measure of ordinary Judaism, and that, in addition to the old observances of circumcision, Sabbaths, &c., their abstinence from animal food and wine, and self-devotion to celibacy and poverty,^ were exactly the practices of the so- called '' Ebionites." Epiphanius dates the Ebionitish hei-esy from the destruction of Jerusalem, when it is said to have been propounded by one '' Ebion " among the Christian fugitives who took refuge beyond Jordan, and there joined the Essenes. But he admits that this (eponymous) heresiarch preached not only in Palestine and Asia, but in Rome ; and, in fact, we find the earliest Roman Christians rejecting not only idol meats, but meat altogether as an unclean thing ;^ and not only observ- ing new moons and Sabbaths,* but a diet of herbs^ almost as spare as that attributed in an Ebionitish work to its hero Peter. The severe Judaism of the early age proved incom- patible with the wants of a progressive society, and, through the consequent neglect or hostility of an unsympathising church, most of its literary records have either perished entirely, or, like the memoranda of Papias and Hegesippus, survive only in a few fragments. The Book of Hermas, which is quoted as " Scripture " by Irenseus, Clement of Alexandiia, and Origen, 1 Hilgenfeld, Apost, Vater, p. ] 61. ^ Comp. Rev. xiv. 4; Rora. viii. 13 ; the traditions about the ascetic James, and the '' Hebrews'" addressed in the Epistle, who are generally allowed to have held the tenets of the Ebionites. Schwegler, N. Z. ii. 272. 3 Rora. xiv. 14. 4 lb. xiv. 5, 6. * lb. ver. 2. ** The Clementine Homilies, xiv. 2. THE SHEPHERD OF HERMAS. 85 probably owes its early acceptance and continued preservation* to its more moderate Catholic spirit, and the deference it pro- fesses for " the Church/' It makes the church a continuance of the old theocracy, or kingdom of God's elect, compre- hending, with the Christians of to-day, the patriarchs and prophets of old ; the latter, however, requiring Christian bap- tism before admittance.^ As the world was supposed to have *been created for the Jews' sake,^ so now its sole end is said to be the church.* This venerable institution appears at first to Hermas in the shape of an old woman (old because its spirit had decayed) ; aftei-wards it becomes cheerful and young, inti- mating that its vigour was renewed by a new revelation and the repentance of its members. Mention is made of its over- seers (episcopi), deacons, teachers ; and although the teachers are self-constituted by an inward call independently of an organ- ised hierarchy, we observe the symptoms of the approach of one in the strifes already occurring about the " chief seats," ^ in the avarice and usurpations of the deacons, and irregular lives of the elders and leaders.' The great object of the book is to recall men from worldly pursuits and heathen laxity* to primi- tive Christian purity, in view of the near end of the world and completion of the edifice of the church, when there would be no more opportunity for penance or repentance. Its doctrinal character is still strongly Jewish. Monotheism and continence are the essence of Christianity ; sin is " avofxia " to " work righteousness " is vital religion ; its meaning may be summed up in chastity and benevolence.^ The gospel is identical with the law,^" and its followers are the twelve tribes." Every viola- tion of a commandment is to be punished in exact proportion to the offence ;^^ and here, for the first time,^^ we meet with the doctrine of supei-fluous merit, or works of supererogation, after- wards adopted from Judaism by the Roman Church. " If," says the writer, " you add any good action to what the Lord enjoined, you will receive more honour at his hands;" he who * Origen mentions it as generally, but not universally, received as divinely inspired. (0pp. ii. p. 644.) 2 Sim. ix. 16. 3 2 Esdr. vi. 59; 4 Esdr. vi. 59, 60; vii. 11. 4 Vis. ii. 4. Vis. iii. 9; Sim. viii. 7; ix. 23, 31. Sim. ix. 26. ' Vis. iii. 9. ^ It seems that many Christians continued to consult the heathen oracles. Mand. X. 2. , 9 Comp. James i. 27. ^^ Vis. ii. 3; Sim. v. 6. " Sim. ix. 17. . ^' Sim. vi. 4; comp. Clem. Hom. xi. 10. ^^ Sim. v. 3. 86 IDEA OF CATHOLICITY. marries sins not, but he will be more honoured by the Lord who remains a bachelor. A relish for savouiy food is ascribed to the suggestions of the evil one, and all superfluities and luxuries are rigidly proscribed. Nothing whatever must be eaten on fast-days but bread and water, and a gratuity equal in value to the difference between this and a full meat is to be given to the poor. In short, the " Shepherd " is a curious relic of an age still claiming full enjoyment of the pneumatic^ " gifts ^^ or Charismata;* it has a strong Ebionitish leaning, exhorting men to eschew the riches of the heathen,^ and to con- sider themselves as strangers and pilgrims in the world.^ It leaves entirely unnoticed the refinements of St. Paul ; its faith consists in acceptance of the law and objective belief in God, redemption being not so much effected by the death of Christ as by the superfluous merit of his labours. 4. Hegesippus, The character and fragments of Hegesippus, the earliest col- lector of materials for Christian histoiy, incidentally supply curious hints respecting the prevalent ideas of his time. A con- vert from Judaism, but with leanings still severely Jewish, he went to Rome under the episcopate of Anicetus (about a.d, 150-160), in the course of a journey undertaken for the express purpose of ascertaining, by personal inspection, the continuity of episcopal succession and doctrinal uniformity of the churches. His Jewish predilections may be inferred from the general te- nor of his preserved fragments, his eulogistic account of James, his using the Gospel of the Hebrews in the Syro-Chaldaic ori- ginal, and his angry contradiction of St. Paul. Photius quotes with evident surprise a passage from his memoranda, in which, adducing Matt. xiii. 16, Hegesippus calls a well-known Pauline saying, from 1 Cor. ii. 9, " a foolish opinion, a lie against Scrip- ture and the Lord.^^* His partiality is still more emphatically marked in an extract which, in the usual feeling of the time, indirectly identifies the Christians with the true sons of Judah. He speaks of ^ " the various opinions (heresies) prevailing among 1 Comp. Justin's Tryph. 308, 314, 315, and Origen against Cels. vii. 337. 2 Sim. i. 3 Comp. 1 Pet. ii. IJ. * Cod. 232, p. 894, HoscM. Eus. H. E. iv. 22. HEGESIPPUS. 87 the Circumcision, or children of Israel, in opposition to the tribe of Judah and the Messiah/^ enumerating the " Essenes, Sama- ritans, Pharisees and Sadducees, &c. /' so that the latter, who the Pharisees especially are wont to pass for the foremost representatives of Judaism, are here classed among unorthodox dissentients : the tribe of Judah alone are orthodox, being necessarily those true sons of Abraham to whom Hegesippus "himself belongs.^ The first Christians were accustomed to judge of a doctrine, not from any internal evidence of its truth, but from the reputation of the teacher, and especially his pre- < sumed personal connection or relationship to Jesus;* and it was chiefly the advantage possessed in this respect by the twelve that enabled them to oppose successfully the far higher mental claims and arguments of St. Paul. The journey of He- gesippus was occasioned by alarm at the progress of abnormal opinion; its object was to collect oral evidence as to the real import of the faith. He carried his purpose into effect by tracing the unbroken succession of the heads of the respective churches from Christ and the Apostles ; presuming that doc- trines so warranted must of course correctly represent the "genuine rule of the apostolical preaching." He therefore carefully noted that the seat of authority in Jerusalem con- tinued for a long time to be held by the family connections of Jesus, who, by virtue of their descent from David, were univer- sally admitted to be its rightful occupants. After the death of James the Lord^s brother, Symeon was chosen because he was the Lord's second-cousin : " Up to this time," says Hegesippus, " the church was still virgin ; it had not been corrupted by vain traditions." The Church of Corinth, too, continued in the true faith until Primus became bishop there. After this there arose, he tells us, many false Christs and false prophets, who disturbed its unity by corrupt doctrines, and gave occasion for his journey. The result is declared to have been on the whole satisfactory; he finds agreement among all the bishops with whom he converses, and in every succession and every city recognises conformity with "the Law, the Prophets, and the Lord." ^ Comp. Justin. Tryph. ch. Ixxx. p. 27(>, otto; James i. 1, &c. ^ Comp. 2 Pet. i. 16, 18; and the description of James by Hegesippus, Eus. H. E. ii. 23. IDEA. OF CATHOLICITY. 5. The Conciliatory Process ; Peter and Paul. The language of Hegesippus shows the prevailing Chris- tianity of the second century to have still retained many cha- racteristics of Judaism. But its Jewish leanings were tempered with a liberal bias; and the influence of St. Paul was practically felt, although there was little sympathy with his theories. Hence the disappearance of the peculiar doctrine of justification in *the later Paulinic epistles, coinciding with a sort of rational compromise between spiritualism and externality, obtained by sinking differences and avoiding abstruse refinements. The principle of law, as before observed, was retained; not, indeed, the ceremonial, but an improved ideal law truly expressing the Divine will, and therefore presumed to contain the true means of salvation. The great object of the 'post-apostolic writers is to develope in this way a specific Christianity, which to the cer- tainty of a fixed rule shall unite the elevation of Christian feel- ing ; combining with a sense of the independence, universality, and superiority of the new religion a popular expression of its meaning. Justin's Christianity, for example, is a " blameless life ;" ^ its privileges belong to those making good their claim by works ^ not works of ceremonial, but deeds of justice, tem- perance, benevolence ; imitation, in short, of the Divine attri- butes or example.^ The later New Testament writers present us with the same idealised Judaism, generally conveyed by the terms "righteousness,'' "purity," "light," "holiness," "truth;"* they especially delight in the word " ayairrj'' (love), to express Christian obedience, a term more practical and emotional than "faith," more spiritual than "works;" indeed, uniting both in a genial compromise, and superadding to the idea of outward ful- filment that of the inner feeling from which obedience should proceed.^ This purified Judaism was naturally assumed to be inherited from Peter, and was separated by a scarcely-discern- ible line from the more moderate forms of Ebionitism; the chief distinction being, that the latter professed to be substantially the old religion, the former gloried in being a renewed and more perfect one. From the time when, in the destruction of ^ Tryph. ch. xliv. ^ Apol. 1, cL viii. ^ Apol. l,ch. x. * See especially 1 Pet. i. 14, 15; Coloss. i. 9; Ephes. iv. 17; and the Ist Ep. John, 5 James v. 20; 1 Pet. iv. 8; 1 Clement. 50. THE CONCILIATORY PROCESS. 89 Jerusalem, God himself appeared to have given an indubitable de facto proof* of the abrogation of Temple and law^ even Jew- Christians adopted a more liberal way of thinking ; they recog- nised in Christianity, as the universal religion, something higher than mere Judaism, placed Christ, as Prophet of " the truth," above the Old Testament Prophets,* and, in short, notwith- standing an intermixture of Essenic elements and much ascetic feeling, made a near approximation to the doctrine of " spiritual law" and moral atonement, leaving the personal claims of St. Paul alone undecided and disputed. There were certainly Paulinists who, forgetting PauPs own tenderness for weak consciences,^ continued severely antinomian, refusing even to associate with Judaisers ;* and there were also intolerant Jew- Christians who still resented PauPs insubordination at An- tioch, and exacted Mosaical conformity from Gentiles. Justin, however, condemns both these extremes; and the prevailing tendency towards coalition is exemplified in the pious story calculated to throw a decent veil over the apostolic feud, sug- gesting that the " Cephas" rebuked at Antioch was not the Apostle Peter, but one of the seventy disciples.^ For the same object, the Acts and the Philippians conceal the polemical atti- tude of Paul, exhibiting him in familiar amity with the other Apostles; and since the latter had never forfeited their pre- cedency in general estimation as the immediate companions of Jesus, the Christian majority inscribed on their banner the associated names " Peter and Paul," considering themselves as followers, not of one Apostle, but of all.^ The case was, how- ever, considerably altered when the inherent antinomian ten- dencies of Paulinism were made more distinctly evident by the progress of the Gnostics. The extreme Ebionitish Christians immediately engaged in bitter controversy with this dangerous revival of an old adversary, and for the friendly partnership of ^^ Peter and Paul" substituted the opprobrious antithesis of " Peter and Simon Magus." ' Simple Paulinism made no pro- gress ; it had from the first but few partisans,* and no internal .principle of union ; so that, in general, it either relapsed into .some form of Judaical Christianity, or pressed on to the extra- 1 See Barnabas, ch. iv. ^ Epiphan. xxx. 18. 3 1 Cor. viii. * Justin, Tryph. ch. xlvii.; Ps. Ignatius, Magnes. 10. - 5 Euseb. H. E. i. 12. " According to Paul's own advice, 1 Cor. iii. 6; comp. 1 Clem. v. 42, 44, 47. 7 See the Clementine Homilies. 8 Philipp. ii. 20; Coloss. iv. 11; 2 Tim. iv. 16. 90 IDEA OF CATHOLICITY. Christian extravagances of Gnosticism. It was otherwise with the extreme Judaisers, whose intolerant prejudices are alluded to in " Romans ;" a portion of these appear to have long con- tinued a powerful hyper-orthodox party in the Roman Church, being, in fact, only the more consistent and decided exponents of that Petrinic element which had ever maintained the ascend- ancy; and thus Judaism and Paulinism were again arrayed against each other under altered aspects, while the majority may be presumed to have held a position of moderation and neutrality between them. In process of time the reactionary anti-Pauline exasperation again subsided, when the conservative influences of hieratic absolutism had succeeded in quelling the sources of internal disquietude ; and when, towards the close of the second century, the rule of faith (the ypa iroWoi. 102 IDEA OF CATHOLICITY. narrative of the apostolic age as complete, and also as safe and satisfactory {a(T(l)aXia) , to all parties as possible. His position is not that of pleader on the Pauline side, but rather of an im- partial arbitrator, striving to combine and generalise views essentially inconsistent, which could only through mutual con- cession obtain a decent semblance of uniformity ; a condition of the hterary structure of the gospels which, while illustrating the extreme futility of attempting to " harmonise '' them, as it is called, or to reduce them to exact historical and chronological order, makes amends for our disappointment in this respect by exhibiting in the peculiar combinations adopted by each writer a different grade in the scale of approach to the eventual ortho- dox standard. 8. The Acts. Of those passages in Luke^s gospel which announce, as if prophetically, the universalism of Christianity, its rejection by the Jews, and its consequent extension to Samaritans and Gen- tiles, th& Acts furnish a quasi-historicdl illustration. To the character of a history of early Christianity the book has no pretension. No particulars are disclosed of its external or in- ternal relations, of its first president the rigid disciplinarian James,^ the labours of the Apostles in the East, or the state of the churches of Asia or Rome. Only of the two great party leaders, Peter and Paul, is there a prominent, though still a scanty^ and garbled mention; and it is clear that the writer's object is not history, but rather the practical aim of promoting Christian unity by an ideal reconciliation and equalisation of the elements of strife ; by confounding the Jew-Christian oppo- sition to a liberal Christianity with the Jewish opponents of all Christianity; by making Peter sanction acts of Paul, while Paul plays the part of Peter; by attributing, in short, to a bygone age and to the leaders of the two parties that friendly understanding and unanimity which was still a desideratum and an expectancy. It is impossible to consider as historical a narrative which, to serve a transparent purpose, scruples not to ' James, in direct opposition to more reliable authority, is here represented as the advocate and patron of liberalism. ' For instance, we look in vain for a satisfactory commentary on Paul's own inti- mations in 2 Cor. xi. 24. THE ACTS. 103 violate all the best ascertained historical data; which perverts the well-known characteristics of historical personages; which teems with the mythical and miraculous ; which contradicts St. Paulj and contradicts itself.^ According to the Acts, Paul is a strict observer of the law, observing the instructions of James. He worships assiduously in the Temple, enforces circumcision,^ and practises the ascetic austerity of Judaism. How unlike all this to the historical Paul, the uncompromising foe to unworthy concession,^ the great enemy of Jewish prejudice and abro- gator of Jewish law, who denounces circumcision as unchris- tian, and condemns the dissembling Peter for the veiy conduct here imputed to himself ! We are in the dilemma of supposing either that Paul was a time-server who knowingly betrayed his own principles, or that the Acts have misrepresented him. How can the subordinate part played by Paul in the Acts and the evi- dent effort to make him appear as the mere delegate of the older Apostles, be reconciled with his own independent lan- guage and proud disclaimer of obligation or connection with them ?* Or how are we to believe that Peter, if he was really the first to confer baptism on Gentiles with the approval of the church, should at a much later time have exhibited an un- manly fear of running counter to prejudices supposed to have been already abandoned?^ Doubtless the writer^s object is to plead for Christian universalism. But he does not argue as Paul would have argued, that salvation, being God^s free grace or gift, could not be the monopoly of any one nation ; the plea is adjusted so as, while conceding the original validity of the Jew- ish claims, to dispute only the actual possibility of insisting on them; halting midway between Jewish jealousy and Pauline liberality, and admitting the former as theoretically justifiable, while defending the latter in practice. The Jews themselves, he says, have inadvertently waived their privilege, and the Gen- tiles must be permitted to enjoy their crumbs and leavings.' Paul, therefore, is not exclusively the Apostle to the Gentiles ; he is carefully shown to have addressed the Jews first, ^ and only afterwards to have transferred the rejected benefit to Gen- 1 Comp. ch. ix. 7, with ch. xxii. 9; ch. ix. 19, with Gal. i. 16, 17; ch. ix. 28, with ch. xxii. 18. 2 Ch. xvi. 3. 3 Gal. ii. 5. * Gal. v. 2. Gal. ii. Gal. ii. 12; Acts xv. 7. ^ Comp. Rom. xv. 9. The two last chapters of the Romans adopt the tone, not of Paul, but of the Acts, and are evidently not genuine. Ch. ix. 15, 20; xxviii. 17. 104 IDEA OF CATHOLICITY. tiles.* Besides, argues impliedly the writer, lie introduced no novelty; he did only what Peter had already done/ and what the church had sanctioned. His apostolic authority, too, is scarcely less than Peter^s own ; he works a miracle for every miracle of Peter^s;^ confers as fully the gift of the Holy Ghost; performs by means of his handkerchief as much as Peter by his shadow;* parallels the resuscitation of Tabitha by that of Eutychus; in short, both have all the outward semblance of di\dnity;^ both have the same legitimate authorisation;^ and the visionary evidence on which the much-disputed apostleship of Paul depended was no unworthy hallucination, no deception of the devil,^ but the very same which guided Peter in one of the most important crises of his career.* Paul is no " deceiver,^^ no " av9pu)TTog avofiog f he is guiltless of any infringement of Jewish propriety. On the contrary, it is Peter who baptizes a Gentile, who deprecates circumcision,^ who pleads for justi- fication by faith.*" Nowhere does Paul declare in plain terms his peculiar view as to the only way in which men could be saved. On the contrary, he preaches the doctrine of Peter, showing from '*' the law and the prophets that Jesus was Christ," and exhorting to works meet for repentance."^* At Antioch indeed,*^ and at Ephesus,*^ he alludes to his theory of justification, but only in a cursory way, and in terms not more expHcitly antinomian than those employed by Peter.** Pa,ul is the great inculcator of the practical virtues ; he preaches jus- tice, temperance, almsgiving ; dwells on his Jewish origin and Pharisaic education ; extols on every occasion the law and the prophets ; and although innocent of any infraction of law, whe- ther Jewish or Roman,*^ is persecuted forsooth for preaching repentance and good works;* although as to this the writer ^ Ch. xiii. 46; xviii, 5; xxii. 18, 21 ; xxviii. 28. So Mark, who usually omits the particularism of Matthew (x. 5, 6), changes Jewish exclusive privilege into priority. Mark vii. 27; Matt, xv. 26. " " A long time before." Ch. xv. 7; comp. i. 8. ^ Comp, the similar narratives, iii. 2, with xiv. 8. * Ch. V. 15; comp. xix. 12. * Ch. x. 26; xiv. 15; xxviii. 7. ^ Ch. X. 41; xxvi. 16. ^ As suggested in the Clementina. Ch. X. 11. ^ Ch. XV. 10. 1" Ch. iii. 16; x. 43; xv. 9. i Ch. xvii. 3; xxvi.20. la ch. xiii. 38, 39. " ch. xx. 21, 24. * Comp. ii. 38; iii. 19, 26; v. 31; x. 43; xv. 9, 10, 11. In the latter passage Peter rests salvation on faith and grace, declaring the law to be an intolerable burden; while Paul's justification by faith does not replace the law (xiii. 39), but is superadded to it. 15 Ch. XXV. 8. 16 Ch. xxiv. 14, 16, 17, 18; xxvi. 20, 21. THE CLEMENTINE LITERATURE. 105 himself furnishes data for his own confutation.* The book concludes with a story which, while betraying an utter dis- regard of historical accuracy, emphatically manifests its pur- pose; for if it be impossible to conceive that St. Paul could have so unblushingly asserted an evident untruth/ or that the Roman- Jews, whether identical with the Christian believers or not, could have been so completely ignorant as is pretended of the meaning of Christianity and of the labours of Paul, we see only the more clearly how necessary it was, in the view of the wi'iter, to seize every possible occasion of proving, both from prophecy and fact, that the original Jew-Christian theoiy had been unavoidably, and therefore allowably extended; and we may infer that, at the time of its composition, the apostolic authority and doctrine of Paul, which required so elaborate an apology, were not generally accepted.^ 9. The Clementine Literature. Many conciliatory Petrinic writings bear the name of Cle- mens, to whom, in tradition, Peter is said to have committed the care of the Roman Church. A Gentile by birth, but a disciple of Peter, he is pointed out by " Hermas^^* as the most appropriate herald of Petrine principles to the Gentiles. But the so-called Clementine writings vary considerably in their import, and a flexibility (corresponding to different phases of church opinion) may be traced in them, ranging from an advanced Ebionitism to that Catholicised Paulinism which en- titles the Epistle to the Philippians^ to claim an originally Petrine name for a Pauline "fellow labourer." The same authority appealed to by the " Homilies" and " Apostolical Constitutions," representing the strict Ebionitish party within the church of the second century who denied St. Paul, is also claimed for the moderate Paulinism of the first Clementine Epistle ; and an early tradition referring the authorship of the " Hebrews," and also of the Acts, to Clemens, exemplifies how this name became habitually associated with literary efforts 1 Ch. xsi. 21; xxii. 22. 2 ch. xxviii. 17. ^ See a series of articles by Zeller in the 8th, 9th, and 10th vols, of the Tubingen Theol. Jahrbiicher, proving incontestably the unhistorical character of the Acts, and that the real Paul was entirelv diiferent from the Paul there represented. * Vis. ii. 4* * * Ch. iv. 3. ^^^ 3 106 IDEA OF CATHOLICITY made to build up Catholic unity out of tlie conflicting elements of the extreme theologies. It denotes primarily the authorita- tive claims of the Petrinic side ; but while the tradition alluded to in Hernias^ and generally adopted in Jew-Christian litera- ture, makes Clemens the disciple and immediate successor of Peter, Paulo-Petrinic orthodoxy, without disputing the Petrine connection, claims its share in the venerated champion of mo- deration by making him the associate of Paul.^ It seems to have been in the last-mentioned way that the monitory epistle addressed by Rome to the Corinthians ac- quii'ed its reputation of being Clemens\ It propounds justi- fication by faith as the original religion and true source of salvation; but it also insists on the realisation of faith in action; shows that Abraham and Rahab were saved, not by faith alone, but by "obedience and hospitality^^ also; and that not only Mosaic righteousness but Mosaic ritual retain, in a more literal and practical sense than that of " Hebrews^^ and 1 Peter,^ their validity for Christians. In the " Homilies" a great change seems to have taken place. St. Paul is no longer, as in the epistle,* the " blessed Apostle ;" he is not even an Apostle at all. The cause of orthodoxy is here more rigorously Jewish ; the essence of religion is belief in one God and ob- servance of his law ; and Christ being supposed to have merely published to the world what had been already disclosed to the wise and good among the Jews, salvation or acceptance with God is equally secured by adherence to either the Mosaic or the Chris- tian system. True religion is essentially practical ; Christianity is legal fulfilment ; man is a free agent ; his sin is voluntary ^ Comp. Tertullian, PrcTes. Haeret, ch. xxxii. ' Phil. iv. 3 and 32. The latter passage probably refers to Clemens, and, indeed, to the same Clemens as the one alluded to in the third verse, although the latter should have been at Philippi. A relation of Domitian, named Clement, was, it seems, put to death for embracing Judseo-Christianity. (Suet. Dom. ch. xv., and Xiphilin. there quoted.) In Hennas his name appears as that of a subordinate functionary; but eventually he became an apostolical man, the typical bishop or episcopal hero of the Roman Church ; although Epiphanius and Eusebius admit that he did not exer- cise the office until the time of Domitian, and are, of course, at a loss to account for his long neglect of duty. Even at this latter date, however, no proper bishops existed; but when the idea of episcopal succession became established, the Petrinic and Pauline traditions, each giving a different order of succession, were brought into forced connection, Clemens was placed fourth from Peter : yet his apostolical cha- racter was pertinaciously insisted on; his imperial relationship was tlirown back to Tiberius (Clem. Horn. iv. 7) ; he was said to have been a disciple of Paul as well as of Peter, and at last became an apostle himself. (Clem. Alex. Str. iv. 17, 107.) ^ Ch. ii. 5. * Ch. v. and xlvii. THE CLEMENTINE LITERATURE. 107 error, not the inevitable result of a corrupt nature ;^ and there is nothing in his moral condition disqualifying him from an adequate performance of his duty. But though generally po- lemical in tone, and vindicating Jew-Christianity in its most improved speculative form against the speculations of the Pau- linists, the wi'iter makes many liberal concessions. Less, per- haps, in what he says, than in what he suppresses, he shows a disposition to abandon the extreme austerities of Judaism. Though deprecating sensual indulgence, he does not forbid the use of animal food or wine, is silent as to circumcision, and even recommends marriage as preventative of a greater evil. He exalts, so far as was compatible with monotheism, the character of Christ, and admits imperfections in the Old Tes- tament. A great step was gained when Judaism departed from the dogged self-sufficiency of its position by admitting the fallibility of its records, and consenting in any degree to sub- mit them to criticism. The compromises adopted by the Alex- andrian Jews to account for Scripture incongruities, however lavishly employed, had been found insufficient for the pur- pose; and the followers of St. Paul had carried the Pauline idea of the independence of Christianity to the extent of ascribing the old law and Old Testament in general to the promptings of the evil principle. The author of the Clemen- tina, in general accordance with the Roman Christianity of his day, makes a different inference from similar premises. He admits that Christianity is not vulgar Judaism, and that the Old Testament, through interpolation and otherwise, con- tains much derogatory matter about God, which reason or " gnosis" has to distinguish, and to separate the true and authentic from the adscititious and false. In this, as in other respects, he nearly approaches St. Paul, who had already recog- nised the New Testament in the Old, and claimed for Chris- tians the true sonship and rightful inheritance of Abraham. Moreover, he adopts the principle of Christian universalism ; not, indeed, in the sense of a scheme originally impartial, and equally open to Jew and Gentile, but as an extension to Gen- tiles of privileges essentially Jewish. The conversion of the heathen, which, by the early Roman Christians, had been looked on with so much jealousy, is now confessedly the great business of the Christian teacher; and, to promote this object, * Corap. James i. 1-4. 108 IDEA OF CATHOLICITY. the office of Apostle of the Gentiles is unhistorically withdrawn from its proper owner, in order to be transferred to the Jew- Christian leader. It is Peter, not Paul, who is commissioned to preach the Divine Unity to polytheistic Gentiles ; the no- velty of his Christian preaching consisting merely in the publi- cation to all of what had formerly belonged to Jews exclu- sively. Peter, however, while propagating Christianity abroad, acts in subordination to James, who presides over the general interests of religion in the holy city of Jerusalem ; to James, as his ecclesiastical superior, he has to render an account of his mission ; and the selection of Peter, rather than James^ to be the knight-errant of Christianity, seems to be part of the con- ciliatory machineiy conducing to the great object of the book, James being the authority of the strict Ebionites, Peter of the catholicising conformists. The interposition of Clemens, too, is probably another instance of the same kind. According to the introductory epistle and " Contestatio Jacobi,^^ in neither of which mention is made of Clemens, the discourses of Peter are to be strictly confined to Jews of approved character; whereas now, in evident disagreement with the original in- tention,* Clemens, the Gentile convert, is the person to whom they are especially committed, and by whom they are written. Hence it has been conjectured'^ that the Homilies and Recog- nitions are revised compendiums of an antecedent Petrinic literature, namely, the Petrinic "preachings" (Kerugmata) and '^journeyings" (Periodoi), so that in these wi'itings, as now presented, the Catholicised Koman Church itself steps forward in the person of its representative, Clemens, to welcome its great Apostle in the supposed original theatre of his labours, and to become his associate in his missionary journeys. The work appears to have been composed about the middle of the second century (a.d. 150-160), that remarkable epoch of the church, when the progress of free opinion made it necessary to meet Gnosticism on its own ground, and to fight it with its own weapons. The writer betrays no consciousness of secta- rianism; he holds to precedent, to apostolical tradition, and speaks in the name of the church. He allows to none the title * Horn. i. 20, carelessly introduces an '^ avrou KeXevcravTos''^ in regard to the agencN- of Clemens, without any corresponding alteration of the rest of the sentence. Conip. Epist. Pet. i. with Photius's interpretation of the passage, as meaning " Ile- Tp!)V ras oiKeias avyypatpai Trpa|eij-'' Cod. pp. 112, 113. 2 Hilgenfeld, Apostolischen Vater,p. 290, Ritschl, Altkatholische Kirche,p. 154. GNOSTICISM. - 109 of a true teacher but those approved by the hierarchy; and staunchly maintains the Ebionitish tenets against Pauhne, the latter not having been sanctioned by an actual companion of Jesus.^ 10. Gnosticism. It is necessary here to advert more particularly to those excursions of speculative opinion which occurred as soon as Christianity was presented to a wider and more educated audi- ence than its first recipients. These extravagances, with which the great majority of believers were wholly unprepared to sym- pathise, were the natural consequence of a free and fluctuating state of thought, and of the instinctive want felt by the better informed to enlarge a religion of mere sentiment into one which should harmonise with intellect and learning. Already Justin disowns several heretical sects; and the anxiety of Hegesippus, who made it the business of his life to ascertain the correspondence between the different churches in regard to tradition and practice, indicates the time when, alarmed at the progress of novel doctrines, or, as it is termed, " vain dis- courses,^^ the majority found it necessary to review the strength of their position, and to intrench themselves against the assaults of free opinion. In other words, it was the progress of Gnosti- cism, which, by presenting a decided contrast to the opinions of the majority, made it necessary for the latter to determine what their opinions were, and at all events to sink minor differ- ences in a league for mutual support. The undue latitudi- narianism of Christian thought thus naturally corrected itself, by enforcing a closer coalition and stricter discipline; and it was the pressure of these assaults, immediately felt to proceed from something alien to Christian sentiment, which promoted among the more moderate the catholic or " Petro-Pauline'^ coalition already adverted to. Gnosis was an attempt to convert Christianity into philo- sophy ; to place it in its widest relation to the universe, and to incorporate with it the ideas and feelings approved by the best intelligence of the times. Not satisfied with simply stat- ing that Christ came into the world to save that which was ^ The Clementine " Kecognitiones" are supposed by Baur to be a later develop- ment of the Homilies on catholic church principles. Hilgonfeld thinks that the relation of priority ought to be reversed. 