^•i:r^> m: i]!^i:,f-.:: m E^^':^^^ PRINCETON, N. J. «cf> Purchased by the Mrs. Robert Lenox Kennedy Church History Fund. Division tLZ^ f -^^^ • Section .(.....S-fr...W . ^■wnber ■^■■^■■y^ J J- BY THE SAME AUTHOR. MORALITY IN DOCTRINE. Crown 8vo. is. 6d. LESSONS FROM THE LIVES OF THREE GREAT FATHERS, St. Athanasius, St. Chry- sostom, and St. Augustine, With Appendices. Crown 8vo. 6s. THE INCARNATION AS A MOTIVE PO^VER. Crown 8vo. 6s. HYMNS AND OTHER VERSES. Small Svo. 5 J. lONA, AND OTHER VERSES. Small Svo. 4^. 6d. LIBER PRECUM PUBLICARUM EC- CLESIvE ANGLICAN^E. A Gulielmo Bright, S.T.P., ^-Edis Christi apud Oxon. Canonico, Plistorice Ecclesiastic^e, Professore Regio, et Petro Goldsmith Medd, A.M., Eccles. Cath. S. Albani Canonico Honorario, Collegii Universitatis apud Oxon. Socio Seniore. Latine redditus. Eaitio Quarta., cum Appendice. With Rttbrics in red. Small Svo. Ts. 6d. LONDON AND NEW YORK: LONGMANS, GREEN, & CO. WAYMARKS IN CHURCH HISTORY WAYMARKS IN CHURCH HISTORY WILLIAM BRIGHT, D.D. CANON OF CHRIST CHURCH, OXFORD, REGIUS PROFESSOR OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY LONDON LONGMANS, GREEN, & CO. AND NEW YORK: 15 EAST 16^'' STREET 1894 All rights reserved TO THE RIGHT REVEREND LORD ALWYNE COMPTON, D.D. BISHOP OF ELY AND LORD HIGH ALMONER, IN LASTING REMEMBRANCE OF THE KINDNESSES OF MANY YEARS. PREFACE Of the papers collected in this volume, the first four, with the sixth and eighth, represent addresses included in a series of " Lectures to Clergy," which were given in the University Schools at Oxford during the Long Vacation of 1893. Part of the eleventh was delivered in a lecture to the Gloucester Cathedral Society in October, 1891. The seventh, ninth, and tenth, with two appendices, are recensions of articles contributed to the Church Quarterly Review in 1883, 1884, 1888, and 1889. The twelfth is an expansion of an article in the Newbery House Magazine, May, 1892. My thanks are due to the Editors of those periodicals for permission to reprint what has already appeared in their pages. Christ Church, February 14, 1894. CONTENTS PAGE I. On the Study of Church History . . i II. Gnosticism and St. Iren.bus 20 III. Ante-Nicene Sectarianism 39 IV. The Arian Controversy: its Issues and ITS Lessons 56 V. The Episcopate of St. Basil 81 VI. The Christological Controversy in the Fourth and Fifth Centuries .... 114 VII. Cyril of Alexandria 139 VIII. Pelagianism 182 IX. Papalism and Antiquity 205 X. The Clergy and Secular Employments . 243 XL An Appeal to Bede 279 XII. Archbishop Laud 323 APPENDICES. A, Ireiuciis on the Saci'anieiits 355 B, The First Steps oj the Arian Co7itroversr .... 361 C, Arianisin tending to Unitm-ianism 364 X CONTENTS. PAGE D. Semi-Ananisin 367 E. Basil and Glycerins 374 F. Theodoret 378 G. Cyril oil the '■'■ Kenosis'''' 384 H. The Coptic Church 394 I. The Alouoth elite Controversy 401 J. '■'■ A Professional Diaconafe'''' 409 K. Canterbury and York -419 I^. Laud's Letters 426 Index 433 ON THE STUDY OF CHURCH HISTORY. Those who approach the study of Church history are frequently warned to put away all partisan bias, and to adopt an ab extra position as simply candid observers. But bias and partisanship, if the latter word is used as implying unfairness, are not equivalent terms. A bias of some kind is unavoidable. We can- not ignore our own beliefs, or even our own prepossessions ; to pose as external to a subject on which we have interior convictions,^— to attempt, for instance, to sweep the belief in a Divine Christ out of our minds before we begin to read about the Nicene Council, would be like trying to take ourselves out of our- selves, to pretend not to be what we are. If our object is truth, we must not begin by being untrue ; and affectation or unreality is untruth. In the words of one who was in sad earnest external to Christianity, if the demand B 2 IVAYMARKS IN CHURCH HISTORY. for " impartiality " means " that the writer on a past age " — and this carries with it the case of a student — "is to take no side, to have no preference either for persons whom he considers virtuous, or for principles which he considers just, and no reprobation for the contraries to these, the answer is that on these lines history cannot be, and never has been, written." As '' in the courts of law it is vain to hope that subjective bias " in favour of one side against another " can ever be removed from the mind of a human judge, and it is not desirable to remove it," so what condemns a historian, who as such professes to be a judge, is not bias, but "unfairness in collecting and sifting evidence, and anxiety to win a verdict by misrepresentation of it." ^ No doubt there are special temptations to such an offence against equity, where historical questions touch on religious interests. Church history has at times been written on the prin- ciple of suppressing what would not "edify," and therefore of concealing, or passing very lightly over, what is in the proper sense scandalous ; of condoning the errors or mis- deeds of men prominent as Christians or Churchmen. Such a course has seemed to be * Cotter Morison on Macaulay, p. 73. ON THE STUDY OF CHURCH HISTORY, 3 suggested by pietas towards spiritual ancestry, by a fear lest outspokenness should fix a blot on a sacred cause. It was a like feeling which has before now led good men, with whom reverence was a predominant religious instinct, to refrain from censuring the treachery of Jacob, to explain away the inconsistency of St. Peter. But all would now say that this was a grave mistake. Hagiology is not history; and if, out of ten- derness for a venerated memory, we blur the line which severs right from wrong, we need to be reminded of Pere Gratry's repeated quotation from the Vulgate, Numqidd Deus indiget vestro inendacio ? or of Cardinal New- man's homely plainness of speech, "It is not honest to distort history " in favour of one who has been sainted ; " it does not answer to call whitey-brown white." ^ We must not " let reverence for any man cause us to err ; " we must remember that nothing edifies which is not honest, that we "give glory to God" by speaking the truth as unto Him, that suppressio veri leads straight to suggestio falsi. Another form of un- fairness is that which is prompted by odmm theo- iaim. Herein no doubt ecclesiastics have * Hist. Sketches, iii. 342. 4 WAYMARICS IN CHURCH HISTORY. often been blamable; but has no odium anti-tkeO' logicnmheQW ever discernible in their opponents ? Without pursuing that question, let us admit that it has been found difficult aXr^Oemiv h aydrry ; but still we can point to great ecclesi- astics who have shown great gentleness, in whom a tender heart has made distinct orthodoxy beautiful. The conduct of Dionysius to the Millenarians, of Athanasius to the Semi-Arians, of Proclus to "heretics,"^ of Peter of Clugny to Abelard, — Augustine declining to be "fierce" with Manicheans because he knew how hard it had been for himself to gain true ideas about God,^ — may we not say that these are instances in which the calmness of Scripture even as to Barabbas and Judas has been taken profitably to heart, in which men who believed that angels were on their side have refrained from railing accusations ? But we of this day have been drilled into a nervously sensitive candour, which occasion- ally leads us to the opposite mistake. We are sometimes apt to indulge self-complacency by protesting that ^' if we had been in the days of our fathers, we would not have been par- takers with them " in this or that ; for instance, * Socrates, vii. 41. ' Aug. c. Epist. Manich. 2. ON THE STUDY OF CHURCH HISTORY. 5 by throwing the whole blame of a disastrous schism on the bishops and clergy of the period, or assuming that if such a one had been dealt with in a more conciliatory fashion, he would not have become an apostate or a heresiarch. This is not the most helpful form of a confiteor. It is so easy, and in its way so pleasant, to apply to men of a distant past, as if e loco sHperiori, the standard reached in after-times and under very different conditions ; as if we did well to be Pharisaically censorious because great teachers, enthusiastic about the memory of martyrs, did not foresee the historic results of practices which in simplicity of heart they encouraged, — because Christians emerging from the atmosphere of the "Grseculus," and misled by the use of the elastic term " economy," did not rise at once to the level of that veracious- ness which, as we boast, " comes natural " to us Teutons ; because, to take yet another example, the moral debasement of Pagan society had obscured for some Christians, whose suminum boniim was utter purity, the religious nobility of Christian married life. But again, we are to study a great phenomenon in the spiritual order ; and we shall not see it properly unless we are at home within its range. 6 WAYMARKS IN CHURCH HISTORY. There is a truth represented by one of the sayings attributed to our Lord : " My mystery (or, My secret) for Me, and for the sons of My house." ^ We must be in sympathy with what we are to appreciate. The statement that in Mosheim love of the Christian cause was not apparent may be thought true or false, but anyhow is not praise. Love is a condition of intimate know- ledge ; it is not outsiders who will best under- stand what the Church of the New Testament claimed to be. It claimed to be the earthly mani- festation and organised form of the Kingdom of God upon earth, as centred in Christ the Incarnate Word. It was called, in a certain true and deep sense, His body. It had been a main part of His original plan. He did not will to "cast His word loose among mankind," to let it float on the mid-stream of human life with- out the protection of a visible society ; on the contrary, "His message" was never given except with due care for *' embodiment," and in a degree for " organisation." ^ Look at His own brief personal ministry ; think how much of it is spent on the training of a chosen few, to be the nucleus and formative principle of a Church ; ^ Clem. Alex. Strom., v. lo. 63. 2 Holland, Creed and Character, p. 57 ; cp. pp. Zt, 117. ON THE STUDY OF CHURCH HISTORY. 7 how significant is the use of such descriptive terms as a kingdom, a flock, or a household, in which some, by His appointment, and as His agents, are to bear rule as shepherds or stewards. No wonder that when He had withdrawn into His " glory," the Church grew up around the Apostles as a centre, — that it regarded itself as His special creation ; that the Apostolic writings are stultified by the hypothesis of a " naturalistic " church, the result of the working tendency of individuals to self-association, evolved under the laws of God's ordinary providential govern- ment, and so allowed, or in this sense caused, to fashion itself thus and thus. A "church" of this kind might be called " divinely organised " just as all forms of co-operative activity are so, from a benefit society to a parliament. The Church of those first days does not present itself as a guild or a company ; to outsiders it may have seemed so, but its members believed it to be a Divine incorporation, to have a unique mystery in its life, an unparalleled Presence in its working. So regarded, the Church fits in with the fundamental miracle of the Gospel. If the Word Himself became flesh, and still is with us as Saviour, King, and Lifegiver, it was clearly consistent that He should provide, for 8 JVAYAfARKS IN CHURCH HISTORY. those who were to receive " out of His fulness," a spiritual abode in which they might attain to effective union with Him, a treasure-house of all the powers and blessings which belong to the economy of evangelical grace. In a word, a supernatural Christ makes a supernatural Church, to say the least, intelligible. And if we adopt this point of view, if we habitually think of the Church, to use St. Paul's pregnant phrase, " in the Lord," if we contemplate Him as reign- ing in it, presiding over it, caring for it, we shall be insensibly trained to face and bear the disquieting shocks which our study will perforce administer. For as a thoughtful and holy man of the Tractarian period used to express it, ''Whoever enters on the study of Church history must be prepared for many surprises." This dictum of Charles Marriott is preserved for us by Dean Church in a brilliant lecture on Bishop Andrewes ; ^ and he adds the comment, " Certainly the course of Church history has not run, either for good or for evil, in the course which theorists would have pre- scribed to it." Elsewhere he says to the like effect, " The history of the Christian Church has ^ Contributed to a book called " Masters of English Theo- logy," p. 109. ON THE STUDY OF CHURCH HISTORY. 9 hardly fulfilled the promise, has not realised on a large scale the ideal, of the New Testament. It has been a very mixed history ; on the one hand, great efforts, definite improvement and progress ... on the other, perplexing disap- pointment, inconsistency, degeneracy ; " ^ and yet again, " The first and characteristic feeling of the Oxford Movement " was that " anomaly and disorder were not here only, or there only, but everywhere." ^ It is so : the story which we might expect to find so glorious illustrates repeatedly, patheti- cally, the memorable passage in which the Apostle explodes the dream of a fond optimism, and points to a law of failure or "vanity" to which creation has been made subject, and not creation only, " but ourselves also, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit ; even we," too, are under this discipline of " bondage," — we, too, must wait for a full "adoption" to set us free. The failures of Christianity and the Church — they are trying, saddening, often well-nigh over- whelming ; they make the believer's heart sick, they supply the unbeliever with taunting pro- verbs, — " At last, then, the sham is being found ' Discipline of the Christian Character, p. 119. ^ The Oxford Movement, pp. 239, 208. lo WAYMARKS IN CHURCH HISTORY. out, — the superstition of ages is breaking down.'" If the work of religion gets done, it is done with reverses, blunders, drawbacks. God's cause is compromised by the weaknesses or sins of His agents ; great teachers use one-sided language, even saints at times act indefensibly. Plans for good are " marred in the hands of the potter ; " zeal is debased by inconsistency or by bitterness ; energy flags under checks not bar- gained for ; institutions formed in true devout- ness exhibit the seeds of early corruption ; long lives of single-hearted labour pass away and seem to leave no fruit ; missions fail to win converts ; fresh growths of piety are blighted ; prospects of reunion are overcast. Churches like the old Irish and the old Prankish are infected by the wild fierceness of the people to whom they minister ; great sees like the Roman in the tenth century are drenched with shame- less vice ; heresies that seemed to have died out revive, like Manicheism among the Albigenses, or Arianism or Photinianism among followers, as Hooker puts it, of " the course of extreme reformation ; " in short, as Keble once expressed it, " The Church's time on earth is a time of crosses," not only of "persecution and direct hostility," but " of hopes frustrated and expecta- ON THE STUDY OF CHURCH HISTORY. n tions cut off." ^ It is the thought of Church " decay " so often recurring in the " Christian Year," as in the verses for Thursday before Easter and the Twenty-first Sunday after Trinity, which gives to that epoch-making book a somewhat sad, autumnal tone, distinct, as Mr. Lock has observed,^ from that of some poems in the '' Lyra Apostolica," notably from those inspiriting stanzas, " Wherefore shrink and say, 'Tis vain," etc. We are not thinking, observe, of open conflicts with the world-power, as of the sudden interruption of a long period of quiet sunshine by the thunder-peal of the edict of a Decius, nor even of the terrible extinction of Churches once rich in martyrdoms, like that of North-western Africa, or, in the seventeenth century, of Japan ; but of hindrances and scandals within the precinct, instances of the awful truth which Faber sets forth with startling plainness, that even " In His own world He is content To play a losing game." » Academical and Occasional Sermons, p. 323 ; cp. the pre- ceding sermon on " Endurance of Church Imperfections." 2 Life of Keble, p. 132. But the idea of "decay" is ex- pressed in his poem on Sacrilege in the "Lyra Apostohca," written some months before his sermon on " National Apos- tasy." 12 WAYMARKS IN CHURCH HISTORY. We wonder, perhaps, why He allows such evils to get ahead and become enormous. We are tempted to fret ourselves over the enigmas of His government, to put into language of our own the question of ail-but despairing prophets or psalmists, of " little-faith " Apostles when their Master was asleep amid the storm. But then, let us suppose ourselves to have been well assured that, as the Lord foresaw the denials of Peter, the timidity of Mark, the for- saking of Paul by Demas, as He predicted that false Christs should arise, that an overflow of iniquity should chill love in many hearts, and that some of his chief servants would dishonour Him by tyranny and sensuality — even so, ever since, all that is painful in the Church's career has been going on before His throne, of whom a brave soul once said, " When He is not^ I shall lose courage." ^ In the strength of that con- viction let the history of the Church be again considered, and the mass of oppressive clouds will be seen to lift and break. Light springs up, "flashing in the gloomiest sky," for those who, truly faithful, have not " lost patience." Compensations, reliefs, consoling facts, reveal * The Abbess Angelique, when her ''postulants " were re- moved by royal order. ON THE STUDY OF CHURCH HISTORY. 13 themselves ; if there are still many " adversaries," there are "doors great and effectual" set open. The dry bones stand up on their feet. The plant, after all, is living ; we can trace its growth ; the leaven has certainly got further into the lump ; after the wasted night of toil, there stands the Figure on the beach ; a piece of success all at once rewards effort ; and love can say with assurance, " It is the Lord." Con- sider how often He provides the right man for the right work at the right hour; how, just " when Israel is in the brick-kiln, then cometh Moses ; " how a brilliant, elaborate, and prevalent misbelief is made the ''servile minister" of faith, employed to train theologians for its own more decisive overthrow ; how truths, long forgotten, victoriously reassert themselves, renewing in effect that scene at the gates of Lystra, when the Apostle, seemingly stoned to death, rose up while the brethren gathered round him, and re- entered the city as if he had been unhurt. "Nothing," wrote Newman in 1835, "is so con- soling as to see the indestructibility of good principles ; again and again they spring up, and in the least expected quarters." ^ Even so the grandest of all individual conversions is in a way * Letters and Correspondence, ii. 93. 14 IVAVMAR/irS IN CHURCH HISTORY. reproduced by accessions to the side of truth which humanly could not have been hoped for, as when, in the first century of English Chris- tianity, the children of a typical heathen king became illustrious as a family of saints ; or, again, by a " miracle of repair," ^ an upward burst of revival and renovation, a Church that seemed far gone in laxity or unspirituality exhibits the inexhaustible Christian power of self-improve- ment, and vindicates that indomitable hope for the cause of goodness, which is wholly bound up with the Gospel of the world's Redeemer. We are helped by such instances to see how defeats that seemed final are not final, to recognise a mutatio dexterce Excelsi bringing the morning after the night; to detect and crush the half-rebellious temper which lurks under a habit of dwelling moodily on the "darker side of things." We have got a clue put into our hands ; we know that even the scandals which have most sorely troubled faith are not to be left for unbelievers to utilise ; that even the crimes which have been perpetrated in the cause of Christianity involve, as Bishop Westcott has said,^ a " defiance of the message of the Incarna- 1 Dean Paget, Faculties and Difficulties, etc., p. 172, ff. 2 Religious Thought in the West, p. 359. ON THE STUDY OF CHURCH HISTORY. 15 tlon," and prove only that the persons answer- able for them were strangers to the mind of Jesus Christ. To glance at one other point ; a great stock of encouragement may be derived from that manifold operation of the Christian Faith on varieties of national character, which has been so splendidly depicted by Dean Church ; ^ that benignant versatility of grace which deepened the Greek nature into a seriousness that put new fibre into it, which opened to the hard gravity of Latins a fountain of afifectionateness and of imaginative capacities, and which awed and refined and disciplined for noble develop- ments the young proud strength of conquering Teutonism. May we not say that St. Paul, in his signal power of self-adaptation to the needs of diverse hearers, was a true represen- tative of the religion which has exhibited so helpful an elasticity, "becoming all things to all men, that it might by all means save some " ? These considerations, and such as these, will tend to reassure us, to show that Christ has not been unmindful of His promise to be with * Lectures on some Influences of Christianity upon National Character. 1 6 IVAYMARKS IN CHURCH HISTORY. His Church "through all the days." He who founded this " house of God " has never ceased in the worst of times to be the High Priest unseen over it. He has not told us all His mind about it, and doubtless we could not have comprehended more than He has told ; but, as in the case of His natural administration, He has given us light enough for a trustfulness that sustains hope, and makes His servants strong enough to work on in His cause. The familiar Virgilian line, "O passi graviora, dabit Deus his quoque finem," may fitly express the solemn confidence which a thoughtful survey of Church history will foster under circum- stances which might otherwise seem more disheartening than Christians of earlier days have had to confront. While we are not better than our fathers, we are not practically in worse case ; if unbelief is more aggressive or more thoroughgoing, we can yet see our own tokens in a revival of Christward devotion, a drawing together, in aim and in spirit, of souls loyal to one Lord. We are not to " seek great things for ourselves," to demand that amount of visible success for the cause which would give us more sensible comfort ; but to seek to lean on that " strength " which is never more truly "per- ON THE STUDY OF CHURCH HISTORY, 17 fected " than in the weakness of those who wait upon Him. And the actual direct benefits from these studies— do they not include a broader and more vivid perception of a Divine order carried on, as under " one increasing purpose," through all the ages between the call of the "friend of God " and the coming of God's own Son ? Ought we not to gain some insight into that mass of evidence at once for the truth and the power of Christ which was necessarily unknown to the first believers ; to learn what Christendom, after all deductions, can do in the way of witnessing for Christ ; how promises have been largely, though not as yet completely, fulfilled ; how virtues neglected by Heathen- ism have got their rights, and vices long tolerated have been branded with due shame; how the type of character exhibited in the Gospels has been the permanent moral enrichment of humanity; what a stimulus to practical faith is to be found in the lives of eminent Christians, ancient, mediaeval, modern ; how the significance of doctrine has thus become more apparent, and the ''credo'' been felt to be more "worth living for and dying for " ? And the warning lesson,— -" writ large," irriXiKoig y pa lujuacriv,— is it c l8 WAYMARJ^S IN CHURCH HISTORY. not just this, that the failures of Church work and the ailments of Church life have been due principally to a forgetfulness that Christ's Kingdom, though it must be in this world, cannot be "of" it? Things went wrong, we see, when men acting in His name did not act according to His revealed will ; when, with a sacred end in view, they were incurious or unscrupulous as to means, or even thought it unpractically fastidious to decline to fight the world with its own weapons ; when unspiritual aims were mixed up with ecclesiastical activity, or unchristian modes of thought with theological speculation ; when leaders of the Church, having to deal with a low type of public opinion, became conformed to it while they fancied that they were only " keeping in touch " with it. We in modern England are by no means free from the peril of a secularised Christianity, adapted to the taste of a race that is instinctively suspicious of what brings the Kingdom of Heaven too near. Our very boast of being members or ministers of an established Church may betray us if we are not sedulously heedful ; we may take up with theories which merge the Church in the State, which require it to express just so much of religion, and just that ON THE STUDY OF CHURCH HISTORY, 19 sort of religion, which the nation from time to time may seem to approve ; or, which is a peril independent of all theories, and closely besetting each individual path, we may acquiesce in something short of that pure self-dedication which the Gospel parable describes as "salt." For the upshot of the whole matter is, that the Church belongs to Christ, and exists to carry out His design for souls ; and those who would work for her must be Christians in thorough earnest, or else, through their own failure in this primary requirement, they will misunderstand her as students, and injure her as members. GNOSTICISM AND ST. IREN^US. If we suppose a young candidate for ordination, who has had no previous theological training, to be " getting up " the history of the first three centuries, and in this enterprise to come across the thing called Gnosticism, we shall recognise a just claim upon our pity. Of course he is bewildered. The theories of Simon Magus, of the Ophites, of Saturninus, Basilides, Valen- tinus ; the primary male and female principles ; the "six roots" of things, produced in couples from an original power ; the " sonship existing in three forms," pure, coarse, and capable of purification ; the First Principle too abstract to be called existent ; the limited but " great Archon " ruling over three hundred and sixty- five heavens ; the long procession of " ^ons " in successive groups of eight, of ten, and of twelve, and so forming a " Pleroma ; " the struggles and sufferings of that younger "Sophia" called Achamoth, whose emotions gave birth ^ * Hence Irenseus repeatedly says that on this theory existent things are the result of a " defect " or weakness. GNOSTICISM AND ST. IREN^US, 21 to all " psychical " and all material existence ; the limited and non-spiritual " Demiurgus " or " World-framer ; " the " lower Christ " formed by him, but ultimately spiritualised by union with a heavenly " Jesus ; " the essential differ- ences between three classes of men as '' mate- rial," "psychical," and ''spiritual;" — all these, and the like, may well appear at first sight like the wild play of an extravagant fancy, like the images which float through a feverish dream. Our prosaic young English student will ask, " What on earth does it all mean ? " or, " Does it mean anything ? " and it will be well if some friend hints to him that in this case, as in the similar case of Manicheism, the luxuriant mythology is the garb of a deep principle, a general view, which had far-reaching effects on an age that was throbbing and seething with eagerness for invisible help mid thickening perils and anxieties, aspiring after a more complete conception of the universe, of its causative powers, of the secrets of "why, and whence, and whither ; " a view which professed to explain with philosophical completeness the formation of the world, the first principle of existence, and " that dire dilemma of the cause of ill." Gnosticism is, indeed, a very serious 22 WAYMARJCS IN CHURCH HISTORY. phenomenon ; we see its germs, as Bishop Lightfoot has pointed out, in what he has called "the Colossian heresy;" we meet with its password in St. Paul's warning against " the profane babblings and oppositions of the Know- ledge falsely so called ; " and the epistle to the "angel" of Thyatira alludes pointedly to some who profess to "know the deep things." In this emphatic use of the word "know" lies one of the keys of the whole subject. " Know- ing men " was a title assumed by those early precursors of Basilides and Valentinus ^ who were pleased to take the serpent as the symbol of intellectual emancipation. One of their hymns represents their Jesus as saying, " I will hand on the secrets of the Holy Way, calling them knowledge."^ Not faith, but intellectual compre- hension, intellectual "sight," as we might say, was their offer as the chief blessing for men : a knowledge different from that which Apostles had ranked high among the privileges of Christianity, but not unlikely to be mistaken for it by unwary Christians who heard a clever Gnostic put his own sense on familiar * Iren. ii. 13. 10. Valentinians also called themselves "highly intelligent" (lb. i. 19. 2). - Hippol. Refut. V. 10, on the Naassenes or Ophites. GNOSTICISM AND ST. IREN^US. 23 Christian language, while quoting freely, for instance, from the Gospel of St. John. The difference of aim, idea, and method between the Gnostic and the Christian teacher was, in fact, the difference between the Christian and the non-Christian point of view. And here is what should interest us — that Gnosticism, in all its proper forms (the Marcionite form being to some extent excepted), was an elaborate attempt to utilise Christianity for the promotion, and absorb it into the mass, of an ethnic theo- sophy or philosophy. As Liddon has said, it looked on Christianity as " an addition to the existing stock of current human speculations," ^ and "handled it freely," as quite unfit, indeed, to pastor absolute truth, but fit enough to be used, or borrowed from, in order to deck out a larger and broader system, which should fill up its blanks and cover the whole ground.^ Here is the point ; Gnosticism, on the whole, is not ^ Some Elements of Religion, p. 13. » ' Cf. Lightfoot on Colossians, p. 80. "The knowledge," says Dean Mansel, "professed by the Gnostic teachers was a curious inquiry, searching after an apprehension of God, not in what He has revealed to us, but in that which He has not revealed — an inquiry which, under the pretence of giving a deeper and more spiritual meaning to the Christian revelation, in fact, uprooted its very foundations by making it subservient to theories incompatible with its first principles." — Gnostic Heresies, p. 8. 24 WAYMARKS IN CHURCH HISTORY. a scheme of perverted Christian thought, but of Heathenish thought adopting some Jewish and some Christian elements. For us, who in our day have known something of the non- Christian use of Christian terms, and even of the non-religious use of the name of religion itself, this characteristic of Gnosticism should be instructive. Its teachers said in effect to the Church, "Put your creed into our hands, and we will make something of it for you ; in itself it is limited, unscientific, behindhand ; you do not yourselves understand the great ideas of which its terms may be made a symbol ; bring us what you call your gold, and we will cast it into the fire ; you shall see what will come out." Some of the results were these : a word like "redemption" was detached from all ethical and spiritual ideas, and made to mean full intellectual development, such as was attained by those who, in the Gnostic terminology, were miscalled "spiritual men." Thus the sacred words which had represented the Christian doctrines of sin and of grace became perverted, and, as it were, unmoralised ; the idea of a moral and personal God was practically stripped of its meaning, the metaphysical conception of a First Principle superseded it, and religion GNOSTICISM AND ST. IRENMUS. 25 in its true sense was undermined. And with the personality of God went the personality of man, for his free will was sunk in the stream of the world's course.^ Again, the deep- seated Oriental preconception that Matter was essentially evil interposed a great gap between the Most High and the forces which produced the universe ; it was impossible that a Father Almighty should be recognised as Maker of heaven and earth. And as to the Person and work of Christ, the same antithesis expelled the idea of an Incarnation, and in some cases involved the human life of Jesus in sheer Docetic unreality. "Not one of the heretics' theories," said Irenseus, "will allow that the Word of God became flesh ; " ^ so that the test of a " spirit's being from God," propounded by St. John, was abundantly verified. That we now can hardly understand the state of mind which was then exposed by that criterion, is due to the faith of the Incarnation, and to the Sacramental principle which is its outwork. Once more, the fatal principle of an aristocracy of souls was put in place of the doctrine that all are one in Christ Jesus ; out of this came the notion of an exoteric and an esoteric ' Mansel, Gnostic Heresies, p. 12. "^ Iren. iii. 11. 3. 26 WAYMARKS IN CHURCH HISTORY. doctrine, which has been the source of so much pride and so much untruth. Out of it came also the supercilious arrogance which Irenseus, in his sarcastic vein, compares to the strut- ting of a cock or the pomposity of a factotum ; ^ out of it, once more, the pestilent maxim that the enlightened might disclaim their own belief, when questioned by those for whom the truth was too high a privilege. In such considera- tions lies the permanent momentousness of the controversy. Not only have the Oriental ele- ments of Gnosticism reappeared at different periods in Manicheism, Paulicianism, Albigen- sianism, — not only did the Valentinian phantasy of a " flesh of Christ " not derived " from the substance of the Virgin Mary His Mother," commend itself to Anabaptists in the sixteenth century,^ and seem to require such a protest as is embodied in our Proper Preface for Christmas, — but even while "Agnosticism" is in fashion, and dualism in all forms is at a discount, and the special philosophy of Gnostic schools is obsolete even to grotesqueness, it is as necessary as ever to guard the idea of a Divine Incarnation against all solvents, and to ^ Iren. iii. 15. 2. 2 Cf. Hardwick, Hist. Reform, p. 278. GNOSTICISM AND ST. IRENMUS. i-j resist the tendencies which would put human speculation into the place of revealed truth, and meet the cry of the soul for bread with the stones of an unreligious " religion." Such contrasts between the Faith and the so-called " knowledge " were enough to make the Church irreconcilably hostile to the Gnostics. But she had further ground of quarrel with two opposite Gnostic inferences from the great Oriental premiss above mentioned ; one en- forcing that miscalled asceticism which St. Paul denounced as undutiful to the Creator; the other justifying all kinds of moral license, on the ground that nothing corporeal could affect the spirit,^ or that complete experience of all that was conventionally called evil was necessary in order to full emancipation from the so-called " rulers of the world." ^ She would see the very mania of perversity in those who glorified the bad men of Old Testament history as repre- sentatives of a higher wisdom, to which the God of the Jews was averse. But now as to the moral of the controversy with these brilliant and often able theosophists, * Iren. i. 6. 3 ; ii. 14. 5. Compare the "Familists." * For this anticipation of the "devil's maxim " of "sowing wild oats " ("Tom Brown at Oxford"), see Iren. i. 25. 4. 28 WAYMARKS IN CHURCH HISTORY. who advanced in scornful confidence of victory over the " simple, uninstructed, psychical minds " of those whom they called " men of mere faith," " knowing nothing about creation," — "common- place Churchmen," in fact.^ They had, un- doubtedly, some resources which might promise abundant success ; among them were keen intellects, persuasive speakers and writers, a rich store of poetic and artistic imagination, such as depicted the Valentinian aeon Jesus as the " fiower and star of the Pleroma," or even gave utterance to noble and quasi-Biblical thoughts, as when the Supreme " Father " is said to have shared in the great delight which filled the Pleroma when " finally established and set at rest." They had laid under contribu- tion the " higher speculation " of the age in all its forms ; they expected to attract Christian " thinkers," and to leave behind in the Churchly area a mere residuum of dogged, incurable narrowness. " The telling and influential talent of those days," it has been said, "was on the side of the philosophers," who aimed at remoulding the Gospel doctrines. In Canon Scott Holland's phrase,^ they had settled down * Irenoeus, i. 6. 4 ; ii. 15. 3 ; iii, 15. 2. Tertull. adv. Val. 2. - Pleas and Claims for Christ, p. 131. GNOSTICISM AND ST. IREN^US. 29 on Christianity " like a swarm of flies," but it repelled them. It remained, and they passed away. Their attack was overruled to the signal benefit of the Church ; the true knowledge was set over against the false ; theology took form in the hands of Irenseus, of Hippolytus, and of the great Alexandrians. Irenseus is one of those characters in the ante- Nicene period which it is eminently worth while to contemplate. " Probably the most learned Christian of his time," says Bishop Lightfoot ; a careful student — so he describes himself — of " the commentaries of the Valentinians," who also took pains to ascertain their views by per- sonal intercourse and " frequent discussion," and even thought it worth his while to make a " collection of the writings " of the Cainites, the extremest sect of anti-Judaic Gnosticism.^ This conscientiousness in preparation for controversy is of a piece with other admirable points in the character and disposition of him whom Eusebius admires as verifying his own name of " Peace- maker," whom modern writers have justly eulogised as a combiner of diverse elements in the Church of his own time. He was " of a ^ About Basilides he seems to have been less fully informed than Hippolytus. Cp. Refut. vii. 20, if. 30 WAYMARKS IN CHURCH HISTORY. temper essentially moderate, conciliatory, har- monising ; " so says De Pressense, although regarding him as rather too much of an eccle- siastic.^ No doubt he represents the principle of orthodox tradition ; ^ as against the Gnostic pretension to a secret Apostolical tradition, he points to the historical Churches of Apostolic foundation as guarding and transmitting the authentic " canon " or standard " of the truth ; " and most valuable is his testimony as to the identity of the Churchly Christianity of his age with that which he had learned from Polycarp, as Polycarp from St. John ; most important, too, in reference to the Christian Scriptures,^ and to Episcopacy as not only in full possession, but as claiming to be, and believed to be, the steward of Apostolic doctrine, the inheritor of Apostolic authority, the representative of the Apostolate to the Church.^ It is opportune to ^ Trois Prem. Siecl. ii. i. 202. 2 '' The first systematic champion of Catholic orthodoxy . . the most competent of the Fathers of the second century.' Lightfoot, SS. Ignatius and Polycarp, i. 430. ^ If he indulges in fanciful analogies, when speaking of the " one Gospel in four forms," this is, as Bishop Lightfoot points out, "an evidence of the firm hold which this quadruple Gospel, as a fact, had already obtained when he wrote." Essays on " Supernatural Religion," p. 264 ; so Dale, The Living Christ and the Four Gospels, p. 145. ^ See Gore on the Ministry, pp. 119, 125. It has been GNOSTICISM AND ST. IREN^US. 31 remember Dorner's words about him : " No one in the second century represents as he does the purity and the fulness of the development within the Church ; " or as an English writer, dear to memory, has expressed it, he " is the star of that happy generation which could refer to the fountain-head through a stream whose course was equally short and pure." ^ A few more words about him may be due to such a memory and such an influence.^ Truly he must have been a most interesting teacher when he lectured on theology at Rome. His great work, " Against Heresies," or, more pro- perly, " Refutation of the Knowledge falsely so called," written about A.D. 180-185, when he was bishop of Lyons, and probably between fifty said that Irenseus went beyond Ignatius in regarding bishops as the representatives of Apostles. But Ignatius makes them even more than this. He thinks of the bishop as representing (i) the Father in His relation to Christ during His earthly ministry, and (2) Christ, during that ministry, in His relation to the Apostles ; that is, as representing the supreme authority. A fortiori^ then, would the bishop, in Ignatius' view, represent the Apostles as invested, after the Ascension, with plenary authority in the Church. ^ R. W. Evans, Biogr. of Early Church, i. 213. 2 " All those parts of Irenasus which are not taken up with vEonology appear to be most admirable in themselves, and extremely applicable to the enrors of this time." — Keble to Pusey, in 1836 ; Liddon's Life of Pusey, i. 429. 32 WAYMARKS IN CHURCH HISTORY. and sixty years old, may give us some idea of his oral teaching. We see in it a lively mind, a richly stored memory, a familiar acquaintance with Greek poets and philosophers, a rather luxuriant faculty for illustration — e.g. he refers thus to various kinds of hunting, to tricks of trade, such as colouring a clay figure to look golden, or passing off lime and water as milk, or patching rags together to make a garment ; to grotesque arrangements of jewels in the form of animals ; to mistakes made by beginners in wrestling, or of boys in their first lessons at school ; to deposits in a bank ; to diverse notes in a lyre ; to medicine and surgery ; to the freez- ing of water in a vessel — nothing comes amiss to him. Like Clement of Alexandria, his eyes are open to all around him ; he is keenly alive to the vast circle of human occupations and experiences, while he is fond of homely and racy proverbs ; he has more humour than any of the Fathers ; he parodies the story of Achamoth by way of *' contributing to the development of the system ; " he makes fun (perhaps rather pon- derous fun) of one form of the ''original tetrad ;" and after describing the numerical mysticism of the wretched charlatan Marcus, tells his reader, " I know you will have a good laugh at this GNOSTICISM AND S7\ JRENAiUS. 33 self-conceited folly."^ A delightful, companion- able guide, genially human, abounding in sym- pathy, and full of tender memories of the past ; ^ withal, a very humane man, who abhors gladiatorial combats ; and, better still, a theo- logian full of earnest charity, who repeatedly anticipates the intercession of our third Good Friday Collect, hoping and praying for the con- version of " heretics," and " loving them better than they seem to love themselves." ^ Besides his specifically Christian teaching, he is most impressive on the perfections, the " simplicity of being," the all-sufficingness of God, with whom " to think, to will, and to act, are identical ; who is wholly mind, wholly spirit, wholly thought, wholly light, rich in resources, generous and ungrudging in His love." As against the Gnos- tics, he bars out all anthropomorphic notions, treats some questions as insoluble in this life, denies the possibility of a full comprehension * See, too, the sketch of Gnostics "knitting their brows and shaking their heads " over a text on which they are not agreed, and calling it "too deep to be explained," iv. 35. 4. ^ See the oft-quoted words of his letter to Florinus, translated and commented on by Bishop Lightfoot, SS. Ignatius and Polycarp, i. 429. ' Irengeus, iii. 25. 7 ; cf. iii. 6. 4 ; i. 31. 3 ; iv. preface. It is just like him to lay stress on " compassionateness " as a characteristic of Church life, ii. 31. 3. D 34 WAYMARKS IN CHURCH HISTORY. of the ineffable nature, but is eloquent on that knowledge which faith and love can secure, and which is the heritage of the Church. He dis- criminates carefully between the false " progress " and the true. His moral teaching is healthy and definite ; he will not tolerate the notion that in the words of Christ and His Apostles there was a disingenuous accommodation to Jewish or Gentile prejudice ; at that rate, he asks, how could we trust them as teachers ? But, as if anticipating modern thought, he sees an adaptation to the needs of different ages in the series of Divine self-manifestations which prepared the way for Christ.^ He insists that salvation depends, not on differences between souls, but on the moral character of each, on the right use of free will ; while perdition is no " directly inflicted " penalty, but the misuse of free will left to work out its own consummation.^ His balance of mind, which may well compensate for a few exorbitances of fancy, or occasional looseness of argument, makes him vigilant against false antithesis ; he sees orderly develop- ment where others imagine contradiction ; he ' Compare Iren. iv. 20. 7, with Mozley, Ruling Ideas, etc., P- 55- ' Iren. v. 27. 2, a very suggestive passage GNOSTICISM AND ST. IRENMUS. 35 will not tolerate any antagonism between "free- dom and service," the bodily and the spiritual, the old and the new covenants, or any severance between the Father and the Creator, between the Word and the Son, between Jesus and Christ, and in Him between Deity and Humanity. The Church, with Irenseus, is the home of the Spirit, and its atmosphere is profoundly evan- gelical. As the revealed truth which it enshrines is not a series of isolated fragments, but one body, so its teaching is everywhere " consistent and equably perpetuated," and can be comprised in a succinct doctrinal formula like a creed. " We receive the faith which, ever renewincr its youth by the Spirit of God, keeps the Church, its receptacle, young also ; throughout the Church have been distributed the means of communion with Christ ; " ^ the Sacraments are what they are, because Christ is what He is — the Incarnate who consecrates what His Father made,^ who is Himself the life-giving sustenance of His people, and in whom, to use a favourite Pauline phrase, mankind may by grace be " recapitulated." Here is the very core of the whole matter ; here is that which answers the question, Why did the Gnostics fail to absorb ^ Iren. iii. 24. i ; cf. iv. 33. 8. " g^g Appendix, A. 36 WAYMAKKS IN CHURCH HISTORY. Christianity ? What was the " unyielding kernel of truth " which victoriously resisted dissolution, which could not be fused into a mass of foreign speculation ? A brilliant writer, already quoted, says in reply, It was the " authoritative person- ality " and therewith " the paramount claims " of that unique, Divinely peerless Master, in whom and on whom the believer could be rooted and built up. Irenseus, and those whom he led and taught, held this faith in their heart of hearts, and by it they prevailed. / In considering Gnosticism as fundamentally " ethnic," we must to some extent except Mar- cionism, because Marcion, though grievously erring from the path of Christian believers, was yet full of Christian feeling ; and if the story in Tertullian ^ be true of him rather than of his predecessor Cerdon, it is deeply pathetic to think of him as finally asking to be received back into the Church, and as dying before he could fulfil the condition of reclaiming those whom he had led astray. Yet Marcionism, which had a singular vitality, as Theodoret found three centuries later in the administration of his little North-Syrian diocese,^ was, at any * De Prsescr. H^sr. 30. ^ " I freed more than a thousand souls from the disease of Marcion " (Ep. 113). They occupied eight villages (Ep. 81). GNOSTICISM AND ST. IRENMUS. 37 rate, a heresy, and a pernicious one. " Anti- theses " was the characteristic title of Marcion's book against the Old Testament ; the opposi- tion drawn out by him between Divine "justice " and Divine " kindness " was fatal, as Irenaeus says,^ to justice and kindness alike,^ and went to the length of actual Ditheism. The Incar- nation was at least as repugnant to him as it was to any of his fellows ; and his theory had the ethical flaw which appears in so many of these ancient misbeliefs, for his Docetic Christ, who came suddenly into the world without any prophetic heraldings, condescended to deceive ^ the " Demiurgus " and the Jews by pretending to be the Messiah. The objections of Marcion to the morality of the Old Testament, like those of Faustus the Manichean, preserved in Augus- tine's elaborate work against him, show how very old are some of the " difficulties " which ' Iren. iii. 25. 2. 2 Against the attempt to resolve the Divine love into mere benevolence, see Butler, Analogy, part i. c. 3 ; Newman, Univ. Serm. p. 104, fif. Also Dale on the Atonement, p. 343, " God has a great love for mankind, . . . but to deny that He can be hostile to men on account of sin is to emasculate and degrade our conception of Him. He is not a mere * good-natured ' God. His righteousness as well as His love is infinite." (Cp. Browning, "Give both the infinities their due," etc.) ^ Tertull. adv. Marc. iii. 15. 38 WAYMARKS IN CHURCH HISTORY. have been popularly regarded as modern.^ The seventy with which Irenseus speaks of Marcion may be largely due to a natural indignation at his peculiar boldness in " mutilating " the one gospel which he recognised, and the epistles of the one Apostle whom he revered. Apparently Irenaeus never fulfilled his intention of refuting Marcionism from St. Luke and St. Paul.^ It is worth observing that when Irenaeus, dealing with Marcionism, insists that God is at once all-righteous and all-merciful, good when He is just, and just when He is good,^ he is exactly in accordance with Tertullian on the same subject, and with one whose temper is more like his — with Clement of Alexandria.* It was well that three such typical Christian teachers should bear such emphatic witness, available amid the questionings and controver- sies of a much later period, against " the false- hood of extremes " and the peril of one-sided- ness, in regard to the character of God as repre- sented in His dealings with man. ' On "the modern tone of Marcion's mind," cf. W. H. Simcox, Beginning of the Christian Church, p. 370. - Iren. iii. 12. 12. On Marcion's treatment of the third Gospel, see Sanday, The Gospels in the Second Century, c. S. ' Iren. iii. 25. 3, * Tertull. adv. Marc. ii. 13 ; Clem. Strom, vi. s. 109. ANTE-NICENE SECTARIANISM. (I.) MONTANISM. MONTANISM has not unnaturally been claimed by some moderns as a witness for an " original freedom and spiritual independence, unrestrained by the ecclesiastical or institutional principle which gradually became predominant in the Church. Here," it is said, "you see the real thing, the primitive spirituality and free energy of Christian life, struggling, though too late, to shake off the yoke of a growing sacerdotalism and formalism. Its prophesyings take us back to a period when the Spirit's presence was in truth a guarantee of liberty." Now it is quite true that prophesying had been current, not only in the Apostolic age, but to some extent, in the sub-Apostolic period, or even later, and that the more fervid Christians were still wont to believe in revelations by vision. But they might do so without being Montanistic. Cyprian, 40 IVAYMARKS IN CHURCH HISTORY. in the next century, the champion of ecclesi- astical order, believed in such communications from on high, " as vouchsafed not only to him- self, but even to the innocent age of children." ^ It was not prophesying as such, nor visions as such, which finally led the bishops of Asia to pronounce against Montanus and his two female companions, Maximilla and Priscilla. It was the application of the idea in what was called a " false kind of ecstasy," ^ in prophesyings claim- ing to " develop " the disciplinary and practical teaching of the Apostles into an indefinite series (for, having begun, it might continue) of rules austerely rigoristic,^ which alarmed and shocked the Churchly mind. Nor was this all ; there was no denying either that Montanism was Phrygian, or that it was, so to speak, racy of its soil.* Phrygia was the centre of the wild and riotous worship, as Bollinger calls it, of Cybele ; and Montanus himself is said to have been for- merly one of her priests. " It seemed to calm observers," says Dr. Salmon, "that the frenzied utterances of the Montanistic prophetesses were far less like any previously known manifestations 1 Cyp, Ep. II. 4; 16, 4. - eV irapeKardcrei, Euseb. v. 16. 17. ^ Tertull. de Virgin. Veland. i ; de Monogam. 2. ■* See Bp. Lightfoot on Colossians, p. 98. ANTE-NICENE SECTARIANISM. 41 of the prophetical gift among Christians than they were to those heathen orgiasms which the Church had been wont to ascribe to the opera- tion of demons." ^ The " false ecstasy " implied a suspension of intelligent consciousness, and this was a mark, not of Biblical prophecy in its normal condition, but of the niantike of the old world.^ "The spirits of" these "prophets " were not "subject to the prophets."^ There was a heathenish twang about their utterances ; not in the so-called revelations as such, but in the way in which they were uttered. And then they claimed to supplement the Apostolic teaching on matters of order and conduct, so that requirements, largely dictated by excit- able women, might be pressed on the Christian conscience as equally sacred with the pre- cepts of St. Paul. Thirdly, the rules put forth were all in the direction of severity ; * more and longer fasts to be observed, second marriages absolutely forbidden, self-surrender during persecution made a duty, absolution to ^ Diet. Chr. Biogr. iii. 936. * Lee on Inspiration of Scripture, pp. 77, 199 ff. He refers to Origen, c. Cels. vii. 4. Athenagoras' words (Legat. 9) do not go as far as Tertullian's idea of prophetical "amentia." ' I Cor. xiv. 32. Cp. Euseb. v. 17. * See Origen, de Princip. ii. 7. 3. 42 WAYMARKS IN CHURCH HISTORY. be impossible after certain heinous sins.^ Fourthly, the erection of a small Phrygian town into a new Jerusalem, a centre of Montanist religious life, would be felt to savour of Judaical localism. And fifthly, an arrogant, self-righteous temper was developed, expressing itself in scorn for the historic Church and its ministry, to which were applied, as freely as by Gnostics, such terms as '* unspiritual " or " carnal." ^ Against it was set up a new Church, calling itself "spiritual," professing to be alone faithful to the inspirations of the Paraclete, and speaking, not through any appointed order, not through a " mere number of bishops," ^ but through indi- viduals presumed to be "spiritual men." This could not be called traditionary or conservative language ; the spirituality and freedom of the New Testament were closely bound up with the grace and dignity of order, as set forth first by significant acts of Christ Himself, and afterwards by His Apostle's express instructions to restless Christian minds in a typical Greek city ; and the Montanist conception of the Church and its life was in effect revolutionary, clean contrary to * See TertuUian's Montanist books, De Jejuniis, De Mono- gamia, De Fuga, De Pudicitia, De Exhort. Cast. - Clem. Alex. Strom, iv. s. 93. =5 Tertull. de Pudic. 21. ANTE-mCENE SECTARIANISM. 43 that which appears, not only in Irenseus and in the sub-Apostolic Fathers, but most pointedly in the Epistles of St. Paul.