LIBRARY OF THE THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY PRINCETON, N. J BT 21 .C74 1883 Crippen, T. G. A popular introduction to the history of Christian A POPULAR INTRODUCTION TO THE HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE. PRINTED BY MORRISON AND GIBB, T. & LONDON, DUBLIN, NEW YORK, . FOR T. CLARK, EDINBURGH. . . . HAMILTON, ADAMS, AND CO. GEORGE HERBERT. . . . SCRIBNER AND WELFORD. A Clc Ytr k lVC lit t POPULAR INTRODUCTION TO THE HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE. B V REV. T. G. CRIPPEN. EDINBURGH: T. & T. CLARK, 3 8 GEORGE STREET. 188 3. Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2019 with funding from Princeton Theological Seminary Library https://archive.org/details/popularintroductOOcrip PREFACE. T HE following pages are designed to supply a want in popular theological literature. They do not appeal to professed students, or to readers able to appreciate the scholarly works of Hagenbach, Shedd, and Cunningham. But there are many Sunday-school teachers, village preachers, etc., who have a fair general acquaintance with the leading facts of the Church’s external history, and yet have not, and know not where to obtain, more than the vaguest notion of the development of the Church’s Creed. The popular manuals of Church history, almost without exception, assume, tacitly or openly, that their author’s personal or sectarian creed was that of the apostolic age; and the whole history of doctrine is, for them, a record of the defence or perversion of this cherished system. The present work, on the contrary, aims at strict impartiality; and although it is perhaps impossible that any treatise of the kind should be theologically colourless, the writer deems himself to have failed of his purpose wherever he has departed from a neutral attitude, or betrayed his own doctrinal or ecclesiastical opinions. Attention is invited to the Appendices, which contain a large amount of information that is nowhere else to be found in so condensed a form, and some of which can only be obtained from rare and costly books. VI PREFACE. The work is now sent forth in the hope that its perusal may tend to promote Christian unity, by exhibiting the wide diversity of opinion upon hotly contested points which has obtained among men of unquestionable saintliness. When the recognition of this fact shall so far prevail among Chris¬ tians as to permit the freest and closest intercommunion among those who, differing widely on subordinate points of metaphysical divinity or ecclesiastical tradition, yet hold with a stedfast faith the essential verities of the gospel; then, and not till then, will the Church below and the angels above “ Bejoice, and be exceeding glad, for the marriage of the Lamb is come, and His wife hath made herself ready.” T. G. CBIPPEN. CONTENTS. I.—Sources of Religious Knowledge. Pre-Christian Ideas : Religion among the heathen—Among the Jews, . Canon of Scripture : Origin of the New Testament—Epistles—Gospels— Canon of New Testament—New Testament Apocrypha—Eusebius, etc.—Canon of Old Testament—Old Testament Apocrypha—Disputes about Canon at Reformation—Modern ideas—Destructive criticism —Critical apologetics, ......... Inspiration of Scripture: Oldest theories—Justin, Clement of Alexandria, Origen—Verbal inspiration held by later Fathers—Extra-Biblical inspiration—Opinions of the Reformers—Luther—Calvin—Romanist and Protestant disputes about inspiration—Bible contains the word of God—Recent speculations, ........ Interpretation of Scripture : Patristic ideas—The Allegorists—Divers methods in the East and West—Augustine—Extravagance of medi¬ eval interpretations—The clergy and the Bible—Vernacular transla¬ tions—The Reformation—The Bible the religion of Protestants— Protestant modes of interpretation—Cocceius—Biblical criticism, text of Scripture—Swedenborg, ....... Tradition and Philosophy : Tradition—‘‘Semper, ubique, per omnibus” —Heathen philosophy, Plato, Aristotle — Tradition rejected by Reformers—Protestant mysticism and traditionalism—Rationalism — Bacon, Descartes — The English Deists — Leibnitz — Natural theology—Kant—Tendency of modern thought, .... PAGF 1 2 6 9 13 II. —Being and Attributes of God. Christianity and Paganism: Early Christians accused of Atheism— Their opinions of the heathen deities—Dionysius (?)—Justin— Minucius Felix—Clement of Alexandria—Arnobius, . . . 17 The Being of God : Early patristic arguments—Scepticism in the fourth century—Later philosophical arguments—Cosmological—Ontologi¬ cal— From contingency — From conscience — Scholastic objections — Atheism of the Renaissance — Argument from history — From design — Clarke’s argument d priori — Kant’s objection — Moral argument, ........... 18 Unity of God: How maintained against Paganism—Gnosticism, what ? How confuted—Its decay—Manichseism—How resisted—Its later influence—Paganizing sects,.21 •■7 4 Vlll CONTENTS. Nature of God: Speculation inevitable—Difficulty of conceiving pure spirit—Anthropomorphism—Tertullian—The Clementines—Opposi¬ tion to Anthropomorphism—Clement of Alexandria—Novatian— Origen—Athanasius and the later Fathers—Attempts to describe God—How far can God be known ?—The Schoolmen—John Dama¬ scene, Erigena, Anselm, etc.—Pantheistic tendencies—Amalric— The Mystics—Eckhart—Tauler, etc.—The Hesychiasts — General consensus of modern belief—Modern Pantheism—Spinoza, Attributes of God : How regarded by the Fathers. Natural Attributes : Omnipresence — Theophilus — Clement of Alexandria — Origen — Cyprian — Augustine ; Omniscience — Justin — Clement — Origen— Augustine ; Omnipotence—Origen ; Eternity—Augustine. Moral Attributes: Love—Clement; Justice—How reconciled with benevo¬ lence— Irenseus—Tertullian—Origen—Lactantius—Augustine ; Om¬ niscience and human liberty—Chrysostom ; Mediaeval speculations— Damascene—Nominalists and Realists—Manner of Omnipresence— Hugh of St. Victor—Alexander Hales—Aquinas—Manner of omni¬ science—Hugh of St. Victor—Bonaventura—Limitations of divine power—Irreverent questions—Erasmus—Luther—Theology of the Reformation—Later controversies—Jesuits—Socinians—Calvinists, . III.—The Trinity. Divine Plurality in Unity: Instinctively conceived — Not formally asserted in Scripture—But implied—Heathen guesses at truth, Doctrine of the Word : Heathen conceptions of the Word—“Word” and “Wisdom” in the Old Testament—In the Apocrypha—The Tar- gums—Philo—Book of Enoch—Claim of Jesus to unique relation with God—How understood by John—Jesus the Word—Doctrine of Paul, etc.—Gnostics—Ebionites—Alogians, . . . . . Monarchianism and Subordination : Praxeas—Noetus—Beryllus, etc.— Prevailing opinion in the second century—Justin—Tatian—Athena- goras — Theophilus — Irenseus—Subordination—Tertullian—Clement of Alexandria—Hippolytus—Callistus—Eternal generation of the Son—Origen, ........... Doctrine of the Holy Ghost: Vague in early Fathers—Personality and subordination — Origin of the term “Trinity” — Tertullian — Hippolytus—Origen—Sabellianism—Opposition to Sabellianism, The Arian Controversy: Doctrine of Arius—Alexander of Alexandria— Constantine—Hosius—Council of Nicea—Eusebius—Athanasius— Nicene Creed—Establishment of orthodoxy—Arianism after the Council of Nicea—Semi-Arians—Councils and conflicts—Authors— Marcellus and Photinus—Prevalence of Orthodoxy in the Roman Empire—Arianism among the German tribes (Goths, Vandals, and Lombards)—Its fanaticism and decline,. Personality and Procession of the Holy Ghost: Doctrine of the Spirit still undefined—Athanasius and Macedonius—Gregory Nazianzen— Council of Constantinople—Pneumatomachoi—Procession, single or twofold ?—Synod of Toledo—“ Filioque ”—Athanasian Creed, Mediceval and Modern Opinions: Dogmatism and alleged heresy— Roscellin, Abelard, etc.—Scholastics and Mystics—Theology of the PAGE 24 29 35 36 38 41 44 47 CONTENTS. IX PAGE Reformation—Humanists—Servetus—Socinus—Unitarianism in the eighteenth century—Whiston—Priestley—Moravians—Swedenborg —Modern Rationalism, ......... 50 IY.—Creation and Providence. Doctrine of Absolute Creation: Heathen speculations—Eternity of matter held by philosophers—Repudiated by the Fathers—Hermogenes— Tertullian — Clement of Alexandria — Origen — Gnostics and Maniclneans — Erigena, his Pantheistic theories — Schoolmen — Reformers—Pantheism of Protestant Mystics, . . . . . 53 Work of the Trinity in Creation: Indefinite views of early Fathers— “By the Father, through the Son”—Part of the Holy Ghost in creation, ........... 56 Purpose of Cod in Creation : Pure benevolence, according to the Fathers and Schoolmen—Contrary opinion of Calvinistic and Lutheran divines,.57 Method of Creation: Early heretical opinions—Mosaic narrative, how understood—Allegorically by Origen—Historically by later Fathers —Literally in the Middle Ages—Ultra-literalism of some Protestants —Rise of modern science—The new astronomy—Preadamites— Geology—Reconciliation of Scripture and Science, .... 59 Providence : Epicureans and Stoics—Particular providence early recog¬ nised—Doctrine developed by later Fathers—Rationalistic views of Jerome and Junilius — Opinions of Schoolmen, Mystics, and Reformers — Foreordination and foreknowledge — The decrees — Excessive subtility of Protestant speculations—Modern doubts as to particular providence,.. . . 61 Miracles: Character of those wrought by Christ—Later narratives less reliable—Mediaeval credulity—Uncritical treatment of the subject by Reformers — Protestant scepticism—Hume—Paley—The resurrec¬ tion of Christ the supreme miracle—Mythical theory—Scientific apologists,.64 Origin of Evil: A standing difficulty—How met by the heathen— Gnosticism—Manichaeism—The Christian solution—Irenaeus—Origen —Lactantius—Augustine—Anselm—Abelard—Hugh of St. Victor— Calvinists and Remonstrants—Connection of physical evils with sin —Edward Williams—Blasche, ....... 66 Y.—Angels and Spirits. The Holy Angels: Jewish opinions—Existence of angels assumed by early Christians—Their origin, nature, and subordination—Their offices—Guardian angels—Angel-worship—Opinions of later Fathers —Can angels sin ?—The hierarchies—Angel-worship from the fourth century—Mediaeval speculations—The Reformation—Rationalism— Swedenborg,.69 The Powers of Darkness: Patristic opinions—Fallen angels—The devil —How did they fall, and when ?—Their influence—Demoniacal possession—Evil spirits God’s executioners—Can they repent— Opinions of the Schoolmen—Popular demonology of the Middle Ages—Luther and the Reformers—Witchcraft and the witch mania X CONTENTS. —Its decline—Rationalism—Swedenborg—The poets—Spiritualism —Mesmerism, .......... VI.—Nature of Man. Man , Corporeal and Incorporeal: Little controversy about the body— Deterioration—Evolution—Soul and spirit distinguished by Justin, Tatian, Irenseus, Clement, etc. — The distinction rejected by Tertullian — Origen doubtful — Afterwards ignored, and why — Augustinism—Partly revived by Aquinas—Adopted by Luther— Regaining favour in modern times, ....... Origin of the Soul: Derived from God—Theories of traduction (Tertullian) —Creation (Clement of Alexandria)—Pre-existence (Origen)—Tra¬ duction v. Creation—Diverse opinions of later Fathers—Prevalence of Creationism in the Middle Ages—And at the Reformation— Traducianism of Lutheran divines—Glanvill, ..... The Image of God: Wherein consisting ?—Strange notions of some early Fathers—Image and likeness distinguished—Later Fathers and Schoolmen—Anthropology of the Reformation, .... Liberty: Freedom of the will never questioned before Augustine— Quotations—Augustine’s earlier and later views—Free-will lost at the fall, and restored by grace only to the elect—Prevalence of this opinion—Probable cause—Opposition—Hugh of St. Victor—Anselm, P. Lombard, etc.—DunsScotus—Bradwardine—Wickliffe—The Greek Church—The Reformers—Jesuits and Jansenists—Van Harmen, Immortality : Death the wages of sin—Is the soul naturally immortal ?— Divers opinions of Tatian — Theophilus — Irenseus — Arnobius — Lactantius, etc.—General prevalence of belief in natural immortality —Recent speculations and doubts, ....... VII. —Sin and its Consequences. Opinions of the Earlier Fathers: Habit of sinning universal—Diverse opinions about natural depravity—First asserted by Tertullian— Hereditary guilt supposed by Cyprian—Peculiar views of Origen and Lactantius—State of man before the fall—Various explanations of the Bible story—Consequences of the fall—Death and pain— Inherited depravity generally believed in the West—Milder doctrine prevalent in the East, ......... Augustine and the Pelagian Controversy: Early views of Augustine— Pelagius and Ccelestine—Their doctrine as represented by their opponents—Counter statements of Pelagius and Augustine on hereditary guilt—Bondage of the will—Unconditional election— Reprobation—Pelagianism condemned—Cassian—Semi-Pelagianism — Ultra-Predestinarianism — Controversies — Prevalence of Augus¬ tinism—Synod of Orange,. Mediaeval Doctrines and Speculates: Gregory the Great—Scholastic ingenuity — Erigena — John Damascene — Gotteschalk — Synod of Chiersy—Anselm and Abelard—Aquinas and the Dominicans— Duns Scotus and the Franciscans—Total depravity—Mortal and venial sins—Exceptions to the universality of sin—The immaculate conception,. PAGE 72 76 79 81 83 87 89 92 96 CONTENTS. XI Progress of Opinion since the Reformation: Cornelius Agrippa—Lutlier —Calvin—Influence of Augustine—Calvinism—Zuingli—Flack— Tridentine doctrine of the Roman Church—Supralapsarians and Sublapsarians—Arminian controversy—Mediate imputation—Pajon —Lutheran and Anglican views—Pietists, Methodists, and Jansenists —Socinus—Kant—Blasche, etc.—Principles of the Revolution— Schleiermacher, .......... VIII.—Person of Christ. Ante-Nicene Opinions: Christianity v. Deism—True manhood of Christ held by the Church and all sects except the Docetse—Opinions of Marcion and Valentinian—God manifest in the flesh—Testimony of Pliny—Diognetus—Ignatius—Justin—Irenseus—Tertullian, etc. —His virgin birth—Completeness of His humanity—Peculiar views of Clement of Alexandria and Origen—Novatian—Sinlessness of Jesus, ............ The First Four General Councils: Council of Nicea—Arius and Athan¬ asius — Hilary — Apollinaris — Council of Constantinople—Schools of Alexandria and Antioch — ‘ ‘ Theotokos ”—Nestorius — Council of Ephesus — Continued disputes — Secession of the Nestorians — Eutyches—Dioscuros—Leo I.—The Robbers’ Synod—Council of Chalcedon, ........... Monophysites and Monotheletes: The Henoticon— Secession of the Egyptian and Armenian Churches—Julianists and Severians— Agnoites — Theopaschites — The Three Chapters — Fifth General Council—“Schism of the Three Chapters”—Jacob al Baradai— Jacobites and Melchites—Monothelete theory—The Ekthesis and Typos—Maximus Confessor—Sixth [General Council—Maronites— John Damascene—Interpenetration, ...... The Iconoclastic Controversy: Abuse of images—Leo the Isaurian—Synod at Rome—Constantine Copronymus—Pope Stephen III.—Irene— Seventh General Council—Charlemagne—Council of Frankfort—Leo the Armenian—Theodora—Why the Eikons were defended—Later use and abuse of images, ........ Disputes of the r Middle Ages: Antipathy of Moslems to doctrine of Divine Sonship—Moslems in Spain—Adoptionist theory—Declared heterodox—Imaginary Nihilian heresy—Strange scholastic disputes —The Mystics—Deutsche Theologie, ...... Christology of the Reformation: Augsburg Confession—Lutherans and Calvinists—Ubiquitarian controversy — Lutheran Monopliysites — Docetism of the Anabaptists—Servetus—Early Italian Unitarians— Socinus — Unitarianism in England — Rationalism — Moravians — Swedenborg—Orthodoxy of modern Churches, .... IX.—The Atonement. Great variety of explanations : classification adopted, .... Pre-Anselmian Theories, not involving the Idea of Satisfaction: Teaching of Christ, so Justin and Clement of Alexandria—Solidarity of the human race, so Irenseus and Origen—Death of Christ always held PAGE 99 104 108 112 116 119 121 125 Xll CONTENTS. of chief importance—Moral interpretation of His death—Origen— Augustine—Victory over Satan—Irenseus—Satan deceived—Gregory Nazianzen—Death beguiled—John Damascene, .... Pre-Anselmian Theories which include the Idea of Satisfaction: A ransom first mentioned in the Epistle to Diognetus—Irenaeus—Tertullian held that man could make satisfaction—Athanasius, a debt due to God—Cyril of Jerusalem—Nazianzen—Chrysostom—Mystical treat¬ ment of the subject—Nazianzen—Augustine—No dogma yet imposed —Gregory the Great,.. . Early Opinions on the Extent of the Atonement: No limitation supposed in the first four centuries—Origen—Eusebius—Gospel of Nicodemus —Harrowing of hell—Gregory of Nyssa—Augustine—Leo, Anselm and his Opponents: Nicholas of Methone—Anselm and his age —Summary of “ Cur Deus Homo ”—Hugh of St. Victor—Abelard— Peter Lombard—Bernard, ........ Scholastics and Mystics: Aquinas—Duns Scotus—Bonaventura—Wick- liffe—Weasel—Tauler—The Flagellants—Other fanatical sects— Deutsche theologie—Would God have become incarnate if there had been no sin Catholics and Protestants: General agreement of the Reformers—Diverg¬ ing | views of Lutherans and Calvinists—Diversities of Protestants and Catholics—Physical and mental sufferings of Christ—zEpinus— Heidelberg Catechism, ......... Controversies since the Beformation: Osiander and Stancar—Was Christ subject to the law ? — Socinianism — Arminianism—Equivalentism — Sacrificial theory — Purpose of the atonement — Cocceius and the Federal theology — Quakers — Pietists — Moravians — Dippel —Swedenborg—Rationalism — Kant — Storr—De Wette — Schelling — Schleiermacher — British orthodoxy — Evangelicalism — Recent opinions, ........... X.—Appropriation of Divine Grace. The Early Fathers; Repentance, Faith, Obedience: Justification by faith—Justin—Clement of Rome—Tertullian—Origen—Theoretical and practical unbelief not distinguished except by Clement of Alexandria—Repentance usually taken to include amendment—Its outward manifestation—Sins washed away by tears—Clearer distinc¬ tions of Tertullian and Clement of Alexandria—Good works—No salvation out of the Church — Cyprian — Origen — Baptism — Meritorious suffering—Justification by faith obscured, The Later Fathers; Free-will and Grace: Free-will asserted, together with necessity of Divine grace—Predestination dependent on fore¬ knowledge—Augustine—Unconditional predestination—Faith the gift of God—Importance of faith equally insisted on by Pelagians and Massilians—None saved without baptism, .... The Schoolmen; Definitions of Faith, Merit, etc.: Faith and Creed— Damascene—Hugh of St. Victor—Peter Lombard—Aquinas—Merit of Condignity and Congruity —Precepts and Counsels—Thomists and Scotists—Ambiguous use of “ Justification ”—Various kinds of grace—Huss—The Mystics—Deutsche theologie, .... PAUE 126 128 131 133 136 138 140 146 150 153 CONTENTS. Xlll Asceticism, Penances, and Indulgences: Heathen, Jewish, and early Christian Asceticism—Anthony—Benedict—Evangelical counsels— Vast number of Ascetics—The Friars—Expiation of sins after baptism—Penances—Indulgences—Tetzel, ..... The Reformation ; Justification by Faith alone: Luther—Confessions of Augsburg and Basle—Tridentine doctrine of the Roman Church— Inconsistent definitions — Paleario — Protestant divergencies — Schwenkfeld—the Mennonites—Agricola—Osiander and Stancar— Major and Amsdorf—Synergistic controversy, ..... Calvinism ; the Arminian Controversy: Authority of Augustine—Calvin —Calvinists and Lutherans—Castalio—Supralapsarians and Sub- lapsarians—Lambeth Articles—Yan Harmen—The Five Points— Synod of Dort—Dutch Arminians—Spread of Arminianism in the Reformed Churches—Hypothetical universalism—Baxter—Present state of the question, ......... The Protestant Sects: Socinians—Crisp and the Antinomians—Quakers —Pietists— Moravians—Methodists—Evangelicals—Rationalism — Protestant orthodoxy,. The Unreformed Churches : The Roman Church—Council of Trent—De Bay and Hessels — Molina — Bellarmine — Jansen — Jesuits and Jansenists—The Greek Church,. XI.—The Church and Means of Grace. Divine Origin of the Church—Division of the subject, .... a. The Age before Constantine. Constitution of the Church : No theory very early formulated—Local, not congregational, independency — Conditions of membership — Creeds—Unity of the Church—No salvation outside the Church, Admission to the Church ; Baptism: Baptismal regeneration—Immersion —Deferred baptism—Baptism of blood—Infant baptism—Sponsors —Lay baptism—Baptism by heretics—Synod of Arles, Worship in the Church; the Lord's Supper: Early Christian worship— Justin—Ignatius—Irenseus—Tertullian—Patristic doctrine of the real presence—Clement of Alexandria—Cyprian—Sacrificial theory of the Eucharist — Justin — Irenseus — Of what did the offering consist? — Oblations for the dead — Term “Sacrament” vaguely applied, ............ Ministers of the Church: Priesthood of all Christians—Bishops and deacons—Subordination of offices—Official priesthood—Cyprian— Growing sacerdotalism—Prelatic Episcopacy—Causes of its develop¬ ment—Necessity of episcopal ordination—Limitations of episcopal authority—No Roman primacy in this age, ..... Discipline and Excommunication: Penitential discipline—Montanists— Novatians—Felicissiums—Congregationalism—The Donatists, b. From Constantine to the Reformation. Development of the Doctrine of the Church: Progress of sacerdotalism and prelacy—Lactantius—Donatists and Pelagians—Augustine— page: 156 158 161 165 168 170 170 172 174 178 180 XIV CONTENTS. PAGE “ Ecclesiola in Ecclesia ”—Primacy of Peter—“ Universal bishop ” —Rise of temporal authority of the Popes—Donation of Constantine —Forged decretals—Dark age—Hildebrand—Becket—Innocent III. —Wickliffe—Popes and Councils—Heresy—Universal priesthood of Christians—Huss—Wessel, etc.,.182 Baptism: Divine life transmitted by sacraments—Baptism—Its effects— Its necessity—Infant baptism—Baptism by heretics—Intention — Conditional baptism—Debates about modes—Heretical views—Lay baptism—Sponsors—Baptismal grace—Liberal views of Huss—Bap¬ tism of blood—Mode, ......... 189 Confirmation: Supplementary to baptism—A peculiarly episcopal act— Dissociated from baptism—Medheval use—Not profession, . . 192 The Lord's Supper: Liturgies—Controversies—Consubstantiation or Transubstantiation—Views of Augustine—Sacrificial theory—In¬ frequent communion—Paschasius Radbert—Rabanus Maurus, etc.— Berenger—Humbert—Transubstantiation affirmed by fourth Lateran Council—Aquinas—Substance and accident—Concomitance—Wor¬ ship of the host—Impious assumptions—Huss—Communion in one kind—Irreverent questions—Impanation—Practice of the Greek Church—“The Mass,” . ..193 Penance: Origin of penances—Confession—Penances by proxy—Medicine for sin — Periodical confession enforced — Penance commuted for money—Three parts of penance—Penance a sacrament—Scholastic definitions—Opposition, ......... 198 Extreme Unction : Origin—Object—Abuse—Controversies, . . . 200 Ordination : Sacerdotal character of ministers—Apostolic succession— Practice of Celtic and Saxon Churches—Ordination a sacrament— Clerical celibacy, . . . . . . . . . .201 Marriage: Early regulations—Matrimonial rites—Divorce—Marriage a Sacrament — Forbidden degrees — Marriage indissoluble — Diffi¬ culties evaded—Mediaeval licentiousness,.203 The Sacraments in general: Vague use of the term—“Sacraments of the first class ”—The number seven—Relations and analogies— Definitions of a sacrament—Modes of operation—“ Opus operatum ” —Diverse opinions—The Eastern Churches, ..... 205 Worship of Saints: Early invocations—Ephraem—Relics—Worship of Mary—Her sinlessness—The assumption—Saint-worship at first local—Afterwards general—Fictitious saints—Canonization—Various kinds and forms of worship—Ludicrous examples—Wickliffe, . . 207 c. From the Commencement of the Reformation. The Church and its Ministers: Character of the Reformation—Calvinists and Lutherans—Their diversities and agreements—Episcopacy and Presbytery—The Church universal and particular—Pietism—The Reformation in England—Anglicans and Puritans—Independents— Ecclesiastical and civil conflicts—Episcopacy triumphant—Modern independency— Quakers — Methodists — Ecclesiastical democracy— The Catholic revival,.. 209 Relation of the Church to the State: Zuingli—Calvin a-Castalio—The Lutheran Reformers—Erastianism—Royal supremacy in England— CONTENTS. XV Opposition to Erastianism—Bancroft—The nonjurors—Hoadley— Voluntaryism—Its extravagances—Discipline in Established and “Select” Churches,. Baptism: Opposition to Romish sacramental theories—Divergencies of the Reformers — Theories of baptism — Lutheran — Zuinglian — Calvinist—Infant baptism—Anabaptists—Mennonites—“ Baptists ” —Pietists—Catholic revival—Modern theories, .... The Lord's Supper : Transubstantiation rejected—Lutheran doctrine of consubstantiation—Ubiquitarianism—Symbolic theory of Zuingli— Calvinistic theory of a seal or pledge — Ambiguity of Anglican standards—Low Church—High Church—Anglo-Catholics — Protes¬ tant Sects, ........... Minor Beligious Observances: Confirmation—Extreme Unction aban¬ doned—Penance repudiated—Absolution—Marriage—Ordination— Diversity of opinion and practice—Preaching—Simple forms of Protestant worship—The Lord’s day, ...... The Unreformed Churches: Greek—Cyril Leukaris—Russian—Oriental — Roman — Council of Trent — Creed of Pope Pius IV. — Papal infallibility,. XII.—The Last Things. The Second Advent and Millennium: Thought near by early Fathers— First and second resurrection — Opposition to Millenarianism— Reason for its decline—Joachim of Flores—Mediaeval anticipations of the near approach of the end—Antichrist—The Reformers— Spener—Modern Millenarianism, ...... State of the Dead ; Hades ; Purgatory : Intermediate state—Justin— Tertullian—Prayers for the dead—Perpetua—Cyprian—The Gnostics —Cleansing fire — Origen — Ambrose — Ephraem — Augustine—St. Patrick—Nature and location of Purgatory—Topography of Hades — Limbo—Scholastic and popular notions—Luther—Latimer—Un¬ reformed Churches—Hades ignored by many Protestants—Jung Stilling, ............ The Resurrection: Early proofs—Heresies—Identity of the resurrection body—Justin—Origen—Diverse opinions prevailing in East and West — Erigena — The Schoolmen — Aquinas — Heresies — The Re¬ formers—Rationalism—Swedenborg, ...... The Last Judgment: Justin — Origen — Lactantius — Augustine — Aquinas — Saints judging the world — Reformers — Rationalists — Swedenborg, ........... Destiny of the Wicked: Sensuous views of early Fathers—Eternity of punishment—Doubts—Extinction—Universal restoration—Origen— Decline of Origenism—Mediaeval representations—Dante—Aquinas —Suso—The Reformers—Modern speculations, .... Final Blessedness of the Saints : Views of Justin—Origen—Cyprian— Nazianzen — Augustine — Erigena — Amalric — Aquinas — Duns — Locality of heaven — Hymns — Beatific vision — The Reformers — Modern ideas, .......... PAGE 217 221 224 226 229 231 235 240 244 247 250 XVI CONTENTS. Appendix A. PAGE The Greeds of Ancient Christendom , .... 254 1. From Ignatius, ...... . 254 2, 3. 99 Irenseus, ...... . 255 4, 5, 6. 99 Tertullian, ...... . 256 7. 99 Hippolytus, ...... . 257 8, 9. 99 Origen, ....... . 257 10. 99 Cyprian, ....... . 258 11. 99 Gregory Thaumaturgus, . ... . 259 12. 99 Lucian of Antioch, ..... . 259 13. Church Creed of Jerusalem, .... . 260 14. 99 ,, Caesarea, ..... . 261 15. 9 9 ,, Antioch, ..... . 261 16. 9 9 ,, Aquileia,. . 261 17. 9 9 ,, Rome, ..... . 262 18. From the Apostolic Constitutions, . 262 19. Confession of Arius the heretic, .... 263 20. Creed of the Council of Nicea, .... . 263 21. ,, ,, Constantinople, . 264 22. ,, ,, Ephesus, . 264 23. ,, ,, Chalcedon, . 265 24. Symbolum “Quicunque,” or Athanasian Creed, . 266 25. Confession of St. Patrick, ..... . 268 Appendix B. Sects and Heretics, real or reputed,. 268 Alphabetical Index of the foregoing Sects, etc.,. 308 Appendix C. Writers quoted or referred to : arranged chronologically, . . .313 Appendix C (2). The Writers prior to the Schism of the Eastern and Western Churches : arranged geographically,.334 Appendix D. Church Councils and Synods, . 