110 IDEA OF CATHOLICITY. corrupted and lost, it ventured upon the antecedent inquiries as to the origin of the world and of evil, how redemption first be- came necessary, and what the nature of the process through which it is to be accomplished. There are so many points of contact between Gnosis and other speculative systems, that it is almost impossible to assign to it any more specific origin than that general property of the intellect which is never satisfied until it has explained, or reduced to a comprehensive for- mula according to its own conception and laws, the phenomena presented to it. This was the task undertaken by Gnosis ; it was the first undisguised attempt to reason about Christianity, to expand its data to the general circumference of free thought. But human thought is never wholly free ; it is tied by pre- occupation and habit, and obliged to express itself in forms suggested by its prior acquisitions. Gnostic speculation was very far from being free; like many later systems, it was but a phi- losophy in fetters, an efibrt of the mind to foi-m for itself a more systematic belief in its own prejudices. Heathenism and Juda- ism, Greek philosophy and Oriental speculation, were all of them conceraed in preparing the forms to be assumed by Christian thought. Gnosticism, like Christianity, may be said to have been originally Jewish, and to have virtually begun in the pre- Christian period, when in Alexandria Judaism became blended with Greek philosophy. There the Jews for the first time be- came educated, and consequently their notions about God ele- vated. They found it impossible to believe any longer in the literal sense of the descriptions of God in the Old Testament ; and, in order to reconcile faith with philosophy, had recourse to allegorical interpretation and a machinery of intermediate beings. Hence the Septuagint alters every passage suggesting a visible manifestation of God, by substituting for Jehovah the "angel" or "glory" of Jehovah; and Philo lays it down, that wherever the literal construction furnishes a meaning unworthy of God or of Moses, there we must adopt a figurative one; so that the whole Pentateuch is to be considered as more or less allegorical, concealing beneath the outward fact a higher and deeper meaning. Alexandrianism was a speculative exegesis of the Old Testa- ment; Gnosis was only a more systematic application of the same kind of treatment to a wider range of materials. The blank left by the removal of God out of an impure world had been filled by Philo with the theory of emanation and an array GNOSTICISM. Ill of intermediate beings the logos, the divine powers, and the angels. He identified the Spirit said to have "brooded" over creation with the spirit of msdom poured from above into man's soul, or breathed into his nostrils at the beginning ; and, rea- soning from the assumption of an intimate connection and union of all spiritual natures, pronounced the human mind to be under an immediate influence from on high, and to be the temple or tabernacle of God.^ The same ideas were adopted by- Christianity. The Paulinic system differs from the Jew-Chris- tian chiefly in the more complete subordination of all other intermediate beings to Christ,^ who restores that interrupted connection between God and the world, ^ whereby every Chris- tian, through possession of the Spirit, is able to discern the divine mysteries."* This assumption of spiritual intercommunion with God explains the freedom used by Christian as well as Jewish speculation in interpreting the Old Testament and in forming new systems. The same Spirit by which the Scripture was originally dictated enabled the gifted mind to construe it. Philosophy, cramped by orthodoxy, was forced into the way of allegory, as an expedient through which new opinions could be grafted on old traditions ; this is the great resource of Philo, the main secret of the spiritual insight of St. Paul,^ in relation to which, the Epistle of Barnabas exultingly exclaims, "Blessed be God, who has given us wisdom to understand his secrets." A religion founded on revelation must necessarily be infallible and uniform. On the other hand, the progress of time and of events called for development and change. The germ of Chris- tian development and innovation lay dormant in the above hy- pothesis of the possession of the Spirit;'' this supplied the means of movement, as the idea of an original revelation upheld the force of conservative resistance. In order to obtain admission for changes in a system founded on such pretensions, it was neces- sary to suppress the name, to introduce reform under the mask of conservatism, and to give to new ideas the semblance of ancient authority. One means of doing this was allegory. As em- ployed by the inspired interpreters of inspired writings, it sig- nified not merely comparison, but identity of meaning; as to St. Paul, the rock which gave w^ater to the Israelites in the wilderness, and which, in rabbinical tradition, was imagined to 1 Pfeif. V. 98; Mang. ii. 437. * Heb. i. 4. ^2 Cor. v. 19. * 1 Cor. ii. 10; Rom. viii. 16. * See 1 Cor. x. 1. M John ii. 27; 1 Pet. i. 12. 112 IDEA OF CATHOLICITY. have followed them about for the purpose^ was not only typical of Christj but was Christ/ The pseudonymous literature of early Christianity was another instance of the same kind. It was an attempt to introduce new developments of Christian consciousness under the sanction of ancient authority. It was the only means which at the time could be resorted to for the pui'pose of maintaining, amidst movement and change, the no- tion of infallibility ; or rather, it was a necessary result of that assumption of infallibility which a revelation implied. In later times, the organs of infallible truth were the councils ; in the primitive age every new suggestion was referred to the Apostles. The very existence of the church, considered as the depository of divine truth, depended on a firm conviction of the unity and consistency of its creed, as identical with " the faith once deli- vered to the saints ;" and since there could be no real contra- riety between two draughts from the same spiritual source, it followed that the suggestions of the Spirit of to-day which seemed to place the original revelation in its true light, might properly be considered as part and parcel of that revelation, and to have been disseminated under the name of those to whom its first outlines had been committed. The continually- expanding sphere of Christian consciousness was thus referred back to the times and teaching of the Apostles. The liberty of publishing under assumed names which became so general, was only an extension of the original claim of St. Paul, who, as first innovator and advocate of progress, immediately assumed the authorisation of the Spirit in dealing with the Old Testa- ment. Some teachers allowed themselves wider latitude than others, while Jew-Christianity for the most part assumed the attitude of stability and resistance ; the policy of the church, or rather the instinctive feeling of the majority which after- wards became the church, was compromise between the two, and an avoidance of extremes the extreme conservatism which ultimately became isolated as heretical Ebionitism, and the in- novating extreme, variously exemplified in Montanism or Gnos- ticism. ^ " Messias in deserto fuit rupes ecclesiae Zionis." Targum Isai. xvi. 1 ; De Wette to 1 Cor. x. 4. GNOSTIC SYSTEMS. 113 11. Gnostic Systems. Christian speculation adopted Alexandrian allegory, in full belief that the inferences it evoked were something higher than faith, containing real "knowledge^' and absolute truth. All its forms were more or less eclectic; but its main source, as the author of the recently-published " Philosophoumena^^ tries to show, was Greek symbolism and philosophy; from which, aided by Jewish and Christian imagery, it attempted to fill up the blank caused by the elevation of the Supreme God beyond the material world. To do this, to reunite creation to a Being placed so far above it as almost to fade into nonentity, the Gnostics again had recourse to the Alexandrian principles of emanations or projections of the Supreme Spirit ; and thus were formed the Jilons, who, personifying the various relations and limitations of the Absolute, constituted a series of ideal links through which the desired connection was effected. Of these beings the most prominent was Sophia, the youngest and weakest of them, whose sufferings and recovery form a metaphysical romance expressive of the souPs fall and recovery. But spirit could not become associated with matter except through some intermediate nature ; hence the necessity of assuming a third or '' psychic ^' principle, mythically incorporated in the notion of a " Demiurgus.^^ The Demiurgus was emblem and ruler of the finite and transitory, arrayed in those gross personal attributes which, suited rather to the weakness of the human faculties than to Divine greatness, had been employed in the Old Tes- tament, and were, indeed, the chief elements of the mytho- logies. In comparison with the purified and abstract God of Gnosticism, all other gods with their correlated systems ne- cessarily fell into a lower rank ; and thus the God of Judaism, in his character of " world-framer" and partial protector, re- appeared in the Gnostic " Demiurgus" as an inferior, or even hostile principle. But it was the nature of the '^'^ psychic" to be temporary and transitory. Its abiding essence was the pneumatic element contained in it, and the solution of the enigma, which began with the Spirit^ s emanation, was dis- covered in the reversal of the process by its re-absorption. The finite antagonism of spirit and matter ends in the victory of the former, and the restoration of all things into the pleni- tude of the Infinite. Gnosticism pourtrays the ideal di*ama of 114 IDEA OF CATHOLICITY. the soul in its passage through the material and finite, up to its return to the unlimited fulness of its proper nature ; gnosis being itself the means of its liberation or return, through the recovery of a consciousness of its inherently supermundane nature. The great representative of the restoring efficacy is Christ. He occupies in the ascending scale an intermediary position analogous to that of the Demiurgus in the descending. Whatever tends to restore the harmony of all, to raise the fallen, and to promote the final spiritual consummation, is my- thically blended with his name. Christianity in this kind of Gnosis shifts its ground. Addressing the reason instead of the feelings, its object is not so much the salvation of the individual as the explanation of the universe. It is no longer a mere acquiescent acceptance of present privation, but an inquiry into its general cause, and the means provided for its extinction. Its Christ is not merely the human Eedeemer, but the talisman of universal restoration. Such is the principle represented by " Christ " in the celestial sphere of the ^ons ; Jesus was its historical representative among men; with him Christ became mysteriously united, in order that he might gather together all that exists in heaven and earth, according to the eternal purpose of the Supreme to reconcile all things to Himself.* The systems of Gnosis which most completely ex- hibit its nature, are those which, like the allegorical romance of Valentinus, are the most nearly allied with heathen thought and symbolism, subordinating Jewish and Christian types to the grand purpose of cosmical explanation. The early names in the history of Gnosis are probably only mythic expressions of its presumed origin and tendencies. The ^' Simon Magus^' of the Fathers is the personified intermixture of heathenism and Judaism f his professed identity with the Father or Supreme Being may mean his supposed authorship of a more elevated idea of Him j and his adjunct Helena denotes, in mythical language, the differentiating principle which the Gnostics were obliged to connect with their abstract Deity in order to account in a popu- larly-appreciable way for the evolution of the world. Ephes. i. 10; iii. 9, 10; Coloss. i. 20. ' Hence he is said to have converted to his purpose, not only the dicta of Moses, but those of the Greek poets. Philosophoumena, vi. 19. MARCION. 115 12. Marcion. Gnosis, like Christianity, was originally Jewish ; it was inti- mately connected with the Jewish Platonism of Alexandria, and its most prominent early type was the Ebionitish name Cerinthus. The sects of Valentinus and the Ophitse were, probably, for the most part, composed of Jew-Christians -^ and though eventually in some of its fomis it came to present the strongest antithesis to Judaism, its orthodox opponents might still call it a Jewish phenomenon, or "Jewish fables."^ Yet the tendencies of free thought were generally anti- Judaical ; and a reaction towards free thought was the essence of Gnosis. It was a necessary consequence of the continuing Judaical spirit in Christianity that it should most resent that form of Christian speculation which carried to the furthest extent the anti-Judaic principle. Hence the most remarkable form of Gnosis is that of Marcion, which, based on the free views of St. Paul, powerfully contri- buted to mature the great idea of the post-apostolic age, the emancipation of Christianity, and its permanent establishment in men's minds as an independent religion. Every system of Gnosis took its stand outside, as it were, of current religious denominations, pronouncing its independent judgment on their relative importance. All gave the first place to Christianity as the last and perfect revelation, superseding or completing preceding ones. But they differed in the comparative estimate put on other systems ; since Christianity might either be con- sidered as developed out of other systems, or contrasted with them ; as alone true, or as admitting a minor degree of truth in ^ Baur, Pastoral-briefe, p. 12. ' Titus i. 14; comp. 1 Tim. i. 4; iv. 7; Ignatius to the Magnes. ch. viii. The late origin of the pastoral letters, as proceeding, not from St. Paul, but from the catholicised Roman Church of the second century (see especially the pointed allusion to the technical church institution of widowhood, as opposed to actual widowhood, in 1 Tim. v.; comp. Ignatius, Smyrn. ch. iii.), maybe assumed, in spite of the natural reluctance of the "orthodox," as certain. The heresy alluded to is described by name as the " falsely so-called Gnosis" (1 Tim. vi. 20); which, according to Hegesip- pus in Eusebius (Hist. Eccl. iii. 32, otto, i. p. 267), did not venture to show itself openly until after the Apostles and their immediate followers had quitted the scene. The only doubt is as to the particular kind of Gnosis intended : 1 Tim. vi. 20, is certainly a very unmistakable specification of Marcion 's "Antitheses;" but the writer's object is, doubtless, not so much to single out any particular form of heresy, as to warn his readers against Gnosis and wayward speculation generall}'. Baur (Paulus, p. 495) remarks the probability that the writer had before him the work of Hegesippus, whose very words he uses. 116 IDEA OF CATHOLICITY. one or botli the former ones. Matter, the Demiurgus, and the Spirit, were the three great cosmieal principles, historically de- veloped, it was supposed, under the form of three religions heathenism with, its physical divinities representing matter ; Judaism, emanating from the creating Demiurgus of Genesis ; and Christianity, the religion of the " pneumatici " or spiritual adorers of the Supreme God. Between early Christianity and Judaism, there could scarcely have arisen a calculation of rela- tive worth, since one was only a new form of the other. But when St. Paul had become convinced of the essential inefficacy of that law in which he had been educated, and through which, if through any, he believed that righteousness and life might have been secured, he was led to look beyond for something higher and stronger than law, and this he discovered in the phe- nomena of the Christian profession, which seemed, according to the Scripture promise, to offer the reconciliation or union with God vainly sought for in the older system. The latter had been a source of sin, a sentence of condemnation and death ; the new theory was the power of God for life. Christ's nature under- went a corresponding transformation ; he was no longer a mere man, the Jewish Messiah, but the personified power or spirit of God. Yet Judaism, though really subverted by St. Paul, was not by him formally repudiated ; the God of the Jews was still to him the God of the Gentiles ; Judaism was a partial paren- thetic manifestation of a world-wide scheme; and the same revelation which imposed the restraints and responsibilities of the law, contained also " the promise," or paramount " gospel of grace," ^ given antecedently to Abraham. But when the feeling, through which St. Paul contrived to escape from moral perplexi- ties, came to be matter of cool reflection and comparison (a transition marked by the tendency to substitute the word yvwdig for TnaTLQ), the incompatibility of the two schemes be- came apparent. St. PauFs assertion of the principle of religious freedom was in reality only the independent expression of the Christian consciousness ; but his language was too mystical to be popularly understood, and its immediate effect in the Paulinic churches, as instanced in Galatia, Ephesus, Thessalonica, and Corinth, was to produce discord and disruption, either by pro- voking a reactionary Judaism, or by encouraging every arbitrary variety of speculative development in the way of fanatical excite- * Gal. iii. 8, seq. MARCION. 117 ment or of Gnostic speculation. Consistency might seem to require that Gnosis, being philosophical and pantheistic, should have extended to heathenism and Judaism a shave, at least, of the divine qualities fully manifested in Christ ; yet its tendency, as shown in its most emphatically Christian form, was to place itself in direct hostility to the systems which Christ^s had ab- sorbed or superseded. " The separation of law and gospel,^' says TertuUian,* "was the proper work of Marcion.^^ Marcion, repelled probably by the rudeness and rigorism of the Asiatic churches, came to Rome, then the metropolis of intellect, about the middle of the second century, and propounded to the Chris- tian " Elders" of that city the question, what did Christ mean by saying, " Let not new wine be poured into old bottles, nor new clothes be patched with old cloth." Convinced of the es- sential newness of Christianity, he thought it high time to dis- card the old rags of Judaism, to make a distinct renunciation of the Demiurgus of the Old Testament, who might be just, but certainly was not good. Marcion^ s Christianity was the religion of love; as such, it was unquestionably anew religion, for the God of Judaism could only represent jealousy, severity, and hate. Marcion was the first openly to condemn those unworthy descrip- tions of the Supreme Being which the Alexandrian theosophy had evaded by means of allegory. A God influenced by passion is no longer a God. " If God," he said, " be jealous, inconstant, furious, &c. like man, how are we to distinguish him from in- ferior natures ? How account for his allowing man to be cir- cumvented by the Devil, except by supposing that He either could not, or would not, prevent it ? " Marcion did not attempt to allegorise Scripture; he took the obvious meaning, and this he at once found to be repulsive and absurd. He was shocked at the idea of Adam playing hide-and-seek with God in the gar- den, and at God^s "coming down" to see if the reports about Sodom were true. Even the attribute of justice could hardly be said to belong to one who broke his own laws, for instance, in sanctioning serpent worship, sabbath-breaking,* and stealing the goods of the Egyptians. But justice itself is far inferior to goodness ; it is as ferocity opposed to mercy, and the God of grace and mercy was first revealed in Christ. He appeared for the first time, when in the fifteenth year of Tiberius Csesar, he entered under the form of Jesus into the synagogue of Caper- 1 Adv: Marc. i. 19. 2 josjj. ^j, 15^ 118 IDEA or CATHOLICITY. naum. Marcion wrote a treatise, called ''Antitheses/^ com- posed of contrasted passages from Law and Gospel, in order more plainly to show the inconsistency of the two systems. He pointed out the benignity of him who spared the cities of Sa- maria, the friend of those little children whom the Demiurgus, at the solicitation of Elisha, sent bears to devour, or destroyed by fire from heaven. He willingly dwelt, too, on the Saviour^s anti-Mosaic acts, his laxity in Sabbath observance, his touching the unclean, his patronage of publicans, Samaritans, and Greeks. He contrasted the real Christ with the Jewish Messiah, armed w4th all the fierce characteristics of the Demiurgus ; and in order to cut ofi" all possibility of a relation between this real Christ and the Creator of the world, he showed that he neither was bom nor died, that he came down suddenly from heaven, and undenvent a visionary death only to express, by a striking symbol, the emancipation of the spiritual from the carnal pre- figured in his life. Marcion' s Gnosticism was pre-eminently what is called " Docetic." Docetism, or the theoiy of a vi- sionary Christ, shared under various forms and degrees by all theories of Gnosis, was employed to meet the requirements of a refined Christianity, just as the Alexandrian construction of the Old Testament theophanies grew out of a more elevated Ju- daism; and the ascetic renunciation of the world of the De- mim'gus which made redemption consist in escape from the material, could base its hopes of emancipation only on an un- tainted incorporeal Redeemer. The attributes of Christ reflected the progressive growth of Christian consciousness ; and in proportion as his followers felt themselves elevated above the trammels of the world and of Judaism, his religion became independent, and his person superhuman. It may be observed that, in the Docetism of Marcion there occurs a trace of the mythical form common to all Gnosticism; since, while it seems to obliterate an historical fact, it only the more vividly and ex- pressively substantiates a theoretical idea. 13. Jew-Christian Gnosis. Marcion^ s theory difi'ered fundamentally from the earlier forms of metaphysical mythology propounded by Valentinus and other Gnostics. For, whereas they had striven to mediate between preceding religious systems, to eliminate contradic- JEW-CHRISTIAN GNOSIS. 119 tions, and to promote coalition by means of ideal agents and emanations, in Marcion every link was abruptly severed, the iEons and trials of Sophia disappeared, the idea of progressive development was abandoned, and Christianity stood alone in isolated antagonism. The reason may be that the earlier Gnostic systems were attempts to explain the world and its evolutions to the intellect, while Marcion^s appealed almost exclusively to the moral sentiments; the one, in explaining Christianity, borrowed the ideas and language of heathenism ; Marcion^s theoiy was an earnest expression of the specifically Christian consciousness, disowning and extruding everything, both heathen and Jewish, which seemed alien to its nature. It was natural that in a faith still closely allied with Judaism whose adherents gloried in being the "true Israelites,"^ so partial and extreme an expression of all that was new and peculiar in it should provoke a reaction. The Clementine Homilies are the reply of the ultra- Judaists within the church to the disruption insisted on by Marcion, maintaining the continuity of Judaism and Christianity, and proscribing all other religions as heathenish and false. Goaded into active opposition by the success of the anti-Jewish theory, they bit- terly attack its author under the name of the Samaritan arch- impostor, Simon Magus,^ the general representative of all those heathenish heretical tendencies of which, to the Jewish mind, Samaria had been the type; and the attack includes St. Paul himself, who, temporarily respited, it would seem, by his death from the active antipathy of his enemies, is here again de- nounced as the " lawless" and " hateful" man,^ convicted by the now evident consequences of his doctrine to have been the real origin of all the mistakes and discords of the church. Judaism, however obstinate on particular points, had always been in practice a changing faith, susceptible of self-modifica- tion and correction. Christianity was itself a modified Judaism, professing to complete and realise all that, in the old religion, had been prospective and ideal; and St. Paul thought that he gave a true when giving a new interpretation to the Hebrew IPet.x. 11,12; ii. 9. * It has been shown (see Banr's Gnosis, p. 306; and Zeller, in the Tiibingen Theol. JahrbiJcher, vol.viii. pp. 378, 380) that this notable Simon, who flew up in the air, made statues speak, whose adjunct Helena was unmistakably the moon, and who at last was buried alive (Clem. Recog. ii. 14; Hom, ii. 23; Philosophouraena, vi. 20), was probably a Samaritan idol, or nature god. (See also Justin, Apol. i. 26.) ' Epist. Petri, ch. ii. 120 IDEA OF CATHOLICITY. oracles as foreshadowing Christian mysteries^, the passage of the Red Sea meaning baptism, the miraculous manna the sa- cramental bread, the passover offering Christ. The writer of "Hebrews" acquiesces in the dissolution of old institutions/ calling on Jew^-Christians to advance from "the elements" of religious knowledge to "perfection;"^ to quit dead works and useless ceremonies, to look to the new covenant, and to recognise in the waning forms of Judaism only types and shadows of which Christ and his religion were the substance. A transition was thus insensibly effected to a new sphere of. opinion by men who were often scarcely aware of the process they were engaged in. The Epistle of Barnabas has a more decidedly Gnostic character depending on allegorical interpre- tation. The ceremonies of ^losaic ritual are said to be no longer binding ; but they are not regarded, as they had been by St. Paul, as having subserved a temporary purpose now answered and superseded, but as having been from the iirst only types of things to come, and so made not so much for Jewish use as for Christian.' The " rest" or Sabbath, for ex- ample, alluded to in "Hebrews,"'* is explained* in an exclu- sively Christian sense to mean the Sabbatical millennium of the Christian era of redemption. The Jews were too gross to under- stand the real meaning of their oracles, the discernment of which is the true Gnosis. The writer of Barnabas draws from Jewish premises specifically Christian conclusions, while almost denouncing common Judaism as Satanic f so that Christian speculation was both Judaical and anti-Judaical, retaining the ancient forms which it used for its own purposes. Justin^s view of the relative value of Judaism comes near to that of Barnabas. He speaks of Christianity as a new law, in which, for the first time, are displayed the real tendencies of the old. He asserts the superiority of Christianity to Judaism, together with its virtual identity with it ; and makes the Old Testament the standard of absolute truth when construed after the Alexandrian fashion of type and allegory. But the philoso- pher wishes to connect Christianity with heathenism as well as Judaism; to show that heathen wisdom as well as Jewish law were preparatory revelations. As, to convince Jews, he had proved all the essential facts of Christianity to be already m the Old Ch.viii. 13. - Ch. vi. 1. 3 Comp. 1 Pet. i. 12. Ch. iv. 9 J comp. iv. 2. ^ Ch. xv. ^ cji^ ix. JEW-CHRISTIAN GNOSIS. 121 Testament, so he argues with the heathen that Christianity even to them was nothing unprecedented, and that they were already to a great extent Christians without knowing it. As Barnabas had made the notable discovery that Abraham's cir- cumcision meant Christ's crucifixion, and that the 318 men whom Abraham circumcised of his household, alluded to the numerals of the initial letters of the Saviour's name,' so Justin professes astonishment at heathen incredulity, when the com- monest instruments employed in husbandry, manufactures, and navigation, all exhibited the unmistakable sign of the cross; the mast and yard, the mattock of the digger, the military standard, all expressing the same form ; nay, it was displayed in their own noses, according to the Scripture intimation, " the spirit before their faces is Christ the Lord."^ The form of thought through which Justin and others for the most part tiy to connect Christianity with preceding systems is the Logos doctrine, a term which, proceeding from Alexandrian Pla- tonism, has the advantage of comprising both reason and speech, the '^word" of creation and the ^^word" of prophecy. Whatever, either in Judaism or heathendom, may seem true and rational, is vindicated as the gift of the Logos, and is therefore Christian, since Christianity is only the full efful- gence of that light or reason which had always been in the world, though its anterior revelations were partial and frag- mentary. The desire to enlarge the range of Christianity by an adoption of Hellenic elements exhibited in Justin's " sper- matic word," is differently shown in the Clementine Homilies. Less liberal than the philosophical Apologist who saw in all religions the " germs" at least of truth,"'' the Clementine writer strictly confines religious truth to the one continuous revelation commenced in Judaism and completed by Christ. Yet he does, in fact, borrow from Greek philosophy, as well as Jewish, mate- terials for his own system ; and while maintaining the principle of religious continuity, feels obliged to concede the basis of the anti-Jewish theory of Marcion which he controverts, namely, the existence of evil, the corruption of matter, a moral dualism coextensive with the universe,* and a specific exemplification * The 300 being the T, or cross (ch. ix.); Barnabas adds, with solemn satisfaction at" his own ingenuity, '" God knows, I never taught to any one a more certain truth; I trust that ye are worthy of it." ^ Lamentations iv. 20; Justin, Apol. i. 55. ^ Apol. i. 44. * Even the most passionate adversary of Marcion (Tertullian, Adv. Marc. i. 16) G 122 IDEA OF CATHOLICITY. of it in the errors and derogatoiy representations of the Old Testament. But he draws a different conclusion from the same premises. He does not, any more than Marcion, try to conceal the errors, or to evade the open admission of them by resorting to allegory, but contends that the real Mosaic revelation must not be confounded with the adventitious mis- takes encumbering it ; and that by means of Gnosis, consisting in sincere love of God and firm adherence to the true idea of Him, genuine Scripture may be distinguished from unworthy representations and interpolated fictions. The occurrence of these arises not from there being two Gods, but from the fallibility of human apprehension and expression, whose inevi- table results, immediately connected with the agency of an evil principle,* have been allowed to remain by the one true God in order to test or try the hearts of the faithful. Clearly, Moses could not have written the account of his own death ; and it follows from this, and from other internal evidence, that his revelations were committed to writing by persons who themselves were not prophets. Where, then, it may be asked, are we to find a reliable criterium of truth, since false religions exist as well as true, and Scripture itself is so multifarious in its assertions that we may prove from it almost what we will V The answer is, that we must inquire of " the true prophet -/' and, again, in order to be able to distinguish the true prophet, we must become acquainted with the exact conditions of that law of contrast (syzygy) erroneously understood and expressed by Marcion, which seems in this, and all other instances, to be did not venture to deny the doctrine of antithesis. He says : " Confirniamus diver- sitatem hanc visibilium et invisibilium adeo Creatori deputandam, sicuti tota ope- ratio ejus ex diversitatibus constat," CScc. ^ Horn. ii. 38 (comp. Barna}>as, ch. ix.). Other instances have been already given (see above, p. 39) of attempts on the part of the hiter Jews to explain the Old Testament anomal'es by the a.irency of the devil. The Cleraent'ne writer wishes to construct a system of Gnosis without a hostile Deraiurgus, and without a dualism; j-et, in fact, he admits both. Content with asserting the supremacy, unit}', and uni- versal causality of the Creator, he allows, nevertheless, the existence of a " rjyefiwv KUKias" or evil principle, opposed to Christ as " ri''/iixc>>v fvrfj8eias," and proceeding from God in some respects, though only to be regarded as permitted by him in others. The world is thus placed under the immediate rule of a being produced out of a fortuitous mingling of the elements, perhaps more opposed to God than even Mar- cion's Demiurgus; although to escape this inference he is called God's left hand, the enforcer of law, and punisher of the wicked. Comp. Uhlhorn, Die Homilien, p. 185. 2 Hem. iii. 10. JEW-CHRISTIAN GNOSIS. 123 the essence of the physical and moral constitution of the world. In the evolution of the world from God, the better necessarily preceded the worse ; heaven was before earth, light before dark- ness (?), life before death. But from the era of the creation of man (who, however, as being after the divine image, produced from himself an inferior, Eve), the order of succession has been inverted, the better member of the syzygy always coming laot; thus man proceeds from woman, Abel succeeded Cain, Noah^s dove the raven, Isaac Ishmael, Jacob Esau, Moses Aaron, and generally true prophecy to false, as Jesus came after John, Peter followed Simon Magus, and hereafter the true Christ would follow Antichrist, the present merge in the future, time in eternity. True prophecy is to false as male to female, or the future world to the present. As the present world, like a mother, bears souls which eternity is to receive and educate as a father, so the true prophets, who, as sons of futurity, bring their perfect knowledge into the present, are always last in order of succession, and if men had comprehended this law or order, they need never have been in error. They would have comprehended at once the relative claims of Peter and the false impostor Simon ; they would have seen that Peter came after Simon, as light after darkness, knowledge after ignorance, and healing after sickness.