^ We are not to wonder if in certain parts of the ancient Christian area some erratic and disorderly elements had a long lease of life ; as in other cases, so in this, the genuine Christian leaven required time to work, and bits of old nationality, so to speak, might obstinately resist its moulding power. What if Montanism grew and spread in spite of episcopal censure ; if it suited many enthusiastic minds which had not been disciplined into Christian " sobriety ; " if it fascinated the intense, but harsh and impatient nature of one great African;^ if it almost commended itself to a bishop of Rome ; ^ if its influence was felt up and down in Europe, as well as in Asia Minor ; if some, at least, of the attacks on the motives and habits of its prophets — as if they had lapsed into self-seeking greed and secular luxuriousness — may well have resulted from odium theologi- ' I Cor. xiv. 40. "^ See Pusey, Pref. to Transl. of Tertullian, pp. viii-xii. ^ Variously identified as Eleutherus, Victor, and Zephyrinus. The letter of the Gallic Church, conveyed to Eleutherus by Irenseus while still only a presbyter, most probably requested that the Asiatic condemnation of Montanism should not be contravened at Rome. Irenoeus alludes severely to Montanism, iv. 33- 6. It would not suit his order-loving soul. 44 WAYMARKS IN CHURCH HISTORY. cum ? ^ This proves only that it had got hold of a truth, although, so to speak, at the wrong end. Like the mediaeval Brethren of the Free Spirit,^ like the early Quakers, like the Ouietists of the fourth century and of the seventeenth,^ like Huguenot *'Camisards" and Jansenist " convulsionaries," and the ruder or coarser revivalists of a later day, like all " fanatics " who have offended sober Church-folk by their dis- orderliness, their indecorousness of language on things sacred, their wild disregard of reverent " seemliness " in worship, by their contracted views, or refusal of culture, or barbaric indif- ference for a venerable past, or blundering " twisty " attempts to realise the life spiritual, — Montanists have a lesson to teach, a warning to administer. An organised Church system ca7i be so misused as to formalise those who live under it ; the outward can be wrested into a substitute for the inward ; the means can be mistaken for an end. After all, there is a true and indispensable spirituahty ; there is a freedom which m.ust live with, and not be crushed out by, authority. After all, institutions * E.g. Apollonius in Euseb. v. i8. 2 See Robertson, Hist. Ch. vi. 391. 3 For the Messalians see Theodoret, H. E. iv. 11. Cp. JervisjHist. Ch. of France, ii. lOO, on modern Quietism. ANTE-NICENE SECTARIANISM. 45 were made for souls, and forms must be kept full of spirit ; and a sectarianism which cries this war-cry, even although it be never so eccentric, or unlettered, or unlovely even to repulsiveness, is yet, at least in results, not wholly the enemy of a Church which can keep her eyes awake to temptations and perils of her own. (II.) NOVATIANISM. Novatianism represents a one-sided and ex- treme view in regard to penitential discipline. We marvel, perhaps, at the austerity which characterised the general line of early Church opinion in the west, with regard to the treat- ment of Christians repentant for grievous sin. In the Roman church, for instance, it would seem to many an over-indulgent step when one bishop, at the beginning of the third century, allowed those who had been guilty of un- chastity to do penance and be absolved ; ^ and yet more so, when his successor consistently extended this favour to penitents guilty of apostasy or of homicide. At Corinth, in the second century, this gentler rule had long pre- vailed, absolution being granted, on due peni- * See Tertullian's Montanistic treatise, De Pudic. i. 46 WAYMARKS IN CHURCH HISTORY. tence, to all who had been guilty of any grave sin ; ^ but in Africa, before Cyprian's time, the Church " held fast," as Dollinger puts it in his " Hippolytus and Callistus," to the lifelong exclusion of those who had been unchaste ; ^ and, as is well known, one of the most learned and able of Italian prelates (who, in some sense, claimed an episcopal position at Rome) was carried beyond all bounds of decorum or fairness in .denouncing Pope Callistus for what he con- sidered a mischievous laxity. Why, we ask, did good men look so sternly on those who had wandered far ? Had they forgotten the parable of the prodigal, and St. Paul's forgiveness, "in Christ's behalf," of the Corinthian who had repented after incest ? We must make an effort to realise the enormous wickedness which in- fested non-Christian society, the slough of sin from which many converts to Christianity had emerged,^ the ghastly shamelessness of hea- thenish vice, the terrible hardheartedness with its disregard for human life, the indissoluble alliance between idolatry and sensuality. Such words as "hating even the garment spotted by * Euseb. iv. 23. 2 Cf. Cypr. Ep. 55. 17. ' See DoUinger's chapter in "The Gentile and the Jew," etc., on *' The Social and Moral Condition of the Romans." ANTE'NICENE SECTARIANISM. 47 the flesh " had a significance then for Christians which, owing to Christian influence, is hardly intelligible now. This must be remembered, in fairness to men like Novatian, a learned man, a copious theo- logical writer, whom Bishop Bull claims as an ante-Nicene witness to the Catholic doctrine of Christ's true Divinity. He had been pro- moted somewhat irregularly to the presbyterate, but had taken a foremost place, in right of his scholarship and abilities, among his brother- clergy at Rome ; during the vacancy of the bishopric in 250 he had been employed by them to write in their name to Cyprian, and to support his line against an over-hasty recon- ciliation of "the lapsed." But towards the end of that year — possibly in disappointment at finding that he was not likely to be elected bishop — he passed over from a moderate to a rigoristic view, and in the next year, after the election of Cornelius,^ he allowed himself to be made the tool of an unprincipled Carthaginian priest who, having been precipitate at Carthage in "granting peace to the lapsed," rebelled * Cornelius' account of Novatian must be taken cum grano. He was evidently an inferior man, who greedily adopted impu- tations against his rival. 48 WAYMARKS IN CHURCH HISTORY. against Cyprian's episcopal authority, and went to Rome as an agitator on behalf of rigorism, and whose name, being very like his own, was taken for his by nearly all the Eastern Church writers, including Eusebius himself. Novatian then persuaded himself that Cornelius, as repre- senting what he now considered as "laxity," had no moral right to be bishop, — that, in fact, he was called upon to champion imperilled "discipline" by accepting consecration and claiming the see. This he did under highly dis- creditable circumstances,^ and so became at once an " anti-pope " and the head of a rigoristic schism. But what was his programme ? What did he contend for, as against the line taken by the bishops of Rome and Carthage ? He held that all who had apostatised in persecution should be kept out of Church fellowship as long as they lived ; and the principle was afterwards extended by his followers to all cases of heinous or "mortal" sin. As Socrates, who admired the sect for its moral earnestness, is careful to explain, it was not affirmed that God would never forgive such offenders, but it was con- tended that He had not commissioned the Church to assure them of His forgiveness.^ ^ See Euseb. vi. 43. ^ Soc. i. 10 ; iv. 28. ANTE-NICENE SECTARIANISM. 49 But the distinction, sometimes overlooked by Catholic opponents, was one which involved a further difficulty, as trenching on the breadth and absoluteness of the commission to " remit and retain," ^ and as assuming, for instance, that a lapse under torture (of which Cyprian judges in a spirit so nobly equitable),^ was equivalent to so absolute an alienation from God as was beyond pardon, because beyond repentance. The mind of the sect might express itself thus : "We must, at all costs, have a Church clear of all serious delinquency. Our danger, as the ' Long Peace ' has warned us, is of becoming spiritually enervated.^ What will it profit a Church to gain numbers, if it loses purity } Never mind about extension, if we can secure moral intensity ; let the channel be narrow, if only it can be deep. The majority do not care about Christian discipline ; they offer privileges on too easy terms ; their version of Christianity may be popular, but we dare not be popular at the cost of strictness." Strictness was with them the one thing to be aimed at ; they would be stricter than Dionysius of Corinth had been, ^ St. Ambrose, de Poenit. i. s. 6. * De Lapsis, 13. ' lb. 5. 6, where Cyprian's testimony to the effects of the " pax longa" is well worthy of study. 50 WAYMARKS IN CHURCH HISTORY. than Dionysius of Alexandria was, than Chry- sostom was to be. But they never bore so really effective a witness as Chrysostom's for a high standard of Christian life ; their witness was marred by the hardness of their sectarian- ism, and — which is still more suggestive — by the pride which made them call themselves ** The Pure," ^ and treat the Catholics as " apos- tates." If Cyprian's language about them is thought to be coloured by the wrath of a " hier- archist" against schismatics who gave him trouble, the truly lovable bishop of Alexandria may be deemed more impartial ; and he, after vainly urging Novatian to " bear anything rather than divide the Church," denounced him not only for re-baptising his proselytes, but for " slandering our most compassionate Lord Jesus Christ as unmerciful."^ For the Church, in her action, was to reflect the mind of the Supreme Absolver ; ^ and if, in some cases, she might not "pronounce His absolution " over sinners being penitent, His forgivingness might be admitted in the abstract, but in effect it would cease to be * See Chrys. Horn. adv. Catharos. It is misleading to render " Cathari " by *' Puritans." ^ Euseb. vi. 45 ; vii. 8. * See Pacian, Ep. 3. 5 : " Ecclesia . . . ubi curantur regroti," etc. ANTE-NICENE SECTARIANISM. 51 a prop of the trembling soul. And without a genuine belief in it, one of the strongest motives for Christian effort would be seriously enfeebled. By virtually obscuring the vision of Divine Love, these severe disciplinarians put a stumbling- block in the path of an effective return to purity. (III.) DONATISM Is the third of these ante-Nicene attempts to secure for Christian life a standard of Church purity without compromise. It arose in the congenial soil of Africa, where religion was so apt to take a murky hue from the ingrained fierceness of native character. And the con- troversy involved two questions ; one of fact, and one of principle. The question of fact was, whether a certain bishop, Felix, who had been the chief consecrator of the Catholic primate of Carthage, had or had not surren- dered the sacred books at the magistrate's bidding, in the great Diocletian persecution. This question was repeatedly tried, and it was proved beyond doubt that the words which incriminated the accused bishop were a forged insertion into a genuine letter.^ But the ques- * For the story of this malignant and too successful plot, see Lessons from the Lives of Three Great Fathers, p. 275. 52 WAYMARKS IN CHURCH HISTORY. tion of dogma was, of course, much larger and more important ; supposing the bishop to have thus become a *'Traditor," a betrayer of his most sacred trust, would his guilt in itself have vitiated his ministrations ? and, carrying the question out to its full scope, did the unworthi- ness of the minister affect the ordinances of which he was the steward ? Was a Christian Church deprived of its Churchly character, if among its officials there were some who might truly be described as tares commingled with the wheat ? It was a grave question that was here started ; and we have to make an effort to resist the repulsive impression produced by this African sect, in order to appreciate the momentousness of the issue. For Donatism is, perhaps, the ugliest phenomenon in ancient Church history. We modern Christians are disgusted, perhaps even irritated, by its dogged hardness, its controversial unscrupulousness, its astonishing capacity of coarse invective, its readiness to adopt and enlist a fanatical ruffianism which could plunge into the wildest outrages, while brandishing clubs called " Israels," and shouting the war-cry of " Praises to God ! " ^ We see that * The " Circumcellions " had originally banded themselves against social order, Aug. Ep. io8. i8, etc. ANTE-NICENE SECTARIANISM. 53 whereas Novatian rigorism stopped short of violent extremities, these Donatists stopped at nothing ; and their fury had the unhappy efifect of making St. Augustine a supporter of penal laws. How are we to do them justice ? We must, at any rate, try to believe that many of them were honestly zealous for "strictness," honestly afraid that the Church, especially after coming full into the sunshine of worldly pros- perity, was being conformed to the age, was clasping hands with the world.^ At the memo- rable "conference" of 411, a Donatist memorial contended that the "field" in the parable of the tares meant the world simply ; that, in another parable, the bad fish remained in the net because they could not be detected ; that the guest without the wedding-garment was promptly expelled, etc. It quoted " Touch not the unclean thing," and the censure in Ezek. xxii. 18 on Israel as having become a " mingled mass," etc. It was replied by Augustine that the "field" meant the Church throughout the world ; that discipline was indeed necessary, but within limits marked by the Christian pru- ' See Aug. Ep, 44, for the good and candid Donatist bishop Fortunius. Procdeianus, Augustine's rival at Hippo, was of "gentle disposition," Ep. 33. 54 IVAYMARKS IN CHURCH HISTORY. deuce which knew that it never could, in this world, anticipate the condition of the Church as " without spot or wrinkle ; " ^ that the one Church had a present and a future condition ; and that it was the duty of Christians to abide within it, and only to keep aloof from the sins of its bad members. But what are for us the lessons of this move- ment ? Morally speaking, it enforced the truth that blindness to such a fact as the inevitable intermixture of evil with good in the actual Christian body will close a man's eyes to " evil in himself" and his own party ; and that self- willed attempts at making a "Church of the pure" are bound to incur the doom that rests on impatience.^ Theologically, it was over- ruled to bring out the inestimable truth, that the sins or faults of the minister cannot obstruct the efficacy of sacraments, because the Lord Himself, their Author, is the true efficient cause of the grace bestowed through them, is really and personally the one Sacramental Agent.^ ^ See too Aug. c. Litt. Petil. iii. 43. De Gest. Pel. 64. - Trench on the Parables, p. lOO. See Augustine's retort as to bad men among Donatists, c. Epist. Parmen. ii. 6. ^ This is set forth by Augustine in his anti-Donatist treatise on Baptism. See too c. Litt. Petil. iii. 59 ; c. Cresc. ii. 26. ANI^E-NICENE SECTARIANISM. 55 But the one-sided zeal of these sectarians for Church discipline has a lesson for us of a Church " established and national," who are apt to forget that religious Nonconformists have a real gravamen in the lack of discipline among ourselves. And then, lastly, the warning which this persistent schism (for it seemed to revive at the very period which gave birth to our English Christianity^) should be taken to address to Christians of all ages is, not only that schism is bound to produce schism, as the " Maxi- mianists " of this sect split off, in time, from the " Primianists," but (what is far more important) that zeal without justice and without charity profiteth nothing, and that a religious party, though including among its members or leaders many men of earnest purpose and pure life, may be hopelessly compromised by alliance with bad auxiliaries ; it may cling to and reiterate disproved fictions which seem to serve a controversial purpose ; it may speak sternly of the world, yet so act as to be " of the world " ; it may deceive itself with the profession of high spirituality, and ruin itself, in a religious sense, by employing weapons which can win no blessing from God. ' Gregory the Great, Reg. Epp. iv. 35. THE ARIAN CONTROVERSY; ITS ISSUES AND ITS LESSONS. In order to understand Arianism and the issues raised by the Arian controversy, we must go back to the close of the Apostolic age, and con- sider, however summarily, the doctrinal problem presented to the Church, in effect, by the teach- ing especially of St. Paul and of St. John. Christianity, to begin with, presupposes the Monotheism of the Old Testament. "Jehovah, our God, is One," was a basal article in the Gospel creed, as of old in that of Israel. But then Christianity superadded to this original proposition two other doctrines which were specifically its own ; (2) the doctrine that God has an only, only-begotten, or " own " Son — a Son, that is, in a unique sense ;^ (3) and the doctrine that this Son is Himself really Divine. The question then arose. How are the two pecu- liarly Christian propositions to be held together * See Liddon, Bamp. Lect. p. 235. THE ARIAN CONTROVERSY. 57 with the first, which is common to Hebraism and Christianity? And we may put the case, as to early heresies in theology proper, some- what thus : One set of thinkers, professedly holding the second of the three, abandoned the third as incompatible with it ; another set of thinkers made much of the third, but virtually nullified the second. These classes are known respectively as the Humanitarian, or, more properly, " Psilanthropist," and the Sabellian. There was no question, be it observed, either with them or with the Church, as to the duty of holding fast to Monotheism. That was admitted on all hands. The Church was as steadfast as either of the two opposite and non-Catholic schools in confessing the Divine Unity ; ^ but she insisted on holding with it, not one only, but both of the doctrines which the Apostles, as she believed, had taught, under Divine inspiration, together with the primeval Hebrew belief. ''It is true," her teachers said, " that God is One ; but it is also true that He has an only Son, and that this Son is Himself God. We must not sacrifice either of these • Thus Tertullian, representing here the Catholic standpoint, maintains the true sense of "Monarchia" as compatible with the "ceconomia, quae Unitatem in Trinitatem disponit," adv. Prax. 2, 3. 58 WAYMARKS IN CHURCH HISTORY. two doctrines to the other ; both are parts of the faith once delivered." And they could not but observe that partial views on either side, prompted perhaps by an impatient logic, re- sulted in self-contradiction. The Humanitarian, because he rejected the divinity of the Son, evacuated the Sonship of its true significance ; the Son, in his view, was but foremost in a whole family of beings who had become "sons" by adoption and moral attainment. And the Sabellian, because he explained away the affir- mation of the Sonship by merging the person- ality of the Son in that of the Father, drifted inevitably into a Humanitarian conception of the Person of Jesus Christ, and verified long beforehand the curt dictum of Blanco White, that " Sabellianism was but Socinianism in disguise." For if Christ had no pre-existent and Divine personality, His personality must have been simply human. We need not spend time in proving that neither Sabellianism on the one hand, nor Humanitarianism on the other, represented the faith of the Apostolic age. There is no room for either in the Christianity of the typical Apostles. The belief that Jesus was merely a great saint appears first in Ebionism. It pro- THE ARIAN CONTROVERSY. 59 bably arose out of a Judaical repugnance to the idea of a Divine Christ. Some Jev/ish Christians might be tempted to take a lower view of the Saviour than that which is involved in St. James's " magnificent " phrase,^ " the Lord of glory ; " lower, let us add, than that which, on the whole, characterises the compilation called "the Teaching," although it does not rise up to the Pauline level of doctrine. A Judaiser's invincible aversion to St. Paul would confirm this tendency : " Let us keep well away from the exaggerations of the adversary, of the Apostate." Again, as Judaisers would not recognise the scope and value of our Lord's redemptive work, they would be ready to disparage the supernatural dignity of His Person. But Ebionism, ere long, felt the attraction of those Gnostic speculations which took so strong a hold over many Jewish minds — notably the Essenes, as is so ably pointed out by Bishop Lightfoot. And Cerinthus, while he anticipated the later school of Ebionites by distinguishing between Jesus and a mystic Christ, supposed to have descended on Him at the baptism, was at one with the first Ebionites in maintaining that Jesus was simply a man, * James ii. i ; cf. Liddon, Bampton Lectures, p. 293, 6o WAYMARKS IN CHURCH HISTORY. the actual son of Joseph and Mary. In fact, this " separationism," as it has been called, of Cerin- thus, and of others after him — that is, of those Ebionites whom Epiphanius describes, and whose notions appear in the Pseudo-Clemen- tine romance, — left the Humanitarian view of Jesus quite intact ; even as, at the end of the second century, Theodotus of Byzantium, who was called by a Catholic writer soon afterwards the ** leader of the God-denying apostasy," ^ came ultimately, it would appear,^ to adopt the •' separationist " theory, but never departed from the position which Humanitarians occupied in regard to Jesus Himself. "The hypothesis," says Dorner, "of the Ebionism of the primitive Church is on all sides untenable." The writers of the sub-apostolic period are decisive against it, and the third- century writer just now quoted appeals confi- dently to a continuous stream of Church tradition, " affirming Christ to be God and man," or '' ascribing Divinity to Him as the Word." It is well to remember this, when some strong tendencies of modern thought go straight ^ Euseb. V. 28, quoting from what was called the "Little Labyrinth," often ascribed to Hippolytus, but with greater probability to Caius. Salmon, Introd. to N. T. p. 66. "Hippolytus, Refutation, vii. 35. THE ARIAN CONTROVERSY. 61 ill an Ebionitic or a Cerinthian direction, as Bishop Westcott expresses it in his Introduction to the Epistles of St. John. It was a very different point of view which gave occasion to what is called Sabellianism. One of its first expositors, when challenged for his unsoundness, exclaimed, *' What harm am I doing by glorifying Christ ? " ^ He wanted to make Christ as divine as possible ; and he did so by representing Him as simply the Father Himself, in a certain phase of His manifestation. When this crude " Patripassianism," as it was nicknamed, was found too revolting to Christian instincts, a sort of Emanationist theory was put forward ; the unipersonal God, known as the Father, was supposed to have developed suc- cessive energies in the characters of the Son and the Holy Spirit. The very existence of Sabellianism attests a current belief profoundly hostile to Ebionism, or to Humanitarianism pure and simple in any shape ; the belief of men anxious to " glorify Christ," but short- sighted as to the effect of their words on their own object. Most remarkable in this sense is the phenomenon of Paul of Samosata, bishop of Antioch in the middle of the third century. ' Noetus, cited by Hippolytus ; c. Ha^r. Noet. I. 62 WAYMARKS IN CHURCH HISTORY. The combination of heresies in him reminds us of the lines which converge in Cerinthus ; and, although he held that the Divine Wisdom — that is, the Word — was an impersonal attribute, the aversion and horror excited by his opinions referred, perhaps, most directly to the famous assertion extracted from him, that Jesus was a mere man, deified, in a sense, as titular Son of God, for His signal "advance" in wisdom and in virtue, and thus made a fitting re- ceptacle for the indwelling of the Word or Wisdom. Such, in merest outline, is the story of ante- Nicene heresies in regard to the Divine Sonship. And within the Church also there were, perhaps inevitably, some failures in the treatment of the great theological problem, when doctrinal terminology had not had time to settle, and men were feeling their way along a path as yet untrodden. Here and there, phraseology of a Sabellianising kind was heard from persons in high places.^ Hippolytus, writing, however, in a strongly partisan vein, vehemently accuses the Roman bishop Callistus of heterodoxy on ' For Beiyllus, see Euseb. vi. 33. Dionysius of Rome, writing against Sabellianism, was careful to guard against lan- guage which anticipated Arianism. Routh, Rell. iii. 374. THE ARIAN CONTROVERSY. 63 this score, while his own language has been considered open to grave criticism in the opposite direction.^ But more usually it is in that other quarter that movement seems unsteady ; that, under difficulties which were non-existent in later ages, hypotheses are started, and language is used which experience ere long discredited as insufficiently considered, and, as Cardinal Newman puts it, "unadvisable."^ On one side, as among the Alexandrians, there was indeed a recognition of the divinity of the Sonship, but coupled with what has been called an over-statement of the Filial "Subordination." The word is not a good term in English, for it suggests more than the Latin Sttbordinatio ; but the truth intended is the derivation of the Son from the Father as Father, and His rank, so to speak, in the order of Divine Persons as second and not first But it was easy to speak so highly of the precedency of the Father as to impair, to say the least, that idea of co-equality which is involved in the truism that there can be no " more or less " in real Godhead. And, on the other hand, there were divines, Asiatic and Western, who, while admitting, as Newman * See Dollinger, Hippolytus and Callistus, c. 4. 2 Tracts Theol. and Eccles., p. 162. 64 WAYMARKS IN CHURCH HISTORY. considers/ "the eternity and the hypostatic existence of the Word," were wont to say that He became the Son when He went forth from the Father's bosom to be the Agent in creating the universe. There were some other phrases in use, which have since then been laid aside, in view of the advantage which heresy has taken of them. The fact is that, in those first ages, theological language was in the making ; and if it is human to err, it is certainly human to be at times, and under special influences or con- ditions, one-sided, unbalanced, and inaccurate. Meantime, apart from all tentamina of theo- logians, the general traditional belief of the Church went on its tranquil way. Christ, the Lord and Saviour of Christians, was believed to be God's only Son in a supreme sense ; and, as Irenaeus^ had said, "what was," in this sense, "begotten of God," was believed, as such, to " be God ; " ^ or, in the words of the Church of Smyrna, written after the martyrdom of Irenaeus' early teacher Polycarp, Christ, "as » Tracts Theol. and Eccles., pp. 182, 187, 198. So Water- land, i. 359, ff. ; ii. 616. - Iren. i. 8. 5. On the eternal "coexistence" of the Word or Son, see ii. 25. 3 ; 30. 9 ; iii. 18. i ; iv. 14. i. ' See Newman, Sermons, vi. 57: *' He is God, not though, but because He is the Son of God." Cf. Hil. de Trin. vii. 13. THE ARIAN CONTROVERSY. 65 the Son of God," was "adored." Here was a very plain test, independent of the theories or phrases of divines. All through the ante- Nicene period, Christians who knew as well as any Jew could have told them that the Divine Unity was the root-truth of true religion, did one thing which spoke decisively as to the purport of their creed. With equal deliberate- ness and fervour, habitually and as a matter of course, throughout life and in the face of death, clergy and people, learned and unlearned, alike and together, worshipped the crucified, risen, and glorified Jesus as their Lord and their God.^ But we can well understand that, what with opposite extremes of opinion outside the Church, and with diversities of language, and, to some extent, of standpoints inside it, there were elements preparing for a great theological con- troversy ; the sea was heaving as if in the hours before a storm. It broke, in the first instance, over Egypt about six years after the Toleration- edict of Constantine and Licinius had avowedly given freedom to all religious professions, whether Christian or non- Christian. Arius was the most distinguished, the most influential of those whom we may call the parish priests of Alexandria ; ' See Licldon, Bamp. Lect. p. 387, {{. F 66 PVA\ MARKS IN CHURCH HISTORY. and, according to the current story, he openly criticised a discourse by his bishop, Alexander, as savouring of Sabellianism. Conferences, private and public, were unavailing to restrain his controversial ardour, to stifle the discussion in its birth.^ He put his own opinions into argumentative form ; he insisted on the reality of the Sonship, which, as he would say, was assailed by Sabellianising language ; and then he drew his own inference. " If the Son is a Son, He must, as Son, have come into being after His Father ; He cannot, as Son, be coeval with Him ; therefore He is not coeternal. Once He did not exist at all, and then He began to exist." The next inference was, " Therefore He is not uncreated ; He is external to the sole incommunicable supreme Being ; He is one, although the eldest and most glorious, of the beings called into existence by the simple fiat of the Most High — in one word, 7}iade by God." This is the Arian doctrine, reduced to its essence. All that Arians held may be evolved out of this twofold conclusion, professedly based on the assumption that priority of existence, being a characteristic of earthly fathers in respect of earthly sons, must hold good equally of the ' See Appendix, B, THE ARIAN CONTROVERSY. 67 Father in respect of His only-begotten Son. And, as it has often been observed^ — indeed, it is obvious— the Arian argument begins by resting everything on the fact of the Sonship, and ends by denying its reaHty ; inasmuch as the conclusion reached supposes a Son who is totally foreign to the essential life of His Father — a Son, we may add, who, according to the unwary admission made by one of the first Arians, had once, as the chief of God's moral creatures, been under probation, and might con- ceivably have " fallen, as Satan fell." But let us now first ask to what antecedents, on the whole, we may trace Arianism ; next, what were the attractive points in it; and, lastly, what were the issues at stake, — in what sense the contro- versy bore on the faith, and therefore, so far, on the life of Christian men. I. Arianism was clearly a stream formed by " meetings of waters." Arius, as a young man, had studied at Antioch, where Paul's destructive misbelief had produced ways of thinking and speaking which tended to lower the tone of thought in regard to the Saviour's majesty ; but Alexandria was his home, and Alexandria had ^ E.g. Newman's Arians, p. 213 ; Gwatkin's Studies of Arianism, p. 28. 68 WAYMARKS IN CHURCH HISTORY. in the previous century been the scene of a very earnest warfare against Sabellianism, and also, as we have already noticed, of an excessive Subordinationism. Dionysius had been distin- guished in both these lines. His namesake of Rome, the only theologian among the early popes, had been appealed to by persons ag- grieved at some language of the Alexandrian, which had seemed to imply an essential in- feriority of the Son — language which Athanasius afterwards took pains to explain in a better sense.^ Nor may we leave out of sight the effect of that theory, already spoken of, which treated the Filiation as an event that had come to pass in time. Arius would rely on this phrase or that phrase, for which there was this or that amount of authority, but would leave out of reckoning other phrases of a counterbalancing character ; thus, if he quoted some Alexandrians as against the coequality, he would ignore what the greatest of them had said in support of the eternity of the Sonship. 2. But what were the attractions of the theory? This is a question which we must always ask if we desire to do justice to a move- ment of thought which we deem erroneous, ' De Sentent. Dionys. 9, 10, THE ARIAN CONTROVERSY, 69 which in our view has been fraught with mani- fold evil. Probably, beside this apparent ad- vantage of a thoroughgoing hostility to that Sabellianism which was still abhorred and dreaded in Egypt, one may reckon, first, the implied offer of relief from the sense of an over- powering mystery which it would be easy to represent as involving a real contradiction. Notwithstanding Origen's sentence, "The Saviour is always being begotten," a man like Arius, with a singularly persuasive tongue, and a ready equipment of logical forms, could soon impress his friends and admirers with the notion that an " eternal Sonship " was unthinkable ; and, as is well known, this point was taken with flippant volubility by all classes of Arianisers in Alexandrian social life. " Much better," it would be said, " to drop this idea, which nobody can intelligently entertain ; to remove a stum- bling-block from the path of outsiders who are always inquiring about Christianity, what it really affirms, to what it would commit them if they embraced it. There is no real risk of detracting from Christ's honour. We can multiply titles which indicate His pre-existent dignity, as of all God's creatures the greatest and the best. He is all but God, and in a 70 WAYMARKS IN CHURCH HISTORY. titular sense we may call Him God ; only do not let us make Him what, as Son, He cannot be." A dislike of episcopal authority when used against a favourite spiritual guide ; a wish to rationalise the idea of the Christian Trinity ; a survival, here and there, of the Pagan concep- tion of gods greater and gods lesser ; an in- tolerance of any hindrance put in the way of popular theological speculation ; all these, and such as these, may have contributed to the complex motive force which within a short time made Arianism so formidable. And we ought not to wonder ; for again and again, in later Church history, this heresy, after seeming to be long dead, has revived,^ and won over proselytes, and taxed the energies of " Trinitarian " con- troversialists, as when Clarke called forth the strong polemic of Waterland ; when also, in a royal drawing-room, Clarke maintained the Arian case against a Roman Catholic divine, who replied by condensing the whole matter into one tremendous crucial question, " Can the Father, on your hypothesis, annihilate the Son ? " There was a silence ; and then Clarke * E.g. in England about 1556 ; in Poland about 1570 ; Milton and Sandius in the next century. THE ARIAN CONTROVERSY. 71 helplessly muttered that "it was a point which he had never considered." ^ It was a point on which all might be said to turn. Even now, perhaps, the Arian view has its own supporters, who deem it a platform that can be occupied between " orthodoxy " and Unitarianism ; it is, as experience has often shown, no platform, but a slope.'-^ Of the intrinsic incoherence of the theory, not a little might be said. It acknow- ledged Christ's claim to worship, while it sapped the only true ground of such a claim. It made Him a Son and yet not a real Son, Divine in title yet not Divine in fact. " The conception," says Mozley, " produced idolatrous relations from within itself;" accordingly, "the Fathers regarded it with simple abhorrence, and the Arian Demiurgus . . . was a theological monster in their eyes, unlawfully, profanely, and falsely imagined." ^ No wonder that Arianism broke into three great sections. One of them stood, or tried to stand, just outside the threshold of Catholicity, while it confessed the Son as " like to the Father in essence," which of course im- plied that He was uncreate. Another, called * Van Mildert, intr. to Waterland, i. 78. ^ See Appendix, C. ^ On the Theory of Development, p. 78. 72 WAYMARKS IN CHURCH HISTORY. after Acacius, the learned but shifty bishop of Caesarea, adopted the equivocal formula of " likeness," which might be strained to include true being in its scope, or relaxed to indicate a mere conformity of will.^ A third attached much obloquy by inscribing " unlikeness " on its banner, and was in its own way serviceable to the Catholic cause by carrying out the older Arianism to the full, as if in scorn of all evasion or compromise. Yet even this ultra-Arian school, as represented by Eunomius, kept up the fiction of calling the Son " God ; " ^ and the inter- mediate school, the most successful of the three, was divided, in the latter part of the century, on the question whether God could be said to have been Father before the Son came into existence.^ 3. And then the issues involved — what were they ? What should we have lost, as Christians, if Arianism had got possession of the Church ? * Cf. Soc. ii. 40. So the Acacians were charged with mean- ing to restrict the "likeness." to "will and activity," so that they might be free to call the Son " unlike in being," etc., Epiph. Hger. 73. 15. Two anathemas of the Semi-Arian Council of Ancyra were meant to exclude this restriction. The Acacians would sometimes admit a " likeness in all things," which, the Semi-Arians insisted, ought logically to carry their own Homoiousion. On the equivocations of modern Arianism see Waterland, i. 393. - See Hussey's Socrates, iii. 376. ^ Soc. V. 2^. THE ARIAN CONTROVERSY. 73 In other words, what made it so thoroughly worth while for the CathoHc champions — for Athanasius above all others — to spend their strength and their life in fighting against it ? Why is the Catholic belief, as opposed to the Arian, no " vain thing for us " at this day, but something that touches our own religious life ? {a) First of all, then, the controversy at once raised the question, Ought Christians to go on worshipping Christ ? For, if He were only the highest of creatures, the law of Monotheistic religion had something very emphatic to say upon that head. Christians from the beginning had been accustomed not only to pray to our Lord, and, as the ancient hymn " at the lighting of lamps " expressed it, to " glorify the Son of God, the Lifegiver," but to trust Him absolutely, to obey Him in thought and feeling as well as in act, to give Him their deepest, intensest love, their unqualified illimitable devotion. Dr. Dale has truly said that to the Apostles " Christ was infinitely more than an inspired teacher or an example of perfect holiness. He is never out of their thoughts, . . . His will is their supreme law, His glory their supreme end. His approba- tion their supreme reward ; " ^ and in this the * Dale on the Atonement, p. 24. Cp. Bishop Alexander, 74 WAYMARKS IN CHURCH HISTORY. Church of the first centuries followed them. Very well. But if Arianism were true, all this would have to be altered ; the Church must make confession that in strange inconsiderate- ness she had been carried beyond the verge of idolatry : she must frankly retrace her steps. It has been well said that Arianism, " while professing to adjust on a rational basis the relations of Christianity to its Founder, was encountered by the fatal objection that t/ie Fomtder was the religmi ; so that any tampering with His Personal majesty did not touch merely an accident of the system, but was a direct blow at its fundamental condition and character." The opposition to Arianism, then, meant just this, first and foremost ; that Chris- tian theology must formulate a rationale of the worship of Christ. Athanasius knew right well how deeply the question touched the core and heart of Christian life ; he felt, he was con- vinced — and the conviction sustained him through all his troubles, conflicts, exiles — that by his contention against Arianism he was Primary Convictions, p. 240, where after setting forth the absolute claims of the Christ of the New Testament, he proceeds, "If He were God, He could ask no more ; and He could get no more, for we have no more to give.'' THE ARIAN CONTROVERSY. 75 justifying before God and man the Church's immemorial adoration of her Redeemer ; as Dr. Wace has said,^ the question for him was, " What think ye of Christ?" a question "evangelical, practical, personal," bound up with the affec- tion, the loyalty, the supreme devotion of Chris- tians to a Christ confessed as really Divine. {b) This perhaps was the issue which would be most readily and commonly recognised by Churchmen. Closely connected with it was another, which, in its own way, would have con- siderable effect. Arians bore witness to the deep-seated habit of worshipping Christ by keeping up that worship, after a sort, among themselves. But it was " after a sort." It was, on their own showing, a titular worship, not real, not seriously tenable.'-^ Here, as the sharp eyes of their great antagonist discerned, the Pagan taint was visible ; creature-worship was coming back when One conceived of as a creature was made the object of an inferior kind of adoration. The advantage thus given was seized and held fast ; the brand of heathen- ishness was fixed on the forehead of Arianism ; 1 Good Words for 1878, p. 686. 2 Socinus himself claimed for his purely human Christ a secondary adoration. 76 WAYMARKS IN" CHURCH HISTORY. and Catholic arguers, while pleading for the dogma of the Homoousion, were ipso facto testifying for the sovereign claims of God ; they were saying, with all possible emphasis, " He alone is to be adored ; His glory He will not give to another," and thus were vindicating against a disastrous corruption that high, pure, exact idea of Deity, which alone can support a working religion for man.^ (c) Yet once again. Arianism, in effect, denied that the Son was a veritable representative of the Father ; and so those Semi-Arians,^ whose difference from the Church was mainly verbal, were content or forward to speak of the Son as the Father's " fully adequate image." A creature, however august, could not be such an image of the Creator. What followed ? That Christ, regarded as only a creature, could not really bring the Most High God face to face with men. God Himself, God in the proper sense, must be thought of as infinitely distant ; ^ Cp. Gwatkin, Studies of Arianism, p. 27. " The (Arian) doctrine is heathen to the core, for the Arian Christ is nothing but a heathen demigod. . . . On its own principles," the Arian worship of Christ " was absolutely heathen creature-worship," etc. All creatures, from archangels to the lowest forms of life, are, qua creatures, on a level before their Creator, * See Appendix, D. THE ARIAN CONTROVERSY. 77 and thus came back, unexpectedly but effect- ually, the old disheartening Gnostic superstition about a supreme original Being to whom, as enthroned in His own " depth " or " silence," there was no real access for man. Such was another result of a theory which pretended to place Christian doctrine on a more reasonable and intelligible basis. It simply put the Highest far off, and concentrated the interest of Christian life on a being immeasurably below Him. It spoke of securing the incommunicable dignity of the Father ; and it made Him too like '' a God unknown." A few concluding words must be added as to the course which the Church took in safeguard- ing her belief against Arianism. The Nicene Fathers have been accused of troubling the clear waters of Christian faith with a foreign element of Greek speculation, because they put into the creed such phrases as, '' From the essence of the Father," "Of one essence with the Father." Let us ask what the objection points to ; is it made matter of complaint that a few words savouring of the philosophical terminology of the period were thus adopted as part of a Church formula ? But, if not in creeds, at least in popular theological writing, technical terms, 78 WAYMARKS IN CHURCH HISTORY. familiar to men of our own day, are now freely- used. Again, the Nicene Fathers, as Athanasius, an eyewitness, twice informs us,^ would fain have settled the question by the employment of simply Biblical terms : it was only the Arian readiness to quibble and palter with such words that constrained them, against their first inten- tion, to protect what they held to be the mean- ing of Scripture by help of a few terms which Scripture itself did not thus use. In so doing, they made it clear that they took such a term as " essence " apart from varying Greek uses of it, (as Athanasius afterwards wrote, " What the Greeks say does not bind us," ^) and em- ployed it to serve for the indication of a "genuine" and peerless Sonship, interior to the infinite life of the Divine Being. We are not to suppose that they succeeded in removing all misapprehensions. The phrases in question were often persistently misunderstood, as if they meant in the Creed what they had meant in this or that school of Greek philosophy — as if they suggested materialistic notions,^ or gave an advantage to Sabellianism ; ^ but the Nicene * De Deer. Nic. 20 ; ad Afros, 5. 2 De Synod. 51. ^ Athan. de Synod. 42, etc. * See Epiphanius, Hoer. 69. 70; Ambrose de Fid. iii. 126. THE ARIAN CONTROVERSY. 79 intention is plain, as pointing to a certain theo- logical idea. But the criticism presumably goes farther ; it means that the idea thus expressed was itself intrusive, a Platonist notion quite alien to original Christianity, a metaphysical speculation without any bearing on ethical interests. If this is contended, let us observe that, as it has been excellently said, the Church doctrine of the Trinity "seems to stand in the very strongest contrast to anything which Greek speculation produced ; " ^ for first, the Greek speculations are purely metaphysical,^ without " interest in moral life," whereas the doctrine of the Homoousion or of the Trinity is in its bearings profoundly moral, spiritual, practical. It was the Arians, not the Catholics, who " philosophised " out of season, who plunged into speculations about the nature of God, His relation to the world, and so forth,^ as it was the Arians in their several sections who multi- plied formularies of doctrine.^ And then, * T. B. Strong, Manual of Theology, p. 188. - On the place of " metaphysics " in Christianity, see Gore, Bamp. Lect. p. 22. ^ Cf. Soc. ii, 41. His list is not complete. * Dr. Liddon once said, " The Arian heresy was not more an innovation in doctrine than an effort of the defeated philosophy to recover lost ground." See Waterland, i. 449. So WA YMARKS IN CHURCH HIS TOR V. secondly, Greek thought had no affinity to the idea of Incarnation ; and it is the Incarnation, with all its hold on moral affections and aims, which at once guarantees and illuminates Trinitarianism, and makes it what it has been truly called, the full recognition of a moral and loving God. In the light of such facts, we may well ask whether Christianity would have survived an Arian recasting ; whether Arianism did not represent a distinctly backward step ; whether we English Christians do not owe a tribute of grateful reverence to Athanasius and to his fellow-workers ; whether, as things are, it would be anything short of disloyalty to Christ to give up the Nicene Creed ; whether we ought not to find fresh stimulus for religious affections, fresh motives for religious effort, whenever, in that sublime doxology familiar to most of our Church congregations, we give "laud and honour to the Father, Son, and Spirit," as — '• Consubstantial, coeternal, While unending ages run.'' THE EPISCOPATE OF ST. BASIL. It should not be difficult for modern Christians to interest themselves in the ecclesiastical career, or, more especially, in the episcopal work, of him who ranks second in time among the " four Greek doctors," and who was regarded, in his own day, as having taken up in some sense the mantle of Athanasius. It is the story of one who could not but be conscious of great powers, and who toiled with unsparing effort to make full use of great opportunities ; who from his youth upward had been surrounded by an atmosphere of admiring homage, and had seemed to "dwell apart" on an eminence of dignity; who yet, on attaining a high place among bishops, which might seem to involve a com- manding and far-reaching influence, was almost continuously subjected to a discipline of mis- construction, opposition, and seeming failure. " He issued," says Newman, " from the solitudes of Pontus to rule like a king, and minister like the lowest in the kingdom ; yet to meet little G 82 IVAYMARKS IN CHURCH HISTORY. but disappointment, and to quit life prematurely in pain and sorrow." ^ There were moments not a few in which Basil was tempted to despond, as if he had spent his strength for nought and in vain ; and yet the traditionary epithet which he shares with Athanasius and Leo, and with the first and best of the Roman Gregories, is justified by what has been called his " powerful person- ality," ^ by the moral elevation of his character, the force which he threw into all that he did, and the effects that remained when his life-work was closed at fifty. Basil " the Great " was less than nine years a bishop, but he " fulfilled a long time." A brief retrospect of his earlier life will suffice. Born some four years after the Nicene Council, at the great city of Caesarea in Cappa- docia, he was, as his friend Gregory of Nazi- anzus expresses it, "trained in piety" by parents distinguished for religious earnestness as well as for social position ; but his baptism was deferred to early manhood. As a boy, he distanced his school-fellows in learning;^ as a ^ Church of the Fathers, p. 51- ' Prof. Ramsay, The Church in the Roman Empire, p. 461. ' See a touching letter of his last years to a companion of his boyhood. " Those days when you and I had one house, one hearth, one pivdagogus, and shared alike in recreation and in study," etc., Ep. 271. THE EPISCOPATE OF ST BASIL. 83 youth, he migrated to Constantinople for the sake of the lectures of men like Libanius ; ^ when somewhat above twenty, he followed Gregory to the University of Athens, where the two soon formed one of the famous friendships of history, " companions," as Gregory says,^ " in talk, in lodging, in studies, having as it were but one soul between them, the bond of their intimacy being a desire for the better things." Athens was full of intellectual activity ; the students " went mad after their professors ; " but, like their brethren of Carthage,^ they had a way of " taking down the conceit " of freshmen by a combination of banter and hustling. Basil, whose reputation already made him a personage, was spared this rough ordeal by Gregory's inter- vention on his behalf; but this exemption did not make him like Athens better, or take kindly to the social side of student life. Partly through natural reserve, which must have seemed, in modern phrase, " donnish," and partly through the weak health which even then oppressed him, and obliged him to include medicine among * He afterwards sent Cappadocians to study under Libanius, Epp. 335-338. 2 Carm. de Vita sua, 226, ff. Cp. Orat. 43. 15. ^ Augustine, Confess, iii. 6. 84 WAYMARKS IN CHURCH HISTORY. the various sciences which he studied, he held aloof, and kept Gregory also aloof, from amusements and festal parties ; and it was evi- dently under his persuasion that Gregory joined him in a resolution to quit Athens, in spite of the remonstrances which deprecated such a loss to the university. First Basil went, then Gregory ; both repaired to their respective homes ; and the Caesareans did Basil no good by treating him as a person of civic importance while acting as teacher of rhetoric in their city. At this critical point, his sister Macrina inter- posed ; in the frank language of their brother, Gregory of Nyssa, she saw that Basil was " ex- cessively vain of his own acquirements, and apt to look down on men in official position ; " ^ and she presented to him a new ideal — the exceptional self-devotion of the ascetic. He responded at once, and set forth on travels through Syria and Egypt, in order to study the new " philosophy " in its homes ;^ and soon after his return, in 358, he betook himself to the neighbourhood of a village in Pontus, where, apparently, he had been brought up in childhood, and where his widowed mother and his sister were now living ^ Greg. Nyss. de vita Macrinae (Op. ii. i8i). "^ Cf. Bas. Ep. 223. 2. THE EPISCOPATE OF ST BASIL. 85 ill religious retirement.^ Basil's own abode was in a romantic spot among the mountains, insu- lated by narrow glens and the river Iris ; he describes it in a passage which indicates a keen appreciation of natural beauty.^ Gregory was induced to pay him a visit, and afterwards, by way of teasing him, descanted in two ironical letters on the various discomforts of the place.3 A subsequent letter assured Basil of his real and thoroughgoing sympathy. He made a longer stay in what Basil called "his isle of Calypso ; " and their austerities and devo- tions were diversified by what we should now call mission-preachings, rich in religious benefit to the inhabitants of that highland region.^ But what most deeply impressed their contem- poraries, and told most permanently on the life of the Eastern Church, was the organisation of monasticism in Pontus by men who had given 2 Cp. Bas. Ep. 210. r. *' There is a high mountain clothed with thick wood, and watered on the north side by cold and clear streams," etc. Ep. 14 ; cp. Ep. 223. 5. ^ See Greg. Epp. 4, 5, on '* the dark mousehole dignified with the name of a phrontisterion—\hQ rushing stream which outroared the psalm-chant, the hut without a door, the hearth without a fire, the garden with never a herb, the rough manual toil, the muddy broth, the bread too hard for the teeth." "* Cf, Tillemont, ix. 44. 86 WAYMARfCS IN CHURCH HISTORY. Up such prospects in such a cause.^ From time to time Basil reappeared in the outer world ; we find him, towards the end of 359, accompany- ing his senior namesake, the excellent Semi- Arian of Ancyra, to Constantinople ; ^ when the " Homoean " creed of Ariminum was enforced, he felt obliged to refrain from communicating with Dianius, bishop of Csesarea, who had accepted it ''in simplicity of heart," but on better information recanted his signature.^ In the reign of Julian, who had been his fellow- student at Athens, and who had then astonished both him and Gregory by an excitable restless- ness of demeanour,* Eusebius, the successor of Dianius, constrained him to receive ordination to the priesthood ; ^ but the observance shown ' See Basil's account of monastic life, Ep. 2. The " Regulce " in the third volume of his Works are admitted as genuine by his Benedictine editors, who reject the " Constitutiones." The " Moralia " are assigned to 361. ^ He took no part in the ensuing discussions ; and Eunomius afterwards misrepresented this reserve, as if he had shut himself up in his room and showed signs of fear when any one approached it. Gregory of Nyssa's answer is in effect, "Basil afraid?" (Op. ii. 310). * Bas. Ep. 51. 2. * Cp. Socrates, iii. 23. Julian's position in 355, as a Pagan mystic still pretending for fear of Constantius to be a Christian, will account for what Gregory describes. * That he had been made a " reader " is inferred from De Sp. Sanct. 71. That he had received deacon's orders, appears from Epp. 68, 268. THE EPISCOPATE OF ST. BASIL. 87 him at Caesarea awakened the jealousy of a prelate whose antecedents had been secular, and whom Tillemont describes as " not far advanced in things spiritual ; " ^ and Basil, to prevent his own friends from assuming a schismatical attitude, returned with Gregory to Pontus. Three more years passed away ; in 365 the Arian emperor, Valens, was believed to be menacing the Church of Caesarea, and Eusebius, feeling himself incompetent to steer it through difficult waters, was induced by Gregory to recall Basil.