336 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE. I.—Sources of Eeligious Knowledge. Pre-Christian Ideas. F BOM the remotest antiquity of which there has come down to us either record or tradition, men have constantly endeavoured by searching to find out God. Yet it is scarcely too much to say, that at the time of our Lord’s nativity religious knowledge had no real existence, except among the chosen people of Israel. In India and China, in Egypt, Greece, and Borne, the choicest intellects had long been seeking after God, if haply they might find Him; but even Socrates, the noblest of them all, could never advance beyond aspirations and probabilities. A few poets enshrined lofty and devout ideas in deathless verse, and did something, no doubt, as far as their influence extended, to raise and purify the religious sentiment; but they could never speak with such authority as to command an intelligent faith. And among the masses there was either a blind acceptance of ancestral superstitions, of which the underlying verity had long been forgotten, or a reckless self-abandonment to the course of this world, in despair of any reliable teaching about another. Among the Jews, indeed, the revelation made by God of old time to Moses and the prophets was devoutly cherished, and the books in which it was recorded were venerated in a manner almost idolatrous. Since the age of the Maccabees a theory had grown up that not merely every word, but every jot and tittle, at least of the Pentateuch, had been expressly dictated by God. By some this notion was extended to the A 2 SOURCES OF RELIGIOUS KNOWLEDGE. remainder of the sacred books, and even to the Greek transla¬ tion (Septuagint), by a ludicrous fable which consecrated its very errors. Believing these books to contain all the religious truth God had yet made known, and expecting the coming of One who should reveal whatever yet remained obscure, they searched the Scriptures daily. Yet so faulty were their methods of interpretation, that they generally failed to recognise the Christ “ to whom gave all the prophets witness,” and were charged by Him with “ making the word of God of none effect by their tradition.” Canon of Scripture. The apostles and their associates, remembering that Jesus came “ not to destroy, but to fulfil,” steadily maintained the authority of the Hebrew Scriptures. The truths embodied in these they supplemented with new truths, derived from the spoken words of Jesus, or revealed to themselves by the Holy Ghost. Wherever these truths were received, the converts were at once organized into churches; and for the instruction of these converts the more distinctly doctrinal parts of the New Testament were written, as occasion arose, in the form of Epistles. The earliest apostolic Epistle is usually referred to the year a.d. 54, at which date churches existed in Judea and Samaria, Syria, Asia Minor, Cyprus, Macedonia, Greece, and (probably) Borne. A few years later the Gospels were composed, to record for all future ages those words and acts of Jesus which the first Christians learned from the lips of His immediate disciples. As the ministry of the apostles came to an end, the churches appear to have instinctively accorded to their writings very much the same authority as was already ascribed to those of the prophets. This authority may have been gradually conceded, but as early as A.D. 120 we find a writer under the name of Barnabas quoting the Gospel of Matthew as Holy Scripture, with the formula “ it is written.” At first the churches were probably content to receive the words of our Lord and His apostles as a tradition em¬ bodied in writing. But soon a number of fictitious writings CANON OF SCRIPTURE. 3 began to appear, bearing the names of the apostles and their companions. It therefore became a matter of importance to distinguish the true from the false; and for this purpose catalogues of accredited Scriptures were compiled. The oldest of these, the Muratorian Canon, is believed to have been drawn up by Caius, a presbyter of Borne, about A.D. 19G. It specifies as genuine the four Gospels, the Acts, thirteen Epistles of Paul, two of John, Jude, a writing of Peter, and the Apocalypse. In extant writings prior to this date we have quotations from twenty of the twenty-seven books of the New Testament; and all the rest are quoted as Holy Scriptures by writers of the following century. From about A.D. 180 the four Gospels were all but universally acknow¬ ledged as authentic; the exceptions being the Jewish sect of Ebionites, who used chiefly or exclusively the u Gospel accord¬ ing to the Hebrews,” which seems to have been an imperfect Hebrew recension of Matthew ; and the Marcionites, a Gnostic sect, who tolerated only a mutilated copy of Luke. In the third century a multitude of apocryphal Gospels, Acts, Apocalypses, etc., were in circulation; but these w T ere soon detected as clumsy forgeries, and their use in the Church was prohibited by Councils. Some other books, the Epistles of Clement of Borne and pseudo-Barnabas, the “ Shepherd ” of Hernias, etc., long competed for canonical recognition, and were quoted as Scripture bj^ several of the Fathers. An important contribution to the settlement of the Canon was made in 332, when the Emperor Constantine directed Eusebius to form a complete collection of the accredited Scriptures for the churches of Constantinople. Fifty copies of this collection were transcribed; and some antiquarians are of opinion that one of them still exists—the well-known Sinai MS. This MS. contains the whole of the New Testa¬ ment, together with Barnabas and the Shepherd. The Canon of the Syrian Church assigns 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John, Jude, and the Apocalypse to a subordinate place; these books are wanting in the most ancient Syriac version, and are excluded from the Church lectionary, but they are all quoted as Scripture by Ephrmm of Edessa (375). There are fourteen catalogues of authentic Scriptures belonging to the third 4 SOURCES OF RELIGIOUS KNOWLEDGE. and fourth centuries; ten of these are identical with our present New Testament Canon, though four of them mark the Apocalypse, the Hebrews, or some of the Catholic Epistles as doubtful; three omit the Apocalypse; and one both it and the Hebrews. The Canon w T as virtually settled in its present form by the Councils of Hippo (393) and Carthage (397). Erom that time to the Eeformation there was practical unanimity on the subject, except that the Armenian Church accepted, doubtfully, a “ Third Epistle of Paul to the Corinthians.” With respect to the Old Testament the case was far other¬ wise. Most of the Gnostic sects, and some of their later descendants, rejected it bodily; not from any doubt as to its authenticity, but from a belief that it was inspired by “ the God of the Jews,” whom they distinguished from, and deemed hostile to, “ the Eather of Christ.” Within the Church there was, till very recent times, but little dispute about those books which were extant in Hebrew, and which were held sacred by the Jews of Palestine. Theodore of Mopsuestia (429) rejected Chronicles, Job, and the Song of Solomon; 1 and some monks of St. Gallen in the ninth century disputed the canonicity of Chronicles and Esther: this was all. But much uncertainty prevailed about the Jewish-Greek books rejected by the Palestinian Jews but held sacred by those of Egypt. These were usually associated with the Septuagint; and most of the earlier Fathers, being unacquainted with Hebrew, accepted them as a matter of course, and quoted them as Holy Scripture. Of the Councils in the fourth century, some accepted and some rejected them. The Greek churches, following the example of Athanasius (373), relegated them to a secondary place, deeming it safest “ to receive nothing which had not apparently a good attesta¬ tion of divine origin and apostolic authority.” 2 Eufinus (410) and Jerome (420) vainly endeavoured to establish the same rule in the West; but the tendency there was “to exclude nothing hallowed by descent and proved by custom.” 2 From the time of Augustine (430) to the Eeformation the Latin 1 Ho is said to have also rejected some of the Catholic Epistles. 2 Dr. S. Davidson in Encycl . Brit. CANON OF SCRIPTURE. 5 Church generally accepted most of the disputed books as canonical. Other books were locally received; as 3 Macca¬ bees and 4 Esdras by the Armenians, and Enoch, 4 Esdras, and 4 Maccabees by the Abyssinians. At the Keformation the old dispute broke out with violence. The abuses by which that movement was precipitated, if they could pretend to any sanction from Scripture, derived it from the “ apocryphal ” books rather than from those which were undisputed. Hostility to the abuses, rather than any critical appreciation of the Scriptures by which they were defended, appears to have determined the judgment of the Reformers; but, perceiving that our Lord had quoted only from the books of the Hebrew Canon, they conceived that He had bestowed upon it a divine sanction. Accordingly, the Lutheran and Anglican Churches remitted the disputed books to a subordinate place; while the more advanced Reformers of Geneva rejected them altogether, and unduly disparaged their literary merit. The Roman Church held to the apocryphal books, appealing in support of their authority to the uniform tradition of the West for a thousand years; and, at the Council of Trent (1545), anathematized whomsoever should dispute their canonicity. The dispute extended to the Greek Church, where it was long continued. Metrophanes Critopulos, patriarch of Alexandria (1625), and Cyril Leukaris, patriarch of Constantinople (1638), especially insisted on the distinction of canonical and apocryphal books; but the entire Apocrypha was canonized by a Synod at Jerusalem in 1672. Antagonism to the unreformed Churches has since given an unmistakeable bias to Protestant criticism of these writings. The Hew Testament was freely, if not always judiciously, criticized by the Lutheran Reformers. Luther (1546) did not regard the Epistle to the Hebrews as on an equality with the apostolic writings, esteemed James and Jude very lightly, and spoke of the Apocalypse as “ neither apostolic nor pro¬ phetic.” Gikolampadius (1531) endorsed this opinion; and Zuingli (1531) rejected the Apocalypse. But the over¬ whelming preponderance of Protestant opinion, led by Calvin (1564) and the Genevan Reformers, was in favour of the traditional Canon of the Hew Testament, and against any such 6 SOURCES OF RELIGIOUS KNOWLEDGE. discrimination as was made in several of the early catalogues between disputed and undisputed books. There was practical unanimity on the subject until the question was reopened by Semler (1791). The science of Biblical criticism may be said to have begun with the editing of the London Polyglott, 1657. Since that time the literary history of the Bible has been carefully studied; and in consequence it has come to be generally acknowledged that the respect due to ancient writings must be determined by other considerations than those which prevailed in the fourth or sixteenth century. This recognition is largely due to the labours of German scholars, who, during the last hundred years, have applied to the sacred writings the same principles of research as are deemed proper in the study of secular literature. The earlier results of this method, announced with much assurance, were sufficiently startling, but were soon left far behind. The Tubingen school, in particular (from 1830), proclaimed nearly the whole of the New Testament to be spurious; and their later followers have done as much for the Old. This destructive criticism has elicited a brilliant series of critical apologetics, with the result of establishing the authenticity and authority of the New Testament on a firmer basis than before. The problem respecting the Old Testament is more difficult, and its con¬ ditions are by no means the same. But it may be safely affirmed that, however much traditional opinions may be modified as to the date and authorship of some parts of the Hebrew Scriptures, nothing has yet been established which can diminish their value as a contribution towards the settlement of Christian doctrine. Inspiration of Scripture. Scripture having become, by the death of the apostles, the chief available source of religious knowledge, it was natural to inquire wherein its authority consisted. It was universally believed that the prophets and apostles taught and wrote by inspiration of the Holy Ghost; but the patristic theories as to the manner of this inspiration were various and inconsistent. INSPIRATION OF SCRIPTURE. 7 Justin (165) and Athenagoras (177) supposed the sacred writers to be passive under the divine influence, like a lyre or flute in the hands of a musician. Clement of Alexandria (220), Tertullian (220), and others affirmed that the same inspiration was common to the Old and New Testaments, and that both were infallible. Others, as Origen (254), strongly protested against the theory of passive reception, and under¬ stood inspiration to be an illumination of the prophet’s mind, “ as far as is necessary.” The Church creeds did not dog¬ matize on the subject; that of Constantinople (381) simply expressed belief in the Holy Ghost, “ Who spake by the prophets.” There is a widespread tendency, alike among Christians and heathens, to bestow on religious books an unintelligent veneration in proportion to their antiquity. Accordingly, from the fourth century, notwithstanding the silence of the Church creeds on the subject, verbal inspiration became more and more the prevailing theory. Eusebius (340) thought it pre¬ sumptuous to admit the possibility of error in the sacred books. Chrysostom (407) called the prophets “the mouth of God;” and Augustine (430) spoke of the apostles as hands which noted down what Christ dictated. Gregory the Great (604) regarded the personality of the human writers as of secondary importance, the Holy Ghost being the real Author. Notwith¬ standing all this, the personal peculiarities of the sacred writers received a fair share of recognition. That inspiration was confined to the pages of Scripture was never dogmatically asserted. Indeed, from the first, a certain degree of inspiration was generally regarded as the privilege of all believers. Some sects, as the Montanists (second and third century), believed in the continuance among themselves of the gift of prophecy. Special divine revelations were believed in all ages to be granted to holy men; and from the fourth century to the Beformation, Church Councils were sup¬ posed to be under such control that their decisions exactly interpreted the mind of the Spirit. This opinion w r as a natural outgrowth from the sacerdotal theory of the Christian ministry, and it tended greatly to the advancement of hier¬ archical pretensions; the pastors, especially the bishops, being 8 SOURCES OF RELIGIOUS KNOWLEDGE. thought of as “ the Church representative/’ and therefore entitled to claim that promise of being “ led into all truth ” which had been made to the Church as a whole. During the Middle Ages some of the schoolmen endeavoured, with little success, to elaborate theories of inspiration ; but most of them agreed that the manifestation of the Spirit extended far beyond the pages of the Bible. The Mystics, such as Tauler (1361) and Gerson (1429), showed a disposition to confound Biblical inspiration with those more general influences of the Spirit of which all holy persons are partakers. The Beformers, while they unanimously insisted on the infallibility of inspired Scripture, mostly held broad and com¬ prehensive views on the subject of inspiration. This is especi¬ ally true of Luther (1546), who says: “The Gospel of John is the true and pure gospel, the chief of the Gospels, inasmuch as it contains the greatest portion of our Saviour’s sayings; thus also the Epistles of Paul and Peter are higher in authority than the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke.” The Lutheran and Anglican Churches defended the authority of the sacred books by an appeal to the historical evidence of their authenticity, and to the universal tradition of the Church. The Calvinistic churches, keenly jealous of traditionalism in every form, were unwilling to concede so much importance to human testimony. “ These divine writings,” says Calvin (1564), “ cannot have a plenary authority in regard to the faithful by any other right than this: the firm persuasion which these establish in themselves that they are come from heaven, as if men heard God Himself speak in them with His own mouth.” The following century witnessed a keen controversy on the subject. It was an age of theological debate, and the value of proof-texts was evidently the greater as they were deemed the more purely divine. In the Eoman Church, therefore, the Jansenists (whose doctrinal peculiarities were not favoured by ecclesiastical authority) contended earnestly for verbal inspiration, which was denied by Bellarmine (1621) and the Jesuits. The Protestant Mystics, as Arndt (1621) and Bohme (1624), insisted on the importance of the spirit rather than the letter of the word. But the orthodox Protestants of INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE. 9 the next generation, in whose early days the Arminian con¬ troversy had raged with furious heat, developed a more rigid theory than had ever been heard of before. In the Formula Consensus of the Swiss Eeformed Church (1675), it was affirmed that even the Hebrew vowel-points were an essential part of the inspired text! The progress of Biblical criticism effectually undermined these rigid theories of verbal inspiration. Bor a while, diffi¬ culties were evaded by arbitrary explanations; but in 1766 J. G-. Tollner enunciated the principle that Holy Scripture contains, rather than is, the word of God. This principle has been accepted, in substance, by most orthodox theologians of recent times, though some of them have loudly protested against it in form. Even those who reject it usually recognise a diversity of kinds or degrees of inspiration, such as direc¬ tion, elevation, revelation, etc. The unmistakeable tendency of modern Christian thought is to regard the Bible as a Record of Successive Revelations, each presenting a clearer view of divine things than those which went before it. Not a few professedly orthodox believers think of inspiration as differing in degree, rather than kind, from the afflatus of the poet or philosopher; while the rationalistic school decline to acknow¬ ledge any difference, accounting the Bible to be merely a record of men’s thoughts concerning God. There are still, however, many who hold that the inspiration of the sacred writers “ was plenary, and their writings are in every part infallible truth.” Interpretation of Scripture. The prevailing doctrine concerning inspiration naturally had a great influence on methods of Biblical interpretation. Very few of the Fathers were content, like Irenreus (202), to allow Scripture always to bear its plain and natural sense. The majority, influenced by theories of verbal inspiration such as found their ultimate development in the Jewish Cabala, or by a desire to evade historical and moral difficulties, indulged in allegorical explanations to an unlimited extent, sometimes to the exclusion of the literal meaning. Origen o o 10 SOURCES OF RELIGIOUS KNOWLEDGE. (254) especially reduced this practice to a regular system, ascribing to Scripture a threefold sense — literal, allegorical, and mystical. From the fourth century the methods of interpretation in the East and West began widely to diverge. About the end of this century a notion arose that Origen had been a danger¬ ous heretic. This tended to discredit the allegorical method among the Eastern theologians, who thenceforth, though not unmindful of the fulness of meaning contained in the sacred writings, endeavoured to elucidate it by a sober grammatical method. They were thus preserved from a slavish Bibliolatry; and, as late as 1107, we find Euthymius recognising the existence of discrepancies in the Bible. In the West, on the contrary, the authority of Augustine (430) led to the accept¬ ance of a fourfold canon of interpretation, regarding the facts of the narrative, the reason of it, the analogies it suggests, and its mystical sense. This rule was still more fully developed by the schoolmen of the Middle Ages. From the eighth to the fifteenth century the Greek lan¬ guage was disused and practically unknown throughout the West. The study of Scripture was therefore mainly confined to the Latin translation, called the Vulgate, which had been made or revised by Jerome (420). By many this was accredited with the same verbal inspiration which they ascribed to the original, and Agobard of Lyons (840) was charged with irreverence for asserting that it contained gram¬ matical errors. The Biblical interpretation of this period was either restricted to collating the opinions of the Fathers, or consisted of the wildest allegorizing. Adam of St. Victor (1192) identified the four rivers of Eden with the four evangelists ! Another writer of the same age found a type of Christ in the worm that smote Jonah’s gourd! A multitude of “ pious opinions ” were based on uncertain traditions, or developed by the scholastic philosophy, without even a pre¬ tence of scriptural authority; but when, as often happened, these opinions were formulated into dogmas, such authority was eagerly sought, and was discovered in any Biblical phrase which, being divorced from its context, might seem to assert the dogma in question, or might be pressed into that service INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE. 11 by an allegorical explanation. So much was this the case that Thomas Aquinas (1274) thought it necessary to prescribe, as a rule of interpretation, that the historic fact should be the basis on which to rear spiritual expositions. Savonarola (1498) insisted that the interpreter needed to be filled with the same spirit in which the sacred books were written. The study of Scripture by the laity was discouraged by Hildebrand (1085); it was also forbidden by a local Council held at Toulouse against the Albigenses in 1229, and by another at Tarragona in 1234. But it is a vulgar error to suppose that such prohibition was usual and systematic on the part of the mediaeval clergy. In fact, from the eighth century to the fourteenth, the languages of Western Europe were in course of formation, and vernacular translations, if made, would have become unintelligible within a hundred years; so that the Latin Bible was more generally available than a French, Italian, or English version could have been. As soon as the Western languages assumed a form fit for literary purposes, late in the fourteenth century, translations of the Bible into the vulgar tongues began to be made by Wickliffe (1384) and others. But by this time the moral corruption of the papacy had almost reached its height; it soon became evident that this corrupt ecclesiasticism was endangered by the diffusion of Biblical truth; and an instinct of self-preservation then led the priesthood to assume, almost universally, an attitude of hostility toward the Book, which has continued to this day. In the fifteenth century, the invention of printing rendered possible the general study of Scripture in the vulgar tongue, and, this once accomplished, a reformation would have been inevitable. The Reformation, however, anticipated the printed ver¬ nacular Bible, the Bohemian, Flemish, and Servian versions alone excepted. The testimony of the Waldenses, the Lollards, the Hussites, and the Friends of God had prepared the way for a more intelligent faith than that which generally prevailed in the Roman Church; but before this was suffi¬ ciently developed to assert itself openly, a revolt was provoked by ecclesiastical abuses. These abuses grew out of dogmas based, not on Scripture, but on tradition, or at best, on 12 SOURCES OF RELIGIOUS KNOWLEDGE. apocryphal writings. Opinions, of which the outcome was so manifestly evil, were self-condemned; the traditions on which they rested must be abandoned; the Eeformers appealed from an infallible Church to an infallible Book, and adopted in spirit the maxim long afterwards formulated by Chillingworth, “ The Bible only is the religion of Protestants.” They there¬ fore encouraged the study of Scripture, both in the original tongues and in the vernacular, insisting on the authority of common sense, rather than of tradition, in its interpretation. The unreformed (Roman) communion, on the other hand, held by tradition and the Apocrypha; discountenanced both the originals and the recent translations, affirming the sufficiency and authority of the Latin Yulgate; and claimed for the Church, through its ministers, the sole right of interpretation —hampered, however, with the impossible condition that the interpretation should only be “ according to the unanimous consent of the Fathers.” To the Reformers belongs the honour of generally adopting the common-sense principle that Scripture, like everything else, is to be understood in its plain, literal, and grammatical sense, except where its language is obviously figurative. The root - principle of Protestantism was, in brief, the supreme authority of Scripture, and the right of private judgment in its interpretation. dSTo doubt this principle was not always consistently followed; and certainly the Reformers and their successors often allowed their doctrinal prepossessions to colour their interpretations, of which there are several examples in our own generally excellent “ Authorized Version.” In the seventeenth century, too, the controversies that arose among Protestants fostered a habit of looking at the Bible chiefly as an armoury of proof-texts; a habit that was strengthened by the then prevailing theory of verbal inspira¬ tion. The notion soon gained ground that the Bible was chiefly designed to reveal an elaborate system of doctrines; and under the influence of this idea, Cocceius (1669) laid down the rule, that “ the words of Scripture must everywhere be supposed to signify just as much as they may signify , so as to be consistent throughout the same discourse.” This theo¬ logian, moreover, gave a new impetus to the allegorical method TRADITION AND PHILOSOPHY. 