^ He who, foraied in God^s express image, and proceeding directly from God^s hand, received the first spiritual afflatus, was of course the fii'st and greatest of prophets. He knew all things, and gave names to all, the same which had already been assigned by the Creator. To him was given empire over earth, air, and water, and he had that ineffable '' vesture^^ of the soul through which he might become immortal."'^ Adam promulgated God's true eternal law; and while it was observed, earth brought forth her fairest fruits, the elements propitious seasons, in short, it was the golden age. But absence of ill made men thoughtless, corrupt, and irre- ligious. At length perverted habits and communication ob- scured the truth, so that the world became as a smoky house, whose inmates cannot see the light. It was therefore neces- sary that truth should be revealed afresh, and this was done by a succession of prophets, called the " seven pillars'' of the world, or rather by successive manifestations of the one spirit * This passage (ii. 17) seems to contain an indirect admission of the priority of the Pauline teaching. 2 Horn. iii. 20. g2 124 IDEA OF CATHOLICITY. terminating in Christ ; that one true pi*ophet who, " from the beginning of time, changing his name with his form, passed through the ages, until, anointed for his labours by God, he entered into an eternal Sabbath of repose/* The writer admits the universalism of Christianity, but not its originality and independence. It is not, as taught by St. Paul, an inward renewal of the mind, but the universal promulgation of a truth which, though not new, had been obscured. Its essence con- sists in obsenance of precepts already extant, but requiring a criterium to verify and disthiguish them. Christ was himself the criterium, and the anticipation of his coming was itself part of Old Testament truth. He came not to destroy but to fulfil;* yet, by destroying,* he showed practically that much of the old law was false, or rather that much accidentally mixed up with it really formed no part of that which was to outlast the world. And as, before Christ's appearance, the true prophecy was committed to a faithful few, so, since his coming, the criterium of infallibility has been vested in the apostles and their successors,^ so that the only w^ay of escaping from the uncertainties of opinion and Scripture interpretation so dangerously prominent in the case of Marcion, is to place unlimited confidence in the actual representations of " true pro- phecy,*' i.e. the inspired heads of the church. Matt. XV. 30. * Ch. xvii. 19, PART IV. ORIGIN OF THE CHURCH, AND ITS CONFLICT WITH HEATHENISM. PART IV. ORIGIN OF THE CHURCH. 1, Heresy and Orthodoxy, The Homilies contain all the elements of the hierarchical sys- tem successfully carried out afterwards by the Church of Rome. The civil importance of Rome would alone have sufficed to make it the metropolis of Christendom, When the fall of Jerusalem had removed the greatest practical impediment to a more free and universal religion, Rome succeeded by general assent to a pre-eminence which became the basis of her subsequent usur- pations. Every one who felt able to contribute to the deve- lopment of thought hastened to the great city; Justin the philosopher, Polycarp the Asiatic bishop, the Gnostics Valen- tinus and Mareion, Praxeas the Alogian, and Proclus the Mon- tanist. At first there seemed to be little prospect of union and organisation amid the rivalries of conflicting ideas, which were not as yet made amenable to any rule or standard. Justin's dialogue with Trypho, written about a. d. 150, shows how vague was the then idea of orthodoxy,* and how slow the pro- gress towards a definite understanding among the various parties who, under irregular impulses of liberality or intole- rance, excused or reprehended each other. In the latitudina- rian spirit of his day, Justin scruples not to allow''^ that Socrates, Heraclitus, and, indeed, all who, before the Redeemer's coming, had lived agreeably to reason (Logos), were entitled to the name of Christian. The same laxity is seen in the multifarious writings bearing the name of Clement ; among which even an Ebionitish work like the Homilies was welcomed as a useful confederate whose individual eccentricity was hardly noticeable in the fluctuating condition of the faith. The Gnostic Cerdo was again and again received, after repeated lapses, into the ' See chs. xlvii., xlviii., Ixxx. * Apol. i. 46, 128 ORIGIN OF THE CHURCH. communion of the church ; ' and the exceptional exasperation of the opponents of Marcion at least proves his popularity, which^ however, is directly attested by Epiphanius, Theodoret, and others; the former calling him the " great serpent ^^ mis- leading the whole world. Compared with the austerity of the Asiatic churches, Rome seems to have been the centre of libe- ralism; and the visit of the intolerant Smyrniote bishop Polycarp'"^ to that city, was probably not confined to the object of effecting individual conversions, but included that of urging the leaders of the church to more stringent measures against heresy.* The tenu " heresy'^ of course implies that toleration had its limits. But it was only after long controversy and ma- nifold trial that the new religion amved at such a clear appre- hension of its own principle and of its proper attitude in relation to surrounding thought, as to enable it to propound a system of orthodox dogma. ^ Orthodoxy arose instinctively out of the approximation and tacit concessions of the leading parties; while their divergent extremes prominently exhibited in various forms of Gnosis, acted partly to suggest new ideas, partly as bounds or barriers within which popular opinion was tutored to follow its legitimate track. The first open contradiction encountered by Christianity had been the Jewish aversion to a crucified Saviour, and to its fundamental axiom that " this man" (Jesus of Nazareth) was the Messiah. When from the extent of its conversions, the fanaticism, secrecy, and, in many respects, antisocial maxims of its adherents,* it began to assume ^ Enseb. Hist. Eccl. iv. 11. * He is said, when saluted by Marcion in the streets, to have coarsely replied, " Hail to the first-bom of Satan." Euseb. iv, 14. * Tubingen Th. Magazine, vol. ix. p. 268. * A comparison of the Clem. Homilies with the false Ignatian Epistles, written, in all probability, about the same time and in the same city, exhibits a curious contrast : the one combating Gnosticism from the Judaical, the other from the Pauline side; the one more especially opposing the Docetism of the Gnostics, the other their Dualism. From this and other indications it Avould seem that Catholicism was a practical rather than a theoretical alliance; that unity of opinion was posterior and secondary to unity of government. * The spiritual worship of Christianity appeared to idolators atheistical; its ear- nestness to be superstitious folly; its secret meetings gave rise to injurious suspicions; and its anticipation of an immediate catastrophe and aversion to military and civil service, seemed, notwithstanding the disclaimer of the church (1 Pet. ii. 13), to countenance the imputation of that irreconcilable hostility to human governments and human interests (see Tacitus, Annal. xv. 44; the Apocalypse generally; the admonition of St. Paul in Romans xiii. 1; Hermas, Simil. i.; Barnabas ii.; Tertul- lian de Cor. ch. xi.; Apol. xxxvii. and xxxviii.; De Pallio, ch. v.; Schwegler, N. Z. ii. 2.55), which induced some of the best and most philosophical of the emperors to en- force the laws against it as a foreign superstition. HERESY AND ORTHODOXY. 129 a menacing political import, it came into collision with the civil authorities ; and hence the long-protracted struggle beginning with that atrocity of Nero which identified him in the Chris- tian mind with their great ideal adversary or '^ Antichrist/' * At length it turned out that the most dangerous foes of the church were some of its own members^ who presumed to think and to worship independently ; and it then appeared that there were '^many Antichrists;" '"' persons denying the Messiah- ship of Jesus, his historical appearance ^' in the flesh," ^ or the precise nature of his Dualistic or Trinitarian relation to the Godhead. But, as in the arts, experience of the bad leads to the discovery of something better, so, according to some of the Alexandrian Fathers,^ the mistakes of heresy were not only allowable but useful in promoting the establishment of ortho- doxy. Heresy was a tei'm taken from the philosophical sects or schools of Greece; a name assumed by themselves, and which Christianity, therefore, reproachfully gave to such of its members as were really or apparently connected with them. As used by Christians it implied the manifold error of arbitrary opinion as opposed to that of the majority, non-agreement with which, it was thought, could proceed only from immoral motives, from pride, wilful perversity, or self-interest. The Gnostics were the archetypes of heresy, because they were the first who, in attempting to rationalise Christianity, endangered its found- ations, transferring it from the domain of feeling to that of speculation, and substituting intellectual mysticism for its simple requirements of faith and moral purity. Opposition from without promoted clearness of perception within ; and it was chiefly by way of antithesis to Gnosis that orthodoxy became defined, in its turn making heresy more conspicuous in proportion as the majority of believers vfere united. The princi- ple of union, as above explained, w as a modified Jew-Christianity, professing to be the universal religion of both Testaments, and, in the name of a "higher intelligence"'^ and specific election,* blending practical holiness with faith in the atonement. Yet a comparison of the Clementine Homilies with the deutero-Pau- 1 Rev. xvii. 20; 2 Thess. ii. 3; iv. 8; see Georgii in the Tubingen Theol. Maga- zine for 1845, p. 7. Eusebius makes every new phase of opposition encountered by Christianity a new aspect of Satan. See Hist. Eccl. iv. 7. 2 1 John ii. 18, 19. i^. jj. jg^ 22. * Ch. iv. 2, 3. * Clement of Alexandria (Strom, vii. p. 867), and Isidore of Pelnsium. * Irenae, iii. 3, 2. ' "irAetwi' 7'(7ty," or " TeAeiorqs." 1 Clem. ch. xli. IPet. ii. 9; i. 15, 19. g3 130 ORIGIN OF THE CHURCH. linic and Petrinic writings proves how pliable even then was ortliodoxy_, and how wide the range of allowable opinion ; per- haps, indeed, the consciousness of unity would never have been effectually realised if the matter had been left to mere argu- ment, and had not been subjected to the forcible compression of episcopal government. 2. The Hierarchy, Episcopacy acted as an antidote to heresy, not only by bar- ring its encroachments, but by diverting the mind from specu- lation. Democracy encourages faction ; monarchy represses it ; and to keep down the separatist and destructive tendencies of abnonnal teaching, the best resource lay in monarchical govern- ment. The church was often compared to a tower, of which the lay members were the stones,^ hoisted unresistingly into their places by means of the Holy Ghost ; the latter were sup- posed to have no right to think or interfere in doctrinal matters ; they were to avoid ^' vain babblings," and to confine themselves strictly to the task of " walking worthily."^ The close connection between episcopacy and the repression of opi- nion, between disciplinal and doctrinal union, is illustrated by their constant association in the later New Testament writings ; and bishops, from their very origin, are proved to have been the enemies of free thought. In the Pastoral Epistles, for ex- ample, the denunciation of heresy goes hand in hand with the advocacy of bishops. The controversy, as here stated, is no longer with internal enemies, but with excommunicated rivals ; i.e. the falsely so-called science or Gnosis of Valentinus and Marcion.'* To St. Paul the idea of an organised church was as unknown as it had been to Jesus. Neither of them made any provision as to the exact external form to be assumed by the members of " Christ's body," which, indeed, in St. PauVs own ^ 1 Pet. ii. 5; Hermas, Vis. ii. 3, 4; Ignatius to Ephes. ch. ix. ' Ephes. iii. 10; iv. 1. On the danger and uselessness of inquiry, comp. Irenae, Proem, i. ; Ignatius, Smyrn. vii.; 2 Tim. iii. 7. ^ Neither here, nor in the 2nd Ep, Peter, is heresy particularly defined ; it is only denounced in the vaguest possible terras as a " damnable" aberration from the teach- ing of the church (see 2 Pet. ii. 1), hostility to which is hostility to truth (comp. 2 Pet. ii. 2, and ii. 10) : the denunciation is (as usual) accompanied with bitter imputa- tions on the immorality of the dissentients ; and here there is no want of an accurate catalogue of vices. (See 2 Pet. ii. 10, &c.) THE HIERARCHY. 131 day seemed to offer little pix)spect of harmonious coherence.* The practical and theoretical consequiences of the principle of unity in regard to faith and government were conceded by later Paulinists only when they had swerved from or forgotten their first ideas, acquiescing in the necessity of confederation to ward off the inroads of Gnosis ; and yet some of the true liberality of Paulinism may be traced in the earliest allusions to the hierarchy from the Pauline side,*^ already deprecating the " lord- ing it over the flocks/' i.e. its gross usurpations and abuses. The first Clementine Epistle, though mamtaining with St. Paul, Barnabas, Hebrews, &c.'^ the spiritual equality of all Christians, caiTies the hierarchical idea far beyond its model, the " He- brews," * advocating, in analogy with Jewish precedent, the establishment of a sacerdotal class and ecclesiastical ordinances/ Episcopacy is declared to be an institution warranted by the Levitical provisions of the Old Testament. Hence, in contra- diction to Heb. vii. 14, it makes Christ a Levite;*' and urges the laity, though without any forfeiture of their general priestly character as Christians, or their right of veto in ecclesiastical elections, to pay due honour to the clergy.^ But the idea is much more clearly developed in another Roman work already often referred to, the Ebionitish Homilies, whose warm advocacy of the episcopate, and self-confident assumption of orthodoxy, seem indisputably to prove that even Docetism was not, at the date of its composition, disallowed or even discountenanced at Rome. Peace, it says, is possible only under the rule of one. The cause of wars is the multitude of kings ; if there were but one, there would be eternal peace.^ Hence the advantage of ecclesiastical monarchy. The church is like a ship whose cap- tain is God, its steersman Christ, with the bishop for his first lieutenant ; persecutions, heresies, &c. are as winds and waves ; the passengers are the community, who, though occasionally troubled with a moral sea-sickness relieving them in a dis- agreeable way of their evil humours and propensities, are at last brought safely into port by the exertions of the bishop," the 1 1 Cor, i. 10, 12; iii. 3; xi. 18. 2 1 Pet. V. 3; comp, Schwegler, N. Z. ii. p. 6. " The ideas and language of this Epistle," says Eichhorn, " are so decidedly Pauline, that any one familiar with St. Paul's peculiarities, would find in it only a repetition of what he had already read under another name." ' Ch. xlvi.; comp. Heb. iii. 1; vi. 4; viii. 10, 11; x. 16; 1 Pet. ii. 5. * Comp. ch. xiii. 17. * Quoting Isaiah Ix. 17. See ch. xxxii. ' See especially ch. xl. to xliv. ^ Hom. iii. 62. ^ Epist. Jacob, ch. xiv. 15, 16. 133 ORIGIN OF THE CHURCH, legitimate guardian of truth. The bishop is Christ's vice- gerent, whom to offend is to offend himself. He is the " Me- diator^' through whom individual Christians must approach God, the master of real Gnosis, without whom there can be no salvation. Next to bishops came presbyters, afterwards dea- cons. These three classes form the clergy, who are officially entitled to govern an ignorant laity bound to implicit obe- dience. Even the idea of the popedom, as soon afterwards realised under Victor and Zephyrinus, is suggested in the Ho- milies ; where, as the bishop is head of the congregation, so the monarchical union of all individual congregations is represented in James, the " bishop of bishops," enthroned on the " Ca- thedra" or seat of Moses,^ receiving reports from all quarters in the then reputed centre of the Christian world, and issuing edicts as source of infallible truth and guardian of tradition. The complete plan of church government and polity contained in the Ebionitish original of the " Apostolical Constitutions," cannot be imagined, any more than the Homilies, to have ema- nated from a discarded schismatical party. Only by means of organisation could the principle of Catho- licism, or Christian universalism, be practically carried out. The idea may be said to have originated with St. Paul ; but the spiritual universalism which he contemplated was veiy unlike that afterwards realised. A religion free to all was, of course, very different from a dominion binding on all; and yet from the necessaiy variety of thought and circumstance among men, the one could not be durably established without the other. The machinery through which Catholicism eventually attained form and stability was of Jewish derivation, based on Levitical analogies; and the earliest confutations of heresy proceeded from writers of Judaical leanings.^ But with new circumstances there arose new antipathies and combinations; and as Jew- Christianity renounced Ebionitism, so the catholicised Paulinists who adopted the name of Peter and the Petriue establishment of the Roman Church,' were induced to signalise their aversion to the Gnostic errors regarded not unreasonably by many as consequences of Paulinism, by pronouncing their condemnation in the name of St. Paul himself. The earliest denunciation of * See Heinichen's note to Euseb. Hist. Eccl. vii. 19, as to the reliquary " throne " of James. Vol. ii. p. 412, otto. ^ E.g. Hegcsippus, Justin, and the Homilies. ' Such seems to be the most probable meaninijf of the symbolical word " Babylon," n 1 Pet. V. 13 J a common Christian nickname for Rome. Comp. Rev. xvii. 5. THE HIERARCHY. 133 heretics in the New Testament (considered as deserters of the church), occurs in the Pastoral Letters/ and the tactics recom- mended by the writer are strict adherence to traditional teach- ing, combined with well-ordered government, and a provision for continuous transmission of the faith. ^ The Epistles of Ignatius,^ a pseudonymous writing nearer in date, probably, to the end of the second century than the commencement, contain, in connection with a violent tirade against heresy,* the first dis- tinct mention of a " catholic church." * The writer proclaims that autonomy or independence of Christianity as a substantive and new form of religion, without a consciousness of which no proper church could have existed; but advocates this Pauline principle in a hierarchical sense. His grand panacea for all ecclesiastical evil is to " stick to the bishop." Nothing must be done without the bishop's approval ; where he is there is the church. He represents Christ, as Christ represents God ; he is Titus iii. 10; comp. Schwegler's N. Zeit. ii. 149. ^ 2 Tim. ii. 2. ^ It is difficult to conceive the incompatible traits ascribed to Ignatius to have ever coexisted in a living person. He is a caricatured St. Paul, and his contrasted pride and meekness far transcend even the paradox (2 Cor. vi. 10) of the Christian cha- racter. The *' God-inspired " man (" Oeofopos^''), deeply versed in the secrets of angels and archangels mysteries so sublime and so far beyond his reader's compre- hension, that he is afraid they may be choked by hearing them (Trallians, ch. v.) is yet so humble that he feels scarcely to deserve to suffer; to hear his own praises is torture to him; he aspires only to be the pupil of his pupils; he is the "filth" and offscouring of the world. (Comp. 1 Cor. iv. 13.) Conducted on his way to execution by a party of rude and cruel soldiers (Rom. ch. v.), he nevertheless has leisure and leave to receive deputations, to give exhortations, and to write elaborate theological treatises ; and in enthusiasm of the martyr far outdoing St. Paul (see Rom. XV. 30, 31) or even Jesus (Matt. xxvi. 39), protests against any possible exer- tions of his friends to procure his release, earnestly entreating all who love him for God's sake not to interpose between him and the wild animals who are to tear him to pieces. The tradition about Ignatius is evidently taken from the letters, or sug- gested by them ; and cannot, therefore, supply a collateral guarantee for their genuineness. The story is in many respects irreconcilable with history; the perse- cution scarcely agrees with the mild character of Trajan, who, in his letter to Pliny, seems scarcely to have made up his mind how to treat the Christians; and the inci- dent of landing at Puteoli on the way to Rome, instead of the nearest port, Brundu- sium, is evidently taken from the life of St. Paul. The state of the episcopacy indicates an age much later than Trajan, and so does the heresy combated in the letters, a docetic Gnosis (see Ephes. xviii. 20; Trail, ix.; Smyrnae iii.), which, according to Hegesippus, did not venture to show itself openly until after the time of the Bishop of Antioch. Euseb. Hist. Eccl. iii. 32; Hilgenfeld, Ap. Vater, p. 240, &c. * This writer dissuades from strange doctrines and Jewish fables, Magnes. viii. 10, &c. He calls the Gnostics "mad dogs," "wolves," "backbiters," "impious workers," " beasts in human shape." Ephes. vii. ; Philad. ii.; Smyrn. iv. * Smyrnae, ch. viii. Also mentioned about the same time in an epistle of the church of Smyrna in Euseb. Hist. Eccl. iv. 15. 134 ORIGIN OF THE CHURCH. the visible incarnation of the true " bishop of the soul ; ^' * every one who is of God acts in unison with him ; nothing is ac- ceptable to God which has not the episcopal sanction, &c. The bishops, in short, are the visible representatives of the spi- ritual immanency of Christ in the churches, through whom his omnipresent aid is perceptibly distributed and apportioned to its members ; so that adhesion to the bishop is absolutely essential to being a Christian. The germ of the hierarchical idea, clearly defined for the first time in the Homilies, may be traced much earlier in the postulate of an unbroken traditional continuity made by Hegesippus, Hernias, and in early Petrinic legend. The tendency to cen- tralisation belonged at first not so much to Christianity as to Judaism. Its earliest expression is perhaps to be found in the '^ seven angels" of the Apocalypse, representing the seven Asiatic churches, and indicating an effort to embody in concrete form the spiritual immanence of Christ in the several communities.^ Of course, there could be no proper church estabUshment while men were looking eagerly for the dissolution of all things, and end of the world ; but as the hope of a celestial Jerusalem re- ceded, a tangible terrestrial kingdom came more prominently into view, armed with power to perpetuate its authority by sup- pressing irregular practices and teaching. Its form, as even- tually established, was a complete reversal of the original consti- tution of the churches. The word bishop (fTrtfXKOTroc) was originally an appellation used indiscriminately with presbyter and deacon,^ implying a peculiarity of function, not the title of a specific dignity. Dignity could be little thought of in a small and often-persecuted community, expecting an immediate end of the world. The anticipation which made even marriage an inconvenient distraction,* and all sublunary considerations as nothing, must have severed the exercise of official authority from every usual motive of interest or ambition. These names were not at first denominations of rank, but generic terms ap- plied interchangeably to the official leaders of the congregation,^ generally consisting of its more " aged " members, who, as '* inspectors " (or episcopi), were also, of course, deacons, i. e. " ministers " or public " servants ;" the greatest among Chris- ' Ephes. ch. i. ^ The "angels," says De Wette, Comment, p. 41, are the " Gemeingeist," or ^ geistige substanz der Gemeinde." "Diaconos." * 1 Cor. vii. 29. Acts xx. 17 and 28; 1 Pet. v. 1, 2. THE HIERARCHY. 133 tians being, of course, the " servant of all." * It was natural that those, who, like the house of Stephanas,^ were the " first fruits " or first converted, or, in other respects, qualified to take the lead, should receive deference and submission from the com- munities they served, and that this submission may have been approved and ratified by an Apostle f but the language of St. Paul, who expressly allows Stephanas to have been self-elected, and who, in addressing the distracted church of Corinth offers only the most general advice in regard to discipline, forbids our supposing that the claims of the early Christian office-bearer had any other basis than the convenience and voluntary respect of the flock. Hence even an Apostle might be called servitor or " deacon," * inasmuch as " deaconry" was synonymous with " ministry -/' a bishopric was " diaKovta ttjq cTrto-KOTrr/c/^ ^ a bishop, "SmKovoc Xoyov.''^ St. Paul mentions "helps and governments " ^ {i. e. abstract expressions for the diaconal or episcopal office), as some of the many diversified gifts or "cha- rismata" of the "one spirit" poured out upon all Christians, and constituting a charge to be exercised discreetly, according to individual fitness and capacity, for the interests of all. The early " ministers" are said to have " served the flock of Christ in all lowliness and innocency, in peace and without self-in- terest ;"^ they were elected after the apostolic age by the notables or eminent men, with the concurrence of the congregation.^ In the original democratic constitution ' the first specific deacons were chosen by the congregation, or " whole multitude,"" their selection being acquiesced in, as of course, by the Apostles ; and this general electoral right continued down to the time of Cyprian, when the distinction of clergy and laity had been defi- nitively established. At first there was no such distinction. One of the fundamental ideas of Christianity was the universal priest- hood of its members ;^^ all the acts subsequently reserved to the clergy alone, as teaching ^^ and administration of the sacraments, were in earlier times performed preferentially, indeed, by the 1 Matt. XX. 2fi, 27; xxiii. 11. ^ 1 Cor. xvi. 15. 3 Acts xiv. 23; Clem. Rom. ch. 42. * Acts i. 17, 25; XX. 24; xxi. 19; Rom. xi. 13. Euseb. Hist. Eccl. v. 1. ^ Apost. Const, ii. 26. Irenaeus, too, confounds the presbyters with the bishops, iii. 2, 3; iv. 26. ' 1 Cor. xii. 28. Clem, to Corinth i. 44. ^ Ibid. 1" Matt, xxiii. 8. ii Acts vi. 3, 5, 6. "* IrenaB, iv. 8, 3; Stieren, p. 582; Tertull. de Exhort. Cast. ch. vii. ^' The Epistle of Peter prefixed to the Homilies speaks of the office of teacher as self-constituted. 136 ORIGIN OF THE CHURCH. office-bearers, but by no means by them exclusively.^ The word '' clergy/' as first used, did not imply any hierarchical usurpa- tion, or any disparity in the laity ; it was, like " deacon,'^ a mere appellative of official ^^ position/' to which was gradually super- added the sense of precedency of rank, and ultimately the Levi- tical idea of separation of class. The laic was a non-official person, but, as a Christian, he was at any time competent to assume office. "Where three are gathered together, there,'' says Tei-tullian,^ "is a church, even although they be laymen." Perhaps the earliest indication of a transition from the primitive collegiate authority of episcopi and diaconi to the monarchical episcopacy is to be found in Hermas ;^ its consummation ap- pears in the letters of Ignatius, where, instead of the simple ecclesiastical constitution described in the Gospel,* we find a regular scale of official rank, the presbytery representing the collective authority of the Apostles, the bishop, without whom there can be no church, occupying the place of Christ or God. The last obstacle to episcopacy, as a paramount ecclesiastical authority, seems to have been a claim to primitive equality on the part of the presbyters, which in some quarters was not set aside till the end of the second century. Freedom generated endless heresies, hence the obvious danger which made it easy for the bishops to establish an absolute sway over men's con- sciences and creeds. A central government, under a single chief, was wanted by the church, just as the nominally theo- cratic, but really anarchical Jews, had demanded " a king to go before them and fight their battles." The spiritual union ima- gined by St. Paul thus became an external sovereignty, and the ideal " body of the Lord " was metamorphosed into an eccle- siastical corporation with a sacerdotal emperor at its head. It was the victoiy of the hierarchical over the congregational or de- mocratic principle, in which the authority, before delegated by individuals to the community, and from the community to the minister, was theoretically reversed in the order of its course, and henceforth supposed to flow from above, determining the organisation of the many by the absolute will of one. * Tertull. de Baptismo, ch. xvii.; Baur's Christenthum, 243; Ritschl, Altkath^ lische Kirche, pp. 375, 3?7. * Exhoit. Cast. ch. vii. ' Simil. ix. 27. * Matt, xviii. 20. THE GOSPEL OF MAil^. CM^^^s?^*^ 137 3. The Gospel of Mark, The Gospel of Mark may be singled out as especially the hierarchical one. It eminently displays the neutral and arbi- trary character of the later New Testament literature. Tradition makes it a Petrinic writing, although the author was also a friend and companion of St. Paul ; and it is said to have ori- ginally consisted of ^' memorials ^^ of Petei'^s preaching at Rome, compiled by Mark either in the Apostle^s lifetime, or, according to other accounts, after his death, ^ at the earnest solicitation of the hearers. According to Papias, it was not a methodical account of Christ^s history and discourses, but a series of de- sultory memoranda of Petrinic "preachings" (ra vtto ntr/oou Kr]pv(T(jof.ieva), supposed to have been delivered occasionally by the Apostle, in reply to the heretical doctrines of a certain false teacher preceding him. Whether this description can be made to tally with our present "Mark" seems more than doubtful. Baur at first attempted to explain the imputed irregularity^ in the sense of deficiency, in other words, the epitomising charac- ter of the second Gospel, since, in point of arrangement, there is evidently no great difierence between Matthew and Mark ; but he afterwards admitted the explanation to be untenable, and that the description, in all probability, applies to the " Krjpvyfia Utrpov/' or to some similar composition akin to the Clementina, confounded by mistake with our present Gospel. Irenseus, who had the latter before him, feels compelled to assign to it a later origin than that assumed by tradition ;''* and, indeed, it is gene- rally admitted that the older evangelical som^es were Palesti- nian, whereas internal evidence * as well as external testimony prove the origin of Mark to have been Roman. The prior con- dition of this Roman Gospel must, if the tradition be reliable, have been veiy different from that which we possess at present. Instead of Petrine original (or ostensibly original) discourses, representing, perhaps, the controversy of ancient Roman Chris- tianity with Paulinism, we have a simple Gospel narrative, from which controversy and extreme opinions are carefully expunged. The whole of Mark, except about twenty-five or twenty-seven verses, may be found in Matthew or Luke. This fact, added to 1 Comp. Euseb. Hist. Eccl. ii. 15; iii. 39; and vi, 14; with Irenae, Her. iii. 1. 2 " Oy fifvroi Ta|ft." Euseb. Hist. Eccl. iii. 39. 3 Ch. iii. 1. * E.ff. its Latin terms and idioms. 138 ORIGIN OF THE CHURCH. its compendious form, led to the supposition of its being the original synoptical text ; but this is negatived by the peculiar variations, indicating later interpolation by awkward abbrevia- tions or omissions. Thus in ch. i. 13, the ministration of the angels is left unexplained, and the moral purpose of the temp- tation lost sight of; the omission of the verses Matt. v. 3, 4, between Mark x. 36 and 37, destroys the meaning and con- nection ; ch. xii. 34, is unintelligible until accounted for by a comparison with ]\Iatt. xxii. 46, or Luke xx. 40. The substi- tution of "Mary^s" son, the carpenter,* for Matthew's "son of the carpenter,'^ '^ indicates a more matured stage of Christological theory than that of the genealogies ; and the alteration of the " coming of the son of man" in Matthew ^ into the " coming of the kingdom of God," * seems to point to the advanced stage of thought at which the disappointment of Christian expectation in its earlier sense was thought to be made good by the visible establishment of the church. It has been noticed that Mark's general neglect (except in one instance ^) of Old Testament cita- tions, seems to denote the view which made Christianity not only the new religion, but the only religion ; and that its pre- tensions to esoteric mystery,^ its denunciation of sacrifice,"^ its omission of the genealogies and emphatic assertion of the divine origin of Christ,** betray affinity with the Clementine Homilies. Mark's Gospel has an especially practical and catholic character. Its assumed author, while supposed to be on terms of affec- tionate intimacy with Paul, Sylvanus, &c.,^ was particularly the companion and interpreter of that Apostle whom the Roman Church, from traditional congruity of sentiment, had early adopted to supply the place of its unknown founder. It seems to address an already organised community, whose union it would secure by avoiding every uncalled-for allusion to contro- verted problems, seeking conciliation, not by direct combina- tions of disputed points of doctrine, but by the safer plan of omitting everything likely to excite discussion or to revive the irritation of party feeling. It leaves out, often with no little injury to the connection, all the Jew-Christian exclusiveness of Matthew,*" and the obtrusive Paulinism of Luke ; and, though admitting to the Jews a certain priority of claim,** treats the Mark vi. 3. 