^ The immediate peril was averted ; but Basil remained at Caesarea, and became everything to the bishop, " a good counsellor, an able supporter," ^ an efficient deputy in the administration of the Church. He was now the most conspicuous ecclesiastic under the rank of bishop in Asia Minor ; besides a mass of spiritual work, including the compilation and arrangement of prayers,* and the framing of rules for ascetic life, he exhibited that tender assiduity in the relief of bodily wants, which, as Gregory well remarks, "often tells with good effect upon the soul." He was active as an ' Tillemont, ix. 70. ^ q^ Ox&g. Epist. 16. ^ Greg. Orat. 43. 33. ■• There is thus a basis for the tradition which traces a " Liturgy" to St. Basil. S8 WAYMARKS IN CHURCH HISTORY. almsgiver, and an entertainer of strangers ; and during a great famine, he was to be seen assem- bling the starving and all but dying poor under one roof, feeding them from a collected store of vegetable broth and salt meat, waiting on them personally as well as by friends or servants, and taking care also to "dispense to them the spiritual food of the word." ^ Already, we may suppose, his more superficial admirers had begun to imitate, not his interior excellences, but his little personal peculiarities.^ Many a " Basil on the outside," as Gregory says, would "speak deliberately, walk slowly as if wrapt in meditation, aim at looking grave, and succeed in looking gloomy." But beside these grotesque affectations there were many who honestly took it as an honour to have done him any small service, or had a word with him, or even heard a word from him ; and what must have given him the truest satisfaction was the late-won but entire confidence of his bishop, who, about the midsummer of 370, "died happily in his arms." The theory of episcopal elections in that age was equitable and coherent. The ultimate responsibility rested with the provincial bishops ; but free expression was allowed, and full weight ' Greg. Orat. 43. 34-36. = lb. 43. 77. THE EPISCOPATE OF ST BASIL 89 given, to the positive wishes of the ckrgy and of the faithful ; ^ and the principle afterwards embodied in a terse Latin formula, " Nullus invitis detur episcopus," was held sacred. But, in practice, the vacancy of an important see was too often the occasion of grievous scandal. In regard to such cities as Constantinople and Antioch, the Emperor might interpose, and carry out his own choice ; elsewhere, too, party spirit might divide the bishops, or the clergy, or, with still greater vehemence, the people ; and the result might be actual faction -fighting, the most tragical instance of which, not five years before the death of Eusebius, had crowded the floor of a Roman basilica with more than a hundred bodies of the slain. And Caesarea, the capital of Cappadocia, was as such the seat of a bishopric which ambition might regard as a prize. It had already a sort of primacy throughout the " diocese," or aggregate of provinces, which, by an extended area of the term, was called Pontic;^ the suffragans under ^ Peter of Alexandria describes these three elements, the action of the episcopal "synod," the ^y\<^o% (used for strong testimony and request) of the clergy, the aXTr](ris of the people. Theod. H. E. iv. 22. Cp. Athan. Apol. c. Arian. 6, on the last of these, and Ambrose, Ep. 63. 46, - Bingham, ix. 3. 2. go WAYMARKS IN CHURCH HISTORY. its metropolitical jurisdiction were few, but each had charge of a wide district ; and the metro- politan, as bishop of Csesarea, was assisted by fifty " chorepiscopi " or assistant bishops for country districts. " The whole Christian body," writes Gregory with patriotic exaggeration, had its eyes on this church, "as a circle on a centre." He was evidently thinking of Asia Minor ; and throughout that region Churchmen would be asking, " Who was to succeed Bishop Eusebius ? " There should have been no doubt as to the election of Basil ; but he was not universally popular, and he does not seem to have known men as Athanasius knew them ; ^ he had evi- dently been too long a recluse. The high city officials would remember his youthful super- ciliousness ; the common people called him proud, and complained of his being unsocial ; he was, in fact, too stately to be universally genial, and Gregory sarcastically admits that he was not a man to talk or laugh in the streets. " You might as well complain of a lion for not being * Gregory showed more tact when he declined to visit Basil at this crisis, and even advised him to withdraw temporarily from Csesarea. Basil had resorted to a curious ** ruse" in order to secure his friend's presence. Greg. Ep. 40. THE EPISCOPATE OF ST. BASIL. 91 a monkey." And there were bishops who thought that he would be too masterful as a superior, or too exacting as a disciplinarian ; who felt, in fact, that his standard of episcopal conduct was too lofty for their convenience. They caballed, says Gregory, against his election, professedly on the ground of his bad health ; his chief supporters were the excellent Eusebius of Samosata, and his friend Gregory's father and namesake, who told other prelates that the business was not that of " choosing an athlete," and that he " could not in conscience prefer any one to his loved and honoured son Basil." ^ The old man, though far past eighty, and " looking death-like," insisted on travelling by litter to Caesarea. His own vote just gave Basil a majority ; and he had the pleasure of joining in the imposition of hands, and of helping to place Basil on the raised episcopal seat." Thus en- throned, the new primate, having previously surpassed others, began to " surpass himself ; " his munificence in building a church with lodg- ings for bishop and clergy, and — what specially won hearts — a hospital for the sick with a full staff of physicians and nurses, and so large as to be almost like " a new city " in itself, a little ' Greg. Epp. 41-43. - Greg. Orat. 18, 36. 92 WAYMARKS IN CHURCH HISTORY. outside of Caesarea ; ^ his conscientious scrutiny of the fitness of his ordinands, his combined patience and firmness in the administration of discipline, his sedulous earnestness as a preacher, his readiness as a comforter and adviser, gave token of a spirit which proved its right to rule : and his dignified gentleness towards unfriendly sufTragans, exhibited rather in conduct than in words, had at last the effect of convincing them that their true interest was bound up with his own.^ Personally he was not a sufferer through the second Arian persecution, set afoot by the stupid and timorous despot ^ who, having unin- telligently adopted the " Ariminian " variety of Arianism, was bent on enforcing it by way of assuring himself that he was emperor. In July 371, Valens was travelling through Asia Minor to Antioch, preceded by his prefect Modestus, as was Modestus by Arian bishops, whom Basil steadily ignored. The prefect reached Caesarea in November, and forthwith sent for Basil. The celebrated conversation which is said to ^ Greg. Orat. 43. 63. Cp. Bas, Epp. 94, 176. Here, says Gregory, Basil would visit and kiss the patients. Here also wayfarers were taken in. ^ lb. 43. 40. It was a slow process ; see Bas. Epp. 48, 141. ' For the character of Valens see Ammianus, xxxi. c. 14. THE EPISCOPATE OF ST. BASIL. 93 have followed 1 owes probably not a little to Gregory's dramatic touch ; but some parts of it have an air of reality. It is likely enough that Basil would meet an invitation to accept the imperial creed by saying that, as himself one of God's creatures, he could not adore a being supposed to belong to their number ;2 that after Modestus had enumerated the possible penalties of contumacy, "confiscation, exile, torture, death," Basil would answer, " Try some- thing else, nothing of this sort frightens me;'' or that the prefect's naive remark, " No one never before spoke to me so boldly," should meet with the rejoinder, "Perhaps you never before had to deal with a bishop!" The scene which followed soon after, when Valens, having arrived at Caesarea, repaired to the cathedral on the Epiphany of 372, still lives for us in Gregory's description.^ We see the church filled with a " sea " of worshippers, we hear it re-echoing the thunderous psalmody; but two figures stand out, — the clumsy, bowlegged, unroyal form of the emperor, with swarthy complexion and nervous air — and the bishop as celebrant, stand- ^ Greg. Orat. 43. 48. "^ " Polytheism prevails ; with them (Avians) there is a great God and a little," Bas. Ep, 243. 4. ^ Greg. Orat. 43. 52. 94 l^VAYMARK-S IN CHURCH HISTORY. ing behind the altar with face turned across it towards the people, but apparently conscious of no presence but that of God. We do not wonder that Valens is overawed by such a manifestation of an unearthly kingdom, indepen- dent of him and his. The attendant clergy may naturally have exaggerated his emotion ; but for the time he was impressed in favour of Basil, and if, in his fitful way, he resumed more than once the purpose of expulsion and banish- ment,^ the incident ended in its final abandon- ment, and in a grant of rich estates to Basil's hospital, and in a cordial understanding between Modestus and the archbishop, who soon after- wards requested the prefect to secure to the clergy the much-prized immunity from burden- some civic functions.^ So it was that Basil continued to look forth from Caesarea, as from a place of secure shelter, ^ See the story of the illness and death of Galates, the young son of Valens, as told by Gregory, and by Socrates, iv. 26. Accord- ing to Gregory, when Basil had prayed, the boy seemed to be recovering ; but Arian prayers were employed, and he sank. ^ Bas. Ep. 104. A few years later, Demosthenes, then Vicarius of Pontus, who, as chief cook to Valens, had come off badly in an encounter of wits with Basil, revenged himself by arresting Gregory of Nyssa on some calumnious charge, and imposing " curial obligations " on all the Cesarean clergy. He also caused an Arian to be intruded into a vacant see, but nearly all the clergy ignored him, E[ip. 225, 237, 23S. THE EPISCOPATE OF ST. BASIL. 95 Upon the storm which broke furiously on other Churches throughout the East.^ In letters of the same year he tries to stir up the sympathy of the more fortunate Westerns by telling them how pastors are being driven away, and wolves brought in to rend the flock ; how sees thus vacated become prizes for ambition or for out- spokenness in heresy ; how under such usurpers all discipline is necessarily relaxed ; how unbe- lievers laugh in scorn, and men of weak faith are unsettled ; how " the sounder part of the people abandon the houses of prayer as having become schools of impiety, and pour out their tearful prayers in the wilderness, amid all severities of weather."- In the summer of the next year, the horrible scenes at Alexandria after the death of Athanasius well-nigh con- strain him to ask, " Is this the predicted apostasy ? " ^ Two years later, he compares the distress and confusion to " a sea-fight under dense masses of cloud, with rolling waves and driving rain." ^ In the year following, he points ' Cp, Ep. 222. - Epp. 90, 92. ' Ep. 139. He alludes, of course, to 2 Thess. ii. 3. * De Spir. Sancto, s. 76 ; written in 375. Cp. Greg. Naz. Orat. 43. 30, "A cloud full of hail, breaking down every church as far as it beats upon it." "A barbaric inroad, but over- ihrowiiisT souls, not cities," etc. 96 WAYMARKS IN CHURCH HISTORY. to the "sad spectacle of women and children, old men and invalids, worshipping in the open country amid rain and snow and frost, or scorching heat, enduring all these because they will not consent to partake of the Arian leaven." He complains that this " sorest of persecutions " is all the sorer because its victims have not the comfort of suffering expressly as Christians. "The one crime," he says, "now severely visited is exact adherence to the traditions of the fathers." When this is proved, venerable age or a life of consistent piety can furnish no defence.^ Sometimes there is no open trial, but men are "seized at night, carried beyond the frontier, allowed to die of hardships in exile ; presbyters and deacons flee, the whole clergy is depopulated ; one has to ' worship the image,' or be tortured by the lash ; there is but one sound to be heard, the voice of wailing in town and country, on roads and in lonely places ; the houses of prayer are closed, the altars not used for the spiritual worship ; no more gather- ings of Christians, no more teachers to preside, no more solemn festivals, no more of that blissful exultation that fills the souls of believers at • In some cases, Gregory intimates, "persuasion" was suc- cessful in producing conformity to Arianism. THE EPISCOPATE OF ST. BASIL. 97 church services, and at the communion of spiri- tual gifts." ' Something may here be allowed for the exuberance of Greek rhetoric, and the indig- nant passion of a lofty and sensitive soul. But, at any rate, enough is known to illustrate that affinity of Arianism with tyrannical violence which had manifested itself so unequivocally at Alexandria in 340, and again during the latter years of Constantius. Valens had begun to persecute, though not systematically, as early as 365 ; by 372 " the pest of heresy had spread well-nigh from the Illyrian frontier to the Thebaid ; " ^ and if the persecution had not been suspended in 378 by the necessities of his Gothic war, and finally stopped by his death on the fatal day of Hadrianople, the only hope, humanly speaking, for his Catholic subjects would have been derived from the fact that he had reached his fiftieth year. Basil might have reason to remember how St. Paul had passed from the thought of "perils" properly external to that of " perils among false brethren " and " the daily pressure of anxiety * Epp. 242, 243 ; written in 376. 2 Bas. Ep. 92; cp. Ep. 164, written in 374; and Ep. 218, written in 375. H 98 WAYMARKS IN CHURCH HISTORY. for all the churches." In words already quoted, he had dwelt on the multiform encouragement which heresies had derived from the imperial onslaught on Catholicism. Now he saw every variety of heterodox speculation lifting its head high and reckoning confidently on the future. The ultra-Arianism first started by Aetius, and now represented by the bolder rationalist Euno- mius, went to lengths eschewed by the official and fashionable Arianism, which deemed itself '' safe " and " moderate," but was despised by "Anomoeans" as a shabby and shifty thing, with- out consistency or straightforwardness. Basil wrote elaborately against Eunomius, and in two remarkable letters, not unsuggestive for our own times, he met the Anomcean cavil, "Do you wor- ship what you know, or what you know not ? " by a distinction between that "comprehension" of God's essence which in this world was unat- tainable, and the salutary knowledge of His moral attributes and operations.^ On the other hand, the milder form of Arianism had de- veloped a theory known by the name of the old Semi-Arian Macedonius. If the Son was practi- cally admitted to be in a real sense divine, the Holy Spirit, at any rate, was to be thought of ' Epp. 234, 235 ; written in 376. THE EPISCOPATE OF ST. BASIL. 99 as the highest of ministering creatures ; and Basil, whose early relations with Semi-Arians might give him a good chance of being listened to, not only wrote his great treatise " On the Holy Spirit," but took occasion in several letters to dwell on the co-equality and co-operative energy of the Three Divine Persons, as against a view which as yet was not widely prevalent, but which, in the interest of Trinitarian faith, required an explicit condemnation.^ Again, the Sabellian heresy, which Arius at the outset had used as a bugbear, was being revived in several places, especially at Neocaesarea, and Basil expresses himself stringently against it.^ He takes note of the fact that Apollinaris, who invented his theory as an effective safeguard against Arianism, was approaching to Sabel- lianism, and also to Judaism ; such aberrations "are the more melancholy, because at first he appeared to be one of us ! " ^ It was thus with a view not only to the oppressed condition of Eastern Catholics, but to the perils menacing the Nicene faith throughout the East, that Basil, again and again, though often like one » Epp. 113, 125, 159, 189, 251. 2 Epp. 126, 189, 207, 210. » Epp. 129, 263, 265. loo WAYMARI^S IN CHURCH HISTORY. hoping against hope, sent messengers to the Western episcopate with urgent and piteous appeals for practical aid. In one of his letters he refers to a time when a bishop of Rome sent relief to the suffering Christians of Cappadocia, whereas now the need was more urgent — not a demolition of buildings, but the ruin of churches ; not the captivity of bodies, but the worse enthralment of souls.^ Something was gained by the declaration of a large Roman Council against claims set up for the Ariminian Council of 359. ai^d in support of the Catholic doctrine ; something more, in 375, by a letter from orthodox Illyrian bishops, and especially by an accompanying document'in which Valentinian I. himself (who was then in Illyria) protested strongly against the Eastern persecutors, as- serted the Nicene Homoousion as not to be confounded with the Semi-Arian Homoiousion, and insisted on the personality of the Redeemer as pre-existent and strictly divine.^ But Basil wished for a powerful deputation from the West ' Ep. 70. He alludes to the charity of Pope Dionysius, the one ante-Nicene bishop of Rome who was also a theologian. - This remarkable letter, of course composed by an Illyrian bishop, declares that Christ was "not a man bearing God, but God clothed with flesh," as if by anticipation of the Cyrilline Christology. Theodoret, iv. 8. THE EPISCOPATE OF ST. BASIL. loi to the East, and obtained little more than kindly expressed letters. In fact, he was irri- tated by the unsympathetic bearing of Damasus, bishop of Rome, to which he alluded in the oft- quoted words : '' If God's wrath still abides upon us, what help shall we get from the Western superciliousness ? " ^ But here this matter was complicated by the troubles of the Antiochene schism. This old discussion between the uncompromising " Eus- tathians " who had ail along held aloof from the crypto-Arian episcopate at Antioch, and those Catholics who, while openly maintaining their faith, deemed it right to frequent the churches, was in a fair way to be healed after Meletius, though placed in the see of Antioch by Arians, made a clear profession of Catholic doctrine. This prospect was destroyed by the self-will of the Sardinian bishop Lucifer, who took upon Him to bestow episcopal consecration on the " Eustathian " presbyter Paulinus. Athanasius, who in an Egyptian synod had framed a concordat for the two parties, was annoyed at this step, and disposed to recognise Meletius ; but his advances were coldly received,^ and at » Ep. 239. Cp. Ep. 215. 2 Bas. Epp. 89, 258. Basil attributes this to "evil coun- sellors." 102 WAYMARKS IN CHURCH HISTORY. last, being convinced that Paulinus was ortho- dox on some points as to which he had been suspected, Athanasius resumed his old relations with the Eustathians, and owned Paulinus as legitimate bishop. Rome and the West did the same ; but Basil, with the orthodox Easterns, was anxious to get Meletius acknowledged by all churches. This produced a series of interesting letters ^ from Basil to Athanasius as a universal "head" and "father;" as "pre-eminent in quick discernment, in practical ability, in far- reaching sympathy ; " as the one man com- petent to " heal the Church's disorder," and to " pilot her labouring bark." What, then, did he ask? That Athanasius would "crown his life- long labours and contests on behalf of true religion " by bringing East and West into true harmony, and particularly by " managing " the adherents of Paulinus, promoting the Rome- ward journey of Basil's own messenger Doro- theus, and opening communications with some Eastern prelates, who desired to be at one with Athanasius, but wanted him to make the first move. The briefest of these letters lays bare ^ Epp. 66, 67, 69, 80, 82. An earlier letter, Ep. 61, refers to the excommunication by Athanasius of a wicked " duke" of Libya, which Basil recognises for his own church. THE EPISCOPATE OF ST. BASIL. 103 the writer's heart. " Could I but have included in the story of my own life some intercourse with your great and truly apostolical soul, I should indeed have received it from God's good hand as a consolation which might well make up for all the griefs that I have endured." To hear from Athanasius and to write thus to him was a privilege for Basil ; but he was asking somewhat too much. Athanasius could not abandon Paulinus ; and Basil, on his side, appears to have been rather too much of a partisan,^ to have hardly appreciated the case which from the Eustathian standpoint could be made out against Meletius, as having been, at any rate, consecrated by heretics, and as having allowed himself to act with Acacius in putting a gloss on the Homoousion. However, so it was that Basil's disappointment at the un- responsiveness of the Westerns drew from him words that suggest despair : ** I look all round the world, and see no one with me." When endeavouring to soothe Peter II. of Alexandria, who, having spoken of Meletius as "heretical," had provoked a sharp answer from Dorotheus, • More so, certainly, than Gregory of Nazianzus, Carm. de Vit. sua 1567 ; and he believed too readily that Paulinus was inclined to Marcellianism, Ep. 263. 104 WAYMARKS IN CHURCH HISTORY. Basil wrote mournfully, " I seem for my sins to be unsuccessful in everything." ^ As if these public troubles were not enough, he had within his own immediate area a series of vexations like "clouds after rain." Once he writes to a monk, " Pray that my reason may not give way under what I suffer." ^ His uncle Gregory, naturally an amiable man, took offence at his appointment, and was with difficulty brought to reason.^ Bishops on the coast of the Euxine became unfriendly, and Basil had to plead with them for a fair hearing.* His own chorepiscopi incurred his censure by simoniacal and other malpractices connected with ordination.^ Some clerics gave scandal by disregard of Church order.^ What was far more painful was the necessity of defending his own orthodoxy. Thus Gregory, sitting at a supper-party, heard a monk say that he had been present when » Epp. 156, 266. 2 Ep^ 123. ' Ep. 59. Gregory of Nyssa tried his hand at promoting a reconciliation, but showed a " simplicity," as Basil calls it, " beyond that of an animal," Ep. 58. He was " quite inexperi- enced in ecclesiastical business," Ep. 215. * He says in effect, "Let me know what you complain of; let us have a free conference " (Ep. 203). * Epp. 53, 54. This refers to minor orders, for which priests and deacons had recommended unfit persons. * See Appendix, E. THE EPISCOPATE OF ST, BASIL. 105 Basil preached on a recent saint's day, and spoke well enough about the Son's relation to the Father, but was silent about the Divinity of the Holy Spirit. " This," it was added, " might be diplomacy, but was not piety ; it was, indeed, a betrayal of the truth." Gregory endeavoured to explain.' Some of Basil's auditors might have been prematurely startled if he had called the Spirit " God." It was, therefore, only a prudent "economy" to substitute terms from which His divinity might be inferred. This did not satisfy critics, and the matter was so widely discussed that Athanasius himself heard of it, and wrote to rebuke unworthy suspicions.^ Again, about three years later, Basil was charged with Tritheistic tendencies, because, like most Easterns of his standing, he spoke not of "one hypostasis," in the sense of one Divine Nature, but of " three hypostases," in the sense of three Divine Persons. He urged that this was requisite in order to bar out Sabellianism.^ ^ Greg. Ep. 58, Orat. 43. 69; Ath. Epp. to John, etc, Basil shows some touchiness when replying to Gregory's report of the incident, Ep. 71. As far back as 360, Basil had used lan- guage almost identical with the fifteenth verse of the Quicunque, Ep. 8. 2. The reply of the opponents to Gregory is remarkable. *' Far better to preserve our own people by the truth, than by this * economy ' to injure them, and not win outsiders." - Bas. Ep. 210; cp. Epp. 38, 214, etc. ic6 WAYMARKS IN CHURCH HISTORY. And a jealousy about his line on this subject is traceable in the strangely hostile attitude assumed towards him by the people of Neo- csesarea, with whom he had formerly been on very friendly terms, but who now were eagerly receiving and circulating whatever reports might tell against his influence.^ This could not come simply from the stiff conservatism which resented his encouragement of practices foreign to their own local tradition.^ When the average citizen pronounced off-hand that Basil's teaching savoured of the wisdom of this world,^ the criticism was put into his mouth, with a purpose, by a Sabellianising bishop.* It was sad work for Basil to be obliged, in such circumstances, to say to Neocsesareans, "For your own sake, hear before you condemn me." In two very different instances, Basil's friend- ship became the occasion of his suffering. He ^ Basil says that this diffusion of malicious gossip was paid for, Ep. 2IO. 2 On this ground they objected to monasticism and to certain modes of chanting. Yet they had adopted penitential proces- sions, which were in the same sense an innovation, Ep. 207. » Basil's remark here is by no means obsolete. "In other matters people resort to experts ; in theology every one thinks himself a competent judge," Ep. 204. 5. He puts a question- able gloss on their founder Gregory's phrase, "one in hypostasis." * Atarbius. See Ep. 126. THE EPISCOPATE OF ST. BASIL. 107 had relied upon the orthodox professions of Eustathius, bishop of Sebaste, an Arian to begin with, and afterwards, for the most part, a Semi-Arian, who, however, repeatedly professed to accept the Nicene faith. He had visited Basil in Pontus, and written to him as a friend in 371. Basil, says Tillemont, "thought too well of this knave," and was blamed in conse- quence by Theodotus of NicopoHs,^ but would not give up Eustathius until he found, in 373, that in obtaining the signature of Eustathius to a long exposition of the orthodox faith,^ he had simply wasted his time. Eustathius dropped the mask, and denounced Basil as an ApoUina- rian, on the ground of a letter written many years before to ApoUinaris.^ After keeping silence for three years, Basil exposed, at some length, the conduct and the motives of his adversary.* Eustathius was desirous of rehabi- litating himself in the eyes of the Arians then * Ep. 99; Tillemont, ix. 189. Basil was impressed by Eustathius' profession of " hating falsehood even in trifles." ' It forms Ep. 125. It embodies and explains the Nicene Creed, and adds an anathema against Macedonianism. Basil was in favour of making an addition to the Nicene Creed on the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, Ep. 258. ' Even this one letter (of a.d. 350) had been interpolated. * Ep. 223 ; cf. Epp. 224, 226, 244, 251, 263. io8 WAYMARKS IN CHURCH HISTORY. dominant at Antioch ; and he showed his aim by nicknaming Basil a " Homoousian." ^ In the other and much more famous case, Basil was rather to be blamed than pitied, although here too he showed a want of discern- ment. Valens had thought good to erect part of Cappadocia into a distinct province, with Tyana for its capital.^ Thereupon, in 372, An- thimus, bishop of Tyana, claimed the position of a metropolitan, and actually intercepted some provisions ^ which were being brought on mules to Cacsarea, from an estate belonging to its church. Near the scene of this violent act was a town called Sasima, well within the limits traced out for " Second Cappadocia." Basil, in order to strengthen himself as metropolitan, determined to retain this place under his juris- diction ; he would erect a bishopric there, and his friend Gregory should be the bishop.^ Gregory was more than reluctant ; he did not * Ep. 226. Basil observes that the copy of the Nicene Creed which Eustathius had signed at Rome is extant, Ep. 244. - Basil is distressed at the loss which this will inflict on Caesarea — gymnasia closed, street-lamps unlit, chief citizens leaving, etc., Epp. 74, 76. * *' Sucking-pigs and fowls," says Gregory, Ep. 48 ; cf. Orat. 43. 58. But Anthimus was " of one heart with " Basil in 375, Ep. 210. 5. * Cf. Epp. 98, 100, 190. THE EPISCOPATE OF ST. BASIL. 109 wish to be a bishop anywhere, and least of all at this '' terribly unpleasant little village, all full of dust and noise," with an unsettled popu- lation, and on a road often traversed by convoys of prisoners.^ Basil could not, or would not, understand this objection, and was in no mood to take opposition patiently. He reproached Gregory for his " country-bred indolence," for his insensibility to high aims, to the call of duty, to the obligations of friendship. Gregory replied with some bitterness ; ^ he submitted so far as to receive consecration, but he would never go to Sasima nor act as its bishop ; nor did he ever again live on the old terms of brotherly intimacy with the strong-willed friend who, as he felt, had ridden roughshod over his sensitiveness. This unhappy affair was the chief mistake of Basil's life, and must have sad- dened many an hour in the troublous years which he had to spend without the solace of that sweet and cheering friendship ; while, even * Cf. Greg, de Vita sua, 442.- He calls the place "waterless, verdureless, devoid of all refinement," and (Ep. 50) marshy. It is significant that he adds — being debateable ground between two episcopal jurisdictions, it could not be held without blood- shed. 2 Epp. 48-50. He even says, " What I blame is your throne, which suddenly lifted you up above us." Basil himself knew that he was suspected on this score, Ep. 56. 1 10 WA YMARKS IN CHURCH HISTORY. after his death, Gregory, while acknowledging the elevation of Basil's motive, could not but confess that " time had not removed the painful impression of his conduct " in regard to Sasima. It was something for Basil that if he lost Gregory, he retained such friends as Eusebius and Amphilochius, the latter of whom induced him to write his work " on the Holy Spirit," ^ and his three " letters on Church rules," which have passed into the canon law of the Greek Church.^ In Basil's multifarious correspondence one is especially struck with the verification in his experience of St. Paul's deep saying on the relation between affliction and the power of administering comfort. Although there is some occasional playfulness in his letters,^ — as Gregory * The immediate occasion was a complaint against Basil for using diverse forms of doxology — " with the Son, together with the Holy Spirit," and "through the Son in the Holy Spirit." An edition of this treatise, by the Rev. C. F. H. Johnston, has recently issued from the Clarendon Press, Oxford. 2 Epp. i88, 199, 217. ' Amphilochius sends him some dried fruits ; he answers, " They don't suit me at my time of life, for my teeth have long gone," Ep. 232. (He was then hardly forty-eight.) He gives a copyist a lesson in transcribing ; " Don't let your hand go obliquely, like the crab in ^sop," Ep. 334. After twenty fits of quartan ague, " I am thinner than my own self . . . weak as a spider," Ep. 193. He alludes to Demosthenes as a " huge fat whale," Ep. 231. THE EPISCOPATE OF ST. BASIL. in says that within his own circle he could be very agreeable, and could tell good stories, — the general tone of feeling is sombre. His own illnesses repeatedly weigh him down ; fever and liver-complaint are perpetual trials. One meets with such sentences as : " It is natural to me to be ill ; " "I have been fifty days ill, hardly able to turn in bed," "quite crushed with uninter- mitting pain ; " "I am trying all this month the hot-water cure." ^ He cannot but quiver under the stabs of misrepresentation ;^ he cannot but feel the chill of loneliness and the sickness of hope deferred ; and out of all his manifold afflictions there springs up a marvellous readi- ness of sympathy, which can identify itself with any and every form of distress. If some poor mountaineers have to pay too much tribute of iron ; if a household or a widow is heavily taxed ; if an old man once well off is plunged into deep poverty ; if a priest has been robbed of his corn, or a monastery destroyed by Arians ; if a husband, or wife, or father is mourning under bereavement ; if a Pagan parent has to be appeased towards a son who has become a 1 Epp. 136-139 ; cp. Epp. 193, 200, 218. "^ His sensitiveness appears in his correspondence with Gregory. See Greg. Ep. 46, " Is it of me or of yourself that you are ignorant? . . . Can your interests be trivial to Gregory? " 112 WAYMARKS IN CHURCH HISTORY. Christian ; — be the particular trouble whatever it may, the much occupied and sorely tried archbishop can throw his heart for the time fully into it, and apply to each case the very treatment that it needs. He seems to be say- ing to others what he has often said to himself, when he reiterates the exhortation to remember that no one is tried beyond his strength, and no one is " crowned " until he has " striven." ^ Such was the task assigned to him whom we may call the most heavily afflicted of all the great Fathers. He worked up to the very last ; he endured hardness to the end. While his breath was all but spent, he persisted in ex- horting, and even in ordaining ; and those who on the New Year's Day of 379 caught the last faint whisper of the well-known voice, as he commended his spirit into his Lord's hands, or who followed him to the grave when crowds were struggling to touch the bier, or when the funeral psalms were drowned in the wailing of Christian and non-Christian alike, must have felt that the task was indeed accomplished, and the labour by no means in vain. In times so full * He uses the Pauline imagery of the *' athlete " in Ep. loi ; cp. Epp. 220, 240. See Ep. 106, a beautiful little letter of spiritual advice to a pious soldier. THE EPISCOPATE OF ST. BASIL. 113 of trouble and rebuke, it was a great thing that the spiritual power of a ** complete belief," ^ as giving true unity and fruitful energy to a life, should be so grandly exhibited in St. Basil.^ * So Isaac Taylor, in "The Restoration of Belief," calls the Nicene faith, 2 Keble's line, " In disappointment Thou canst bless," seems applicable to many parts of his career. THE CHRISTOLOGICAL CONTRO- VERSY IN THE FOURTH AND FIFTH CENTURIES. Arianism was bound to produce a vehement reaction. All extremes, all one-sided presenta- tions of a case, and yet more such as would reconstruct a religion, have that consequence to reckon with. It is inevitable, and it is just ; but it involves much that is perilous, much that is mournful. The interest attaching to the Apollinarian controversy is enhanced by the per- sonal piety and earnest devotion to the honour of Christ, which are manifest in that friend of Athanasius who lived too long for his own fame, inasmuch as he lived to take a place among heresiarchs. He was a man of wide culture, who had put his versatile talents to account, in the trying days of Julian, by pre- paring Christian works in classical form for students, when that emperor's "oppressive" edict, as Gibbon calls it, had silenced Christian THE CHRISTOLOGICAL CONTROVERSY. 115 teachers in State schools. But he was also a man of high personal character, who had been a confessor during Arian persecution. " It is," says Newman,^ "a solemn and pregnant fact that two of the most zealous and forward of Athanasius' companions in the good fight against Arianism — Marcellus and Apollinaris^ — fell away into heresies of their own." The case against Marcellus is not, perhaps, quite so clear ; but, on the whole, it would seem that both these eminent men were betrayed into error by their eagerness to devise new tactics for the campaign against the heresy which both so passionately abhorred.^ Some Arians had held that the creaturely and titular Godhead, which alone they recognised in the Son, had supplied the place of a human '' soul" in Christ. It seems to have occurred to Apollinaris that he might take hold of this theory, recast it, and turn it into a weapon for Catholic hands. As ^ Church of the Fathers, p. 169. He goes on to quote " The grey-haired saint may fail at last," etc. See a character- istic passage in Tillemont, Memoires, vii. 627. * Properly, Apollinariws. ^ Marcellus, apparently, thought to quash the Arian objec- tions to an eternal Sonship by substituting an impersonal Logos for a Divine Son. The result was a denial of an "eternal Trinity," and of a Divine personality in Christ. ll6 WAYMARKS IN CHURCH HISTORY. held by Arians, it had indicated the inferiority of our Lord's pre-existent nature ; for such a nature, not differing in kind from the angelic, might fairly enough fulfil such a function. But when Apollinaris maintained a substitution of the Logos for the "rational soul" in the Incar- nate, he meant to insist on, to emphasise, the dignity of Christ's one Divine Person, and to argue that as ** mind " involved a human per- sonality and a capacity of evil choice, there- fore its place must be supplied by the Logos, believed to be " consubstantial j " thus only, he held, could the Christian heart be secured in the possession of a truly Divine and immaculate Christ.i It was probably some of the followers of Apollinaris, rather than the master himself, who went back in their own sense to the Arian notion that not only the human mind or spirit, but even the "animal" soul, was thus super- seded in Christ's humanity. We may, in the first instance, confine ourselves to the question of the " reasonable soul," as it is referred to in the " Quicunque." For some years Apollinaris and his friends observed caution in the utter- ance of their views ; it was easy to admit that * See Later Treatises of St. Athanasius, in Lib. of Fathers, p. 79. THE CHRISTOLOGICAL CONTROVERSY. 117 Christ had " a mind," with the unexpressed meaning that the Logos was a mind for Him, that His " intelligence " was Divine and not human. But the opinion really held was in- capable of long concealment ; and council after council— at Rome, at Antioch, at Constanti- nople — pronounced a formal condemnation on Apollinaris, whom Athanasius himself, in his last years, had felt obliged to oppose in a formal treatise, though he refrained, for old love's sake, from censuring him by name.^ But the new heresy had resources which made its suppression very difficult ; it developed a controversial literature and an active titular episcopate ; ^ and although, as usual, its ad- herents split up into sub-sections — the moderate and the extreme^ — it appealed powerfully to a large class of devout and mystical minds, which were even feverishly anxious to erect barriers against the destructive profanity of Arianism. It pleaded for reverence ; like other heresies, it exhibited what St. Hilary* plainly * Later still, in 376, Basil could only say that he "had read with some disapproval a few of his books," Ep. 244. - Basil, Epp. 244, 265. ' Represented by Valentinus and by Polemon. * De Trinitate, iv. 6. Cp. Cyril, Apol. adv. Theod. 10. So Eutyches "began, as he thought, in doing honour to God," etc. ; Pusey, Two Sermons on Faith, p. 64. ii8 WAYMARKS IN CHURCH HISTORY. calls " an irreligious solicitude about God," as if so great a condescension as the received doctrine involved were too great to be ad- mitted without a risk to piety. Apollinaris was *' solicitous " for the indivisible singleness of Christ's Person ; and he assumed that a human mind would involve a distinct human personality, such as, given the Incarnation, would constitute two wholes, as he expressed it, that is, two persons, or, otherwise, two Christs. And secondly, he professed zeal for the impecca- bility of the Saviour, and assumed that if He had had a human mind, it must have been in Him, as in us, a seat of impulse and choice, and capable of change from good to evil, so that He must have been humanly capable of sin. Now, first of all, the Catholic arguers who replied to Apollinarians admitted the major premisses thus laid down, but denied the assump- tions or the conclusions. And first as to the Personal Oneness. Apolli- naris could not be wrong in contending for that " consummate union ; " the Divine nature in Christ had a basis of personality all its own, while the human nature had not ; manhood was taken up into the one Divine self which had existed from eternity, so that Christ, as Man, THE CHRISTOLOGICAL CONTROVERSY. 119 was yet not "^ man" in the strict sense in which any given individual of the human species is such. " His manhood had not a substantive character," simply because it belonged to Him, the Word, who had "taken it into" Himself. So Athanasius had unweariedly insisted that all the human acts and sufferings of Christ belonged to that one ahroq, who was the Eternal Word or Son ; and Gregory of Nazianzus, who even went so far as to invoke State power against Apollinarianism, had said that to assert " two Sons " was to forfeit the Christian's adop- tive sonship, " for God and Man are two natures, but not two Sons." ^ But while affirming what Apollinaris had affirmed, the Catholics chal- lenged his inference. God, they held, could maintain the human body and human mind, under the Incarnation, in union with a single Divine "Ego;" the Word could assume both flesh and intellect, and yet remain indivisibly one Person. Again, it was most true that Christ was humanly impeccable, that He could not conceivably have fallen or revolted as Man. He could be tempted, but if His mind ever con- templated as desirable this or that object, it could not cherish any such wish when it recog- ^ Athan. Orat. ii. 55 ; iii. 31. Greg. Naz. Ep. lor. 120 WAYMARKS IN CHURCH HISTORY. nised that the object was incompatible with His mission ; His human will could not set itself against the known will of His Father. And this impeccability could be believed without prejudice to the reality of His human mind ; for while He had in Himself, as Epiphanius puts it, *' all the elements of a true humanity," He could " preserve them from pollution " and moral perversion by the Godhead which com- passed them about.^ So, as Ambrose said, there was no call for this "over-anxiety as to whether, in Christ, the desires of the flesh might not have overpowered the law of the mind."^ Or, as we might say, "Trust God to take care of His own honour ; it cannot be beyond His power to protect a mind from rebellious choices, when that mind is the property of His only-begotten Son." And then the Catholics went on to point out the positive flaws in the new theory. Quite early in the con- troversy, a famous Alexandrian Council had referred to the Scriptural account of our Lord as having become " Man ; " ^ and how could He be Man if He had only the animal soul, the » Epiph. Hcer. 77. 27. 2 S. Ambr. de Incarn. Sacr. 69. ^ S. Ath. Tom. ad Antioch. 7. THE CHRISTOLOGICAL CONTROVERSY. 121 physical vitality, and not a human mind also ? Again, the theory contradicted, or nullified, such texts as spoke of His being "troubled in spirit,"^ which could not be construed as attri- buting this sense of "trouble" to the Godhead in Him without involving a monstrous inter- fusion of Godhead and Manhood, a humanising, so to speak, of the Deity itself, — a commixture from which would result something neither properly Divine nor properly human. More- over, a very intelligible and practical line of criticism was suggested by the act that Christ came to save the whole of human nature. All that had fallen, and therefore all that needed redemption, was assumed by Christ as " Re- deemer ; " but the rational soul, being precisely that which had misused the gift of free-will, did pre-eminently need redemption. If man had fallen by halves, and had only to be saved by halves, then only half of manhood might have been assumed by the Saviour ; but the effect of the Fall on the whole of our nature required it to be assumed as a whole, in order that, as * Unfortunately, some Fathers countenanced a way of speak- ing — quasi-Docetic in drift — which reduced the stronger expres- sions of human feeling on our Lord's part to a form of didactic *' economy or of intercession." 122 WAYMARKS IN CHURCH HISTORY. 2l whole, it might be rectified and saved.^ There was yet one other point on which, strangely enough, the Apollinarian heresy approached the ground which was afterwards occupied by the Pelagian. It underrated the work of Christ as the Re-creator, the Restorer of fallen man. It laid great stress on the Incarnation as " exhibit- ing" the unseen God.^ But this by itself might suggest that man might work out his own re- newal merely by a practical contemplation of God in Christ, by simple imitation of Christ's character. Not to say that imitation implied a pattern in a human but all-pure mind, it was most needful to remember that for the forma- tion in us of the "new man" after Christ's likeness, a work of renewal by Christ was indis- pensable. Apollinaris himself would appear from his own words — unless he spoke with great in- sincerity^ — to have, on the whole, and as a rule, kept clear of that grosser form of his ^ Damasus urged this point in one of his Roman synods. * Newman, Tracts Theol. and Eccles. p. 267. ^ His language seems to have varied somewhat. He was understood at times to imply that Christ's manhood was pre- existent ; but in one letter he says he has always taught that "the Saviour's flesh was not of heavenly origin," etc. This uncertainty caused divisions among his followers. THE CHRISTOLOGICAL CONTROVERSY. 123 theory which affirmed a "conversion of God- head into the flesh" assumed by Christ,— in other words, the non-human character of what, to all appearance, was His body. But some of his followers, undoubtedly, maintained this offensive paradox ; and it came particularly under the notice of Athanasius, who thought well to confute it elaborately, insisting on the human reality of the body that was born and was crucified,— explaining St. John i. 14 to mean, " The Word became man,"— and urging that to treat His flesh as of heavenly origin was to disown Him as Son of Man, to impugn the essential spirituality of Godhead, to enter on a course which had Docetism for its goal. The whole of the Catholic polemic might be summed up as a protest against "will-worship," against the temper which recoiled from God's wonderful condescensions, and said in effect, " Be it far from Thee, Lord." "Your profession of reverence," it was argued, " will not avail you ; God knows how to provide for His own dignity. Do not in- sult Him by assuming that a virtual annihilation of the God-Man's true humanity is necessary to guard the Divine purity from fleshly taint ; and do not injure your own race and its hopes by such a minimising of the human element in 124 WAYMARKS IN CHURCH HISTORY. Christ as would cut us all off from His merciful and life-giving operation as the Son of Man and Second Adam, the Head, the Example, the Brother, the High Priest." Such, then, was Apollinarianism. It is neces- sary to consider it at some length in order to understand Nestorianism and Eutychianism — the two subsequent forms of a one-sided and erroneous Christology, which distressed the Church in the next age. To appreciate the attractions of a " mystic " heresy is always difficult for us Englishmen ; but we must bear in mind that to the great Church leaders at the close of the fourth century Apollinarianism was a really formidable phenomenon. It stretched out hands to various dispositions ; it offered to provide an impregnable stronghold against theories disloyal to the divinity or the holiness of the Saviour. It seems, also, in some cases, to have tampered with Sabellianism, or with fancies about a gradation in Deity, and even to have shown some indulgence to sensuous Juda- ical dreams. Its accomplished founder was at the head of a propaganda, which poured forth book after book,^ and particularly an abundance of religious poems which were sung by men at * Greg. Ep. loi. THE CHRISTOLOGICAL CONTROVERSY, 125 work, or even at festal parties, or by women at their loom — " new Psalters," as Gregory calls them, — which doubtless brought home the seem- ingly high conception of a "heavenly mind," or a body of Divine substance, to Christians whose piety was too unthoughtful or too emotional. Christ was being sublimated, etherealised, dehumanised, in the interest of a mysticism which seemed to have fundamental affinities to the Oriental abhorrence of matter, which recoiled from " confessing Jesus Christ as come in flesh." What was to be done? The mischief must somehow be arrested. Who was to step forward and bar its advance, when it had spread through the east of Asia Minor, and through the whole of Northern Syria ? The Syrian or Antiochene school was the natural enemy of this tendency ; and it had a distinguished representative in Diodore, bishop of Tarsus, who, in long-past years, first as layman and then as priest, had done so much to organise among his fellow-Churchmen at Antioch a resistance to the insidious or the open attacks of Arian heresy. He became a very prolific writer, but, unhappily, his antipathy to ApoUinarianism was so unbalanced as to make him actually a precursor of Nestorianism. 126 IVAYMARKS IN CHURCH HISTORY. He disclaimed, indeed, the notion, condemned by Athanasius and by Hilary, that the Word of the Lord had " come to " Jesus as formerly to saints and prophets, only, of course, in special fulness of influence.-^ He believed undoubtingly in the eternal personality of the Son, who was the Word ; but how did he state his own view of the relation of God to man in Jesus ? He held that the Divine presence, as given to pro- phets, was partial, but, as given to Jesus, was entire ; the result being that the Incarnation was reduced to an exceptionally close intercourse between the Word and one particular man ; and this was to annul it altogether. But his pupil Theodore, who became one of his neighbour- bishops in the last decade of the fourth century, must be called the true author of the "Nestorian " scheme. Already St. Gregory Nazianzen had spoken of some person as " inconsiderately bringing in the notion of two Sons, one born of God, and one of the Virgin ; " ^ and such floating elements of thought were consolidated by him whose copious comments on Scripture procured for him the title of " The Expositor/' while his controversial writings procured for * Athan. Orat. iii. 30 ; ad Epict. 2, etc. Hil. de Trin. x. 21. '^ Carm. de Vita sua, 633. THE CHRISTOLOGICAL CONTROVERSY. 127 him a high theological reputation. We can hardly ascribe to him the courage of his opinions ; for once, when preaching at Antioch, and being understood to divide Christ into two persons, he was actually pelted in church, and within a few days made a public recantation.^ His adhesion to the literal system of exegesis was so absolute that he confined " Messianic " language to extremely narrow limits. He dealt very freely with two Old Testament books. He anticipated Pelagius in the denial of " original sin," and of the need of inward grace ; a position which may have been suggested by his defective Christology, or may, by a reverse process, have led him to that Christology — for either cause is quite intelligible. A low estimate of Christ's Person might involve, or might be involved in, a low estimate of His work. Pro- fessor Swete appears to think ^ that Theodore's disbelief in an actual Incarnation was a result of his " imperfect realisation of the nature and extent of human sin." If sin is thought of as mainly a " weakness," if mortality is " the great enemy of man," then " a man," joined to God by ^ Mansi, Concil. ix. 241, iv. 1064, Cyril, Epist. p. 197. - Preface to Theodore's Commentaries on Epistles of St. Paul. 128 WAYAIARKS IN CHURCH HISTORY. a " complete moral union, suffices for the work of conquering death." On the other hand, it may- be deemed probable that the pupil of Diodore began by losing faith in the Incarnation, and went on consistently to minimise the evil of sin and the need of restorative intervention. And what did Theodore say and mean ? He was passionately opposed to any confusion between Godhead and manhood, any absorption of manhood into Godhead. But he had also an ethical interest in the question ; he was afraid that the moral " purpose," in his own phrase, of Christ's life would be overlooked, and His example bereft of its power. His own view was to this effect : the Divine Word or Son of God assumed ^' a man" into very close alliance with Himself, and dwelt in him because he was thoroughly " well pleased " with him. This alliance might be called "union," but was in effect a "combination," differing in degree, but not in kind, from the Divine indwelling in the saints. Although Theodore, not wishing to break with received Church language, perhaps from prudential reasons, would even speak of a "personal unity," he explains this phrase to mean that the indwelling Word admits the man whom He inhabits and inspires to a share THE CHRISTOLOGICAL CONTROVERSY. 129 in His own powers ; he makes this yet clearer by describing Jesus as the chief of all the " adopted " sons of God ; and if fuller proof of his meaning be wanted, it is found in his illus- trating the '* combination" from the fact of earthly marriage. Jesus, thus specially privi- leged, is said to have been specially "quick" in discerning good from evil, to have "practised virtue and eschewed sin more completely and more easily than other men," to have been "troubled but little by the passions of the body, more so by those of the soul," but in both cases to have obtained a complete though gradual victory.^ Such, in brief, is the Christ of Theodore. As in the former case, we may say that he had got hold of true ideas, but had perverted them, and made wrong inferences from them. It was most true that Christ had a real humanity : but Theodore had no right to assume that this was incompatible with His being person- ally Divine ; that the Son could not enter the sphere of human life, and also remain within the Divine sphere ; that He could not take our nature into union with His own eternal self; that Jesus, to be really man, must be ' See passages in Migne, Patrol. Gr. Ixvi. 977-981, 992. K I30 IVAYMARKS IN CHURCH HISTORY. only the Saint of saints. The very pith and core of the great passage in Phil. ii. 6-8 is the identity between Him who "existed in the form of God " and Him who "became obedient, even to death." And again, we must assuredly believe in a moral Christ, who as Man was a pattern of holiness, and in whose humanity we can observe a continuous choice of good, a continuous self-oblation to the " will and work " of the Father. But this does not imply that Christ had to struggle against inclinations to rebel against the Father, that through His career He had to curb an interior sinful ele- ment, and only did so more thoroughly than other men. If the virtue of His example required Him to be peccable, it might be held to imply that He was susceptible of every sort and kind of evil impulse by which any man at any time could be affected, that He might feel with all and be a pattern for all. Others might go a step further, and say that He could not aid us in this respect unless He had some- times, or at least once, actually fallen, and so had shared in the sad experience incommuni- cable to the unfallen, had thus far needed to cry, " Have mercy ! " But we should gain less moral stimulus from a superior John or Paul, THE CHRISTOLOGICAL CONTROVERSY. 131 who had but once had occasion to repent, or from a saint who, in fact, never had sinned, and who, even so, would seem far removed from us, than we do gain from One who, because He neither did sin nor could sin, could become the Re-creator, the principle of spiritual life and moral recovery for souls brought effectually into union with Himself.