13 of interpretation, by practically ignoring the historic and literary characters of the several sacred books, and treating the entire Bible as a single treatise. The gradual abandon¬ ment of these fancies, under the influence of a more intelligent criticism, has of late discredited the allegorical school, and restored to general acceptance the common-sense method of the Reformers. About the middle of the seventeenth century, attention began to be directed to the multitude of various readings revealed by the comparison of ancient Biblical manuscripts. The first announcement of this fact was greeted with loud cries of heresy and profanity, by which, however, it could neither be altered nor long concealed. From this time the settlement of the actual text of Scripture became a question of prime importance; a question which, so far as the New Testament is concerned, has been approximately settled by the labours of Mill, Wetstein, Griesbach, Scholtz, Hahn, Lachmann, Tischendorf, Tregelles, Westcott, Hort, etc., but which, as regards the Old Testament, is still in process of solution. Since 1743 the disciples of Swedenborg have energetically commended a new instrument for the attainment of divine truth, in the shape of the so-called Science of Correspondences; a method of interpreting mystically certain parts of the Bible, said to have been miraculously revealed to that eccentric genius. The results of this system of interpretation differ widely from the opinions generally prevailing both in the reformed and unreformed Churches. Tradition and Philosophy. Until the Reformation, the canonical Scriptures were never regarded as the only source of religious knowledge. So long as men survived who had listened to the teachings of the apostles, there would be a genuine apostolic tradition available to decide questions of interpretation and ecclesiastical practice. To such traditions Irenseus (202) appeals in the controversy about the proper time to keep Easter, and Tertullian (220) in his book of Prescription against Heretics . In the contro- 14 SOURCES OF RELIGIOUS KNOWLEDGE. versies about the Trinity in the fourth century, at least as much importance was attached to the traditions of the several local churches as to the words of Scripture. Thus, forgetful of the corruptions that invariably creep into traditionary opinions and practices in the absence of an authoritative standard, men came to regard tradition as a source of knowledge co-ordinate with Scripture. To check the excessive growth of tradition, Vincent of Lerins (433) established the famous test of ortho* doxy, as that which was received “ always, everywhere, and by all.” But in an uncritical age it was easy to pretend that the silence of ancient authors about a recent tradition arose from its universal and unquestioned acceptance, and to qualify “ by all ” with the explanation “ except heretics.” Then such traditions were endorsed by Councils, and to dispute them was accounted heresy. It thus came to pass that by the fourteenth century the popular creed was at least as much traditional as scriptural. Hot only Scripture, Tradition, and Decrees of Councils, but also Heathen Philosophy had a large share in the forma¬ tion of Christian opinion. The Alexandrian theologians of the third century, in common with their heathen contem¬ poraries, were largely influenced by the writings of Plato. In the ninth century, John Scotus Erigena, largely imbued with the Platonic spirit, endeavoured to prove that a true theology and a true philosophy are virtually the same, differ¬ ing only in form, as faith and knowledge; and for three hundred years his writings exercised a considerable influence on religious thought. This influence was supplanted in the thirteenth century by the rediscovery of the works of Aristotle, whose philosophy had almost as great a part in forming the systems of the later schoolmen as Scripture itself. The Reformers renounced alike the authority of tradition and philosophy. They unanimously accepted the position subsequently expressed in the Articles of the Anglican Church, that “ Holy Scripture containeth all things necessary to salvation, so that whatever is not read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be required of any man that it should be believed as an article of the faith.” But they TRADITION AND PHILOSOPHY. 15 usually attached great importance to the opinions of the Fathers, and the decrees of the first four General Councils, as confirmatory of their interpretations of Scripture. This holds good of the German and English, more than of the Swiss and French Reformers. The exclusive authority of Scripture, however, was not universally maintained in the Reformed Churches. There are few minds altogether free at once from Mysticism, Tradi¬ tionalism, and Rationalism. As early as 1527, the Lutheran Schwenkfeld asserted that faith does not proceed from ex¬ ternal things, such as the written word, hut from an Internal Revelation. The early Anabaptists laid claim to special revelations that were denied to the Reformers. And in the next century the Quakers insisted on an Inward Illumination, which gives authority to the written word, and makes it intelligible. On the other hand, the controversies between Romanists and Protestants, from 1530 to 1600, gave birth to a great number of creeds and confessions of faith, which, in the later controversies among Protestants themselves, were really (though not avowedly) accredited with much the same authority as the Romanists ascribed to their older traditions. Their influence is not yet extinct. Side by side with this Protestant Mysticism and Dogma¬ tism, a spirit of Rationalism began to prevail. The early Socinians, for example (1550—1620), while they acknow¬ ledge the need of external revelation, and the authority of the New Testament, affirmed that Scripture, rightly understood, could not contain anything either incomprehensible or con¬ trary to reason. Francis Bacon (1626), the founder of the Inductive Philo¬ sophy, sharply distinguished between the spheres of philo¬ sophy and theology, affirming that experience in the former, and revelation in the latter, are the only possible sources of knowledge. But the rapid growth of intellect, when emanci¬ pated from traditional fetters by this new philosophy, speedily brought about the application of its methods to the credentials of revelation. The philosophy of Descartes (1650) had no immediate connection with religion or theology, but its fundamental 16 SOURCES OF RELIGIOUS KNOWLEDGE. principle, that all true knowledge proceeds from doubt, excited the suspicion of orthodox divines, and gave rise to an angry controversy. This was chiefly localized in Holland, where Yoet (1634-76) was conspicuous as the leader of an anti-Cartesian party. In 1657, a Synod at Delft required all candidates for the ministry to repudiate the obnoxious system, which nevertheless, in the end, secured toleration and even popularity. The English Deists, from Herbert of Cherbury (1648) to Chubb (1.747), declared that revelation, inspiration, prophecy, etc., were philosophically impossible; and denied, on critical grounds, their actual existence in the Bible and in history. In Holland, the Pantheist, Spinoza (1677), critically assailed the Christian idea of revelation, attacked the authenticity of the Hebrew Scriptures, and vindicated absolute freethinking. In France, the flippant sceptic Bayle (1706), without directly assailing the facts of revelation, treated them in so frivolous a manner as to invite ridicule, and thus prepared the way for that outburst of sarcastic wit which, provoked by the tyranny, hypocrisy, and licentiousness of the age of Louis XIV., found free expression in the notorious Encyclopaedia. Trans¬ lations and feeble refutations of this mass of antichristian literature gave the first impulse to the flood of rationalistic unbelief which afterwards overwhelmed the churches of Germany. At the beginning of the eighteenth century, Leibnitz (1716), and after him Wolf (1754), endeavoured to demon¬ strate the elements of religion in a philosophic manner, inde¬ pendent of, but in harmony with, the Bible. From their speculations grew numerous systems of Natural Theology, the effect of which on the popular mind, however little intended by their authors, was to encourage the spirit of Bationalism, and to discredit Bevelation as unnecessary. This tendency, even within the Church, was fostered by the subtle influence of avowedly antichristian literature, and especially of the nationalistic philosophy of Germany. But when Kant (1781-94) had proved the insufficiency of Beason to investi¬ gate the Divine,—even though God, Liberty, and Immortality were accepted as “ postulates of practical reason,”—a sharp CHRISTIANITY AND PAGANISM. 17 line of demarcation was drawn between Rationalists and Supernaturalists; the former declining to accept the authority of any supernatural revelation, the latter perceiving the neces¬ sity of such revelation to supplement the deficiencies of reason. It is no part of our design to present a history of Christian Apologetics, or to trace the effects of non-Christian litera¬ ture and philosophy upon the Church of the present day. It must suffice to remark that the prevailing tendency in all Protestant Churches, at present, is to accept the words of Christ , and of the apostles and prophets whom He accredited, as the chief and only reliable source of religious knowledge, beyond what is involved in Kant’s postulates. The authen¬ ticity and authority of these words is understood to depend on the historic accuracy of the documents in which they are embodied, and on their adaptation to man’s moral and spiritual necessities; and it is generally agreed to interpret them by substantially the same rules as are applied to ordinary litera¬ ture, remembering that such interpretation will be more or less successful as the student is more or less imbued with the spirit of the author. II.— Being and Attributes of God. Christianity and Paganism. The Existence, Unity, and Personality of a Supreme Being are doctrines so fundamental to every form of Christianity, that no difference of opinion on such matters could ever be tolerated within the Church. Yet it is scarcely surprising that the refusal of the early Christians to honour the gods of the heathen should cause them to be looked on as Atheists; and that it became necessary, therefore, not only to assert those doctrines, but to prove them. This need was the greater when the Church found itself opposed by philosophic sects and systems in which these fundamental truths were denied. And it was no less important to show that the objects of heathen worship were utterly unworthy of the regard paid to them by their votaries. B 18 BEING AND ATTRIBUTES OF GOD. The methods by which the early Christian apologists assailed idolatry were various, according to their several opinions about the nature of the pagan deities. Some, as the author of the Epistle to Diognetus (ascribed, with some probability, to Dionysius the Areopagite 1 ), refused to see in them anything but the wood, stone, or metal of which the idol was fashioned. Others, especially those who had been subjected to Jewish or Oriental influences, conceived of them as demons or fallen spirits; thus Justin (165). Others again, as Melito (170) and Minucius Felix (235), regarded them as deified kings or heroes. Clement of Alexandria (220) went far toward anticipating modern conclusions on the subject, arranging the objects of heathen worship in seven classes, viz. The Heavenly Bodies, The Fruits of the Earth, Various Aspects of Divine Beneficence, Various Forms of Betribution, Human Passions, Personified Events, and Legen¬ dary Heroes. Most of the apologists laid much stress on the infamous acts of cruelty, lust, and deceit ascribed to the pagan deities, of which a horrible catalogue is given by Arnobius (29 7). And, in contrast with the popular belief, they delighted to adduce the sentiments of ancient Greek poets and philosophers concerning “ the one and universal King, from whom all things, and we ourselves, have sprung.” The Being of God. When the earlier Fathers attempted formal proof of the being of God, it was usually either from the testimony of conscience, as when Justin says, “ The appellation God is not a name, but an opinion implanted in the nature of men of a thing that can hardly be explained; ” or else from the witness of the material universe to its Creator, thus Minucius Felix, “For this reason we believe Him to be God ... for in His works, and in all the movements of the world, we behold His power ever present.” More artificial proofs of the divine existence were unknown at that early period; and, indeed, by such profound thinkers as Clement of Alexandria and Origen (254), its demonstration without the aid of revela- 1 See B. H. Cooper’s Free Church of Ancient Christendom , App. A. THE BEING OF GOD. 19 tion was deemed impossible. Nay, Arnobius thought it almost as impious to attempt to prove the being of God as to deny it. The downfall of paganism in the Roman Empire, early in the fourth century, necessitated a different kind of Christian apologetic from that which had formerly been in vogue. Belief in the old gods had perished, but “the offence of the cross ” was still, with many, as potent as in the apostolic age. There ensued a chaos of conflicting doubts and specu¬ lations, amidst which heathenism, under the forms of Neo- Platonism, etc., made some feeble attempts at self-preservation, but in which the general tendency was towards universal scepticism. It became, thenceforth, a favourite problem to demonstrate philosophically the existence of the Most High; not, however, without protest from some illustrious theologians, as Athanasius (373) and Gregory Nazianzen (391), to whom such demonstrations appeared irreverent. Diodorus of Tarsus (about 384) argued that as every¬ thing in the universe is subject to change, and change itself must have had a beginning, there must have been before that beginning a self-existent Author of change. This argument was afterwards more fully developed by John Damascene (about 750). Augustine (430) propounded a very abstruse metaphysical proof of the being of God, from the existence of general ideas. Boethius (524) suggested that the idea of imperfec¬ tion points directly to a perfection which must needs be realized in God. The arguments of Augustine and Boethius were established with philosophic precision by Anselm of Canterbury (1109); they were the delight of the mediaeval Schoolmen, and were yet further elaborated by Descartes (16 5 0). Arguments of a more practical character were also adduced by the great scholastic theologians. That of Hugh of St. Victor (1141) is, in brief, as follows: “Every man is aware that there was a time when his own reason did not exist, it therefore had a beginning; and, seeing that it is spiritual, and so altogether unlike his bodily nature, it could not have originated in that nature, but must have had an external Author. But no creature can create; there must be, there- 20 BEING AND ATTRIBUTES OF GCD. fore, an Independent and Eternal Being as First Cause.” Abelard (1142) found evidence of a Supreme Euler in the dictates of conscience, an argument which was thus improved by Eaymond of Sabunde (1350): “ Man feels himself to be accountable; there must therefore be One superior to himself, able to reward and punish; else the nature of man would be a contradiction.” Yet, even among the Schoolmen, there were some who held that these arguments, however practically sufficient, did not amount to absolute demonstration. Such were Duns Scotus (1308) and Ockham (1327). The revival of classical learning in the fifteenth century was followed by a contemptuous rejection of the entire scholastic philosophy; and, in Italy at least, by a tremen¬ dous outbreak of real, though generally unavowed, Atheism. Savonarola (1498) therefore deemed it necessary to prove the existence of God from the universal consent of mankind. This method was also employed by Grotius (1645). The argument from design in nature seems to have been first insisted upon by Boyle (1691); it was popularized by Bay (1705), further elaborated by Derham (1714), and perfected by Paley (1794). Meanwhile, it was felt that no effort to establish a strictly philosophical proof of the being of God had hitherto been quite satisfactory. In 1704, however, Samuel Clarke advanced his celebrated a priori argument, which, if not absolutely perfect, has at least never been refuted. It may be summarized as follows:—“Whatever is must either have a cause or be self-existent. The world as it now is cannot, for several reasons, be deemed self-existent; it must there¬ fore have a cause. This cause may be either self-existent or derived; but if the latter, we are simply led back step by step till at length we reach a cause that is underived and self-existent. Extent and duration cannot be thought of as other than infinite; but these are mere properties which must belong to a commensurate, i.e. an infinite and self- existent substance. Such a substance can only be found in the Ultimate Cause of all things, whose immensity and eter¬ nity are thus demonstrated. A similar argument applies to ITis wisdom, freedom, goodness, etc.” UNITY OF GOD. 21 After the outbreak of Pantheism, Materialism, and undis¬ guised Atheism in the latter half of the eighteenth century, Kant (1804) undertook to expose the weakness of all meta¬ physical proofs of the divine existence. He attached more importance to the argument from design; an argument, the value of which is increasingly shown by the persistent efforts of recent materialists, not to refute, but to evade it, in some cases even by denying the reality of causation! Within the present century, too, Schleiermacher (1834), Coleridge (1834), etc., have striven to prove the being of God from what they call “ the feeling of absolute and universal dependence.” In our own day a new school of scientific apologists has been called into being, to meet the assertions of atheistic evolu¬ tionists ; this task they have successfully accomplished, by showing the failure of evolution to account for the origin of life. At present it seems to be generally allowed, on the one hand, that the divine existence is a doctrine which, from its very nature, does not admit of logical proof; and, on the other, that the cumulative force of the evidence is such as can scarcely be resisted, unless by mental or moral obliquity. Unity of God, The Christian conception of God was so radically different from that of the pagan divinities, that the early apologists shrank from any kind of argument which might suggest that He was one of the crowd, competing for exclusive recogni¬ tion. They usually preferred appealing to the primaeval tradition of one God, preserved by the ancient poets; thus Justin (165). Sometimes they argued the impossibility of conceiving more than one God, from the relations of space; so Athenagoras (177). At other times they insisted on the hopelessness of permanent agreement between joint holders of divine power, urging the harmony of the universe as proof that its Euler is one; see Minucius Felix (230). But there were two theories abroad in the early Christian ages, both distinctly hostile to the Christian doctrine of Divine Unity. These were Gnosticism and Manichseism, both 22 BEING AND ATTRIBUTES OF GOD. of them attempts to solve, in connection with, a theory of the world, that problem which has ever been the crux of philo¬ sophers, the Origin of Evil. Both were characterized by the conviction that the old world had run its course, and that the time was come when it should be renovated; and both sought to accomplish this end by blending antiquated heathen philo¬ sophy with some Christian elements. Gnosticism (the creed or system of them that know) is difficult to define; it is rather a general term for a number of systems, in which heathen theories about the origin of the world are associated with the Christian idea of salvation. More than twenty Gnostic sects are described, some ascetic, some grossly licentious. They mostly agree in regarding matter as essentially evil, and in ascribing its origin or control to a World-maker ( Demiurgos , i.e. Artificer ), distinct from the supreme God. This supreme God they generally regarded as unknowable; but they asserted that from Him, or It, pro¬ ceeded a number (varying in different systems) of AEons cr Emanations. One of these was the World-maker, who was usually regarded as malevolent, and hostile to the supreme God, and was frequently identified with the God of the Jews. Another was Christ, who was said to have attached Himself to the man Jesus, to restore the broken harmony of the universe. The various sects allegorized various parts of the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures, and generally pretended that Jesus had taught their peculiar “gnosis.” Some allusions to incipient Gnosticism are to be found in the New Testament; but the evil only reached its full development towards the middle of the second century, when it spread over Egypt, Syria, Asia Minor, Greece, and Rome. The Fathers who chiefly combated these vagaries of “ science, falsely so called,” were Irenseus (202), Tertullian (220), and Hip- polytus (236). They showed that the World-maker, the God of the Jews, and the Father of Christ were alike supreme, and that two or more supreme beings could not co-exist. They gave modest and intelligible explanations of those portions of Scripture which the heretics quoted in support of their opinions, and invited the decision of common sense which was most like truth. They also exposed the licentious UNITY OF GOD. 23 practices of so?ne of the Gnostic sects, and sometimes appealed to the uniform teaching of the Church. By the fifth century, if not earlier, Gnosticism had disappeared; hut its influence long survived in the tenets of obscure sects, some of which still exist in Bussia and the East. Manicmism was an attempt to combine Christianity with Parseeism, or the doctrine of Two Eternal Principles, which had long been the prevailing religious philosophy of the East. Its author was Mani, a Persian, who about 270 gave himself out for the Paraclete promised by our Lord in John xiv. 16. He was put to death by Berham, king of Persia, in 277; but his system spread almost everywhere, and long con¬ tinued to flourish in spite of persecution both by heathen and Christian rulers. It seems to have absorbed or assimi¬ lated much of the Gnosticism of the day, so that later writers confounded the two heresies. The Manichsean doctrine is, briefly, as follows: The Good and Evil Principles, i.e. God and Satan, co-existed, and were mutually opposed from all eternity. God, by the instru¬ mentality of “ the Mother of Life,” made “ the Ideal Man” who entered into warfare with Satan, but was defeated and partly swallowed up. God caused “ the Living Spirit ” to form, from this mixture, the visible world, and took up what remained of the Ideal Man to the sun, whence It should superintend the strife in which each man’s “ Soul of light ” contends against the kingdom of darkness. At length the Ideal Man descended, in a phantom body, as Christ, to liberate the souls of light by His teaching. This teaching had been misunderstood by the apostles, and restored by Mani. The sect included an inner circle, “the perfect,” who abjured marriage, and practised strict asceticism. The earliest formal opponent of Manichseism was Archelaus of Cascara, who held a viva voce debate with Mani himself, insisting chiefly on the harmony that prevails between the body of man, which Mani ascribed to the Evil Principle, and the soul, of which he admitted the Good God to be the author. This heresy was also refuted by Titus of Bostra (362), Gregory of Hyssa (395), and Augustine (430), who in early life had held the opinions of the sect. Augustine’s 24 BEING AND ATTRIBUTES OF GOD. later philosophy seems to have been, in some respects, uncon¬ sciously influenced by his early Manichseism, which may thus, through the excessive regard paid to him by the Reformers, have indirectly affected much of the Protestant theology. However this be, it is certain that sects whose opinions were strongly tinctured with Manichseism continued far down into the Middle Ages. Such were the Priscillianists in Spain (fourth to sixth century), the Paulicians in Asia Minor, etc. (seventh to tenth century), the Bos Homes in France, and Gazari in Italy (eleventh century), and the Bogo¬ miles in Bulgaria (twelfth century). Feeble attempts to combine heathen polytheism with some Christian elements led to the formation, in the fourth and fifth centuries, of short-lived sects of Messalians or Euchetes, Satanians, Euphemites, Ccelicolse, Hypsistarians, etc. The incongruity of their tenets led to their speedy dissolution; and from the fifth century there has been little occasion argumentatively to maintain the divine unity, except in systematic theologies, and in direct appeals to the heathen. Nature of God. Arguments in proof of the being and unity of God led inevitably to speculations concerning His nature. The practical piety of simple souls might shrink from such inquiries, as when the martyr Attalus (about 177) declared that “ God has not a name, as men have; ” but the very idea of revelation involved the possibility of some knowledge on the subject. Jesus had distinctly taught, and the Church from the beginning had steadily held, that “ God is a Spirit; ” but much controversy arose, age after age, from the difficulty of conceiving spiritual existence apart from the most refined material substance. This difficulty was less felt by the Jews, whose law forbade visible representations of God; by some Oriental peoples, whose deities had been vague personifica¬ tions of natural forces; and by those whom the higher Greek philosophy had familiarized with the idea of a supreme mind, distinct from and superior to the gods. But it was no easy task to impart the notion of pure spirit to the rude NATURE OF GOD. 25 multitude, with whom the deities were simply exaggerated men and women, capable of representation by the sculptor’s art. Accordingly, some of the Fathers ascribed to God a bodily form. The earliest of them who is charged with this opinion is Melito of Sardis (170), but the fragments of his works do not support the assertion. Tertullian (220) was undoubtedly of this mind; it w T as an essential part of his peculiar philo¬ sophy. “ All that exists,” he says, “ is a body of its own kind; ” and elsewhere, “ Who will deny that God is a body, although God is a Spirit, for Spirit has a body of its own kind, in its own form.” He endeavours to guard this doctrine against abuse by saying, “We read, indeed, of God’s right hand, and eyes, and feet; but these must not be compared with those of men, because they are associated in the same name.” A grosser Anthropomorphism occurs in the Clemen¬ tine Homilies (about 215): “He has shape, and He has every limb primarily and solely for beauty’s sake, and not for use. . . . He moulded man in His own shape.” Others of the Fathers vehemently protested against these representations. Irenaeus (202) was so fearful of sanctioning an unworthy conception of God, that he could barely tolerate the application to Him of the terms “ Light ” and “ Under¬ standing.” Clement of Alexandria (220), more familiar with Plato than most of his Christian contemporaries, wrote, “Let no one imagine that hands and feet, and mouth and eyes, and going out and coming in, and resentment and threats, are said by the Hebrews to be attributes of God. . . . God is all ear and all eye, if we may be permitted so to speak.” Novatian (251) is still more emphatic: “The divine agencies are exhibited by means of members; it is not the appearance of God or the bodily lineaments that are described. . . . He is all eye, because He all sees; and all ear, because He all hears; all hand, because He all works; and all foot, because He all is everywhere.” And Origen (254) claims to have “ refuted every notion that might suggest an idea that God is in any degree corporeal.” Side by side with the decline of belief in the gods, we may trace the growth of a more purely spiritual concep- 26 BEING AND ATTRIBUTES OF GOD. tion of God. Accordingly, from about the fourth century Anthropomorphism was generally deemed heretical. Yet the controversies that ensued about the Trinity, and about the Person of Christ, often led orthodox writers to apply to God language which properly refers to the entire person of Christ, or even solely to His humanity. Hence often strange con¬ fusion of thought, as when an anonymous writer of the fifth century says, “ Thy hands have made me and fashioned me, even those hands which for me were nailed to the cross ! ” To guard against this tendency some of the later Fathers insisted on what they thought to be metaphysically correct terms to describe the Godhead. Athanasius (373) calls Him “ beyond being, superexistent; ” Augustine (430) thought the word “ essence ” preferable to “ substance,” in speaking of God; and Gregory the Great (604) would even have replaced the Latin word for God by the equivalent