2 ch. xiii. 55. 3 ci,, ^ 23; xvi. 28. * Mark ix. 1. Ch. i. 2. Ch. iv. 11. 7Ch. xii. 33. 8 ch. i. 1. 1 Pet. V. 13; Col. iv. 10; 2 Tim. iv. 11. 1 Ch. x.b^Q-, xv. 24; xix. 28. Ch. vii. 27. THE EPISCOPATE OF VICTOR. 139 Christian privilege and " church " ^ as the admitted property of " all nations." There is no partial reservation in favour of the "lost sheep of Israel" on one side, nor any vindictive condem- nation of them on the other ;^ all cause of offence is carefully avoided, and the politic directions of the Pastoral Epistle ^ to stick to the practical, and to avoid theological controversy, are faithfully observed. So far is this carried, that the peculiar en- comiums elsewhere bestowed on Peter '^ are suppressed, as if from a feeling that it was enough to possess the authority of St. Petei'^s own words,^ without making him enact the ungraceful part of his own panegyrist. The result of this conciliatory and conventional tendency is a Gospel deficient, perhaps, in dog- matical interest and marked peculiarities ; but the veiy absence of peculiarities is interesting, as denoting a period when agitat- ing controversies had ceased, and when unity was thought to be well earned at the price of insipidity. 4. The Episcopate of Victor. The few remaining memorials of the Roman Church of the second century contain indications of several curious revolu- tions of feeling ; but the great change was the transition from Jewish to independent Christianity; from the sphere of na- tional privilege to that of a universal salvation. A reaction seems to have occurred in some circles towards Judaism in opposition to Marcion; but the general tendency (exhibited even in the Homilies) was towards hierarchical universalism ; which, if, in some respects, requiring the sacrifice of primitive freedom to the necessities of order and government, made ample amends by repeated instances of abandonment of illi- beral and inconvenient restrictions. This expansive, yet, at the same time, tyrannical aspect of the church, is especially conspicuous in the age of the Roman bishop Victor, an epoch seemingly exemplifying a state of things frequently met with under arbitrary government, the combination of strict rule ^ Ch. xi. 17, where the words " of all nations" are evidently inserted with a purpose. Comp. xvi. 20. ' Matt. iii. 9; viii. 10, 12 ; xxi. 31, 43, omitted. 3 Titus iii. 9. * Matt. xvi. 17, &c. * See especially the words in 2 Pet. i. 12-15; a late epistle, attesting the ge- nuineness of Mark's Gospel. This excuse for St. Mark's silence is given by Eusebius, Dem. Evang. iii. 5. 140 ORIGIN OF THE CHURCH. with popular concession. It was at this juncture that occurred the celebrated dispute about the Passover between the Ro- man and Asiatic churches, which was partly a struggle for privilege and priority between rival establishments, partly the old feud of Paulinism with Judaism. It originated under the Roman bishop Anicetus, between whom and Polycarp the controversy ended where it began, neither choosing to concede the point at issue.* Under Victor it was resumed with greater asperity on both sides. The Asiatics, headed by Polycrates Bishop of Ephesus, claimed the authority of John and the other Apostles in favour of the ancient practice of eating the Passover, according to Jewish custom, and the Old Testament, on the 14tli day of the month; devoting the 15th or following day, to the ^*^ remembrance^' of Christ's death, and appealing, as we are told by Apollinaris, not to John's Gospel, but to Matthew's, in confirmation of their proceedings; whereas the western churches fasted on the 14th or Passover day, in com- memoration of the crucifixion, according to the Pauline axiom that Christ was himself the Christian's Passover.^ The " Apos- tolical Constitutions," a work compiled by a Catholic writer out of ancient, and often very indifferently assorted materials, supplies collateral literary evidence of the prior occurrence of this doctrinal transition in the Church of Rome ; for, whereas in its present fomi ^ the book distinctly rejects the Jewish Passover, the sect of the Audiani, according to Epiphanius,* quoted it to justify their own contradictory practice of Quarto- deciman observance ; and there is equal inconsistency arising out of a double authorship in frequent instances of stipulation for Sabbath obsei-vance, while elsewhere^ Sabbatising is re- nounced, and the Christian Sunday alone permitted. It may appear strange that Victor should have considered a difference seemingly so trivial sufficient reason for excommunicating all the churches of Asia, which he actually did, notwithstanding the remonstrances of the western bishops. Irenseus, among others, strongly urged the impropriety of cutting off that large section of the Christian world, which, after all, had only too faithfully observed an ancient custom; adverting also to the * Euseb. Hist. Eccl. v, 24. 2 1 Cor. V, 7. It need scarcely be observed that St. John's authorship of the fourth Gospel, which makes Christ the passover, no ' bone of which is to be broken," is wtterlv irreconcilable with the Asiatic tradition. Ch.V. 17. * H^r. Ix. 10, 11, U. E.ff. v. 15. THE EPISCOPATE OF VICTOR. 141 fact, that preceding rulers of the church, though they did not themselves " observe/' had by no means held it necessary to renounce relations of amity with those who did. It is clear that at this time observance of the Jewish Passover was gene- rally considered to be, what Tertullian expressly calls it, a covert return to Judaism; this is evidently the footing on which the church rested its subsequent denunciations of it;' and the decree of Victor may be regarded as the formal dis- claimer of all those relics of Orientalism which, though formerly overlooked as unimportant, it had become absolutely necessary to repudiate, in order to vindicate the independent authority of Rome. If ever the lloman Church was to realise those claims to supremacy which it appears already to have entertained, it was indispensible that, both in discipline and dogma, it should inake good its ground by a definitive disclaimer of the preten- sions of its rivals. The amalgamation of parties had already gone so far, and the lloman pontiif was so strengthened by the disciplinal and doctrinal coalition represented in legend by the reconcilement of Paul and Peter, that he was already able " to bind and to loose," and "to excommunicate dissent." The controversy between the churches was carried on, not on the ground of what was right, but of what was apostolical and ancient ; each appealed to the legitimate succession and relative importance of its members. Polycrates pointed to the Chris- tian heroes, from the Apostles downward, who had bequeathed their bones to the soil of Asia ; from John, who " rested on the Lord^s bosom," and wore the priestly diadem ; and Philip, who then slept at Hierapolis, with his two aged virgin daughters. " Why," he exclaims, " need I mention Polycarp, and Thraseus, and Sagaris, all of them martyrs, reposing at Ephesus, at Smyrna, or Laodicea; the blessed Papirius too, and Melito the eunuch who rests at Sardis, awaiting the episcopate from heaven when he shall rise from the dead ? All these observed the 14th day according to the Gospel, deviating in no respect, but following the rule of the faith. And I, Polycrates, who am the least of you, have ever, according to the traditions of my relatives, some of whom preceded me in office (for there were seven of my relatives bishops, and I am the eighth), have ever observed the day when the ^ people^ {i. e. the Jews) put away the use of leaven. I, therefore, brethren, being now sixty-five * Schwegler's N. Zeit. ii. 210, n.; Montanisraus, \9Q^ n. 142 ORIGIN OF THE CHURCH. years old in the Lord^ having conferred with the brethren throughout the world, and consulted the whole of the sacred Scripture {i. e. the Old Testament), am not scared at the threats of those who would intimidate me, since greater than I have said that ' we must obey God rather than men/ " 5. Montanism. About the same time occurred, after some vacillation, the breach of the Roman Church with the Montanists. These were enthusiastic votaries of the old school, principally Asiatics, who carried the primitive maxims and feelings to what now ap- peared to be an inconvenient excess. They were the pietists or '' latter-day saints" of the second century, whose tenets ap- peared exaggerated, simply because they had ceased to harmo- nise with the advance of the age. We know from the New Testament that the protracted postponement of the long-ex- pected " second coming ^^ led to scepticism and levity, cessation of faith producing laxity in morals.^ Montanism was a reac- tionary movement against increasing worldliness, a revival of ancient faith and discipline. It proclaimed more emphatically than ever the approaching end, the coming Messiah, the judg- ment and dissolution of the world. It enforced an austerity of morals suited to such circumstances,^ and claimed the spiritual gifts which were to be " poured out on all flesh in the latter days." All this was evidently but a return to the Apocalyptic escha- tology, the rigid observance and spiritual claims of the early church. The love of many had been chilled, but firm believers who " endured to the end," considered the final catastrophe to be nearer in proportion to the prolongation of their suspense. " What a spectacle," exclaims the Montanist TcrtulUan, ^' shall I soon behold ! The Lord himself, indubitable, triumphant ! How shall I rejoice, how exult, when I shall see so many kings said to have been already received up into heaven, groaning with Jove and his associates at the bottom of the abyss when I behold the judges and persecutors of the name of the Lord melting in fires more cruel than those which they kindled for the Christians ! " The prophetess Maximilla is said to have announced, "after me no more prophesying, but the end." The 1 2 Pet. iii. 3, seq. Comp. 2 Pet. iii. 1 1 ; Heb. x. 25. MONTANISM. 143 Montanists were ardent Chiliasts^ fanatically devoted to the external materialistic form of Christian idealism which seems to have been still very generally prevalent.^ They painted the de- tails of the approaching millennium in the liveliest colours, and while Catholicism had already limited its aspirations to the prolongation of its worldly interests,^ perpetually prayed in a millennarian sense, "thy kingdom come!^' Priscilla, another Montanist prophetess, but whose raptures were by her adver- saries interpreted as a demoniacal possession, pretended to have had a vision of Christ, who pointed out to her the exact spot on which the heavenly Jerusalem was to descend. A state of eager expectation, acting on ardent temperaments, naturally favoured the development of prognostication and prophesying. All Christians were gifted with the Spirit, and spirituality and prophecy were almost the same thing.^ This charisma, long forfeited by the Jews, is claimed by Justin and Irenseus as hav- ing passed, with other Jewish privileges, to the Christians;* and the names of its successive recipients are commemorated, Agabus, Judas, Silas, the prophetic daughters of Philip, Am- mias and Quadratus of Philadelphia. Through these the gift was transmitted to the Montanists, who enjoyed the plenitude of inspiration reserved for " the latter days.^^ They assumed on this score to be, like the Gnostics, distinguished above other persons as " Pneumatici '^ or Spiritualists. To them are some- times ascribed all the apocalyptic writings of early Christianity, Hernias, the Fourth Book of Esdras, and the Sibylline oracles, their spiritual claim as pietists and prophets nearly coinciding with that of the authors of those works. The prophet had always been considered as speaking, not his own words, but those of in- spiration, as being the passive organ or " medium" of the Deity ; hence Montanus, as a vehicle of the divine, became identified with the power he represented, which, " as a plectrum, struck upon the cords of the human soul." Tertullian describes a prophetess or weird sister resembling the mesmeric clairvoyantes of the pre- sent day, who, seized with ecstasy during church worship, seemed to converse with angels or with the Lord himself, divined what was passing in people^s minds, and prescribed medicines to those consulting her.^ According to Tertullian, everything later in * Justin, Try ph. ch. Ixxx. p. 276, otto. * " Oramus pro rerum quiete, pro mora finis," Tertul. Apologeticus, ch. xxxix. ' 1 Cor. xiv. 37. * Tryph. ch. Ixxxii. ' TertuU. de Anim. ch. ix. j Irenae, Hccr. ch. v. 6. 144 ORIGIN OF THE CHURCH. order of time is better, more intense, and more God-like; so that as the day of doom approached nearer and nearer, the efful- gence of spiritual illumination became ever more penetrating and brilliant, and the revelation of Christ was eclipsed by the ma- turer one of the Paraclete. The Paraclete was sent to promote that perfection of discipline which human mediocrity could not at first support ; for as nature grows and ripens, so also does ''justice,^^ or the moral character of man. "In his rudimen- tary condition he worshipped a God of fear; the law and the prophets were his infancy ; in the gospel he advanced to ado- lescence ; his maturity was now provided for by the Paraclete.'^ * The qualification most insisted on under this last or " Para- cletic ^^ dispensation was purity of life. Man, as the temple of the Holy Spirit, should himself become holy by bringing his body more and more into subjection, by breaking off all con- nection with the fading world. The results of the theory were exhibited in austere rules as to fasts, celibacy, and martyrdom, requirements which certainly were not novelties, but only a re- vival of ancient fervour. The church had stooped to an obse- quious alliance with the world, sometimes even giving money to obtain immunity from persecution. A strong reaction to primi- tive devotedness now exceeded in its ascetical requirements not only the righteousness of Scribes and Pharisees, but even that of Jesus and the Apostles. Christ had repealed much that had been permitted by Moses on account of Israelitish hardness of heart ; and many allowances conceded to the weakness of the flesh by him were now withdrawn by the Holy Spirit. A Mon- tanist in Origen claims the merit of virgin purity as a " Naza- rite of God, drinking no wine.^^ The law of God and of morality was, indeed, always the same; but consideration for human ignorance and frailty had relaxed the severity which now in the ends of the world it had become necessaiy to enforce. Hard- ness of heart prevailed to the time of Christ ; even then men were unable to bear the extirpation of their fleshly propensities. It was necessary that even this last weakness should cease, that the flesh should become wholly subservient to the spirit. The Paracletic revelation was, in short, that maturity of the genuine Christian sentiment, in which its original ascetical requirements to forsake father and mother, all sublunary cares and relations, were fully carried out, and in which the moral consciousness wholly abandoned the world to take refuge in itself. * TertuU. de Virg. Vel. ch. i. SEVERANCE OF THE CHURCH FROM MONTANISM. 145 6. Severance of the Church from Montanism. Montanism had much in common with Gnosis. Both were based on individual consciousness of elevated sentiment and Di- vine inspiration ; both asserted the ultimate victory of spirit over matter, and indulged in views ranging beyond the actual into the past and future. But Montanism was only the Christian feeling and Christian Messiah theory intensified; Gnosis ad- vanced beyond positive Christianity towards free speculation. One was latitudinarianism of idea ; the other, exaltation of sen- timent : Montanism exemplified the extreme tendencies of the Christian life; Gnosis aimed at an intellectual development of Christian theory. Neither extreme was compatible with the conventional moderation and absolute rule of an established church. Gnosticism was clearly irreconcilable with ecclesiastical instincts in its tendency to rationalise and generalise,, to raise Christianity above the range of popular apprehension, and to merge its plain meaning in philosophical ideas. Though far from being really free, it was yet too free and independent for church acceptance. Its docetism, or the making Christ an ideal being, the mere symbol of a conception, was at variance with tradition ; and by viewing salvation as an emancipation of the spirit, a transcendent operation within the mind, it left the human appearance of Christ unaccounted for, and the ex- istence of a church unmeaning. It is true that the uni- versalistic tendencies of Gnosis, and its claims to spiritual in- sight and infallibility, were necessary ingredients of church success. But the latitude required by Catholicity in its cor- porate capacity, could not be conceded to individuals ; and the expansion it permitted was not allowed to proceed to the extent of Gnosis, in which positive Christianity was dissipated and lost. The Jewish theory of a special salvation, proportionably modified, was far more agreeable to the general feeling than that Gnostic independence, in which all principle was deserted for a wild reverie on the problems of the Cosmos. Montanism had less of apparent heterodoxy than Gnosis. It implied no new form of doctrine, nor, strictly speaking, even of discipline. The most eminent Christian teachers of early times were more or less attached to it, as Melito, Irenseus, Hippolytus, Justin, Athenagoras, Tertullian. The novelty was really on the side of its opponents, who, advanced beyond the past^ wanted a new H 146 ORIGIN OF THE CHURCH. name for stationary or reactionary tendencies. Belief in the continuance of divine revelation combined with an ascetical mo- rality had been general, and the expectation of Christ^s imme- diate return to judge the earth had been a prominent tenet of his followers ever since his death. Chiliasm, too, was a common mark of Jewish Christianity ; it was held by almost all the early Christians/ and the churchy in condemning it, con- demned its o^vn doctrinal antecedents. But Montanism, though containing nothing new, contained much that was effete and incompatible with the practical wants of the age. While Chris- tianity clung to its idea of an immediate end, it could not obtain a firm footing among secular institutions. The fluc- tuating condition of faith and discipline made it more and more necessary, if it were to last, that its members should be organised and its faith defined ; that it should have a code and a government. The seat of government was naturally Bome ; but Rome could not tolerate a doctrine which made a " new Jerusalem^^ its heaven ; nor could the independent appropriation of spiritual gifts by lay individuals be allowed by a church claiming in its corporate capacity alone the spiritual authority implying the exclusive salvation of its members and infallibility of its decrees. We are not particularly informed on what grounds Praxeas succeeded in persuading the Roman bishop/ who was at first disposed to deal amicably with the Asiatic churches, to recall letters of pacification already issued, and to desist from recognising the " Charismata /* whether it was the irregular enthusiasm of the Montanist prophets, the part they took in the Passover controversy, their repugnance to hier- archical authority, or all these together. It is clear, however, that here, as in the Passover dispute, interests of vital im- portance were thought to be at stake, involving the very ex- istence of Christianity and the church. The controversy, so far as it can be made out, seems to have been an episode of the important revolution already mentioned, which changed pri- mitive Christianity into Catholicity. The points at issue were the incompatible assertion of autonomy on one side, and hier- archical supremacy on the other, the latter involving the disuse of inapplicable irrational tenets. To the pretensions of extra- * E.g. Cerinthus, Papias, Justin, Irenseus, and many others, down to the " Re- futation of the Allegorists" by the Egyptian bishop Nepos in the third century. (Euseb. Hist. Eccl. iii. 28; vii. 24.) 2 Probably Victor or Eleutherus. SEVERANCE OF THE CHURCH FROM MONTANISM. 147 ordinai*y proplietic gifts, Catholicism replied that " the law and the prophets were till John -^^ in other words, that the old pro- phecy had ceased with the old dispensation. It exposed in bolder terms than those used by St. Paul in his reproof of the fanatical Corinthians, the absurdities arising out of the old theory of holy frenzy; since it was impossible that those who were really under the influence of the Holy Spirit should lose their senses, or be capable of instructing others when ignorant or mad themselves. The Christian faith, it was said, depended not on meats and drinks, nor was a spare diet essential to evince the love of God. The Montanists were accused of " Galatising," i.e, Judaising like the Galatians; they were also " quartodecimans,'' or partisans of the Jewish side on the Passover question.^ They exacted a purity and abstinence inconsistent with ordinary feeling; and the church, which could only become really universal by conforming to human wants, was obliged to repress and regulate the overstrained and im- practicable pretensions of its members.'^ But it could not condemn the Montanists without condemning itself. The church claimed to be holy as well as catholic or universal; yet to make it universal was to open an asylum for the in- famous, and practically to allow its impurity. A universal church could not be altogether a holy one; unless, indeed, a distinction were allowed between the visible and invisible, the empirical and ideal churches, a distinction not obvious, and which the visible church, of course, could not safely admit. The latter met the difficulty by appealing to its prerogative, its authority " to bind and to loose,^^ or to unlock heaven to penitents. The plea of ecclesiastical authority was opposed to the scruples of individual consciences. The general difference came for decision in the form of a controversy as to the power claimed by the bishops to absolve from deadly sin committed after baptism. The first Christians were inflexible in this respect,^ and the Montanists only maintained the ancient rigour. However, the Roman bishop, Zephyrinus, issued a Schwegler, Nachap. Zeit. ii. 216, 217. 2 Ancient Christianity condemned second marriages as a specious form of adultery (Athenag. Leg. p. 33,); the church, according to Epiphanius (Hasr. pp. 48, 49), re- commended abstinence, but did not insist on it; it made due allowances for human frailty. ^ See Heb. vi. 4, seq. ; x. 26 ; xii. 17. The ancient writing called the " Shep- herd," supposes all opportunity of repentance to cease from the moment of the constitution of the church. ( Vis. ii. 2 ; comp. iii. 5.) H 2 14<8 ORIGIN OF THE CHURCH. peremptory edict, authorising absolution j^ an edict which Ter- tullian calls " monstrous/^ insufferable, and more worthy of the stews, than of the purity of the spouse of Christ. It is at least singular that the church should have commenced its career with so marked a concession to worldliness as was im- plied in the proclamation of a principle akin to that of indul- gences. That the dispute, though quieted for a time, was not satisfactorily settled, is proved by its recurrence, as in the instances of the Novatians and other schismatic disciplina- rians, whom Catholic writers are often puzzled to distinguish from their own monks, being in the awkward position of having either to admit the crookedness of church policy, or to condemn in the IMontanists the very tenets substantially coun- tenanced by themselves."'* 7. Scripture and Tradition. In order to maintain order and uniformity in the only sense in which, in an actual establishment, it seemed possible to secure these objects, it became more and more obvious that the church must have a definite standard of doctrine to appeal to. All parties had long been accustomed to refer to Scripture ; but they were not agi'ced as to what was Scripture, or how it was to be interpreted. Each accused the other of subornation and forgery ; each found in the contemporary pseudonymous litera- ture evidence suited to its purposes ; and Tertullian exhibits in his own person the loose way in which argument was con- ducted, quoting for " Scripture" at one time the very book which at another he scornfully rejects as apocryphal. It was impossible to make any conclusive appeal to canonical Scripture when the canon had no existence. The floating literature of the day had no authentic stamp. Books were scarce, and few were able to read them. Those used in some communities were thought inadmissible by others ; and there was always a large intermediate class of " antilegomena," or disputed works." Eu- sebius tells us * that the Apostles expressed themselves in vulgar ^ " Ego et moechiae et fomicationis delicta poenitentia functis diraitto." TertuU. de Pudicitia, ch. 1. ^ Schwegler, Montanisraus, p. 238. 3 See Euseb. Hist. Eccl. iii. 25; vi. 12, &c. * Hist. Eccl. iii. 24. SCRIPTURE AND TRADITION. 149 language, and knew little of the art of composition ; that even the ablest of them, St. Paul, wrote only a few short epistles ; and he might have added, that for a long time even these shared the unpopularity of their author, and were seldom noticed except to be contradicted. A divine revelation could not be secured to later generations unless it were written ; but the first disciples, who expected an immediate end of the world, had no motive, even if they had the ability, to undertake a seemingly useless task. It would have appeared absurd to con- fine within written paragraphs the free overflowings of the spirit; and those who came immediately after them, Papias, Polycarp, and Hegesippus, found it less profitable to consult books than to make personal inquiries of those who had asso- ciated with the disciples and professed to recollect their state- ments.^ Writing was only resorted to as a subsidiary expedient when the ^' living voice^^ was absent or extinguished ; and since Christianity seemed only a new phase of Judaism, the Old Testament sufficed for almost every purpose of reference ; Justin^ even declaring the gospel to be only a restoration of the law, and its true teachers to be the prophets.^ The construction of a New Testament canon was the fruit of the controversies which showed the want of it; an independent literature accompanying the consciousness of an independent religion, which became more determinate and precise in propor- tion to the necessity of defining its limits against aggression. But heretics appealed not without efi'ect * to Scriptures of their own, or to readings which they asserted to be the more ancient and genuine ; and their opponents, finding literary controversy unsafe ground, fell back to the old resource of tradition, de- claring with Tertullian,^ "Ergo non ad Scripturas provocan- dum est.^^ In short, it was necessary to test Scripture by means of doctrine, before doctrine could be established by the evidence of Scripture. The argument was a begging of the ques- tion ; Tertullian characteristically laying it down that heretics cannot be Christians, because heretical doctrines cannot be * Euseb. Hist. Eccl. iii. 39; Irenaeus, Haer, iii. 3, 4. 2 Justin assigns only a subsidiary authority to his Apostolical " Memorials ;'* and even the " Apostolical Constitutions" (i. 5) refer primarily to the Old Testa- ment for scripture evidence, making the '* ^va-yy^Kiov " secondary evidence only as ,a " (TVfiirKrjpwfAa." ' Schwegler's N. Zeit. ii. 196. * Tertull. de Prsescr. cli. xv. * Ibid. ch. xiv. and xix. 150 ORIGIN OF THE CHURCH. derived from Christ ! ^ Heretics might have replied that they repudiated the denomination ; and might have added^ that even orthodox tradition was a precarious test, being in many in- stances palpably absurd and false.^ They, however, prefeiTed 'to accept the proffered criterium/ only they claimed a hearing for traditions verifying their own opinions. These they endea- voured to connect with the most ancient times, declaring them to have been faithfully handed down through Glaukias or Theodas from Paul, Peter, or Jesus. They pretended that the Apostles themselves were not always in the right, instancing the dispute between Paul and Peter at Antioch ;'* they even went so far as to say that heterogeneous elements had been mixed with Christianity by its Founder, who sometimes uttered the promptings of an intermediary iEon, and that in other cases the Apostles had imperfectly comprehended and incor- rectly recorded his statements. The Fathers replied by point- ing to the comparatively modem date of Gnosticism and the differences among its teachers, in advantageous comparison with which stood the unifonn assent of the churches repre- sented by the bishops and presbyters to whose care they were committed by the Apostles, and from whom they received the transmitted truth derived by the Apostles from Christ, and by Christ from God. If, therefore, it were asked what Christ really revealed and the Apostles preached, recourse must be had to the churches founded by them : Achaians might repair to Corinth, Asiatics to Ephesus, Macedonians to Thessalonica or Philippi; as to the western Christians, whither should they look for ti-uth unless in the bosom of that glorious church founded by the two great Apostles and martyrs, Paul and Peter, in which apostolical tradition had been faithfully handed down from the very beginning ?^ "In short," says Tertul- * De Praescr. ch. xxxvii. 2 Clemens, for instance, avows that he suppresses many traditions "lest he shonid put a sword into the hands of children;" yet he repeats the story of John's having inserted his hand into the dead body of Christ without feeling any resistance; and informs us that the nutriment taken by the Saviour was wholly absorbed without faeces (pp. 538 and 1009: ed. Potter). The former of these stories occurs in the ** Hypotyposes," although Cassiodorus professes to have purged them of discreditable matter. * Irenae. Haer. iii. 2, 1. * The church evaded this objection by pleading that the Peter who disputed with Paul at Antioch was not the Apostle, but another person. See Euseb. Hist. EccL i. 12. Irenae, Hser, iii. 2, 2; Tertull. de Praescr. xxi. and xxxvi. SCRIPTURE AND TRADITION. 151 lian, ^^ the Apostle himself tells us that it is better to leave heresy to itself; ^ to argue with a heretic is impossible, since he refuses to accept our premises, and already deserves castiga- tion on that very account." * A general reference to tradition seemed at first to supply the required standard of uniformity, inasmuch as the oscillations of the Christian consciousness were confined within certain limits. These, in the conflict with heresy, became more defined, and thus arose the first outlines of a rule of faith,'"* consisting of short sentences adapted for repetition at baptism, and antithe- tically arranged against heretical errors, which at length settled down into " the Apostles' creed." Yet the appeal to tradition was, after all, only a reference to opinion, a summons to the vox populi to supply the means of self- verification and correc- tion.* Originally a conservative expedient employed against the Gnostics, it might be made to serve equally well the oppo- site purposes of innovation and development;* and thus be carried to an extreme subverting its purpose, and conceding all that Gnosticism wanted. The Clementine Homilies, for in- stance, assert the infallibility of tradition independently of any outward determining test or objective condition, in the absolute sense of a universal or ideal certainty derived through some un- explained channel*^ from the beginning of the world. For the fixed external standard of historical tradition, it thus substitutes a principle of ideal interpretation quite as arbitrary as that of the Gnostics.^ The church avoided this dangerous latitudina- * 1 Tim. vi, 3, 4; Tit iii. 10, 11. * De Praescr. xvi. Valesius says that the church for ever retains the divine charisma (or gift) of Gnosis ; but that heretics, although they usurp the name, cannot have the thing, " because they are not of the church ; (" cum alieni sunt ab eccle- sia Dei.") ' See Irenae. Haer. i. 10; Tertull. de Praescr. xiii.; Adv. Prax. ii.; Origen de Princip. sec. Rufin. i. 4. * " Quud apud multos unum invenitur non est inventum sed traditum." Tertull. de Prass- xxviii. * Bishop Stephen, in his controversy with Cyprian, says, *' Nihil innovandum nisi quod traditum est.'" * " Ta ax* amvos eu KpvxTca o|tots irapaSiSo/jiei'a." Horn. iii. 19. ^ This free and easy principle is certainly countenanced in the early Christian literature ; the author of Hebrews, for instance, finds in the Old Testament account of Melchisedek a reflection of his own Christian idea of an eternal high-priest, although the particular on which the comparison is founded, i. e. the having no father or mother, is a gratuitous inference suggested by the hypothesis it is meant to support. The same may be said when, attempting to show that the ancient Hebrew worthies found favour with God through their faith, he is obliged, in the case of Enoch, to assume the fact which was to be proved, and to make the favour 152 ORIGIN OF THE CHURCH. rian postulate by continuiug to regard personal relationship or connection as the best attainable security for exactitude of doc- trine, of taking for its rule, not tradition in general, but that guaranteed as legitimate ^ by the authority of the bishop. The principle was thus inseparably interwoven with that of Episco- pacy. Had the bishops been really the immediate successors of the Apostles, there might have been some reason, however slight, for trusting the Episcopal warrant. Unfortunately for the church, this cannot be proved. The official leaders of the infant church were not bishops as usually understood, but " presbyters '^ or " elders ;" and the Fathers, in their traditional recitals, almost invariably appeal to some " blessed presbyter,^^ in order to connect themselves with the Apostles. Some idea of the way in which tradition grew may be found from involuntary pa- tristic admissions. Its general mode of propagation is exem- pliiied by Papias, whose belief, in happy indifference to the usual tests of historical credibility, is implicitly guided by the estimation in which the reputed author of a story was held by the church. If an " elder ^^ said so and so, no possibility of mistake is for a moment suspected ; although we are not assured that the " elder '' had any authority whatever for the particular communication, or that it may not have been wholly gratuitous. Irenseus, in his eagerness to maintain tradition, confounds the whole time anterior to Gnostic " innovation '^ in one grand " Apostolical period ; '' he makes immediate " disciples of the Apostles " out of a presbyter of the middle of the second century,^ and Papias, who expressly disclaimed the honour;^ striving to obliterate the chronological interval by preposterously exaggerating apostolical longevity,* and claiming an impossible antiquity for his own informants. Clement of Alexandria coolly makes his own compilations into a Gnostic " paradosis" derived from the Apostles ; and we are tempted to ask whether the offensive matter which, according to Photius,^ he tried in the Hypotyposes to verify from Scripture, and which shown to Enoch the ground for assuming his faith. A writer who so unscrupulously makes Scripture a vehicle for propounding his own ideas, would hardly hesitate to Dublish congenial sentiments under a borrowed name. 1 Sometimes even against stronger apostolical evidence, as in the passover-contro- versy between Victor and Polycrates, where the synoptical gospels were clearly over- ruled 8 Irenae. iv. 27, 1, and 32, 1. 