^ Theodore, then, distorted the truth of Christ's humanity by severing it from a real Incarnation, and thereby invalidating that redemptive work which requires as its basis the Divine person- ality of the Redeemer. He took, also, a wrong method for securing the moral potency of Christ's human life and character ; as we can believe in the singleness of His Person without prejudice to the reality of ?Iis manhood, so His example does not require us to ascribe to Him, in His humiliation, a peccability which, as far as we can see, would interfere with His function as Second Adam and life-giving Head. Nestorius is simply, for theological purposes, a faint shadow of Theodore. It has been thought that he was rather verbally than advisedly heterodox ; that he was unfortunate in his language, but really meant very much ' See Church Quart. Review, xvi. 292 (July, 1883). 132 WAYMARKS IN CHURCH HISTORY. what some, at least, of his critics meant ; that, in short, he did not disbelieve in the " Personal Union." And certainly some of his language, taken by itself, might be construed more favourably than, for instance, the passionate refusal (possibly uttered under strong provo- cation), to say that " a babe of a few months old," — meaning Jesus in His infancy — " could have been God." But he can hardly have been ignorant of Theodore's Christology ; and it is certain that Theodore did intelligently conceive of and represent Jesus as a human individual in exceptionally close fellowship with God, — that with him the Incarnation was, to all intents and purposes, changed into an association, and the Saviour of all men put simply at the head of all Saints. It is unfortunate that the title "Theotocos" was made the symbol of the contro- versy, — unfortunate, because it has led people to think that the dignity of Mary was at the heart of the question, whereas in truth the point at issue was the majesty of Him who, as touching His manhood, was "incarnate of" her, and, being God, became humanly her Son. It is not less unfortunate that a certain one- sidedness in Cyril's famous Twelve Articles (afterwards happily supplemented by another THE CHRISTOLOGICAL CONTROVERSY. 133 formula which did more justice to both sides of the truth), and, yet more so, a certain im- perious hastiness in Cyril's own proceedings at Ephesus, should have allowed Nestorius to appear in the character of a man oppressed by partisanship or by absolutism. But faults or mistakes on the side of " orthodoxy " must not shake the balance when the real merits of the case are being considered. After all due allow- ance made on this score, it remains true that Cyril was right in describing Nestorianism as " a wrenching-up of the Incarnation from its basis," and withal "a digging-up of the root of our salvation." For, as Hooker says, the matter really at issue was "the infinite worth of the Son of God." A Christ, Divine and human, — tJiat is the Christ whom we know ; One in whom heaven and earth can meet ; who, being both God and Man, can lay His hand on both God and men ; whose death for man has " a virtue which could be in no other, for He was God ; " who, being Divine in His own unchange- able, indefeasible personality, can do for us what no mere man could do, however privileged, however morally excellent. Imagine this belief superseded by the theory that we have been considering ; and the Christianity on which 134 JVAYMARKS IN CHURCH HISTORY. souls have been fed, which is presupposed in worship, which has unified doctrine, kindled enthusiasm, produced and sustained such devo- tion and such loyalty, would need to be reconstructed from its basis. Nestorianism, in its turn, was sure to be followed by an opposite movement. Cyril him- self must be acquitted of all real agreement with Apollinarianism ; he was ever ready to disclaim it, to protest against any notion of a " fusion " of manhood with Godhead ; but others, who had looked up to him, and taken him as their leader, outwent him when he stopped short. He had acknowledged " two natures " in regard to the Christ. He was asked by some of his old friends whether he had given up the phrase which he believed (but, it seems, mistakenly) to be Atha- nasian — " One nature {(pvaig) of the Word, but that nature incarnate." He answered by ex- plaining " nature," in this context, to be practi- cally the same thing as self or " person," so as to mean the one Divine indivisible personality of the Son, in short, " one Christ ; " ^ but others took the phrase, and ignored, or did not know of, the explanation. A number of partisan monks followed up the victory over Nestorian- ' Epist. pp. 117, 133. 137. THE CHRISTOLOGICAL CONTROVERSY. 135 ism by persecuting all who laid any stress on the difference between the Godhead and man- hood in the Saviour. Of these, Theodoret, the most learned Syrian bishop of his time, and personally one of the best men in the Church, was the most conspicuous and influential.^ In his second Dialogue, he argued against what we call the Eutychian hypothesis (from Eutyches, the chief of the party referred to), as implying an absorption of manhood into Godhead, like that of " a drop of honey into the sea." He insisted that no sound believer could be un- willing to speak of Christ as " Man." Of course He was God, but He had assumed manhood, and thus had become, and still was, man. It was a false reverence which shrank from call- ing Him so. If even in this work there are verbal differences between Theodoret and Cyril, it is evident that Theodoret now, at any rate, held the main point for which Cyril had been contending, i,e. that He who from all eternity had been God, He Himself and no other, had adopted, and still owned, a human sphere of being ; as elsewhere Theodoret plainly affirmed that those who "divided the one Christ into two persons were alien from Christianity." But ' See Appendix, F. 136 WAYMARKS IN CHURCH HISTORY. the present question, as he rightly felt, was different ; it was in effect, whether the Apol- linarian line of thought and speech should be allowed to reappear in a new form, under the auspices of an ill-instructed piety. It is true that Eutyches himself, summoned before a local council at Constantinople, declared Christ to be "perfect Man." This, naturally interpreted, might well have sufficed ; but it was only under pressure that he admitted what Cyril had years before acknowledged — that He was "of one essence with us as to His manhood;" and he absolutely refused to own that there were "two natures" subsistent in Christ "after the union," — that is, after the Lord became incarnate. For this refusal Eutyches was condemned ; his language and conduct were deemed to nullify his first admission of the " perfect manhood." The question then raised was sufficiently momentous. The error involved is one less likely to be popular among modern English Christians than the Nestorianism from which it was a violent recoil ; but it is surely not less destructive to true belief; for if the Redeemer had not really assumed, assimilated ou" humanity, "and that without spot of sin, to make us clean from all sin," — if He had THE CHRISTOLOGICAL CONTROVERSY. 137 '' only touched it from the outside, and by so touching changed it into something else/'^ He could not be a true Second Adam, an appropriate Sacrifice, a fitting Mediator, a sympathising Elder Brother. The Incarnation would have been nullified on the human side of it ; and, as in the former case, the Christian faith and view of life could not have been to us what, by the mercy of God, they are. Leo the Great as we all know, was the spokesman of Catholic thought in this new controversy. He is almost Athanasian in the steady balancing of diverse elements, each needing to be held with the other ; while he insists on the " preservation," as he calls it, of " each nature or substance in its own propriety," as it really is, he never fails to safeguard, in the context, the absolute one- ness of the Incarnate Person. His famous twenty-eighth epistle, or " Tome," has been a standard of orthodoxy ever since ; and from it was taken the phrase which his envoys pressed — and happily with success — on the acceptance of the Fourth General Council, — that Christ now exists in the two natures. The force of **in," as a correction of the less distinct term " of," is manifest ; it means, in plain English, that Christ ^ Gore, Leo the Great, p. 57. 138 IVAYMARKS IN CHURCH HISTORY. is Man now, as well as God ; that He will be both God and Man to all eternity. And thus the Council worded its solemn statement of doctrine, to the effect that '* one and the selfsame Christ was both truly God and truly Man, existing in these two spheres of being, to the exclusion of all notion of change, of fusion, of commixture, as well as of division or severance ; not parted into two persons, but one and the same Only- begotten, God the Word, the Lord Jesus Christ."^ If we wish to bring home to ourselves, or to our people, the real spiritual momentousness of the twofold doctrine involved in these old con- troversies, let us recur to four lines in that immortal Christmas hymn which we owe in substance to Charles Wesley — *' Veiled in flesh the Godhead see, Hail the Incarnate Deity ! " and then immediately, and in deepest con- sistency — *' Pleased as Man with man to dwell, Jesus, our Emmanuel." • See Notes on Canons of First Four Councils, p. 241. Pelagius, in his profession of faith, had anticipated the very language of Chalcedon. CYRIL OF ALEXANDRIA. The memory of this famous prelate and theo- logian has been hardly used by writers of the modern liberal school. It was comparatively little that they should not appreciate his emi- nence as a divine, or the great services which he rendered to Catholic Christianity. This was to be expected, of course. But besides this, they have exaggerated the faults of his public conduct, and ignored not only his high courage and his majestic force of character, but also his firm grasp of the Christian ideas of mediation and atonement, and that deep reli- gious sense of "the marvellous love of God, as manifested in the Incarnation," which, as Dorner admits, was a sustaining motive of his polemical energy. Herein they have supplied another illustration of that kind of prejudice which, when excited by the names of " dogma- ti.sts " or *' sacerdotalists/' goes far to contradict I40 IVAYMARKS IN CHURCH HISTORY. all professions of tolerance or charity. But then, if we were asked what was most likely to provoke an access of this unfairness, we should be obliged to answer, " Indiscriminate eulogy — a disposition to look at Cyril from the hagiological rather than the historical stand- point;" and something like this is apparent in the preface, partly by Dr. Pusey, prefixed to Philip Pusey's translation of some of Cyril's anti-Nestorian writings. This preface, for in- stance, ignores the deplorable letter to Atticus, wherein the nephew of Theophilus ranked the glorious confessor of Constantinople with Jeconiah, and even with Judas, by way of emphasising his refusal to place the name of " John " on the diptychs of his church, as a bishop who had died in Catholic communion. Ere long, it is true, he yielded to circumstances, and to Isidore's exhortation " not to wrong the Church by perpetuating a family feud under the garb of piety." And in the February of 430 he referred to " John " as a standard of "fluency" which, he intimated, Nestorius had still to reach. But it is hard to believe that he had really come to a better mind on the merits of the case, since we find him, in 432, praising Acacius of Berrhoea, St. Chrysostom's one sur- CYRIL OF ALEXANDRIA. 141 viving personal enemy, for a speech uttered by him in Cyril's own hearing, " when John was accused at the Holy Council" of the Oak. But there is something else to be taken account of in any full estimate of Cyril's character, of what he had had to learn and to unlearn. Orestes, the prefect of Egypt, had long been offended, as Neale says, " at the enormous power assumed by the bishop," who had begun, in Socrates' words, to "go beyond the bounds of ecclesiastical administration, and to domineer in civil affairs." ^ Cardinal Newman, in the wonder- fully vivid paper on Theodoret which appears in his " Historical Sketches," says that the power of the " Evangelical see " was " too great for human nature in times of external prosperity and in ordinary hands ; " that Athanasius was intrinsically too noble " to abuse his power," but that " when he was gone, and persecution ceased, and his place was filled by men of coarser grain," such as Cyril's uncle Theophilus, it was otherwise. " Scoundrel " ^ as Orestes pro- bably was, we can see that he had his own ' Soc. vii. 7. Neale, Hist. Alex. i. 227. '^ It is Kingsley's word, in " Hypatia," c. 20. Speaking of the rotten state of society in Alexandria, he says that moderns know as little of the pandemonium against which Cyril fought, as they do of the intense belief which sustained him in his warfare. 142 IVAVJl/AJ^AS IN CHURCH HISTORY. reasons, such as they were, for wishing to force a quarrel on Cyril. He listened to Jewish maligners, and caused a zealous lay churchman to be scourged. Cyril threatened the chief men of the Jews ; and they in revenge planned a night-attack on the Christians, which was only too successful. Thereupon Cyril, doubtless despairing of justice from the prefect, took the law into his own hands, led his adherents in force against the synagogues, drove the Jews out of the city, and gave up their houses to be plundered by the mob. Soon afterwards, acting on good advice, he attempted to be reconciled to Orestes, who, however, preferred to keep his grievance, and was obdurate. Then the Nitrian monks, among whom Cyril had been brought up, hurried in wild excitement to Alexandria, and one of them wounded the governor with a stone. " The culprit," says Neale, " was arrested, condemned, and executed " by torture ; where- upon Cyril proclaimed him to be a martyr, although ere long he " was glad to let this monstrous canonisation sink into oblivion." And what of the tragedy of Hypatia ? It is indeed most unfair to fasten on Cyril person- ally the guilt of that hideous murder. What Socrates says is, "This brought no small dis- CYRIL OF ALEXANDRIA. 143 grace on Cyril and on the church of Alexan- dria."^ The statement of the Pagan Damascius in the next century, to the effect that the arch- bishop had prompted the deed, is unsupported, and evidently calumnious. But Cyril was responsible for having stirred up "a force of passions which outran his own control." His had been the error of thinking that in her strife with the world the Church must not disdain the world's weapons ; and " those who had shed Hypatia's blood at the foot of the altar were but ' bettering the instruction ' which had let them loose upon the synagogues." ^ Of course the events in question constituted, as it has been expressed, a " trial " for Cyril ; but the point is, how did he stand it } What Cardinal Newman says of his persistent hostility to St. Chrysos- tom's memory may be applied with yet greater force to the line which he took in the other case:— "Theologically he is great ; in this respect Catholics of all succeeding times have been his ' Soc. vii. 15. Stanley says, "The direct charge of Damascius is not contradicted by Socrates " (East. Church, p. 293), as if Socrates could have read Damascius ; and thence he infers that " Cyril was suspected, even by the orthodox, of complicity in the murder." Even Milman does not go this length (Lat. Christ, i. 190). * Diet. Chr. Biogr. i. 764. 144 WAYMARKS IN CHURCH HISTORY. debtors . . . but ... we may hold St. Cyril to be a great servant of God, without considering ourselves obliged to defend certain passages of his ecclesiastical career." ^ " Accept no person against thy soul." ^ One who is more inclined by habit to admire than to criticise should keep this maxim before him written large, when he has to speak of certain canonised Fathers — of Cyril, of Jerome, or even of Leo. He will then remember that his first duty is not to their honour, but to his- torical truth and the Christian moral standard ; and he will not let the saintly prefix per- vert his judgment on a question of right and wrong. When he comes across what is wrong in their recorded conduct, he will speak of it gravely, and as it were sorrowfully, with care- ful measurement of words, and with scrupulous appreciation of temperament, of difficulties, of provocations, and of counterbalancing merits. But he will not try to make it look like right, or to wrap it up so as to keep it from recogni- tion, or even to omit it from a general estimate of character. Doubtless it was possible that the "high-handed proceedings" of Cyril's early episcopate should leave no permanent mark ' Historical Sketches, iii. 342. - Ecclus. iv. 22. CYRIL OF ALEXANDRIA. 145 upon his character ; that within thirteen or fifteen years he should have so completely over- come the habits of his early training and the tendencies of his natural disposition as to be simply the loving, "peace-making," "self-forget- ful, God-devoted " saint presented to us by Dr. Pusey's peculiar affection for the memory of one who had been "his own early teacher on the connection of . . . the Incarnation and the Holy Eucharist." It was possible ; but, on the whole, was it probable ? and do all the facts verify this engaging picture ? ^ That he was a man of "strong natural love" for friends and adherents, proves too little. If we love those who love us and are loyal to us, what thank have we ? Again, did Isidore, who knew Cyril intimately, and whom Cyril called his "father," think in 431, while the Council of Ephesus was sitting, that his ** son " and " Pope " had been thoroughly softened and disciplined ? He did not ; for otherwise he would not have warned Cyril that if "partiality could not see clearly, antipathy could not see ' Gamier admits that "his temper, unless restrained by the bridle of Christian virtue, was almost ambitious," and that '* even his sermons seemed sometimes vix non iracundid accendV (Mar. Merc. Op. ii. p. xiii.). L 146 WAYMARKS IN CHURCH HISTORY. at all ; " adding that " many who were assembled at Ephesus charged him with pursuing a personal quarrel," and observed, " After all, he is Theophilus' own nephew." ^ The force of this letter cannot be broken by setting it in parallel with another letter of subsequent date, wherein Isidore told Cyril that his acceptance of the Formulary of Reunion proved him to be " either unstable or insincere." ^ For are the cases analo- gous ? The second letter deals with the ques- tion of the consistency of certain theological statements, as to which the great abbat's/;'m<4 facie view might be mistaken. The first is evidently prompted by anxiety as to the revival of dangerous impulses in Cyril's nature, which his spiritual " father " knew too well. We do not say that this warning was needed ; but it is too plain for question that Isidore thought it was, and that, as he had said in an earlier letter of rebuke, " he must not be like Eli." At the same time, it is certain that Cyril showed nothing like impetuosity in, at any rate, his earlier proceedings towards Nestorius. He was altogether within his rights, nay, he was but doing his plain duty, when in April of 429 he warned the monks of Egypt against * Isid. Epist. i. 310. ^ j^. i. 324. CYRIL OF ALEXANDRIA. 147 errors disseminated from Constantinople, with- out naming Nestorius as the author of the sermons which contained them. His first letter to Nestorius, after that prelate had taken offence at the " Epistle to the Monks," is grave and earnest, but not bitter; it intimates some doubt as to whether the obnoxious writings were really by Nestorius, and assumes nothing to be his act but the rejection of the word "Theotocos," a rejection which he is entreated to cancel, and thereby to consult his own reputation, and to secure Christian peace. Nor does the inestimable "second letter to Nestorius" contain a harsh or unbrotherly word. Cyril writes, he says, "out of love in Christ," and he explicitly guards his statement of doctrine from any appearance of the Apol- linarianism with which Nestorius charged the maintainers of "Theotocos." The letter was apparently written at the end of January, 430 ; and after Easter Cyril wrote to Celestine of Rome, taking credit for his own patience, but indicating somewhat of the old Alexandrian jealousy as to the power of the comparatively upstart see of Constantinople. This letter produced in August the synodical inquiry at Rome ; after which Celestine commissioned 148 WAYMARKS IN CHURCH HISTORY. Cyril to signify to Nestorius, that unless within ten days he should agree with Rome and Alexandria "as to the birth of Christ our God, he would forfeit the communion of both sees, and be treated as alien to the Church." ^ But it was not until the beginning of November that Cyril acted on this commission by sending the "third letter to Nestorius," with its ac- companying anathematisms ; so that Neale is warranted in saying that "none can justly accuse Cyril of eagerness in procuring the downfall of his opponents but such as, to carry out their own preconceived hypothesis, dare to violate all truth, and to reject all testimony." Yet can we think that in proposing to Nestorius, as a sine qua non of communion, the adoption of these anathematisms, Cyril was doing pre- cisely the best for the cause which he had so deeply at heart? The twelve "articles" or " chapters " were in themselves by no means calculated to reclaim the erring prelate, being aimed expressly and pointedly at language which he had used ; and the abruptness of their tone, and a certain onesidedness which laid them open to criticism on the part of ' Mansi, iv. 1020. Celestine meant that he would secure the concurrence of other great sees, so that the sentence should, ipso factOf carry with it a universal excommunication. CYRIL OF ALEXANDRIA. 149 many who believed in a Divine Christ, but were jealous for the truth of His Humanity,^ were " obstacles to their acceptance," and a source of manifold confusion and discord. The all-sufficient proof of this is, that Cyril found it necessary to explain and to re-explain them, and that they received at most a tacit acquiescence in the Council of Ephesus, and were passed over by the Council of Chalcedon,^ and that even as late as 553 some Catholics declined to be bound by them.^ It is very well to say that they ought not to have been cir- culated without the epistle to which they were annexed, and which, if carefully read, would have corrected any misconception as to their bearing ; but it was to them, not to the letter, that Nestorius was imperatively summoned to set his hand. " What it is necessary for your * Especially as to the 3rd and 12th. See " Later Treatises of St. Athanasius," pp. 157-170. The text of the 8th has a slight difficulty ; eV should be omitted, as in Explan. Cap. 8, etc., and then the construction is clear ; what is condemned is the Nestorian notion that "the man assumed by the Word is to be adored with Him, called God ivith Him, as being one person with another." ^ The two epistles used as authorities at Chalcedon were the second to Nestorius and the letter to John of Antioch. The articles were approved by the Fifth Council, Mansi, ix, 385. ^ At the " Conference " of Catholics and Severians, 15© WAYMARKS IN CHURCH HISTORY. Piety to anathematise is subjoined to this our letter." He was to sign the "articles," or consider himself deposed. We now come to the crucial question of Cyril's conduct in regard to the opening of the Council of Ephesus before the arrival of the Antiochene or Oriental members. Let us recall the situation. The imperial summons of a General Council had cut clean across the policy shaped by Celestine and by Cyril. It suspended the action of their sentence, and upheld for the present the status quo. By obeying it, they were obliged to acknowledge Nestorius as not excommunicate, and not deposed. Hence it is not relevant to say that Nestorius, when he arrived at Ephesus, "had already been severed from the com- munion of the greater part of Christendom," ^ if this means that he was then excommunicate. Not only had he never previously been tried, but during the preliminary conferences it was "the bishop of Constantinople" whom efforts were made to reclaim ; and even during the first session of the Council he was spoken of as ** the most religious Nestorius." ^ Theodosius * Pusey, Preface, p. Ixxxii. ' Even the third citation did not assume the fact that he had promulgated heresy, but that he was '* said " to have done so. CYRIL OF ALEXANDRIA. 151 had ordered the Council to meet on Whit Sunday, June 7, 431. But several bishops had not arrived, and the Emperor had also ordered that whatever was done should be done by "general vote." ^ A fortnight passed. John, bishop of Antioch, and his suffragans, were still absent; the prelates at Ephesus were suffering seriously from the heat, and could not understand why the " Orientals " did not arrive. It was apparently on Sunday the 21st that Cyril, who had just sent off a letter to John of Antioch to say that the Council was waiting for him, received from John a kindly worded note, to the effect that he was now only " five or six halting-places " distant.^ What was now to be done? The natural and regular course would have been to wait until the time specified, or at least, as Candidian, the imperial commis- sioner, requested, for four days ; but Cyril and the majority, in spite of remonstrances and protests,^ decided to open the Council on the next day, and did so. Were they justified in this ? or, since they clearly acted at his instiga- ^ Mansi, iv. 1113. 2 lb., iv. 1272, 1 121. Cyril's Apologeticus, P. E. Pusey'sed., P- 443- ^ Mansi, v. 765, 770. 152 WAYMARKS IN CHURCH HISTORY. tion/ was he justified ? Dr. Pusey argues for the affirmative, to the following effect : " * It does not require much humility to think that St. Cyril ' had sufficient reasons for what he did. He 'must have known' that he was incurring peril by disobeying the Emperor and braving 'the menace of Candidian.' But the thing to be done was to secure the deposition of Nestorius ; and this could not well be secured if John and his friends were to arrive, bent (as Cyril might have just learned) on procuring a condemnation of the twelve articles, sure of Candidian's support in making this the first business of the Council, and likely enough to find backers ready for any violence, such as afterwards in that very city turned a synod into a ' Latrocinium.' And after all, it could make no practical difference. The Church had spoken her mind. The Nestorianisers ' were but a fraction. No injustice,' therefore, 'was done to Nestorius' by not waiting for John when they were close at hand ; and the popular feeling at Ephesus was largely in Cyril's favour." ^ ^ It would be ridiculous to suppose that Cyril was overborne by the other bishops. - Preface, p. Ixxxii. CYRIL OF ALEXANDRIA. 153 Can such an argumentum ad verecundiam carry weight with us, in view of certain ante- cedents already mentioned ? And can we help observing that the plea falsifies the ex- cuse made by Cyril, that John was purposely loitering^ — an excuse which Neale examines and puts wholly aside ? ^ Of two things one : if he was loitering, then the theory of his being determined to push for a condemna- tion of Cyril's articles breaks down. Cyril could not at once suspect the former and fear the latter. As to the numbers, sixty-eight bishops did indeed sign a remonstrance against proceeding to business without the " Easterns," although John's "conciliabulum," when it met a few days later, could only muster forty-three ; but the sixty-eight, as events showed, were not a compact Nestorianising body,^ and Cyril could not but know that, in any event, he would have a clear majority in the full Council. He had nearly a hundred and sixty to begin with, and his clearheadedness and resolution were sure to draw over not a few waverers. ' Mansi, iv. 1229 ; and Cyril's Apologeticus, p. 441. - Hist. Alex. i. 258. See also Newman, Hist. Sketches, iii. 350. ^ See Preface, p. xxxi. ; Hefele, Hist. Councils, s. 134. 154 WAYMARICS IN CHURCH HISTORY. Force would have been a dangerous card for his opponents. Candidian himself did not attempt to clear St. Mary's church when the bishops persisted in assembling. Cyril had his Egyptian seamen within reach, and could handle them as well as another ; Memnon of Ephesus, as Dr. Pusey observes, had the support of the " peasantry " of his Church estates, and of the city population. Again we say, of two things one : the suggestion that there was peril of a Nestorian triumph, and the suggestion that the Nestorianisers were a feeble folk not worth con- sidering, cannot stand together. Moreover, was it "no injustice to Nestorius" himself, on the part of a patriarch who had already committed himself very decidedly against him, to insist on not waiting even a little longer for another patriarch who was generally disposed in his favour, and who would also take the tone of a friend in urging the test-word on his acceptance } unless, indeed, the profession of holding a trial were but a pretence. Doubtless, some allowance must be made for Cyril's dis- appointment at having to take the case through a Council at all. But he could well have afforded to respect the forms of order and fairness ; and his true interest would therein CYRIL OF ALEXANDRIA. 155 have coincided with his duty. Supposing he had answered Candidian and the other remon- strants, " Our brother John shall have no reason to complain ; we will wait yet those few days more, and when he and his friends arrive, God will defend His own truth ; " would he not have taken up a noble position, and rendered to his cause a supreme service? He afterwards asked, in the tone of one who could afford to contemplate an impossible contingency, why John, on arriving, had not come straight into Council and taxed him with heresy.^ Even if John had attacked the articles, might not Cyril have pointed out their true import in connection with the letter to which they were appended, and which John had not seen when he called them Apollinarian ? " John himself," says Dr. Pusey, " held and stated the true faith, and thought the word Theotocos the con- venient and true way to express it, and that to reject it would jeopardise the unspeakable mystery." If so, the most that could have been carried by Syrian influence was a proposal for some expansion of the articles, in order to exhibit that other side of the complex truth which Cyril really held, and which he was after- ' Apologeticus, p. 447. 156 WAYMARKS IN CHURCH HISTORY. wards to emphasise by accepting the Formulary of Reunion ; and this would have been so much gain to Catholic truth. What discord, what scandal, what distress to pious souls, might thus have been avoided ! The heresiarch would have been unable to pose as a man unfairly treated. The great Nestorian com- munion, which once extended from Cyprus to China, might very likely never have existed ; at any rate, Cyril would have acted unimpeach- ably, and might have left results to God. Why did he act otherwise ? Apparently because he wanted to get Nestorius condemned as quickly and as unanimously as possible, to identify the Council's action with his own of the preceding autumn, and also to avoid the an- noyance of having to defend his articles in Council against John, or Andrew, or Theodoret. So on that Sunday he resisted, and doubtless encouraged or stimulated his adherents to resist, all remonstrances against precipitate action ; so he professed to think that John did not mean to come in time, while he himself meant to make sure that he should not come in time : so on the Monday morning, quite early in the synodical proceedings, he quoted the Emperor's letter as if it ordered the bishops to proceed CYRIL OF ALEXANDRIA. 157 " without any delay," whereas the words were, " without any disturbance ; " and Theodosius, while directing that the doctrinal question should be taken first, had required also, as we have seen, that it should be decided by the joint action of all. So afterwards he took advantage of John's verbal message, " If I tarry, set about your work," as if it did not obviously mean, " If I am delayed beyond the time which I have specified ;" and in his '' Defence" to Theodosius he referred to it as if it had not had a conditional clause, but had been to the effect " that we were not to wait at all for his coming, but rather proceed." Into such disingenuousness was he most unhappily led by the determination which Neale traces to "a momentary weakness of faith," and of which he says, "that the fault brought its own punishment in the confusions that ensued is but too plain." ^ Nor can Facundus be blamed for saying, " Hinc exstitit totius causa discidii : hinc omnis tumultus sump- sit originem." ^ Alas, that the " Doctor of the Incarnation " should have been on this occasion one by whom offence came, so that even now, after so many ages, his conduct can be cited as a warning instance of the readiness of ' Hist. Alex. i. 259. " Def. Cap. vii. 2. 158 IVAYMARKS IN CHURCH HISTORY. strong-willed ecclesiastics, while aiming sin- cerely at the good of the Church, or of the Faith, to compass their ends — quocunque modo ! Did Cyril " show his peace-loving disposition on his return to Egypt ? " Hardly so in the " Defence " addressed to the Emperor, written while his resentment against the " Nestorian- isers" was fresh, and containing some things painful to read, after all allowance for provoca- tion. The " preface " mentions the negotiations for peace between him and the "Eastern" or Syrian bishops, but does not bring out the fact that the Emperor himself was urgent with both parties, so that Cyril as well as John was concerned to arrive at a concordat. The for- mulary which Paul of Emesa presented to Cyril in the winter of 432 had been originally drafted by Theodoret in 43 1 for presentation to Theo- dosius ; the beginning and the conclusion, which reflected on Cyril's articles, being struck out.^ One part of it would directly meet the demand of Alexander of Hierapolis, that Cyril should explicitly refer the sufferings of the incarnate ^ See Mansi, v. 292, 783, 871, 878. The formulary received Catholic sanction, being inserted by Cyril into his letter to John of Antioch. See above, p. 149. CYRIL OF ALEXANDRIA. 159 Saviour to His manhood.^ Cyril accepted it, although he would have wished it to be still more explicit on the Personal Union,^ as to which, however, we may well think that it was plain enough for all practical purposes. On the other hand, it laid rather greater stress on the distinction between our Lord's natures than Cyril had been wont to do ; but he acquiesced in this, says Tillemont, "in order to destroy the suspicion, or even the belief, that he and other Catholics confounded them."^ The twelve anathemas were not withdrawn, for Cyril, as Dr. Pusey points out, had most reasonably rejected a former proposal for their withdrawal, even though backed by civil authority ; but they were at any rate kept in the background, and some Easterns boasted that he had been induced to retract them,^ which of course he * Mansi, v. 838. Cyril had already done so, again and again, e.g. adv. Nest. v. 5, adv. Orient. 12, etc. ; but this old bishop was doggedly prejudiced, although perhaps rather a Nestorian- iser than a Nestorian. See below, p. 379. 2 Cyr. Epist. p. 134. =* lb. p. 118; Tillemont, xiv. 534. Yet Cyril had repeatedly denied any "fusion;" and in Adv. Theod. 4, he had distinctly admitted the difference between " words" which related to the Godhead of Christ and those which were " appropriate to the limitations of the * emptying ; ' " only he contended (as the Formulaiy indeed acknowledged) that both the 0eo7rpeTr^ and the avOpuTTLi/a belonged to the one Christ. * Comp. Synodicon, c. loi. Mansi, v. 883. i6o JVAYMARKS IN CHURCH HISTORY. denied in letters to his old friends. Of the difficulty which such friends found in reconciling his adoption of the Syrian formulary with his former employment of the phrase, "one (^vmq of God the Word, and that incarnate," which he believed to be Athanasian, we need only say that this phrase, even were it Athanasian,^ was an undesirable one in the existing develop- ment of theological terminology, but that, as used by Cyril, it was wholly clear of Monophysi- tism in the technical sense of the word ; for not only did he explain it, as in effect he had done before the Reunion, to mean the one Son of God, and that Son as having assumed humanity, but he had already, in his third letter to Nes- torius, virtually substituted " one hypostasis " for "one (^ud^c/'so as to indicate "one person." - And he afterwards approved the excellent " Tome " of Proclus, which made the same change, and called the manhood a (^vrng. In regard to Cyril's relations with the im- perial Court during the negotiations for the ' On this see Athan. Op. iv. 23 (Migne). "^ He prefers to use (pvais in the sense of "person," though he does speak of *' the vaLQ, although He has assumed our man- hood, which coexists with His Godhead, and the union of the two may be illustrated by that of soul and body in one man ; or, if you say, 'The Godhead would necessarily absorb the Manhood,' I deny it. Your theory really means two Sons, the inferior of whom is in a position ejnsdem generis with that of all God's servants (a position in the abstract capable of forfeiture)." After insisting on Rom. ix. 5, Phil. ii. 5, ff., I Cor. viii. 6, Cyril denounces the "connexion" theory as the unscriptural inven- tion of a mind deficient in spiritual insight ; it CYRIL OF ALEXANDRIA. 177 supposes a created " partner with God," an " un- real Son, a Saviour who is saved, a Redeemer who is redeemed ; " and he proceeds to quote Titus ii. 13, "our great God and Saviour Jesus Christ." It is but right to add that in one context Cyril mars his own case, and does a violence to the most awful part of the Gospel story, by explaining away the cry " My God, my God," etc., as instructive for men in suffer- ing, and intercessory for men as sinners. This is an instance of evasive interpretation, sug- gested by a misdirected reverence not unlike that against which he so eloquently warns Nestorianisers. And it is not in the least necessary to — rather, it is inconsistent with — the Cyrilline Christology ; for if the Son of God could ''appropriate," without prejudice to His Divinity, the pain or grief which affected His manhood, why not also that mysterious spiritual anguish which formed the very climax of the Passion ? ^ Some Cyrilline fragments are of singular in- terest, because the line therein taken against ApoUinarianism shows that their author would ^ Further on, Quod Unus, p. 407, Cyril shows how Christ could both "suffer" and "not suffer." This may be applied to His "knowing " and " not knowing." N 178 WAYMARKS IN CHURCH HISTORY. not have sanctioned Monophysitism, either in its extreme or in its more moderate form. Here his arguments from the Mediation and the Holy Eucharist to our Lord's true manhood are remarkably like those of St. Leo against Eutyches, and are complementary to his argu- ment, noticed above, from the Eucharist to the personal Divinity. There is a noble passage in Adv. Nest. V. 5, which might be borrowed by a Good Friday preacher ; another (ib. ii. 2) on the moral transformation of Christians through a Divine Christ; another (ib. iii. 6) on that Christ as Second Adam ; and others in the Quod Unus on the contrasts of the Incarnation, on its importance to our spiritual life, and on the Nestorian impoverishment of the great assur- ance, " God so loved the world." The style of St. Cyril is criticised by Photius as " laboured and immoderately diffuse." ^ Tille- mont, quoting this, adds somewhat severely, " ses ouvrages sont . . . toujours embarrasses et obscurs, mais non pas toujours egalement," and indulges himself, so to speak, at the end of his biography by telling us how King John HI. of Sweden had been " disgusted with Calvin's books and sentiments after reading some works * Biblioth. 49. CYRIL OF ALEXANDRIA. 179 of St. Cyril, although they are not the most agreeable among the writings of the Fathers." His very intensity makes him often cumbrous and turbid ; he feels too strongly to aim at literary grace ; and, like St. Athanasius, he does not care how often he repeats himself, if determined iteration will impress a cardinal idea. Hence his readers learn to be familiar with, and to expect the recurrence of such phrases as " remaining what He was," " impas- sible in His proper nature," " not by way of acci- dental connexion," " not a man as individually separate," "He appropriated what belonged to the flesh," "the limitations of the emptying" or " of the manhood." By the " Kenosis," as he expressly says in the Quod Unus, he understands the humiliation involved in the Son's assuming flesh, and beginning to exist as man, within the limits of humanity. But he does not say that the Son " suffered those limitations to prevail over Him,"i as if they involved any abandonment of the Divine prerogatives in the Divine sphere. The phrase is t^' t'«»^^(?i "in His own case,"^ * Gore, Bamp. Lect. p. 162, quoting from Quod Unus, p. 399, ed. Pusey. 2 So in Quod Unus, p. 389, " that He might also dignify the nature of man e^' ^avr^." See Appendix G. i8o WAYMARJ^S IN CHURCH HISTORY. inasmuch as He "appropriated" human con- ditions while remaining unalterably God. To conclude with a remark on that one world-famous title, the watchword of the momen- tous Cyrilline struggle, and the oecumenical symbol of faith in a Divine Christ. " Theoto- cos " has been correctly Latinised into " Dei- para ; " but can it be said to have found a precise equivalent in English ? If it is too much to say that " the common rendering. Mother of God, introduces a new element of thought," ^ we can hardly help feeling that the Greek term, by its very form and sound, gives pro- minence to the Divinity of Him who, as Man, was born of Mary ; whereas the English phrase begins, so to speak, at the other end, and lays greater stress on the supremely privi- leged Motherhood. The doctrinal intention is the same in both cases, but the impression produced is not identical. Nor can it be denied that, save to a theologically instructed ear, the fuller phrase is more exacting, at first, than St. Paul's language as to " God's own blood " in Acts XX. 28, not only because it is more abrupt, but because it seems to assert a derivative dependence of " God " on a human creature, * Bishop Basil Jones, The Peace of God, p. 202. CYRIL OF ALEXANDRIA. i8i and the mind has to go over certain points of faith in order to define the true scope of the expression. For all this, the phrase is, for English-speaking Christians, the only practical representative of "Theotocos"; and we must do the best with it that we can. To use it popularly, without due accompanying safe- guards, would, as things are, be to court mis- conception ; but with such a paraphrase as that in the first Reformed Liturgy, '' Mother of Jesus Christ our Lord and God," ^ or with such an explanation as that " the Son of God took our nature upon Him by being born of the Virgin, while He continued to be God," the phrase will assist in the luminous presentation of that supremely precious truth — as precious, one may believe, to Theodoret as to Cyril, Celestine, or Proclus — that we "live by the faith of" an infinite and adorable Redeemer.^ * Cf. Liddon, Christmastide Serm., p. S3, "the Mother of the Divine Redeemer," etc. His text is Gal. iv. 4. - See Appendix H. PELAGIANISM. Just fifty years ago, an illustrious Cambridge theologian, on whom the spirit of Pearson might seem to have rested, observed that it was " thought wise, in the language of some, that our cultivation of theology properly so called, where our materials are necessarily most im- perfect or beyond our mastery, should in a great measure give place to that of the anthro- pology of religion, where materials are ample and ever at hand to our use." He had reminded his hearers that the thought of ancient Christen- dom rested usually on the great " objects of faith," such as the Trinity and the Incarnation ; whereas modern controversies " turned not upon those high truths, but on the mode or order in which the individual mind should savingly apprehend them;" but he guarded himself against being understood to assert "that all reference to objects of faith was set aside in PELAGIANISM. 183 popular teaching," or, " on the other hand, to represent the Church of old as incognisant of subjective matters in its divinity. The Pelagian controversy," he added, " and other points that might be mentioned, rise in refutation of such an idea of ancient Christianity." ^ This controversy may excite interest even when the properly theological questions, in- volved in other great controversies of the early centuries, are practically disregarded under the influence of a suspicion, or vaguely defined notion, that the matters on which they turn are really beyond human ken, that statements about them cannot be verified, and ascertained results are therefore impossible. Guizot, when he lectured on the " History of Civilisation in France," must have had among his auditors not a few who would hardly have committed them- selves to a single Christian dogma ; but he was confident of carrying them with him when he undertook to show that the question of " the relations between the liberty of man and the Divine power, of the influence of God upon the moral activity of men," — the question stirred by Pelagianism, — "was not peculiar either to the fifth century or to Christianity, but was ^ V^^ H. Mill on the Temptation, p. 3. l84 IVAYMARKS IN CHURCH HISTORY. a universal problem, which all religions, all systems of philosophy, had propounded to themselves, and had endeavoured to solve." Much more ought we, as Christians, to appre- ciate the deep significance of such terms as sin and free will and grace ; of the extent of moral corruption in human nature, and the character and operation of that healing and restorative force which, according to our faith, is an out- come of the Incarnation of our Lord. And we shall readily observe how this con- troversy illustrates what may be called the solidarity between the Christian doctrine of God and the Christian view of man. As " the thought of God" is the only "stay of the soul," ^ so the doctrine about Him, developed . out of the original Christian Credo, will be found to dominate all our conceptions about the capacities, duties, responsibilities, of human nature, as under His sway and guidance. The whole discussion inaugurated by Pelagius is from the outset pervaded by theological ideas, in the proper sense of the term : how God views sin, what He expects of man, what He bestowed on man in his creation, what further gifts He bestows through Christ as Mediator, — ' Newman's Sermons, v. 313. PELAGIANISM. 185 we never lose sight of questions like these ; we never for a moment cease to feel that " anthro- pology," as here under consideration, is in closest connection with, perpetually runs up into, the revelation which tells us, not every- thing, but enough for faith and obedience, about the mind and will of the Most High. It was, indeed, in the first instance, a zeal for the doing of God's will, a serious desire to promote a stricter obedience, which started the whole controversy. Let us begin by doing justice to our own countryman, unhappy as he was in the course into which he was betrayed, in part, perhaps, through misapprehension, in part, we must fear, through faults in his own temperament and character. Pelagius was very earnestly anxious to raise the moral tone of easy-going Christians. In the early part of the fifth century, especially where, as at Rome, there had set in a sort of fashion of adopting Christianity, a current of " conversion " among the well-to-do and the upper classes, there would be many who took their practical obliga- tions too lightly, and who, if ever they were admonished to take more pains, or reminded of the necessity of striving to work out their salvation, would answer that too much must 1 86 WAYMARKS IN CHURCH HISTORY. not be required of them, that self-restraint was painful, that effort was too hard. Pelagius, who was staying at Rome, and in high estima- tion as a devout and learned monk,^ was indignant at this ignoble slackness, intolerant of this languid self-excusing. He suspected that a sort of heathenish fatalism underlay these despicable pleas. *• Have done with such mockery of God," we can imagine him saying : " it is not the strength that fails you, it is the will. You could do better, if you would. Rouse your will ; pull yourself together ; and remember that you have, through God's gift, a nature capable of choosing the right. Men sin because they misuse their free will ; if they chose, they could avoid sin. To lay the blame on nature is to wrong its Author, who has furthermore equipped us, as Christians, with new resources for well-doing. To say, 'Flesh is weak, I can't do my duty,' is to accuse Him of imposing on us obligations which we cannot fulfil. What blindness ! what profane rashness ! You will not deceive Him by such pretences. He knows what He has enabled men to do." ^ There is a depth of warning, one might say ' Cf. Aug. de Pecc. Merit, et Remiss, iii. i, 5. ^ Cf. Pelagius' letter to Demetrias. Aug. torn. ii. app. PELAGIANISM. 187 of pathos, in the fact that Pelagius could thus earnestly exhort the indolent, could deal thus plainly with the self-deceiving ; that he could honestly express himself as shocked at hearing of Augustine's prayer, " Give me the power to do what Thou commandest, and then command what Thou wilt." ^ '' Give the power ? " he would say. " Why, you have the power." He would feel and speak, very likely, as Chrysostom did when he preached exertion to those who pro- fessed inability, who fancied that they were under a kind of fate ; but, although unsuspected by himself, there lurked beneath his moral zeal that sort of pride which has often been the bane of the ascetic ; and his studies of St. Paul had not infused into him the Christian sense of in- trinsic weakness, the Christian longing for an imparted strength which should be "made per- fect in " the acknowledged '' weakness " of the receiver. It would be very unjust to suppose that he did not recognise any gift of Divine assistance over and above the endowments of the moral nature as it came from the Maker's hand. If he had been asked, as afterwards he was repeatedly asked, whether he did not believe in grace as bestowed on Christians, he would * Aug, de Dono Persev. 53. i88 WAYMARKS m CHURCH HISTORY, have answered, " Of course I do, and fully. I believe that when the moral law was given in the old dispensation, the moral sense, as originally formed, received a real enlargement ; the desire for goodness was stimulated by ex- hortations, appeals, rebukes, and promises of favour ; and then, when Christ came, not only was illumination made yet fuller, and exhor- tation yet more persuasive, but a still more precious and beautiful ' grace ' was bestowed in His perfect moral example." " Grace," in short, was admitted by Pelagius in several senses.^ The moral constitution of human nature was a grace ; the law and the preaching of duty were graces ; forgiveness of sins was a grace ; the pattern shown in Christ's character was a grace. Was any other grace needed ? Yes, it was answered, something else — a grace beyond all these ; a movement of the Holy Spirit, not merely addressing the soul from without, but working upon it within — appealing not merely to the mental apprehension of duty, but, with a touch at once tenderer and stronger, to the affec- tions and the will — coming to close quarters with them, awakening, kindling, inspiring, em- 1 Cf. Aug. de Nat. et Grat. s. 12 5 de Grat. Chr. 8, 40-43, etc. PEL AG I A NISM. 1 89 powering. Of this he made no account ; perhaps he thought that to speak of it was fanaticism ; certainly he took it to be superfluous, and dis- couraged behef in it as a subtle inducement to ignore the real, existing, sufficient incentives to well-doing ; to wait for some force which, as it were, should carry the man off his feet, and make him good without farther trouble. He would really think that he was loyal to Christ, and helpful to Christians, in solemnly warning those over whom he had influence not to imagine that any "grace," in the special sense of an inward-working Divine energy, was needful in order to the avoidance of sin and the performance of Christian duties. Here, then, is the first Pelagian proposition — the denial of the necessity of grace, in what is now the received sense of that great word. But Pelagius, as a thinker, and probably as influenced by some Eastern thinker of one mind with the able but deeply heterodox bishop Theodore,^ proceeded to form a logical basis for this his first negation. " You do not want this imaginary ' grace ' which men like Augustine talk of. Why not? Because you come into the world in the same position in which Adam was created, and ' Marius Mercator, Commonit. adv. Pel. et Gael. I90 WAYMARKS IN CHURCH HISTORY. by the right use of which, had he but chosen, he could easily have obeyed, and secured eternal life. Do not listen to those who would tell you that you inherit from him, and are born with, and from your birth are compromised by, some ingrained moral flaw, or taint, or disease, or evil bias, producing a disturbance and dislocation of your whole interior being, such as would require a supernatural corrective or restorative action on God's part — that is a superstitious fancy, making the heart of the righteous sad, libelling human nature, and constructively libelling its Author under the show of dependence on His merciful intervention." Here is the second Pelagian proposition ; the denial of the need of real grace is founded on, is justified by, the denial of what, rather unfortunately, we call "original sin," meaning thereby a sinful tendency accompanying the very origin of our human existence, that mysterious "fault," or "corrup- tion," or " depravation " of our moral nature, which is nowadays admitted as a universal fact, even where observers decline to form any theory as to its transmission, and prefer to call it un- accountable rather than accept the received account, certainly based on Scripture, of its derivation from a fallen head of the race.^ * See Mozley's Lectures, p. 145. PELA GIANISM. 19 1 We are looking at Pelagianism as a pheno- menon, and are not called upon to follow out its career in details. That career, in a general survey, is sure to have its ups and downs. In one quarter, the ethical strictness associated with its teaching proves impressive with earnest men \^ elsewhere, for the most part through misunder- standing on the part of Greek-speaking judges, and explanations or disclaimers on the part of Pelagius himself, which, prima facie, look suffi- cient, he gains a temporary advantage.^ For a brief space he persuades the Roman Church itself that he has been wronged by prejudice and unfair construction. It is the African Church which, from first to last, under the vigilant leadership of St. Augustine, keeps an eye on the twofold unsoundness of the theory, by its clear and resolute statements of doctrine impresses its own mind on one pope, and overrides in effect the facile acquittal obtained on hollow pretences from his successor.^ ^ Aug. Ep. 177. 6. 2 See Aug. de Gest. Pelag. 