of “ I Am.” When the Arian Eunomius (about 358) declared that “ Christ had opened unto us a way to the perfect knowledge of God,” so that “ we may know as much of the nature of God as the Creator Himself,” the statement was regarded as impious. But with the rise of Scholasticism in the Middle Ages, the endeavour “ by searching to find out God ” began to be pursued with ever-increasing eagerness. The controversies of the Schoolmen about entity and quiddity are totally un¬ intelligible to ordinary mortals, but seem to have been very important to those who indulged in them. A few of their more striking utterances may be of interest. John Damascene (750) said, “ God is altogether above knowledge and above being; ” a statement closely resembling that of Athanasius. Erigena (850) boldly asserted that “God does not know what He Himself is I ” Anselm (1109), more modestly, that “ God alone knows His own nature.” “ If anything is spoken rela¬ tively of the Supreme Nature, it is not significant of His substance.” Albertus Magnus (1257) deemed it possible for creatures “ to attain to God by the intellect, but not to com¬ prehend Him.” Aquinas (1274) taught that man cannot know God as He is in Himself, but may know what He is to His creatures. Duns Scotus (1308) taught the contrary. NATURE OF GOD. 27 After long controversy it was agreed, in the jargon of the day, that “man may know the quiddity of God, but cannot know* Him quidditatively; ” which seems to mean, in plain English, something like this, “We may, in a certain sense, know what God is; but our knowledge cannot be adequate, we cannot know Him as He is,” see Cajetan (1524). Anthropomorphism being finally discredited, there grew up an opposite tendency, towards Pantheism. So essentially pantheistic are several of the Eastern systems of philosophy, that it is somewhat surprising how little of this element appears in the early Christian and semi-Christian sects. The speculations of Erigena (850) are decidedly pantheistic in their tendency; but they had little effect on the popular intelligence, until developed by Amalric of Bema (1204), a professor at Paris, and David of Dinant, his disciple. These took the decided step of identifying the universe itself with God; and so prepared the way for the strange outbreak of pantheistic sects—the “Sect of the Holy Ghost” in France, the “ Brethren of the Free Spirit ” in Germany—which soon afterwards rose in opposition to the prevailing ecclesiasticism. From speculative Pantheism to practical Atheism the transi¬ tion is not difficult. Caesar of Heisterbach (1222) argued that “as he who loves is in God, whatsoever is done in love, though it be theft or fornication, is no sin ! ” The morals of the sects just named, and of their offshoots, Adamites, Turlupins, Men of Understanding, etc., were worthy of such a doctrine. Some of the Mystics, who kept clear of these extrava¬ gances, approached very near to Pantheism. Thus Eckhart (1329) said, “ God has the nature of all creatures in Him. . . . After the creation God was not God in Himself, but He was God only in His creatures.” Against such expres¬ sions not only the great Schoolmen, like Albert the Great and Aquinas, but the more sober Mystics, such as Suso and Tauler, protested. Yet these laid firm hold of the fact that God is “not far from every one of us.” Tauler (1361) said, “ God is nearer to me than I am to myself.” Another of the same school called God “ a circle, whose centre is every¬ where, and His circumference nowhere.” Wessel (1489) 28 BEING AND ATTRIBUTES OF GOD. wrote, " God alone exists; all other things are what they are through Him.” In the Greek Church a curious controversy arose during the fourteenth century. Certain monks of Athos, cultivating the contemplative state, fancied they saw a bright light surrounding them. This they identified with the Uncreated Light which surrounded Christ at the Transfiguration; and it was gravely debated whether or not this Light was God Himself! Several Councils were held on the subject at Constantinople; at last, in 1351, the “ Hesychiasts ”—as these visionaries were called—were pronounced heretical. Since the Eeformation there has been little dispute within the Church about the divine nature. Even Deists, who reject the authority and deny the fact of revelation, generally agree with the orthodox Fathers and Schoolmen; regarding God (in contradistinction alike from Anthropomorphism and Pan¬ theism) as an Immaterial Essence, Self-existent, Self-conscious, the Author of the Universe, therefore distinct from it, and incapable of being fully comprehended by any created mind. Some sects, however, as the Libertines of Geneva and the Anabaptists of Munster (1535), likewise the English Planters (1640), held decidedly pantheistic opinions. Servetus also (1553), and some Protestant Mystics, as Bohme (1624), in¬ dulged in speculations that savoured strongly of Pantheism. Moreover, a complete pantheistic system was developed by the Jewish philosopher Spinoza (1677), who main¬ tained “ that God is nothing but the universe, which thinks in man, feels in animals, vegetates in plants, is inanimate in the earth; that there is but one substance variously modified, infinite in every sense; and that the existence of beings is necessary and eternal! ” It is need¬ less to say that this philosophy found little acceptance within the Church. It has had, nevertheless, an undeniable influ¬ ence on some recent phases of Christian thought; so that we hear, in the present generation, of “ Christian Pantheists,” and of “ the divine totality of being.” Moreover, Pantheism is perhaps the most formidable element—because less easily disposed of than a gross materialism—in those antichristian speculations with which, of late years, the Church has had to ATTRIBUTES OF GOD. 29 contend. It is scarcely necessary to mention, as an opposite extreme, the crude and gross Anthropomorphism of the petty sect of Muggletonians, about 1630, or of the more modern sect of “ Latter-day Saints.” Attributes of God. From the very first there entered into the Christian concep¬ tion of God the natural attributes of Immensity, Eternity, Omnipresence, Omniscience, and Omnipotence, together with the moral attributes of Infinite Wisdom, Benevolence, Justice, etc. All these are distinctly affirmed in the Scriptures both of the Old and Hew Testament, and any opinion at variance with their full recognition was promptly rejected. But there was some difference in the manner in which these divine attributes were regarded by various schools of theologians. The earlier Fathers found it necessary to vindicate the natural attributes of the one God against the heathen, whose ideas on the subject were cramped by the habit of adoring very finite deities. Thus, concerning the Divine Omnipresence and Immensity, Theophilus of Antioch (180) says, “It is the attribute of God not only to be everywhere present, but also to see all things and to hear all. ... For God is not contained, but is Himself the Place of all ” [other copies read “ His own place”]. Clement of Alexandria (220) says, “God is not in darkness, or in a place, but above both place and time, and the properties of things that are; therefore neither does He ever dwell in a part, either as containing or contained, either by any limitation or division.” Origen (254) thought of God as rather “ filling and holding together the world with the plenitude of His power” than with His actual presence. But Cyprian (258) expressly asserts that “ the whole of Him is everywhere diffused.” Augustine (430) has this remarkable statement: “ God is not anywhere, for whatever is anywhere is contained in a place, whatever is contained in a place is a body. He is not, then, anywhere; and yet because He is, and is not in a place, it is rather the case that all things are in Him than that He is anywhere.” As to the Omniscience of God, Justin (165) connects it 30 BEING AND ATTRIBUTES OF GOD. with His Omnipresence: “For the ineffable Father and Lord of all neither arrives anywhere, nor walks, nor sits down, nor rises up, but remains in His own place, wherever that is; quick to behold and quick to hear, not with eyes or ears, but with an indescribable power; and He sees all things and knows all things, and none of us escapes Him.” Clement of Alexandria says, “ God knows all things; not only those that are, but those that shall be . . . seeing the soul naked within; and He bas from eternity the idea of each thing particularly. ... In one glance He views all things together, and each by itself.” Origen has been thought to imply some limitation of the Divine Omniscience, when he asks, " Can God comprehend all things ? It were impious to say that He cannot; but if He can, they must have a beginning and an end, for what has no beginning cannot be comprehended.” Augustine views the matter differently : “ The world could not be known to us unless it were; but if it were not known to God, it could not be.” The same love of wire-drawn speculation which suggested to Origen a metaphysical limitation of God’s knowledge suggested a similar limitation of His power. “We must say that the power of God is finite ... for if the divine power be infinite, it must needs be able even to understand itself; but that which is naturally illimitable is incapable of being comprehended.” Elsewhere he is more practical: “ With God all things are possible; we know how to understand the word all, as not referring to things non-existent or inconceivable. But God cannot do what is disgraceful, for then He would cease to be God.” Of the Eternity of God Augustine has a sublime concep¬ tion. “ There is not, in the divine life, either past or future, but only present, because it is eternal. For to have been and to be about to be is not eternal.” The moral attributes held a prominent place in the theology of the Fathers, and with good reason, considering the immoral character of the gods whose worship was to be supplanted. Clement of Alexandria, in particular, delights to dwell on the compassion and love of God. “ In His ineffable essence He is Father, in His compassion to us He became ATTRIBUTES OF GOD. 31 Mother; the Father by loving became feminine; the great proof of this is the One whom He begat of Himself, and the fruit brought forth by love is love.” Even penal inflictions Clement resolves into manifestations of divine love. “ He who loves anything wishes to do it good. . . . How, then, if the Lord loves man and is good, is He angry and punishes ? . . . This mode of treatment is advantageous to the right training of children, indeed a necessary help. For many of the passions are cured by punishments. . . . Eeproof is the surgery of the passions of the soul.” The reconciliation of punitive justice with divine good¬ ness was a difficulty with the Gnostics; some of whom, as Marcion, offered a plausible solution by discriminating between the just and the good God. Against these Irenseus (202) argues, “If the Father does not exercise judgment, He consents to all those actions that take place. But on as many as by their own choice depart from God He inflicts that separation which they have chosen. God does not punish them immediately of Himself, but punishment falls on them because they are destitute of all that is good.” Tertullian (220) deals with other aspects of the question. “From the first the Creator was good, and also just; and both His attributes advanced together. . . . But when evil broke out, and God’s goodness began to have an adversary to contend against, His justice acquired another function—that of directing His goodness according to men’s application for it.” And again, “ He owes the infliction of chastisement to whatever He promulgates, for the vindication of His authority and the maintenance of submission.” Origen goes farther, proving that justice is a necessary part of goodness; his universalism, however (of which more hereafter), compels him to argue that all penal inflictions are intended for reformation. Lactantius (320) devotes a whole treatise to the anger of God, proving that it is not inconsistent with benevolence; he says, “ If God did not hate evil, He could not love good.” Augustine writes, “ The just punishment of sin shows even more of the Lord’s clemency than of His severity . . . and the beauty of justice is in accord with the grace of benignity, in that when we are deceived by the sweetness BEING AND ATTRIBUTES OF GOD. o o oJ of inferior good we are tauglit by the bitterness of punish¬ ment.” The task of reconciling the omniscience and sovereignty of God with human liberty was undertaken by several of the Fathers. Chrysostom (398) solved the problem by ascribing to God an antecedent and a subsequent will; according to the former all creatures should be happy, according to the latter sinners must be punished. Augustine, too, in his earlier writings contributed to the discussion; but the exigencies of his controversy with Pelagius led him to deny human liberty altogether, and to resolve the divine fore¬ knowledge into absolute predestination. The interminable discussions of the Middle Ages threw little real light on the divine attributes. John Damascene (750) says, “This only can be comprehended of Him, His infinitude and incomprehensibility.” The reverential caution of this Father was generally imitated by the later Greek divines. In the West it was quite otherwise. The intellectual torpor of the tenth century, “ The Dark Age,” was followed by that marvellous awaking which gave birth to the Scholastic Philosophy. The Schoolmen found an intense delight in investigating the Unsearchable. Their object was, without reference to the authority of Scripture, and by pure reason, to demonstrate the doctrines of Christianity; to arrange them into a compact system; and to combat all possible objections raised by scepticism. From the latter half of the eleventh century they were divided into the opposing [philosophical] sects of Bealists and Nominalists, according as they supposed “ Universals,” i.e. the general conceptions of things, really to exist or not to exist apart from the mere thinking of man. Their opinions on this knotty question greatly influenced their speculations about the divine attributes. But the realist Anselm (1109) and the nominalist Abelard (1142) agreed with the proposition laid down by Augustine, that the attributes of God form one whole, and are so identical with His Essence that they cannot be regarded either as manifold or as merely attached to Him. Abelard says, “ Wisdom is not in God . . . His wisdom is God Himself.” ATTRIBUTES OF GOD. 33 Hugh of St. Victor (1141) discussed the unity of God, which he regarded as involving immutability. He also speculated about the manner of the divine omnipresence: “ God is substantially and really in every creature and nature without being defined, and in every place without being circumscribed.” Alexander Hales (1230) agreed with this; he, however, thought that God was not in all things in the same manner, but variously, “by His essence, by His presence, and by His power.” Aquinas (1274) is more explicit: “God is in all things, not as part of their essence, nor as an accident, but as he who does anything is in what he does. He fills every place, not as a body, but in that He everywhere gives being to those things which fill all places. His substance is present in all things as the cause of being.” The manner of God’s omniscience was likewise debated. Hugh of St. Victor expressed his views as follows: “ All things that were created by God in time existed in Him from eternity , and were known to Him because they existed in Him.” This is substantially Plato’s theory of archetypal ideas, and affords an intelligible illustration of the root- principle of scholastic realism. Bonaventura (1256) says: “ God knows all things as if present, and at once, perfectly also, and immutably. . . . He knows things temporal eternally, things changeable unchangeably, things contingent infallibly, things created uncreatedly, things other than Himself He knows in and by Himself.” About the power of God the Schoolmen indulged in the wildest speculations. They debated whether God could lie ? Whether He could make undone that which was done, e.g. change a harlot into a virgin ? and questions even more outrageous and indecent! Even the love of God did not escape their irreverent discussions. It was sometimes repre¬ sented as at variance with His justice and omnipotence, and needing to be reconciled. They inquired whether He loved angels or men the most ? Whether His love toward His creatures was of the same kind with His love toward Him¬ self, etc. Erasmus (1536) satirized these impertinences in his Praise of Folly ; and Luther (1546) wittily rebuked them when, being asked where God was before the creation, he c 34 BEING AND ATTRIBUTES OF GOD. replied, “ In tlie bircli wood, cutting rods to chastise pre¬ sumptuous inquirers.” The Eeformation put an end to these extravagances. Nevertheless, Protestant writers of the sixteenth and following centuries have devoted much attention to systematic theology, and in their treatises have elaborately defined the divine attributes; asserting them, indeed, on the authority of Scrip¬ ture, but adopting, in general, the scholastic method of demonstration. The Lutheran Hollaz (1713) affords a fair example of their usual mode of treating the subject: “ The divine attributes are distinguished from each other, and from the Divine Essence, not merely by name, nor yet in reality, but formally, according to our method of conceiving, and not without a certain ground of distinction.” It has been necessary, now and again, to defend the divine attributes against antichristian speculations ; and debates have arisen within the Church about the harmony of divine justice and mercy in connection with the pardon of sin, and about the old difficulty of reconciling divine foreknowledge with human freedom. This last question has been very variously treated. The Jesuits, following Molina (1588), supposed a peculiar kind of knowledge, 1 intermediate between predestination and observation, whereby God foresees the voluntary actions of free creatures. The Socinians denied God’s absolute foreknowledge of human actions ; and some of them, as Crell (1633), went so far as to limit His natural attributes of eternity and immensity. The Calvinists, on the other hand, followed Augustine in denying the freedom of the will; and were so fearful of degrading the conception of God to a mere exaggerated humanity, that they have sometimes declared Him to be “without passions” (see Anglican Articles, 1553, and Westminster Confession, 1647). On the whole, the discussions of the last three hundred years on the divine attributes have added very little, if anything, to the doctrine of the early Fathers. 1 “ Scientia media.” DIVINE PLURALITY IN UNITY. 35 III. —The Trinity, Divine, Plurality in Unity. Notwithstanding the divine unity is witnessed alike by primseval tradition, by revelation, and by the ripest thought of the greatest philosophers, there yet seems to be in the human mind an instinctive disposition to conceive of some kind of divine plurality. This disposition appears not only in heathen Polytheism and in the vagaries of Gnosticism, but in some of the most refined forms of philosophic speculation. All these conceptions, however, fail to harmonize the two seemingly contradictory notions of unity and plurality; and it may be fairly claimed that the difficulty has never been met except by the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. So essential has this doctrine appeared to the orthodox. Christianity of sixteen centuries, that one is startled at being reminded that it is nowhere formally laid down in Scripture. In the baptismal formula, in the apostolic benediction, and in one or two other places less pointedly, the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are mentioned as co-ordinate ; but the only dogmatic assertion on the subject (1 John v. 7) is well known to be interpolated. Of the Fathers, the first who certainly uses the word “ Trinity ” in the orthodox sense is Tertullian (190-220). There is, indeed, a well-known passage in Theophilus (180) w r here a Divine Trinity is mentioned, but the exact meaning is doubtful. But though the doctrine is not formulated in the New Testament, the facts of which it is a convenient expression are clearly there asserted. Not only so, even before the advent of Christ these facts were being felt after both by Jew and Gentile. No great importance is to be assigned to triplets of gods that appear in several mythologies; the only one of them which presents any considerable analogy to the Christian doctrine is the Indian triad of Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva; and this is rather a figure of divine energy in its various aspects, as creator, preserver, and destroyer. But as soon as men began to think of God as a Being purely spiritual, it was necessary to think also of a Medium by 36 THE TRINITY. which He creates and governs the world, and manifests Him¬ self in it. Some thought of this Medium as distinct from, others as subsisting within, the Divine Essence; and thus, even before the Christian era, we perceive two germs of thought, tending respectively towards Arianism and Trini- tarianism. Doctrine of the Word. It is a singular fact that in ancient Indian legends Brahma is represented as creating the world by a mystic word, “ Om ! ” In the system of the Parsees, too (ascribed to the semi- mythical Zoroaster), the good God Ahuramazda is evolved out of Absolute Being by a word, “Honover.” And Plato imagined the Creative Intelligence {Nous) to stand in a relation towards God somewhat analogous to that which St. John assigns to the Word {Logos). In several places of the Old Testament the Word of God is poetically personified, see Ps. cxlvii. 15, Isa. lv. 11 ; and the Divine Wisdom still more strikingly in Prov. viii. To these personifications a more definite form was given in the Apocryphal Books; see especially Ecclus. i. 4-10, xxiv. 1-22; Wisd. vii. 22—viii. 4, xviii. 15. In the Targums—the earliest of which dates at least a generation before Christ—“ The Word of the Lord” is constantly spoken of as a person; and though, no doubt, it is often merely equivalent to “ The Lord Himself,” there are many cases in which it cannot be so understood. Moreover, the phrase, when most decidedly personal, is used as denoting the medium whereby God com¬ municates with men. The way was thus prepared for the speculations of Philo, a contemporary of our Lord, who teaches a doctrine wonderfully like that of the beloved disciple. He speaks of the Word {Logos) as God; as “a second God,” as “the only-begotten Son, first-begotten, image, shadow, glory, wisdom, etc., of God; ” as the Mediator by whom the revelations of God were brought about, and by whose instrumentality the appearances of God became possible. Yet he regarded this Word of God as holding much the same relation to the Supreme Intellect as speech does to the human; and it is by no means certain that he meant to DOCTRINE OF THE WORD. 37 ascribe to it a distinct personality. In the Book of Enoch, however, such personality is plainly ascribed to a “ Son of Man,” called also “ the Chosen One and the Hidden One,” of whom it is said that “ before the sun was created His name was called upon in the presence of the Lord of Spirits. . . . All who dwell on earth will fall down and worship before Him.” This book was probably written a few years before the birth of Jesus; and though it seems to contain later interpolations, they are of Jewish, not Christian origin. Coming now to the Gospel narratives ; it is certain, if these are in any degree trustworthy, that Jesus Christ claimed to hold an entirely unique relation toward God. Hot only did He use language which in an ordinary man would be quite inconsistent with exemplary goodness,—as when He asserted His own power to forgive sins, and claimed to be Lord of the Sabbath,—which His hearers believed to have been ordained by God; but, when solemnly adjured by the highest civil authorities, He avowed Himself “ The Son of God ” in so peculiar a sense as to leave them no alternative but either to admit His claims or adjudge Him guilty of blas¬ phemy. These claims were fully recognised by His most intimate associates ; in particular by John, who, adopting in substance the same doctrine of the Logos which had been hinted in the Targums and speculatively developed by Philo, identified this Logos with the superhuman element in the person of Jesus. The basis of Johns theology is, “The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us.” Though the word “ Logos ” is not used by Paul in the same sense as by John, he nevertheless repeatedly asserts the pre¬ existence of Christ, and ascribes to Him divine acts and attributes, especially in Col. i. 15-17, ii. 9. The same doctrine is clearly taught by the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews; and the other Hew Testament writers, though less dogmatic than Paul and John, all use language wdiicli agrees perfectly with their teaching, and cannot without violence be reconciled with the denial of it. The doctrine of the Word, in the Hew Testament, is treated in a thoroughly practical manner. Alike in His words and in His acts Christ is the revealer, nay, the manifestation of 38 THE TRINITY. God. But in tlie age following that of the apostles, the practical treatment of the doctrine gave place to unlimited speculation. The Gnostics represented the Word, or “the Christ from above,” as one of the many AEons or Emanations from the Supreme God. Opposed to them were the Ebionites, a Jewish sect, who acknowledged Jesus as the expected Messiah, but regarded Him as a mere man, and rejected the doctrine of the Word altogether. Still, neither Gnostics nor Ebionites can be fairly accounted Christians; at most they occupied a sort of borderland, verging on heathenism and Judaism respectively. But about 170 there sprang up a sect or school within the Church, to whom, from their rejection of the doctrine of the Word, the name “ Alogians” was applied. They acknowledged that Jesus was preternaturally conceived by the Holy Ghost, and born of the Virgin Mary. But they denied that there was anything superhuman in His nature, until, at His baptism, a certain divine element entered into Him, by virtue of which He then—or, according to others, only at His resur¬ rection—was made God. This sect originated in Asia Minor, and gained some adherents at Borne, where its leaders, Theodotus and Artemon, were excommunicated about the end of the second century. The same judgment was passed on Paul of Samosata, who, about 260, propounded a similar heresy at Antioch. Monarchianism and Subordination. The Logos being identified with the superhuman element in the person of Christ, it was difficult to maintain Its essential deity and distinct personality, without seeming thereby to assert the existence of two Gods. To avoid this difficulty the Monarchian or Patripassian theory was advanced. Its chief advocates were Praxeas at Borne, Noetus of Smyrna, and Beryllus of Bostra in Arabia (between 190 and 240). The opinions of these speculators varied somewhat in detail, but they agreed in acknowledging the true Godhead of Jesus Christ, while they rejected the personal distinction between the Father and the Word. It was thus implied that the MONARCHIANISM AND SUBORDINATION. 