3 Euseb. iii. 39. * Irenae. v. 30, 3. P. 286, Hoschl. SCRIPTURE AND TRADITION. 153 Cassiodorus undei-took to expunge, were really Apostolical; whether his story of the just living in the sun/ his abortive attempts to conceal Scripture discrepancies/ or the explana- tions in midwifery communicated by the presbyter in Eclog. Proph. 50, are due to inspiration; or whether they are not rather to be classed with those fictions which, growing with the occa- sion like Falstaff^s men in buckram, become at last too much even for the ostrich digestion of the commentators ; for instance, the story of Judas, who having passed through the hanging recorded in Matthew, underwent several other deaths in compliance with the seeming requisitions of prophecy, being first ruptured by a fall, then victim to the dropsy,^ which inflated him to such an extent, that his head was "larger than a chariot;" until at length this term of comparison, expressive of his size, was turned into the engine of his destruction, the illustrative chariot came into actual collision with his body, and he fell crushed by the weight of a metaphor. There are some expressions which seem to betray a consciousness on the part of Clemens of un- fairness in indiscriminately claiming apostolical authority for the matter collected by him. In designating the primordial tradition by the name of apostolic " germs,"* he virtually admits the non-apostolical character of the matured story. The au- thentic nucleus is thus reduced to a minimum ; apostolical sanction extends only to the Gnostic principle ; and so far as Christian feeling had a tendency to spiritualism, the state- ment so limited may possibly be correct. But then if the Apostles sanctioned only the first hints and germs of tradi- tional Gnosis, what becomes of the reliance claimed for the presbyters, or the pretended careful transmission of full-grown unadulterated accounts " from father to son " {iraic irapa irarpog), which by their matured absurdity make all develop- ment impossible and superfluous ? In short, it was impossible to admit any distinction between the superadded and the tra- ditional without abandoning the whole argument; but Clemens does not choose to prejudice his own case by making a display of its weakness, and candidly allowing a discrepancy between the initial story and the " dropsical " proportions of the actual. If by any ingenious device or distortion of Scripture a particu- Eclog. Proph. Ivi. 2 p^ ]017, Potter. '. Probably inferred from Ps. cix. 18, of which ver. 8 is quoted in Acts. See Strauss, Leben Jesu, iii. 3, 130. * " anepixara." Strom, i. 1; Potter, p. 323.. H 3 154 ORIGIN OF THE CHURCH. lar notion could be connected with a presumably apostolical dictum, the Fathers were confirmed in their belief that the Apostles actually possessed the " true Gnosis -y^ but the power of verifying and tracing it to its source belonged only to a favoured " few," because those only who, by means of allegoiy, had contrived to appropriate to others their own ideas, knew how to discover and recognise them. And it may well be asked, if such were the liberties taken when Christianity was in the hands of educated men well versed in Greek philosophy, what must have been the condition of the plastic impassioned age and unguarded opportunities of its infancy; what the credulity of those " babes " in intellect and " paupers in spirit," whose ex- cited imaginations, rather than their memories, furnished the precarious traditional materials of gospel " history ? " 8. The Conflict with Paganism. The designation of the disciples as the " salt of the earth/' bespeaks the feeling which eventually made Christianity a world-wide religion. The Fathers loved to dwell on the re- markable affinity between their faith and imperial power ; how both came to maturity at the same time, and had ever co- existed with mutual advantage.* They even ventured to assert that the welfare of the State depended on Christianity, and that their prayers alone deferred the end of time, whose dura- tion was prolonged mainly on their account.^ The heathen did not reciprocate these advances ; nor, indeed, were they con- sistent with what had been originally professed by the Chris- tians. The latter, as may be seen in the Apocalypse, exhibited at first all the antisocial exclusiveness of Judaism. The very essence of Christianity was separation from the world, its ideas, its pleasures, and to a considerable extent its duties.^ It stood aloof from society,* renounced solicitude for the morrow, and treated human authority as a commission from the devil,^ the " prince of this world," who had absolutely nothing in Christ. It was, therefore, not true that Christianity really loved the world, or was in any very obvious sense the means of its pre- servation j on the contrary, it has been said with truth that it 1 Euseb. iv. 26. ^ Tertull. Apol. ch, xxxii.; Justin, Apol. ii. 7. ' Hermas, Vis. i. 3, &c.; and the remonstrances in Rora. xiii. 1; 1 Pet. ii. 13. * See Matt. x. 16; xx. 25, 26; Luke vi.22; John vii. V, xv. 18; xvi. 33. * Matt. iv. 8, 9; Hennas, Simil. i.; Barnabas, ch. ii. THE CONFLICT WITH PAGANISM. 155 had no inconsiderable influence in causing the downfall of the Roman Empire. With such tendencies it was naturally disliked. Its antipathy to the usual forms of public worship and social intercourse countenanced the suspicions generally attaching to a secret society, which made it appear to the most enlightened among the heathen as a dire superstition {" exitiabilis super- stitio"), whose essential principle was hatred of the human race.* Hence the most atrocious charges found ready credence when brought against the Christians, whose general character was thought even by Tacitus to supersede the necessity of ad- ducing evidence to justify their conviction. The Christian reply to this unjustifiable severity is the Apocalypse, which, little anticipating the historical realisation of Christ's kingdom of which Rome was to be the scene, denounces that city as the blood-stained murderess of the saints, and as the throne of Anti- christ. And yet, notwithstanding this deep-rooted aversion and real incompatibility, of which the execution of the Founder of Christianity by a Roman official may be regarded as a pre- sage, the despised and calumniated faith had an advocate in the bosoms of its individual adversaries which ever replenished its ranks. It was a mental refuge from calamity, instantly replac- ing by new associations and ideas all the then broken ties of moral and religious life. The increase of conversion, attested by the well-known letter of the younger Pliny, led to increased apprehension and persecution ; and this again stimulated, among the educated especially, the tendency to conversion. It was no longer possible to ignore the new faith now openly ex- hibited before the world. And although the emperors, in the interests of state policy, disliked and affected to despise the theatrical avidity for martyrdom displayed by the Christians, it was, at least, impossible to conceive their devotedness to be inspired by the unw'orthy motives ascribed to them ; and many even of the philosophers, whose distinctive character, according to the practical fashion of the day, was rather a life than a theory, were led, in admiration of what they saw, to go over to the practical " philosophy" of Christianity, their manner of life and general turn of thought as Christians continuing un- changed. These educated converts became the ^^ apologists" of their newly-adopted faith, endeavouring by their writings to place it in a truer light before the world. The defence was * Tacit. Ann. xv. 44; TertuU. Apol. ch. xxxvii. 156 ORIGIN OF THE CHURCH. addressed to Jews, Gentiles, philosophers, and politicians; showing first that the charges of gross immorality, if not alto- gether unfounded, were at least entirely opposed to Christian principle; and that, in justice, the misdeeds of a few ought not to be laid to the account of all.^ It endeavoured to con- vince statesmen that, so far from being dangerous to civil government, Christianity, as now better understood and ex- plained, was especially calculated to form good and obedient citizens ; and that, it was wrong to hate those whose very name (" x/^'J^^^oi^'') showed them to be " good^-* men. The apolo- gists pleaded that, instead of being repugnant to the best opinions of the day, their faith was in reality a recapitulation of them ; and as they tried to convince Jews that Old Testa- ment prophecy had been fulfilled, even to the most minute particulars, in the career of Jesus, so to Gentiles they declared that, instead of deserving reprobation as opposing the philo- sophy of the old world, Christianity had, for the first time, made its meaning clear and its warring theories consistent. The " Logos'^ doctrine was well adapted to this theory of amalgamation. The same "Word" which had been revealed in one direction to the Barbarians (or Jews), had also, it was said, communicated to the Greeks all that they possessed of true and rational; and consequently every one who at any time had lived rationally might be considered to have been Christian. The defect of heathen philosophy was its incom- pleteness ; it was not the whole truth, which, now revealed in its entirety by the "Word" to the Christians, enabled them to grasp as a living universal faith what had before been only a confused medley of conflicting theoretical opinions. The unjust treatment of the Christians arose from the agency of dsemons, who, having contrived to make themselves feared, had been in consequence worshipped. Socrates tried to destroy their influ- ence, and eventually fell a victim to their vengeance, under the pretence that he denied the existence of the gods. The same nefarious arts were now being practised against the Christians ; they, too, were called Atheists ; but the accusation was wholly unfounded, or, at least, only true in case daemons were to be accounted gods. ^ Justin, Apol. i. ch. iv. and vii.; Euseb. Hist. Eccl. iv. 7. CELSUS. 157 9. Celsus, Tbese efforts, whatever their immediate result, were in them- selves a new epoch in Christian history. The Christians were no longer an obscure sect, but an extensive party led by culti- tivated intellects ; so that it became necessary to examine its meaning carefully, and either to accept or answer the argu- ments adduced in its favour. Among those who, towards the close of the second century, undertook the latter task, was a Greek philosopher named Celsus. His refutation of Chris- tianity anticipates most of the usual objections. The argu- ment first proceeds on Jewish ground, adverting to the im- probabilities of the gospel narrative, the lowly appearance, sufferings, &c. of Christ. '^ How,^' says the objector, " can Jews be blamed for not believing what was not believed by his own followers ? Why should other men be expected to die for him who was deserted by his own intimate associates ? If he really rose from the dead, he should have shown himself openly to his enemies and judges, not to a few superstitious women only, and those who had a direct interest in supposing him to be alive.^^ But the point at issue went far beyond the petty quarrel between Jew and Christian. The latter was limited to the inquiry whether a divine messenger had already come, or was still to come ; the philosopher raises the previous ques- tion whether it be probable that God should send such a mes- senger at all ; whether it be reasonable to suppose Him to inter- vene in the coarse palpable way presumed by such a mission. Whj, asks Celsus, should God come down from heaven? Was it to investigate that which, by virtue of his omniscience. He must already have known ; or to correct that which his Almighty power might have corrected long ago ? And if God, the ideal of all that is greatest and most perfect, descended from heaven to assume a human form. He either submitted to a change and diminution of his former perfections, or practised an unw^orthy deception. Moreover, every revelation must have a special purpose, and this speciality leads inevitably to con- tracted and unworthy ideas of the Supreme Being. The Jews and Christians, with their special pretensions to divine revelation, were like two frogs in a ditch, tiying to convince themselves that heaven and earth were made expressly on their account. They thought themselves singled out as favourites of Heaven, 158 ORIGIN OF THE CHURCH. and that God either came Himself, or would send his son to help them ; and yet by their lame attempts to explain allegori- cally the undignified trivialities of the Old Testament, they showed that they were ashamed of the very revelation they boasted. In the general plan of the Almighty, whose care ex- tends equally to the whole creation, there is no room for special revelations ; but if, according to the prevailing prepossession common to Jew and heathen, there were intermediate beings (angels or daemons), through whom a revelation might possibly be made, let the Jew or Christian prove their revelation to be intrinsically superior and more rational than the Greek; and that (excluding what was manifestly fabulous) it contained anything which had not been anticipated by other less arro- gant, though at least equally valuable, systems.^ It was indeed incontestable that these pretended revelations had bor- rowed much from other systems, in many cases, however, misapplying what was not clearly comprehended. Moreover, they were inconsistent with each other, for how could the same God command the Jews to amass wealth, to subdue the earth, and to kill their enemies, while in the other giving the precisely opposite injunction, to eschew riches and honours, to take no care for food or raiment, and to offer the cheek to the smiter ? Celsus here asks, was it Moses who spoke falsely, or was it Christ ? Did God, when he sent the latter, forget his former orders ? had he in the interval changed his mind ? or was he, as some Christians asserted, a being entirely different from the Mosaic God ? Celsus takes but a superficial view both of the Christian notions and the heathen opinions which he contrasts with them; disparaging the former as absurd,^and ridiculing the faith which, addressed almost exclusively to the low and igno- rant, resembled a pedlar prowling about a house, who despairs of imposing on the master, but gladly converses with the women and servants.^ Yet in the midst of his ridicule, he cannot avoid admitting the fact of the wide prevalence of Christianity, and is at a loss to account for so strange a phenomenon; he can only conclude its silent progress to be the result of a fraudulent conspiracy, treating the absolute supermundane God of Christian and Jew as an unjustifiable revolt against that general feeling ^ Plato, says Celsus, never pretended to any exclusive divine revelation; he did not say "such a person is God's son; he has disclosed divine truth to me, which you are bound to accept and to believe." ^ Origen, Cels. iii. 55. VICTORY OF CHRISTIANITY. 159 of heathenism, which in all its phases had ever claimed the presence of its Deity as immanent in nature. The God of heathenism was not a being who sat concealed behind the arras of the sky, ever and anon giving capricious tokens of his exist- ence from his hiding-place by interfering with the machinery of nature ; he was the living support of that machinery within man and all around him, the radiance of the sun and the heal- ing influence of fountain and breeze, directly controlling the changes of the seasons, and conferring the fruits of the earth. Celsus, therefore, denounces the jealous monotheism of the Christians, arguing that if they refused to worship those " dae- mons" or divine powers, whose existence, as beneficent agencies in nature, was in fact acknowledged under a difierent name by themselves, they ought to cease to live, since live they could not without at each moment enjoying the means and conveniences of life provided by these agencies. 10. Victory of Christianity. The prejudice which at first treated Christianity as criminal was gradually silenced. The charge became limited to that of clever deception, and the religion which Celsus afi*ected to con- temn was already the profession of an influential body, chal- lenging every resource of oratory and philosophy to refute it. Lucian^s ridicule in his romance about the Cynic Peregrinus was less earnest than the arguments of Celsus, and therefore less formidable; indeed, his general Epicurean indifierence to the various forms of religion disqualified him from forming a philosophic judgment as to their comparative claims and real hold on human nature. The life of Apollonius of Tyana, by Philostratus, indicates a more advanced stage in the relative po- sition of the Christians. This work, without expressly naming Christianity, describes the career of a heathen reformer, who during the first century went about, like Jesus, healing the sick and raising the dead, teaching pure religion and morality, and exemplifying in his own person all the virtues he recommended. The work, conceived in a spirit of rivalry rather than hostility, may be regarded as impliedly conceding the truth, and even divine origin, of Christianity, contending only that it had no monopoly of truth, and that Jesus did not stand alone as moral renovator of mankind. Christianity was indeed only one phase 160 ORIGIN OF THE CHURCH. of a general psycliological phenomenon. The decay of ancient nature- worship, combined with the discovery of a remoter Deity transcending nature, compelled the religious sentiment to seek compensation by some new mode of reuniting itself with this higher object; and both in heathenism and Christianity the means were found in the idea of revelation, intermediate beings, and mysterious rapture. To Christianity nature is but a corpse occasionally galvanised by miraculous intervention ; and man is a fallen being, whose reason, as well as the laws of nature, are lost sight of in the notion of revelation. Through a similar process philosophy had become specifically religious, and the want left unsatisfied by its former inadequate results was supplied by a direct appeal to the supernatural. The issue was an eclec- ticism formed out of old traditions and systems, taking Plato- nism and Pythagoreanism as a basis, and blending the religious mysticism of the East with the mysteries and legends of Greece. In this medley, called new Platonism, Christianity, now 200 years old, had a fair claim to be an ingredient ; but then it was necessary to adjust the precise terms on which the claim should be admitted. The new Platonist Porphyry was regarded as the most formidable of all the foes of Christianity ; and certainly he made many objections to the Old as w^ell as New Testament which were difficult to answer, and the destruction of his book was the consequence of Christian resentment. Yet he was by no means a wholesale antagonist like Celsus ; and it was the very circumstance that his remarks took the form of criticism instead of contradiction, that made them so obnoxious and so dangerous. He exposed the inconsistencies of the gospel narra- tive and doctrine, as also the futility of the wild allegorising expedient resorted to by Origen, by which rationality was set at nought, and anything might be made out of anything. But he did not allow the error or deceit out of which these corruptions arose to have originated wit'h Jesus ; it was his Apostles and later followers who had misrepresented him, and who, for in- stance, attributed to him a divine character to which he had never himself pretended. Discrimination was needful, in order to separate what was admitted to be original and true in Chris- tianity from the anomalies which heathenism felt obliged to repudiate. Jesus w^as not, as the Christians gave out, a God, though he was certainly a divine man; but then heathenism could show examples of men who had been as much favoured by Heaven as he. The same motive which induced Pbilostratus VICTORY OF CHRISTIANITY. 161 to record the life of ApoUonius, caused lamblichus and Por- phyry to write that of Pythagoras ; one, says lamblichus, who was not only the veiy soul of wisdom, but an incarnation of the Deity, '^ sent to bring down the light of happiness and philo- sophy for the salvation of the human race." But the supe- riority of these distinguished personages did not make them gods, or in any way interfere with the prerogatives of the received heathen deities ; on the contrary, every nation had an appropriate object of adoration in its presiding genius or daemon, and the multitudinous forms of Polytheism were a divine ap- pointment, of which the exclusive worship of the Christians seemed an unnatural violation. It should be observed that with Septimius Severus^ began a line of rulers, whose tastes were more Oriental than Roman, and who had no longer the same motive as their predecessors for persecuting Christianity for the sake of the State. They patronised the religious syncretism of the day, and in the " Lararium " or private chapel of Alexander Severus, Abraham is said to have stood associated with Orpheus, and Apollonius with Christ. Favoured by this impartiality, Chris- tianity had free scope to display its ability to supply the moral void left by the displacement of the ancient creed. It had become " catholicised " or humanised ; and the relaxation of its ancient unsocial, nay, rebellious asceticism, made its intimate alliance with the State comparatively easy.^ Tertullian and other apo- logists openly pleaded what was virtually the cause of Protes- tantism and general religious liberty against heathen conserva- tism, and men were left to decide for themselves whether with Porphyry they were bound to adhere to the established forms of honouring the gods, or might obey the dictates of conscience, and openly reject what they could not seriously believe. On the accession of Decius, however, heathenism again took an attitude of reactionary alarm ; the old Roman policy was re- sumed, and persecution became, for the first time, general and systematic. The leaders of the churches were sought out and made to expiate, by their deaths, the public misfortunes of the empire. Even Diocletian at last yielded to the remonstrances of the an ti- Christian party, who, caring less for liberty of con- science than for the safety of the State, had probably found the impunity of the new faith incompatible with the prejudices of ^ Septimius himself, however, showed little mercy to the exclusive creeds of Jew and Christian. =* See Rom. xiii. 1, and 1 Pet. ii. 17. 162 ORIGIN OF THE CHURCH. the people and soldiery.* Yet men could not help respecting a religion whicli had already lasted 300 years. The Christians were very numerous ; they filled high offices at court and in the camp, were entrusted with the government of provinces, and in one instance had attained the purple. The temples were compa- ratively deserted, the Eoman sacra profaned, and vulgar fanati- cism perpetually outraged by the proximity of the cross. Rome found it necessary to submit to circumstances, and formally to acknowledge a revolution whicli was already accomplished.* The interests of State policy appeared suddenly to coincide with those of the religion to which hitherto they had been so entirely opposed ; and the very parties who had been foremost to perse- cute now concurred in favour of toleration, disguising, however, the change of plan in the newly-issued edict, by falsifying facts, and declaring the former severity to have been directed, not against Christianity, but in its favour ; not to subvert the faith now tacitly admitted to have been from the first a "religio licita," or ancient institution of the empire, but only to check unauthorised deviations and schisms. But the adhesion of Rome was given, not to Christianity for its own sake, still less to the right of free choice in religion, but to the de facto establishment of a new spiritual rule, and the well-approved ascendancy of the incorporate church. It was the exchange of one State religion for another, the substitution of a living faith in place of a dead formalism ; the religion which had been discarded when it was weak, because portending disruption, was welcomed when strong as a guarantee of union and stability. Constantine, by be- coming Christian, placed himself at the head of a powerful or- ganisation. In his combination of ruler and religionist, he may be regarded as the immediate precursor of the Popes. He fra- ternised with the bishops, affected to consider himself their colleague, and to be the divinely-appointed guardian of the general peace. He became a Christian emperor because the empire had become Christian ; and the secret of his motive is revealed in his constant appeals to the good sense of clergy and people in favour of unanimity, deprecating those theological strifes and controversies which he declared to be absurdity, * Euseb. Hist. Eccl. viii. I, observes that the persecution first broke out in the army, ^ Alexander Severus, and even Hadrian, had proposed to receive Christ among the number of the gods; but they were deterred by fear of the extent of the change which would infallibly have ensued. Gieseler, i. 1, p. 259, n. 6. VICTORY OF CHRISTIANITY. 163 impiety, and madness. It is less easy to determine the causes of the memorable revolution of which his conversion was the result. History, like the dial of a clock, presents results, but conceals the machinery producing them. We cannot pry into the secret annals of the human heart, or trace, unless indi- rectly and imperfectly, the despondency, incredulity, and dis- gust which made room for Christianity, and prepared a keen relish for its reforms and consolations. But it does not follow that because the revolution w^as obscure, it was therefore miracu- lous, or at least more so than many familiar things which occur in a world governed certainly by Providence, but not by a self-con- tradictory system of Providential intervention or interference. Christianity grew because it could best make good the blank left by the discredit of the old religions. A pietistic and moral reac- tion took place in men^s minds in an age of depravity, and it is not strange that an idea, which had long been the solace of the persecuted Jews, should have been taken up by the other op- pressed nations under Roman sway. Doubtless the spiritual self-respect of individuals, the reconcilement of the conscience by means of atonement, the hopes connected with the unseen world, had all been once provided for by Paganism, as they must be by every religion which has had a real historical exist- ence. But their efficacy is ever dependent on belief; the heart remains unsatisfied when the understanding hesitates, and its religious consolations vanish when the god who was supposed to dispense them proves to be unreal. Baffled in one direction, the heart seeks satisfaction in another ; and this, naturally fol- lowing the general bent of the time, was at the Christian sera that of a subjective idealism. The Christian believer uncon- sciously sympathised with contemporary Pagan philosophy, when he construed religion as a practical revolution of the heart, and declared, " est Deus in nobis,^^ that the kingdom of God was within him. An ideal assurance of a heavenly future, called forth by the contrasted experience of an unsatisfying present, combined with an earnest moral reaction in an age of degeneracy, became the new life and light of the world. The realisation of its external ascendancy was a mere matter of time and oppor- tunity. Its power was chiefly exerted among that large class of whom Celsus speaks so contemptuously, ^ the weavers, shoemakers, and curriers, those above the prejudices of gross * Origen, Cels. iii. 52, 55. 164 ORIGIN OF THE CHURCH. ignorance, but uninfluenced by the political or speculative pre- dilections of the noble and philosophical, men whom history disdains, but the secret working of whose minds was sure to turn the scale of opinion, and give character to the age. Per- secution only nourished the flame originally kindled by the mind's reaction against the hardships of the world, and was regarded as abridging to a favoured few the passage to a divine kingdom, soon to be within the reach of all. " All the refine- ments of your cruelty," exclaims TertuUian,^ "only give zest to our calling and multiply our numbers; our blood is the fruitful seed of a more abundant harvest." A new generation had silently displaced the race of the heathen. " Although of yesterday only," says Tertullian,^ "we already fill all your quarters, your cities, strongholds, even your camps ; we are in the palace, the senate, the forum; we leave you only your temples ; we can match the numbers of all your armies ; why, there are more Christians in a single province ! " He declares that "the empire, without its Christian subjects, would be a solitude;" its very existence depended on its being Christian. The immediate instrument which brought the church into union with the empire was the episcopate. The previous concentra- tion of ecclesiastical authority facilitated the transition which the genius of Constantine recognised as a State necessity.^ 1 Apol. ch. . * lb. ch. xxxvii. ' See Baur's " Christenthum." PART V. ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF DOGMA. PARTY. ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF DOGMA. ' 1. The Ehionitish and Gnostic Christologies, Christianity was a religious revival founded on feeling. It appealed directly to the soul of the recipient. Its advent was the souPs retreat from all its usual points of contact with external life^ from vain forms of worship^ from immoral gra- tifications of the senses^ from the hopelessness of national and individual enterprise^ and from the over-sanguine researches of philosophy. The souFs asylum was itself; within itself it found that which had been the goal of heathen philosophy as well as of Jewish expectation religion, and the object of religion, God. Thus the idealism, which originally was only subjective, had a natural tendency to become an objective one. The mental impression naturally directs attention to the object pro- ducing it j and Christianity was in the same way impelled to seek an objective basis, soon to become entirely absorbed in the contemplation of it. Men could not rest satisfied with a mere sentiment ; they required a definite hope, and an external guarantee to assure them of its truth. In filling up its out- lines they could not stop short of that union with God w^hich is the great aim of all religion ; and while thus striving to make good human deficiency out of divine fulness, they naturally found the required assurance in the claims and character of him by whom the new aspirations had been suggested. To bring the divine object of these aspirations nearer to the con- sciousness, to help the mind by means of ideal links and resting-places to comprehend its capacity for divine reunion, and thus to develop the full significancy of its faith, continued for many ages to be the great unpremeditated aim of Christian speculation and teaching. 168 ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF DOGMA. The character and attributes of Jesus were thus made to supply that substantial connection between God and man which had been wanting in Judaism ; and his divinity, symbolical of the mental elevation of his followers, became the leading dogma of his religion. At first vaguely felt or surmised, it was after- words directly questioned and adjudicated; the different suc-^ cessive phases of the religion producing proportionately-altered conceptions respecting the attributes of the Founder. When Christianity was Judaical, Christ was the son of David or Jewish Messiah ; a " man-descended man/^ ^ but a man especially en- dowed with the divine Spirit.^ For although a Jewish Messiah was necessarily human, there was a tendency, even in Judaism, to elevate his character. The prophets had exhausted language in panegyric on the coming Saviour ; and when long secular disap- pointment concentrated the thoughts upon a future world, he became, instead of a merely temporal deliverer, a supernatural Being or Angel " coming in the clouds.^^ ^ All religion natu- rally invests the Deity with the character of parent in reference to the human race. The Jews, as God^s chosen people, claimed a peculiar right to address Him as their Father ; and this rela- tionship they applied especially to the successive magistrates or " mediators^' of their theocracy, to prophets, judges, and_, above all, to kings.