22, 41, 45> 60 ff. ^ The judgment of Zosimus was solemnly and formally given. He accepted, as sound, "explanations" either suggestive of heresy or obviously inadequate ; and he lectured the African bishops upon their injustice. Augustine is somewhat diplomatic in minimising this grave error. On it see Pusey, Second Letter to Newman, p. 219, ff. Even Tillemont understates it. 192 WAYMARKS IN CHURCH HISTORY. Pelagius agreed with Theodore on the special question then brought to issue, but did not depart in the least from orthodox Christology ; he left it to others to verify the statement that " the Nestorian Christ is the fitting Saviour of the Pelagian man ; " ^ that a partial or inadequate estimate of the disease to be cured would induce men to be content with one less than God Incarnate as the Healer. But, apart from this, we may see that Pelagianism, in its reckoning up of human possibilities, omitted a class of very discouraging facts — the inclination to self-will which, explain it as we choose, is observable " from the moment of dawning reason," and the limitations which do not destroy the reality of free will, but clog its action, and hem it in with the meshes of habit. It has been truly said that to " claim " a moral " perfection," in the sense of soundness, "for human nature, was to contradict the plainest verdict of human consciousness."^ Here, again, a partial view conducted minds to a conclusion much too simple ; a shallow optimism left out half the case. A sad irony runs through the career of one who might have * Ch. Quart. Review, xvi. 298. ' Diet. Chr. Biogr. iv. 292, PELAGIANISM. 193 done so much to make men better. He begins, bond fide, by preaching up reaHty in religion ; but partly through intellectual one-sidedness, and partly through lack of that humility which is the salt of earnestness, he is drawn into con- clusions which foster self-dependence, impair the sense of sin, and, by asserting the " easiness " of becoming thoroughly good, actually lower the standard of that Christian virtue for the sake of which he had become a monitor and a controversialist.^ And the end of all is to put souls further off from Christ as the Restorer from moral death, the principle of effectual sanctification — to take a broad step backwards towards a naturalism superficially embellished with Christian terms, and devoid of some essential elements of Christian thought, as related to the aims and efforts of man. St. Augustine, as we all know, was incom- parably the greatest instrument in the organ- ised resistance to Pelagianism. He had his own personal reasons for dreading and hating any theory that could tempt men to "write" less than the full amount of their debt to * See Aug. de Gest. Pel. 54. "The general tendency of the position of the Pelagians was to a secular . . . view of per- fection." Mozley, Lectures, p. 165. Cf his Aug. Doctr. Predest. p. 106. O 194 WAYMARI^S IN CHURCH HISTORY. the grace of the Redeemer. He would look back on the strange experiences of a life which, from his early years at a country-town school, at the University of Carthage, at his own home, and in Italy, had been, as he would say, one long exhibition of the persevering mercy of God. He felt that "grace," as a real and wonder-working action of the Holy Spirit, had unweariedly pursued him through all his moods of self-will, his changes of abode and of occupation ; had at last come up with him under the fig-tree in that quiet Milanese garden, and won him, by a suddenly imparted strength, to give himself up to Christ for once and for all.^ Natural, surely, it was, that this remembrance should make the sovereignty of God, and the masterfulness of a love that would take no refusal, the dominant ideas in his mind, — that they should dwarf and attenuate all balancing conceptions, and fix his theology in a predestinarian mould. Yes, the word must be spoken ; and we must ac- knowledge that his exaggerations, his one- sidedness, did a real injury to the cause of " the doctrine of grace," and to a just estimate of the Fall. There is much excuse to be * Aug. Confess, viii. 29, PELAGIANISM, 195 made for him ; ^St. Paul himself, for whatever reason, gives a view of the Divine decrees in Rom. ix. which may be called one-sided ; ^ but then, in other parts of his letters, the balance of statement is practically restored, and this is not the case with Augustine's anti-Pelagian writings. A young, self-confident, and keenly disputatious Pelagian bishop, who gave him much trouble in his latter days, may show us on one side — as the growth of the Semi-Pelagian school (which made grace come in to supple- ment free-will), makes evident on the other ^ — what scandal was caused to many a serious mind by the uncompromising assertion of an arbitrary decree of predestined salvation for some, and of irrevocable abandonment for others, — of the condemnation of all unbaptised infants, which Bishop Julian rejects as a "sacrilegious" attack on the Divine justice,^ — and of the irresistible action of grace on the elect, while the non-elect were supposed to be, simply as such, incapable of working out their salvation. Augustine's way of meeting these difficulties could hardly satisfy any one ' Cf. Liddon, Analysis of Ep. to Rom., p. 162. - See letters of Prosper and Hilary to Augustine. ' Aug. Op. imp. c. Jul. i. 48. 196 WAYMARKS IN CHURCH HISTORY. who raised them ; he would sometimes try to silence the objector, sometimes answer short of the mark ; would insist on the most rigid interpretation of one class of texts, and twist out of shape others that stood in his way. He applies this latter method especially to St. Paul's assertion that God " willeth that all men should be saved." ^ And his admission of free- will is not a real admission, being neutralised by his belief in a necessitas bojii in case of the good, an actual Divine determination of their will to union with God's will ; which was, in effect, to anticipate the condition that, in their case, would folloiv their period of probation, and to deprive their obedience, during that period, of the moral worth that depends on freedom. It seems impossible not to trace this partiality to an imperfect conception of what was involved in the Divine equity on the one hand, in human responsibility on the other. If only he had trained himself to look at both aspects of a truth ; to give up the intellectual pleasure of a sweeping and absolute statement on the side that most attracted him ; to stop short where Scripture did, and not to claim completeness for a part of its manifold teaching ; ' Aug. de Corr. et Grat. 44 ; c. Jul. iv. 44. PELAGIANISM. 197 to shrink from explaining away, and also from over-inferring ; to say that grace could initiate, yet not strictly determine ; and to admit that salvation was really offered to all men, and only lost by those who refused it ; what bitter controversies, what disastrous causes of offence, would have been averted from the Church in his own last years, in the rest of the same century, in the times of Hincmar and Gottschalk, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and — must one not say it? — in times which have seen Christianity so often rejected because it was supposed to involve Calvinism ! Not that Augustine was so consistent, so relentless a predestinarian as the great Genevan dogmatist. It has been observed by Arch- deacon Hardwick, in his " History of the Articles," that Augustine recognised real grace as working, for the time, in some who were not predestined to persevere, whereas Calvin did not. And another writer remarks that "pre- destinarianism in him was" practically "different from what it was in Calvin, because the Church and the Sacraments were to him as real facts as the air and the sun, and because the Church system in which he lived reflected and sustained 198 IVAYMARKS IN CHURCH HISTORY. that belief."^ So far, he admitted a balance; so far, Augustinianism avoids the snare of being over-logical. But here one is reminded that Augustinianism is nowadays condemned in the lump, and by no means simply on account of its predestinarian rigour. Some writers take up their parable against it as a whole, with an undiscriminating breadth and asperity of censure which is hardly a token of " sweet reasonableness." They cry, " Not Augustinianism, but Alexandrianism." What does Alexandrianism mean ? Athanasius, one would think, cannot well be their hero and oracle ; and even if he were less committed to the cause of '' orthodox dogma," his work as a theologian was almost wholly confined to the great themes of the Trinity and the Incarnation. Assuredly the ante-Nicene Alexandrians were men of rarely noble character — as thinkers and teachers profoundly interesting, and most brilli- antly attractive. One loves Clement, for in- stance, while one reads him ; a man of truly ^ Ch. Quart. Review, xxiv. 286. Calvinism being predis- posed, as it were, to reject the received doctrine of sacramental operation, and finding it logically incompatible with a strong predestinarianism, developed a new theory which made sacra- ments simply •' obsignatory," as pledges of a grace bestowed independently on the elect. See below, p. 339. PELAGIANISM. 199 Pauline sympathies, adapting himself, with the skill that is born of charity, to the capacities and requirements of earnest inquirers ; leading them on, step after step, as by a " kindly light," to the feet of that true Guide, the Word who had been speaking in all ages to all receptive souls; acknowledging and genially appropriating whatever was best in Pagan thought ; presenting truth as to be " seen by its own light," as vindi- cating its affinity to the heart and conscience of man. Yet Clement himself is, in his way, one- sided ; he looks too much at the illuminative element in Christianity, too little at the redemp- tive ; as a fervent admirer of him owns, he " idealises and Platonises over much ; " ^ his readers often find themselves walking, so to speak, in a golden haze, amid forms indistinctly shaped ; he often seems to disparage the objec- tive, the historical, the organic, in his eager pursuit of spiritual significances. Origen is so great a name that it is almost an offence to refer to him casually ; but, with the deepest reverence for his services as an apologist, and, yet more, for the splendid moral example of his life and of his death, it must be said, it is after all a truism to say, that there were some gravely ^ Pressense, Hist. Prem. Siecles, ii. 2. 267. 200 IVAYMARKS IN CHURCH HISTORY. dangerous speculations to which his writings gave popularity and currency, and which justify the refusal of the Church to place him among her canonised doctors. From Alexandrianism one ought to learn much ; it supplies a corrective to Latin hardness, and is specially valuable as bringing out the moral character of faith ; it expands the magnificent phrase of a great African writer who represents a sterner school, a phrase which may seem overbold, but which emphasises the adaptation of the Gospel faith to deepest human needs : " That testimony of the human soul, as being naturally Christian ! " ^ Let us by all means learn what Alexandrian Fathers, even in the ante-Nicene period, have to teach. But, when all is done, we cannot dis- pense with other teaching on other points of high religious importance. Augustinianism, in the large sense, is emphatic (too much so, pro- bably, for some of its present critics) on the subject of a visible organised Church, and of Sacraments as instrumental for the sustentation of spiritual life — in other words, for the union of souls to Christ their Head, in His life-giving Humanity. But it is grossly unhistorical to repre- sent Augustine as inventing these doctrines ; he * Tertull. Apol. 17. PELAGIANISM. 201 developed, in a lawful sense, what ante-Nicenes — not only a Cyprian, but an Irenaeus — had held as a principle ; and if he formulated these ideas, he may have ignored some needful quali- fications or reserves, but formulate them, in some sense, he must ; he could not but be led by his predominant topic of grace to consider the means by which, within the Church, grace acted, or, as he himself would say in his discus- sion of the difference between the " letter " and the "spirit," the means by which the energy of the Holy Spirit was brought home. It may surely be said that his Churchmanship, his sacra- mentalism, were spiritualised by the thought of a personally acting Paraclete, a personally, inti- mately, livingly present Lord. Among the aspects of religious thought in our own day, we can hardly fail to discern a Pelagianism modernised. It fits in with some of our English habits of thought, and it takes a variety of forms. We see it in a diminished, enfeebled sense of the heinousness and malig- nity of sin. Because Calvinism has exaggerated the "depravity" of human nature, some are disposed to smooth away the sharp edge of so unwelcome a fact Similarly the Divine sanctity, and its claim over us, are sometimes 202 WA YMARKS IN CHURCH HISTOR V. but faintly recognised : a lower than the Apos- tolical standard of Christian attainment is accepted as one that will work. Withal, grace is undervalued ; man is thought capable of striving after improvement without the presence of a " living and holy will " not merely pleading with his will, but "enclosing and moving" it, though not irresistibly ; — at once an exterior " light " and an interior " strength." ^ This feeling, or way of thinking, sometimes claims to represent a broader and more intelligent piety, as if it were more religious to dwell on the general manifestations of Divine activity in the natural order than to affirm its special presence in the supernatural ; as if the former were not only God's sphere, but His in such sort as to cover the whole ground ; as if men had only to go on in the natural lines, and all would come right without need of "grace" or of "ordinances :" as if " the Church " were more interesting and significant when viewed like any other voluntary organisation, and stripped of all " mystical " or " transcendent " claims, or even identified with a refined and moralised social order. When men get to this point, they can hardly help going further : Christology itself is necessarily affected. * Principal Tulloch, in Good Words for 1879, P- H^- PELAGIANISM. 203 When Christianity is regarded as mainly educa- tional, when the lines which distinguish it from a high civilisation are effaced or made indistinct/ Christ will be thought of as mainly a moral hero, a type of whatever in man is purest and highest, an external model rather than a foun- tain of recreative energy. We hear Him thus " admired " and thus eulogised ; we observe a disposition to drop, as factitious, the estimate of Him taken in the Fourth Gospel ; there is a consistent dislike for the Pauline doctrine of spiritual incorporation, for the whole super- naturalism of New Testament Christianity ; and therefore no wonder if Sacraments shrink into edifying badges of Christian fellowship, or occasions for stimulating the higher aspirations of the soul.^ A lowering, denuding, impover- ' Cp. Church, The Gifts of Civilisation, etc., p. 117, "^ It may be considered whether there is not a touch of Pelagianism in the theory that baptism does not make the recipient a child of God by grace, but only "declares" that he is so already by nature. It appeals to God's " universal Father- hood ; " but this is no more incompatible with a special Father- hood in the order of grace than are the gifts of His natural providence with the supernatural blessings of the Gospel. And whatever men may say of the sacramental interpretation of John iii. 5, they ought to see that the whole context establishes the necessity of a new birth, a process of spiritual re-creation. The theory, of course, is in flagrant contradiction to the Prayer-book, which in this, as in all other respects, is consistently anti- Pelagian. 204 IVAYMARKS IN CHURCH HISTORY. ishing process is applied to the religion which is built on the Incarnation ; its real life closes up and withers ; the vital warmth, so to say, goes out of it. In such a condition of things, it is worth considering whether St. Augustine may not, after all, be of some use to us, in keeping our English Christianity "solid;" whether, if we wholly proscribe his teaching, we shall not relax our hold on the great primary Christian ideas of sin, of atonement, and of grace ; whether, in a word, we can turn from him as a false prophet, and continue, in good earnest, to be disciples of St. Paul. i PAPALISM AND ANTIQUITY. All members of that imperial Church which, in claiming to be the One Church Catholic and Apostolic, is careful to add the distinctive epithet "Roman," will not only admit, but pro- claim as a thing "whereof to glory," that it is essentially and characteristically a Papal Church; that, in the words of the Vatican decree Pastor ^termts, " the force and solidity of the whole Church consists in the Apostolic primacy," that is, in the supremacy inherited by the Popes from St. Peter. This is its fundamental con- tention ; and all discussions as to other parts of Roman doctrine are logically subordinate to the consideration of the Papal claims. But then, every one who makes the " profession of faith " enforced by the bull of Pius IV. in 1564 pledges himself never to "take or interpret Scripture otherwise than according to the unanimous consent of the Fathers ; " which at once, and inevitably, suggests the question, Does any such 2o6 WAYMARKS IN CHURCH HISTORY. * consent of the Fathers " support the Papacy, as it now exists and rules in the Latin Church ? Many Protestants, especially those whose theological position is advisedly undogmatic and individualist, will put such a question aside, or attach to it, at most, an interest purely academical. But no Roman Catholic, bound by the " profession " referred to, can afiford to ignore it ; nor will it seem unimportant to those who, neither idealising the Patristic Church life, nor idolising its great canonised representatives, adhere to the Anglican tradition of a reasonable reverence for " Catholic antiquity." And to such persons the Vatican Council of 1870 did a real though unintentional service, by clearing to a very considerable extent the ground of controversy, and limiting the issues involved. The Pastor jEternus^ promulgated by Pius IX. with all possible formality and solemnity, divides the Papal authority into two main parts, and ''defines" each in its turn, sacro approbante Con- cilio. First, the Roman Church is declared to possess, " by the Lord's appointment," — that is, in virtue of the " primacy of true and proper jurisdiction " alleged to have been conferred by Him on St. Peter, — " ordinance potestatis princi- patum over all other churches ; " and this PAPALISM AND ANTIQUITY. 207 ''power of jurisdiction belonging to the Roman Pontiff" is affirmed to be "truly episcopal" and "immediate," obliging "pastors and faithful" alike, individually and collectively, to render him "true obedience, not only in things per- taining to faith and morals, but also in things pertaining to the discipline and government of the Church dispersed throughout the whole world." A sort of caveat is added, that " this power of the Supreme Pontiff" is far from pre- judicing "that ordinary power of episcopal jurisdiction whereby bishops, who, being placed by the Holy Spirit, have succeeded in the room of the Apostles, act as true pastors in feeding and ruling individually the flocks assigned to them," etc. But the general import of this part of the definition is unquestionable ; it makes the Pope practically a universal bishop, holding direct power in and over every single diocese, so that the several diocesans are, in effect, no more than his commissaries and vicars. The other part of the Papal authority as thus set forth has attracted more attention, and given cause to fuller debate. In the chapter "on the infallible magistermm of the Roman pontiff," it is declared to be " a dogma divinely revealed, that when he speaks ex cathedrd~\\i^\, is, when 2o8 WAYMARKS IN CHURCH HISTORY. in discharging the function of pastor and teacher of all Christians, he defines, by his supreme Apostolic authority, a doctrine on faith or morals, as to be held by the Universal Church, he is, through the Divine assistance promised to him in blessed Peter, invested with that infallibility with which the Divine Redeemer willed that His Church should be endowed in defining doctrine on faith or morals ; and, therefore, that such definitions by the Roman pontiff are irreformable of themselves, and not in consequence of the assent of the Church." It was natural for English Churchmen, on first becoming acquainted with this sonorous sentence, to assume that it committed the Roman Church to the extremest type of Ultra- montanism ; but, in point of fact, it is less Ultramontane than the dogma about Papal jurisdiction. Mr. Wilfrid Ward's most valuable and interesting volume, entitled, " William George Ward and the Catholic Revival," leaves Englishmen without excuse for any mistake on this head. It is evident that Ward would, at the time, have desired a much more comprehensive and thorough-going " definition " of infallibility.^ * Baron von Hiigel writes, towards the close of a most suggestive letter : "Your father . . . never made any secret of PAPALISM AND ANTIQUITY. 209 There is certainly something both humorous and pathetic in the story of what Ward had long-ed for. and what he had to make the best of. He, as an ultra-Papalist, would fain have seen infallibility attached to any and every Papal utterance which " intimated " an " intention " of teaching. Cardinal Newman, on the other hand, laid stress on two conditions; (i) the action of the schola theologoriLin in preparing definitions for the Pope to make, and (2) its action in explaining them when made. The first of these conditions was recognised by *'a historical introduction" to the decree, which was not published — strange to say — until twenty years after the Council ; and Mr. Wilfrid Ward considers that this " by consequence " carried the other, "the practical necessity of the aid of bishops, synods, and scientific theologians," in " interpreting a definition," and " in determining what was infallibly and irreformably decreed, how much he cared for the question as to the object^ the range of infallibility, and how little comparatively for that as to its subject, its organ ; of how backward he thought, on the first question, the opinions of the large majority of the bishops of the Council ; and of how disappointed he was that the Council, whilst giving a most moderate definition as to the subject, left the question of the object exactly where it was before your father began insisting that it was the great Catholic question of the age" (W. G. Ward, etc., p. 374). P 2IO IVAYMARKS IN CHURCH HISTORY. and what was not " (p. 263). He also tells us that the question, how much was included within the scope of infallible definitions — whether, e.g.^ it included pronouncements on " dogmatic facts " — was "designedly left open ;" so that, after all, we must infer that this oracle too can speak ambiguously, and that theologians have to discuss whether a certain Papal utterance did really issue " from the Chair ; " whether the Pope is infallible when he canonises a saint, when he publishes a "syllabus," when he expressly adopts a censure passed by the congregation of the Inquisition on some book that is charged with heterodoxy. After all, the promise of luminous and restful assurance, which has attracted so many proselytes, is but imperfectly fulfilled ; after all, the " consensus Ecclesise " comes to something, and the universal teacher is somewhat restricted by the taught, if experts must help him to determine what he has to say, and afterwards help others to under- stand whether he has said it infallibly, and if he has, what it means/ But, when due weight has been given to qualifications which make this definition seem to Roman Catholics so " moderate," it may well be used as a test of ^ See Ch. Quart. Review, xxxvii. 74. PAPALISM AND ANTIQUITY, 211 sameness between the primitive and the Roman principle in regard to a teaching authority. To return to the purely historical question. In the decree, the doctrine set forth is plainly asserted to be " in accordance with the ancient and constant belief and practice of the Church Universal," to represent what had been " always understood by her," to be defined in " faithful adherence to the tradition received from the beginning of Christian belief;" and "all the venerable fathers and holy doctors " are credited with having "revered and followed the Apos- tolic teaching of the successors of Peter," and having been " most fully persuaded that the See of St. Peter always remains untainted by any error, according to the promise " in St. Luke xxii. 32. Here, then, is the task marked out for the Papalist arguer, and to which, to speak plainly, he must be kept. He can hardly hold himself free to distinguish between the dogmatic definitions themselves and the repeated assertion of their historical relation to antiquity, as if the latter were only the statement of a "dogmatic fact," and, as such, not necessarily infallible. Not to say that the " CEcumenical Council " accepted the decree as a whole, the Pope could hardly be speaking 212 WAYMARKS IN CHURCH HISTORY. ex cathedra in one part of it and not in another, when the definitions are confidently put forward as expressing neither more nor less than what the Catholic Church has always held.^ Infalli- bility in the structure coheres but ill with fallibility in the basis. Nor will it be open to the interpreter of this decree to accept its historical propositions in the sense of a growth in the actual substance of the credendwn^ as distinct from a fuller expression and elucidation of its original and intrinsic import.^ These propositions resist such glossing ; they must be taken as they stand, or not at all.^ The arguer, then, when he follows the decree in its appeal to history, has to show that history attests, in sub- stance, the dogmatic definitions in question — these and no others. Evidence, therefore, ^ " Neque enim Petri successoribus Spiritus Sanctus promissus est ut, eo revelante, novam doctrinam patefacerent, sed ut, eo assistente, traditam per Apostolos revelationem seu fidei deposi- tum sancte custodirent et fideliter exponerent." - The Nicene doctrine as to our Lord is an explanatory development; it presupposes a belief in Him, a worship of Him, as existing in the Church from the very first. What we maintain as to the " Papal " doctrine is, that there was no such original substratum of belief as to any Papal prerogative whatsoever. ^ They represent the c^^tr ground of Roman controversialists. See quotations in Palmer on Doctrine of Development, pp. 199, 226-229. PAPALISM AND ANTIQUITY. 213 which makes for less than this is evidence which must be treated as nil ad rem. Language or acts which at most suggest an eminence, a leadership, a "primacy" of influence or of honour, a limited appellate jurisdiction granted —if, indeed, it was granted— by a Council not oecumenical,^ or enlarged by the secular authority of emperors,^ or, as time advances, a claim of widening supremacy which yet falls short of the Vatican standard— are all irrelevant to the purpose in hand. It is the old story, familiar ever since Thucydides wrote,^ of riyefiovia changing itself into apx^h But apxv cannot be allowed to slur over the change for its own 1 The difficulty as to the genuineness of the Sardican series of canons consists in this : that genuine Sardican canons must surely have been circulated in the West, and therefore in Africa ; whereas, when a Roman envoy produced part of this series as " Nicene," the African Church, instead of knowing it to be Sardican, was obliged to inquire in the East as to the genuine text of the Nicene canons ; and St. Augustine actually confounded the Sardican council with the conciliabuhini of Arian seceders from Sardica (Contra Cresc. iii. 38). 2 On "the immense importance" of Gratian's legislation as in effect conferring on the bishop of Rome a "patriarchal jurisdiction over the whole Western empire," see Fr. Puller's excellent volume, " The Primitive Saints and the See of Rome," pp. 155-160. The terms of the rescript of Valentinian III. in 449 are unhappily discreditable to Leo the Great, who also himself reproduced what he must have known to be the detected misquotation of Sardican canons as "Nicene" (Ep. 43). ^ Thuc. i. 75, 96. 214 WAYMARKS IN CHURCH HISTORY. argumentative convenience ; and, in the case before us, the demo7istrandttni is the primitive- ness not of rfytjuovm, but of ap^}. It is precisely the twofold Vatican dogma which has to be warranted by the testimony of antiquity — not, of course, word for word, for it is principles, not phrases, that are in question — but in its full essential significance, as involving a matter of faith, and thus of action. The decree, as a whole, undoubtedly implies that what Pius IX. was to Roman Catholics in regard to jurisdiction and magistermm^ that was each Pope in ancient times ; that was Victor, when Irenseus and other bishops " somewhat sharply rebuked " him for trying to induce other Churches to follow his example in excommunicating the Quartodecimans ; ^ that was Cornelius, when Cyprian disallowed appeals to him from Africa ; ^ that was Stephen, when Cyprian informed him that the African Church would adhere to its ^ Euseb. V. 24. The famous passage in the Latin version of Irenseus about the Roman Church is so far from favouring the notion of her universal teachership, that it represents her as necessarily a meeting-place of various streams of Apostolic tradition, which keep the faith pure "in " her^ Iren. iii. 3. 2. 2 Cypr. Ep. 59. 20. In preceding words, " principalem " is explained by " unde unitas sacerdotalis exorta est," so as to mean *' the mother church of Italy and Africa" (Puller, p. 54). PAPALISM AND ANTIQUITY, 215 own rule as against his,^ — when, in writing to another, Cyprian spoke of Stephen's "error in upholding the cause of heretics," ^ and when, in a council of eighty-seven prelates, he significantly observed, " No one of 7is sets himself up to be a bishop of bishops ; " ^ that was Damasus, ' lb., Ep. 72. - lb., Ep. 74. I. ' Cyprian's seven councils (see Archb. Benson in Diet. Chr. Biogr., i. 744 ff.) were episcopal synods ; and so in all the larger ancient councils, the only constituent members were bishops, present personally, or by priests or deacons as their deputies. Thus Dionysius of Alexandria (in Euseb. vii. 5) and Eusebius (v. 23) speak of '* synods of bishops ; " and we may contrast the diocesan synod of Jerusalem in June, 415, with the episcopal synod at Diospolis in December, 415. But three points are to be observed: (i) a bishop, in early days, was in a true sense the elect of his clergy and people ; though *' set over " his church, he was, as Cyprian felt, " in " it and " one with " it (see Pusey, Pref. to Epistles of St. Cyprian, Lib. Fath., p. xiv.) ; he had its confidence, he could testify as to its mind, he was both officially and morally its legitimate representative. (2) Presbyters, deacons, and laymen in full communion (whom Cyprian called "stantes") were often present, as in Cyprian's last council, and the council of Eliberis or Elvira ; presbyters being seated as the assessors of the bishops, the deacons and laics standing. This attendance of the laity may be also inferred from the description of synods on the Montanist question as "assemblies of the faithful in Asia " (Euseb. v. 16) ; from Tertullian's reference to councils in Greece, as involving "a presence of Christians in general" (de Jejun. 13), and probably from the encyclical of the great council of Antioch in 269, as professing to come not only from the prelates who composed the council, but from *' presbyters and deacons, and the churches of God " 2i6 WAYMARKS IN CHURCH HISTORY. when Basil bitterly alluded to him as the "coryphaeus" of the ''supercilious" Westerns, as insulting those who were weaker than himself, and mistaking haughtiness for dignity ; ^ that was Celestine, when at the end of the case of Apiarius a Carthaginian Council warned him in respectful but stringent terms to abstain from interfering with the home jurisdiction of Africa.^ On the showing of the decree, each of these popes, thus freely dealt with by saints or (Euseb. vii. 30). When the emperor or his commissioners were present, they were not representatives of the laity, but of the Christianised sovereignty as deeply interested in the Church's well- being and order. (3) Laymen who could give information or advice were freely consulted, and theological experts, clerical or lay, were invited or encouraged to assist the synod in questions of doctrine [e.g. Origen at two Arabian synods, Malchion at Antioch, Athanasius at Nicsea, Florentius the *' patrician" at Constantinople in 448). This was analogous to the provision by which, in episcopal appointments canonically conducted, the wishes and opinions of the Church were brought fully and effectively before the provincial bishops, with whom the final decision rested. ^ Bas. Ep. 239: cf. Ep. 215. One embarrassing result of insistence on Jerome's obsequious letter to Damasus (Ep. 15) is that it makes him (oet. 30) treat St. Basil as "profane." 2 This famous synodical letter, instead of simply deprecating precipitancy in the reception at Rome of appeals from Africa, struck at the whole principle of such appeals, whether made by bishops or by clerics, and, with an almost prophetic significance, pronounced it incredible that the spirit of just judgment should be bestowed on "some one individual," rather than on a number of bishops in council (Mansi, iv. 516). PAPALISM AND ANTIQUITY. 217 synods, was by Christ's will the Church's abso- lute monarch, the Church's universal teacher ; and bishops who did not own him as such, who treated him simply as the most eminent member of their own order, were, by hypothesis, ignorant of what was, in their times, "the Church's constant belief, the tradition received from the outset of Christianity." ^ But it may be sufficient for the present purpose to give some illustration of the Vatican claims for the Papacy from the history of the ancient CEcumenical Councils as typical expressions of the mind of the undivided Church. A Roman proselyte of 1888, who had for years been a highly esteemed Anglican clergy- man, and who, very shortly after his secession, came forward as a controversial monitor to Anglicans, affirmed in 1889 that "Nicaea, Constantinople, Ephesus, had brought out the reality of the Pope's position more and more ^ In the case of Pope Liberius, two points may be treated as certain. As bishop of Rome by right, and desiring to be restored to the possession of his bishopric, he (i) abandoned the cause of Athanasius, and (2) gave up the Nicene creed, and accepted some formula more or less Arian ; Sozomen says, a Semi-Arian compilation. The Fragments of Hilary contain letters ascribed to Liberius, which make him sign a really Arian creed, made at Sirmium by Easterns. The well-known difficulty is to fix on an extant creed which answers this description. 2i8 WAYMARKS IN CHURCH HISTORY. clearly, but it was reserved for Chalcedoii to emphasise this headship more clearly still." ^ " The Pope's position " must be that which the Vatican decree affirmed him to hold ; on its hypothesis, he never had any other. Did Nicaea, then, "bring out" the reality of his absolute jurisdiction and his ex cathedra infallibility ? One is inclined to marvel that a Papalist should venture to name Nicaea at all. If the Vatican decree is true — and for a Papalist it is the voice of God — then the bishop of Rome in 325 had just the same rights, and just the same responsi- bilities in regard to their exercise, as the bishop of Rome in 1870.^ And was there ever, in the * "Dependence," etc., p. 49. In a volume called "Author- ity," Mr. Rivington argued from Cyprian, De Unit. Eccl. 3, as if "the head" there mentioned was the Pope, whereas the context shows it to be Christ ; he mistook " the root and womb of the Catholic Church," in Cypr. Ep. 48, for the Papacy, whereas it means the Church herself as a mother (cf. Ep. 45). He assumed that "principalis," applied to the Roman church, meant " ruling j " he talked of Cyprian as having once been "restive under the exercise of Papal authority," discharged little pellets at the "miserable and disgraceful letter" of St. Firmilian, and compressed his view of the case of Meletius into the smartly laconic dictum, " St. Meletius never rebelled, Eng- land did," — as if Meletius ever by word or act owned himself to be Rome's subject. 2 In "Authority," p. 56, Mr. Rivington remarked that if the Papal office of "universal teacher and head of the Church be divine, we should expect that those who hold it would be made aware of its divine institution." Certainly we should. PAPALISM AND ANTIQUITY. 219 whole range of Christian history, a fitter occasion for such exercise of rights, or rather for the discharge of such solemn and urgent duties, than was the Arian controversy ? Yet no one invoked Sylvester of Rome to decide that momentous question ex cathedra ; it never occurred to him to put forth his gift of infallibility for the sup- pression of a theory which denied his Master's real Godhead ; instead of this, it was deemed practically necessary to bring together the repre- sentatives of a world-wide episcopate, and in their assembly his deputies did not even take the leading part, for the story that Hosius presided as his legate is a later invention. Did the Church of 325 ignore what Pius IX. was made to call an aboriginal tradition ? or did Pius IX.'s pre- decessor in 325 betray, by not asserting, the tremendous function committed to him by Christ? It is hardly worth while, after this, to notice the interpretation put by this author on the sixth Nicene canon : " The Nicene Fathers . . . said in effect, Rome has set the example of subordinating certain sees to certain others ; let Alexandria and Antioch continue in their similar groove." ^ This, of course, is a ' "Dependence," p. 55, It is added, "They gave no reason for thus adhering to the order of things inaugurated by Rome." There was no call for a reason. 220 WAYMARKS IN CHURCH HISTORY. quiet way of suggesting that Rome had intro- duced the usage by her own unique authority. The canon, one need not say, implies nothing of the kind. There was an old affinity between the Churches of Rome and Alexandria, and hence it was natural to quote the case of the former as illustrating the reasonableness of the position to be secured for the latter. But did the Second General Council " bring out" still "more clearly " the sovereign "position" of the Pope ? In a very curious manner ; it was held apart from him, without his co-ope- ration, without the presence of any Roman delegate. This author says of its third canon, " Although the papal legate had seemed to recognise" the "new position" of Constan- tinople, " that third canon never obtained oecu- menical acceptance." An ill-informed reader might possibly infer that a "papal legate" attended at Constantinople ; but this author can only mean that at Chalcedon the " legates " acquiesced in the claims of Anatolius of Con- stantinople to take rank next to themselves — an acquiescence for which Hefele suggests a reason, — that the bishop of Alexandria was an accused person, and there was a doubt as to who was the rightful bishop of Antioch. PAPALISM AND ANTIQUITY, 221 Then as to the Council of Ephesus. Mr. Rivington tells us that this synod, " in accord- ance with the judgment of Pope Celestine, presided over by his legate St. Cyril of Alex- andria, had condemned Nestorius . . . had, in obedience to the Pope's letter, deposed Nes- torius." No one who had really read the docu- ments would think this a fair account to present to persons unacquainted with them. First, the commission given by Celestine to »Cyril had nothing to do with the Council ; it was given nearly a year before, in order that in a certain contingency — if Nestorius did not satisfy him on the doctrinal question at issue — Cyril might signify to him that he was severed from the communion both of Rome and of Alexandria, This was done. But Nestorius had already procured from Theodosius 11. the summoning of a General Council, which ipso facto suspended the operation of this sentence ; and Celestine and Cyril made the best of it, and prepared for the Council. Celestine did not commission Cyril to represent him at Ephesus, but sent three legates, Arcadius, Projectus, and Philip. Pending their arrival, Cyril himself presided, " occupying also the place of Celestine " — that is, claiming, not unreasonably, to hold his proxy, 222 WAYMARKS IN CHURCH HISTORY. as Flavian of Philippi "also held the place of" Rufus of Thessalonica.^ Next, the deposition- sentence, combining " the sacred canons " with a previous letter of Celestine to Nestorius, must be taken together with the anathemas uttered against Nestorius before that letter had been read, with the formal announcements to Nes- torius and to his clergy which do not allude to Celestine, and with the synodical letter to the emperors, . which " praises " Celestine for his orthodox zeal.^ Further, the Roman delegates, arriving after the deposition, were received as representing not Celestine only, but the whole Western episcopate.^ One of them, certainly, used the high " Petrine " language which was matter of course with Roman ecclesiastics ; * at the same time it is somewhat difficult to recon- cile Celestine's own words about the " common " interest of all bishops in the Apostolical teaching office^ with the Vatican doctrine of Papal infallibility. And now let us come to the subject on which Roman writers exhibit a special confidence — the bearing of the Council of Chalcedon on the case between England and Rome. They insist * Mansi, Concil. iv. 1123. ^ i^^ ^^^ ^212, 1177, 1228, 1240. 3 lb. iv. 1300. * lb. iv. 1295. ^ lb. iv. 1283. PAPALISM AND ANTIQUITY. 223 that Anglicans have no ground for appealing to its authority. Let us consider. After the con- demnation of Eutyches by the local synod of Constantinople, and the assent of Leo to that decision,^ " the cause of Eutyches was espoused by the patriarch of Alexandria, Dioscorus, and the emperor Theodosius was enlisted in their cause. A General Council was suggested, and St. Leo consented." Yes, he did so, although thinking that no Council was really needed, and wishing that, at any rate, the emperor had given him longer notice ; ^ for it appears more than once in the course of these proceedings that the initiative of a General Council did not rest with the see of Rome. Leo wrote his inestimable " Tome " for the assistance of the Council on the great doctrinal subject involved ; but he insisted in various letters that the question was not whether Eutyches should be found orthodox or heterodox, but whether he would retract his ascertained error. Characteristically enough, Leo construed the Eutychianising emperor's invitation to a Council as intimating ^ "Flavian," says Mr. Rivington, *^ remiited \hQ cause at once to the Pope." The phrase suggests the action of a subordi- nate tribunal towards a higher. Nothing like this appears in either of Flavian's two letters (Leon. Epp. 22, 26). 2 Leo, Epp. 31. 4, and 36. 224 WAYMARKS IN CHURCH HISTORY. a desire to learn from St. Peter in his successor what was the import of Matt. xvi. i6 ; ^ and he assumed, according to the standing Roman policy of assumption, that the Council would content itself with simply acting on the lines which he traced out. After the scandalous catastrophe of the Latrocinium, Leo entreated Theodosius to summon another and larger Council, to be held in Italy, and suggested that until then, the status quo ante should be main- tained.^ He set the Western court to urge this on Theodosius.^ In vain ; the emperor upheld the Latrocinium. Again, in July, 450, Leo wrote to Theodosius, putting his request into a contingent form, and urging that Anatolius, the successor of Flavian, should study the letter of Cyril to Nestorius, and ^^ not disdain also to read over his [Leo's] own letter," Le. the Tome. He told Pulcheria that what he asked of Ana- tolius was simply " acquiescence in Cyril's letter or assent to his own."* Suddenly, on July 28, 450, the scene changes : Theodosius dies, Pulcheria espouses Marcian, and *' he at once," 1 Ep. 33. I. - Epp. 44, 54. 3 £pp^ ^5_^8^ * Epp. 69, 70. Did Leo, then, believe his Tome to be an infallible utterance binding on the whole Church ? Mr. Riving- ton here (p. 39) boldly makes him *' insist " on its being " con- sidered" as "containing his ex cathedi-d definition," etc. . PAPALISM AND ANTIQUITY. ^25 Mr. Rivington tells us, *' expressed his willing- ness to convene a Council at Leo's bidding^ The Greek phrase, aov avOEvrovvrog, or the Latin- version, te auctore^ is here misused.-^ Leo's tone had been that of a petitioner ; " ^ and Mar- cian now intimated his desire that a Council, supported by Leo's authority, might be the means of securing peace on the basis of true faith. But Leo did not now want a Council. He kept Marcian long waiting for a reply. In fact, the emperor had to write thrice before Leo entered on the subject;^ he then assumed that the doctrinal question was settled, and a few weeks later in another letter tried to get the Council deferred.'* The fact was, that he did not wish for any Council unless it could be held in Italy ; which shows that he was by no means sure of his hold over the East. But Marcian was resolute that there should be a Council, * Ep. 73. The construction is also missed. "^ "Obsecro.'. . sacerdotes supplicant . . . obsecramus . . . supplicationem nostram . . . postulationem . . . petitionem oblatam a Leone . . . Concilium universale intra Italiam, sicut synodus . . . mecum petiit, dementia vestra (Theodosius) con- cedat," etc. Little enough of "bidding" here ! 2 Cf. Leo, Epp. 73, 76, 82. Marcian plainly intimated that he would choose the place of the Council. ^ Ep. %i. The time, he pleads, is not opportune for such a gathering. 226 IVAYMARKS LV CHURCH HISTORY. and that it should be held in the East ; and Leo submitted, saying in effect, almost plaintively, " I asked you to defer the Council, and hoped you would comply ; but since you will not, I submit — only let the faith be secured." ^ The Council meets at Chalcedon. "The papal legate," we are told, "demands that the patriarch of Alexandria be degraded from the seat he had taken. He insists on obedi- ence, and Dioscorus retires to the middle." This is just a little too bold. The "Acts" tell us what happened. The legates ^ demanded that Dioscorus should not be present until he was brought in "to be heard" as an accused party. " Let him go out, or else we will go out." The imperial commissioners, who evidently had the effective management of the proceedings,^ al- though the legates held the highest ecclesias- tical place, ruled that he should be present, but sitting by himself in the middle ; and the Roman legates " sat down in their own places, and held their peace." ^ Exactly the same posi- » Ep. 89. ^ The term is used for convenience, but "under protest" that its popular sense, as applied to papal representatives, must be put aside. Dioscorus is properly Diosc//rus. ' See Tillemont, xv. 646. * Mansi, vi. 581. The commissioners told a legate that he had no business to be both judge and accuser. PAPALISM AND ANTIQUITY. 227 tlon was assigned to Thcodorct, as an accuser who might himself be accused. The " Tome of St. Leo " was, as we all know, accepted by the Council of Chalcedon. But was this acceptance such as would be required, on Vatican principles, for an ex cathedra pro- nouncement on faith by a pope ? That is the question. Mr. Rivington answers it in the affirmative. His argument is, that in the second session "the bishops" declared that they had already signed the Tome ; ^ and that on its being read, the cry arose, " Peter hath spoken thus by Leo ; " so that when it was agreed that some difficulties found in the Tome by certain pre- lates should be elucidated in a conference, and, later still, the bishops individually declared their acceptance of it, this was not a case of " review- ing and confirming" the document, but simply of securing an intelligent adhesion to what was ab initio binding on the Council. Here, then, is the point : on the Roman view, the Tome was de fide for all Christians from the moment ' Clearly all the bishops had not. Some had— as was the case with Anatolius and others (in November, 450). Mr. Rivington makes the bishops in general say, "The declaration given by Leo suffices." This is very careless. What they did say was, " The expositions which have been given suffice," re- ferring mainly to the two forms of the Creed (Mansi, vi. 953). 22S JFAYMAHA^S IN CHURCH HISTORY. of its promulgation in June, 449 ; no bishops, either before the Council of Chalcedon or during its sittings, were competent to " review " it, or to withhold their submissive assent. Simply be- cause it came ex cathedra from Leo (for that it did so come was too plain for question), it was to be received, apart from all inquiry about its merits, as the teaching of Peter, as the oracle of the Holy Spirit. But this theory will not stand Avith the facts. The prelates who said that they had previously, and not in Council, signed the Tome, and those who on hearing it read broke forth into the famous acclamation, meant that they themselves personally approved of it, and held it to be intrinsically in accord- ance with the mind of St. Peter. " Piously and truly," they added, "has Leo taught ; so taught Cyril." ^ And this is made further evident by the long series of individual declarations of acceptance which fill so many columns in the record of the fourth session.^ Their general * Mansi, vi. 972. Mr, Rivington suggests that the object was to prove Cyril's teaching to be accordant with Leo's ("Depend- ence," p. 42). It was exactly the reverse. There was in many minds an apprehension that, by adopting the Tome with its assertion of Two Natures, they would be abandoning Cyril's contention for the One Person of Christ. It was a mistaken fear, but it had to be dealt with. ^ See Mansi, vii. 9, fif. The phrases imply a personal ex- PAPALISM AND ANTIQUITY. 229 drift is that the bishops approve the Tome because they believe, or have ascertained, that it is in harmony with the Creed and with the teaching of Cyril. To represent them, then, as "simply bowing to the authority of St. Peter speaking through Leo," and not exercising any true personal judgment, is really to falsify the record, which shows distinctly that the Council, as such, did pronounce judgment on the merits of the Tome, and did not, as Vatican principles would demand, accept it submissively as an oracular Instruction on the faith. In the fifth session the Roman legates, assisted by three imperial commissioners, did great service by inducing the Council to do what the doctrinal emergency required. There amination of the Tome, in comparison with existing standards. **I have found— we have found— I am fully persuaded— that it agrees with," etc. "As far as I have been able to perceive, it agrees," etc. " I perceive that it is nowise discordant," etc. "I find in it no divergence from," etc. Pope Vigilius himself says decisively, " Nulli venit in dubium quin patres nostri Ha a se venerabiliter crederent suscipi beati Leonis epistolam, si earn cum Nic?en?e (et) Constantinopolitanre synodorum, turn etiam beati Cyrilli in Kphesina prima expositis assererent convenire doctrinis : et si ilia tanti pontificis et tanta ortho- doxae fidei luce prrefulgens epistola his exigit cotuparationibus approbari,'^ etc.; and again of Cyril's teachings, "quorum conlatione tanti pontificis, ut dictum est, meruit doctrina /aWrt!r/" (Mansi, ix. 473). 230 WA y MARKS IN CHURCH HISTORY. had been at first a strong objection to the framing of any new formulary, lest it should be taken for anew creed; when this was got over, a formulary was drafted in a sense thoroughly anti-Nestorian, but insufficiently anti- Monophysite, whereas it was Monophysitism which the Council had specially to exclude. This paper, which is lost, spoke of our Lord as being "of two natures," — a vague phrase, which Dioscorus himself accepted in his own sense. Leo's Tome had said, " /;/ two natures," and Basil of Seleucia had said the same at the local synod.^ This clearly went to the point ; it meant, "Our Lord now exists in two spheres of being ; He is God, and He is Man." At last, and with some difficulty, the argument from consistency, " You have already accepted Leo's letter," combined with resolute pressure on the part of the government, secured the adoption of the phrase which secured the truth at issue.^ It is pertinent to observe that the Council in deposing Dioscorus, was not simply registering a sentence passed by Leo. Anatolius of Con- stantinople "votes with the Apostolic see, as * So in the text of the acts, ISIansi, vi. 685. ' Mansi, vii. 105 ; Tillemcnt, xv. 677, fi". PAPALISM AND ANTIQUITY. 23 1 agreeing in all points with it," and other bishops record their votes as concurring with Leo and Anatolius, and with " this holy Council." ^ On the other hand, there is the remarkable case of Theodoret ; after having been deposed at the Latrocinium, he appealed to Leo, who answered by declaring that he merited restoration to his see. But the Council did not accept this judgment as final ; it kept Theodoret w^aiting through several sessions as one who was still open to accusation ; at last it devoted the eighth session to a case which, on Vatican principles, was finita. It insisted that Theodoret should then and there clear himself of suspicion of heresy by anathematising Nestorius. He did so after a while, and added an anathema against all who should refuse to call the Virgin *' Theotocos," or should divide the Only-begotten into two Sons. Then, and not till then, the Council professed itself satisfied, and the le- gates themselves were fain to recognise its decision as superadded to what their master had *' long before " pronounced.^ Now compare this procedure with the "teaching" of the Vatican decree; "that the judgment of the •Apostolic see, the authority of which has no * Mansi, vi. 1048, ff. . ,- ::.;-*, Mansi, vii. 189. ^32 WAYMARKS IN CHURCH HISTORY. superior, is not to be reviewed (retractandimi) by any one, nor is any one free to judge con- cerning its judgment." On this showing, how can the Fourth CEcumenical Council be ac- quitted of disloyal encroachment on the sovereign rights of the Church's visible head ? As for the "twenty-eighth canon," which developed the Second Council's assertion of a precedency for the see of New Rome next to that of Old Rome into the erection of a Con- stantinopolitan patriarchate, the acts show the helplessness of the Roman legates when at- tempting, in the sixteenth session, to undo what had been done during their absence in the fifteenth.^ They first suggest that the pro- ceeding was irregular. The answer is prompt ; ** You were told that the church of Constanti- nople had some business to bring forward ; you were asked to take part in considering it, and you refused." Next they assume that the reso- lution was accepted under constraint; a shout arises, " No one was forced," and several bishops in succession state why they voted for it. When Paschasinus produces his Roman version of the sixth Nicene canon^ beginning, "That the R6man church has always held the primacy,'* * Mansi, vii. 425, ff. FAPALISM AND ANTIQUITY. 233 the Latin corruption is at once politely and effectively disposed of by the simple reading of the genuine Greek text.