39 passion of Christ was actually endured by God the Father. These views were vigorously combated, from various points of view, by Tertullian, Hippolytus, Callistus, and Origen; but, though denounced as heterodox, their supporters were not always excluded from the Church. The prevailing opinion, down to the end of the second century, seems to have been that the Word existed from eternity within the Divine Essence, as a thought within the mind ; and that Its personal distinction from the Father was not necessary and eternal, hut originated in a free act on the part of God, and was somehow connected with the creation of the world. There was thus a tendency to subordinate the Word to the Father, as if the expression, “ My Father is greater than I,” referred to Christ’s state of existence before His incarnation. A few extracts may render this more intelligible. Justin (165) writes: “ To the Father of all, who is unbegotten, no name is given ; and His Son, who alone is properly called Son, the Word, who also was with Him and was begotten before the works, when at first He created and arranged all things by Him, is called Christ.” And elsewhere, “ This power was begotten from the Father by His power and will, but not by severance, as if the essence of the Father were divided.” And he illustrates his meaning by the case of one fire kindled from another. Tatian (166) uses the same illus¬ tration, and says, “ With God, by Word-power, the Word who was in Him subsists, and by His simple will the Word springs forth; and the Word, not coming forth in vain, becomes the first-begotten work of the Father. Him we know to be the beginning of the world. But He came into being by partici¬ pation, not by severance.” Athenagoras (177) writes: “The Son of God is the Word of the Father, in idea and in opera¬ tion ; for by Him and through Him were all things made, the Father and the Son being one. For from the beginning God, who is the Eternal Mind, had the Word in Himself.” Theo- pliilus (181) developes the same idea more fully: “God, having His own Word inwardly within His own bowels (!), begat Him, emitting Him along with His own wisdom before all things. He had this Word as a helper in the things that 40 THE TRINITY. were created by Him. . . . The Word . . . always exists, residing in the heart of God; but when God wished to make all that He had determined upon, He begat this unuttered Word, the First-born of all creation, not Himself being emptied of the Word, but having begotten the Word and always con¬ versing with the Word.” Irenseus (202) strongly disapproved of all speculative explanations, and especially of all material illustrations, of the doctrine of the Word. He says : “ Hone can understand that production, or generation, or calling, or revelation, or by whatever name one may describe His genera¬ tion, which is in fact altogether indescribable.” Elsewhere he speaks of God as “ All Mind and all Word.” The tendency to subordinate the Word to the Father, as well as the fear of seeming to recognise two Gods, excited opposition in the form of Patripassianism. The earlier assailants of the last-named theory distinctly affirmed the subordination of the Word. Tertullian (220), in an elaborate treatise against Praxeas, writes: “We believe that there is one only God, but that this one only God has a Son, His Word, who proceeded from Himself. ... For God sent forth the Word as the root puts forth the tree, the fountain the river, and the sun the ray. But the tree is not severed from the root, nor is the Word separated from God.” In Clement of Alexandria (220) the doctrine of the Word assumes a more practical aspect. “ The Word both does, and teaches, and instructs in all things.” He is the image of God, by means of which God is perceived. He is superior to men and angels, but subordinate to the Father. Nevertheless, “ we are to love Him equally with God; ” indeed, Clement distinctly calls Him “ God the Son.” Hippolytus (236) maintained a similar doctrine against Noetus; whilst Callistus, bishop of Ptome (223), conceived that both Monarcliianism and Subordination contained elements of truth and of error. He seems to have taught—though in a crude and confused manner—the eternal and personal distinction of the Father and the Word within the inseparable unity of the Divine Essence. “ The Word ” was at first spoken of with reference to a sub¬ sistence within the Divine Essence; the title “ Son ” being used with reference to the incarnation. In Tertullian this DOCTRINE OF THE HOLY GHOST. 41 distinction vanishes ; and its surrender prepared the way for an important doctrinal development. This was the doctrine of the Eternal Generation of the Son of God, which, having been vaguely anticipated by Callistus, was first clearly pro¬ pounded by Origen (254) in opposition to Eery lias. Having identified the Son with the Wisdom of God (Prov. viii. 22) and the Power of God (1 Cor. i. 24), he says, “The only- begotten Son of God is His Wisdom hypostatically existing. . . . Who can suppose that God the Eather ever existed even for a moment without generating this Wisdom ? For in that case He must say either that God was unable to generate Wisdom before He produced her . . . or that He possessed the power indeed, but was unwilling to use it; both which suppositions are absurd and impious. . . . Let him that assigns a begin¬ ning to the Word or Wisdom take heed that he be not guilty of impiety toward the unbegotten Father Himself. . . . His generation is as eternal and everlasting as the brilliancy which is produced from the sun.” On one point Origen is uncertain, whether this Eternal Generation of the Son is to be referred to the nature or the will of the Father; but his doctrine on the subject, except as to that subordination of the Word which he held in common with his predecessors, came in a short time to be regarded as exclusively orthodox. Doctrine of the Holy Ghost. Meanwhile the doctrine of the Holy Ghost was much more slowly developed ; indeed, the ideas on this subject which prevailed throughout the Ante-Nicene period were exceedingly vague. The earlier Fathers, while they insist largely on the work of the Spirit as inspiring the prophets, and, to a less extent, on His witness and operation in the hearts of believers, have nothing definite or intelligible concerning His nature. Some seem to confound the Spirit with the Word, as Justin (165), who says, “ It is wrong to understand the Spirit and the Power of God as anything else than the Word.” Else¬ where he speaks of the Spirit as a mere gift or influence bestowed on men by God, which, he says, “ was announced under another name by Plato . . . who does not 42 THE TRINITY. think fit to name it the Holy Spirit, but Virtue.” Yet in another place Justin says, “ The Father of righteousness, and the Son who came forth from Him, and the prophetic Spirit . . . we worship and adore.” Others, making a distinction between the Word and the Wisdom of God, seem to identify the latter with the Spirit; thus Theophilus (180) speaks of “ The Trinity [more correctly, Triad] of God, and His Word, and His Wisdom;” and Irenoeus (202) says, “With Him were always present the Word and Wisdom, the Son and the Spirit ... by whom He made all things.” Even Tertullian (220) sometimes confounds the Word and the Spirit; as where, commenting on Luke i. 35, he says, “ The Spirit of God in this passage must be the same as the Word;” though in other places he carefully distinguishes them. Indeed, Tertullian asserts the personality of the Holy Ghost with much greater explicitness than any earlier writer, distinctly subordinating Him both to the Father and the Son. Tertullian, as has been already mentioned, was the first to use the word “ Trinity ” to denote at once the personal dis¬ tinction and essential unity of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost; and the term, thus happily chosen, was soon uni¬ versally adopted. The doctrine is distinctly formulated, and defended in all essential points, in his treatise against Fraxeas (about 208). “The mystery of the dispensation,” he says, “ is still guarded, which distributes the Unity into a Trinity, placing in their order the three—the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost: three, however, not in condition, but in degree; not in substance, but in form; not in power, but in aspect; yet of one substance, and of one condition, and of one power, inasmuch as He is one God, from whom these degrees and forms and aspects are reckoned under the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.” The same doctrine is more clearly defined by Hippolytus (236). “The Father indeed is one; but there are two persons, because there is also the Son; and then there is the third, the Holy Ghost. . . . The ceconomy of harmony is led back to one God, for God is one. It is the Father who commands, and the Son who obeys, and the Holy Ghost who gives understanding; the Father who is above all, and the DOCTRINE OF THE HOLY GHOST. 43 Son who is through all, and the Holy Ghost who is in all. And we cannot otherwise think of one God, but by believing in truth in the Father and Son and Holy Ghost ... for it is through this Trinity that the Father is glorified.” Origen (254) still further developed the doctrine of the Spirit, giving it as his opinion that “ the working of the Father and the Son takes place as well in saints as in sinners, in rational beings and in dumb animals, and even in things without life . . . but the operation of the Holy Ghost takes place only in those persons who are turning to a better life, and walking along the way that leads to Jesus Christ.” As to the nature of the Spirit, he frankly acknowledges that “ in His case it is not clearly distinguished whether He is to be regarded as created, or uncreated, or also as a Son of God, or not.” Origen, like Tertullian, subordinates the Spirit both to the Father and the Son. This idea of subordination among the three divine sub¬ sistences soon became a fruitful source of controversy. Mean¬ while Sabellius, an Egyptian residing at Eome (about 256), devised a modified form of Monarchianism, which was widely accepted in Egypt and elsewhere. His system differed from those of Praxeas, Noetus, etc., in assigning a distinct and necessary place to the Holy Ghost; while, in common with them, it repudiated personal or hypostatic distinctions within the Divine Essence, affirming that God is a simple unity. According to Sabellius, the divine unity, as “ a silent God,” rested in Himself, until, being about to create the world, He came forth from Himself as God the Word. During the development of the world, the Word presented Himself under three forms or personations, each of which contained the entire Deity. In the character of Father He gave the law, and at the close of the Old Testament dispensation returned to His absolute state. Next He appeared in the incarnation as the Son, and after His passion and ascension again returned into Himself. Once more He manifests Himself as the Holy Ghost, that when the whole Church shall have been sanctified He may again return to His essential unity, and remain indis- tinguishably one for ever. These successive acts Sabellius called “ expansion and contraction; ” and he illustrated his 44 THE TRINITY. idea of the Godhead by the sun, “ which is one in substance, but has three energies, motion, light, and heat.” The views of Sabellius were energetically combated by Novatian, Diony¬ sius of Eome, and his namesake of Alexandria. No sect of Sabellians was ever formed; but in all ages the speculations of the Egyptian theologian have commended themselves to many who found it difficult to reconcile unity with tri¬ personality. The Avian Controversy. Hitherto, in all the disputes which had agitated the Church respecting the medium whereby God creates and manifests Himself to the creature, that medium had been considered as subsisting within the Divine Essence. But about 318 the assertion of a contrary opinion led to a far more serious con¬ troversy. Arius, a presbyter of Alexandria, affirmed that “ the Son is not unbegotten, nor yet in any sense a part of the Unbegotten ; but neither [is He made] of anything subsisting, but He subsisted by will and counsel [of God] before times and before ages; fully divine, only begotten, unchanging: and before He was begotten, or created, or defined, or founded, He was not, for He was not unbegotten.” This is somewhat ambiguous, but the following is unmistakeable : “God was not always a Father, but became so at length. The Son was not always, for before He was begotten He was not. He is not of the Father, for He was constituted out of non-existence ; He is not of the Father’s proper essence, for He is created and made, and Christ is not very God, but He was made God by participation.” This doctrine, which runs to the opposite extreme from Sabellianism, was at once challenged by Alexander, bishop of Alexandria, and in a very short time all Christendom was involved in the controversy. The Emperor Constantine, who avowed himself a Christian in 323, seems to have inclined at first to the Allan doctrine. Having vainly endeavoured to conciliate the opposing parties, he was advised by Hosius, bishop of Cordova, to call a General Council to settle the dis¬ pute. Accordingly, in 325, there assembled at Nicea three THE ARIAN CONTROVERSY. 45 hundred and eighteen bishops, under the presidency of Hosius, or, by other accounts, of the emperor himself. It is to be regretted that the acts of this famous council have only come down to us in an incomplete form; but the following particu¬ lars are certain. The Arians formed a considerable party, headed by Eusebius of Nicomedia. A larger number, probably a majority of the whole council, led by Eusebius of Caesarea (the historian), held to the views of Origen—the eternal generation of the Son, together with His subordination to the Father. A decided minority at first favoured what was ultimately defined as the orthodox doctrine; but what they lacked in numbers was more than made up by the logic and eloquence of Athanasius, a deacon who accompanied the bishop of Alexandria. The arguments of the Athanasian party convinced Constantine; and it has been asserted, justly or unjustly, that his imperial authority had no small weight in determining the issue. However that may have been, the deliberations were earnest and long continued; and, after several confessions had been proposed and rejected, the views of Athanasius were embodied in a formula which was adopted almost unanimously. This formula expresses belief “ In one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, begotten of the Father, only-begotten [that is] of the essence of the Father, God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, of the same essence ( liomoousion ) with the Father. . . . But those who say that there was a time when He was not, and that He was not before He was begotten, and that He was made out of nothing, or affirm Him to be made of any other subsistence or essence, or that the Son of God is mutable or changeable, the holy Catholic and Apostolic Church declares them accursed.” Only two bishops refused to sub¬ scribe to this creed; and two others, one of whom was Eusebius of Nicomedia, to its condemnatory clauses. The Arian controversy was by no means settled at Nicea. For more than half a century it continued to rage, and was complicated by political entanglements, and by well-meant efforts at reconciliation made by the party of Eusebius of Caesarea. This party, known as Eusebians or Semi-Arians, proposed several formularies, declaring the Son to be of the 46 THE TRINITY. like essence ( homoiousion ) with the Father. To this the Arians assented; but the Athanasians naturally rejoined that what is like is not the same, and what is not the same is another ; if, therefore, the Eusebian doctrine were true, the Son must be of another essence ( heteroousion ). This the Eusebians would not assert, while the Arians, now led by Eunomius, bishop of Cyzicum, and Aetius, a deacon of Antioch, eagerly affirmed it. Opinion in the East was much confused, the Arian and Eusebian doctrines dividing the majority; while in the West the doctrine of Athanasius was predominant. In 357—8 two councils at Sirmium, in Servia, discarded the unbiblical term ousia , and declared that the Son was “ like the Father ( [homoios ) in ail things, as the Holy Scriptures say.” The following year the Eastern bishops, assembled in council at Seleucia, rejected the formula of Sirmium in favour of a more distinctly Arian confession ; while those of the West, at Rimini, rejected it as inconsistent with the decisions of Nicea. The strife was still further embittered by political complications. Its details belong to general Church history. Suffice it here to say, that within fifty years about sixty councils and synods were held on the subject, the members of which anathematized each other with strict impartiality. With equal impartiality did each party, when for a while it enjoyed imperial favour, persecute the others. Nearly all the leading controversialists suffered banishment in turn. The principal writers on the orthodox side were Athanasius (now bishop of Alexandria), Basil the Great, Gregory of Nyssa, Gregory of Nazianzuin, Chrysostom, Theodoret, Ephraem, Lucifer of Cagliari, Hilary of Poictiers, and Ambrose. On the Arian side were Asterius, Philostorgius, Aetius, and Eunomius. Among the Eusebians were Basil of Ancyra, George of Laodicea, and Cyril of Jeru¬ salem. Meanwhile Marcellus of Ancyra and Photinus of Sirmium, in opposition to Arianism, adopted in substance the theory of Sabellius, differing in this, that they applied the title “ Son of God ” only to the incarnate Christ. All these writers flourished in the half-century following the Council of Nicea. Controversies respecting the Holy Ghost led to the assem¬ bling of a second General Council, at Constantinople, in 381, PERSONALITY AND PROCESSION OF THE HOLY GHOST. 47 This council marks the definite triumph of Trinitarianism over Arianism within the Roman Empire. For a while the latter opinion struggled to regain its ascendancy, but always in vain; and at length it succumbed to the combined force of argument and persecution. But during the temporary triumph of Arianism, in the middle of the fourth century, Christianity made its first great conquests among the German tribes. It may be that the Arian doctrine, as preached by Ulfilas (“ the apostle of the Goths ”) and his fellow-missionaries, was more intelligible to a rude people than the refinements of Athanasian orthodoxy; it may be that political considerations had weight in deter¬ mining the profession at least of some of the tribes. How¬ ever, by the end of the fifth century more than half the German race professed the religion of Christ in the Arian form. Unhappily the hostilities which had broken out between these barbarians and the Empire induced a combina¬ tion of national hatred with sectarian animosity, so that German Arianism came to be of the most fanatical character. This was especially the case with the Yandals, who in 430 conquered Northern Africa, and commenced a cruel persecution of the orthodox, which continued till 485. The Goths conquered Spain in 475, and for more than a century they, too, persecuted the orthodox. But the conversion of Clovis, king of the Franks, in 496, gave political predominancy to orthodoxy; and by the middle of the sixth century Arianism was on the decline. The Goths in Spain abjured Arianism at the third Synod of Toledo, in 589. The last German tribe in which it was held as the national faith was that of the Lombards, amongst whom the efforts of orthodox missionaries from Rome were powerfully seconded by the celebrated Queen Theudelinda (about 600), but their conversion was not completed till about 670. Personality and Procession of the Holy Ghost. Notwithstanding the clear dogmatic statements of Tertullian and Hippolytus, the doctrine of the Holy Ghost remained indefinite for at least a generation after the Council of Nicea. 48 THE TRINITY. Lactantius (325), whose theology is in several respects peculiar, seems, like some earlier Fathers, to identify the Spirit with the Word. The Arians are said [by Athanasius] to have maintained that the Spirit held the same relation to the Son as the Son did to the Father, and that He was the first creature made by the Son. The Eusebians also regarded the Spirit as subordinate both to the Father and the Son. Many who held the consubstantiality (homoousion) of the Son with the Father hesitated to ascribe the same to the Holy Ghost. The opinions even of such distinguished theologians as Hilary (355) and Cyril of Jerusalem (375) are vague and difficult to ascertain. Some regarded the Spirit as a mere energy of God, others frankly admitted that they knew not what to think on the subject. Macedonius, bishop of Constantinople (about 362), spoke of the Spirit as a creature and servant of God. Athanasius (373), Basil the Great (379), and Gregory of Nyssa (394) taught that, as the Son, so also the Spirit is a distinct subsistence within the Divine Essence. Gradually this view prevailed, those who rejected it being distinguished as “ Macedonians.” Against these Macedonians an energetic controversy was maintained by Gregory Nazianzen (391), who undertook to prove that the Spirit is neither a creature nor a mere energy, and therefore must be truly God. It is note¬ worthy, however, that Gregory thought this doctrine to be intimated, rather than revealed, in Scripture; and that the Spirit, dwelling in the Church, manifested Himself more fully since the doctrine of the Son had been fully established. We have here that notion of a gradual development, within the Church, of orthodox doctrine not clearly revealed in Scripture, which has had such startling results in subsequent ages. In 381 the Council of Constantinople, adopting the views of Athanasius, Basil, and the two Gregories, added the following definition to the Confession of Nicea: “ I believe in the Holy Ghost, the Lord, the Life-giver, who proceedeth from the Father, who with the Father and the Son together is to be worshipped and glorified, who spake by the prophets.” The so-called Mcene Creed, in its present form, was really the work of this Council. The Macedonians were excommuni- PERSONALITY AND PROCESSION OF THE HOLY GHOST. 49 cated, and nicknamed “ Pneumatomachoi,” i.e. fighters against the Spirit. They continued as a separate sect for more than a hundred years afterwards. The Council of Constantinople had left unsettled the rela¬ tion of the Spirit to the Son; and forthwith a violent contro¬ versy broke out, whether the Spirit “ proceeds ” from the Father only, or from the Father and the Son. The dispute referred, not to the sending forth of the Spirit among men, but to what may he called the internal ceconomy of the God¬ head. Athanasius, Basil, and Gregory of Uyssa were quite indefinite on this point. Theodore of Mopsuestia (429) and Theodoret (441) maintained that the Spirit proceeds from the Father only, an opinion favoured by most of the Greek theolo¬ gians, and defended and enforced by John Damascene (750). Epiphanius (403) insisted that the “ procession” of the Spirit was both from the Father and the Son; with him agreed Augustine (420) and nearly all the Latin theologians. The controversy was embittered by a Synod of Latin bishops, at Toledo (589), who interpolated the word “filioquc” i.e. “ and the Son” after “ proceedeth from the Father ” in the creed of Constantinople, and anathematized all who held the contrary opinion. This act tended, more than any other single cause, to bring about and perpetuate the schism between the Eastern and Western Churches, which, however, did not actually take place till the ninth century. The doctrine of the Western Church on the subject of the Trinity is presented in its most definite form in the Symbolnm “ Quicunqiie commonly called the Athanasian Creed. The origin of this creed is uncertain. Undoubtedly it is not the w T ork of Athanasius, but originated in the West, among the followers of Augustine. It has been variously ascribed to Vincent of Lerins (450), Hilary of Arles (454), Vigilius of Tapsus (485), and others. It was not generally adopted as a Church creed till the seventh century, and is only so recognised by the Boman and Anglican Churches. From the paradoxical character of its definitions, it has been thought by some to be an Arian caricature of the orthodox faith ; but this opinion is quite untenable, as it does not contain D 50 THE TRINITY. a single paradox which is not to be found in other writings of the same age, and of undisputed authenticity. Mediaeval and Modern Opinions. The history of the doctrine of the Trinity during the Middle Ages is of very limited interest. As if the subject were not of itself sufficiently difficult, salvation was declared to depend on “ keeping whole and undefiled ” the faith defined in the Athanasian Creed, with some statement of which every attempt to explain its mysteries must inevitably come in collision. Accordingly, all such attempts involved their authors in the suspicion of heresy. The speculations of Erigena (850) were said, with some reason, to savour of Pantheism. Eoscellin (1092), the founder of the “ Nominalist” school, was charged with Tritheism; “ God ” being, as his views were reported by his opponents, a mere general conception, like “ man ” or “ thing,” under which the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost were comprehended as individuals. Abelard (1142), also a Nominalist, seems rather to have inclined to Sabellianism; Power, Wisdom, and Love were, in his opinion, the three Persons of the Trinity, the difference being merely nominal. Yet this statement cannot fully represent the views of Abelard, as he illustrated the Persons of the Trinity by the persons in grammar, “I, Thou, He.” Gilbert de la Porree (1154), a Eealist, distinguished the divine essence from God, as humanity is distinguished from man; not only, therefore, did his views bear the semblance of Tritheism, but he was charged with transmuting the Trinity into a quaternity! Alan of Eyssel (1203) represented the Father as matter, the Son as form, and the Spirit as the union of both. It was usual to regard power as the special attribute of the Father, wisdom of the Son, and love of the Holy Ghost. Hugh of St. Victor (1141) insisted on the necessity of this distinction, lest misconceptions of the divine character should be fostered by the names of the three Persons. He also associated the Trinity with the course of the world’s history. The law, given by the Father, was a dispensation of fear; the manifestation of the Son, a dispensation of truth; and the MEDIEVAL AND MODERN OPINIONS. 