* Thus the phrase, " Son of God,^^ became a theocratic title, which afterwards, in consequence of that well- known oracle held up^ to later generations as the great Mes- sianic charter or normal expression of theocratic hope,^ was definitively appropriated to the ideal king, or " anointed one," who was to be the earthly vicegerent of Jehovah. When, therefore, Jesus admitted himself to be the ^^Son of God,"^ he admitted that he was the Messiah ; and the designation might be variously turned so as to reflect varying theories of Messiah- ship. For instance, it was very differently understood by those who, like the so-called Nazarenes, expanded it into the coarse and inconsistent legend of the supernatural conception, and those who, idealising Christianity with St. Paul, kept aloof from genealogies, personifying its saving power alone in an ex- alted conception of its Author. The earlier gospel narratives and the Acts, though often containing materials of compara- tively recent date, in general exhibit that early phase of theory * Justin. Tryph. xlviii. p. 156, Otto. ^ According to Isaiah, xi. 2. 3 Daniel vil 13, 14. * Comp. Psalm ii. 7. = Ps. Ixxxix. 12. * 2 Sam. vii. 12, seq. 7 Luke xxii. 70. THE EBIONITISH AND GNOSTIC CHRISTOLOGTES. 169 in which the death of Jesus had merely made it necessary to separate the prophetic from the kingly office of the Messiah, transferring the latter to a future period, with the assistance of the imagery of Daniel. They uniformly^ assume Christ^s his- torical manhood, and ascribe the superhuman part of his nature to the agency of the Holy Ghost, exerted either at baptism or birth. As man he might be liable to death ; but as the Mes- siah, in association with whom the Jewish resurrection doctrine had originated,'^ he was the Lord or principle of life, and, his human career terminated, immediately assumed the insignia of his true dignity.^ From this point starts the Christology of St. Paul, which, still vague and undecided, may be considered as standing midway between the early Ebionitish tenet of a gene- rally human Redeemer, and the later theory making him sub- stantially divine. Christian autonomy and universality, as ad- vocated by St. Paul, opened the way to the fuller recognition of Christ^s divinity; and as the religion became spiritualised, the idea of its author was spiritualised also. True Christianity, considered as the inner solace of the mind, the ideal wealth of the future, implied a master entirely independent of external appearance and mortal contingencies. Christ had certainly lived as a man ; he was the second Adam, whose body was sub- ject to death, and who in his human person expiated the ancient curse. But he was not, like the first Adam, an essentially ma- terial or "psychic^^ being, but the "pneumatic" man, the " quickening spirit" of life ; a humanity so raised and refined that w^e already lose sight of the historical Jesus in the ideal principle of salvation, and are scarcely sure that any humanity is really left. The first Adam was of the earth, earthy; the second heavenly;* not an ordinary man with a dash of divinity superadded, or in consequence of accruing circumstancvs ele- vated, but humanity in its original unadulterated form, bearing indeed the " semblance" of a sinful mortal body,* but really the sinless being fitted to be the vehicle and dispenser of " grace" to the rest of mankind.^ St. Paul declared that he * The language of the Evangelical " Memorials " of Justin makes it clear that Christ's spiritual endown;ent was originally supposed to have been conferred for the first time at his baptism. The citation (Tryph. ch. Ixxxviii.; comp. Epiphan. Haer. XXX. 13) runs : " Jesus having come to Jordan, the Holy Spirit flew down upon him in the form of a dove, and a voice came from heaven saying. Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee." ''^ Acts ii. 24, 36; iii. 15. ^ Matt, xxviii. 18; Luke xxii. G9. < 1 Cor. XV. 15, 21. Rom. viii. 3. ^ Rom. v. 17; 2 Cor. v. 21. I 170 ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF DOGMA. knew no more Christ after the flesh/ that his sole concern was the risen Christ ; ^ that this risen Christ was the divine Spirit^ sent forth to irradiate the heart of man/ and to se- cure his celestial affiliation. St. Paul did not assert that Christ was God; he distinctly made him subordinate/ yet it was this spiritualising theory which was the first step to an apotheosis involving his antehistoric antemundane existence and divine consubstantiality. The increasing tendency to idealise the Redeemer, to elevate his person in proportion to the aggrandisement of his religion, extended his agency to the past as well as the future; as the religion came to be regarded as aboriginal and universal he began to assume a mysterious place in the early histoiy of the Israelites;^ and since universal nature as well as human events seemed to stand in necessary relation to his appearance, it was said of him, as it had been said of the divine " Wisdom^' in the Apocrypha, that all things existed " by^^ him, or " on his ac- count."^ It was at this point that the speculative imagina- tions of the Gnostics intei'wove the Christological idea with cosmical theory. In Gnostic speculation the human character of Christ was either omitted, or else made entirely subordinate to the part executed by him in the great ideal drama of the re- covery and self-reconciliation of the Spirit. This treatment was objectionable in two ways : first, that by confounding historical Christianity with the general evolution of the world, it merged the moral influence of Christ^s personality in a physical prin- ciple ; and secondly, that it jeopardised his personal dignity by placing him in careless juxtaposition with many other ideal per- sonages or " iEons."*' The Valentinians assigned to Christ a "psychic" or "pneumatic" body only; the Marcionites, fol- lowing out the hint of St. Paul,** treated him as a mere phan- tasm, thus making the external events of his life, which were 1 2 Cor. V. 16. 2 Rom. viii. 34; although, indeed, to the Jew-Christians of Rome he had con- descended parenthetically to include the Davidical Messianity " according to the flesh," Rom. i. 3. 2 Cor. iii. 17. * Gal. iv. 6. ^ J Cor. iii. 23; xi. 3; xv. 24; comp. 2 Cor. iv. 4, 6. Rom. ix. 5, is wrongly pointed in our version. See Tischendorf ad loc. * 1 Cor. x, 4. The Jewish '* Schekinah " and " Memra " were supposed hy the Rabbis to have similarly accompanied the journeys of the Israelites, and may per- haps have contributed to the idea of Christ's pre-existence. ' 1 Cor. viii. 6. Rom. viii. 3. "Hebrews/' " colossians/' and "ephesians." 171 so all-important to human interest and feeling, supposititious or " docetic/' Even the Clementine Homilies, though strongly asserting the " monarchy^' or unity of God in opposition to the attempted insinuation of a double Deity/ transforms the his- torical Christ into the general spirit of inspiration or prophecy passing through the ages and dispensations of the world, sym- bolising his universal agency in mental phenomena, so as almost to betray the secret that inspiration means nothing more than the internal prompting of the soul.^ 2. "Hebrews" " Colossians/' and "Ephesians/^ The Judaical and the Gnostic, in other words, the sensual- istic and speculative theological extremes, were the Scylla and Charybdis of early Christological speculation. In the one, the human character of Christ was too prominently kept in view, in the other, it was nearly obliterated ; in short, one was apt to be derogatory and anthropomorphic, the other docetic. The speculative Ebionitism represented in the Clementine Homilies takes the latter side ; its Christology is little more than an am- plification of the prevailing idea which, ever since the death of Christ had tended to identify him with the " Spirit '' with which he was supposed to be endowed, and to make him the embodied representative of the spiritual life especially desired at the time. Orthodoxy, or rather the more measured views of those who at that early day were unconsciously creating ortho- doxy, strove to recall men from vagrant fancies, to vindicate indeed Christ^s paramount superiority, yet at the same time to retain him, as human Kedeemer,^ in the closest connexion with human sentiments and sympathies. The First Epistle of John denounces as " antichristian^' the docetic denial that Jesus came in the flesh;* that to the Hebrews, as well as Ephesians and Colossians, while in opposition to derogatory Judaical 1 " Our Lord," says Peter, " neither asserted the existence of many gods, nor did he pretend to Godhead himself ; he rather called him blessed who saluted him as the Son of God." 2 "Truth," says Peter (Hom. xvii. 18), " wells up innate and pure in the souls of all pious persons. In this way carae the revelation to myself from the Father; for as soon as the Lord put the question to me, as recorded in Matthew, He came over my soul, and I replied, I know not how. Thou art the Son of the living God." 3 Hebr. ii. 17. " Ch. iv. 2, 3. i2 172 ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF DOGMA. views, insisting on many of the lofty Christological claims which had been advanced by the Gnostics, vindicate against Gnosti- cism Christ's corporeal personality as well as his divine supe- riority and anteriority to the angels and all created being.* The writer of the Epistle of Barnabas adopts the views of St. Paul, whose words indeed he quotes;^ he assumes the pre- existence of the " Son of God/' ^ but, like St. Paul and other early writers (for instance Hermas), identifies this pre-existent Being with the Holy Spirit. The Christ of the Homilies is not the son of David, but the " Son of God'' in this sense ;'* and indeed most of the early forms of speculative Judaical Christo- logy are only applications of the Alexandrian doctrine of the perennial migration of " Sophia," or " the Spirit," through the seven great prophetical ^'pillars" and ages of the world, ac- cording to which Christ, superhuman and pre-existent, had from time to time from Adam downwards appeared at pleasure in bodily form to effect a beneficial change in human affairs.* But all Judaists were, of course, Monotheists ; they would only allow Christ to be an angel or archangel, or a re-issue of Moses; they insisted on his being, at all events, created ; and, as we learn from Epiphanius, often denied his attribute of Divine Sonship altogether. Angels were the only intermediate beings recognised by the Jews ; and their apocalyptic literature, from Daniel downwards, had been unable to exalt the Messiah above this class of agents. Cerinthus, like Stephen and St. Paul,' is said to have attributed Hebrew legislation to angel ministers, and to have ascribed a similar character to the Spirit or " iEon" temporarily united at baptism to the man Jesus.* It was, however, an essential requirement of all Christian feeling, whether Judaical or otherwise, to extol as much as possible the dignity and superiority of the Messiah. St. Paul's Christ be- comes really appreciable only from the moment when, as the " first fruits" of the resurrection,^ he resumes his true cha- 1 Hebr. i. ; Coloss. i. 15, seq.; ii. 9; Eph. i. 21. 2 Comp. Barn. xii. with Rom. xi. 36 ; Bamab. vii. and xxi. with 1 Cor. vi. 19, &c. 3 Ch. V. * Ch. xviii. 13. It may be observed that Mark's " Son of God " (i. 1) is spoken of as " Son of David " only in one place (x. 47), and that by a blind man. See on symbolical blindness, Zeller, Tubingen Jahrblicher, viii. 403; Baur's "Paulus," p. 71. * See Epiphan. Haeres. xxx. 5. " Haer. xxx. iii. and 1 6. ' Epiphan. Hajr. xxv,; Acts vii. 53; Gal. iii. 19. * TertuU. de Came Christi, ch. xiv. 9 1 Cor. xv. 23. " Hebrews/' "colossians/' and ^* ephesians/' 173 racter as the '^ Lord from heaven/' or the " life-dispensing Spirit/'^ Cariying on the expression of this sentiment, the Epistle to the Hebrews, written evidently by a person familiar with the Alexandrian theology, declares, in opposition to the reactionary timidity of Judaical Christianity, that Christ, as Son of God, " the brightness of his glory and express image of his person," is a Being essentially divine, pre-existent, creating and upholding all things,^ and therefore superior to all other created beings, spiritual as well as terrestrial. He who upholds all things "by his Word,'' '"^ and who effected the atonement ** through the Spirit,"* was indeed temporarily made lower than the angels for the suffering of death, but was immediately after- wards crowned by God with transcendent power and glory. The *^olossians," like " Hebrews,'^ addresses persons who, though by no means as yet alien from the church, erred, like Justin and many others, by mixing angelolatry with Christianity ; and, pursuing the effort to give a more decided expression to Christ's dignity, applies to him the predicates, though not the name, of the Alexandrian personification the Word or " Logos.^' He is the visible form of the invisible God, embodiment of the divine Pleroma, circumference and supporter of the universe.' Though, as " first-born of creation," on a level with the world and immanent in it, he rises by his universality above it ; he is the pleroma or fulness of revealed Divinity, in whom the un- seen God displays the amplitude and exuberance of individual life. The visible realisation of this ideal immanency of the universe in Christ is the church. As Christ is the "bodily" form of God, so the church is the body or external form of Christ. Christ is the cosmical and ecclesiastical centre, the real source of Gnosis; and the object of both "E^hesians" and *' Colossians" is to show, that as from Christ all things, including even angels, originally proceeded, so by his atonement all things, both in heaven and earth, were reconciled and reunited to him.^ In these writings occur the first distinct intimations of the adoption by Christianity of the Alexandrian doctrine of the "Logos."' "Logos," "reason," or "the Word," had been * 1 Cor. XV. 45; Rom. i. 4. 2 " By whom," it is said, " he made the aeons," i. e. the present and future worlds. 3 Ch. i. 3. * Ch. ix. 19. * Coloss. i. 16, 17; comp. Gfrorer's Philo. i. p. 188, ff. Eph. i. 10 ; Coloss. i. 20. Hebr. iv. 12. 174 ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF DOGMA. found, by the Jewish students of Plato, a convenient terai to express the agency of Divine Wisdom in creation, and its influ- ence over the human soul. It united in one term the rational plan of the universe with the enunciation of that plan, or uttered creative fiat of its Maker ; and with the '' Word^^ of prophecy, so often mentioned and almost personified in the Old Testament. It has been often questioned whether Philo, in his descriptions of the Logos, means a personification or not. He makes it the sum of the divine emanations or external agencies, either denominated by the Platonic tei-m " ideas,^^ or Judaically personified as "angels,^^ calling it Archangel, Intercessor, Pa- raclete, the Great High Priest, the Image of God, Son of God, and even second God ; the latter expression he, however, qua- lifies as improper or figurative only. The mind strives to represent by a series of symbols the really inexplicable con- nexion between the visible creation and its invisible Cause ; but the wisest of the philosophers, while indulging in religious re- verie about the transcendent mysteries of the universe, did not afi'ect a deceptive perspicuity as to what they could not com- prehend. In addition however to this necessary source of ob- scurity, Philo, by attempting to blend Hellenic metaphy- sics with Old Testament imagery, produces a chaotic medley which, if obscurity were his object, effectually answers the pur- pose. It must however be observed, that the monotheism which avails itself of a conception like "the Logos" to express the divine energy in the universe, leaves little of Monotheism really remaining ; since all the moral influence of the Deity, as well as his physical causality, is withdrawn from him, leaving behind only a dry metaphysical residuum which the heart can no more sympathise with than the intellect can comprehend. 3. The Apostolical Fathers and Apologists. The Asiatic development of the Logos doctrine preceded its acceptance in the West. The Christology of the early Roman writers, represented by the names of Peter, Hermas, and Cle- mens, follows that of the " Hebrews," and is that suited to the head of a rehgion claiming to be the absolute and universal one. The divine element in Christ is "the Spirit;" the spi- ritual essence being either an agency immanent in God, or separated and individualised as an angel; an idea which, as THE APOSTOLICAL FATHERS AND APOLOGISTS. 175 already observed, sufficed, in the early period, not merely for Judaical Christianity, but even for Pauline writers, as Luke, as well as St. Paul himself. In the First Epistle of Peter, which insists on the absoluteness and perfection of the religion, Christ is said to have been pre-ordained to the work of salvation before the world; and it was his Spirit which, in the mouths of the Prophets, announced, in language unintelligible at the time,* the events of his career.'^ Hermas speaks of the Son as " before eveiy creature,^' one by whose name the whole world is sus- tained;* his essence is the Holy Spirit;* although an angel or *^ servant," he is a great power and authority;^ in short, he is brought as near to the Deity as possible without being actually deified. The Adam-Christ of the Homilies is admitted to be God's Son; but the wi'iter carefully avoids confounding him with God. " Our Lord,'' he makes Peter say, '^ neither asserted the existence of many Gods apart from the Creator, nor his own Godhead; but only called him blessed who salutes him as Son of God." " Indeed," he adds, ^' it is wrong to give the same name to things which are not alike in all respects. Christ, doubtless, was of the substance of the Father, and came forth from Him; but this no more entitles him to be called God than human souls, which are also of divine origin; to deify Christ in this general sense can be no distinction whatever." Even writers using the term "Logos" were at first far from doing so in the true Trinitarian sense. Justin's indiscriminate application of the term Logos, with other predicates, to the '^Son of God,"*' is one proof among many that he could not have taken it from the fourth Gospel ; ^ and his general lan- guage makes it difficult to suppose that there existed at the time any settled doctrine on the subject. He seems, in one passage,* to make association with the Father accompany, or even precede the birth of the associate, who is said to be a dis- tinct being,^ yet not severed from the Father's essence in such ^ Comp. Barnabas, ch. iv. and v. ^ i p^j^ i. H, 12, 20. ^ Simil. ix. 12 and 14; comp. Hebr. i. 3, and 1 Clemens, ch. xvi. and xxxvii. ; Hilgenfeld, Apost. Vater. p. 169. * Simil, V. 5 and 6 ; ix. 1 ; comp. 2 Clem. ix. ^ Ibid. ^ Especially Tryph. ch. Ixi. ' See Hilgenfeld, Evangelium Justin's, p. 293, seq. Justin's gospel citations are evidently pre-canonical, but have a general resemblance to the synoptical type. His ignorance of the fourth Gospel is an almost inevitable inference from certain passages, as Tryph. ch. xl,; comp, John i. 29; xix. 36; also Tryph. ch, c. p. 336, c. Otto, where the object of yorjais stands opposed to the " yeypafjLixevov.^'' ^ Apol. ii, 6. Tryph. cxxviii. 176 ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF DOGMA. a way as to alter it from what it was before. Yet aversion to the coarse physical analogies incidental to the emanation theory seems to have led Justin to ascribe the origin of the Logos to an act of will, and to make his unity with the Father not sub- stantial but moral. It is impossible to trace with minute pre- cision the history of this difficult metaphysical puzzle. Later writers seem to have been chiefly actuated by controversial motives in regard to Gnosticism or Ebionitism; some endeavour- ing to counteract Gnostic emanational doctrine^ and the tendency to vague unhistorical abstraction; others vindicating the claim of a divine head of the church, and making a reactionaiy protest against over-familiarity. The first class of writers, as Tatian, Theophilus, and TertuUian, risk the dignity of the Son in their anxiety to preserve his subordination and personality, while en- deavouring to fix the mode and moment of the commencement of his separate existence. Theophilus,^ for example, uses the coarse metaphor in the Psalms (" eructavit cor verbum^'), of God having his Logos within his bowels, and vomiting him forth before creation. Driven by similar views to accept the idea of a graduated Trinity of subordinated beings emanating one from the other, like the Gnostic .^ons he disapproves, Tertullian tries to defend his position by adducing physical analogies,^ and by stooping to the admission that the Devil might sometimes speak truth, and even heretics be occasionally in the right.* On the other hand, Athenagoras and L'enseus, eager to avoid ascribing a derogatory act or attribute to the Supreme Being, hazard the personality of the Son by ignoring the epoch of his origin, and insisting too closely on his divine unity; the same considerations influenced the Alexandrian Fathers, so as in Cle- mens almost to efface the mediatory character, and to make his Christ a complete contrast to the concrete corporeity of Tertul- lian^s. Between these two opinions, one giving greater pro- minence to Christ^s personal identity with God, the other to his personal individuality, opinion long fluctuated ; on one side contemplating a Son undistinguishable from his Father, on ^ This controversial tendency is especially marked in the words of Pseudo- Ignatius, ad Magnes. ch. viii. " The eternal Word, not produced out of Silence." 2 Ad Autol. ii. 10. ' Showing that the " projection " or " prolation " of the Son was no more a diminution of the Father, than the issuing of light from light, or rational discourse from the source of reason. * Adv. Praxeam. ch. viii. THE ASIATIC CHURCH. 177 the other, one so subordinate to Him as almost to cease to be divine. 4. TJie Asiatic Church, The Apologists, and some of the apostolical Fathers, show an increasing acquaintance with that Christian development of the Logos doctrine which, originating apparently in Asia, was aftei-wards generally adopted by the church. Our earliest ac- quaintance with the Asiatic church is derived from the Apoca- lypse and St. PauFs Epistles; from which it appears, that no sooner had the Gentile Apostle published his " GospeP^ to the Galatians, than emissaries from Jerusalem arrived to thwart him ; and he owns that they who gratefully accepted him at first ' easily succumbed to these new influences, that a Judaising form of Christianity triumphed, and that his labour was thrown away. His efforts at Ephesus were similarly frustrated ; * and soon after his departure the Apostle John took up his residence there as official ^'high priest"^ of the churches of Asia. It should be remembered that primitive Christianity consisted of two elements ; it was Judaism, but Christian Judaism ; and its character differed according to the preponderance of one or the other. The early Judaical Christianity of Rome, described in St. Paul's Epistle, was gradually modified by new ideas and circumstances, until, expanding with the requirements of a metropolitan establishment, it attained the comprehensiveness suited to a world-wide destiny. In this catholic and compliant spirit the religion of Rome, professing to be a recapitulation of what was true and good in the whole course of divine revelation from the beginning of the world,* was generally tolerant to widely- varying sects and systems; Valentinus was patiently listened to, and Marcion met with decided opposition only from those extreme J'udaists of the Homilies, who, far from being themselves molested or excluded as heretical, were for the time among the most strenuous friends of the hierarchy. The course of Asiatic development seems to have been different. Here the specifically Christian sentiment seems to have early assumed a more uncompromising and hostile attitude; though Judaistic Gal. iv. 14, 15. M Cor. ^v. 32 ; xvi. 9; Rev. ii. 2. 3 Euseb. Hist. Eccl. iii. 23 and 31. * Hebr. i. 1; Titus i. 2; 1 Peter i. 10, 11; iii. 19. I 3 178 ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF DOGMA. in foiin and language, it declared war against Judaism as well as Paulinism; and under the banner of the " Lion of Judah^^^ set up exclusive claims to doctrinal superiority and prophecy. In Asia the ecclesiastical sway of Rome had but a limited influ- ence ; Peter was here obliged to submit his pretensions to those of John; and even Irenseus, with all his deference for Rome, appeals to Asiatic authority in regard to Christology and Chili- asm. The visionary book ascribed by tradition to the great Asiatic Apostle agrees with what we know from other sources both of himself personally* and of Asiatic Christianity in ge- neral, as subsequently instanced in the austerities and w41d prophesyings of the Montanists; and they who^ with Caius and the later Roman church, repudiated the latter, disavowed also the authority of the composition. Caius is said to have ascribed the Apocalypse to the less creditable name of Cerin- thus, a symbol of early Ebionitish Gnosticism, indicative of speculative views afterwards proscribed by the church, but in many respects akin to those of the book in question. Their general import amounts to an assertion of the superiority of Christian over ordinary or empirical Judaism, conveyed in the Gnostic formula that the supreme God was for the first time revealed by Jesus, who at his baptism became united with Christ or the Holy Spirit. This sentiment, accompanying a Christian appropriation of Jewish ideology, is generally cha- racteristic of the Apocalypse. Its form, its work-righteousness, its Chiliasm, and other eschatological imagery, are all unmis- takeably Jewish. For instance, there w^as a Rabbinical tradi- tion, that three things might allowably share the divine name " Jehovah^^ ^just men, the Messiah,, and the city of Jerusalem, the appropriation in each case being warranted by texts from Scripture ; ^ and the author of the Apocalypse evidently knows, and in his peculiar way avails himself of the privilege.* The elect, so distinguished by him, belong to the twelve tribes ; and the multitude of Gentile converts make but a subordinate ap- ^ Rev. V. 5. ^ E. g. he was called " irapfleyos;" comp. Rev. xiv. 4, and the esteem in which'" iropeerio " was held by the Montanists. According to Tertullian (c. psych, ch. v.), man, by abstaining from food, may become the equal of God. Comp. ch. ix. The Apostle was also believed to have had great energy of character (Mark iii. 17). His attributive priesthood may be alluded to in J9hn xi. 51, and xviii. 15. ^ Isaiah xliii. 7; Jerem. xxiii. 6 ; Ezek. xlviii. 35. * Comp. Rev. iii. 12; xiv. 1; xix. 12; xxi. 11,22; xxii. 4. The new name (iii. 12) is probably mysteriously and paraphrastically expressed in reference to the Messiah in the passages i. 4 and 17; il 8 ; and xxii. 13. THE ASIATIC CHURCH. 179 pendage to the proper inliabitants of the " heavenly Jerusalem/' " the first fruits of God and the Lamb/' Even the Christology, seemingly bordering on Alexandrianism in regard to the pre- existence of Messiah^ and his identification with the "Word" and with Jehovah/ may be sufficiently accounted for from Jew- ish mystical sources.^ But the writer pleads Judaically only in a Christian sense, and as the fanatical partisan of an essentially new and exclusive system. The old Jerusalem is disgraced and disavowed;* yet it is still the "beloved city/' and a new Israel rises, under the auspices of the Christian Messiah, on the an- cient foundations/ the spirit of prophecy is revived under the name of the " testimony of Jesus/' and its guardians are as ^' kings and princes of the earth/' ^ immediately dependent upon God, and recognised even by angels as their equal.'^ The Johannean Christianity founded on "love," or on a devoted attachment to the cause and person of Jesus, seems from the first to have combined with Judaical feeling and forms a more objective character than the Pauline, and to have been deeply imbued with the speculative mysticism which throughout dis- tinguished the Oriental mind. It was through this tendency that the activity of the Eastern church was chiefly devoted to the development of dogma, as that of the Western to hier- archical polity. Christian Rome continued the tendencies of ancient Rome, " regere imperio populos," to establish an or- ganisation for governing mankind ; the East laid the founda- tions of speculative theology, which, at the close of the second century, was taken up and carried on by the Christian philo- sophers or legitimate Gnostics of Alexandria. The writers of each school, at first very similar in character (as Hermas and the Apocalypse), diverge as they advance^ the apostolical series ending on one side with Pseudo-Ignatius, on the other, with the Gospel of John. The name of John seems to have had a significancy in Asia corresponding to that of Peter at Rome. It might be claimed for Asiatic orthodoxy in general, and serves to classify the series of its records, advancing from a strongly Judaical commencement to a creed more tolerant and elevated. Most of the literary records of the earlier period, as the books ^ Ch. iii. 14. * See Zeller's Theol. Jahrbucher, vol. i. 710, and vii. 250. 2 Comp. Strauss, Glaubenslehre, i. 412, seq. ; Gfrorer's Jahrhundert des Heils, i. 307, seq.; ii. 30. * Ch. xi. 8. Ch. XX. 6, 9. ^ ch. i. 6 ; v. 10. 7 Ch. xix. 10; xxii. 9. 180 ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF DOGMA. of Papias, Melito, &c., have perished; but enough remams in the Apocalypse, the Sibylline oracles, and other relics, to give a sufficiently faithful idea of its type of doctrine. The Chiliasm of Papias and others, the anti-Jewish yet Judaically-tinted Gnosis ascribed to Cerinthus, the prophesyings and asceticism which the Montanists carried to an excess scarcely warranted by the Apocalypse,^ were the general characteristics of an epoch which, to the sobriety of later times, seemed uncouth and heretical. The close of this visionaiy period is marked by the Roman disclaimer of Montanism; but it was long before a decided rupture took place between the church and its less tractable members. Even Tertullian, though a Montanist, was not, during his lifetime, considered a heretic ; and his writings were long used and esteemed by the church. A firm champion of apostolical precedent, he claimed for his independent fanaticism the undoubted sanction of antiquity. According to him, there existed no real quarrel between the " Pneumatici^^ and " Psych- ici ;'' they had " not severed the bonds of fraternity; they had one faith, one spiritual church." The quarrel, when it came, was ecclesiastical, not doctrinal ; for even the adversaries of the Montanists were unable to impugn the antiquity of their opi- nions ; or if they did, were forced, like Caius the Roman pres- byter, Dionysius of Alexandria, and others, to deny also the apostolical origin of the Apocalypse, and to accuse them of wholesale literary forgery.^ It seems to have been the peculiar theories of the Montanists that finally determined the Christian adoption of the Logos doctrine. The earlier apostolical writ- ings, making the divine element in Christ the Holy Ghost, are evidently unacquainted with it; but the Montanists, who claimed the Holy Ghost as the inspirer of the present, required another name for the Son, and this was already provided in the Christian application of the term Logos. ^ ^ Comp. ch. ii. 21; xxi. 8; xxii. 15. ' Euseb, Hist. Eccl. iii. 28 ; vi. 20. The fragments preserved by Eusebius of the controversy between Caius and the Phrygian leader, Proclus, curiously illustrate its style and the kind of evidence, altogether unconnected with the merits, appealed to in conducting it. Proclus argues : " After this there were four aged prophetesses, daughters of Philip in Hierapolis, where their tombs may still be seen, as well as that of their father." (Euseb. Hist. Eccl. iii. 31.) Caius rejoins (lb. ii. 23) : ** But I can show the cenotaphs of the Apostles ; for if you go to the Vatican or the Ostian way, you will find the trophies of those who founded this (the Roman) church." The quarrel of the churches was, in short, an abrupt appeal to antiquity and authority, and although the real presumption in these respects was in favour of the Orientals, victory naturally fell to the more practical side. ^ Rev. xix. 13. THE FOURTH GOSPEL. 181 5. The Fourth Gospel, The later Paulinic writings lean towards the speculative mys- ticism which inspired the Gnostics ; they merge the religion in its Author, and dwell less upon the inward regenerating effects of faith in its original Pauline sense than upon its outward cause or object/ This object was the divine element in Christ^s person ; and the refining or defining process could only stop at an actual deification of it. In the specification of this element the Epistles in question contain little which had not been more or less distinctly anticipated by St. Paul, who already uses ex- pressions in regard to Christ^ akin to those of Alexandrianism j and the difference distinguishing the later writings from the earlier seems chiefly to consist in the more exclusive direction of the mind towards ecclesiastical rule and metaphysical trans- cendentalism ; indicating a further advance from the asceticism and subjective independence of primitive Christianity to the objective in theology and the absolute in government. Christ's person is held up in these writings as the all-sufficient solution of the paradoxical antithesis between the Christian life and the Christian expectation. As with Christ, so among the mass of mankind, humiliation and suffering are shown to be the neces- sary antecedents of exaltation and glory. The "Philippians^^^ enforces disinterestedness and lowliness by the example of him who in his pre-existent state possessed the dignity and '^ form'-* of God,* but who voluntarily divested himself of this glorious state in order to assume the "form'' of a servant, the '^ a\r]ixa avOpwTTov." On this account it is said that God had highly exalted him, giving him a name above every name ; and it is added, God will one day likewise change our vile body, in order that it may become like his glorified body.* The same moral is taught in the "Hebrews;" only here the view taken of the scheme of redemption is more hierarchical than Gnostic; and the eventual exaltation of the divine High Priest is ascribed to his having observed the priestly virtues of obedience and fide- lity, to his having " loved righteousness and hated iniquity." * The author of " James,* St. Paul, and the writer of the fourth Gospel take very different views of the nature of religion. Comp. James i. 27; Romans viii. 10, 14, 15; John xvii. 3. ^ E. g. where he speaks of the " image of God," 2 Cor. iv. 4, 6 ; and of his pre-existent creative energy, 1 Cor. viii. 6. 