^ When, at the end of the session, the " interlocutor " of the com- missioners, supported by the acclamations of the Council, affirms the new canon, Lucentius, to save "the Apostolic see" from ** humiliation,'* demands that it be cancelled, or else that the legates' pretext be recorded ; but the commis- sioners answer bluntly and briefly, " Our inter- locutor has been ratified by the whole synod." But what happened afterwards ? Did not the Council address Leo as "their head, the divinely appointed guardian of the Vine, the interpreter of the words of Peter " ? Unques- tionably ; they treated him as presiding over their assembly ; they appreciated his high merit as a faithful exponent of all-important doc- trine ; they thought, it seems, that reverential language ^ would overcome his objection to the canon ; they carried diplomatic courtesy so far as to assume that the legates merely opposed ^ The Ballerini, and even Hefele, resort here to a weak sug- gestion of interpolation in the Chalcedonian acts. 2 Easterns were fluent in such phrases : the bishops hailed Marcian as "priest" and "teacher of faith" (Mansi, vii. 177). The Councillaad already, by its ninth canon, ignored any claims of the Roman see to appellate jurisdiction. 234 WAYMARKS IN CHURCH HISTORY, the canon in order that the benefit to the Eastern Church, which it involved, might origi- nate from the *' thoughtful care " of the Pope ! ^ Marcian afterwards asked him to *' be so good " as to assent to it, in his character of president of the synod by deputation. The emperor's tone is not at all that of humble entreaty ; he intimates surprise that Leo has not promptly confirmed all the proceedings of the synod, and Leo actually catches up a few phrases of the emperor's, praising his zeal for the ancient canons, as if they meant, *' I acquiesce in your rejection of the new one because of its deviation from Nicene lines." ^ Mr. Rivington imaginatively pictures both Marcian and Anatolius " as if on their knees " before Leo. In fact, Anatolius complains to Leo of the conduct of the legates, urges him to signify his own assent, and only after three years gives up the point, acknow- ledging that the validation of the Council's acts is reserved to Leo.^ And when Mr. Rivington tells us that " nothing more trans- pired concerning the canon, and it was omitted from the authorised collection of canons even in the East," he omits, and it is no small / Leo, Ep. 98. - Cf. Epp. no, 115. ' Epp. loi, 132. PAPALISM AND ANTIQUITY. 235 omission — it is a real siippressio veri — to say after Hefele that the Greeks did not adhere to the profession made by Anatolius, and that his successors continued to act as patriarchs under the terms of the new canon, with the full approval of their emperors, and in despite of the protests of Rome. Liberatus, writing about a century after the Council, puts the fact tersely and accurately, "Licet sedes apostolica nunc usque contradicat, quod a synodo firmatum est imperatoris patrocinio permanet quoque modo." It is very well to talk of" the canon invalidated," i.e. from the standpoint of papal assumption ; but it is the canon which has practically prevailed. The great doctrinal question which Chalce- don was to have settled continued, as is well known, to distract Egypt, where the condemna- tion of Dioscorus was bitterly resented, and the Council's " definition of the faith " was branded by prejudice as virtually Nestorlan. It also, some years later, involved Constantinople, and thereby other Eastern Churches, in the long complications of the " Acacian " dispute. Aca- cius of Constantinople was supposed to have condoned the Monophysitism of the Alexandrian Peter Mongus ; and Popes Felix and Gelasius, while posing as uncompromising enemies of 236 WAYMARKS IN CHURCH HISTORY, heresy, dishonoured the doctrine of the Re- deemer's gracious Humanity by a domineering absolutism of tone and a daring falsification of evidence,^ whilst Anastasius II. had not time to carry out his own more moderate policy. At last, when Acacius had been thirty years dead, and his church thirty-five years out of commu- nion with Rome, the combined urgency of Pope Hormisdas and the emperor Justin induced the patriarch John to accept a formula,^ in which he Avas to profess the strictest orthodoxy, to pledge himself to "follow the Apostolic see in all things " (that is, as the context shows, in all things pertaining to the Christological contro- versies), and to condemn the memory not only cf Acacius, but of all who had died in separation from Rome. John yielded, but ingeniously endeavoured to save the honour of his own church by prefixing a preamble, addressed to the Pope as his " fellow-minister," wherein the sees of Old and New Rome were complacently described as forming '' one see."^ (Imagine the faces in the Lateran when this was read !) Other Eastern bishops — probably a considerable * See Mansi, vii. 1140, viii. 54, for this Roman treatment of documents. - Mansi, viii, 451. ^ Comp. Mansi, viii. 456. PAPALISM AND ANTIQUITY. 237 number — signed the formula after John ; but in large parts of Asia Minor, in Syria, in Palestine, the severest government pressure failed to extort compliance with the required condemna- tion of deceased prelates ; and Hormisdas found it prudent to restore his communion to such recalcitrant Churches without touching this tender point -^ — in other words, without insisting on what might afterwards have been construed into an admission that union with Rome was essential to Catholic status. When, in the middle of the same sixth century, the Council commonly reckoned as the Fifth General repre- sented a sensitive zeal for the anti-Nestorian aspect of orthodoxy, the vacillating Pope Vigi- lius got into difficulties, which resulted in humi- liation ; and his ultimate acceptance of the Council's condemnation of certain writings known as the '' Three Chapters " ^ exasperated ' Cf. Mansi, viii. 504, 505, 509, 510, 1033. - The heretical writings of Theodore, the Nestorianising writings of Theodoret, the letter of Ibas to Maris. Vigilius, brought by Justinian's orders to Constantinople, (i) consented to condemn the "chapters" by his "Judicatum," April, 548; (2) withdrew it in form, but took a solemn oath to do nothing in favour of the " chapters," August, 556 ; (3) refused to come to the Council as being predominantly Eastern, so that it was opened without him. May, 553; (4) issued his "Constitutum " cen- suring Theodore's heretical language, but declining to anathe- matise him posthumously, or to touch the honour of Theodoret 23S WAYMAR/CS IN CHURCH HISTORY. a number of Western Churches into an actual breach with the Roman see. The Pope, they thought, had been false to Leo's teaching. The agitation was not even abated by the moral lift which Rome received through the illustrious pontificate of him whom the old English Church, in grateful reverence, called " Gregory our father." Much less of a theologian than Leo, he was at once more lovable as a man and more comprehensively energetic as a Pope ; and, as Dean Church has tersely observed,^ it is the " theological boldness or innocence " of some Anglicans which has interpreted his vehement denunciation of the title of " Uni- versal Bishop " as a disclaimer of papal supre- macy,^ although he certainly never claimed or Ibas ; (5) and when his name had been erased from the "diptychs," gave way under fear of exile, and accepted the condemnation of Theodore and his writings, of Theodoret's writings against Cyril, and of the letter to Ibas, December, 553, February, 554. If the pope was weak, the emperor was tyrannical ; and the Council was not equitable in its treatment of the case of Theodoret. ^ Miscellaneous Essays, p. 256. 2 When Gregory repeatedly says that the Council of Chal- cedon had offered this title to Leo, he confounds memorials read in the Council with an act of the Council itself (Mansi, vi. 1005, ff.). The Vatican decree inserts the passage, "Mens honor," etc., from his Ep. viii. 30, into a context Avhich would certainly have been surprising to his correspondent, the Catholic patriarch of Alexandria. FA PA LIS M AND ANTIQUITY. 239 " immediate jurisdiction " in all the dioceses of the Church. Little did this great Pope think that, fifty years after his own death, one of his successors would be exiled and practically martyred by the tyranny of a heterodox em- peror, and that, some twenty years later, another would be posthumously anathematised by an orthodox General Council. If the name of Martin I. has some of the fragrance of the eighth beatitude, that of Honorius I. has been a stand- ing crux to writers in the service of the Papacy. Newman, in his remarkable, though now almost forgotten, " Letter to the Duke of Norfolk," met this ** strong prima facie argument against the Pope's doctrinal infallibility " by suggesting that Honorius, in his two letters, did not intend ta speak ex cathedra. We certainly have no reason to think that he imagined himself to possess official infallibility ; but he was con- sulted as Roman patriarch, and he meant to speak with all the weight of that position. " We ought," he writes, to do this or that ; " you will, with us, affirm" so and so; and gives his judgment " as to what touches the Church's doctrine, and what we are bound to hold and teach." ^ There is more reason in the plea that he did not really ' Cf. Mansi, xi. 538, 543, 579. 24Q WAYMARKS IN CHURCH HISTORY. understand the bearings of the Monothelite question ; ^ but it was, to say the least, a danger- ous assumption to deny that there could be, in the Incarnate, a human will not antagonistic to the Divine. And the Sixth Council, in 680, took a severe view of the case ; it declared that he had " followed the false doctrines of heretics," *' confirmed the impious dogmas of Sergius ; " it anathematised him as a *•' heretic ;" ^ and the suggestion that the plain term "heretic," as applied by it to a Pope, meant no more than " remiss " or " negligent," is really too pitiful for consideration. If Leo II., in one letter, spoke of Honorius's fault as " negligence," in another he called it a " profane betrayal." Two subsequent Councils, called the Seventh and Eighth, *' rejected Sergius, Honorius, Cyrus . . . as adverse to true religion," or " anathematised Sergius and Pyrrhus, and with them Honorius, together with Cyrus ; " ^ the Popes' profession of * See Appendix, I. - jNIansi, xi. 553, 556. Because "Pope Agalho's letter, claim- ing that the popes had always in bold language strengthened their brethren," was heard by the Council without demur, Mr. Rivington infers that " the Council practically set its seal to the principle of Papal infallibility," although it dealt thus with the memory of Pope Honorius ! His account of the anathemas (Dependence, p. 81) is far from ingenuous. ^ Mansi, xiii. 377 ; xvi. 181. PA PA LIS M AND ANTIQUITY. 241 faith, through a series of pontificates, condemned Honorius as having " fomented the unsound assertions " of the Easterns ; and any one who can attribute the erasure of Honorius's name from the list of prelates condemned by the Sixth Council, in the fifth lesson for June 28 in the Roman Breviary, to " charity " in view of ** perverse misunderstanding," ^ must have lost, not only the sense of historical truth, but also all healthy perception of the absurd. It was a noble and truth-loving French priest who declared that "the question of personal infallibility was totally gangrened with fraud." ^ He would be much deceived who should imagine that the temptation to manipulate facts, to mis- interpret the purport of events, or to read un- warrantably between the lines of documents, has never been too strong for Anglicans,^ not to say * " Dependence," p. 85. 2 Gratry, Second Letter to Abp. Decliamps. ^ E.g. it is often assumed that the Northumbrian church and realm in 680 rejected the Roman decree in favour of Wilfrid as being Roman, and as constituting an interference. But this is to ignore evidence. The ground taken, according to Eddi, 34, was that the decree had been fraudulently obtained, "ut pretio redempta essent scripta ; " as afterwards king Aldfrid pretended to doubt the genuineness of a similar decree, " Apos- tolicse sedis, ut dicitis, scripta," Eddi, 58. In the final settle- ment, great respect was professed for "apostolic" decisions, although Wilfrid had to be content with far less than Rome R 242 WAYMARKS IN CHURCH HISTORY. for Protestants. But the extent to which, and the persistency with which, this method has been pursued, presumably for the sake of "edifica- tion," by Roman advocates, amounts to some- thing like a moral " sign " against a system that eget tall auxillo, had at first awarded. In fact, the EngHsh Church before the Conquest did not care to define its own relations to the Roman see, and " traces of Roman influence " on its internal affairs are " scanty " (Bp. Stubbs, Const. Hist. Engl. i. 2S0) ; but it will not do to shirk the fact that ecclesiastical " England looked up to Rome with the reverence due from a colony to its metro- polis " (Freeman, Norm. Conq., v. 492). THE CLERGY AND SECULAR EMPLOYMENTS. The " revival " or " restoration of the diaconatc " has been for some years past an attractive watchword, and that on two intelligible grounds. It appeals to those who look back with reve- rence to antiquity, and desire, in the spirit of a great Anglican saint, the " supply of what is lacking " in our conformity to primitive stand- ards. It appeals, perhaps yet more forcibly, to those who are deeply sensible of the present need for extended spiritual ministrations, in order to meet the immense demand which is made upon the Church by the ever-increasing growth of the population. Then, when persons are told that we have " practically lost an order of Christian ministry," and that if we could regain it, and set its forces at work, we should substantially provide for this demand, and so far be vindicating our Church's claims to keep 244 WAYMARKS AV CHURCH HISTORY. a hold both on the past and on the present, to stand in the old paths and yet to be equal to any new emergencies, it is both right and natural that attention should be secured. But then comes the question — How ? Forthwith many earnest speakers answer. By allowing men of zeal, piety, and sufficient theological knowledge, to become deacons without looking onward to the presbyterate, and at the same time to be independent of official stipend by retaining their secular occupations. As far as we know, it was Dr. Arnold who first started this idea ; and accordingly he was quoted at a Diocesan Conference in i88i as having written "forty years ago " — " The first step towards the restoration of the Church seems to be the revival of the order of deacons, which might be effected without any other change in our present system than the repeal of all laws, canons, or customs, which prohibit a deacon from following a secular calling, which confer upon him any civil exemptions, or subject him to any civil qualifications. The Ordination service, with the subscription to the Articles, would remain perfectly unaltered ; and, as no deacon can hold any benefice, it is manifest that the proposed measure would in no way in- THE CLERGY AND SECULAR EMPLOYMENTS. 245 terfere with the rights and duties of the order of presbyters or priests. . . . But the benefit would be enormous if we could have a large body of deacons, the ordained ministers of the Church, visiting the sick, managing charitable sub- scriptions, and sharing with the presbyters in those strictly clerical duties which now, in many cases, are far too much for the health and powers of the strongest. Yet a still greater advantage would be found in the link between the clergy and the laity by the revival of an order appertaining in a manner to both." Reference was also made to another expression of Dr. Arnold's mind on this point, contained in a letter to " A. P. Stanley, Esq.," dated February 27, 1839. "In large towns, many worthy men might be found to undertake the office out of pure love, if it were to be understood to be not necessarily a step to the presbyterial order, nor at all incompatible with lay callings^ ^ The seventy-fifth canon merely forbids ecclesi- astical persons to "give themselves to any base or servile labour ; " but the statute i and 2 Vict. c. 106, makes it illegal for them to " carry on any trade or dealing for gain or profit, or to deal in any goods, wares, or merchandise," save in ' Stanley's Life of Arnold, ii. 146. 246 WAYMARKS IN CHURCH HISTORY. certain excepted cases, in none of which, how- ever, may the cleric carry on the business personally.^ In attempting to estimate this proposal in the light of ancient Christian and ecclesiastical usage, it will be needless to dwell on that form of "extension of the diaconate" which would confine itself to the case of persons willing to serve the Church in that order, dispensing with stipend on the ground of independent income. If any such persons, whether country gentlemen or retired professional men, should give evidence of a genuine vocation, and of a clear purpose to live as ordained men and not as laics, it is not clear that any objection could be raised against their admission to the diaconate, on the understanding that they did not, at least at present, intend to ask for promotion to the priesthood.^ The only plan practically in ques- tion is the proposal that men who have already committed themselves to some reputable secular calling should, by due repeal of canonical or statutable restrictions, be allowed to become * Cripps, The Law relating to Church and Clerg}', p. 65. ^ In the case of persons who had determined never to apply for priest's orders, there would be no doubt an unreality in the use of the collect which supposes that the ordinands will in time be called to " the hitrher ministries in the Church." THE CLERGY AND SECULAR EMPLOYMENTS. 24J deacons a7id to retain their temporal employ- ment. It failed to receive the approval of the Upper House of the Convocation of Canter- bury in 1884 and 1887, of the Lower House in 1888, and of most of the diocesan confer- ences which discussed it in iSS6-y, In particular, the London conference, March 3, 1886, resolved that the diaconate should be extended and made more efficient by " the ad- mission to it of such suitable and duly qualified persons as are not excluded by law, but that nothing should be done to reduce the order in the public mind to the level of a lay ministry." If the necessary changes in secular and canon law were effected, we should see a number of professional men — not to say tradesmen — applying to bishops for admission to the diaconate, on the understanding that they were to maintain themselves, as before, by their secular business, and also, of course, that during the week-days they should only be called upon to devote their " /m?/r^ time," as it has been expressed, to work properly clerical. We pass over the necessary qualifications of sufficient religious knowledge and what the Church calls " godly conversation ; " they are assumed on both sides. The barrister, solicitor, 248 - WAYMARKS IN CHURCH HISTORY. physician, surgeon, auctioneer, bookseller (for we do not indicate such trades or lines of busi- ness as might hardly seem compatible with the amount or kind of knowledge, in rebus sacris^ which every deacon ought to bring with him to ordination), would, on approval, be ordained, and, probably, be licensed to preach, perhaps with some limitations. He would wear clerical attire on Sunday, and officiate in church as his vicar's assistant ; he would baptise in the vicar's absence ; he might hwxy the dead ; he would catechise in church, and preach, at any rate in a mission-room ; he would take part, above all, in the administration of the Holy Eucharist. On Monday he would resume his lay dress ; he v/ould be in all men's eyes what he was before his ordination ; he would see his patients, advise his clients, or, it may be, attend to his customers ; this ordinary routine of honourable secular work would necessarily be continued until the Saturday evening, with the exception of such occasional interludes of spiritual ministration as would be consistent with the demands of the profession or trade by which he would have to live and make his money. These are simply the facts as they would be. And before taking account of argu^ THE CLERGY AND SECULAR EMPLOYMENTS. 249 ments on the merits of the case, let us, by way of clearing the ground, consider how far the scheme would be a "restoration." Is it, in fact, a return to antiquity ? does it rely on authentic precedents ? Let us take three points : I. The fact that St. Paul, at least sometimes, amid his Apostolic labours, worked at the trade which he had learned, like all Jewish boys, in youth. Himself the " bondsman " of that Lord whose sacred hands, before the beginning of His ministry, had held the tools of a carpenter at Nazareth, the Apostle, with '' the care of all the Churches " on his mind, " found time and strength," as Dollinger expresses it, "to make carpets and tent-covers." ^ As Dean Howson has said, when the young Saul's father, "in compliance with this good and useful custom," had to choose for his son a craft which might " fortify him against idleness or against ad- versity, none would occur to him more natu- rally than the profitable occupation of the making of tents, the material of which was hair- cloth, supplied by the goats of his native pro- vince," and known for ages by the name of ciliciinn. St. Paul's hand had not lost its cunning ; and so at Thessalonica, during his - ^Dollinger, First Age of the Church, E. Tr., p. 375. ,25o WAYMARKS IN CHURCH HISTORY, second missionary journey, he " did not eat bread for nought at any man's hand, but worked hard night and day " (2 Thess. iii. 8). Soon afterwards, while he was at Corinth, St. Luke tells us that the Apostle lodged and worked with Aquila and Priscilla, " because he was of the same craft" (Acts xviii. 3) ; and he himself repeatedly reminds the Corinthians that he had thus supplied his own needs (i Cor. ix. 12, ff.). He followed the same practice while at Ephesus, during his third missionary journey, as we learn from I Cor. iv. 12 and Acts xx. 34. Now, what is the relevance of these facts to the pro- posal before us ? An archdeacon at a diocesan conference boldly declared that *'Mr. Gedge's bill" followed the Pauline precedent. Others have used equivalent language. But let us observe (i) that any argument from St. Paul's conduct is just as good for the case of bishops or priests as for the case of deacons. (2) No one at Thessalonica, Corinth, or Ephesus, could possibly fail to see that the Apostle's manual labour was altogether subordinate to his Apos- tolic duties; he himself intimates that he snatched time from the hours of sleep in order to earn money by this occupation. (3) Both at Thessalonica and at Corinth he did accept con- THE CLERGY AND SECULAR EMPLOYMENTS. 251 tributions from other Churches ; so that there, at any rate, his was not the case of a Christian minister supporting himself altogether by secular work (Phil. iv. 16, 2 Cor. ^\. 8, from which latter passage, indeed, we should not have learned that he did anything in this way for his maintenance). Further (4), he had, as he himself tells us, two special motives for this self-denying exertion. At Thessalonica he wished, by a striking " ex- ample," to correct the tendency of the local Christians to idleness (2 Thess. iii. 9-12). At Corinth and at Ephesus he deemed it expedient to silence Judaising misrepresentations, which imputed sordid motives to the man who, above all others, was sensitive on the point of in- tegrity.^ The adversaries who dogged his foot- steps, and left no stone unturned to destroy an influence which they dreaded as revolutionary, had dared to insinuate that he was after all, in a worldly sense, a gainer by his Gentilising pro- paganda. Hence his resolution to "cut off occasion from those who desired an occasion," and " to cause no hindrance to the Gospel," such as might have ensued from any suspicion of self-interest ; hence the pathetic protestation at Miletus, " I coveted no man's silver, nor gold, 1 See Howson's Character of St. Paul, p. 168. 252 IVA y MARKS I.V CHURCH HISTORY. nor apparel. Ye yourselves know that these hands ministered unto my necessities, and to them that were with me." Lastly (5), his words on this subject to the Thessalonians and Cor- inthians contain an express reservation of that ministerial right to a maintenance, which, for certain reasons, he chose "not to urge to the full." " Not that we have not a right (fc^ouo-tav), but that we might make ourselves an example to you." And yet more emphatically in the long context, i Cor. ix. 4-18, the Apostle urges this ministerial right on the threefold ground of natural reason, of a Mosaic precept spiritually interpreted, and, above all, of the express com- mand of Christ. Referring, doubtless, to the precept, " Provide neither gold nor silver nor brass in your purses ... for the labourer is worthy of his hire," he lays it down positively and dogmatically, that the Lord Himself had '' ordained that those who preached the Gospel should live of the Gospel." It had been argued in the House of Laymen, in 1887, by Mr. Sydney Gedge, that ** either there must be increased means of paying the men, or they must be men who would work for no pay, or for very little remuneration indeed." Here is the point : if more men could l^e found, THE CLERGY AND SECULAR EMPLOYMENTS. 253 there would be a difficulty about maintaining them as clergy ; the laity might fail to supply the "means." Now, does the Divine "ordi- nance," referred to by St. Paul, bind Chris- tian people in our age and country, or does it not ? Has it nothing to say to the richest laity of any Church on earth, who already, by virtue of long-standing endowments, enjoy a large amount of ministerial service without any contribution of their own ? We can faintly imagine what St. Paul would have said, if he could have foreseen that his own high-minded self-abnegation would be quoted in order to warrant such a laity in allowing a new class of ordained ministers to depend for support on this or that "secular calling." The difficulty of " finding the right men " is another matter ; but we have surely the fullest scriptural authority for contending that it ought to be the difficulty in the case. II. And this naturally leads us to consider the position held by deacons, as such, in the early Christian Church, which had inherited the teaching of St. Paul. We may begin by hearing the testimony of St. Ignatius. How did the martyr bishop of Antioch, who had probably conversed with more than one of the Twelve, 254 IVAYMARKS IN CHURCH HISTORY. regard the office of deacons ? As one might who had pondered the combination of deacons with liricTKOTroi, that is, presbyters, in the address of the Epistle to the Philippians, and in the first Epistle to Timothy. The deacons are marked off, with the bishops and presbyters, from the general body of the faithful (Magn. 13, Trail. 7, Philad. 4, etc.). They have been entrusted with cijiKovLav 'b^o-ou Xpiarov, which Bishop Lightfoot takes to mean *' a service under Jesus Christ " (on Magn. 6) ; and the phrase also reminds us of terms in which St. Paul speaks of himself as a ^iukovoq of God or of Christ, and even of Christ as ^kikovoq of the circumcision. Again, the deacons have been " appointed according to the mind of Jesus Christ " (Philad. i). The Smyrnseans are bidden to " pay respect to the deacons as to God's commandment." In a very abrupt passage, Ignatius enjoins the Trallians to "respect the deacons as Jesus Christ, even as they respect in the bishop a type of * the Father ; ' " a " start- ling comparison," as Lightfoot says,^ "which rests on the assumption that the relations of the deacon to the bishop are analogous to those of Christ to the Father" (i.e. of Christ in His ' S3. Ignatius and Polycarp, i. 157, on Trail. 3. THE CLERGY AND SECULAR EMPLOYMENTS, 255 ministry as Son of Man). Two passages are significant as to their function ; one implies that the Philadelphian successors, so to speak, of Stephen and Phih'p had something to do with the public teaching. *' I cried out while I was with you, . . . Give ye heed to the bishop, and the presbytery, and deacons." Yet more emphatically in Trail. 2, the more spiritual side of their ministry is exhibited ; ^they are "deacons of the mysteries of Jesus Christ — not deacons of meats and drinks, but servants [or, 'under- officers'] of God's Church." On which Bishop Lightfoot comments — " The diaconate was originally instituted ZiaKovCiv T^air'cZ,mQ (Acts vi. 2) ; and these less spiritual duties of the office, such as the distribution of the alms, the arrange- ment of the Agape, and the like, tended to engross' the interests of the deacon ; he needed therefore to be reminded that the diaconate had a higher aspect also." They could hardly be thus "en- grossed" by their eleemosynary ministrations, if they were mainly occupied, in the sense required by Mr. Gedge's proposal, with the routine of secular work. It has been strangely contended that " there could scarcely be a more secular or more unecclesiastical occupation than the doling out of rations, or what represented 256 WAYMARKS JN CHURCH HISTORY. rations, to all the members of the infant com- munity." Not strictly to " all," but to the poor, who, as we know, formed the main body of the Church ; but, whether they were more or fewer in any Church, no one who reads Rom. xv. 25-27, or 2 Cor. viii. and ix., will compare the collecting or administering of charitable funds, in point of " secularity," with the ordinary tasks of a modern man of business. Those who "served tables" at Jerusalem were thereby discharging an ecclesiastical trust, not carrying on a trade or profession for their own maintenance, but " minis- tering to the saints," to adopt St. Paul's phrase. The sum of this is, that taking these Ig- natian passages together, and assuming that they date from about ten years after the death of the last Apostle, we cannot reasonably sup- pose the officials then described to have been deacons after Mr. Gedge's pattern. They were evidently devoted to the exclusive service of Christ in His Church. They were, in a most practical sense, addicti eccIesicE et episcopo. In that age, as Bingham says,^ they performed " all such offices as were in after ages committed to the inferior orders, such as the offices of readers, subdeacons, exorcists or catechists, doorkeepers, ^ Bingham, b. ii. c. 20, s. 15 (vol. i. p. 301). THE CLERGY AND SECULAR EMFLOYMEi\TS. 257 and the like" — of which, apparently, the reader's office was the first instituted, since Tertullian speaks of it as of an office long established.^ Bingham is here reiterating what is affirmed by St. Thomas Aquinas : " In primitiva ecclesia, propter paucitatem ministrorum, omnia inferiora ministeria diaconibus committebantur," so that the powers required for them were " implicite in una diaconi potestate."^ But after these in- ferior orders were created, the deacons still had their hands full enough. Besides their functions in church, they had the general administration or stewardship of Church property, and of the funds belonging to the widows and orphans.^ They were the Church's recognised almoners, as we know from the beautiful story of St. Laurence. In times of persecution, "it was their duty to minister to the confessors in their prisons, and to bury the bodies of the martyrs." They were permitted, when no presbyter was accessible, to hear confession, and bless by laying on hands, in the case of certain peni- tents at the approach of death.* They were in close relation to the bishop, as St. Cyprian * De Prgescript. Hser. 41, ^ Supplein. q. 37, a. 2, 2. ' See Diet. Christ. Antiq. i. 528. * Cypr. Ep. 18. S 258 WAYMARKS IN CHURCH HISTORY. says that they were *' appointed to attend on the episcopal office of the Apostles, and on the Church." ^ They were to be aides-de-camp and messengers of the bishops. Laurence thus asked Sixtus, " When wert thou wont to offer the Sacrifice without thy minister } " that is, "without me to * serve ' you ; " and the readers of the life of St. Athanasius will remember how he em- ployed an able and energetic deacon to hunt out Arsenius in his hiding-place.^ The bishop had thus a standing right over their time and over their best energies ; they were " channels of communication" between him and his people to inform him of ''scandals," and to '' relieve him of the lighter cases brought " to him " for adjudi- cation." Hence the familiar description of the deacon as "the bishop's eye," or "ear," or " mouth." Their numbers differed in various places. Thus, when Arius was originally con- demned, the clergy who by their signatures expressed their assent to their archbishop's judgment were seventeen priests and twenty- four deacons of Alexandria, and nineteen priests and twenty deacons of the Mareotis. There was also a large number of deacons at Con- stantinople, though ultimately we find there six ' Cypr. Ep. 3. ■ Athan. Apol. c. Ari. 65-67. THE CLERGY AND SECULAR EMPLOYMENTS. 259 chief deacons beside the archdeacon. In some churches the original number of seven was strictly adhered to ; we find this actually pre- scribed by the Council of Neocaesarea in 314 ; and the valuable clerical statistics preserved in Euseb. vi. 43 inform us that at Rome, in the middle of the third century, there were seven deacons and seven subdeacons, as against forty- six presbyters and forty-two acolyths. The same rule was retained at Rome in the fourth and in the fifth century. This proportion en- couraged the Roman deacons to assume a loftiness of bearing which drew from Jerome a characteristic outburst of resentment. But it is easy to judge whether such deacons as have been thus briefly described would recog- nise their own representatives in deacons who could but give to their church the odds and ends of their weekday time. The archdeacon already referred to told his hearers that, "when he was at Cambridge, he was constantly having impressed on him by those in authority that the great wisdom of the Church of England was to follow the precedents of the first three centuries. It was beyond all question that to adopt the principle of the bill would be following the precedent of the first 26o WA y MARKS IN CHURCH HISTORY. three centuries." This affirmation was cheered, presumably by those who had not studied the extant evidence as to the h'ght in which the deacons of those centuries were regarded, or the nature of the work which they had to per- form. It may be well to produce a little more positive evidence from these same centuries ; at present let us observe that the sacredness of the diaconate was so fully recognised, that Optatus, in the fourth century, spoke of deacons as "in tertio sacerdotio constitutos," using "sacer- dotium" for a "holy order." This, however, was exceptional language ; and Praesidius, whom Jerome sent to Africa as a deacon, had become at least a presbyter when Augustine wrote to him as " consacerdoti." ^ Usually the deacons were compared to the Levites ; and at Carthage their office was called a " ministerium " as dis- tinct from " sacerdotium." Yet, in default of presbyters, deacons were sometimes put in charge of flocks ; and this may explain why, in Gaul, they often took upon themselves to " make the oblation " — a presumption decisively checked by the Council of Aries, as afterwards the Nicene Council did not enact, but assumed as of course, that they had no commission to do so. But one ^ Cf. Jerome, Ep. 103 : Aug. Ep. 74. THE CLERGY AND SECULAR EMPLOYMENTS. 261 may here not inconveniently notice a statement by Dr. Arnold, which has lately been repro- duced, to the effect that " according to the canon law, the deacon is half a layman, and could return at any time to a lay condition altogether." Dr. Arnold was not likely to have made a study of such matters ; and he was doubtless unaware of a passage in the Roman Pontifical, in which the candidates for the subdiaconate, which, as we all know, is unwarrantably included by Rome among the sacred orders, receive the following admonition.:— "Hactenus . . . liberi estis, licetque vobis pro arbitrio ad ssecularia vota transire ; quod si hunc ordinem suscepe- ritis, amplius non licebit a proposito resilire, sed Deo, cui servire regnare est, perpetuo famulari . . . atque in ecclesiae ministerio semper esse mancipatos. Proinde, dum tempus est, cogitate," etc. We need not dwell on the language in which the ordaining bishop is directed by the Ponti- fical to address the "diaconandi." He bids them consider earnestly " ad quantum gradum ecclesiae ascenditis ; " while at the same time the whole rite is so constructed as to set forth the far superior dignity of the priesthood. Of course the Pope is held to have a dispensing 262 WAYAMRKS IN CHURCH HISTORY. power which could cancel the obligations, with- out effacing the "character," of a deacon, or, for that matter, of a priest. Reginald Pole, while only a deacon, hoped to obtain release from his vows in order to espouse Queen Mary ; and in the previous century Alexander VI. solemnly freed that remarkable deacon, Csesar Borgia, from all the bonds of ecclesiastical life.^ But the point is (and the statement is made on high Roman Catholic authority) that the bonds would remain, for any deacon in the Roman Church, until relaxed by Papal dispensation ; he could not unloose them for himself at will.^ III. But now, to come close to the point, let us see whether certain ardent speakers have been justified in their deduction from certain facts and certain documents relating to secular work as done, or allowed to be done, by eccle- siastics in the fourth and fifth centuries. We will take first the oft-quoted canons of the so- called "Fourth Council of Carthage." Much has been made of some canons in this long series. They have been claimed as proving ' See Bishop Creighton, Hist, of Papacy, etc., iii. 266. - The case of Bermado I., king of the Asturias and Leon, in 788, is exceptional ; his people put pressure on him, though a deacon, to accept the crown and to marry. But he soon abdicated in compunction. THE CLERGY AND SECULAR EMPLOYMENTS. 263 that the African Church formally allowed the clergy to support themselves by manual labour or trade. But what do these canons say ? They contain numerous directions as to the conduct of bishops, and one as to that of presbyters. Then come five canons, 37-41, relating to deacons. The last of them is — "Ut diaconus tempore oblationis tantum, vel lectionis, alba utatur." Then comes canon 42 — " Clericum, inter tentationes officio suo incubantem, gradibus sublimandum." Then, after an inserted pro- vision, to the effect that a layman who has suffered for the Catholic cause shall be highly honoured by priests, and receive supplies of food through a deacon, comes a long string of canons relating to the "clerici." **A cleric is not to wear long hair or a beard. A cleric is to indicate his profession by his dress and demeanour. ... A cleric is not to walk in the streets, except when absolutely obliged by his duty. A cleric is not to walk about the market- places, except for the purpose of buying some- thing. A cleric who is absent from the vigils, except in case of bodily infirmity, is to be mulcted of his stipend. A cleric who, amid temptations, avoids his duty, or discharges it negligently, is to be removed from office." Then 264 ■ WAYMARKS IN CHURCH HISTORY. come canons 51, 52, 53: " Clericus, quantum- libet verbo Dei eruditus, artificio victum quserat ;" " Clericus victum et vestimentum sibi artificiolo vel agricultura, absque officii sui detrimento, paret ; " " Omnes clerici qui ad operandum vali- diores sunt, et artificiola et litteras discant." The term "clerici" would naturally be used for members of all the orders below the epis- copate, from the presbyterate downwards ; but as here the *' clerici " are named after and apart from deacons, Bingham takes them to be the " inferior clergy " or members of the minor orders,^ the subdeacons, acolyths, readers, etc., just as Hilary the Deacon speaks first of " deacons," then of " clerici," ^ and the Council of Laodicea requires " the ministers and all the clerics " to pay respect to the deacons.^ But this may be too restrictive for the context. These canons, however, do not sanction the arrangement now proposed. For as the Arch- bishop of Canterbury said, in his memorable speech to the Upper House in 1887, "Labour, ^ Bingham, vi. 4. 13 ; cf. i. 5. 8. The Third Council of Carthage uses "clerici " in both senses — generally in c. 11, etc. ; restrictively in c. 15, — *' Placuit ut episcopi et presbyteri et diaconi vel clerici non sint conductores, etc." ^ Ambrosiaster, In Eph. iv. 11. ^ By "ministers" {vir-qp^Twv) we must understand, as Hefele says, the subdeacons. THE CLERGY AND SECULAR EMPLOYMENTS. 265 if poverty necessitates it — that is what is per- mitted by the Fourth Council of Carthage. If a clergyman was without food or raiment, then he was permitted to work for them. . . . Food and raiment ... a meagre result of an *arti- ficium ' ... or of ' litterae ; ' but it is all that is allowed. . . . That is what the canons . . . say." His Grace next alluded to a law of Gratian and Valentinian II. as enacting that "clerici" might employ "the miserable sum of ten or fifteen solidV in a business.^ This law is one of a series on the "lustral tax," otherwise called " chrysargyrum," to which all tradesmen were liable. It has been said that " when the Roman empire became Christian, the law encouraged the clergy to earn their own living by exempting them from the ' chrysargyrum.' " As to this, Bingham understands the " clerici " thus ex- empted to be " the inferior orders," thus " allowed to traffic, to support themselves, without paying any tribute of this nature, when the Church's revenues were scanty, and not sufficient to give all the clergy a decent maintenance." Certainly the first law as to this commerce-tax excepts " only those ' clerici ' who are called * coplatae,' " a very inferior class of ecclesiastical function- ' See Cod. Theod. xiii. i. 11, a.d. 379; Bingham, v. 3. 6. 266 IVAYMARKS IN CHURCH HISTORY. aries, appointed (by Constantine ?) to manage funerals. A law of somewhat later date appears to distinguish the " copiatae " from the " clerici," while exempting both from the (lustra!) "con- tribution" on condition of their aiming at nothing by trade more than "tenuem victum vestitumque." The law goes on to require this tax from the rest who were reckoned among ''negotiatores" at its last exaction, and after- wards " clericorum se coetibus adgregarunt " — a phrase which implies that they had not risen beyond the lower grades of the clerical body. Profits beyond mere maintenance were to be given to the poor. But to return to the canons of Carthage ; the archbishop proceeds to point out that " in the canon itself it is distinctly pro- vided that even this kind of trading by clerks must not be allowed to interfere with the dis- charge of their office — absque officii stn . . . detri- inento. Now surely all this is the very contrary of what is now proposed. Such enactments cannot be produced to support the idea that deacons may occupy themselves in secular pro- fessions. ... It is one thing to labour as a clergyman, and to earn sufficient by some occu- pation to get food and raiment, and another thing for a trader or professional man to take THE CLERGY AND SECULAR EMPLOYMENTS. 267 up diaconal work as a side pursuit. They are entirely different," etc. Similarly Bishop Harold Browne, himself an advocate of relaxation, had (as Bishop Ellicott dryly remarked), " in the last part of his speech, completely answered himself in regard to the earlier. He had justly pointed out that the case of the 'clerici,' said to be permitted to engage, for their bare livelihood, in so-called secular occupations, was very different from that of deacons engaged in trades, under the circum- stances in which trades are now carried on, and with the engrossing competitions with which we are now all perfectly familiar." And if we want to see how the Church of the early ages felt, and what restrictions she laid upon her ministers as safeguards against a secularising tendency, let us look at the seventh "Apostolic" canon, which is, at least in substance, very ancient : " Let not a bishop, presbyter, or deacon take upon himself secular cares (ivOd/xfKa^ (ppovri^ag)." -^ Archbishop Benson would "not press at all" the eighty-first and eighty-third canons of this series, because they are of later date. ^•But then," he said, "we have most marked ' On this canon see Bingham, vi. 4. 9 ; xvii. 5. 11. 268 WAYMARKS m CHURCH HISTORY. testimony in Cyprian's first epistle, where, alluding to a much older Council ... he gives one instance of the principle which he says is acknowledged : ' Quae nunc ratio et forma in clero tenetur, ut qui in ecclesia Domini ordinatione clerica promoventur, in nuUo ab administratione divina avocentur, ne molestiis et negotiis saicularibus adligentur. . . . Ad ter- rena et sseculares actus vacare non possunt.' ^ They cannot attend to their religious work and to worldly cares too." We need not quote St. Cyprian's well-known censure of the secularity produced by the " Long Peace," as having even induced *' many bishops to disregard their office as stewards of God, and to become procuratores reriim scBcularmin'' ^ This evidence is well within that period of the first three centuries which has been referred to as warranting the exercise of secular professions by deacons, though not by priests. In the fourth century there was ' Cypr. Ep. I. He adds, "but that by the respectful contributions of the brethren they only receive, as it were, tithes of the fruits of the earth," etc. This language is such as to cover the case of deacons, although it was called forth by the nomination of a priest as executor. Nor does his principle depend on its relation to such a case. ^ Cypr. de T.apsis, c. 6. THE CLERGY AND SECULAR EMPLOYMENTS. 269 Still further need to guard the clergy against the temptation of worldliness ; and so the Council of Elvira forbade bishops, presbyters, or deacons to leave their posts in order to pursue a secular business, and only permitted them to employ agents in such a matter when it was a question of providing themselves with food ("sane ad victum sibi conquirendum.")^ And the Council of Hippo, in 393, provided, by its fifteenth canon, that bishops, presbyters and deacons should not be " conductores [agents] aut procuratores privatorum, neque ullo negotio tali victum quaerant, quo eos peregrinari, vel ab ecclesiasticis officiis avocari necesse sitP'^ Can words make it plainer that deacons, as well as presbyters and bishops, are to give their main time to the Church's work ? Observe, too, that this canon does not simply debar them from such secular work as was in itself discreditable or demoralising ; it rests its order on their primary obligation to sacred service — an obliga- tion which, for the deacons of the new scheme, * Mansi, Concil. ii. 9. - Mansi, iii. 921. Compare Jerome, Ep. 52. 5, to Nepotiaii : " Negotiatorem clericum quasi quamdam pestem fuge." See, too, the pseudo-Augustinian In Qusest. Vet. et Novi Testament! (in appendix to Aug. Op. tom. iii.), c. 127, that a man is not allowed " negotiari " after he becomes an ecclesiastic. 270 WAYMARKS IN CHURCH HISTORY. would become secondary. Another canon of higher rank is the third of Chalcedon ; it enacts that " no bishop, nor cleric " (here, of course, the term is used for all ecclesiastics below the episcopate), " nor monk, shall engage in the management of temporal affairs, unless he be either absolutely required by the law to undertake the guardianship of minors, or be permitted by the bishop of the diocese to manage ecclesiastical business " {i.e. of a temporal kind), "or the affairs of orphans not otherwise provided for, and of such persons as specially need the aid of the Church, because of the ear of the Lord."^ This canon naturally in- troduces us to the exceptional instances which have been adduced as permitting clergymen to follow a secular calling. Referring, clearly, to the ancient clergy in general, Bingham says that it was deemed " lawful to spend their leisure hours upon any manual trade or calling, when it was to answer some good end of charity thereby ; as that they might not be over-burdensome to the Church, or might have some superfluities to bestow ' See Notes on Canons of First Four General Councils, pp. 152, 156. The curious "canon" assigned to Edgar's reign, which directs priests to learn a handicraft ' ' for the sake of learn- ing" (Wilkins, i. 225), is hardly to our present purpose. THE CLERGY AND SECULAR EMPLOYMENTS. 271 upon the . . . needy, or even that they might set the laity a provoking example" (cf. Heb. X. 24, A.V.) " of industry and diligence in their callings." 1 He adds that "after St. Paul's example, " many eminent bishops of the ancient Church were not ashamed to employ their spare hours in some honest labour." Thus when Spyridon, the canonised Cypriot bishop, retained his former occupation as a shepherd, he did so, says Socrates, " out of deep humility ; " ^ and Sozomen adds that "of the fruits which accrued to him he gave away part to the poor, and lent the rest, without interest, to those who wished to borrow."^ When Zeno, bishop of Maiuma, kept up till his death, at a very advanced age, his old practice of weaving linen, he lived by part of the profits, and spent the rest in charity ; and this handicraft never interfered with his daily attendance at "the morning and evening hymns, or any other divine service." ^ Epiphanius knew, it seems, of a great many similar cases ; in all of them the object was partly to obtain funds for charitable purposes ; in all of them the temporal industry was of a kind compatible with "con- • Bingham, vi. 4. 13 (vol. ii. p. 199). - Soc. i. 12. ' Soz. i. II. Mb. vii. 28. 272 IVAYMARKS IN CHURCH HISTORY. tinuous attendance on ecclesiastical duties ; " in all of them the labour thus undergone was purely voluntary ; the " priests " who thus "imitated St. Paul" had an indefeasible right to be maintained {koI Kara ^iKaioGvvr]v aLTovjiivwy).^ But how manifest is the true relation which such condescension, so to call it, bore to what Bingham calls the " proper business " of the clergy! Nothing was for a moment to come between one who so acted and the perpetual obligations of his ministry. His life on the weekdays would be in no danger of seeming a laic life, plus some occasional calls to clerical duty. " These men," said Bishop Campbell in Convocation in 1884, "were following their spiritual calling first and foremost. . . . No one of their contemporaries who witnessed their lives, or of those that read the record of them now, could mistake this. While one was tending sheep, and another weaving linen, they did not degrade the higher, but raised and sanctified the humbler office." It was so, doubtless, with the Galatian presbyter Fronto, who, in a time of persecution and therefore of * Epiph. Haer. 80. 6. Cp. Apost. Const, ii. 6^. Gerontius, the eccentric bishop of Nicomedia whom Chrysostom deposed, had endeared himself to his people by placing his medical skill at their service, Soz. viii. 6. THE CLERGY AND SECULAR EMPLOYMENTS. 273 impoverishment, " practised agriculture," and by a questionable use of the produce of his vineyard stole away a martyr's body from the soldiers set to guard it ; ^ and with one of St. Basil's presby- ters, and even with all his clergy in 375, who had to practise " handicraft " or "sedentary arts in order to obtain daily food " in the then dis- tressed condition of the Church of Cappadocian Caesarea.2 So the Roman council of 6Z0, ad- dressing Constantino III., mentions the result of barbaric warfare on clerical income : " De labore corporis victus est, eo quod pristina ecclesiarum sustentatio paulatim per diversas calamitates deficiendo succubuit."^ It may well have been so with many a clergyman who, for special reasons, acted as a local magistrate, or gave legal advice to rural patients, or prescribed for them when no doctor was within reach ; or with St. Patrick's* father, the deacon Calpurnius, who was a " decurio," perhaps from inability to find a substitute who could represent him in one of those sorely burdened municipal bodies or " curiae," which Mr. Hodgkin has called " gaols " ' Ruinart, Act. Mart. Sine, p. 384. * Basil, Epp. 81, 198. ' Mansi, xi. 287. * Compare the opening of his "Confession " with his *' Letter to the Subjects of Coroticus," c. 5. T 274 WAYMARKS IN CHURCH HISTORY, of the middle-class subjects of the decadent empire.^ It may have been the case, long afterwards, with many a mediaeval chancellor- prelate or prince-bishop, who succeeded in resisting the temptation to let the secular character absorb the sacred, a temptation bitterly deplored by Colet in a Convocation sermon, and fully recognised by Laud, who guarded his defence of the employment of prelates in State offices by the proviso (borrowed from 2 Tim. ii. 4) that he must not be "entangled" therein.^ It may also have been the case with some clergymen dispossessed for conscience' sake, or ministers of a poor unendowed communion, ashamed to live on charity, and fain to support themselves by some business, as was the case with Cartwright, one of the last Nonjuring bishops, who practised ^ Hodgkin, Italy and her Invaders^ ii. 604. See Basil, Ep. 84, on the case of a boy of four made a "curialis," his old grandfather being saddled with the obligations. * Laud, Works, vi. 181. Robertson, the translator of Moehler's Symbolism, tells a story (Introd. p. Ix), which was a favourite with the late Bishop Forbes, that an archbishop-elector of Mentz in the last century, passing through the streets, and seeing a poor man in a dying condition, considerately ordered his servants to " fetch a priest." The Council of Trent recognised cases of episcopal " absence" from diocesan duty "propter aliquod niunus et reipublicse officium episcopatibus adjunctum " (Sess. 23, de Ref. i). THE CLERGY AND SECULAR EMPLOYMENTS. 275 as a surgeon at Shrewsbury. To mention one more instance. When the good peasant-folk of Seathwaite knew that Robert Walker was wont, while teaching in the day-school, to eke out his wretched stipend by spinning wool, "in which trade he was a great proficient," or was ready to aid them in the shearing of their flocks, did they ever forget for a moment that he was essentially their pastor, and that this character adhered to him through every hour of his truly " wonderful " life ? But enough of these " precedents." They furnish, we think, another warning as to the seductive untrustworthiness of those hasty com- parisons and false analogies which so often misled the late Dean Stanley, and which still crop up exuberantly in the pleadings of imagi- native Broad Churchmen. One could not state the case more tersely than in the words of Archdeacon Bathurst, at the Ely Conference : '• In every precedent he had found that the trade was supplementary to the orders, and not the orders supplementary to the trade." The same antithesis is put, with less of condensation, in the report of the committee of bishops. Referring to ancient precedents, it says : "It is evident that a broad distinction must be 276 IVAYMARKS IN CHURCH HISTORY. drawn between allowing or encouraging clergy- men to assist in maintaining themselves by secular labours, as St. Paul did, and admitting to the sacred ministry men already devoted to secular occupations, and purposing to continue in their callings." So the Bishop of Bangor in 1884 : "The persons now proposed to be admitted to the diaconate are to be, in the first place, doctors or lawyers, or, it may be, country gentlemen, and only in a subordinate degree deacons in the Church of God." An expressive Greek term will help us in substituting a real contrast for an unreal simi- larity. The " by-work " or irdpEpyov, as distinct from the e'/oyov, of a bishop like Zeno, or of a Carthaginian " cleric," was his secular industry. The irdpepyov of a deacon under the new scheme would be his clerical ministration. It is but his " leisure " which can be consecrated to the Church's service ; and we can all see how the urgent stress of modern professional or industrial life will, in many cases, reduce that "leisure" to very narrow dimensions indeed. What a clashing of " calls " would he experience ! In 1562, the Upper House of Convocation sanctioned certain orders for readers and deacons, who were not " openly to intermeddle with any THE CLERGY AND SECULAR EMPLOYMENTS. 