51 outpouring of the Spirit, a dispensation of love. This idea was further developed, in a mystic and prophetic strain, by Joachim of Flores (1202). The later Schoolmen altogether subordinated the practical bearings of the doctrine to subtle speculations and absurd questions. They debated, Why there are not more or less than three Persons in the Godhead ? Why should God be called “ the Father,” and not “ the Mother ” ? Why did the Son, rather than the Father or the Holy Ghost, become incarnate ? Could the Father, if He had so willed, not have begotten the Son ? Is it lawful to vary the order, in speaking of the Divine Persons, etc.? The Mystics not only repudiated these impertinences, but generally admitted the impossibility of explaining the doctrine. Tauler (1350) says: “If we attempt to speak of it, it is as impossible to do so properly as to reach the sky with one’s head.” Wessel (1489) discovers a resemblance to the Trinity in the constitution of man, who was made in the likeness of God, and in whom coexist under¬ standing, intelligence, and will. At the Keformation Protestants and Catholics were at one about the Trinity, and accepted the same ancient creeds on the subject. Yet both Luther and Melanchthon expressed their dislike of the excessive importance attached to scholastic definitions. And, side by side with the Keformation, there was at work a spirit of scepticism, begotten of disgust at ecclesiastical corruptions on the part of men enthusiastically devoted to the newly-revived classical learning. These “ Humanists ” looked on the whole scholastic philosophy with avowed contempt; the name of the illustrious schoolman Duns Scotus they applied as a byword to an ignorant person —a dunce; and, being mostly destitute of deep religious feeling, they cast aside the definitions of the earlier Councils with the later absurdities of the schools, and adopted a crude Unitarianism. A few speculative minds inclined to Arianism, but their influence was small. A more commanding figure is that of Michael Servetus. His views have been described as “ Pantheistic Unitarianism;” but in respect of the Trinity he appears to have approached the modified Sabellianism of Photinus. By the merciless ridicule with which he assailed 52 THE TRINITY. the orthodox doctrine, he incurred a charge of blasphemy, in consequence of which he was burnt, not indeed at the instigation, but with the acquiescence of Calvin, in 1553. Lselius Socinus (1562), and his nephew, Eaustus Socinus (1602), advanced opinions resembling those of Artemon and the Alogians, denying altogether the Trinity and the Godhead of Christ. Their views, which for a while had great popu¬ larity in Poland and elsewhere, will be more conveniently treated of hereafter. On the breaking out of the Arminian controversy, about 1603, some of the Remonstrants reverted to the theory of Subordination, which had so generally pre¬ vailed in the earlier centuries. Their opponents eagerly charged them with Socinianism, but the charge was altogether void of truth. In England, about the beginning of the eighteenth century, there was a considerable revival of Arianism in a slightly modified form. This doctrine had been held by Milton (1674), but not avowed by him in his lifetime. Its chief advocates were Samuel Clarke (1729) and William Whiston (1752), the latter of whom endeavoured, by an elaborate collation of documents, the antiquity of which he greatly over-estimated, to prove that Arianism had been the prevailing creed of the Ante-Nicene age. Arianism found no tolerance within the Anglican Church, Whiston being excommunicated as a heretic, but it spread widely among Presbyterian and Baptist congregations. These, however, lapsed into Socinian¬ ism and Deism, so that Arianism is now all but extinct. Throughout the eighteenth century the denial of the Trinity was a crime against English law, though the law was not practically enforced. In 1813 legal toleration was granted to Unitarians, and their congregations thenceforth rapidly increased in number. At present their prevailing tenets are rather Deistical than Socinian. The same may be said of American Unitarianism, which received a powerful impulse from Priestley, a distinguished natural philosopher, who, being persecuted in England, emigrated to America in 1794. His views appeared to find little favour during his lifetime; but soon after his death (1804) hundreds of Unitarian congrega¬ tions came into being. Unitarianism chiefly prevails in the MEDIEVAL AND MODERN OPINIONS. 53 New England States. It has progressed from a devout Socinian- ism, as represented by Channing (1842), to a pure Nationalistic Theism, as represented by Theodore Parker (1860). The Moravians (from 1727) were charged with heterodoxy in an opposite direction, that of paying exclusive homage to the Son. Some of their hymns so far warrant the charge, that in them the Father and the Son seem confounded; but the Moravians have always accepted the definition of the Trinity contained in the Augsburg Confession, which agrees with the ancient creeds. The views of Swedenborg (1772) on the Trinity were peculiar. Rejecting altogether the ecclesiastical doctrine, he asserted that “ God is only one Person, and this one Godhead is Christ, who manifests Himself in a threefold form: the Father is the principle, the Son the form, and the Spirit the activity of the manifested God.” This doctrine has a strong affinity to Sabellianism. It has been already intimated that the standards of the Reformed Churches agree in substance with the confessions of Nicea and Constantinople. It is nevertheless true that, from about 1750, the Protestantism of Germany, Holland, Switzer¬ land, and France became largely imbued with the spirit of Rationalism, so that, in spite of the standards, a bare Theism had almost displaced the doctrine of the Trinity. Within the last half century, however, there has been a reaction. An “ Evangelical ” school has sprung up beside the Rationalistic school in the continental Protestant Churches, and its theo¬ logians have energetically contended for orthodoxy as embodied in the ancient formularies. Meanwhile, many throughout Protestant Christendom adopt the suggestion of Schleiermacher (1834), and refer the Trinity rather to the work of redemption than to the nature of the Deity; and these, naturally adopting opinions more or less akin to those of Sabellius, find general toleration within the Churches. IV.— Creation and Providence. We have already seen that the Church from the beginning accepted the Old Testament Scriptures as the record of a 54 CREATION AND PROVIDENCE. divine revelation. A necessary consequence of this belief was the recognition of God as Creator, Preserver, and Euler of heaven and earth, i.e. of the entire universe. Doctrine of Absolute Creation. The early Fathers found themselves confronted with a variety of speculations about the origin of the world. In the East opinions.were divided between the pantheistic philosophy of India and the Persian cosmogony, which derived the universe from the mixture or conflict of two eternal principles, light and darkness. In the West conjectures were far more nume¬ rous. Matter was universally regarded as eternal, and from it some (the Epicureans) supposed all things to have been unintel- ligently developed by a “ fortuitous concourse of atoms; ” while others (the Ionic school) spoke of water, or air, or fire, as the first principle of all things. The vulgar loosely ascribed the fashioning of the universe to “ the gods; ” and of those who rose to the conception of a presiding Deity, some (the Stoics) thought of Him as the “ Soul of the world,” or pantheistically regarded all things as a part of Him, supposing in either case that God and His works were alike subject to a fatal necessity ; others (the Peripatetics) thought of Him as eternally self¬ active in organizing the world out of matter, and therefore of the universe as eternal, as well as the matter of which it is formed. Only a few nobler souls, like Plato, conceived of God as freely moulding matter into forms which image His own infinitely perfect and eternal ideas; and thus, although still entangled with the conceit of the eternity of matter, they almost reached the truth so clearly enunciated on the first page of the Hebrew Scriptures, “ In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” As to the fact of absolute creation, the earliest Fathers were clearly decided. Hermas (140) says, “First of all, thou shalt believe that God is One, who created and finished all things, and out of not being made all things to be.” About the end of the second century, Hermogenes, a painter at Carthage, endeavoured to reconcile the Christian belief with the philo¬ sophic doctrine of the eternity of matter, arguing from the unde- DOCTRINE OF ABSOLUTE CREATION. 55 niable existence of evil in the world, which, he urged, would have been perfectly good if created out of nothing by a God who is only good. To him Tertullian (220) replied, showing very skilfully that the theory of Hermogenes involves greater difficulties than that held by the Church; in short, that it amounts to a deification of matter. Clement of Alexandria (220) is said to have taught that matter had no beginning; but the statement seems based on a misunderstanding of his language. Origen (254) plainly intimates his belief that matter was once non-existent; but yet, being unable to conceive of the Creator as unemployed, he supposes an in¬ definite number of worlds to have succeeded each other and passed away before the present world came into being. This was understood to involve the coeternity of the universe with God, a notion which has much in common with that of Aristotle and the Peripatetics, and which was energetically combated by Methodius (302). Some account has already been given of the Gnostics, who, in the multitude of their fantastic conceits, agreed to dis¬ tinguish the Maker of the world from the Supreme God. It may here be further mentioned that some of the Gnostic theories embody a pantheistic element; all existences, or at least the authors of existence, are represented as emanating from the unknown God ; the World-maker ( Demiurgos ) being the lowest or remotest of these emanations. Others are more distinctly dualistic, matter being regarded as coeternal with the Supreme, and as being either essentially evil or under the dominion of Satan. None of the Gnostic cosmogonies admit absolute creation; in every case it is either a pantheistic evolution or a mere fashioning the world out of pre-existing material. The same may be said of the Manichiean system, already briefly described. According to its exponents, the world was not created at all, but was formed by “ the Living Spirit,” at God’s command, from the “ mixture ” which had been produced when the Prince of Darkness overcame and partly swallowed up the divinely-begotten “ Ideal Man.” Speculations of the Gnostic and Manichsean type continued to be indulged in by various sects as late as the twelfth century. The system of Erigena (850) may perhaps be most aptly 56 CREATION AND PROVIDENCE. defined as “ Christian Pantheism.” According to him, all things were not so much created as developed out of the Divine Essence. But throughout successive ages the orthodox Bathers and Schoolmen held firmly to the idea of creation out of nothing. “God,” said Hugh of St. Victor (1141), “is not only the Former, but the Creator and Author of matter.” The later Schoolmen thought it needful to define this doctrine with great precision, partly lest it should be imagined that nothing could he a cause of existence, and partly in opposition to that revival of Pantheism, early in the thirteenth century, which is exemplified in the teachings of Amalric of Bema. The same doctrine of Absolute Creation was maintained by the Reformers, and continues generally to prevail both in the Protestant and Catholic Churches. Nevertheless, pantheistic speculations have never been entirely laid aside. The philo¬ sophy of Servetus (1533) was decidedly of this order; and the same may be said of the reveries of many Protestant mystics. For example, Bohme (1624) says, “The creation is nothing but a manifestation of the Almighty; it is all that which He is in His eternal generation, but not in His omni¬ potence.” Similar ideas are still entertained by a few within the Church; while others deem it possible to reconcile the eternity of matter with the distinctive articles of the Christian faith. Work of the Trinity in Creation. As the doctrine of the Trinity assumed a definite shape, it was natural to inquire what part of the work of creation belonged to each of the Divine Persons. On this point the earlier writers were indistinct, sometimes the Father, some¬ times the Word being spoken of as the Creator of the world. Thus Irenseus (202) in one place says, “These are the first principles of the gospel, that there is one God, the maker of this universe ; proclaiming the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, and ignoring any other god or father but Him.” While in another place he says, “ The Creator of the world is truly the Word of God; and this is our Lord, who in the last time was made man.” Generally, however, creation was regarded as the act of the PURPOSE OF GOD IN CREATION. 57 Father, wrought through, i.e. by means of, the Son. Theo- philus (180) says, “That in His Word God made heaven and earth, and whatsoever is in them, it is said, ‘ In the Begin¬ ning God made, etc.’ ” He thus identifies the Word with the Beginning, an idea seemingly derived from Bev. iii. 14. Even the Arians acknowledged that God effected creation by His Son. The JSTicene Creed (325) calls the Father “Maker of all things, visible and invisible; ” but says, in reference to the Son, “ by means of whom all things were made, both those in heaven and those in earth.” The Church thus assigned to the Son, as the Father’s agent, a function analogous to that which was undertaken, independently, by the malevolent “ World- maker ” of the Gnostic systems. The Creed of Constantinople (381) assigns a part of crea¬ tion to the Holy Ghost, calling Him “ the Life - giver.” Similarly Gregory of Uazianzum (390) speaks of the creative work as “ an idea accomplished by the Word, and completed by the Spirit.” It is presumably in this sense that Augustine (430), and several Western theologians of the same period, referred the work of creation to the whole Trinity. A cele¬ brated hymn of the eighth or ninth century commences, “ Yeni, Creator Spiritus;” but in thus ascribing creation to the Spirit, the author could scarcely have intended more than was expressed in the Creed of Constantinople. The same is obviously the intention of the Anglican Church, which includes the hymn just quoted in its ordinal, while in its catechism it distinctly ascribes creation to the Father. In short, from the fourth century downwards the doctrine of the Nicene and Constantinopolitan Creeds has found universal acceptance, except among the sects which were tainted with Manichsean- ism, and among modern Unitarians. Purpose, of God in Creation. Very diverse opinions have been held as to the ultimate purpose of God in creation. The primitive Christians seem generally to have deemed it a voluntary act of divine bene¬ ficence, designed to bestow happiness on intelligent crea¬ tures. Justin (165) writes, “ He in the beginning did, of His 58 CREATION AND PROVIDENCE. goodness, for man’s sake, create all things out of unformed matter.” So also Tertullian (220), “ God has made nothing unworthy of Himself, although it was for man, and not for Himself, that He made the world.” To the same effect Athenagoras, Irenaeus, and Origen. Similar views were held by the later Fathers, both in the West and East, as Augustine, Chrysostom, John Damascene, etc., and by the great majority of the Schoolmen. Aquinas (1274) says that God “intended only to communicate His own perfection, which is His goodness; so that the divine goodness is the end of all things.” But after the Reformation entirely different ideas on the subject began to prevail. Half Christendom being in revolt against a spiritual despotism wielded by ecclesiastics, it was natural that the sovereignty of God should be insisted upon in opposition to the authority of priests. In fact, the divine sovereignty occupied the minds of the Reformers, almost to the exclusion of the milder aspects of Deity. That the universe should have been made chiefly with a view to the happiness of the creature was a supposition quite inconsistent with the humility proper to finite and sinful beings. Indeed, in the theology of the “ Reformed ” (Calvinistic) Churches the bestowal of happiness was a very subordinate element in the divine purpose. The Calvinistic doctrine is stated in the most absolute manner in the Larger Catechism of the West¬ minster Assembly (1643-49): God has “for His own glory unchangeably foreordained whatever comes to pass,” both in creation and providence. Even the Lutheran Calovius (1686) thus defines the ultimate purpose of creation: “ that the good¬ ness, wisdom, and power of God should be celebrated by rational creatures, and made known in all creatures.” This novel doctrine was controverted both by Socinians and Armi- nians, who were accustomed to ask, “ Is God proud or vain ? ” Of late the general tendency has been, if not altogether to revert to the early patristic opinion, at least to regard the happiness of the creature as an object co-ordinate with the glory of the Creator. METHOD OF CREATION. 59 Method of Creation. As to the method of creation, speculation has been rife in every age. Some of the early heretics are said to have ascribed the making of the world to angels, either as the agents of God, or (as some Gnostic sects) in opposition to His will. These notions found no acceptance within the Church. It being evident that no real knowledge on the subject was attainable from the imperfect science of their day, the Fathers devoted special attention to the Mosaic narrative of creation. They unanimously accepted it as the record of a divine revelation, but differed much as to whether it should be understood literally or otherwise. Theophilus (180) received it literally; whereas Origen (254) thought it impossible that the narrative should be so understood by “ any person having sense and reason,” and treated the whole as allegory. But as the allegorical system of exegesis fell into disrepute, the tendency was to regard the account as historical; and such was the opinion of Athanasius (373) and Augustine (430), the great champions of orthodoxy. Yet Augustine endeavoured to spiritualize the literal as far as might be, frankly admit¬ ting the difficulties of a purely historic interpretation, and saying of the six creative days, “ Of what sort they could be it is difficult, or rather impossible, for us to think, much more to tell.” He endeavoured to dissociate the notion of time from God, and still to retain the truth that creation had a begin¬ ning, by representing God as the Author of Time. In the Middle Ages the same diversity of opinion is found, though the greater number of the Schoolmen accepted the Mosaic narrative as a literal statement of facts. Generally, however, they held that these facts had a mystical or allego¬ rical significance, thus especially Hugh of St. Victor (1141). These views prevailed down to the time of the Beformation, after which they gave place for a while to the baldest literalism. This was due to the prevalence of a hard mechanical theory of verbal inspiration, and to the difficulty of allegorizing the narrative so as to be useful in the controversies of the day. This excessive literalism sustained some curious developments in the “Keformed” Church of the seventeenth century. It 60 CREATION AND PROVIDENCE. was seriously debated, Whether there had been time before the world was created ? and, if so, At what period of time the creation had taken place ? Some German divines gravely decided that it was in the spring; others in autumn. Calo- vius (1686) more reasonably affirmed that God created “not properly in time, but at the first instant and beginning of time.” The growth of natural science reawakened doubts as to the possibility of accepting, in its literal sense, the Mosaic story of creation. It had been assumed as unquestionable that the truth of Scripture was firmly bound up with the Ptolemaic theory, which represented the earth as the centre of the uni¬ verse. The discoveries of Copernicus (1543), being confined to a narrow circle of philosophers, excited at first but little general interest. Their importance was perceived by Tycho Brahe (1601); and he, as a zealous Protestant who “wor¬ shipped the very letter of every part of Scripture,” endeavoured, by an ingenious theory of his own, to reconcile them with the centrality and fixedness of the earth. But when Kepler (1630) and Galileo (1642), both devout Catholics, had not only demon¬ strated the earth’s motion, but popularized their discoveries, the cry of heresy was loud and long. 1 Kepler was excom¬ municated ; Galileo was compelled, by imprisonment and the threat of torture, to abjure; and their books, together with those of Copernicus, were prohibited. Still, the new astronomy found general acceptance, sooner with philosophers than among theologians. Even when it had been established beyond the possibility of reasonable doubt by the observations and experiments of Kewton (1727), it was feebly resisted by the school of Hutchinson (1737), who denied the discoveries, set Moses against Kewton, and imagined that all science, natural and divine, was contained in the Bible. As early as 1655, Isaac de la Peyrere suggested that there might have been human beings before Adam. His “ heresy ” soon reached oblivion; but toward the end of the eighteenth century the then infant science of geology convinced many 1 Especially offensive was the dictum of Galileo, that Scripture was designed, not to explain the motion of the heavens, hut to guide men thither. PROVIDENCE. 61 that a bare literal interpretation of the Mosaic record was no longer tenable. Herder (1803) regarded the whole story as a myth, of which the internal truth is clothed in a poetic dress. During the present century many have been induced to follow this opinion by the numerous unsuccessful attempts to recon¬ cile the Bible narrative with the provisional hypotheses of scientists. On the other hand, as recently as 1850, some conservative theologians were to be found identifying geology with infidelity, denying the reality of fossil remains, or ascrib¬ ing them generally to “ the flood,” and insisting, with Hutchin- sonian pertinacity, on the scientific accuracy of the Mosaic record, literally understood. Very few educated persons, how¬ ever, are now satisfied with this bare literalism, or even with the ingenious theory of a local creation. Those who reject every form of the mythical theory usually accept the opinion of Cuvier, that the creative “ days ” represent geological periods of great but indefinite length. Many adopt, with variations of detail, the idea first suggested by J. H. Kurtz in 1849, and since developed by Hugh Miller, D. Macausland, etc., viz. that the Mosaic narrative describes a series of visions, in which successive stages of God’s creative work were exhibited to some ancient seer. Providence. The speculations of the heathen about the government of the world differed as widely as their notions of its origin. By the vulgar “ the gods ” were supposed to preside over various departments of nature and conditions of life, and at their vary¬ ing pleasure to dispose of the affairs of men. The Epicureans thought of them, if at all, as sublimely indifferent to sublunary cares. The Stoics deemed gods and men to be alike subject to an inexorable fate. This notion of a dread impersonal fate ruling over all was very widely prevalent, and its decrees were thought to be written, intelligibly to those who knew the celestial alphabet, in the motions and configurations of the stars; while by some (as afterwards among the Gnostics) the stars themselves were supposed to control the fate of men. Very rarely some noble spirit, like Socrates, rose to the con- 62 CREATION AND PROVIDENCE. ception of a God “ having an admirable regard ” for His creatures. The truth, thus dimly seen by Socrates, was plainly taught in the Hebrew Scriptures, and strongly enforced by Jesus Christ. Accordingly, the Fathers were unanimously opposed alike to Epicureanism and Fatalism. Clement of Alexandria (220) says: “ In one glance He views all things together and each by itself.” “ Health by medicine and wealth by trade have their origin in Divine Providence, but also in human cp-operation.” Minucius Felix (235) says, “Neither does God have care alone for the universe as a whole, but also for its parts. . . . Kings only know all the affairs of their king¬ dom by the ministration of their servants ; God has no need of information; we live not only in His eyes, but also in His bosom.” The later Fathers also devoted special care to this doctrine. Augustine, in particular, taught that the actual presence of God is as necessary to the preservation of the world as to its creation; “ nothing would be able to exist without Him.” Chrysostom, Theodoret, Salvian, and others wrote distinct treatises on the subject, showing that God’s providence extends to the minutest particulars. Nemesius (400) proved this from the social instincts of bees and ants. He defined Providence as “ the goodwill of God, by which all beings receive their proper guidance to an end.” Jerome (420), however, held a different opinion. While admitting a special providence in all that concerns mankind, he thought it “ absurd to bring down the majesty of God to this, that He should know each moment how many gnats are born or die . . . how many fishes are in the sea, and which of the small ones shall be the prey of the larger.” He thus prepared the way for the speculations of Junilius, an African bishop in the sixth century, who distinguished between the particular providence which God exercises over angels and men, and the general providence which, he thought, suffices for other creatures in merely preserving the race. The views of Jerome and Junilius found little favour in the Church ; and the pious Schoolmen of the Middle Ages believed in the universality of God’s particular providence. The same PROVIDENCE. 63 belief is likewise conspicuous in the writings of the Mystics of the same period. Suso (1365) recognised the act of God in the blooming of flowers, the frisking of lambs, and the song of birds. “ 0 tender God,” he says, “ if Thou art so loving in Thy creatures, how beautiful and delightful must Thou be in Thyself!” The doctrines of Augustine, Chrysostom, etc., were adopted and developed by the great theologians of the Reformation. They regarded the preservation of the world as “ a continuous or perennial creation.” The words of Melanchthon (1560) are worth remembering: “ God is present with His creatures; not present as a Stoic God, but so that He acts most freely, sustaining the creature, and of His unbounded compassion controlling, bestowing good things, helping or hindering second causes.” The prominence which the Reformers gave to the divine sovereignty had a great and necessary influence on their views of providence. In the opinion of the Calvinistic school, God did not so much provide for every contingency, as provide against any contingency. Ho thing could be contingent or uncertain if, as they maintained, the Divine Will had irrevoc¬ ably foreordained, from all eternity, even the least thing that should come to pass. The technical term by which they described this foreordination was “ The Divine Decrees.” The only point in which their doctrine can be logically distin¬ guished from the fatalism of the ancient Stoics is, that the Stoics subjected God Himself to a fatal necessity, while the Calvinistic theologians supposed “ the Decrees ” to have originated in a free act of the Divine Will. It is interesting to notice how much their theory has in common with the modern non-Christian necessitarian philosophy; according to which, everything that is, or happens, is the inevitable result of things that have happened before; and so on ad infinitum. The anti-Calvinistic theologians generally regarded God as infallibly foreseeing and providing for every contingency; and were content to leave the question, how the contingent could be foreseen, (the “ Scientia Media” of the Jesuits,) as an insoluble mystery. The theological systems of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries abound in subtle distinctions between 64 CREATION AND PROVIDENCE. general, particular, and special providence; between that which is natural or mediate in God’s working, and that which is supernatural or immediate; and between His permitting, directing, limiting, or restraining the actions of men. In the present day the prevalence of a not always intelligent rational¬ ism has induced a widespread tendency to admit a general divine superintendence, such as Jerome thought might be exercised over gnats and fishes, but to doubt the probability of any special interference on the part of God with the pre¬ scribed course of the world. Miracles. It may be well here briefly to mention the phases of opinion that have succeeded each other in the Church con¬ cerning miracles—understanding by “ miracle ” a departure from the ordinary course of nature by reason of the special interposition of divine power. The miracles of Christ and His apostles were in no case mere sportive exhibitions of supernatural powers, like those ascribed to magicians and enchanters; but were, all of them, either acts of beneficence for the confirmation or reward of faith, or lively illustrations of spiritual truth. That miraculous powers survived in the Church for one or two generations after the apostolic age seems indisputable, unless we reject the whole weight of contemporary evidence. But at a later period we meet with narrations, rarely purporting to be contemporaneous, of innumerable miracles, often of the most purposeless, grotesque, and childish character. These are multiplied as we advance into the dark ages; and at length every unusual event was deemed miraculous,—say the appearance of an ignis-fatuus, or the sudden removal of a pall from a tomb by a gust of wind. Credulity was further stimulated by religious romances, based on traditions of real or fictitious saints, in which the miraculous element abounded. The power of working miracles was thought inseparable from the character of a saint; and supernatural virtues were ascribed to the bones, garments, and other relics of persons who died in the odour of sanctity. These opinions continue to prevail, with some- MIRACLES. 