3 Ch. ii. 5, &c. * Comp. 2 Cor. iv. 4, 6. Ch. iii. 21. 182 ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF DOGMA. Christ, however, though " first-born of creation/^ is not openly- exempted from its range ;^ he is hke unto his brethren, only highly distinguished above his "fellows/^^ Thus his humanity is stilly as with St. Paul/ an unreconciled contradiction. Suf- fering and sonship stand together somewhat strangely and unharmoniously, and the atonement is a temporary eclipse or ab- negation of his proper nature.* In the Johannean, or ultimate development of Oriental Paulinism, the last barriers of Judaical feeling are overthrown, the glory mingles with the humanity, and Christ is plainly asserted to be abofiginally divine as the Logos. In this composition we reach a time when the old con- troversy of Jew and Gentile had been decided/ when the " grace and truth" of Jesus was felt to stand immeasurably far above the law of Moses/ and when Christianity, though certainly grafted on Jewish historical antecedents, was established as the immemorial aim of seers and lawgivers,^ the sole true religion of mankind.* It is probably not without significance, that w^hile the other disciples seek only the theocratic Messiah of the Jews, the only follower of the " Lamb of God"^ is the ima- ginaiy waiter of the Gospel, whose name may have been selected as an appropriate watchword of a type of Christianity difibring from that which he really professed, because experience was supposed to have best qualified him above all others to act the part of Evangelist ; to make the " testimony of Jesus" {fxaprvpia lr]2 Ch. X. 30. THE FOURTH GOSPEL. 183 his pre-eminence ; his coming in the flesh is not, as heretofore, a "lowering" or dereliction of his dignity, but an unbroken continuation otf it, and men " see" plainly revealed the glory of the " Only Begotten" full of grace and truth. " The Word existed in the beginning;" his existence was an activity ever directed to {irpog), yet immanent in the Father (wv hq tov koXttov tov iraTpog) ; and though not absolutely God (6 Qiog), he was, and is, a divine person {Oeog).^ The absolute Godhead far transcending all finite things and intelligences, our know- ledge of Him must be derived from the revelation of his Son ;* and the writer^ s object is, to show that this Son is at the same time distinct from the Father and identical with him;* that he is in heaven even while he seems to stand on earth.* The writer alters the character of the incident which, in the earliest gospel forms, dated the commencement of Christ^ s divinity from his baptism f and disclaims, on the part of the Baptist, the character of Elias, whose consecration was expected in Jewish theory to inaugurate the Messianic office. From what Theodoret*' says as to the omission of the genealogies by Ta- tian, it appears that the reason for so doing was the obvious one of ignoring the carnal origin of Christ ; and it has been observed that Mark^s Gospel,^ as well as John\s, exhibit in this respect the character of an advanced Christianity, and were indeed both appealed to ^ by the Docetists. The " Word," in his mysterious unity with God, is said to have been the light and life of the world and in man; but his light "shined in darkness," and darkness, as prophecy had foretold,^ refused to receive or comprehend it. Darkness is naturally inimical to light, and men shunned light because their deeds were evil.^*^ But it was the eternal purpose of the Logos to confront and ' The Gospel itself (ch. x. 34) explains that the word deos might be very gene- rally and vaguely applied. 2 Ch. i. 18. 3 ch^ 3jj^,^ 10, n. 4 Ch, iii. 13, ^ This was intimated in the '' Gospel of the Hebrews " by the application to Christ's baptism of the words, " Thou art my son, this day have I begotten thee " (Justin's Tryph. ch. Ixxxviii. ; comp. Hebr. i. 5 ; v. 5); to which was added the circumstance that "fire immediately appeared on the Jordan ;" i. e. the Holy Ghost appeared there for the first time ; a conclusion which Justin endeavours to exclude by saying that the appearance took place merely on account of the by-standers ; while the fourth Gospel, which evidently he was unacquainted with, makes it into a mere sign to distinguish the person of the incarnate Logos given specially to the Baptist. 6 Hser. Fab. i. 20. 7 ch. i. 1, and xv. 39 and 44. * See Trense. Haer. iii. 11,7. 5 Isaiah vi. 9, 10 j John xii. 37, 40; comp. Acts xxviii. 26. 1 Ch. iii. 30. 184 ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF DOGMA. overcome this adversary by a series of manifestations ever in- creasing in fulness and brilliancy ; for this purpose he " be- came flesh/' and the Gospel describes the progress of his self- manifestation triumphantly carried on in the works_, doctrine^ and death of the historical Jesus, whose divinity, if dimmed to outward observation by his mortal lineaments, shone forth only the more victoriously and unmistakably at the instant of his death. Yet, notwithstanding this apparent effort to carry out the deification, the writer does not absolutely quit Monotheism. Christ's unity with the Father does not exclude subordination to that "only true God"^ who is allowed to be '^ greater than all,"' and "greater than himself;"' who "sent" him in a ministerial capacity into the world,* and in reference therefore to whom his predicate of " Otog'' in its wider Biblical ac- ceptation,* may, after all, mean no more than that moral unity or community of will, which St. Paul, or even Jew- Christianity, might have admitted. The identity of the Chris- tian Redeemer with the Logos, so confidently assumed by the evangelist, must, of course, have been a notion already fa- miliar, meeting the Christian desideratum of an absolute expression for the high attributes of Christ, while it gave the necessary form and consistence to what had been a vague theological idea. It satisfied the Gnostic tendency to per- sonify metaphysical conceptions while cutting short their exube- rance, and striking the true catholic medium between Ebionitish reserve and Gnostic superfluity. Many critics, Baur especially, have shown at length the impossibility of considering the fourth Gospel historical, or as anything but the Christianised Logos-theory in narrative form ; a representation, by a writer well versed in Hellenistic ideas and language, of the advanced Asiatic theology of the second century,^ in which the vanish- ing of the old covenant contemplated in " Hebrews"^ is com- pleted, the exclusive sanctity of Jerusalem at an end,* and the 1 Ch. xvii. 3. Ch.x. 29. Ch. xiv. 28; xx. 17. * Ch. iii. 16; V. 30; xvii. 3. * Ch. x. 34. 6 The citation of the fourth Gospel by Basilides, over which, as supposed to be attested in the "" Philosophouraena," a shout of triumph has been raised by ortho- doxy, is hardly worth alluding to, the anonymous writer's language being far too vague to authorise any decided inference. Even if the citation could be with cer- tainty attributed to Basilides, the effect would be, not to overturn the Tubingen theories, but only to alter by a few years the approximative date of the fourth Gos- pel, as conjectured by Baur. 'Ch.viii. 13. 8Ch. iv. THE FOURTH GOSPEL. 185 Jews, instead of being, as in the Apocalyse, the legitimate heirs of salvation^ are definitively disclaimed as sons of dark- ness and the devil. ^ As the garb of flesh, in itself profitless,"^ served to clothe and express the divine essence of the Logos, so the ostensibly historical materials only supply an artificial framework to incorporate the evangelical idea. The writer's object is to justify by his narrative everything true and ele- vated in Christian sentiment ; to found an intellectual Catho- licism, not on the artificial basis of a comprehensive external rule, but on an enlargement of the Christian idea, so as to unite the voluntary suffrages of the votary of faith as well as the man of works, the Montanist as well as the Gnostic. In the conflict of new ideas and ancient traditions, when doc- trine was fluctuating and documents contradictory, when arbi- trary principles of interpretation were constantly resorted to to reconcile such incongruous records, and to explain what seemed irrational or unmeaning, it is not surprising that a gifted genius should have ventured to put his own construction on the materials before him; to seek steadily through the vain babbling of inferior minds for the true indications (arjiuLsia) of the Logos, and to look on the conflicting mass of extant writings and traditions as the "dead body,''^ from which the '^ word,'' or pure " spirit" of the Gospel, still remained to be ex- tracted."* Assuming the ancient data as a basis, he strives to trace through the obscurity of vulgar semblance an infinite reality; and, omitting or casting into the shade everything unessential, everything savouring of Jewish prejudice or human degradation, without any magical device or spectral trans- figurations, reproduces the genuine image of Christ's mani- fested glory. He puts forth his work anonymously, in full reliance on the force of the unanswerable internal evidence it addresses to the sympathies of congenial souls ; he speaks of himself, not as an apostle, but only as one of the general Christian body,^ any one of whom might be said to have spi- ritually '^ seen the glory" brought home, by means of faith, to their own convictions.^ However anxious to affirm the truth of what he relates, he does not profess to be himself an eye-witness, but only a reporter of the testimony of an eye- ^ Ch. viii. 44; ix. 39. 2 ch. vi. 63. ' '"To (TcwjuaTiKo." Clem. Al. in Euseb. Hist. Eccl. vi. 14. * "John, divinely inspired, produced a pneumatic gospel." Ibid. * Ch. i. 14-16. 6 Ch. xiv. 23; xvi. 14 ; xvii. 3, 30, 24; xx. 29. 186 ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF DOGMA. witness. At a later day, indeed, it seems to have been thought desirable^ to change the '' jjaprvpojv irepi tovtcov'^ into the " ypa\paQ ravra ;" to assert the direct apostolic authorship of this noble burst of Christian inspiration; to explain to the literary sceptic who might be startled with the many discre- pancies from ordinary gospel -tradition, that innumerable par- ticulars of the sayings and acts of Jesus remained unrecorded and unknown, and that therefore their apparent novelty implied no imputation upon their truth.^ Yet the passage, chapter xxi. 24, expressly distinguishes the disciple who " wrote these things," from the "we" believing his testimony; and the reference has rather the effect of weakening than confirm- ing our reliance on the over-anxious attestation; since '^ Tavra'* (" these things") must needs include the account immediately preceding ; and it is impossible to conceive that there was any original writing of John ending with the abrupt interrogatory of the 23rd verse. And if the original Gospel be supposed to have ended, as it appears to do, at the close of the 20th chap- ter, there is still no distinct afiirmation of an immediately apostolic authorship. The original writer declares, in chapter xix. 35, that the sole eye-witness (6 ewjoafcwc) of the facts there mentioned, and to which he attaches so much import- ance, " bare record," and that his " record was true ;" more- over, that the aforesaid eye-witness knows (or "knew," KaKctvoc otScv") his record to be true, " in order that ye might believe." It is certainly satisfactory to be told that our informant was perfectly convinced of the truth of his own statement ; but it is not said that the eye-witness wrote anything himself; on the contrary, he is appealed to by the writer as the unimpeach- able witness on whose evidence the written account depends ; and, though certainly a writer may, in many cases, allowably speak of himself in the third person, it is scarcely conceivable how, if intending to make himself the eye-witness, he is war- ranted by grammatical propriety in saying " he who saw bare record," instead of " I saw, arid testify what I saw ; " thus awkwardly appealing to his own past attestation, as if he were not himself present to renew and to confirm it. It seems in- conceivable that the same writer who, in the Apocalypse, re- peatedly refers to himself by name,^ should here, where so ^ Chapter xxi. being evidently ^superadded to the end of the original work. 2 Ch. xxi. 25. 2 Rev. i. 1, 4, 9: xxi. 2 ; xxii. 8. THE FOURTH GOSPEL. 187 anxious to convince,, affect an indirect style of address and unnecessary incognito, when his object would have been best answered by standing openly forward in his proper person. Certainly the affectation of disguise cannot be ascribed to a modesty which does not appear to have belonged to the iVpostle's character/ nor, indeed to that of any one who should have so constantly made himself individually prominent as " the beloved disciple ;^^ a designation which, however appropriate in the mouth of his master or a third person, was wholly unfit to be ostentatiously paraded by himself. Even if we could suppose that the Apostle John wrote a book so much in advance of the ideas and convictions of his youth, and so full of perplexing anachronisms and geographical mistakes,^ it would still be impossible to believe that a writer displaying so high an order of intellect and feeling, could have been guilty of the bad taste of eulogising and glorifying himself in a way not borne out by the other Gospels, all of which assign the primacy to Peter. And when the Asiatic Christians, headed by Poly carp and Polycrates,^ claimed John^s authority for the Oriental pass- over observance distinct from the commemoration of Christ^s death, it is obvious that they could not have been aware of a Gospel of John, which not only ignores the proposed observance, but emphatically sanctions the contrary Western practice,* and rather omits altogether the institution of the Lord^s Supper,* than allow any obscurity or doubt to interfere with the Pauline significancy of the Crucifixion. The work may possibly have originated with the party of the elder Apollinaris,^ w^ho were anxious to combat the lingering Judaical tendencies of their national church, while eagerly maintaining in opposition to Rome its ecclesiastical independence. Hence the studied at- tempt (especially conspicuous in the superadded 21st chapter) to exalt the character of John, as apostolical representative of the Asiatic Church, at the expense of that of Peter, assigning to the latter, in significant allusion to the practical tendencies of Rome, the inferior office of ecclesiastical administration, while reserving to John, as first and favourite disciple, the spiritual sympathy and intuitional superiority so highly ex- i Matt. XX. 21 ; Mark iii. 17. ^ References in Schwegler, Nachap. Zeit. ii, 350. ' Euseb. Hist. Eccl. v. 24. * Making Jesus himself to be the passover, according to St. Paul's dictum, 1 Cor. V. 7; comp. John xix. 36. * Ch. xiii. 1, 2. ^ Schwegler, Nachap. Zeit. ii. p. 354. 188 ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF DOGMA. tolled throughout the composition.^ Christ^s declaration to his disciples " that there were some standing near who should not taste death until they had seen the Son of Man coming in his kingdom/^ ^ seems to have been very naturally under- stood afterwards to refer to St. John, who long outlived the other Apostles. Hence the legendary exaggeration about his predicted immortality ; an inaccuracy which the writer of the concluding chapter* corrects, while claiming the prediction in its authentic shape as a distinction really conferred on the reputed writer of the Gospel. In the course of the disputes between the Roman and Asiatic churches, there naturally arose invidious comparisons as to the respective dignity of the two leaders ; and it would, of course, be urged that the martyr- dom of St. Peter gave him vastly higher claims than those of the rival community, which, in many respects, seemed to be- tray the Christian cause,* and could certainly show no such apostolical example. The writer replies that whatever the individual pretensions of that Apostle who continuously fol- lowed Jesus, and on all occasions had been the first to recog- nise him,* they were, at all events, no appropriate object of envious animadversion on the part of the rival establishment ; that the proper business of Peter was to " follow ;" to feed the sheep of Christ ; to convey safely to his Master the multitude of fishes which his net providentially held without being broken; reserving the consideration of what might really be the comparative claims of him who merely waited for the Lord^s spiritual coming, for persons better qualified than the querulous Peter to comprehend their meaning. Rome seems to have acknowledged the justice of this reasoning, the more so because the Asiatic advocate admitted its right of pastoral supremacy ; nay, it invented a kind of martyrdom for the rival Apostle, whose severe, yet not absolutely fatal torture, harmonised with the predicted " tariying," ^ without interfer- ing with the more signal heroism of Peter. The Catholic tendency of the Gospel was in general agreement with Roman feeling, and perhaps the repeated allusions which it makes to Philip, the Apostle of Phrygia,^ who is supposed to press for a vision ^ Comp. ch. XX. 29; xxi. 7, 15, 16. It has also been supposed that the epithet *'<^tAo7rpwT6uc<;j'," applied in John's Third Epistle (ver. 9) to one Diotrephes (pro- bably a symbolical name), refers to the ambitious pretensions ("episcopus episco- porum") already made by the Roman pontiffs. 2 Matt. xvi. 28. 3 Ch. xxi. 23. * Ch. xxi. 20. ^ Ch. i. 37; XX. 8; xxi. 7, 20. Ch. xxi. 22. 7 Ch. vi. 5; xii. 21,23; xiv. 8, 9. PSEUDO-IGNATIUS. 189 or palpable display of the divinity, may be intended to correct the eccentricities which still disfigured Asiatic Christianity, and especially to reprove the gross niillennarian pretensions of the Montanists/ The Alogians, on the other hand, are said to have recognised in the Gospel a defence of Montanism, and to have in consequence denied its authenticity, ascribing it, as well as the Apocalypse, to Cerinthus; they found it easier to give it a bad name, coarsely con'csponding to its anti-Judaical character, than to make critical inquiries into its origin ; and were led by the facility of so stigmatising it, to acquiesce in the reputed antiquity which was relied on by its advocates as evidence of its genuineness. The intention to refute Cerinthus, often imputed to the fourth Gospel, as well as the legendary representation of the same doctrinal antithesis in the story of John's collision with Cerinthus in the bath, has been more truly referred to the obvious contrast presented by the develop- ment of Asiatic Christianity, and to the antipathy evinced in its later manifestations to the Judaising tendencies of the earlier. The historical John was an " apostle of the circum- cision j^' and we, consequently, find Paul at first occupying the very same antithetical position which John succeeded to.^ Indeed, so far as we can form a conjecture, the Apostle would have been far more likely to have recoiled from the views of the Gospel, than from the niillennarian and other speculations of Cerinthus. But when Asiatic Christianity in general took a higher tone, it naturally claimed ancient precedent in its favour ; it therefore carried over the name of the Apostle from a fanatical and contracted theory to a liberal one, making the fancied author of the Gospel overlook and often contradict the sentiments imputed to him in the Apocalypse. 6. Pseudo-Ignatius. The final rupture with Judaism indicated in the fourth Gos- pel as regards the Asiatic church, is marked in the Epistles of Ignatius (whose Latinisms betray the secret of their origin) for that of Eome. Beginning with an almost unmitigated Judaism, the Roman church had gradually divested itself of most of the properties inconsistent with Catholicity; but its hierarchy was * Ch. V. 25. ^ Epiphan. Hair, xxvii!. 4. 190 ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF DOGMA. essentially Jewish ; and its Christianity^ notwithstanding the changes it had undergone, continued in some circles inflexibly attached to ancient prejudices. The Judaical or extreme Pe- trinic party having endeavoured to establish a separate interest by extolling the episcopacy, and at the same time pleading for a high church Jud?eo-Christianism in the name of the ancient Bishop Clemens/ it seems that another writer, who, while equally desirous of Catholic concentration and union, was averse to Judaical reaction, stood forth on behalf of the cause of St. Paul, under the banner of the equally famous bishop of that city ^ where Christianity is said to have first asserted its inde- pendence. In addition to the Catholic principle now generally conceded,^ the Epistles maintain that of religious independence and autonomy ; declaring Christianity {xptarLavKTiaoQ) to be the exclusively true religion, and denouncing Judaism, with its Sabbatarianism and other reactionary practices, as " evil leaven,^' "useless jargon,^^ and " anti- Christian heterodoxy .^^ To live Judaically, it is said, to call ourselves by any other name than Christ^ s, is virtually to admit that we are not Christians ; that we have not attained the Christian grace. But in pleading the cause of St. Paul, the writer does not venture to infringe the rights of Peter ;* like St. Paul himself, he accepts the religion of the Old Testament, though only on the hypothesis of its substantial identity with the Christian, representing the pa- triarchs and prophets as having believed, hoped, and waited for the Christian Redeemer. The great object of Ignatius is to promote ecclesiastical unity ; to deprecate separatism in polity and doctrine. Heresy is the mischief he dreads, episcopacy the remedy ; to this end the bishop is to be watchful, and to unite the qualifications of dove and serpent f and the flock are advised to rally round the shepherd for security against the numerous wolves waiting to pounce on the unwary. Gnostic innovation was as much to be feared as Judaical reaction f and consequently * /. e. in the Homilies. 2 Antioch; see Acts xi. 26. Ignatius is said to have been the Pauline bishop of Antioch, Evodius being the Petrinic. 3 Smym. i. ^ Rom. iv. 5 To Polycarp. ch. i. and ii. " Every disease," says Ignatius, " is not to be cured by the same plaister;" the bishop is therefore to be careful as to using severe mea- sures, and rather to assuage the morbid accessions of heresy with emollients. ^ That is, in the middle of the second century; not at the time of the real Igna- tius, or at its commencement; for th*e era of the commencement of Gnosis coincides with that of the death of Ignatius. Hegesippus in Euseb. Hist, Eccl. iii. 32; iv. 22. Clem. Alex. Strom, vii. 17, p. 7fi4. Hilgenfeld, Ap. Vater. p. 240. PSEUDO-IGNATIUS. 191 Ignatius warns his readers against "strange doctrines'^ and " old fables/' confounding, like the pastoral letters, the two objects of his aversion together. The Gnostic error chiefly combated in the letters is the denial of Christ's humanity ; and Ignatius, without alluding, as might perhaps have been ex- pected, to the Gnostic separation ^ of the God of Christianity from the Demiurgus or God of Judaism, insists only on the reality of Christ's human appearance and sufi'erings denied by the Docetists. In regard to positive doctrine he is as vague as in hierarchical advocacy and negative polemics he is firm and decided; he advances only the moderate, safe, and ge- nerally agreed on; avoiding everything open to question, or likely to excite controversy. He exhibits in this respect a striking contrast to the author of the fourth Gospel, avoiding the speculative difficulties which the latter undertakes to meet and set at rest. Agreeably with the lofty claims of the church, he makes its Head to be the Eternal Word who, though subor- dinate to the Father, was with him before the ^ons (or worlds) ; entitling him a " God in human form," and " the Christian's God ;" ^ while repudiating those results of Gnosticism which seemed adverse to the continuity and universality of the faith, he is evidently under the influence of Gnostic ideas, '^ claiming knowledge of the unseen world, the Archons and angels, the visible and invisible, &c. But, to him. Gnosis is summed up in Jesus Christ."^ To the prolix details of Gnostic emanation he opposes the single idea of Jesus as the Logos ;^ the Gospel is thus made to appear to him, as to Justin,^ in a new light ; and as the Epistle to the Hebrews contrived to find Christianity in the Old Testament, Ignatius elicits from the evangelical narra- tive the higher import it presents to his own mind of the abiding * The two cardinal inferences of Gnosis are Docetism and dualism; the ignoring Christ's human character, implying at the same time a loftier idealised Christianity; and in general combination with this, a deep sense of the contrast between matter and spirit, between the old religion and the new, not unfrequently accompanied by a degradation of the Demiurgus, or God of the Old Testament. The former aspect of Gnosis, as exhibited in the Docetists, Ignatius naturally deprecates, as being incom- patible with the obtuse intellectual condition required for the purposes of hierarchical absolutism; the latter inference, implying the commencement of a critical comprehen- sion of the progress of religious opinion, he is unwilling to countenance, yet equally unwilling explicitly to contradict, lest he should be giving encouragement to the Judaists. 2 "'O T]fxwv Qeos.'''' Rom. iii.; Ephes. xviii.; Smyrn. x.; Magnes. vi., viii., and xiii. 3 Hilgenfeld, Apost. Vater. p. 252. * Ephes. 17. ^ Magnes. viii. * Tryph. xlviii. 192 ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OP DOGMA. union of Christ with the Father/ and of the mystic significance of his birth^ baptism^ and unction.'"' In other respects he has little doctrine^ to teach except to recommend his reader to " be- lieve with charity ;^^* to submit^ that is, the reason to the feel- ings ; and to practise the ecclesiastical duties of " faith ^^ and '' love /' admirable virtues doubtless in the highest acceptation of their meaning, but of questionable merit in the sense of un- reasoning adherence to what the church prescribes, and pre- determination to like whatever, under the pretence of leading men to God,^ she may consider favourable to her interests. He quotes an uncanonical gospel^ in general agreement with Mat- thew ; and it would be singular that a writer entertaining views nearly akin, in many respects, to those of the fourth Gospel, should have voluntarily confined himself to the synoptical ac- counts, which he is obliged to modify to suit his purpose,^ had the other been known to him. Only one passage appears to have a precise (though, indeed, contradictory) relation to the fourth Gospel ;* and yet there are many instances of a similarity of view, which probably gave rise to the legend of Ignatius having been a disciple of the evangelist. 7. Orthodox Gnosis in Alexandria. Christianity at its outset had been addressed not to the " wise and prudent,^^ the mighty or noble, but to " babes in intellect," the " poor" in spirit and in fortune, the '^ weak things of the world," by whom the world's pride was to be confounded by exhibiting the superiority of foolishness. It was an assurance founded on feeling, not on external evidence or argument; and was addressed rather to those who, dissatisfied with the * Magnes. vii. This idea preponderates so much with Ignatius as to cause him to be accused of Patripassianisin; the assertions in this sense are, however, quali- fied, as in the fourth Gospel, by others indicating his going forth from the Father, his subordination, conformity of will, &c. * Ephes. 17-19. ^ One passage (Phil. 8) alludes to St. Paul's doctrine of justification; but the latter is not adhered to, and Christianity is viewed as a system of ordinances " evTO\ai " or " 5mT07/iaTO." Trail, vii. * Philad. ix. * Ephes. 9 and 14. According to Jerome, the " Gospel of the Nazarenes," or " the Hebrews." ^ For instance, as to the import of the star, and meaning of baptism. Ephes. 18 and 19. " Ch. iii. 8; comp. Philad. vii. ^ As Magnes. vii.; Rom. iii. 7; Smym. iii. &c. ORTHODOX GNOSIS IN ALEXANDRIA. 193 world and with prevailing systems, yearned after salvation or consolation, than to acute thinkers and favourites of fortune comfortably unconscious of deficiency. In its early stage, there- fore, the pretensions of worldly wisdom seemed superfluous or hostile ;^ and before it could become a distinct and settled form of religion, it had to contend against internal sources of disrup- tion, in the shape of Gnosticism and Montanism, or indepen- dence of thought and sentiment ; the one by encouraging indi- vidual impulse and fanaticism being inimical to the necessary quietude of an establishment; the other tending to dissipate practical religion by spreading it over an indefinite speculative surface. Yet these tendencies were to some extent as insepara- ble from the church as they are from human nature. The same questions which had excited the curiosity of the Gnostics, were interesting to all intelligent Christians ; and it became necessary to provide some sort of reply to the general intellect as well as to the feelings ; to consider whether the opposition made to the extreme results of inquiry and to the Gnostic mode of conducting it, should be extended to inquiry in itself. More especially would those who lived in the same intellectual circles out of which the chief sects of Gnosticism originated, feel its stimulating influence ; and Alexandria, the cradle of Jewish and afterwards of Christian speculation, produced an orthodox theology or Gnosis, in which the Church endeavoured to meet the extravagancies of its erring sons by a judicious discussion of their difiiculties and appropriation of their re- sources. In this way it endeavoured to oppose to heretical speculation a legitimate and harmless equivalent, such as might be supposed to have been authorised by the Lord and approved by the Apostles. The resulting form of " Gnosis'^ has some- times been called a Christian ^' philosophy," being indeed the philosophic efi'ort of > a time when reflection first began to resume its empire after the first ebullition of Christian sentiment. But its energies were cramped by certain given preconceptions ; and the mental eflbrt which in true philosophy is directed to the discovery of being, was in the Fathers addressed exclusively to develope a systematic construction of the faith. The term " philosophy," therefore, applies to Patristic theology only in a limited sense. A philosophy tied to dogmatical authority is a manifest self-contradiction ; and Christian dogma was already 1 Cor. ii. 7; Col. ii. 8. 194 ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF DOGMA. sufficiently fixed to render the use of the term on this account unwarrantable, although not so precisely and completely as wholly to supersede speculation, still less so damaged by the ordeal of criticism as to force it, as was the case long after- wards, into a new independent channel. The earliest reflective efforts of the Christians were directed to ascertain the distinctive character of their religion, and its rank relatively to other systems. They insisted, in the Epistle to the Hebrews, for instance, and that of Barnabas, on its being the sole true "covenant^' or means of salvation, and their ingenuity was exercised in fortifying the inference by citations from the Old Testament. Confidence of superiority encouraged the tendency already evident in St. Paul,* to regard this abso- lute and perfect revelation as including the exercise of all the mental faculties, and in particular a higher comprehension* of ^^the truth,'^ or of divine things. The pretension was, however, very imperfectedly maintained, and even the historian of Christian " philosophy" ^ is forced indirectly to confess his title-page to be a misnomer. The chief distinction of the so- called philosophy seems to have been an enlarged and more liberal comprehension of former systems ; the admission against dogged ignorance, of the general claims of heathen wisdom as well as Jewish, as part of a universal revelation ; and on the other hand, the assertion, against the one-sidedness of heretical Gnosis, of the plain doctrines of Christianity, its one personal creating God, its fall, its sacrificial atonement, and its ideas as to resurrection and retribution. The Apologists, while allowing philosophy to have been a Gentile revelation, were prepared to show that Christianity was the only true philosophy,'* that the same Logos had been the inspiration of Moses and of Socrates, and that if a judicious selection were to be made from the pagan sages of everything unimpeachable to be found among their works, the result would be found to tally with it exactly.* Justin claims all true philosophers for Christians ;^ but seems to have been little competent to appreciate the meaning of philo- sophy or the value of evidence. Disclaiming artificial reason- ing,^ he professes only " God's grace to understand the Scrip- ' 1 Cor. xii. 8; 2 Cor. viii. 7. ^ " riAfiwi' yvaxTit.'''' 1 Clem. ch. xH.; cornp. Phil, i, 9; iii. 10. 3 Ritter's Christ. Philos. i. pp. 300, 308, &c. * Melito in Euseb. Hist. Eccl. iv. 26; Justin, Apol. 1, ch. xx.; Tryph. viii. ^ Lactant. Inst. vii. 7; Min. Fel. Octav. p. 155. Apol. i. 46, p. 230, Otto; Tryph. viii. p. 32. ^ Tryph. Iviii. p. 190. ORTHODOX GNOSIS IN ALEXANDRIA. 195 tures ;" but the grace which he so highly values is, like that of Barnabas/ little more than a quibbling attempt to decipher Christianity out of the Septuagint. Conceiving that all men, including heathen philosophers and poets, had a share of divine truth, he pronounces the share of those who lived before the revelation of the incarnate " Word,^^ or truth in its entirety in Christ, to have been exceedingly small, and even that to have been in general stolen from the Hebrews.^ Clement of Alex- andria means probably the same thing. He eulogises heathen philosophy as a useful aid and necessary preparation for Chris- tianity in opposition to its hyper-orthodox (" opOo^o^aaraL" Strom, i. 9,) decriers ; but afterwards retracts the concession by declaring the devil, that prince of robbers, to have had the principal share in its composition and transmission.