277 artificer's occupations," if they had an ecclesi- astical income of twenty nobles a year. On this Strype remarks that readers "seemed not wholly to forbear their callings, but were not countenanced to follow them, especially if they were mechanical." ^ If this were so with readers, a fortiori \Y\th deacons. Not to overlook a point, it may be added that the Roman Church law permits the in- cumbent of a very poor benefice {si ecclesia ei sufficere non potuerit) to practise agriculture or handicraft, yet so as not to interfere with sacred duties. The ninety-first "Distinction" in the Decretum rules that a cleric ought to be main- tained " de oblationibus ecclesiae," but if these are insufficient, " proprio artificiolo vel agri- cultura, exemplo apostoli . . . sibi necessaria inveniat ; ita tamen, ut occasione sui operis vigiliis ecclesiae non desit" except in case of ill health.2 And a received book of Roman moral theology allows the clergy to sell the proceeds of an industry, such as cloth, paint- ings, etc., and even, in cases of extreme emergency, to perform surgical operations, for- bidding them, at the same time, to practise such "arts" as are "deemed inconsistent with 1 Annals, i. 516. ' Decret. Grat. 547, ed. 1585. 278 IVAYMARKS IN CHURCH HISTORY. the dignity of the clerical state." ^ But here, again, it is implied that it is necessary for the cleric comparare sibi victum by such means ; and it is assumed throughout that the clerical character is primary and dominant, and the secular work a Trdpepyov. To conclude in words of Archbishop Benson which have all the authority of his great place and high attainments. " T/te case set tip entirely breaks down so far as the early CJmrch is co7i- cerned. From the beginning, the earliest evidence we have shows that the bishops, priests, and deacons were to be maintained in other ways than by trading, the exception being in cases of extreme poverty, and in cases of self-devotion (asceticism), in which latter remunerative labour was permitted for the purpose of giving alms to the poor. That which is sought, then, to be established by this bill is an unknown order of clergy — unknown to our own Church, unknown to the primitive Church ... an order which is both lay and clerical, is neither one nor the other." 2 ^ Scavini, Theologia Moralis, i. 342, ff. "^ See Appendix, J. AN APPEAL TO BEDE. Amid all the interest which of late years has been excited as to the beginnings of our English Christianity, there is too much reason to fear that modern versions of that story have largely superseded the study of Bede's own work. This is much to be regretted, not only because the neglect of that study has fostered the growth of some popular misapprehensions which it seems worth while to notice, but on account of the serious loss which English Churchmen entail upon themselves by neglecting to become acquainted with, and therefore to love, the father of our national Church history. There is no writer of the past who has a greater power of attracting and securing, at whatever distance of time, the affection and gratitude of his readers. In spite of some inevitable differences of stand- point, he is thought of as if he had been a personal friend. This is why we may be ex- cused for not writing such a name with archaic 28o IVAYMARKS IN CHURCH HISTORY. precision as " Baeda," for speaking of him as he stands in the Calendar, and has lived in the hearts of so many generations. To us he may- well be still " the Venerable Bede." It may be granted that there are some drawbacks at first to the full enjoyment of the " Ecclesiastical History." The irrepressible Paschal question will present itself to most readers as a grievance. They may admit that in the days when Bede wrote, such a point, involving other and larger issues, might well have appeared, " even to the strongest and most spiritual minds," to minds imbued with "a mild and liberal Christianity," *' far graver than charity can allow it to be in our time ; " ^ yet still it must needs be a surprise, or even a shock, to find even Bede adopting, as he himself expresses it, " the apostle's saying about a zeal for God which was not according to knowledge," ^ as a due ' Goldwin Smith, Irish History and Irish Character, and Lectures and Essays. * Bede, v. 22. In iii. 3 he qualifies it, *' non plene secundum scientiam;" but there he is speaking of Aidan, of whom, in iii. 17, he acknowledges that in his erroneous reckoning about Easter " he had the same truth at heart that we have, namely, the redemp- tion of mankind by the passion, resurrection, and ascension of the Mediator ;" and again, in iii. 25, that he "could not keep Easter otherwise than his own people did " {i.e. the Church in North Ireland). Bede makes it quite clear that the Celts were not AN APPEAL TO BEDE. 2S1 measure of the enormity of allowing the " four- teenth of the Paschal moon," always provided that it fell on a Sunday, to be the earliest pos- sible day for the Easter festival, and the twentieth to be the latest, whereas the " Catholic " rule, in order to exclude any coincidence with the Jewish Passover, began the series of possible Easter Sundays with the fifteenth day, and closed it with the twenty-first. And if, as we may safely assume, he is himself the author of that " grandis epistola " which went in 710 from abbat Ceolfrid to the Pictish king " Naiton " or Nechtan,^ we cannot but wonder that, while admitting the religious indifference of such a point, he should have sanctioned that ascription of the semicircular Celtic tonsure to Simon Magus, which matched so symmetrically with the assumption that St. Peter's own head had exhibited a " uniform crown " — both notions being matter of amusement to a learned Irish really Quartodecimans ; and Wilfrid, at Whitby, triumphantly told Colman that he followed neither St. Peter nor St. John (iii. 25) ; but Catholic sensitiveness discerned an approach to Quarto- decinmnism in the admission of " the fourteenth" into the rota of Easter Sundays. Cf. Eddi, Vit. Wilfr. c. 12. * Nechtan, son of Derelei, accepted the Catholic Easter, and drove the "family of Hii," the Columban clergy, out of the Pictish territory into Dalriada. — Cf. Skene, Celtic Scotl., ii. 177. Stephen, Hist. Scott. Ch. i. 170. 282 WAYMARJCS IN CHURCH HISTORY. Roman Catholic historian.^ Legends, too, of miraculous healing by means of splinters from St. Oswald's cross, or from the post on which his head was affixed at " Oswestry," or of dust from the sacristy where his bones had been washed at Bardney, not to speak of similar stories, are to us unwelcome interruptions. We see that dreams have been often mistaken for visions, that in one case a natural effect has been treated as a " miraculum," ^ and that Edwin's mysterious visitor was most likely Paulinus himself; we ask how SS. Peter and Paul could be credited with that long address to the dying boy at Selsey. We cannot make ourselves feel with Bede as to the supreme sanctity of the eremitic life ; we cannot admire kings who abandon their royal duties for the cloister ; we cannot, perhaps, repress a certain satisfaction at finding that Bede himself lived to deplore the abuses of a monasticism which had been perverted by secular greed, or carried to such excess as to imperil the safety of the kingdom.^ We wish that some of his informants ^ "The English disputants constantly supposed that every ecclesiastical practice observed at Rome in their time had been established by St. Peter : " Lanigan, Eccl. Hist. Irel. iii. 6g. - The pouring of oil on troubled waters, Bede, iii. 15. 3 Cf. Bede, v. 23 : Ep. to Egbert, 6-8. AN APPEAL TO BEDE. 283 had given him more particulars as to the growth of the Church in their several districts ; we would gladly part with two or three turgid samples of papal letter-writing for a fuller light on Felix as he fulfills his "happy" ministry^ in Norfolk and Suffolk, on Birinus as he " calls many people to the Lord by pious labours " ^ through- out a diocese extending from Dorset to Bedford. We may regret that Bede has not condensed the verbosity of Constantius' account of St. Ger- man, or has allowed himself, in his not unnatural dislike of the " British," to adopt whatever Gildas thought fit to say about an Arianising movement among them in the fourth century,^ or a reign of all the vices among clergy as well as laity in the fifth. Again, we observe that the story does not always flow on in a straight course ; there are stoppages, divergences, or circuits, especially when a saint is to be panegyrised ; facts are sometimes put in before their time, and some- times long after it ; occasionally the meaning of authorities is mistaken,^ or there is inac- • " Juxta sui nominis sacramentum," etc., Bede, ii. 15. 2 Bede, iii. 7. He was an Italian, perhaps a Roman. 2 Athanasius testifies to the orthodoxy of the Britons, Ep. to Jov. 2. So Hilary, de Syn, 2. ■* E.g. in "tempore autumni," i. 12, and **Hiberni " i. 14, Gildas is misunderstood, Cp. i. 16. In i. 24, 27, /Etherius is confounded with Virgilius. 284 IVAYMARKS IN CHURCH HISTORY. curacy about this or that date ; ^ and pretty often we are told something about a matter, but not enough for full explanation. Thus we ask, Why mention Palladius and not Patrick ? What drove Sigebert into Gaul while his brother reigned in East Anglia? Had Oswald any previous knowledge as to the slaughter of Edwin's son Eadfrid ? Did he in effect threaten the lives of Eadfrid's brother and nephew ? In what sense was ^thelhere of East Anglia the " cause " of the last war between Oswy and Penda? Why did the devout Oidilwald play the traitor at the battle of the Winwaed ? How came so good a prince as Alchfrid to " attack " his father Oswy? How came Chad in 664 to go to Wini for consecration, when Boniface of Dunwich was living and available ? Under what circumstances did ^tla hold the see of Dorchester? Whose son was that Osric who appears first as sub-king of the Hwiccas, and afterwards as king of Northumbria ? ^ It is by inference that we gather from Bede what is stated as a fact by *' Nennius," that Edwin ^ Compare i. 15 with i. 23 ; and see i. 4, 6, 11. 2 Cf. i. 13; ii. 15, 20; iii. 24, 14, 28; iv. 23; v. 23. Osric, according to Simeon of Durham, was son of king Aldfrid. His grave was identified in Gloucester cathedral by Dean Spence in 1892. See Good Words for 1892, p. 388. AN APPEAL TO BEDE. 285 suppressed the little British realm of Elmete ; ^ and we are left to speculate as to Bede's motive for just mentioning in one brief clause the " dissensions " between Egfrid and Wilfrid, re- ferring in others, as if casually, to Egfrid's " hostility" and Wilfrid's "expulsion," and after- wards cramming the career of Wilfrid into one long chapter, far on in the fifth book. In fact, if one could be angry with Bede, it would be for his leaving us so much to depend on Eddi for information about Wilfrid.^ But such matters are more than made up for by what Bishop Stubbs has so truly called " the extraordinary clearness, brightness, and indis- putable genuineness " ^ of the narrative as a whole. We are struck by the unwearied in- dustry with which our guide has sought far and wide for information,* and yet more by the * Bede, ii. 14. It " answered, roughly speaking, to the present West Riding," Green, Making of Engl. p. 255. - Bede, iv. 12,13; v. 19. His loyalty to bishop John would prevent him from taking Wilfrid's side in the controversy ; and perhaps we may infer from Ep. to Egb, 4 that he did injustice! to Wilfrid's motive for resisting the proposal to divide his diocese ; but he thrice calls Wilfrid's "memory" blessed, and mentions a conversation which he had once held with him, iv. 19. And he evidently delights to tell of Wilfrid's winning the souls of the South Saxons by helping them in a time of starvation, iv. 13. ^ On the Foundation and Early Fasti of Peterborough. * See the Praefatio, and especially the beautiful sentence, " Lectoremque suppliciter obsecro," etc. 286 WAYMARKS IN CHURCH HISTORY. splendid fidelity with which he distinguishes between various degrees of evidence, introducing some of his most famous and precious anecdotes by such phrases as " it is reported " or " it is said,"^ and carefully telling us who it is that has told him this or that, and whether at first or at second hand.^ Again, how graphic is his touch ! Even as to localities which most likely he never visited, his imagination lights up, for himself and for us, what he had heard about the leaded stakes, " as big as a man's thigh," which could still be traced in the bed of the Thames, where Caswallon left them to obstruct the Romans' passage ; about Selsey, as acces- sible by a neck of land "of a sling's cast in width ; " about the district of Ely, as " like an island, devoid of large stones, and encompassed * E.g. "fertur" as to Augustine's litany on descending into Canterbuiy, Mellitus refusing to administer the Eucharist to the unbaptised young kings, Oswald planting his cross on Heavenfield and breaking up the silver dish, Oswin's rare humility: "ferunt" as to Aidan's remark about "milk and meat," Oswald's protracted prayers, Aidan's prayer at Farue : " ut perhibent " as to the British hermit's advice. The most famous tale of all, as to Gregory and the Angle boys, is guarded, so to speak, by "opinionem," "traditione majorum," and "dicunt," ii. i. ' Compare ii. i6, Deda about Paulinus : iii. 12, 13, 15, 27; iv. 14, 22, 25, 31 ; V. I, 2, 5, 6, 12, 13. AN APPEAL TO BEDE. 287 by fens and waters."^ And when he speaks of scenes in his own Northumbria, he is natu- rally still more picturesque. Take his account of the great wall, " eight feet across and twelve in height, running straight from east to west, as is plain to those who see it at this day ;"2 of Lindisfarne, as twice a day mainland and twice a day island ; ^ of the dreary treeless islet of Fame, where Cuthbert made himself a '* narrow cell " within a " mound " that shut out all prospect but of the sky ; ^ of the " lodge " girt in by trees and a dyke, a mile and a half from Hexham ; ^ of Lastingham, nestling as we still see it among the hills and moors of north-east Yorkshire, where amid the former "haunts of * Bede, i. 2 ; iv. 13, 19. His account of the original Melrose as nearly encircled by the Tweed (v. 12) may have come from hearsay. ' Bede, i. 12. He ascribes this wall to the Romans before abandoning Britain, and thinks that the same line of fortifi- cations (between the Tyne and the Solway) had been followed before by Severus. The great wall is now usually assigned to Hadrian, and Severus' *' vallum" is supposed to have run between the two Firths. Cf. Skene, Celtic Scotl. i. 91. ^ Bede, iii. 3. * Bede, iv. 28. The mound was of rough stones and turf, Vit. Cuthb. 17. vSee Bede, v. i for another Fame picture — a hermit aroused "fragore procellarum et ferventis oceani." * Here bishop John used to come for "retreats," Bede, v. 2. Cp. iii. 16, iv. 3, 30 (Aidan, Chad, Eadbert). 288 IVAYMARKS IN CHURCH HISTORY. robbers " Bishop Cedd hallowed his monastery by a strict Lenten fast, and where, according to one of the most pathetic tales in Bede, thirty brethren from his East Saxon monastery came to die beside his grave,^ one little boy alone surviving the " pestilentiae clades," and living to be " helpful to many in the Church." ^ We gain from Bede not a few illustrations of secular history. We hear of Northumbrian power as subjugating Man and Anglesey ; of strained relations between Deira and Bernicia ; of the animosity of Lindsey against Northum- bria; of frequent hostilities between Northumbria and Mercia;^ of a patriotic uprising of Mercia against Northumbrian supremacy ; ^ of an un- provoked Northumbrian invasion of Ireland ; of the crash of Northumbrian power beyond the Forth.^ We see that the kingdoms were ' Bede, iii. 23, cp. iv. 3. The account of the foundation of Lastingham is now inscribed within a frame on the south aisle of its very interesting church. At a break in the semicircle of hills a large stone cross looks down significantly on the village. ^ The bad practice of committing children to monastic life is repeatedly referred to in Bede ; cf. iii. 12, 24 ; iv. 8. 14. However, it was overruled for vast good in his own case, v. 24. ' On one of these occasions Theodore acted as peacemaker with success, iv. 21. * See a noble passage in Bede, iii. 24, where his love of liberty overcomes his Northumbrian prepossessions. * The defeat and death of Egfrid at Nechtansmere or AN APPEAL TO BEDE. 289 deficient in centralisation. There are joint- kings or sub-kings in Kent, Wessex, Essex, Northumbria, Mercia ; Essex and Sussex are dependent on their stronger neighbours ; Kent suffers from invasion and from anarchy ; and the "brief resistless course" of the strangely named Cadwalla in Sussex and in Wight is but partially overruled for good by the completion of the conversions. We are introduced to the Witan, to the " duces " or ealdormen, to the " ministri, milites," or king's thegns, such as Lilla, who gave his life for Edwin, and to the " comites" or gesiths, such as Hunwald, who be- trayed St. Oswin to his murderer.^ We learn that the " old Saxons " in Germany had no king, and in war time chose their leader by lot. We come across curious survivals of old Teutonic superstition ; a " comes " believes in " letters that can unloose " the bonds of a captive, and peasants who have been duly baptised recur in time of pestilence to the use of spells and amulets. But richer by far is the store of knowledge opened for us as to religious habits Dunnichen in 685 freed the Southern Pictsand the "Irish" in Scotland from Northumbrian domination, Bede, iv. 26. See Vit. Cuthb. 27 on Cuthbert's forebodings at Carlisle. 1 Cf. Bishop Stubbs, Const. Hist. Eng. i. 176-186. U 290 WAYMARKS IN CHURCH HISTORY. and Church usages — the observance of Lent, the partial fast on Wednesdays and Fridays, Christmas sometimes absorbed into Epiphany ; Thursday regarded as quasi-festal, when " Scotic " rules are in force ; vigils and recita- tion of psalms by way of intercession ; the Eucharist offered up for the dead as for the living, and ordinarily at 9 a.m. ; reservation of the Sacrament for the dying, a particle of it carried after Mass to the sick ; ^ reception of it in the open hand ; prayer made with hands turned upward, grace said with hands out- stretched ; elaborate catechising before baptism ; exorcism by breathing on the candidate for baptism, renunciation of "Satan and all his works ; " white garments worn by the newly baptised ; the importance attached to alms- giving ; the tentative advances towards a paro- chial system ; ^ the value set on preaching and on the study of Scripture ; confession of sins before a priest ; dedication of churches ; the institution of "double monasteries," in which monks and nuns inhabited different parts of the same precinct.*"^ In several passages we ' Bede, iv. 22, 14, 24. 2 Cf. Bede, iii. 22 ; v. 4, 5, 12. 3 Bede, iii. 8 ; iv. 7, 23, 25. AN APPEAL TO BEDE. 29] observe a disposition to look steadily at the sombre aspects of life. Illness is frequently mentioned ; not only the desolating pestilence of 664 and subsequent years, but fever, ague, paralysis, tumours, beside serious or painful accidents ; and the trial is regarded as a discipline sent in mercy.^ The thought of death, and of judgment after death, is im- pressed on the reader's mind with anxious persistency ; ^ but the awe which it should inspire is united, for pious Christians, with a calm trust exemplified in the exquisite story of Casdmon's "beautiful end," and repeatedly indicated in such phrases as "the day of death, or rather of that life which alone is to be called life."^ There is a purpose in the large space given to such " visions " as those of Fursey and Drythelm ; such stories as those of the thegn who put off repentance, and the godless monk who died in despair.* They are set forth in hope that some unthinking souls may be roused to a sense of the Last Things. ' Bede, iii. 12 ; iv. 9, 19, 23, 31 ; v. 3. Cf. Hist. Abb. 8, 9. =^ Bede, iii. 19; iv. 3, 11, 25. Cp. the verses repeated by Bede in his last days, on the need of serious thought, during life, of " what will be the soul's doom after death-day." 3 Bede, iv. 24, 28 ; cf. iv. 3. 23 ; v. 22. Cf. Hist. yVbb. ii. * Bede, iii. 19; v. 12-14. 292 WAYMARICS IN CHURCH HISTORY. It is this moral and spiritual tone which makes him the best type of the best age of " Saxon " Christianity. We may — indeed, we must — consider him credulous in some things ; but what we never lose sight of is his goodness. Listen to him as he pours himself out in homage to the moral nobleness of Oswald, of Oswin, and of Aidan, and of the clergy whom Aidan's bright example had made conspicuous for pure unworldly self-devotion ; as he tells us of Hild as a true "mother in Israel," wise, energetic, loving, devout ; of Cuthbert, as with " angel face " he bent over his penitents, or " deemed that to help weak brethren by exhortation was equivalent to praying;" of John's sweet fatherly gentleness in dealing with a wilful but warm-hearted young cleric ; ^ of Witbert's meek submission to the pain of " find- ing no fruit " after all his missionary labours ; or, again, while he points to Augustine, Aidan, Fursey, Cuthbert, and Egbert, as instances of the power of a consistent life in enforcing a teacher's words.^ Believe him when he says, in ' Herebald's story is one of the most charming in Bede, see V. 6. 2 Bede, i. 26 ; iii. 5, 19 ; iv. 28 ; v. 22 (cp. the combination of " verbo et opere " in iv. 13, " verbum et exemplum," iv. 23, etc., and Ep. to Egb. i, Hist. Abb 9). AN APPEAL TO BEDE. 293 that little fragment of autobiography, that he has "always found it delightful to learn, to teach, or to write ; " attend, as if with bowed head, to the solemn prayer which sets a seal upon the " History ; " ^ and think whether this man does not well deserve to be our chief authority as to the age of which he is himself the worthiest product.^ * "Teque deprecor, bone Jesu," etc., v. 24. Compare the account of his last hours, in which he quoted Phil. i. 23. ^ All who read Bede should read also the exquisite account of his "pious and peaceful end," which we owe to his pupil Cuthbert. We there learn that his last illness began a fortnight before Easter, but that he lived "usque ad diem Ascensionis Dominicas, id est, septimo Kalendas Junii " (May 26). A hasty reading produced the notion (which even Mabillon adopted) that his death took place on Ascension Day itself, and fixed his commemoration on May 26 {e.g. York Missal Calendar). But Cuthbert shows quite clearly that he died at a late hour on the Wednesday, when, after bidding his brethren farewell, and hearing from an attendant pupil that his task of dictation was now " finished," he asked to be placed on the floor of his cell, began the Gloria, and spent his last breath in the utterance of "Spiritui Sancto." He died, therefore, on Ascension Eve, being May 25 ; and Ascension Eve fell on May 25 in 735 . Professors Mayor and Lumby, while accepting the fact that he died on the Eve, reject 735, and (on the ground of a variant reading in a ninth-century MS., which gives May 9 as the day of the month) adopt 742, in which year the eve fell on May 9. But this is to confuse the results of Cuthbert's simple narrative, which in the received text brings us to May 25, Ascension Eve, 735. Moreover, Bede's health had begun to fail when, instead of travelling from Jarrow to York, he wrote his admirable 294 WAYMARKS IN CHURCH HISTORY. Since Bede is such as he is, why is it that people do not read him, or, at any rate, do not make a point of checking modern accounts of the period which he has illuminated by systematic reference to his authority ? Such accounts may sometimes appear to be suggested by the supposed requirements of " Church defence ; " they are thought, perhaps, to be more convenient in the permanent and inevitable controversy with Rome. If we do not now hear as often as we used to do that our own Church was directly founded by Easterns, and that thus it inherited an Eastern Paschal reckoning, we are still too frequently told that the British Church was the rock out of which the English was hewn ; that the English Church is in this direct sense "the ancient British Church" developed and en- larged ; that the native Welsh clergy took an important part, at least, in the conversion of the " Saxons." One observes the complacency with which some Anglicans represent the " Gre- gorian mission " as a failure — as maintaining, through half a century, a feeble vitality in Kent, letter to Egbert, who had recently become bishop of York. That see had been vacated in 732, and Raine (Fast. Ebor., p. 94) considers that King Ceolwulf at once ' ' appointed " his cousin Egbert to succeed Wilfrid II. Is it likely, then, that Bede would have lived on to 742 ? AN APPEAL TO BEDE. ■ 295 and dying out suddenly and completely after six years in Northumbria ; or how they repeat, again and again, with the unhesitating con- fidence that might attach to a revealed fact, the terse antithesis to which a great name has given a not unnatural currency — Not Augus- tine, but Aidan is the true Apostle of England." ^ Now, if persons would only consult Bede, he would tell them plainly that the Welsh bishops and clergy refused not only to adopt the continental usages in regard to Easter and to the '' manner of completing the ministration of baptism " — probably by adding as soon as possible the episcopal application of chrism to the forehead — (which were the only two cere- monial points on which Augustine insisted at the close of the memorable conference), but also to join him and his clergy in preaching the Gospel to the " Angles." " They said that they would not do any of these things, nor would they have him for their archbishop." Their resolve in the refusal to take part in mission- work was partly due to an apprehension that, by doing so in his company, they would in- sensibly be drawn into some compromise of the ecclesiastical independence which they were ^ Bishop Lightfoot, Leaders in the Northern Church, p. 9. 296 WAYMARKS IN CHURCH HISTORY. determined to preserve. But one must fear that they were also too tenaciously mindful of all that their race had endured from the fierce invaders, of all the misery involved in its " dis- placement " ^ from the central and eastern part of South Britain, of all the outrages to their religion which had effaced throughout that area the organised form and presence of a Church. No, they would not put forth their hand to avert the curse which rested on the Saxon. And to this unhappy resolution they adhered : it was not a result of momentary irritation ; it represented their settled mind. And Bede, who certainly speaks of them with a bitterness foreign to his nature, affirms that "up to this day it is the habit of the Britons to esteem the faith and religion of the Angles as a thing of nought, and to hold no more communication with them than with pagans." ^ And Aldhelm had already complained to the British king of Devon that the British " priests beyond the Severn strait would give to Angles neither greeting nor kiss of peace, and went so far as to fling the remains of an Angle's meal to dogs and swine, and to * The phrase of Freeman and Green. Both disclaim the notion of an extirpation of the Britons, which indeed would be incredible. Cf. Bede, i. 15, fin. 2 Bede, ii. 20 ; cf. v. 22. Contrast the Irish, iv. 26. AN APPEAL TO BEDE. 297 scour with sand or ashes the dishes or bowls in which it had been served up." A people who, under whatever provocation, persistently acted in such a spirit were not likely to repay good for evil by helping to preach Christ to a race which they thus abhorred. And, in fact, we do do not know of a single case in which the British Church as such did anything for its conversion — although, of course, British serfs may here and there have said words in season to " Saxon " masters. The Welsh story that the person who actually baptised Edwin of North- umbria was a Briton named Rum, the son of Urbgen (or Urien), is of far later origin than Bede's account, and cannot stand comparison with it. Edwin, says the historian, was ** baptised at York on the holy day of Easter " {i.e. doubt- less on Easter Eve), "April 12, 627, in the church of St. Peter, which he himself had built there of wood, with all speed, when he was being catechised and instructed for the reception of baptism ; in which city also he gave an episcopal see to Paulinus, his teacher and prelate." Bede was thoroughly conversant with Northumbrian history civil and ecclesiastical ; he evidently believed that this memorable baptism was per- formed by Paulinus ; and it would be in the 298 JVAYMARKS IN CHURCH HISTORY. highest degree improbable that in the circum- stances any one else should have proposed, or have been permitted, to officiate. The Welsh legend claims for " Rum " the whole honour of the Northumbrian conversions of 627 : ^ and thereby it disproves itself, though it may be based on a tradition that when Edwin was an exile in North Wales, some attempt was made to bring him over to Christianity. But as to the point before us, we may confidently say with the late Professor Freeman, "It is contrary to all historical fact to speak of the ancient British Church as something . . . out of which the Church of England grew." ^ It is equally unhistorical, we may add, to speak of the Welsh episcopate as the "fountain" of the English. There is, we may say it with thank- fulness, a real continuity between the British and the English Church ; but it consists in this, that by slow degrees — first by the Britons' acceptance of the Roman Easter, then by the establishment of precedents in favour of the consecration of Welsh bishops at Canterbury, ^ The British writer has evidently copied and exaggerated Bede's account of the baptisms during thirty-six days at Yevering, " per quadraginta dies (Rum) non cessavit baptizare omne genus Ambronum " [sic), Mon. Hist. Brit., p. 76. 2 Guardian, February 8, 1888. AiV APPEAL TO BEDE, 299 then by the assertion of jurisdiction by Canter- bury over Wales, and lastly by the exercise of visitatorial power by Canterbury in Wales— by a complex process which extended through some five centuries/ the English Church absorbed the British into its one body ; the older and smaller stream flowed into the younger and larger, and became a veritable and inseparable part of it. It may indeed be asked whether the British or Welsh Church may not claim some indirect share in the evangelisation of Northumbria, as a result of her efforts in the middle of the preceding century — a period in which she w^as at her best — for the revival of religious life in Ireland ? It may be asked in reply, What evidence is there that Columba's resolution to become a missionary was due to any Welsh exhortations, or to any examples of Welsh fervour? Gildas' journey to Ireland could have nothing to do with it ; for when he arrived in 565, Columba had been two years at Hy, or, as we now call it, " lona." The traditions of his life in Ireland do not make any reference to Welsh influence as determining his career. And when Aidan came from Hy into North- ^ Haddan and Stubbs, Councils, etc, i. pp. xxii.-xxix. 30O WAYMARKS IN CHURCH HISTORY. umbria, it never occurred to him to look to Wales for co-operation or assistance.^ In order to estimate the due position of Augustine among the evangelisers of the English, and the amount of success or of failure which followed the inauguration of his enterprise, let us look back to the latter years of the sixth century. What was to become of the conquerors of the larger part of South Britain as spiritual beings for whom Christ died ? The defeated race had made no attempt to draw them to Him as their true Master. " Saxons " had long before established a repu- tation for exceptional ferocity, and had fully verified it in their descent on the south-east ; and Angles had devastated the north country, had profaned the sanctities of the once im- perial York, had pushed their way inwards from the Wash into Staffordshire, had laid the foundations of the " Marchmen's " realm. Wherever the invaders came, sweeping on like a vast destroying force, the Church's orderly system fell before them ; the worship of Woden and Thor drove out the worship of Christ. If ' Yet he may well have lived at Hy under the fourth abbot, Fergna, surnamed " the Briton," who was probably a native of Strathclyde. Cp. Bp. Reeves, Adamnan, p. 372. AN APPEAL TO BEDE, 301 in the west the Saxon advance was stayed by natural barriers for some thirty years after the British victory at Badbury in Dorset, it was renewed ^ by the conquest of Wiltshire and Berkshire, of Oxfordshire and Bucks ; it reached the lower Severn valley ; ^ by the momentous battle of Deorham it won three famous Roman towns ; it formed the " Hwiccas " settlement in Gloucestershire and Worcestershire ; and if, a few years later, its triumph in the Wrekin district was stopped by yet one more native victory, and by the fatal dissensions among West Saxons themselves,^ the work of conquest was done, the Teuton was lord wherever the Briton had been " displaced ; " and the 'question became even more piercingly urgent, What in a religious sense was to be the future? Were Saxons and Angles accessible to Christianity ? It has been observed by Dean Church, that the Teuton or German races had been in a sense prepared for Christianity by certain " rude primitive elements of character,"^ by a rever- ^ It must be needless to refer to the marvellously vivid third chapter of J. R. Green's Making of England. 2 Guest, Orig. Celt., ii. 282 fif. ^ Green, Making of Engl., p. 206. * See Church's Gifts of Civilisation, etc., pp. 320-325 ; and Merivale's Conversion of Northern Nations, p. 88. 302 JVAYMARKS IN CHURCH HISTORY. ential sense of things unseen, by some per- ception of sin, and of the need of Divine forgiveness, by a regard for truth and for true manliness, by a sense of personal obligation, by a love of order, and by a respect for lawful authority, and for the purity which consecrates and, in a deep sense, makes the home. In fact, we are assured by a deeply earnest Gallic writer, who stayed his soul in a wild time on the great fact of the Divine moral government, that the barbarians contrasted favourably with the luxurious, polished, but morally decaying society of the great Continental cities, on which Christianity had but a superficial hold.^ The Teuton was rough, wilful, turbulent ; in hot blood he could be mercilessly cruel ; but he was not the child of a corrupt civilisation ; his simple nature could be awed by the Church's solem- nities, representing the majesty of a kingdom not of this world : he could be attracted by a ' *' Gothi . . . Wandali . . . meliores etiam in hac parte (a sense of what they owe to God for protection) quam nostri ; " Salvian, De Gub. Dei, vii. 9. The Barbarians, he says, have virtues to be set against their vices, ^.^. **Saxones crudelitate efiferi, sed castitate mirandi. ... In Afris (inhabitants of the Roman province of Africa) pcene omnibus nescio quid non makim," ib. vii. 15 ; and see vii. 20, 21, on the moral self- restraint of the Vandals when they became masters of the Roman cities where vice was like an infectious disease. AJV APPEAL TO BEDE, 303 faith which lighted up and completed his dim traditionary hopes of a future, which pointed to a moral ideal in the ''mild-hearted Saviour," the " white " or immaculate Christ. That faith appealed to him on his best side ; it disciplined and ennobled the inherent force which would otherwise have run wild ; it lifted him, as our early Church history repeatedly shows, to the "measure of the stature", of manhood in Christ Jesus. But how did it come face to face with him ? We all know how Gregory, afterwards Pope, was stirred to the depths of his noble and tender heart by the sad sight of those fair-faced Yorkshire lads in the slave-market then existing at Rome. As Dean Church says, that "famous string of puns, one following another, as they do in a punster's happy moment," ^ exhibits the mixture of playfulness with a very earnest purpose underlying it, which often relieved, in some sort, his anxieties and his sufferings. It was the thought of what these poor barbarians were worth in the sight of God, of what they needed, of what they could yet become, if only some effort were made to lift them upward, that bore fruit when his manifold ' Miscellaneous Essays, p. 221. 304 WAYMARKS IN CHURCH HISTORY. labours at last allowed him to send Augustine with forty monks on a mission to the heathen in Britain. The date of 597 is a date which no English Christian, having once heard of it, should cease to recall with devout thankfulness. It was the year of the arrival of St. Augustine, the year of the foundation of the English Church ; and few places in England are worthier of a pil- grimage than Ebbsfleet, in Pegwell Bay, near Ramsgate, where, it is said, Augustine set foot on our shore.^ To name our first Archbishop is to remember that as once the effect of his personal wprk was over-rated, and the defects of his temperament forgotten under the spell of his renown as a canonised saint, so now the pendulum has swung too far the other way. We are continually reminded of his going back from Gaul at the request of his companions to obtain from the great Pope a release from a really perilous enterprise ; a certain narrow- mindedness, natural, if not inevitable, in a monk who was not also a Gregory or a Benedict, is pointed out as observable in some of the questions sent to Gregory ; a certain self- complacency as to his rapid and brilliant * Stanley, Memorials of Canterbury, p. 28, AN APPEAL TO BEDE. 305 success in Kent, inferred with some reason from one of the Pope's letters, is gravely censured ; and he is specially rebuked for discourtesy and bad taste in not rising from his seat to receive the British ecclesiastics, at a conference held, apparently, somewhere near the eastern limit of Worcestershire or of Gloucestershire.^ Well, he had his failings, doubtless ; but let us not forget the testimony borne by King Ethelbert himself, at the conference above Minster, to the moral impressiveness of his pleading ; " Fair are the words and promises which you bring, having come from afar to impart to us what you believe to be true and excellent." Let us trust the father of our own Church history when he tells us that in all respects these Roman missionaries lived up to their preaching, were single-hearted, con- sistently self-devoted, " ready to suffer adver- sities, or even death, for the truth which they were proclaiming ; " so that they speedily won converts,^ not only by "the charm of their heavenly doctrine," but by " the simplicity of ^ For Bede's words, ii. 2, must mean " on the border-line between Hwiccas and West Saxons." It may have been near Cirencester, as reached via Silchester and Speen. * Conversion, they insisted, must be voluntary. X 3o6 WAYMAI^KS IN CHURCH HISTORY. their innocent life " which recalled the character of " the primitive apostolical Church."^ If Augustine bore himself in too stately a fashion at the conference which ended in failure, it is fair to remember that Gregory, from his papal point of view, had assumed the right to make him supreme over all bishops in Britain ; that he waived several points of difference between the Celts and the Continental Church, in order to lay stress on three alone ; and that he was supremely anxious that they should join him in some attempt to win the Angles to Christ. But now for the contention that he ** all but failed," and that the early English Church was quite mistaken in looking back to him as her ** apostle," and ought to have set that crown on another head.^ Let us first of all define the import of the phrase, "Apostle of England." Obviously, in the present connexion, " England " stands for South Britain as occupied, at the time in question, by the English or Saxon race. Taking it so, or, in a word, putting " the English people " for " England," let us ask what we mean by * Bede, i. 25, 26. * Bede awards it to Gregory through him, ii. I. AN APPEAL TO BEDE. 307 the "apostle" of a people. Is it the man who, in his missionary enterprise, traverses the whole or the greatest extent of the area which they inhabit, and converts the largest number of them to Christianity? In that sense, no one would dream of claiming the title for Augustine. But then, can it, in that sense, be assigned to Aidan ? So far as we know, after coming into Northumbria, he never set foot outside its limits ; never practically entertained the idea of doing anything for the districts further south; left behind him no instructions, no programme, pointing in that direction. He had been dead nearly two years when the mission to the *' Mid-Angles" took place ; and how did it originate ? Not in the mind of his successor Finan, A young Mercian prince comes to woo the Northumbrian king's daughter; his paganism constitutes an insurmountable objection ; it is the heir of Northumbria, already his brother-in-law and a zealous Christian, " who is mainly successful in persuading him to accept the faith." Then Finan's ministry is called in, first to baptise Peada somewhere near Newcastle— his "gesiths" and "thegns" being sharers in the rite — and then to provide him with four priests, three of them Angles, 3o8 WAYMARKS IN CHURCH HISTORY. " to teach and baptise his own people ; " the fourth of these missionaries being afterwards consecrated by Finan as first bishop of the Mercians^ as well as of the Mid-Angles.^ This mission to the Midlands branched out, in the following year, into a similar and equally successful enterprise for the revival of Christi- anity in Essex. Here again the impulse comes, not from Finan personally, but from King Oswy, who induces King Sigebert and his attendants, then sojourning at the Northumbrian court, to cast off idolatry, and to receive baptism from the bishop of Lindisfarne. It is Sigebert who asks for "teachers to convert and baptise" his people ; it is Oswy who summons Cedd from the Midlands, and bids him " preach the Word to the East Saxons ; " and it is only on a chance visit, as men might call it, of Cedd to his own mother-church at Lindisfarne that Finan resolves on consecrating him as the East-Saxon bishop.^ These are, roughly speaking, the facts as to the two missions on the score of which, one must suppose, the " Apostleship of England " has been claimed for Aidan. Is there not something rhetorical in the claim ? But if the title belongs to the man who first * Bede, iii. 21. * Bede, iii. 22. AN APPEAL TO BEDE. 309 brings home to any part of a given people the knowledge of Christ and the ordinances of His religion, then it is enough to remark that Augustine came into Kent when all the *' Saxon " kingdoms were still heathen. He came to confront risks which Aidan, for instance, had never to reckon with on appearing in Northum- bria at the express invitation of St. Oswald. He came thirty-one years before the evange- lisation of the East Anglians, thirty-seven years before the arrival of Birinus in Wessex, thirty- eight years before the '' Scotic " mission estab- lished itself, with assurance beforehand of the fullest royal co-operation, in Northumbria. His long precedency in the mission-field is a simple matter of chronology ; it means that he threw open the pathway, that he set the example, and that a generation passed away before '' Scotic " zeal followed in his steps. But how far was Aidan, we may ask, the "apostle" even of Northumbria } He certainly was not so in the latter construction of the term. Every one who knows anything, directly or mediately, of Bede's tale remembers the Witan at Goodmanham, and the words of in- exhaustible and most suggestive pathos in which a Northumbrian thegn compared human 3IO WAYMARKS IN CHURCH HISTORY. life, with the gloom that hung over its antece- dents and its issues, to the rapid flight of a sparrow *' through the king's hall on a stormy winter's night, when the hearth in the midst was kindled." ^ Let us go on with the parable in the wording of Professor Palgrave : — ^ " ' We see it born from darkness, And into darkness go ; So is our life. King Edwin — Ah, that it should be so ! But if this pale Paulinus Have somewhat more to tell, Some news of whence and whither, And where the soul may dwell ; If on that outer darkness The sun of hope may shine, He makes life worth the living ; I take his God for mine ! ' So spake the wise old warrior j And all about him cried, ' Paulinus' God hath conquered, And he shall be our guide.' " "Accordingly," says Bede, "king Edwin with all the nobles " (the " eorl-kind ") " of his nation, and a very large number of the common people, received the faith and the laver of holy regeneration, in the year of our Lord's Incarna- tion 627." " From that time Paulinus preached the word of God in that province during six con- ' Bede, ii. 13; cf. 14. "^ Visions of England, p. 27. AN APPEAL TO BEDE. 311 tinuous years," and " 'as many as were preordained to eternal life believed ' and were baptised." And this brings us to the question of the extent and character of his mission-work. It was appa- rently Dean Hook who set the fashion of under- rating it ; ^ and even Bishop Lightfoot has said that "he made no way in Northumbria " (ap- parently meaning Bernicia alone, which was but the larger part of Northumbria), on the ground that, as Bede himself tells us, "no sign of Christian faith, no church, no altar had been set up in all Bernicia " (that is, between the Tees and the Firth of Forth) before Oswald planted his hastily made cross of wood on the spot which even then was known as " Heavenfield." As to this, York was Paulinus' episcopal centre ; as Bede says, he " most fre- quently abode in Deira with the king." He was, no doubt, working his way northwards, and had not time to organise a settled Church life in Bernicia, which, we must recollect, had its own traditionary attachment to a different branch of Northumbrian royalty from that which Edwin represented. Yet even as to Bernicia it is far too much to say that ''for the Christian mis- ^ Lives of Archbishops of Canterbury, i. 117. Contrast the higher authority of Raine, Fast. Ebor., p. 42. 312 WAYMARKS IN CHURCH HISTORY. sionary " after Paulinus departed " it was virgin soil ; " and that " the first missionary sent from lona " (who, says Bede, " had no success in preaching ") '' had failed even more signally than Paulinus ; " and Bishop Lightfoot practically corrects himself in other passages, where he admits that Paulinus " had preached far and wide with energy and success," and that the results of his labours were "brilliant," though he assumes that they were " superficial." ^ Let us consult Bede himself, whose home through all his life was in Bernicia. " So great is said to have been then " (the *' tunc " is signifi- cant) "the fervour of faith, and the desire for the laver of salvation, among the nation of the Northumbrians, that at one time'Paulinus, coming with the king and queen to a royal vill called Adgefrin" (Yevering, under the Cheviots), ''re- mained there with them for thirty-six days, entirely devoted to the duty of catechising and baptising, on all which days, from morning till evening, he was doing nothing but instructing in the word of salvation, and, after such instruc- tion, cleansing with the laver of remission in the neighbouring river Glen, the people of ^ Leaders in Northern Church, pp. 8, 40, 43, 196 ; and p. 41, *' Scarce a vestige of his work remained." AN APPEAL TO BEDE. 313 Christ who flocked thither from all villages and places. . . } This he did in the province of the Bernicians ; but also in that of the Deirans, he used to baptise in the Swale, which flows by Cataract " (?>. Catterick). " For in the very beginning of the Church there it was not pos- sible as yet to build oratories and baptisteries, but he did build a basilica " (with a stone altar) " at Campodonum " (probably Doncaster). It was, of course, under his influence that Edwin " persuaded Eorpwald " of East Anglia to " accept the faith with his province." To this must be added Paulinus' preaching in Lindsey ; his success in converting Bla^cca, the reeve of Lincoln ; his building of a church " of goodly workmanship " within the old Roman city of Lincoln (the precursor of a modern church mis- takenly named " St. Paul's ") ; his baptising of a "great crowd of people" in the Trent, one of whom lived to tell a Lincolnshire abbat, through whom the description passed to Bede, how well he remembered "the tall bent figure, the black hair, pale face, thin aquiline nose, and reverend awe-striking aspect " of the Italian bishop of York, as he administered the initiatory sacra- ment, attended by James his deacon. ^ Bede, ii. 14. Further north, near Coldstream, is " Pallins- burn." Bishop Lightfoot mentions other local traditions. 314 tVAVA/A/^JirS IN CHURCH HISTORY. And are we sure that his work was "super- ficial," that it sprang up too rapidly " because it had no deepness of earth," and therefore withered away completely when the fiery heat of invasion smote it, when, after Edwin fell at Hatfield, Cadwalla, fiercer than Penda himself, was venting his fury on Northumbrian Angles, and " paying no honour to the Christianity that had grown up among them " ? Bede does not say as much : " the year of apostasy " of which he speaks, refers not, as some hastily read him (or do not read him) to the Christianised people, but to the two wretched young " kings," Osric and Eanfrid, who — perhaps in hope of winning Penda's indulgence, as well as the support of those who regretted the days of heathenism — " gave themselves up to be polluted and ruined by the old defilements of idolatry." Even in remote corners of our present Northumber- land one cannot . reasonably suppose that all the impressions of Paulinus' careful instruction would be effaced in a few months for want of a cross or ain altar. In north Yorkshire, we know that James the deacon, showing himself "a man of energy in Christ and the Church," staid at his post after Paulinus (as we may think, without sufficient justification) had fled with AN APPEAL TO BEDE. 315 the widowed queen to her old home in Kent ; and that, "by teaching and baptising" (observe the continual insistence on catechetical instruc- tion in order to baptism), he " took much spoil from the ancient enemy." So we are told that Oswald was anxious that "the whole of the people whose king he had become should be imbued with the grace of Christian belief; " that he "took great pains to build up and enlarge the Church of Christ in this realm ; " that under him " the number of the faithful increased ; " and that Aidan, during his episcopal circuits, found not only " unbelievers to be invited to receive the faith," but " believers to be confirmed in it " and " stirred up to works " of piety.^ We have, then, good reason for believing that as Paulinus was first in the Northumbrian field, as the solemn national receptance of Christianity was due to him and to Edwin as his proselyte, as he worked incessantly for six years chiefly in Deira, but also to some extent in Bernicia, so the foundations which he laid were not destroyed, but rather built upon and enlarged, when Aidan came and had for his fellow-worker a prince whom Bishop Lightfoot justly places in "that small list of kingly saints " who were also ' Cf. Bede, ii. 20 ; iii. 3, 5. 3i6 WAYMARKS IJV CHURCH HISTORY. "saintly kings." As we admire Oswald more than Edwin, so Aidan ranks higher than Paulinus in pure saintliness, and in the attractiveness of simple self-devotion. He set a pattern of ministerial activity, of absolute conspicuous un- worldliness, of tenderness to the poor and weak, of boldness in behalf of right before the strong, of thoroughgoing intense resolution to carry out in life the moral teaching of Scripture, which Bede, Latin as he is in tone, has described with a loving reverence equally honourable to the Anglian historian and to the Scotic saint, and to those who carried on Aidan's tradition. Their self-denying goodness contrasted sadly with the average clerical character when, in Bede's later life, the fine gold of his own Church had become dim. There is thus a quiet pathos in Bede's reflections on the Scotic mis- sion, and the men whom it moulded ; and we know what he means when, in telling us of Chad's humility and simplicity, he adds by way of explanation, '' Foj' he was one of the disciples of Aidan," that is, " one of Aidan's twelve boys, whom in the first days of his episcopate he took out of the nation of the Angles to be instructed in Christ." ^ But our love for Aidan's ^ Bede, iii. 28, 26. AN APPEAL TO BEDE. 317 beautiful character must not make us less than just to Paulinus. Aidan's episcopate lasted nearly thrice as long as his predecessor's ; he had not the trials, the hindrances, the sickness of hopes deferred, which Paulinus had to endure for nearly the first two years of his residence at York ; he was, one must repeat it, watering in many places where Paulinus had planted, and carrying out in completeness what Paulinus had begun. Nor would it have been really good for Eng- land if the Scotic episcopate, with all its spiritual charm, had fixed the type of Church life in Northumbria. Great is our debt to it if only for having given us a St. Aidan ; but we ought to recognise the necessity of its being super- seded, the impossibility of its ever having be- come sufficient for the needs, or competent for developing the religious capacities, of a widely different race. Even Aidan, on one occasion, exhibits a sancta simplicitas which makes an Englishman smile ; ^ and Irish bishops or abbats, with all their lofty enthusiasm, had a full share of the impulsiveness, the passionateness, of the Irish temperament, and often, in what seemed * Bede, iii. 14 ; the story of the king's horse and the beggar. 318 WAYMARKS IN CHURCH HISTORY. righteous wrath, forgot " of what spirit they were," as sent to bless rather than to curse, No one can seriously regret that the Whitby conference ended as it did, with the failure of Colman's party. A new English Church modelled after the old Irish might indeed avoid some of the worst faults of its type. It could not, on English ground, have become the victim of tribalism ; its organisation could not have been so abnormally lax ; monasticism could not have usurped the jurisdiction belonging to episcopacy. Schools might have grown up like those which drew Anglian students, such as Egbert and Chad and Aldfrid, to study in Irish monas- teries, where they always found a generous welcome,^ and such schools in England would at least have been nearer to the area of Con- tinental culture ; but Celts, however devoted, could never have been appropriate trainers of the spiritual life of a Teutonic people, and, as Green puts it, " had England clung to the Irish Church, it must have remained spiritually iso- lated from the bulk of Western Christendom," with its " traditions of letters and art," of order and of "law." 2 To return to the Gregorian mission in Kent. ' Bede, iii. 27. ^ Making of England, p. 324. AN APPEAL TO BEDE. 319 To what extent, and in what sense, was it a " failure " ? It could not carry out the mag- nificent programme of Gregory as to the two provinces with twelve sees each ; but Gregory himself, on reflection, must have felt that all sorts of difficulties might well prevent the attainment of this ideal. But the archiepis- copal see had hardly three suffragans at the death of Deusdedit, in 664. It had done nothing for Wessex ; it had left others to restore its own ruined work in Essex ; it had not so much as sent a missionary across the dense Andredsweald to preach to the poor barbarians of Sussex. (Even Theodore did not make this venture ; it was reserved for the versa- tile genius, the forceful apostolical enthu- siasm, of the wronged and exiled Wilfrid.) Thus far, then, Canterbury seemed to be one "that sitteth still." She had not "enlarged the place of her tent." On the other hand, she sent forth Paulinus, with what result we have seen. She " sent," as Bede puts it — that is, she advised — Bishop Felix, the Burgundian, to go and work in East Anglia in conjunction with King Sigebert. She kept up a school of sacred learning which supplied Felix with competent teachers, and which was afterwards developed 320 IVAYMARKS IN CHURCH HISTORY. into that great college where Abbat Hadrian, under Theodore's oversight and with his per- sonal co-operation, taught not only theology, but Greek and Latin literature, with all the sciences of the age — medicine included, as we learn from one of Bede's delightful anecdotes about St. John of Beverley.