65 what less of extravagance than formerly, in the unreformed Churches. Among Protestants a disposition toward scepticism on the subject of miracles was early developed. By them the bulk of the ecclesiastical miracles were summarily rejected, often not much more intelligently than they had been credited by the preceding generation. The argument was often, in brief, much like this: Saint Such-a-one was a benighted papist, or a champion of the papacy; that God should have empowered him to work miracles is therefore incredible. Indeed, little judgment seems to have been exercised by either party, in the sixteenth century, in receiving or rejecting miraculous stories; party spirit took the place of criticism. With the rise of the Inductive Philosophy a still more general incredulity on the subject of miracles began to prevail. They could not, usually, be subjected to the test of experi¬ ment,—general observation pointed rather to the uniformity of nature; the English Deists, without venturing to deny their possibility, dismissed them as utterly improbable; and orthodox Protestants were so far influenced by the spirit of the age as to limit, as much as the then prevailing theories of mechanical inspiration would permit, the miraculous element even in sacred history. But the miracles of Scripture, being embodied in an infallible record, were insisted on as evidences of the doctrines with which they were associated, not merely for those who beheld them, but for all ages. Hume (1776) undertook to prove the incredibility of all miracles whatsoever. His argument was, That the uniformity of nature, and the frequent unreliableness of testimony, are matters of daily observation; it is therefore, on the whole, more likely that any amount of testimony should be fallacious, than that there should be a departure from the uniformity of nature. To this Paley (1794) replied, That the testimony by which the principal Christian miracles are supported acquires exceptional force from the fact that the witnesses had nothing to gain by persisting in falsehood; and that they deliberately chose to suffer the loss of all things, and of life itself, rather than disavow the alleged facts. The tendency of the present day is to regard the credibility E 66 CREATION AND PROVIDENCE. of miracles, and of the Christian religion itself, as dependent on the supreme miracle of Christ’s resurrection from the dead. It is seen that the possibility of this event cannot he called in question without the denial of divine omnipotence; and its actuality is held to be established by sufficient testimony. As to the probability of miracles, either in ancient or modern times, this is estimated by the importance of the occasion and the character of the agent, as well as by the weight of evidence. But there are many within the Church whose views of the uniformity of natural law make it hard for them to repress doubts of the reality of the subordinate miracles, and urge them to take refuge in rationalistic explanations. Meanwhile the antichristian philosophy of our day claims the argument of Hume as irrefragable, sneers at Paley, and disposes of all miraculous narratives as legendary or mythical. The latest scientific apologists, on the other hand, propose to relieve both miracle and particular providence from the charge of antecedent improbability, by regarding the divine energy, not as exercised on matter from without, but as immanent in the whole creation. According to this view, the only dis¬ tinction between the natural and supernatural is that of usual and unusual. Origin of Evil. How to reconcile the supremacy of a benevolent God with the existence of evil is a problem which has perplexed man¬ kind in every age. To the thoughtless multitude among the heathen, whose superstition divided the rule of the universe amongst a multitude of deities of like passions with themselves, it presented but little difficulty. But to those who dimly descried a God, above and beyond the gods, it was a saddening mystery. Nearly all their conjectures found an echo among the early heretical sects. The Stoics ascribed all evil to the inscrutable decrees of Fate; and most of the other philosophic sects of the West to a property necessarily inherentki Matter. These notions were adopted, with various modifications, by the Gnostics; of whom those who did not ascribe evil, as a pro¬ perty, to Matter itself, usually attributed it to the malevolence ORIGIN OF EVIL. 67 of the ruler of Matter, the Demiurgos. The pantheistic philosophy of the East, regarding personal existence as a kind of temporary severance from Deity, thought of evil as the necessary effect of such severance, and therefore as inseparable from personality; an idea that has been variously reproduced by the Mystics of all ages—Christian and non-Christian alike. While the Zoroasterian doctrine of two Eternal Principles offered an easy solution of the problem, which was adopted partially by the Gnostics in their figment of the World-maker, entirely by the Manichaeans, and with more or less of modifi¬ cation by the various sects which sprung from them,— Priscillianists, Cathari, Bogomiles, etc.,—who in successive ages represented Satan as co-ordinate with God or Christ. The same perplexity has been continually acknowledged within the Church; and the various solutions of the problem of evil which have been proposed may be generally reduced to these three,—the free-will of the creature, the necessary defectibility of all finite existence, and the mysterious decree of the Creator. The first of these views prevailed in the earlier ages. Irenseus (202) observes that through the contrast of good and evil in the world, the good appears more excellent: “ But if thou wilt not believe in Him, and wilt flee from His hands, the cause of imperfection shall be in thee who didst not obey, not in Him who called thee.” Origen (254) writes to the same effect: “Since rational creatures were endowed with the power of free-will, this freedom of will incited each one to progress by imitation of God, or reduced him to failure by negligence.” He draws special attention to the connection between physical and moral evils, and explains those which cannot be accounted for by the free-will of man—being born blind, for example—by supposing that they are inflicted by God in just recompense for defection in a former state of being! Lactantius (325) ascribes all evil, physical and moral, to the devil, whom he regards as a second son of God, who rebelled through envy of the First-begotten. According to Augustine (430), nothing is evil by nature; evil is only the absence of good. Things good in themselves become evil when improperly used, as fire or poison. Suffer¬ ing is beneficial as a punishment; “by the bitterness of 68 CREATION AND PROVIDENCE. punishment we are instructed.” They who love God are lifted above the reach of evil; “ A mind that dwells in God is altogether higher than the whole world.” The Schoolmen generally adopted the views of Augustine. Anselm (1109) went so far as to assert that “whatever is, is right.” Abelard (1142) held that “God could not have made a better world than He has made.” Others objected to this optimism on the ground that it made God the author of evil; either directly, by His will, or indirectly, by defect of power. Hugh of St. Victor (1140) thought that not indeed the actual existence of evil, but the mode of its existence, depends on God; He does not do evil, but when it is done He overrules it. This view tacitly ascribes evil to the will of the creature. Aquinas (1274) taught that the imperfections of individual things belong to the perfection of the world; in this sense evil may be said to proceed from God “ as if by accident.” Most of the scholastics distinguished between the antecedent will of God, which is wholly good, and His subse¬ quent will, which takes account of existing or foreseen evil. Some Protestant divines, as Calvin (1564) and Beza (1605), were led by their views of divine sovereignty to suppose that even moral evil was predestined by God, for the glory of His justice in punishing sinners. The Remonstrant theologians, on the other hand, ascribed moral evils to the free-will of the creature, and physical evils to the punitive justice of God. It was commonly supposed, during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, that pain and death among the lower animals, and even the phenomena of earthquakes and avalanches, and the extremes of climate, were the effects of human guilt. And when it had been proved that these things existed before the appearance of man on the earth, there were theorists who affirmed that they were to be connected with sin by antici¬ pation ! An ingenious theory was advanced by Edward Williams (1813). He argued that as finite creatures are of necessity capable of defection, this defection must inevitably be reached by some of them sooner or later, unless prevented by divine interference. B. H. Blasche (1827) revived the earlier notion, that evil is necessary to form a contrast with good. THE HOLY ANGELS. 69 Somewhat similarly a recent poet has said, “ Evil and good are God’s left hand and right.” But the problem of evil is still acknowledged to be as far from solution as ever, and no theory on the subject can be said to have gained general acceptance in the Church. V.—Angels and Spirits. The Holy Angels. The present seems a convenient place for reviewing the doctrine of the Church concerning intelligent creatures other than men. The existence of such beings, both good and evil, is clearly intimated in the earlier Hebrew Scriptures; but there is reason to believe that the Jewish notions on the subject, after the captivity, were strongly coloured by Baby¬ lonian and Persian traditions. Some later Jewish writers, as Philo, thought of the angels as divine powers, related to God as rays to the sun. Others, especially the Talmudist and Cabbalistic Eabbins, developed a very elaborate angelic hierarchy. Many of their notions are reproduced—or vice versa —in the speculations of several Gnostic sects. These regarded the angels, not as created beings, but as emanations from the divine substance. Some spoke of them as taking part in the work of creation. The early Christians assumed the existence of angels as a matter of course; and, no doubt, their conceptions of their nature included many traditional Jewish elements. But all the orthodox Fathers insisted that they were created beings, not divine emanations. Justin (165) says, “There are angels, who always exist, and are never reduced to that out of which they sprung.” Irenseus (202) says, “All things, whether angels, or archangels, or thrones, or dominions, were both established and created by Him who is God over all.” About their nature opinions differed. Justin seems to have assigned to them some kind of ethereal bodies needing food, which was manna. Tertullian (220) says, “Their nature is a spiritual substance, though, in some sense peculiar to them¬ selves, corporeal. ... A property of angelic power is this, to 70 ANGELS AND SPIRITS. assume to themselves bodily shape out of no material sub¬ stance.” Clement of Alexandria (220) seems to regard them as incorporeal. He has a remarkable passage about their subordination: “ At the highest extremity of the visible world is the blessed band of angels, and down to ourselves there are ranged, some under others, those who, from One and by One, both save and are saved.” Origen (254), with his usual frankness, admits his ignorance “ when they were created, of what nature they are, or how they exist.” As to their offices, Athenagoras (177) recognises “a multi¬ tude of angels and ministers, whom God . . . distributed and appointed to their several posts by His word, to occupy themselves about the elements, and the heavens, and the world, and the things in it, and the goodly ordering of them all.” Clement of Alexandria affirms that “ regiments of angels are distributed over nations and cities; and, perhaps, some are assigned to individuals.” This latter notion of special guardian angels may have originated in the heathen belief in tutelary genii; however, it is found as early as Hernias (140). He says: “There are two angels with a man, one of righteousness, and the other of iniquity. When the angel of righteousness ascends into your hearts, he talks to you ... of every righteous deed and glorious virtue.” Origen (254) writes: “They ascend, bearing the supplica¬ tions of men, to the purest of heavenly places; . . . they come down from thence, conveying to each one, according to his deserts, something enjoined by God. ... As if by common agreement, they visit with all manner of kindness and deliver¬ ance those who pray to God.” In apostolic times Paul thought it necessary to express disapproval of the worshipping of angels (Col. ii. 18). There is a passage in Justin (165), the most obvious sense of which is, that “ the host of the other good angels, who follow and are made like to Him,” are, together with the Pather, Son, and Spirit, objects of Christian worship; but in another part of the same book he says expressly: “We ought to worship God alone.” Ho other early Father gives the slightest sanction to angel-worship; and Origen repeatedly disallows it as unwarranted and unreasonable. THE HOLY ANGELS. 71 In the fourth and following centuries opinion concerning the angels became increasingly definite. Gregory of Nazian- zum (390) says: “They act according to the One Will of the Creator. They praise God incessantly, and always behold His glory.” He ascribes to them great power, partly original and partly derived; and inconceivable swiftness, by reason of which, and of their multitude, they may be thought of as everywhere present. It was disputed whether they were capable of sinning. Cyril of Jerusalem (386) thought that not only was this the case, but that they actually needed pardon. Augustine (430) supposed that they had been in danger of falling; but that when some had actually fallen, the rest, who remained faithful, were confirmed in immutable holiness. It was debated whether they were created before the rest of the universe, as was supposed by Nazianzen, or on the first day of creation, which was the opinion of Augustine. About the sixth century appeared an apocryphal treatise, ascribed to Dionysius the Areopagite, in which the hint of Clement about their subordination was improved into an angelic hierarchy of nine orders, arranged with military precision. This forgery probably originated in Syria or Asia Minor, and is largely imbued with Neo-Platonism; while in Northern Africa the difficulty of conceiving pure spirit, which had determined the peculiar philosophy of Ter- tullian, still prevailed. Accordingly, Fulgentius of Euspe (533) affirmed that angels are composed of body and spirit. During this period the worshipping of angels became rapidly popular. It was forbidden, indeed, by a Synod at Laodicea (364), and discouraged by Augustine (430), Theo- doret (456), and even Pope Gregory I. (604). But it was sanctioned by Ambrose (397), and the practice of dedicating churches to angels [or more properly, “ to God in honour of angels ”] gave a great impulse to angel-worship. Towards the Middle Ages stories of angelic apparitions were multiplied, and about the eighth century the festival of St. Michael and All Angels came to be regularly observed through¬ out the West. At the fourth Lateran Council (1215) the purely spiritual nature of angels was laid down as an article of faith. The Schoolmen indulged in innumerable discussions 72 ANGELS AND SPIRITS. about their powers, faculties, and capacities; some of these speculations have much poetic beauty, others are wildly absurd. Belief in guardian angels was almost universal, and found sanction in the authorized service-books of the Church. At the Reformation the worship of angels was abandoned as unscriptural. By a natural consequence, speculations on their nature and functions became of less interest, and gradu¬ ally ceased. In the Protestant confessions we have only passing allusions to their existence; while theologians have contented themselves with adopting the definitions of the Schoolmen, pruned of their extravagances. With the rise of Rationalism there has been a tendency to ignore, and even to disbelieve in, angelic ministrations, regarding the language of Scripture as either mythical, or poetic, or symbolic of the forces of nature. Among orthodox Protestants the prevailing opinions on the subject are vague and uncertain. Swedenborg (1772), on the contrary, pretended to a close acquaintance with angels, whom he supposed to be the glorified spirits of righteous men; a notion that has found a place in popular divinity. In the unreformed Churches the mediaeval beliefs and practices still survive. The Powers of Darkness. • In all ages there has been a widespread conviction that evils, not accounted for by human agency, are the result of an intelligent purpose. Hence the Manichaeans imagined an Evil Principle co-ordinate with God; and the Gnostics a malevolent World-maker, at once subordinate and hostile to Him. In opposition to both these, the Fathers adopted and developed an opinion already prevalent among the Jews, for which they found warrant in the New Testament. They believed that a multitude of angels, created by God in a state of innocence, had revolted from their allegiance under the leadership of one of superior rank or power, whom they dis¬ tinguished as the devil, or Satan. They disagreed as to when and how this revolt took place. The prevailing opinion was that it occurred after the creation of the world, and before the fall of man. Tatian (170), however, seems to regard the THE POWERS OF DARKNESS. 73 fall of Satan as a consequence of his part in man’s first sin; while Augustine (430) imagines that men were created to fill the void left by the fall of the rebellious angels. Many of the early Fathers, by a strange anachronism, associated Gen. vi. 2 with the fall of the angels, whose sin they supposed to he lasciviousness; others defined it as pride or envy, either of man or of the Son of God. Gradually this latter opinion displaced the former. To these fallen spirits the Fathers applied the name of “ demons,” which, in the Greek mythology, had denoted a kind of spiritual beings intermediate between gods and men. To the acts or influence of these demons every kind of ill was ascribed: disease, famine, and other physical evils; the entire system of paganism, particularly the heathen oracles; the persecutions of the Christians, and even heresy. Special reference is needless, as allusions of the kind abound in most of the early Fathers, many of whom identified these demons with the pagan deities. Hermas (140), Clement of Alex¬ andria (220), and Origen (254) supposed that particular vices were promoted by individual evil spirits; one demon provok¬ ing to envy, another to lust, etc. But all the Fathers agreed that, while the devil and his subordinates may tempt and allure, they cannot compel any one to sin without his own consent. Throughout the patristic period there was a widespread belief in the frequency of demoniacal possession, which was supposed to simulate disease, madness, or inspiration. Accord¬ ingly, the office of exorcist had a recognised place in the ecclesiastical system. Adjuration in the name of Christ, and especially the sign of the cross, were thought to be effectual means of expelling or exposing demons; and by the fourth century exorcism had become a usual preliminary of baptism. The fallen spirits were believed to be consciously under the wrath of God, even though they might be employed as God’s executioners; an opinion which has survived in the vulgar belief to the present time. It was disputed whether their fall was irretrievable. The general opinion was that they could have no place of repentance. Justin (165) thought they would be unchangeably wicked, not of necessity, but of their own free-will. Clement of Alexandria (220) asserts that the 74 ANGELS AND SPIRITS. devil is able to repent, but does not intimate any hope of his actual repentance. Origen (254) cherished a hope that all fallen beings, even the devil himself, might ultimately be restored. Gregory of Nyssa (394) and Didymus of Alexandria (395) ventured faintly to indulge the same hope; which was combated by Cyril of Jerusalem (386), Jerome (420), and Augustine (430), and condemned in the sixth century by the imperial theologian, Justinian. The theologians of the Middle Ages indulged in various speculations about evil spirits, which are of little permanent interest. It was debated how far they could exercise power over the material world, and the conclusions of the Schoolmen on this subject were far more rational than the vulgar belief. Aquinas (1274) thought the power of the demons has been much limited since the coming of Christ. It was believed that they were rendered miserable by their knowledge of God’s perfect happiness, and of the triumph of Christ, but that they found pleasure in the torments of the damned ! The popular belief tended in two different directions. On the one hand, it assumed a gloomy and terrible form in con¬ nection with magic and witchcraft; every person distinguished by extraordinary acquaintance with mathematics or the laws of nature was vulgarly reputed a wizard, e.g. Michael Scot (1291), the translator of Aristotle, and Boger Bacon (1294), the inventor of gunpowder. On the other hand, there was a disposition to confound the fallen angels with the imps, trolls, elves, brownies, and goblins of popular mythology; and to think of the devil as “ a cunning impostor, and merry fellow, fitted to excite laughter rather than fear; ” see the mysteries and miracle plays of the fourteenth century. Demoniacal possession and obsession were still believed in, and the rituale of the Boman Church still affords sanction to the belief, by providing forms for the exorcism both of persons and places. The Beformers generally acquiesced in the prevailing opinions about fallen spirits. Luther, especially, had an intense conviction of the personal agency of the devil, who, he believed, had actually appeared to him. In the Protestant confessions, however, the whole subject is treated in the most cursory manner. THE POWERS OF DARKNESS. 75 From the remotest ages a belief in witchcraft and sorcery had been everywhere more or less generally entertained; but from the fifteenth century onward, throughout Western Christendom, it attained a frightful development. The popular belief was assailed by Cornelius Agrippa (1535) and a few other writers, of whom Eeginald Scott (1584) is the most distinguished. In reply to the latter, James VI., king of Scotland, wrote his Demonology (1597), which stimulated the prevailing superstition till it became a perfect mania. In Germany, Scotland, England, and America many thousands of innocent persons—chiefly aged women, and many of them lunatics—were burnt or otherwise tortured to death as witches, on evidence such as should not have convicted a known thief of larceny. Catholics, Protestants, and Puritans were equally infatuated. At length the superstition was successfully combated by Balthazar Becker (1698) and Christian Thomas (1702); the former of whom advised men to fear God instead of fearing the devil, “ who is of less con¬ sequence than people generally believe.” He even suggested doubts as to the existence of fallen spirits, explaining the assertions of Scripture as “ accommodations to the prejudices of the people.” The rapid decline of belief in Satanic influence, which set in from this time, is treated by Lecky as the first chapter in the history of Bationalism. In fact, as the laws of nature began to be understood, it was perceived that many things which had been mistaken for witchcraft were simply the effects of natural causes, and that other things, alleged to have been effected by diabolic agency, were either delusion or imposture. Soon, among the advocates of what were called “ enlightened views,” the devil became an object of derision; his existence was doubted or denied; and in the present day there is not a little scepticism on the subject within the Church. Swedenborg (1772) denied the personality of the devil, and maintained that all fallen spirits derive their origin from the human race. Popular belief in the prince of dark¬ ness has been rather weakened than confirmed by the mutually inconsistent representations of the poets—Milton’s “ Satan,” Goethe’s “ Mephistopheles,” Byron’s “ Lucifer,” etc. On the 76 NATURE OF MAN. other hand, much attention has been lately directed to the subject in connection with alleged spiritualistic manifestations. Most of these are, doubtless, mere impostures, while others may possibly be due to the operation of unrecognised natural forces; but there are multitudes within the various sections of the Church, both in Europe and America, who believe that some, at least, of the phenomena are produced by spirits both good and evil. Closely associated with these are the pheno¬ mena of mesmerism, which, though purely natural, are thought by many to prove the possibility and illustrate the manner of demoniacal possession. VI.— Nature of Man. To summarize the history of Christian Doctrine concerning * the nature of man would involve a review of almost the entire history of philosophy; for there is scarcely any opinion on the subject, except the grossest Materialism, that has not at some time or other found a home within the Church. It is necessary, therefore, to restrict our inquiry to those topics which are closely related to the peculiar doctrines of Chris¬ tianity. Man, Corporeal and Incorporeal. That man consists of body and of something which is not body is usually deemed self-evident; and it is with the doctrine concerning this incorporeal something that we have chiefly to do. Indeed, the only controversies respecting the physical nature of man which have any great religious significance are these: first, the old dispute as to how far the body was deteriorated by the intrusion of sin—of which anon; and, secondly, the very recent question whether Chris¬ tianity can admit the modern scientific theory of evolution as the divine method in creation, so far as to suppose that the bodily or animal nature of man was developed out of some inferior creature. This question has not yet passed into the domain of history. Most of the early Fathers distinguish between the soul, the MAN, CORPOREAL AND INCORPOREAL. 