^ He makes faith and knowledge the necessary complements of each other, all Gnosis requiring a groundwork of faith, and faith being rudimentary and imperfect until carried forward into Gnosis. But his Gnosis is an equivocal medley of Christianity and learning, a claim to absolute and universal knowledge founded on the idea of bringing together the scattered elements of truth which are to be found in all times and nations. A disorderly eclecticism is thus formed out of the fragments of former systems, in which the articles of Christian " faitV^ are confounded with the self-evident principles or first '^ axioms^^ of philosophy. Faith is said to be a compendious or anticipatory Gnosis, and Gnosis a detailed exposition of the elements of faith; true Gnosis being identical with Christianity, or that lore which Christ and the Apostles superadded by way of explanation to the Old Testament. The identity of both reve- lations as proceeding from the same divine source, the " Word" or Logos, is made out, as by earlier Alexandrians, Philo and " Barnabas," by means of allegory, through which for the first time, the law is placed in its true light as unfolded in the Gospel. The result is a mysterious secret (" airoppnrov'), not to be carelessly or generally divulged.* Christ, after his resur- rection, communicated it to James the "Just," John, and Peter ;^ these delivered it to the rest of the Apostles ; from them it passed to the seventy, of whom was " Barnabas," the writer of the Epistle ; and from these it was by God's grace transmitted Chs. V. and vi. ^ Apol. 1, ch. xliv. p. 225. ^ Baur's Gnosis, 528-530. * Strom, i. 2, p. 328, Pott. * In Euseb. Hist. Eccl. ii. 1. * Although " Barnabas" himself makes true Gnosis the property of all Christians. k2 196 ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF DOGMA. without writing through a few deserving persons from father to 8on down to " ourselves/^ ^ But then it appears that the Gnostic " paradosis^' thus given out as apostoHc^ is little more than a compilation of the authoi-^s own ; and it was only by a strained effort that the requirements of scientific thought could be re- conciled with the simplicity of Christian belief, or that an affinity could be traced between Greek dialectics and the Gospel. Heretical Gnosis seems to have sunk into comparative insignifi- cance from the time that the Church, from a higher point of view, took the problems of religious philosophy into its own hands. All the contemporary systems of eclecticism had certain points of convergence and similarity; all attempted to blend religion with philosophy ; and, generally speaking, were all influenced by the Platonic conception of the representative relation between the actual and the ideal worlds, the '' kog/uloq voTjroc" and ''ataOrjTog.'' But this relation might be construed positively or negatively ; as implying resemblance, or the reverse of resemblance ; and the New-Platonists, who took it in the former sense, disavowed the melancholy severance and alienation of creature and Creator assumed by the Gnostics, which the latter endeavoured to get over by a philosophical application of the redemption theory. Plotinus urged that the excellence, order, and beauty of the world, proved it to be no base counterfeit, but the genuine stamp of its Creator; that it was absurd to despise and shun the evident impress and re- flection of divinity. Orthodox Christianity could not deny estrangement and fall; but it had reasons of its own for object- ing to heretical Gnosis, for instance, to the separation of God from the "Demiurg^^ or Creator, and to the peculiar character of the antagonism commonly assumed by the Gnostics between the material and spiritual. If these two be considered as two pre- ordained spheres or classes of being, implying in themselves the conditions of reconcilement or estrangement, faith ceases to be optional, and there is no more merit in the believer, or respon- sibility in the unbeliever. If salvation be a spontaneous gift, or natural privilege of the " Pneumatici^^ or spiritually minded, no room is left for the virtuous convictions or free determina- tions of the soul; the commandments become nugatory; baptism, instruction, &c., aimless ; and the Redeemer's coming unmean- ing. In short, the orthodox Fathers plead the cause of moral Comp. Strom, vi. 7, p. 771, Pott. IRENiEUS AND TERTULLIAN. 197 sentiment and practical religion against the inferences of meta- pliysical theory ; their chief peculiarity consisting in this, that they do not, like other Gnostic teachers, resolve the souPs development into a scheme of necessity, predetermining its character and excluding its responsibility, but appeal through- out to the free action and election of the individual. They thus stand in harmony with the prevailing Petrinic orthodoxy, and the general Christian feeling in which purity of life was the grand essential ; and while sharing the Gnostic tendency of the age so far as to propose intellectual contemplation as the end and perfection of human development, they always insist on making obedience to God^s will the indispensable preliminary to the knowledge of Him/ In opposition to the dualistic Gnosis, they maintain the world, as the work of the Almighty, to be good, the continuing revelation of his wisdom and school of the soul; alone, however, it would not suffice for the purpose ; God therefore co-operates from within to open the eyes of the understanding, and this He does through his Son or " Word, that perfect revelation by which He created the world, gave afterwards a written code for its guidance, and at last became flesh, in order to show by a living example how man may become God/^ The antagonism of heretical Gnosis determined orthodoxy to abide by those broad outlines of practical Chris- tianity which were the real limits of its position. Origen, whose treatise on " Principles^' furnished the first outline of a Christian theology, was supposed to have overstepped those limits ; Clement remained within them, secured from impeach- ment chiefly through his mystical obscurity and self-contra- dictions. 8. Irerusus and Tertullian. The position taken by the Western Fathers was less liberal than that of the Greek. They disclaimed human wisdom, ap- pealing exclusively to Christian instincts. Tertullian declared the soul to be naturally and originally Christian ; " not, perhaps, that, which brought up in schools and libraries, prates of the academy and the porch, but the soul in its unperverted unculti- ' Comp., for instance, the fourth Gospel, ch. vii. 17, with Justin, Clement, and the account of Origen in Ritter, Christ. Philos. i. pp. 435, 479, 481. 198 ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF DOGMA. vated simplicity/^ ^ To the unsophisticated Christian feeling the far-fetched extravagances of Gnosticism could not but seem, incongruous and false. Its horror of the material world, its numerous j^ons and mythical Demiurgus, above all its tendency to idealise and symbolise historical fact, were impious travesties of holy things. Appealing to religious common sense, Irenseus complained that the mysteries of finite and infinite were after all not explained by the multitude of iEons, nor were the ano- malies of creation accounted for by imagining a Demiurgus acting independently or in spite of the Supreme Being. He showed that the Gnostic systems were only heathenism in dis- guise, a revival of the Greek theosophies ; so that we are driven to the dilemma that either Christianity was a superfluous itera- tion of truths already revealed by the philosophers and poets, or that it was a still less commendable repetition of what had been before proved to be useless and false. The Gnostics, he said, ridiculously claimed for themselves that absolute wisdom which they denied to the Framer of the worlds ; and the very contrivances by which they endeavoured to exalt the dignity of God defeated their object, as implying change, subdivision, and human affection in the Being whose unimaginable essence they were designed to veil. Even the dualism of Marcion appeared to Tertullian to involve all the absurdities of polytheism ; for if the divine principle be divided, it signifies little how far the sub- division may be carried. Moreover, to suppose the Supreme Being to have been for many ages dormant or latent, and to withdraw creation from his attributes, was not only a denial of his power, but of what Marcion mainly insisted on, his good- ness ; though at the same time there was a difficulty in retain- ing creation as a divine act ; since, in order to avoid a dualism of two principles and also the supposition of change or emana- tion from a single one, it was necessary altogether to decline speculating on the subject, and to take refuge in the incompre- hensible dogma of creation out of nothing.^ Especially repul- sive to Christian feeling was Docetism ; for if Christ^s appearance in the flesh was a deception, all the supposed beneficial effects of his life and death must have been deceptive also. But the aversion of these Fathers was not confined to Gnos- ticism. Unlike Clement, who could find an excuse even for heresy,* their hatred of the unwelcome ofi*spring of philosophy * De Testimonio Animae, i. * Irenae. Haer. ii. 10, 4. Strom, vii. pp. 887, 888, Pott. IREN^US AND TERTULLIAN. 199 indisposed them to philosophy itself. They recoiled from what seemed to be so fatal to ecclesiastical unity, urging that piety was better than wisdom, and that it was far better to love God and attend to the common duties of life than to make vain efforts to understand what is unintelligible. Irenseus, indeed, contradict- ing himself,* as well as some other enemies of Gnosticism,^ said that since God is always teaching, man should be always learn- ing ;^ and allowed within certain limits the application of reason to revealed data. He held the mysteries of religion to be no more inconceivable than those of nature ; and hoped that some day they would be cleared up. But Tertullian asserted to the fullest extent the maxim that the wisdom of the world is enmity with God; and held faith, which to the Alexandrian theologians had been only a step towards the higher mysteries of intellec- tual intuition, to be all in all.* The philosophers, he said, were the '^ patriarchs of heresy,^' and their doctrines rather those of devils than men.* " What,^^ he asked, " has Jerusalem to do with Athens ? what connection is there between the academy and the church ? between heretics and Christians ? Our doc- trine is from the porch of Solomon, who taught us that we must seek the Lord in simplicity of heart. Let those answer who want to introduce a Stoic, a Platonic, or a logical Christianity. We want no researches beyond Jesus Christ, no inquiries beyond the Gospel. Once believing, we require no extra belief; for this is one of the primary articles of our faith, that there is nothing which we ought to believe beyond iiJ"^ "Let curiosity give place to faith, vainglory to salvation ; to know nothing against the rule of faith is to know everything.'^ And while Tertullian discovered in the natural instincts of Christianity an infallible guide through scholastic perplexities, he recognised in the very contradictions of dogma the evidence of its veracity, declaring in words often since repeated, " It is credible, because absurd, cer- tain, because impossible."^ The Latin Fathers were more successful in combating Gnos- ticism than in substituting an intelligible system in its place. They took their stand on Christian instinct, and avoided any precise expression of speculative opinion. It was easy to say that God being omnipresent cannot be said to be hidden ; that Ch. V. 20, 2. 2 2 Tim. iii. 7. * Ch. ii. 28, 3. * " Fides Integra secura est de salute." De Baptismo, xviii. * De Anim. iii. ; Marc. v. \9. * De Praescrip. Haer. vii. ^ De Carae Christi, v. 200 ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF DOGMA. He required no intermediate agency wherewith to create the world, which He hrought forth simply by his word ; that He used no patterns or pre-existent matter, since He must still have been maker of the matter or patterns, and is not like a human workman, to whom it is, of course, impossible to make something out of nothing; or that the inferior agents or beings to whom the Gnostics delegated the creative func- tion must after all have been servants of the Almighty Will, and that consequently the work done by them was his work, &c. Such language was in fact only an evasion of the difficulty which the Gnostics would have explained, and was what would naturally be used by an enemy of inquiry to reconcile the un- learned to remain contented with their ignorance. It amounted to a confession that the Divine doings are inscrutable ; and the strength of the position taken by Irenseus lies in the fidelity of Christian feeling to the postulate of the necessarily limited nature of human knowledge. It may seem strange, perhaps, that so zealous a Churchman as Tertullian should have even- tually been a heretic ; but Montanism differed little from the church except in regard to government, and Tertullian's church was not the visible but the spiritual.^ 9. The Holy Spirit, Most singular is the logic appealed to in defence of church dogmas. Like the Rabbinical arguments in the Talmud, it is often no more than a forced application of Scripture passages utterly unconnected with the subject. Jesus is obhged to go into Egypt in order to fulfil a Scripture sentence, referring not to the Messiah, but to the Israelites;* and the incarnation is attempted to be proved from a verse intimating only that Isaiah had children.^ So, when once the doctrine of the Trinity had been received. Scripture was found to teem with corroborations of it. It was recognised in the plural form of the word Elohim, in the brooding Spirit and divine " Word^^ of creation, in the vision- ary appearances of angels, and the figurative personifications of Proverbs and Ecclesiasticus. Every one found his own de- terminate prepossession reflected in the oracles of divine truth. When God, for instance, addresses a newly-crowned monarch,* " Spiritus per spiritalem hominem, non ecclesia nuraerus episcoporum." * Hos. xi. 1 3 Heb. ii. 13. * Ps. ii. 7. THE HOLY SPIRIT. 201 '' Thou art my son, this day have I begotten thee ;" or a court poet says of his congratulatory ode, " eructavit cor meum ver- bum bonum/' this " Son" and this " Word" were discovered to be the Logos. Apart from these uncritical fancies, the first age of Christianity certainly knew nothing about the Tri- nity. Jesus is described in the synoptical Gospels as a divinely inspired man ; but the source of his inspiration, or the ^' Holy Spirit," is no distinct hypostasis, but only the ^^ power of the Highest," or an imparted agency of God.* It has, indeed, been said that the baptismal formula in Matthew^ supposes the Tri- nity ; but we do not find that this formula, which may not, after all, involve the Trinitarian doctrine, was actually used by the Apostles ; ^ and assuredly the use of symbolical imagery, such as doves or fiery tongues, cannot prove the personality of the Holy Ghost. The more emphatic appreciation of the divine element in Christ by St. Paul, leading to a recognition of his pre-existence, is a step in advance towards personification, but still no Trinity; for with him "the Lord" is essentially one with " the Spirit," and neither is clearly distinguishable from God. The representations given by the Alexandrian writers of the outward manifestations of the Deity, however various and expressive, stop within the limits of poetical figure, and are far from being distinctly defined either in relation to foreign sys- tems or between each other. The divine Spirit of Hebrew an- tiquity and the Alexandrian " Wisdom" (Sophia), or " Logos," appeared, to the early Christian writers, not as distinct imper- sonations, but, as they really were, collateral equivalent concep- tions ; so that, although there might be a duality or plurality of approximate deifications, there was certainly no Trinity. Nothing more clearly shows how rudimentary and unassimi- lated as yet were all the elements of Trinitarian theory than the confused application of them by Justin, who, in a remark- able passage, enumerating as objects of worship " the Father, the Son, the attendant host of angels, and (last in order) the prophetic Spirit,"* elsewhere interchanges the terms at random, ascribing the same functions indifferently to the one or the other, at one time making the Spirit the source of inspiration, at another the Son or the Logos. All the writers of the period exemplify, by their similarly irregular treatment, the uncertain state of the conflict between the old Hebrew emanation and the Luke i. 35; Acts v. 3, 4. " ch. xxviii. 19. 2 Acts ii. 38; xix. 5, * Apol. i. 6. K 3 202 ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF DOGMA. new Hellenistic one. In the fourth Gospel we seem at length to approach a definitive separation between the two, dating from the death of Jesus, who during his life had the Spirit in its en- tirety/ and who, on returning to the Father became for the first time enabled to confer what he had himself possessed on his disciples,^ while by so doing he virtually returned to them himself.^ TertuUian'* anxiously explains, that even that por- tion of the Spirit which had enabled the Baptist to '' prepare the way of the Lord" was withdrawn to the Lord himself, " as to its universal repositor}^," as soon as this object was ac- complished; and hence the inability of the Baptist to recog- nise Jesus when he first met with him. The idea seems to have been, that so long as Jesus, in whom centred all the ful- ness of the Deity, was present on earth, he was the perfect and only representative of the spirit and feeling essentially consti- tuting his religion ; but that when, after death, he returned to the glory of his antemundane condition as the Supreme Objec- tivity or Logos, the Spirit, i. e. the subjective Christian con- sciousness, became for the first time distributable among the individual members of the congregation. When in this way a fixed status had been assigned to the Son as Logos, room was left for subjecting the outstanding and still fluctuating element of divinity to a similar process. This seems to have been an immediate result of the progress of speculation respecting the prophetical inspiration of the Montanists. Montanism was not so much a specific form of doctrine as an extended period of the history of the church, during which many doctrinal modi- fications were gradually introduced. Strictly Judaical at first, it relaxed its Ebionitish rigour by allowing the deification of the Logos and Pneuma, exhibiting traces more or less distinct of an unbroken doctrinal continuity from the Apocalypse to the fourth Gospel ; and it became desirable to show some external warrant for these changes, as being advances towards a real, though post-apostolical perfection. The Pneuma was origi- nally the Spirit of prophecy, which, according to Joel, was to be abundantly poured forth in "the latter days." This pre- cious gift, claimed by all Christians as source of their divine knowledge and assurance of their privileges, was especially in- sisted on by the Montanists, who assumed superiority to other Christians as " Pneumatici " or Spiritualists, supposing them- 1 Ch. i. 33; iii. 34. Ch. vii. 39. 3 Ch. xiv. 18, 26; xv. 26; xvi. 7, 13. * Marc. iv^8. THE HOLY SPIRIT. 203 selves to represent in that capacity a third and last epoch in the dispensations of the world. They seem at first to have been as strictly Unitarian as other Judaists. Their earliest oracles pro- ceed from ^^ God the Father " and the vision to a prophetess of a female Christ' is probably a consequence of the identi- fication of the Son with the Sophia of the Old Testament/ whom the strictness of Jewish Monotheism reunited to the Al- mighty as his wife.* The assignment of distinct functions and personality to the Spirit seems to have arisen from the endea- vour of the Montanists to find an objective basis in the nature of the Deity to justify their own advanced theological position.* The Apocalypse had already met the distinctive claims of the *' new prophecy" with an effort to hypostatise its source ; and when_, after long controversy/ the Logos had been definitively deified/ the Pneuma, or Paraclete, was similarly treated, the one being the constitutive principle of the divinity of Christ, the other subordinate in rank, though higher in immediate efiiciency, the abiding solace and patron of the congregation. Thus, without any admitted infringement of Monotheism, was formed that graduated classification, or, as it was termed, '^ oeco- nomy" of the divine nature, which, obscurely indicated for the first time in the fourth Gospel, appears in Irenseus and Tertul- lian as the Trinity.'^ Such Tertullian himself, when calling it *' a revelation from the Paraclete," intimates to have been its origin ; and the language of Irenseus, ascribing it to the Asiatic presbyters and prophets, implies the same thing. 1 " Ev tSeot' '^vvaiKos ea-xru^o-Tio-fifUos rjXde irpoe fie Xpiffros, Kai evePaX^v ev efioi TTiv (To^mi'." Epiphan. Hser. xlix. 1. ^ Prov. viii. 22; Grimm to Wisdom vii. 28; viii. 2, 3; ix. 16, 18; Justin, Tryph. 336c, and 418c, Ed. Otto. ^ Comp. Mangey's Philo. vol. i. p. 361; Clem. Horn. xvi. 12. * " Propterea Paracletum misit Dominus, ut quoniam humana mediocritas omnia semel capere non poterat, paulatira dirigeretur et ordinaretur et ad perfectum per- duceretur disciplina ab illo vicario Dei, Spiritu Sancto." TertulL De. Verg. Veland. i. ^ Inferred from Epiphan. Haer. li. 6. * " 0eos OA.TJ07JS irpoaicoi/tos." Melito in Routh's Reliquiae, i. 112 ; Euseb. Hist. Eccl. V. 26. ^ " Nos, ut inslruetiores per Paracletum^ unlcum quidem Deum credimus; sub hac tamen dispensatione, quam * oeconomiam ' dicimus, ut sermo ex ipso processerit, qui deinde miserit a patre Spiritum Sanctum paracletum." Tertull. adv. Prax. ii. 204 ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF DOGMA. 10. The Monarchy. The controversies commencing at the end of the second century, in reference to Monotheism, or, as it was called, " The Monarchy,^^ make it necessary to recall to mind the strictly Unitarian position of the primitive age, which the expansion of Christian sentiment had for some time been gradually forsaking, but which even the fourth Gospel does not wholly renounce. In the early times of Christianity no one thought of making a distinct person out of the divine element or influence constitut- ing the superiority of the Redeemer; the only difi'erence was, as to whether the man Jesus, or the ^^spirit^^ inspiring him^ was the better entitled to be called " Christ." The anxious defence of Monotheism in the Homilies certainly implies a contemporaneous inclination in the Roman community towards dualism ; to deify Christ as a distinct person, while maintaining, as in the letters of Ignatius, the paradoxical tenet of his being at the same time one with the Father and difi*erent from Him. This tendency must have prevailed to a considerable extent among the Catholic majority of the age of Victor; and its general acceptance was referred to the pontificate of his suc- cessor. Its progress can be little traced ; but, however obscure the details of its history, it is certain that even at the close of the second century of the Roman church, it was still immature as a doctrine, and, though gradually working its way to popu- larity, was often wholly denied. The denial was made in two senses, proceeding either from those who considered Christ to be substantially human, or those who made him undistinguish- ably divine, as an aspect or undivided effluence of the one God. In the unsettled condition of the general faith, such a denial could not properly be called heresy, since there can be no heresy until orthodoxy has been clearly defined and propounded as such. On the contrary, the Ebionitish reactionists of Rome could appeal with confidence to all the ancient antecedents of their church, whose Unitarianism had probably been the more obstinately maintained on account of its quarrel with Trinita- rian Montanism ; and it was only their eventual reluctance to advance with the episcopacy and the general tendencies of the age, to acquiesce, for instance, in the anti-Judaical pleadings of Pseudo-Ignatius, that caused them to forfeit the consideration which had otherwise been due to their high church predilections THE MONARCHY. 205 and skilful advocacy. They seem henceforth to have sunk into obscurity ; and the sect of the Artemonites may be regarded as an attempt to revive some of their already antiquated views in regard to the person of Christ ; views which now appeared to be a culpable, or even "insane" deviation from the true faith; but which in reality were only a consistent adherence to ancient precedent. The most simple and abrupt form of expressing these views was the assertion of Theodotus (" first author/^ as he was afterwards called, "of the God-denying apostacy"), that Christ was a mere man, that the Divine Spirit indeed descended on him at baptism, but that this by no means made him a God. Theodotus appealed in support of his assertion to the synoptical Gospels and Old Testament ; urging that the Messiah foretold by prophecy was unquestionably human, and that Jesus himself did not profess to be God, but only " Son of God." The Apostles too spoke of Jesus not as God, but as a "man ap- proved by signs and wonders;" even Paul called him " the one mediator, the man Jesus Christ."^ Soon afterwards the fol- lowers of Artemon, though in other respects by no means Judaically inclined, made a more emphatic and elaborate protest on the side of Monotheism. They declared the dogma of Christ's divinity to be of notoriously recent introduction, and claimed ancient indisputable precedent in their own favour. They alleged that all the primitive teachers and the Apostles them- selves were strictly monotheistic ; that this true faith remained unchanged until the time of Victor, and that it was for the first time falsified under his successor Zephyrinus. The anony- mous writer in Eusebius* who records these remonstrances, endeavours to refute them by referring to Scripture and to many early writers who had asserted Christ's divinity. But to appeal to Scripture when Scripture was still unformed and fluctuating is evidently inconclusive ; and the writer is either not aw^are, or dishonestly suppresses the fact, that the early writers referred to were many of them of the Asiatic church, or else held the dogma of Christ's divinity in the ancient limited sense of a divine qualification or inspiration, not of a divine essence. The question really in dispute was not whether Christ possessed a divine element, but whether he was a substantially distinct divinity ; not about his being " Qeov \oyog," but " Qsog Xoyog.^' From none of the earlier writers, neither Hermas, Acts ii. 22; 1 Tim. ii. 5. * Ch. v. 28. 206 ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF DOGMA. Clement, Justin, nor the " Kerugma Petrou/^ can the indepen- dent divinity of Christ be proved in the latter sense; for although the attribution of a divine quality or angelic virtue to Christ sufficed to warrant the supplemental attribute of his pre-existence, he was by no means thereby elevated to the rank of a subsidiaiy God, nor is there any evidence of his being distinctly recognised as such even by individual writers until the close of the second century. Justin does not venture to accuse Unitarians of heresy; and Tertullian, in a remarkable passage, fully corroborates their remonstrances as borne out even in his own day by the indisputable aversion of the majority of Christians to all distribution, or, as it was called, " ceconomy^^ of the divine perfections. " The simple," he says, "^ or rather the fools and dolts, who are always the majority among the faithful, considering the Divine unity to be an article of the true faith, and not clearly apprehending how this unity is to be understood, are frightened at the idea of the oeconomy. They find in the numbers and subdivisions of Trinitarian doctrine a negation of unity, although the unity producing out of itself a trinity, is in reality not thereby destroyed, but only ppportioned or ^ administered.^ Hence they pretend that two or even three Gods are preached by us, while they themselves worship the only true God ; as if it were impossible that an irrational adhe- rence to unity should be heretical, or that a liberal trinitarian distribution should be consistent with truth. We hold, say they, to the Monarchy."* This candid admission is fully con- firmed by the Clementine Recognitions, which, written in all respects with a view to church interests, quietly concede the Monarchian argument,* as if it were unsafe or impossible to refute it. It is not that the book is heretical, but that the church doctrine was at the time unformed and incomplete ; and it is only by the unwarrantable anachronism throwing back the Athanasian Christology to a time when it had no existence, that the Trinitarianism of Tertullian can, in defiance of his own words, be shown to be more orthodox than the scruples of the " dolts and fools" represented by Artemon and Praxeas. Theodotus is classed by Epiphanius with the reactionaiy Asiatic sect of the '^Alogians," so called not merely because they denied the Logos and the developments of Asiatic Chris- tianity in general^ but because a punning application of the * Ad. Praxeam, ch. iii. THE MONARCHY. 207 word might indicate their presumed infatuation in doing so. Nothing, of course, would appear more senseless and wicked than disagreement with prevailing theological opinion ; and the case seemed still more flagrant when the Artemonites presumed to reason about the faith, to criticise the Scriptures, to study Euclid and Galen, Aristotle and Theophrastus.^ Theodotus was excommunicated by Victor; but it was probably not so much in consequence of his general Monarchian views, as on account of his particular mode of expressing them. Monarchianism, as already intimated, was twofold, correspond- ing to the two difierent views as to the nature of Christ. These were the Christology " from above,^^ and that " from below f if Christ was human, he was numerically distinct from God, as in the ancient Judaical theology ; were he divine. Monotheism would equally be preserved by blending him with the Deity as one nature. So that, while the Trinitarian pioneers of orthodoxy strove to find an impossible compromise between two contra- dictory propositions, each extreme of the opposed Christological formulas came round by a different path to Monotheism, one by excluding Christ's personality, the other his apotheosis. Neither party denied the divine element in Christ; they as- serted only the primitive faith, that this divine element was not severed from its source by becoming resident in a human sub- ject ; and whether the title " Christ^^ were predicated of the divine or the human constituent, it continued, despite the com- munication of it, part and parcel of the Supreme Being.^ Praxeas, who seems to have visited Rome, like Polycarp, for the purpose of denouncing heresy and stimulating the slumber- ing intolerance of its bishops, was not personally molested, although, as a Monarchian, he eventually turned out to be a heretic himself. Identifying the divine principle in Christ with the Father, he did not shrink from the inevitable consequence since termed Patripassianism that the Father shared the Son^s suffering and death ;'^ but he admitted this inference only in the same sense, and to the same extent, as the Trinitarians wxre themselves compelled to admit it in reference to the Logos ; a divine personification was equally jeopardised in both cases. 1 Euseb. Hist. Eccl. v. 28. ^ According to Beryllus, bishop of Bostra (Euseb. vi. 33), the Lord was not per- sonally pre-exi stent before his human pilgrimage ; he had no peculiar divinity of his own, but only a transitory communication of the Father's. * " Praxeas," says Tertullian, "executed two commissions for the devil in Rome; he expelled the Paraclete, and crucified the Father." 208 ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF DOGMA. The doctrine of the Smyrniote Noetus appears to have been intended to meet the difficulty by what really amounts only to a confession of its being one of the incomprehensible mysteries inherent in the Deity, who can become visible or invisible at pleasure; who as the Son suffered death, but who as the Father lives for ever. The theory of Noetus (or of Praxeas) became popular, and was diffused by Cleomenes in Rome, where, at the close of the second centuiy, it seems to have been the favourite and fashionable creed. Victor, who condemned Theodotus, pa- tronised the views of Praxeas ; and the " Patripassian^^ heresy, as it was afterwards called, was adopted by the two succeeding bishops, Zephyrinus and Callistus. The latter, indeed, was one of its most efficient advocates; and the exasperation against him exhibited by the author of the " Philosophoumena,^' a man deeply engaged in these dissensions, while exhibiting in a very disreputable manner the factious virulence of a Christian dis- putant, proves the strength of the party still opposed to the *^ Ditheists," or introducers of a double God. No wonder that Praxeas, notwithstanding his Unitarianism, should have had sufficient influence at Rome to alter the determination of its bishop at an important crisis* if the bishop was Unitarian also. The party controverted in the Homilies must either have stopped short of a distinct subdivision or multiplication of the Deity in regard to Christ, or they must have still been com- paratively uninfluential in proportion to the more numerous body, who, however they might revolt at the idea of rescuing the unity by asserting Christ to be a mere man, felt satisfied, and safe in acquiescing in the old-established alternative by which Christ^s dignity was vindicated while Monotheism was preserved.* It would indeed be difficult to imagine that the painfully-elaborate system of Sabellius could have arisen at all in a decidedly Trinitarian age. Sabellius, like Noetus, tried to show, not that God is one, but that his unity can consist with phenomenal diversity. He compared God to the sun, which in one luminary combines three properties light, warmth, and rotundity. He gave to the same essentially Unitarian doctrine a more developed Pantheistic or emanational form, explaining how, through the instrumentality of the Logos, as universal * Above, p. 146. ^ The Second Epistle of Clemens, written towards the end of the second century (Kilgenfeld, Apost. Vater. p. 120), begins by telling its readers, " we ought to think of Christ as of God j as of the judge of quick and dead." THE MONARCHY. . 209 principle of creative movement, the successive dispensations or aspects {7rpo