77 principle of life, and the spirit, the higher principle of reason. This distinction they held to be established by the frequent use of the dissimilar words neplusk and mack in the Old Testament, and psyche and pneuma in the New; but especially by such scriptures as 1 Thess. v. 23 and Heb. iv. 12. Justin (165) says: “The body is the house of the soul, and the soul is the house of the spirit; these three, in those who have sincere hope and unquestioning faith in God, will be saved.” Tatian (166) says: “We recognise two varieties of spirit, one of which is called the soul, but the other is greater than the soul, an image and likeness of God.” Irenseus (202) says: “ There are three things out of which the complete man is formed—flesh, soul, and spirit. The soul, when it follows the spirit, is raised up by it; but sometimes it sympathizes with the flesh, and falls into carnal lusts.” Clement of Alex¬ andria (220) distinguishes between “ the spiritual principle communicated at our creation ” and “ the ruling faculty of the soul.” Some of the Gnostic sects so perverted this dis¬ tinction as to divide men into three classes, earthly, psychic, and spiritual, according to the elements which severally predominated in them. The threefold nature of man, however, was not universally recognised. Tertullian (220) in particular energetically com¬ bats the distinction between soul and spirit. “ It is essential to a firm faith (he says) to declare that the soul is simple.” It is “ sprung from the breath of God, immortal, corporal, having form, simple in substance, intelligent, developing its powers in various ways, free of will, subject to accidents ; in its faculties mutable, rational, supreme, capable of pre¬ sentiment, evolved out of One.” He discusses its situation, and locates it in the heart. This language exactly agrees with his anthropomorphic views of the divine nature, before mentioned. Indeed, Tertullian seems to have been quite incapable of conceiving the idea of pure spirit. Origen (254) expounds both opinions with considerable fulness, but does not definitely commit himself to either. Subsequently the distinction between soul and spirit was in general ignored or repudiated. This general departure from the earlier patristic psychology is not easily explained. 78 NATUEE OF MAN. It might have been supposed that the seeming analogy of body, soul, and spirit would be valued by those who had to defend the doctrine of the Trinity, but such was not the case. Something may be due to the antagonism excited by Apollinaris (about 370), who explained the incarnation by supposing that the Godhead of Christ took the place of a human spirit. Still more important is it to observe that the religious instinct was regarded by Irenseus, Clement, etc., as a function of the spirit, not of the soul; whereas from the time of Augustine (430) most of the Western theologians virtually denied the existence of a religious instinct, making a sharp distinction between “ nature and grace,” and refusing to discern any relation between God and the heathen world.’ The spread of Augustinism carried with it the Tertullianic philosophy, which had all along prevailed in Northern Africa. Augustine says: “ As the reasonable soul and flesh is one man, so God and man is one Christ; ” and the phrase was transferred almost verbatim to the pseudo-Athanasian Creed, thus ascribing to Athanasius a psychology which he would certainly have repudiated. The adoption of the “ Quicunque ” as a Church creed in the eighth century gave to this opinion the stamp of orthodoxy throughout the West, and in the East it was commended by the great authority of John Damascene (750), so that in the Middle Ages it became almost universal. A few of the Schoolmen, indeed, especially Thomas Aquinas (1274), endeavoured practically though not formally to revive the earlier doctrine, by distinguishing between the sensible and the intellectual soul. But mediaeval views continued generally to prevail throughout the Beforma- tion period, and down to our own day. To this, however, there have been notable exceptions. Luther (1546), in particular, compares the nature of man to the tabernacle of Moses; his body, like the court, is manifest to all; his soul, like the holy place, is illumined by the sevenfold light of knowledge and understanding; “ his spirit is the holy of holies, God’s dwelling-place in dim faith without light.” And of late there has been a considerable tendency to revert to the psychology of the early Fathers. This is due, in part, to the decline of the Augustinian OKIGIN OF THE SOUL. 79 dogmas about nature and grace, which have so long prevailed under the name of Calvinism; but also in part to the exigencies of modern apologetics. The distinction between man and beasts has usually been found in the possession of reason; but as, in the opinion of some philosophers, the dividing line between reason and instinct is less clear than was formerly supposed, it has appeared to several recent apologists that a better distinction is presented in the sole possession of a self-conscious spirit, in which a moral sense is inherent, and which alone is capable of apprehending God. Origin of the Soul. It is plainly asserted in Scripture, and has been uniformly held throughout the Church, that the element whereby the first man was distinguished from the brutes, whether it be called soul or spirit, derived its being immediately from God. But very diverse opinions have been entertained as to the origin of souls in general. Tertullian (220) held the theory of traduction , that the soul is propagated together with the body by the joint agency of both parents. This opinion he supported by arguments rather too plain-spoken for literal quotation. Clement of Alexandria (220), on the contrary, regarded every soul as a distinct creation. “ You men,” he says, “ are God’s handiwork, who have received your souls from Him. The Maker of the universe alone, the exalted Artist and Bather, has formed us such a soul-containing image as man is.” He expressly repudiates the idea, mentioned doubtfully by Justin, that “the soul is a part of God.” Origen (254) maintained the pre-existence of souls, which, he thought, had descended to a lower condition on earth, either on account of ill-desert, or in order to serve the world. They were created indeed, but “ in the beginning.” This opinion did not find very wide acceptance; it was defended by Nemesius (400) and Prudentius (405), and thenceforward seems to have been almost forgotten, except as it was con¬ demned by a Council at Constantinople in 538 or 541. From the fourth to the sixth century the question of traduction or creation was keenly debated. The former was 80 NATURE OF MAN. advocated not only by reputed heretics, such as Eunomius (358) and Apollinaris (370), but by orthodox writers of the highest repute. Gregory of Nyssa (394) says: “Man being one, consisting of soul and body, the common beginning of his constitution must be supposed also one; so that he may not be both older and younger than himself; that in him which is bodily being first, and the other coming after.” Jerome (420) rejects this doctrine, but admits that it was the one generally prevalent in the West in his day. Lactantius (325), on the other hand, affirms that “ a body may be produced by a body, but a soul cannot be produced from souls; souls are not given by parents, but by one God and Father, of all, who alone produces them.” Hilary of Poictiers (368), Pelagius (420), and Jerome were of the same opinion; the latter speaks of God as “ making souls daily.” Augustine (430) agreed with his great adversary, Pelagius, in denouncing the notion that souls are “ part of the divine substance; ” but declined to enter on the question of creation and traduction. Gregory the Great (604) puts the difficulty very forcibly : “ If the substance (of the soul) is begotten of Adam with the flesh, why does it not also die with the flesh ? But if it is not begotten with the flesh, why is it held in bondage to sin in that flesh which is derived from Adam ? ” In the Middle Ages the Schoolmen almost unanimously adopted the creation theory, which Odo of Cambray (1113) designated “ the orthodox opinion.” Aquinas (1274) sought to reconcile the two, by suggesting the traduction of the sensitive and the creation of the rational soul. At the time of the Beformation, Calvin and most of the Keformed theologians defended creationism, as did Bellarmine (1641) in the Eoman Church, and Calixtus (1661) among the Lutherans. The majority of the Lutheran divines, as Gerhardt (1637), Calovius (1686), and Hollaz (1713), adopted a modified theory of traduction. Both opinions find general tolerance in the present day, it being perceived that the ques¬ tion is philosophical rather than religious. The eccentric Joseph Glanvill (1682) tried to revive the notion of the pre¬ existence of souls as “ a key to the mysteries of Providence; ” but he gained very few disciples. THE IMAGE OF GOD. 81 The Image of God. It is written that God created man “ in His own imao'e.” O Wherein did that image consist ? The answers to this ques¬ tion have been various and curious; and some of the Fathers had very wild notions on the subject. Tatian (166) limits the divine image in man to those in whom God dwells by His Spirit: “ But if one be not such a habitation, man excels the beasts only in speech ; in other respects his life is like theirs, as one who is not a likeness of God.” Melito of Sardis (180) could not limit the divine image to a part of mankind. He says : “ Thy mind itself is His likeness ; for it, too, is invisible and impalpable, and not to be represented by any form; yet by its will the whole bodily frame is moved.” To much the same effect writes Clement of Alexandria (220): “ Conformity to the image and likeness is not meant of the body, but of mind and reason, on which fitly the Lord impresses the seal of likeness, both in respect of doing good and of exercising rule.” “ The Image of God is the divine and royal Word, the Impassible Man; and the image of the Image is the human mind.” Tertullian (220), on the contrary, seems to think of the divine image as something external and bodily: “ There was One,” he says, “ in whose image God was making man, that is to say, Christ’s image; who, being about one day to become man, had already caused the man to be called His image, who was then going to be formed of clay.” It must be remembered that Tertullian supposed soul and body to be related as form and essence ; the soul, in his opinion, was the formative principle of the body; and even when separated from the body it retained a certain shadowy form. These ideas appear more grossly in the Clementine Homilies (third century), which ascribe to God both form and beauty, and add, “ He moulded man in His own shape, as in the grandest seal, that he may be lord and ruler of all.” Some of the Fathers distinguish between image and like¬ ness. Irenseus (202) says, “When the Word became flesh, He showed forth the image truly, and re-established the likeness after a more sure manner, assimilating man to the F 82 NATURE OF MAN. invisible Father through the visible Word.” Clement of Alexandria speaks of “ the pious Christian alone ” as “ God’s image, and also His likeness, having become righteous, and holy, and wise by Jesus Christ, and so far already like God.” Tertullian associates restoration to the likeness of God with baptism, explaining that “ the image is counted in His form, the likeness in His eternity.” Origen (254) says, “Man received the dignity of God’s image at his first creation, but the perfection of His likeness has been reserved for the con¬ summation, that he might acquire it for himself by the exercise of his own diligence in the imitation of God.” This opinion found some acceptance down to the end of the fifth century. Gradually the more extravagant of the above-mentioned ideas passed into oblivion. Gregory of Nyssa (394) says, “ Not the passions are to be taken for the image of God, but reason, the master of the passions; ” and in another place, “ Where there is the power to rule, there is the image of God.” Such was also the opinion of Athanasius (373), Cyril of Jerusalem (386), Chrysostom (407), and Theodoret (457). Gregory the Great (604) understood by the image of God that “ natural perfection ” which was forfeited by sin. Later theologians, and the Schoolmen generally, combined the views of Gregory of Nyssa with those of Gregory the Great, distinguishing, however, the image from the likeness. Thus Hugh of St. Victor (1140) and Peter Lombard (1150) say, almost in the same words, “The image is to be under¬ stood as knowledge of truth, the likeness as love of virtue.” The mediaeval divines indulged in many conjectures as to what man would have been if sin had not effaced the divine likeness ; but their speculations are of no practical interest. At the Reformation, the Protestant divines usually re¬ garded the image of God as consisting in “ righteousness and true holiness';” to which many of them added free-will and natural immortality, which they believed to have been lost by “the fall.” The Arminians (from 1610) held less exalted notions of man’s original condition, regarding him as innocent, rather than positively holy, and resembling God LIBERTY. 83 chiefly in intelligence and freedom. The Socinians went farther, considering that man—even though he had not sinned —would have been mortal unless sustained by divine grace, and reducing the image of God to dominion over the inferior creatures. All these opinions, as well as those which pre¬ vailed in the Middle Ages, find a home within the Church at the present time. Liberty. The freedom of the will is unquestionably either a fact of consciousness or a universal illusion. It was denied by the Stoics, the Manichaeans, and some Gnostic sects, which ascribed to the stars a controlling influence over human actions; but was maintained against them by the unanimous consent of the Fathers during the first four centuries. Not a single passage, bearing a contrary sense, can be honestly quoted from any Father previous to Augustine. So strong an assertion needs to be strongly supported; but a few examples must suffice. Justin (165) writes: “Not like other things, as trees and quadrupeds, which cannot act by choice, did God make man; for neither would he be worthy of reward or praise if he did not of himself choose the good; . . . nor if he were evil would he be worthy of punishment.” Tatian (166): “Each of these [angels and men] was made free to act as it pleased; that the bad man may be justly punished, having become depraved through his own faults; but the just man may be justly praised for his virtuous deeds, since, in the exercise of his free choice, he refrained from transgressing.” Theo- pliilus (188): “God made man free, and with power over himself.” Irenseus (202): “ Man, having been made free in his will, and with power over himself, is the cause to himself that sometimes he becomes wheat and sometimes chaff.” Origen (254): “This is clearly defined in the teachings of the Church, that every rational soul is possessed * of free-will and volition.” The great theologians of the Eastern Church were equally unanimous on this point, though they admitted that the moral faculties of man had been impaired by the intrusion of sin. Such were the views of Athanasius (373), 84 NATURE OF MAN. Ephrsem of Syria (375), Basil (379), Cyril of Jerusalem (386), Gregory Nazianzen (391), Chrysostom (407), etc. Even Augustine himself, in his earlier writings, maintained human freedom against the Manichseans. But afterwards, being led to adopt the theory of predestination by the exigencies of his controversy with Pelagius, he conceived that the freedom of the will—except for evil—had been altogether lost to man on the occasion of the fall, and was only restored to the elect by the special grace of God. This opinion rapidly gained ground throughout the West, and was held, with some variations, by the great majority of the Schoolmen. It is natural to ask, what causes could lead to the general acceptance of a doctrine which, whether true or false, was at that time undoubtedly novel, which is by no means flattering to human pride, and which seems to be contradicted by daily experience ? Its prevalence cannot be satisfactorily accounted for by the authority of the Church, by the personal influence of Augustine, or by the unpopularity of Pelagius—against whose heresy it was maintained. A more probable cause may be found in the history of the times. The glowing anticipa¬ tions excited by the conversion of Constantine, in 323, had been cruelly disappointed. Instead of a visible kingdom of God upon earth, the Empire had exhibited a lamentable scene of dissension, sectarian strife, and political degradation. The ancient glories of Pome were irretrievably lost; and the entire Empire was overrun by the barbarians,—Goths, Yandals, Huns, etc.,—who spread devastation and misery on every side. Ptome was plundered by the Goths in 410; and in 430, the year of Augustine’s death, the Yandals made them¬ selves masters of Africa, executing vengeance on a community whose morals (if we may accept the testimony of Salvian) were comparable to those of Sodom. Within fifty years from this time the whole of the West was in the hands of the barbarians, the Koman Empire being extinguished in 476. It seemed as if the triumph of the cross, instead of estab¬ lishing “ peace on earth, and goodwill to men,” had simply broken up the fountains of the great deep. In the presence of distress more universal, if not more severe, than the world LIBERTY. 85 had yet seen, it is scarcely surprising that pious souls should find rest in a theory which referred all things to the irre¬ sistible will, and to the unerring though inscrutable wisdom of God. The world at large, lying in wickedness, was free only to do such evils as were daily multiplied on earth; to the elect alone a higher freedom was imparted by divine grace. Not, however, without a struggle did the predestin- arianism of Augustine attain supremacy in the Western Church. It was never accepted in the East; and in France and Italy was long confronted with the Oriental doctrine under the name of Semi-Pelagianism, of which more here¬ after. The early mediaeval doctrine on the subject of human liberty is thus concisely expressed by Hugh of St. Victor (1140): “Man, before the fall, was both able to sin and able not to sin ; after the fall, and before justification, he is able to sin, but unable not to sin; when justified but not fully sanctified, he possesses grace to do good, and infirmity to do evil; in the highest state of perfection he is able not to sin, and unable to sin, but only because he will never be deprived of assisting grace.” Other mediaeval divines endeavoured to reconcile Augustine’s doctrine of predestination with a real freedom of the will. Anselm (1109) affirmed that both are taught in Scripture ; therefore, he says, “No one maintains an acceptable rectitude but by willing it, neither can any one will it unless he have it; but to have it, except by grace, profits nothing at all.” Peter Lombard (1164) distinguished between predestination and prescience; the latter may exist without the former, but not the former without the latter. “ By predestination God foresaw those things which He Him¬ self was about to do; but He also foresaw those things which He was not about to do, i.e. all evil things.” This is the “ scientia media ” of the later Jesuit theologians. Bona- ventura (1274) spoke of man’s free-will as a contingent cause included in God’s prescience. Duns Scotus (1308) went much farther in asserting human liberty: “ A meritorious act is in the power of man (a general influence being supposed), if he shall have had the use of free-will and grace.” His views were eagerly 86 NATURE OF MAN. adopted by the Franciscans, and speedily became so popular that Thomas of Bradwardine' (1349) said—misrepresenting his opponents after the manner of controversialists—that “ almost the whole world had fallen into the errors of Pela- gianism.” Bradwardine’s views on the bondage of the will were more rigid than those of Augustine himself. “ The divine will,” he says, “is universally efficacious, invincible, and necessary in causation; it can neither be impeded nor frustrated by any means . . . [otherwise] men would dispose their wills, ante¬ cedently and causatively, to this or that; so that God would subserviently and executively dispose the number of the elect thus and thus.” Wickliffe (1384), a pupil of Brad¬ wardine, was not less absolute; he is represented as affirming that “all things that happen do come absolutely of neces¬ sity ; ” and that man, who believes himself to possess free¬ will, is like a child in leading-strings, wha thinks he is walking alone. Similar views were entertained by Huss (1414). The views of Duns Scotus and the Franciscans unquestion¬ ably tended towards “ Semi-Pelagianism.” They found in¬ creasing favour with the more conservative members of the Boman Church, especially the prelates, as it became evident that reformatory movements were chiefly promoted by the advocates of Augustinism. Meanwhile the Greek Church steadily adhered to the earlier belief in human liberty, which had been defended by John Damascene (750), Tlieophylact (1070), Nicholas of Methone (1089), etc. The leaders of the Deformation, Zuingli (1531), Luther (1546), Melanchthon (1560), Calvin (1564), and Beza (1605), were all predestinarians, as were the most distin¬ guished of their coadjutors, with the single exception of Castalio (1563). This was owing, in part, to the influence of Augustine, whose writings, as an acknowledged authority, were of great importance for the establishment of salvation by grace, in opposition to the work-righteousness of the Boman Church. Another cause was, doubtless, the necessity of insisting much on the sovereignty of God in opposition to the authority of the Church. It was thought derogatory IMMORTALITY. 87 to the honour of the Universal King to suppose that any¬ thing should take place otherwise than as He willed it. Accordingly, several of the Beformers fairly exhausted the powers of language in their denunciations of free-will. As if by a natural consequence, the opposite doctrine gained strength within the Boman Church, and was energeti¬ cally supported by the Jesuits (from 1540). As Augustine was a canonized doctor of the Church, his theology could not well be pronounced heretical; but it fell into almost universal disfavour. An attempt was made to revive it by Jansen, Bishop of Ypern (1638); and the controversy which ensued led to a bitter persecution of the Jansenists in France (1665-1709). From 1704 these formed a separate sect, chiefly located in Holland; they are now absorbed in the “ Old Catholics.” Tn 1603, James van Harmen (Arminius), professor at Leyden, became convinced that the predestinarian theories of the Beformers were unscriptural. He asserted the freedom of the will, together with other doctrines respecting sin and grace, which will be more conveniently reviewed hereafter. The “ Arminian Controversy,” which followed, was by far the most bitter and long-continued of all that have arisen in the Protestant Churches. It still breaks out occasionally; as the freedom of the will is denied, at least by implication, in the written standards of several religious bodies whose indi¬ vidual members hold the contrary opinion. To the more thoughtful minds, however, it has become evident that the whole question belongs to the sphere of philosophy rather than of religion. Immortality. There remains the question of immortality. Except among the Pelagians and Socinians, it has been till very lately the universal belief of Christendom that “the wages of sin is death,” in such a sense that man, if he had not sinned, would have been immortal. But man, as known to us, is naturally subject to death, having, however, a prospect of everlasting life through Jesus Christ. The question is, whether or not everlasting life, in its literal sense, is the exclusive privilege 88 NATURE OF MAN. of them that are saved; or whether the soul is naturally immortal ? This question has been so generally answered in favour of the latter alternative, during the last 800 years, that recent assertions to the contrary are by many thought to be novel as well as heretical. Nevertheless, the early Fathers were by no means of. v, f„ - CJ ( I pf --( i* f $ - l-* j Jr*-*-* (r\ ' %.( .--Ivor pi $ 9 C if 1 % •JLZZfr - % c*. ■ t .t. fv* W J ^ 5 v K >. . 1 *o^a #v 102 ■4 A. A •*' SIN AND ITS CONSEQUENCES. The Cyprianic doctrine of the transmission or imputation » to Adam’s posterity of the guilt of his sin was retained alike ^in the Lutheran and Reformed Churches, as well as by many i ^ theologians in the Church of Rome. But in 1640 Joshua ^ _jjr— de la Place, professor at Saumur, France, advanced the doctrine of “ mediate imputation,” i.e. that God charges the j ^ guilt of Adam’s sin on his posterity only in consequence of 'Ow y the depravity which they inherit by natural generation. The strict Calvinists, on the contrary, affirmed that such depravity was a consequence of the imputation of Adam’s guilt, in fact, a part of its penalty; and the views of La Place were condemned by a Synod at Charenton in 1644. A similar . , r i t condemnation awaited the assertion of Cl. Pajou (1685), that //m cil A' original sin consists chiefly in an imperfection of the under¬ standing, which exercises a pernicious efl ? ect on the will, and needs to be healed by the operation of the Holy Spirit. In the Lutheran Church, during the seventeenth century, the Augustinian doctrine concerning sin, though retaining its place in formal theology, came to be practically ignored. This 4*44 1 1'% v^was probably owing to the belief, retained from the Roman Church, that original sin—whether consisting of depravity, hereditary or imputed guilt, moral inability, or what not— . t \ was extinguished by the sacrament of baptism. The same belief obtained in the Anglican Church, though repudiated in its Articles. In opposition to this, great importance was v , «■ .attached to the survival of original sin in them that are jk- / u^^^P^aptized, by Spener (1705) and the German Pietists; as „ ^ also, half a century later, by the [Arminian] Methodists l \ and [Calvinistic] Evangelicals in England, of whom more V i ri 'A-'*/ anon. Moreover, from 1638 to 1704, the Jansenists, in £ < ( France and Holland, maintained Augustinism within the bosom of the Roman Church. It is a remarkable fact that, (Atj* amidst the almost universal decay of piety in the last quarter of the seventeenth century, the highest moral and v spiritual life of the period was found among the Jansenists ct* ti * ,tu>. t M f and Pietists. It is only necessary barely to glance at rationalistic and philosophical speculations on the subject. The Socinians, from 1602, approached closely to Pelagianism; according to PROGRESS OF OPINION SINCE THE REFORMATION. 103 the Bacovian Catechism, there is, properly speaking, no original sin, but a natural bias toward evil for which man is no w T ay responsible. Swedenborg (1772), too, disbelieved original sin, and regarded man as a free agent, influenced by good and evil spirits. The adherents of modern rationalism have, in like manner, erased original sin from their systems. Kant (1804), admitting that evil tendencies exist in man, insisted that they had their origin in his liberty, and denied that they were inherited from an ancestor of the race; the narrative of Adam’s fall he regarded as merely a sym bol, to be explained on these principles. Blasche (1827) similarly denied hereditary depravity; according to him, innocence 1