^ Archbishop Honorius had heard much of Aidan, and held him in high respect, although Aidan clearly did not acknowledge him as metropolitan. By the time that his successor had passed away, Northumbria itself had come to feel what all the kingdoms possessed in Canterbury — what the archbishopric, however "cribbed and cabin'd" in the past, was to be and to do for all the dioceses in England. The idea on which Theodore acted had been in some sense present alike to King Oswy and King Egbert, and to the whole " Church of the nation of the Angles," when they united in choosing Wighard to be consecrated archbishop of Canterbury at Rome.^ The see of Canterbury, in fact, was biding its time. There was that in it from its founda- tion which was sure to expand, to energise, to assimilate. Augustine's work was not a failure, ^ Beue, iv. 2 ; v. 3. ^ Bede, iii. 29. AN APPEAL TO BEDE. 321 in that he left behind him, whether he knew it or not, the destined centralising principle of English ecclesiastical life. It was because he founded the archbishopric that, more than sixty years after his death, the sixth of his successors, a stronger and greater man than himself, was able to weld the English Churches into one. This was the great result of Augustine's ministry. Undoubtedly it had drawbacks and limitations. The Latin Christianity which he brought with him had already become encrusted with superstitions, and even with corruptions ; the relations with Rome which to him were matter of course contained the germ of abuses which in after-ages became enormous and in- tolerable. And it is evidently the sense of this, the dread of whatever might be construed as involving an admission of Roman authority, which has tempted many Anglicans to slur over and minimise the obligations of our Eng- lish nation, as Christian, to the great Pope who took pity on the religious desolation of our fathers, and to Augustine as his agent in the mission which he could not personally dis- charge. It is thought safest, apparently, to say as little as possible* on that topic, or on the debt which we owe to other Continental mis- V 322 WAYMARKS IN CHURCH HISTORY, sionaries ; to make as much as possible of the help received from Ireland ; and even to assume that somehow or other the " native British Church " must have had a hand in the good work. But to twist facts in a controversial interest is to injure our own cause. No amount of charitable activity on the part of a pope in the sixth century could bar a Church which had profited by it from shaking ofif in the sixteenth a dominating papal yoke which neither Scripture nor antiquity could uphold. Nor could it, let us say, dispense a Church thus founded from the duty of reviewing questionable traditions, and going back to those primitive standards which are of paramount obligation, while, in truth, the patriarch had been merged in the supreme pontiff.^ And if we are seriously persuaded that the papal claims, as now urged on us, are false, we shall not strengthen our case against them by ignor- ing, on a question of history, what is true. * Manning, as an Anglican archdeacon, wrote, "Premisses are advanced to show a patriarchal jurisdiction ; but * currente rota,' we find a supreme pontificate." Unity of the Church, p. 363- ARCHBISHOP LAUD. Fifty-eight years ago, an accomplished clergy- man, when drawing towards the close of his biography of Laud, wrote as follows : — "In conclusion, what is to be said of this man ? Was he faithless to his country, or his God ? Was he without all sense of moral and religious obligation? Was he agitated inces- santly with the furies of a malignant temper ? Was he a conspirator against the fundamental laws of England ? Was he either a corrupter of the national faith, or a traitor to it ? Or, if none of these, was he the driveller and the dotard which, in later times, he has been represented ? Was he, in short, as it has been affirmed, the monster or the idiot, on whom the Church, with maternal infatuation, has lavished her especial favour and protection ? " ^ * Le Bas, Life of Laud, p. 379. In the last sentence he is alhiding to an absurd passage in Macaulay's article on Hallam in the Edinburgh Review of September, 1828. 324 WAYMARKS IN CHURCH HISTORY. Of the queries thus suggested, two or three will perhaps appear too extravagant for dis- cussion. But in 1836 the stream of popular opinion had long set vehemently against the memory of one whom no Whig or Low Church- man could bring himself to speak of with for- bearance or without bitterness. As the Oxford movement spread, those who came under its influence were apt to go into the opposite extreme, and to take too ideal a view of the career of "the high-souled primate," ^ who might well be entitled a martyr for Anglican Catho- licity. Since then, ecclesiastical idealism has come into such disrepute that some appear too scrupulous to give the prefix of " Saint " to an Athanasius or an Augustine. Anyhow, it is eood to have been schooled in historical con- scientiousness ; and the schooling should enable us to adopt, perhaps with increased emphasis, the words which follow the passage quoted above. By this time, "a juster estimate may surely be formed of the worth of Archbishop Laud." All that can be attempted in this paper is to contribute something towards such an estimate, by means of material in those writings of the * Newman, in Lyra Apostolica, p. 121. ARCHBISHOP LAUD. 325 most famous of modern primates which may be said to constitute an autobiography. The landmarks of his life are easily stated. He was born at Reading on October y, 1573; his father was a well-to-do clothier, and he was bred up in the " free school " of that old town, which always retained a hold upon his heart.^ He went thence to Oxford in 1589, and became successively commoner, scholar, and fellow of St. John's College, which now enshrines his remains.^ He was ordained deacon and priest in 1601, while the see of Oxford was passing through the last of three periods of vacancy, making up forty years in all, to which it was subjected by the shameless rapacity of Elizabeth. His ordainer was Bishop Young of Rochester, who seems to have in some sort anticipated the ecclesiastical line of Andrewes. ^ He wrote from his cell in the Tower to the Reading cor- poration, in reference to one of his benefactions for the town, *' As long as I forget not myself, I cannot but remember that place." Works (in Angl.-Cath. Lib.), vi. 591. Clarendon speaks of his parents as "honest " — i.e. respectable. It was just like Prynne to sneer at his birth, and disparage its " obscurity." Ibid. iii. 261 ; cf. Lord Say and Sele, ib. vi. 86. - His tutor Buckeridge, afterwards bishop of Ely, did some- thing towards forming his opinions, and probably directed him to the "canon of 1571 " about "the catholic fathers and ancient bishops." 326 WAYMARKS IN CHURCH HISTORY. But Andrewes was not yet even dean of Westminster, and Calvinism was far from being at the end of its ascendency. Only five years had passed since Whitgift had sanctioned the Lambeth Articles, after mitigating by some important corrections the rigour of the original draft. At Cambridge, where Whitaker, the author of that draft, had reigned in the school of theology. Overall was preparing the younger minds for emancipation from the " Genevan " yoke ; but at Oxford that yoke was still unques- tioningly accepted, and men looked up to Cal- vinistic teachers, such as Holland in the chair of Divinity, and Reynolds in the lectureship which Walsingham had founded to uphold the Puri- tanical interest, as authentic exponents of the English Church's mind. No one had arisen to do for Oxford what Baro, not to say the less estimable Barrett, had done for Cambridge, until in 1603 the young fellow of St. John's affirmed in a course of divinity lectures the perpetual visibility of the Church in the West, throughout the Middle Ages, not in sectarian groups, Albigensian, Wycliffite, or Hussite, but in the historical Latin communion. It was a daring thesis for the time ; and, although it was but maintained in a college chapel, it was ARCHBISHOP LAUD. 327 prophetic of much. Next year, in the public Divinity school, as a candidate for the degree of B.D., Laud proceeded to assert the necessity of baptism and of diocesan episcopacy.^ The dominant party felt that this young man was becoming dangerous ; that, in short, he must be put down. Holland "rated him shrewdly;" and two years later he got into trouble with the vice-chancellor for a sermon at St. Mary's ; Abbot, master of University College, whom Laud was destined to succeed in the see of Canterbury, " openly branded him as a Papist ; " ^ he became " a man forbid ; " persons feared to compromise their orthodoxy by greeting Laud of St. John's in the streets.^ He had already committed himself in another scene by an act of weakness, of which unfriendly tongues took advantage : * he was chaplain to the earl of Devonshire, who desired to marry a divorced lady with whom he had been living in sin. Laud yielded to his patron's importunities, and per- formed the marriage *' in spite of the reproaches * For his deliberate opinion about episcopacy, see a letter to Bishop Hall in 1639, Works, vi. 573. "^ So Heylyn's Life of Laud, p. 54. For his subsequent hostility to Laud, see Diary, Works, iii. 135, 151. ' So he afterwards told Heylyn, ■• See Works, iii. 81, 132, 160. 328 WAYMARKS IN CHURCH HISTORY. of his own conscience." The feast of St. Stephen, on which this took place in 1605, was for him a fast day ever afterwards. He accepted a country benefice in 1607, became chaplain to Bishop Young in 1608, and thus was brought under royal notice, and preached at Court in 1609. In 161 1 he stood for the headship of his college, and after disputes as to the regularity of his election (caused by a strange outrage on the part of a supporter of his rival), was confirmed as presi- dent by King James, and soon afterwards appointed a royal chaplain, and, in 1616, dean of Gloucester, where he angered the Puritanical bishop, Miles Smith, and the townsfolk of the "godly city," by establishing in its cathedral that " altar-wise " position of the holy table which was to be so conspicuously associated with his name.^ He did this by a formal "chapter act," but with an imprudent precipi- tancy, an indifference to local sentiment, which gave only too clear a token of the defects of his mind and temper. He was forty-three years old, and might have expected more rapid preferment ; but James, not a bad judge of ^ On this question see Works, iv. I2i, 198, 226 ; v. 495, 625 ; ^'i- 595 239. Gardiner, Hist. Engl., iii. 245 ; vii. 313. ARCHBISHOP LAUD. 329 character when he chose to be observant, is said to have discerned in him a " restless spirit." However, at the suit of Buckingham, and of Bishop Williams by his own account, the king named Laud for the poor and distant bishopric of St. David's.^ He was consecrated on November 18, 162 1. In 1622 he held what has been called his "immortal conference," or discussion, with the Jesuit Perse, known as Fisher,^ and entered on those confidential relations ^ with the power- ful favourite Buckingham, out of which grew his long feud with Bishop Williams.* In 1626 he represented Williams as dean of Westminster at the coronation of Charles I ,^ and soon after- ^ For his Welsh episcopate, see Bevan, Dioc. Hist, of St. David's, p. 198. He consecrated the present chapel in Aber- gwili palace, cf. Works, iv. 250. On a bright October day soon afterwards, he "rode up to the mountains, and dined in the open air " (Diary, Aug. 28, October 10, 1625). 2 Of course he was called a favourer of Popery. No charge could be more futile, except from the standpoint of extreme Protestantism. Charles I. recommended the "conference" to his daughter Elizabeth, "to ground her against Popery" (Herbert's Memoir, p. 188). See Diary, Works, iii. 147. ' " I became C. to my Lord of Buckingham " (Diary, June 15, 1622). He does not deny, in his History of Troubles and Trial (Works, iv. 321), that "C." means confessor. For his views on confession, see Works, iii. 332. ^ See Diary, in Works, iii. 143-145. Le Bas, p. 67. ^ On the charges against him in connexion with this function, see Works, iv. 211. 330 IVAYMARKS IN CHURCH HISTORY. wards was translated to Bath and Wells, and made dean of the Chapel Royal. In 1628 he was attacked in Parliament on the mistaken supposition that he had licensed a sermon which extravagantly exalted the royal prerogative ; ^ whereupon King Charles, as it were, replied to the Commons by placing Laud in the great see of London, a promotion which so incensed the Puritans that a paper left at St. Paul's deanery bade " Laud be assured that his life was sought." In 1630 he became chancellor of his old University, and at once " resolved to set close to a reformation " of the abuses resulting from a long decay of " discipline," extending to the common disuse of academic habits ; and also " took up " the work (already begun at his instance) of " reducing the statutes into a body." ^ In 1633 he attended Charles to Scotland, and preached at Holyrood on the benefits of ritual order and conformity. After his return, repeated offers of the Roman cardinalate were made to him, to which he replied that " somewhat dwelt within him which would not suffer that till Rome were other than it was." ^ But Abbot was now dead, and Laud, as a matter of course, the * On Manwaring's case, see Works, iv. 83. 2 Works, V. 13. ' Works, iii. 219 ; cf. ib. 201. ARCHBISHOP LAUD. 331 king having long prearranged it, ascended the throne of Canterbury. One of the first events of his primacy was the ill-judged republication by Charles I. of his father's unlucky '' Book of Sports." The unwisdom of such a step was phenomenal, and there can be no doubt that Laud had either prompted or encouraged it. Early in 1634 he began a metropolitical visitation of his province ; ^ "in other words," says Le Bas, " a course of warfare against the manifold in- decencies and abominations which for a long period had disfigured the Church," especially the irreverent treatment of the holy table.^ In 1636 he corresponded with the Scottish bishops as to the preparation of a Prayer-book for Scotland.^ In 1640, after taking legal opinion, he continued the sittings of Convocation after the unfortunate dissolution of the Short Parlia- > Cf. Works, V. 453, ff. 2 See Heylyn, p. 285 ; Le Bas, p. 184. It is true that by placing the table permanently altar-wise at the east end, he set aside what Gardiner calls "the Elizabethan compromise ;" see Cardwell, Doc. Ann. i. 234. On communicating at the rails, cf. "Works, V. 360 ; vi. 108, etc. ' He himself says that he had originally wished the Scottish bishops to adopt the English Prayer-book as it then stood ; but when some of them preferred to have a distinctive book, he acquiesced in what he considered to be clear improvements on the English. See Works, iii. 278, 338, 342, 344, 354, 359. 332 WAYMARJ^S IN CHURCH HISTORY. ment/ and carried through the synod some canons which made him still more obnoxious to the popular party .^ Their opportunity C9.me in the autumn. In the first days of the Long Parliament, the Commons impeached him on a general charge of treason. He was committed to custody, and sent to the Tower in March, 1641, on fourteen charges presented by the Commons ; ^ but the proceedings against him were suspended until October, 1643, when ten other charges were brought up, and he was tried by the Lords, March-September, 1644, brought to the bar of the Commons in November, and attainted by an ordinance to which the Lords, under menaces, gave their assent, although the judges had implicitly declared that nothing charged against him amounted to treason.^ He was beheaded on Tower Hill, January 10, 1645. * The " breaking " of the parliament being ascribed to his advice, his "house" at Lambeth was beset for two hours by five hundred riotous " 'prentices " collected by a placard, cf. Works, iii. 234, 284. - The continuance of convocation was by royal order, and under high legal advice, Works, iii. 285. He never stooped so low as when, in November, 1640, he begged Selden to forbear attacking " these unfortunate canons " in Parliament, and pro- mised to get them "abrogated" (Works, vi. 589, cf. v. 613). ^ See them in Works, iii. 398, ff. The second set added " other high crimes " to " treason " (iv. 33). •* Works, iv. 417. They referred to 25 Edw. III. c. 2. ARCHBISHOP LAUD. 333 The manuscripts containing his Diary, and the " History of his Troubles and Trial," are preserved in a wing of St. John's College library, which he had himself built, and in which he had entertained the king and queen in 1636. The Diary is a small book with long pages, and lies open at the significant entry, April 29, 1638: ''The tumults in Scot- land, about the Service-book offered to be brought in, began Julii 23, 1637, and continued increasing by fits, and hath (sic) now brought that kingdom in danger. No question but there's a great concurrence between them and the Puritan party in England." ^ It was, in fact, the furious attitude of the Scottish Pres- byterians towards Laud, as if chiefly responsible for the imposition of this Prayer-book on the nation (although he had exhorted its prelates to act considerately and legally),^ which gave a stimulus to the hostility long cherished by his English adversaries, who naturally sympathised with the malcontent Scots. The History breaks off with an entry seven days before his execu- tion : " The rest shall follow as it comes to my knowledge." But the information that the Lords had passed his condemnation cut short * Works, iii. 230. ^ Works, iii. 317, 335. 334 WAYMARKS IN CHURCH HISTORY. the History, and left several leaves blank. The two documents are pathetic relics, appro- priately preserved in such a place, together with his red skull-cap, and an ivory-handled stick, on which he leaned as he walked ''with a cheerful countenance " to the scaffold. Little need be said in answer to the question : What was Laud's general aim in his Church policy, or his use of power as bishop and as primate ? A Tractarian poet hardly does him full justice in the words : " Thy spirit in thee strove To cleanse and set in beauty free The ancient shrines." ' We see, indeed, in him one deeply in earnest to restore the dignity of what Butler afterwards vindicated, when he urged the Durham clergy to inculcate " the importance of external re- ligion." But if he insists on " external worship," he does so because Puritanic contempt of ex- ternals had " almost cast a damp upon the true and inward worship of God."^ Happily, it is » Isaac Williams, The Cathedral, p. 57. - Works, iv. 60 ; cf. iii. 407. It is strange that such a writer as Dr. Stoughton should infer from Laud's defence at his trial, in which the former passage occurs, that his "ritualistic zeal "was not ennobled by " Christian sentiments " (Religion in England, i. 386). See also Works, iii. 277, 462 ; iv. 9, ARCHBISHOP LAUD. 335 next to impossible for any pious adherent of the " Evangelical " school to imagine the ex- tremities of profane irreverence to which Puritanism in its development had been im- pelled. Things had been done as if in defiance of the very idea of local sanctity, and yet in the name of the pure Gospel, which would make modern Low Churchmen shudder,^ and which went far beyond the mere antipathy to stained glass, to organs, to consecration of churches or chapels, to bowing even at " the Name of our salvation." Of course, Laud was bent on setting right the wrong done to holy things and places ; but underneath lay not only a zeal for " inward worship," but a theological interest, an issue between two irreconcilable principles. Born just when the controversy between Whitgift and Cartwright was proceed- ing,^ marked down for denunciation at every opportunity by the Calvinism which then tyrannised over Oxford, Laud had only too 26, 49, etc., for indications in the " History " of his habitual piety ; the Dedicatory Epistle prefixed to the Conference, Works, ii. 16 ; an allusion to a libel, Works, vii. 309. ' Heylyn, p. 289. * He came up to Oxford at sixteen, some six months after Bancroft's sermon at St. Paul's had inaugurated the revival of Church principles. See Strype's Whitgift, i. 559. 336 WAYMARKS IN CHURCH HISTORY. good reason to know what Puritan theology meant, how it affected the view taken not only of ritual or of Church polity, but of the Church itself, of the Sacraments, of the plan of salva- tion, of the character of God.^ He knew, none better, the cost which had to be counted by non-Calvinists, so long as Calvinism was in power. Abbot's primacy was in itself a sig- nificant programme ; so was the device of " feoffments " for setting up Calvinistic lectures in towns ;^ so was the eagerness of the Commons, in Montague's case, to act as a Calvinistic Inquisition.^ Unless the Calvinistic propaganda could be arrested, the English Church would be revolutionised. Dr. Gardiner, in his judicial " History," fully recognises the vital difference of principles between Laud's school and the Calvinists,* and in another work has very fairly appreciated the position : " Laud, sharing Hooker's dislike of Calvinistic dogmatism, was fully penetrated with the conviction that he and ^ He was perpetually vilified as an " Arminian," merely because he was an anti-Calvinist. " I have nothing to do to defend Arminianism," Works, iv. 267. Cf. Works, vii. 275. Evidently he thought the question of the "decrees" too deep for solution, vi. 292. - Heylyn, p. 209 ; Le Bas, p. 149. ^ Works, vi. 244. See Laud's forebodings, iii. iSo. * Hist. Engl. ii. 124; iii. 243 ; v. 359 ; vii. 39 ; viii. 115. ARCHBISHOP LAUD. 337 his friends must either crush the Calvinists or be crushed by them." ^ There were, doubtless, many " moderate " Puritans who objected to what were called Laud's ** innovations," and desired to maintain the episcopal and liturgical system, if worked and interpreted in a purely Protes- tant sense ; and Puritanical politicians could be loud in praise of the Elizabethan settlement, and " avow for truth the sense of the Articles which by the public acts of the Church of England, and the general and current exposi- tion of the writers of our Church, have (query, hath ?) been delivered to us." '^ But Charles and Laud, and, indeed, all non-Puritans, could not but know that the spirit which animated the passionate denouncers of Popery and Arminian- ism was alien from that of Parker and of Elizabeth, and that their success would make the English Church too narrow to hold men like Hooker and Andrewes.^ And thus, from Laud's point of view, it was Puritanism that was in aggression : it had been too long allowed to rule in the high places, to speak in tones of traditionary authority, to pose as representing * Constitutional Documents of the Puritan Revolution, p. xxv. ^ Declaration of the Commons in 1629. » Dean Church, in " Masters in English Theology," p. -jd. Z 338 JVAYMARKS IN CHURCH HISTORY. the Church. No time was to be lost if she was to be delivered from an ascendency which would otherwise stifle her distinctive life. Here it may be well to pause for a moment. Those who at this time represented the Elizabethan Calvinists had a prima facie case when they denounced their opponents as in- novators. They had had a long reign ; they could point to the influence of the foreign reformed in the latter years of Edward VI. ; they had been accustomed to interpret the Articles in their own sense, with few to gainsay ; they were not unnaturally indignant when Charles's "Declaration" assumed that the "true, usual, literal, grammatical sense" was something different ; they had tried to build up their own theory on the Lambeth articles as if supple- mentary to the Thirty-nine ; they had been countenanced by professors, bishops, and arch- bishops, and James himself for a time had adhered to Calvinism. The name of Dort was venerable in their eyes, and even Laud himself, in 1630, blamed an " aspersion laid " on that synod.^ Even the canons of 1604 had repeated the sanc- ' Works, V. 15. Cf. Cosin, Works, ii. 63, on a suggestion at the York House conference in 1625 for " establishing the synod of Dort in the Church of England." ARCHBISHOP LAUD. 339 tion previously given to Nowell's catechisms ; the addition then made to the Church Catechism had pointedly gone beyond them by empha- sising the idea of means of grace, but it was some time before the purely "obsignatory " theory was superseded in minds like that of Ward, the friend of Usher.^ And, strange as it may now appear, there were many who detested the doctrine of free-will, and to whom the term " predestinarianism " was bound up with the true gospel. But more than this must be said. It is doubtless hard for a person of the Churchly type of mind to do justice to Puritanism. He is repelled by its grim unloveliness, its enormous intolerance, its sourness of temper, so subtly linked to self-deceit ; by its " fierce Judaical hatreds," its frequent cruelty in success, the un- discriminating barbaric fury of its iconoclasm, and the unevangelical rigorism which, as any insight into human nature would have foreseen, provoked a reaction to wild excesses of riot. He sees the broad chasm of separation be- tween those who looked to God as uniting men to Himself through His Church and His ordinances, and those who looked to Him as working directly on separate souls as ' Ward, Opera Nonnulla, p. 44 ; Usher's Works, xv. 506. 340 WAYMARKS IN CHURCH HISTORY. such. He remembers how this individualism has been corrupted into an irreligious form of independence, and a practical rejection of the idea of a visible Church ; how disbelief in the conveyance of grace through sacraments has shifted from the basis of Genevan dogma to that of an unintelligent rationalism ; above all, how Calvinism, assumed to be bound up with Christianity, has driven many minds into a passionate revolt against God. And yet he ought to recollect that historically there is another side to the picture. In its early days Puritanism very often meant a zeal for righteous- ness, an intense personal conscientiousness, a resolute straining after personal fellowship with God, and a determination to make His claims dominant throughout every department of life, to walk in the fear of the Lord all the day long. The Puritan cared much for what he deemed purity of rite and worship ; but at least as much, or more, for strictness of Christian living. His dread of forms was a one-sided devotion to spirit. His anti-sacramentalism was a mis- directed longing to get closer and still closer to Christ, as if outward instrumentalities were barriers, instead of being, as in the Churchman's view, appointed modes of access ; as i( to insist ARCHBISHOP LAUD. 341 on them was to fall back on a mechanical religiousness associated with " Popery." And in the days of Charles I., when two political parties faced each other, it cannot be denied that the opponents of prerogative were, as a body, the more religious. It is easy to see that the cause of royalty and episcopacy had its worst foes in its own household ; easy to imagine how it would be compromised in the eyes of a grave, devout, and free-spirited London citizen by association with courtiers who found their ideal in Buckingham, or afterwards with such '' Wild- rakes " as followed and emulated Goring. In presence of such scandals, the profoundly reverential piety of good Anglicans,^ lay or clerical, the moral significance of royalism as represented by Falkland or Hyde, or so truly noble a cavalier as Sir Bevil Grenville, were but too likely to lose their due impressiveness. It will, however, be hardly denied, on con- sideration, that Laud was, in the Anglican sense, pious. "Nothing in his life," it will be said, "became him like his leaving it." What Le Bas calls the " memorable supplication " ^ offered ' This is beautifully appreciated by Stoughton, ii. 386, ff. ' He prayed, "Merciful Father, look down upon me in mercy, but not till Thou hast nailed my sins to the cross of Christ . . . not till I have hid myself in the wounds of Christ," etc. 342 WAYMARKS IN CHURCH HISTORY. up by him on the scaffold, the answers which he afterwards gave to the insolent catechising of a Puritan member of Parliament as to the best grounds of comfort for a Christian at such an hour, and the unspeakably touching prayer^ which closed the scene — these things bear a testimony not to be gainsaid. Yes, but his " Devotions " also tell us what he was habitually in his "closet." His Diary, whatever else may be said of it, abounds in references to God's goodness, in prayers for God's blessing,^ although it was not natural for him to express religious feelings in the phraseology which Puritanism demanded, nor can it be said that the mark of high saintliness is conspicuous on his life as on that of Andrewes, whom he evidently revered.^ But what of his temper and dis- position } There was, no doubt, a harshness, an ^ " Lord, I am coming as fast as I can. I know I must pass through the shadow of death before I can come to see Thee ; but it is but Jimbra mortis^ a mere shadow of death, a little darkness upon nature ; but Thou, by Thy merits and Passion, hast broke through the jaws of death," etc. ^ Works, iii. 210, 239, etc. He believed in special guidance through prayer, ib. iii. 220. ^ Works, iii. 160, 196 ; iv. 251. He and Andrewes had visited Bishop Buckeridge at Bromley, June 6, 1625. A copy of Andrewes's Devotions, given by him to Laud, is in the pos- session of the Rev. R. G. Livingstone, Fellow of Pembroke College, Oxford, and has been edited by Canon Medd, ARCHBISHOP LAUD, 343 imperiousness, an irascibility which he never quite mastered until he ''was in trouble," when amid the "barbarous revilings " of a London crowd he could " look upon a higher cause than the tongues of Shimei and his children ; " ^ a lack of native refinement, which made it easy for him to say very rough things ; ^ and an unfor- tunate abruptness and disagreeableness of manner, which enabled one critic to liken him to " a busy angry wasp." Le Bas has said, " There has seldom, perhaps, lived a man who contrived that his good should be so virulently evil spoken of ; " and so Clarendon, " Few ex- cellent men have ever had fewer friends to their persons." The expressions of hatred which were let loose by his fall, and were rife throughout his trial, tell their own story. He himself wondered at "the bold, free, frequent, and most false swearing that had been against " him. He was not unconscious, as he once admitted to Hyde, that while "his heart had very good meaning, he sometimes" [rather, apparently, too often ^] " spoke more hastily and ^ Works, iii. 437. He thought it quite right that " libellers " should *' lose their ears," Works, iii. 228. 2 Works, iv. lOO. 3 He would use "sharp words at the Council;" and on one occasion gave offence to Charles himself (Works, iii. 285). 344 WAYAIARKS IN CHURCH HISTORY. sharply than he should do, which oftentimes he was sorry and reprehended himself for."^ Allowance must be made for his frequent attacks of illness, and for the exasperating effect^ of that stream of invectives which Puritanism, after the precedent of Martin Mar-prelate, kept pouring forth against "the fox," "the arch- wolf," "the devil's arch-agent," "the arch-in- cendiary," " the fountain of all wickedness," and so on. But when all is said on that score, it remains true that he had a dry mind, was singularly deficient in geniality and sympathy, and could not place himself in imagination at an opponent's point of view. His portrait indicates a certain narrowness and rigorism : intellectually, not to speak of his attention to dreams and his belief in apparitions, he was sadly wanting in practical political in- sight. Though sprung from the lower middle class, he was as incapable as Charles I. of under- standing that side of the English character which was being revolted by arbitrary methods. He thought he had done his utmost for the * Clarendon's Life, i. 60. ' **I have had all manner of provocations put upon me" (Works, iv. 374). Like many other hot-tempered persons, he was very affectionate to his friends, including an "ancient, loving, and faithful servant " (iii. 449, cf. 154, 224, etc.). ARCHBISHOP LAUD. 345 Church when he got Bishop Juxon made High Treasurer ; and, as Macaulay takes care to point out/ he was deceived by the appearance of an all but general conformity to the order that communicants should come up to the altar- rails, at the beginning of the very year of the great crash. In short, he was horrie just where, at such a time, largeness of view was most neces- sary for one in such a place ; he was, in that sense, too little of a statesman. Another drawback to Laud's success was in- volved in the connexion of the rising High Church party with the cause of royal prero- gative, while the tide of English opinion was coming in like a flood against it. For Charles I. it has indeed been pleaded that he was hardly to blame for "not recognising the national growth which made his subjects impatient of what their ancestors had quietly borne." Even Macaulay, in the debates on the first Reform Bill, could describe an ideal minister of Charles as "acknowledging" that under him the people were not less "free" than under Elizabeth, while ^ Essays, p. no (on Southey). See Laud's Works, v. 364. The alleged "innovations" as to setting the table north and south, railing it in, and bowing towards it, are discussed in his speech on the case of Bastwick, etc. (Works, vi. 55, ff.). 346 WAYMARKS IN CHURCH HISTORY. adding the momentous suggestion that there had been " a change in the public mind which made it unsafe to treat them as if they continued to be what they were." And a prince who in- sists on exercising personal government must, for his own sake, be able to discern the signs of the times. Charles might have learned from indications given in his father's reign, to which Scott alludes in a passage in ^' The Fortunes of Nigel," that Stuarts could not do all that Tudors had done ; and, moreover, after finding that he could not get on well with parliaments, he set himself for years to do without them. He would fain wield the majestic power of the Tudors without being, as they were, in accord with the popular spirit, without having an iota of their innate capacity for rule. And Laud, regarded as the patron of courtly preachers, and known to be intimate with the great autocratic states- man whom the popular party called an apostate, compromised his order and the Church by ap- pearing as the willing supporter of a policy tending to absolutism.^ The cause of civil ' In his defence, he said he had ' ' learned long before out of Aristotle " to dislike an arbitrary as opposed to a legal govern- ment (Works, iii. 398) ; and denied that he had ever been an enemy to parliaments (iv. 354). But he wished parliaments to be strictly subject to that personal kingly rule which he deemed ARCHBISHOP LAUD. 347 liberty was thus bound up with opposition to the hierarchy, and with a resolute purpose of "reforming" the Church. Englishmen, who rightly felt that England must not become like the France of Richelieu, were inevitably led to associate the railing-in of altars and the repres- sion of Calvinistic preachers with schemes for developing royal authority beyond the limits required by the ever-growing strength of the national mind and will. Nor did Laud see better, in the area of eccle- siastical procedure, the danger of " trusting," as Dean Church expresses it, "to administration and power." ^ A religious movement is apt to "drive heavily" when it is originated by authority, and, so to speak, imposed from above. In this respect the history of the Evangelical and Tractarian movements presents an instruc- tive contrast to the Laudian. The archbishop, indeed, had to do what he could under con- legal. For this view of his, Ranke refers to the canons of 1640, and might also have referred to language in the Prayer-book which later changes have reduced to an anachronism. The fact is, that Laud's lot was cast at a parting of the ways ; the Stuart king was not fit to exercise that ultimate supremacy which the parliament was irresistibly urged on to claim and achieve. And Laud, of course, cast in his lot with the king. ' Masters in English Theology, p. 94. 34S WAYMARKS IN CHURCH HISTORY. ditions not of his own making ; the restoration of churchmanship had to be taken in hand by the hierarchy, because the clergy were weak in the presence of a largely Puritanised laity,^ and needed themselves to be educated and heartened up. But Laud does not seem to have been sensible of any special difficulty as involved in this state of matters. A born legalist, a dis- ciplinarian by temperament, he took in hand the enforcement of ecclesiastical orderliness by the machinery of Star Chamber and High Com- mission, of royal or archiepiscopal mandates, visitations, official instructions, minute and vexa- tious inquiries, with the same sort of confidence with which, as an academical chancellor, he laid down the law for the discipline of " the boys " at Oxford.^ He did not see, apparently, that all this was the operation on a large scale of "the letter that killeth," of sheer imperativeness in- sisting on submission under penalties, and pro- voking resistance by its lack of " the spirit that ^ For the oppression of London clergy by aldermen, see Works, iv. 105. Lawyers were generally hostile to Laud, in some cases from a strong Puritanical animus, such as was exhibited by Sherfield. There was also a tradition of aristo- cratical Puritanism, which had come down from the days of Elizabeth ; and Laud's methods were not such as to conciliate. - Works, V. 20, 191, " His idea was conformity at any price ; " Ranke, Hist. Engl. ii. 49. ARCHBISHOP LAUD. 349 giveth life." Most curious are his reports to King Charles, year after year, as to the amount of conformity or nonconformity in the dioceses of his province,^ and they show, among other things, what a large interpretation he put on metropolitical authority. Although the very reverse of an Erastian, he exaggerated the royal supremacy in Church matters as a convenient instrument for his purpose ; and there is some- thing half pathetic and half ludicrous in his utter unconsciousness of the possibility of a turn of events, which might pervert the forms of royal authority for the subjection of the Church to a practical government very unlike that of the monarch who was at once his friend and her sincerely loyal son.^ Such were the hindrances to Laud's life-work, which may explain why that work was, for immediate purposes, a failure. But even when things were at their blackest — even after that judicial murder which Hallam himself describes as "a far more unjustifiable abuse of power than any that was alleged against" Laud himself,^ — a thoughtful Churchman, who retained his ' Works, V. 317-370. "^ See Gardiner, Hist. Engl. vii. 306. ' Constit. Hist. Eng. i. 578. 350 WAYMARKS IN CHURCH HISTORY. faith in the destiny of the Church of the Episco- pate and the Prayer-book, might have a robust confidence that when, in God's appointed hour, that Church should regain her rights, her con- dition would prove that Laud's work had been no failure in the long run ; that she would come back with his impress inefifaceably stamped upon her, with his theology, on the whole, in the ascendant, as the fullest expression of her authentic mind. Such a person would know well that, whatever were the faults of the arch- bishop's temper, or the limitations of his intellect, he was really what Dr. Stoughton in our own day has called him, " an extraordinary man, of wonderful activity," whose " capacities for work were of gigantic magnitude," and to whose " abilities " his " enemies have not done justice." ^ There was in him an intensity, a persistent in- exhaustible energy of will, which could not belong to a small nature, and which could not fail to carry others before it. There was also a certain grandeur of conception, and a total absence of low self-seeking ; he ever kept before him an ideal ; his " notions of spiritual power " were, as Hallam owns, " magnificent ; " he could * Religion in England, i. 31, 34; cf. Ranke, Hist. Eng. ii. 48, "a man of comprehensive energy." ARCHBISHOP LAUD. 351 give like a prince to the cause of learning as he knew it, and Oxford has signal reason to rank him amongst her most splendid benefactors. An eminent writer who regards his theological position, or that of "High Anglicanism,^' as essentially Roman, freely acknowledges his in- tegrity, uprightness, literary munificence, genuine respect for learning and culture, and willingness to let men of intellect speculate for themselves. Even Prynne, whose cruel punishment had been resolved upon in Council without Laud's vote, and who surpassed himself by ''instructing" the witnesses against Laud in his trial, and by placing in the hands of the peers a garbled version of that Diary which he had carried off from Laud's prison chamber,^ was fain to admit that his defence was " full, gallant, and pithy," replete with "art, sophistry, vivacity, oratory, audacity, and confidence;" indeed, even to glance over its pages is to see a wonderful performance for a man over seventy, who, after such a fall from high estate, had long been in captivity, awaiting a predetermined » Works, iii. 221, 235, 259. He actually left out words referring to "the errors of the Roman Church" (Works, iii. 201). For his domiciliary visit to Laud's bedroom in the Tower, see iv. 24 ; on his malignity and unscrupulousness, iv. 51, 251, 325, 366, 369, and Diary, June II, 1634. 352 IFAVJ/AJ?KS IN CHURCH HISTORY. doom.^ Wordsworth's comparison of him, in that extremity, to "a poor bird entangled in a snare," is quite singularly infelicitous. His bearing before his unfriendly or timorous judges, or in face of the headsman and the block, at that " uncomfortable time to preach," when he began his last address with Heb. xii. 2, had not a little of the serene courage which makes a man's death heroic. He died, and his works followed him. There is much suggestiveness in such words as the following from the close of Dr. Mozley's brilliant if somewhat too favourable essay on Laud, written in 1845: "A great practical rise in the English Church was the * His memory, which he calls "decayed," is extraordinary. He is always ready with his answer, " No proof here ; " " This witness is single ; " " Mere hearsay ; " "It was the act of the body of which I was but one member;" "What if such or such books were found in my study?" "Could I prevent persons from writing to me ? " etc. He repeatedly argues as one not bound to incriminate himself, and occasionally carries such economy rather far, e.g. as to an ambiguous Scottish canon ; cf. Works, iii. 322, vi. 434. Once or twice he is bitter, oftener sarcastic, as, "if it be treason, it is against A or B, not the king." More than once he repels with a lofty scorn the monstrous charge of personal corruption, e.g.^ iii. 404. More than once, too, he avows his conviction that controversial fierce- ness damages a cause, iv. 309, 348. One of the finest passages is that in which he meets the charge of " endeavouring to reconcile the Church of England with " Rome, iii. 412. ARCHBISHOP LAUD. 353 effect of his career. He stopped her just in time, as she was rapidly going downhill. . . . There is no mistaking the tendencies of that period. That we have our Prayer-book, our altar, even our Episcopacy itself, we may, humanly speaking, thank Laud. The holy table in all churches, altar-wise at the east end, is a visible memorial of Laud which none can escape. It was not so before his time ; it is not necessarily so by the actual rubric of our Church at this moment. That our Articles have not a Genevan sense tied to them, and are not an intolerable burden to the Church, is owing to Laud. He rescued them from the fast-tightening Calvinistic grasp, and left them, by his prefixed * Declara- tion,' open. Land saved the English Church!''^ But a weightier and more significant witness was borne to "the brain-force of Laud," in presence of a great academic auditory, by a great lay Churchman in October, 1892. Having remarked that "of Laud as a Churchman it ought to have been remembered, at least in extenuation, that he was the first primate of all England for many generations who proved himself by his acts to be a tolerant theologian," Mr. Gladstone emphasised the fact that "after ^ Mozley, Essays, i. 227. 2 A 354 IFAYA/A/^/irS IN CHURCH HISTORY. obtaining hold of the helm, he gave to the Anglican polity and worship what was in the main the impress of his own mind ; " that though " he sank to the ground in that conflict of the times which he had much helped to exasperate," yet " his scheme of Church polity, for his it largely was, grew up afresh out of his tomb, and took effect in law at the Restoration. And now, with the mitigations which religious liberty has required, it still subsists in all its essential features, not as personal or party opinion, but as embodied alike in statute and in usage, with no apparent likelihood of disappearance or decay." ^ 2 The Romanes Lecture for 1892, p. 38. For an excellent survey of Laud's career, see H. O, Wakeman, The Church and the Puritans, pp. 94-16S. APPENDIX A. IREN^US ON THE SACRAMENTS. Iren^us is not concerned to contend for the sacra- mental principle; he assumes it as acknowledged within the Church, and expressly attributes the opposite principle to some Gnostics of an ignoble type, who "say that the mystery of the ineffable and invisible power ought not to be performed by means of visible and perishable creatures, nor that of things inconceivable and incorporeal by means of things sensible and corporeal" (i. 21. 4). Of baptism he speaks as of the medium of regene- ration : " The Lord, when giving to the disciples the power of regeneration unto God, said to them, Go, teach all nations, baptising them," etc. (iii, 17. i) ; and when in the next section he says, " Our bodies have received through the laver that union (with God) which tends to incorruption, but our souls through the Spirit, wherefore both are necessary," he is not contemplating the action of the Holy Spirit as independent of baptism, but is distinguishing, as we should say, " the visible sign " from " the spiritual grace." The body, in this view, is itself sanctified and 3S6 WAYMARJ^S IN CHURCH HISTORY. prepared for life immortal by its contact with the water. We shall see that he has a similar thought as to its reception of the Eucharistic elements. In i. 21. I he says that the Marcosians have been " misled by Satan into a denial of baptism, of the regeneration which is unto God, and a rejection of the whole faith." But he speaks much more fully of the Holy Eucharist. Like Justin, he takes for granted that it involves a visible oblation. Thus, " Teaching His disciples to offer to God firstfruits from His own creatures. He took that bread which is part of the creation, and gave thanks, saying, ' This is My Body,' and similarly declared the cup, which is part of the creation that we know of, to be His Blood ; and taught us the new oblation of the new covenant, which the Church, receiving from the Apostles, offers throughout the whole world to God, to Him who bestows on us food, the firstfruits of His own gifts," quoting Mai. i. 10, II, and proceeding to apply Malachi's phrase, '* a pure sacrifice," to this new Christian oblation, which he represents as differing from Jewish sacrifices in three respects : it is offered in a free spirit, with a pure intention, and " through Christ," or " through the Word " (iv. 17. 5 ; ib. 18. 4). It follows, then, that the table on which the Eucharist was thus celebrated was for Irenaeus an altar; and his words in iv. 18. 6, " There is an altar in heaven, for thither our prayers and offerings are directed," simply indicate the mystic relation between the worship on earth and the Medi- ation in heaven, and are analogous to the prayer in the APPENDIX A. 357 ancient Roman canon, that the offerings may be ^' carried to the altar on high." The stress laid by Iren^eus on the derivation of the Eucharistic ele- ments from the creation is at once intelligible, when we remember that Gnosticism traced this creation to an inferior power, which, in the Valentinian theory, resulted from an "emotion" or a "defect" in the younger Sophia or Achamoth ; whereas it is a first principle in Christian theology that the Creator is identical with the Most High. So, when Irenaeus connects the offering of the elements with the affirma- tion by Christians in the liturgy that they are the Body and Blood of Christ, he goes on to ask how that could be, if the Father of Christ were not the Creator? Could He be supposed to accept an offer- ing out of what was not in truth His work ? Irenaeus goes on to speak of the Lord's Body and Blood as blessing even the bodily nature of communicants, and claims the Eucharist as "establishing the opinion " of Catholic Christians on the identity of the Maker with the Father. " We offer to Him things that are His own, consistently announcing the fellowship and union of flesh and spirit ; for as the bread which is from the earth, on receiving the invocation of God" — i.e. when God has been invoked over it — "is no longer common bread, but Eucharist, consisting of two things, an earthly and a spiritual, so our bodies, by partaking of the Eucharist, are no longer corruptible, in that they have a hope of resurrection" (iv. i8. 5). The Gnostics, he argues,' cannot be really at home with the Eucharist, for (i) in their view the bread 358 WA y MARKS IN CHURCH HISTOR V. and wine are not creatures of the Father of Jesus Christ; they are therefore disquahfied from offering them to that Father, or caUing them His Son's Body and Blood; and (2) they do not believe the future resurrection, and therefore cannot appreciate the efficacy of the Eucharist as a principle of life for body as well as soul. The historical interest of this context consists in the implied agreement of these Gnostics with Catholics in the use of the received Eucharistic language. The point taken is, "This language is unmeaning in your mouths ; you do use it, but your misbelief evacuates it of significance." If the phrase- ology in question had not been originally current among Christians, the "philosophical Christians" of that age would hardly have cared to embarrass them- selves by employing it. Another passage (v. 2. 2, 3) is equally suggestive as to the Church's belief towards the close of the second century. '' If this flesh cannot be saved, then neither ... is the cup of the Eucharist the communion of the Lord's Blood . . . When the cup that has been mingled and the bread that has been produced receive the word of God, and the Eucharist becomes Christ's Body" (or, *'and be- come the Eucharist of Christ's Body and Blood "), " and by these " (or, " by which ") " the substance of our flesh is increased and sustained, how can they deny that the flesh which is nourished by the Lord's Body and Blood, and is" (thus made) "a member of Him, is susceptible of that gift of God which is eternal life ? " x\s the products of the vine-plant and of wheat, "on receiving the word of God, become APPENDIX A. 359 the Eucharist, which is the Body and Blood of Christ, so our bodies, being nourished by it, will, after having been deposited in the earth and decom- posed, rise again in due time, the Word of God vouchsafing them resurrection." The steps of the argument seem to be, " The Word assumed flesh and blood, which, as having become His, are vitalising, and by consecration become the inward part of the Eucharist, and so have a vitalising effect, not only on the soul, but also on the body." This is very like the argument of Cyril of Alexandria. By "receiving the word of God " Irenseus indicates a comme- moration of the institution with solemn prayer, cp. ^vyr\^ \6yoM in Justin, Apol. i. (i(y. Once more ; the thirty-eighth Irenaean fragment (referring to the " second directions of the Apostles," a phrase of dis- puted meaning) gives, apparently, a form of Eucharistic invocation of the Holy Spirit, " that He may make this sacrifice, both the bread to be Christ's Body, and the cup to be Christ's Blood, to the end that all who receive these emblems" {i.e. "the outward part or sign ") " may obtain remission of sins and life eternal." On the whole we may fairly say that the theory which denies the consecrated bread to be bread in a real sense, the theory which assigns to the Eucharist a mere symbolical value, and the theory which uses the "Body and Blood of Christ" as a synonym for the efficacy of His death, and thereby deprives the Eucharist of its unique position among Christian ordinances, had not so much as occurred to the mind of this typical disciple of the disciple of St. John. 36o WAYMARKS IN CHURCH HISTORY. And when it is said that he does not speak of the celebration of the Eucharist as a function of the Christian ministry, it may be asked whether a writer who attached so much importance to the ministry as a guardian of Christian truth (iii. 2. 2 ; iv. 26, 2) ; who. when speaking of the Church as the scene of the Holy Spirit's presence, could select the ministry as a sample of the forms or organs of His working (iii. 24. i) ; and, lastly, who evidently regarded the Eucha- rist as the Church's most precious spiritual treasure, would not take for granted that such a ministry had this treasure in its own especial charge, on the prin- ciple embodied in Christ's own words, Luke xii. 42. [In the above, the reading " Verbum per quod offertur," in Iren. iv. 18. 4, has been followed. It suits the whole context better than " Verbum quod offertur," which, though supported by the best MSS., abruptly introduces a new idea. If this latter reading be adopted, " verbum " cannot, as Stieren supposes, mean '' prayers ; " for " the Word," a few lines further, is identified with "the Son."] APPENDIX B. THE FIRST STEPS OF THE ARIAN CONTROVERSY. It is not altogether easy to settle the order of events in what Montfaucon calls the " exordia implicatissima " of Arianism. On the whole, the following sequence may seem most probable. 1. Arius, the leading " parish priest," as we might call him, in Alexandria, disseminates his opinions, at first, within a circle of friends and admirers. 2. Archbishop Alexander, loth to interpose pubhcly and thereby probably to precipitate a crisis, sends for Arius, and tries the effect of private remonstrance, but in vain (cf. Epiph. Hser. 69. 3). 3. An Arianising movement spreads in Alexandria ; some zealous Churchmen blame the archbishop as "remiss;" he finds himself practically obliged to bring the subject before a meeting of his clergy, but in his address still avoids the use of decisive language, and permits a free expression of opinion (Soz. i. 15). 4. The agitation still increasing, Alexander holds a second meeting, and this time speaks out on the doctrinal question involved. Arius takes advantage of his words to charge him with Sabellianising, and pro- 362 WAYMARKS IN CHURCH HISTORY. ceeds to argue from the title " Son of God " to his own conclusion that the Sonship is " not eternal " and " not uncreate " (Soc. i. 5). 5. Alexander's next step is to obtain the signatures of the majority of the clergy to a solemn admonition addressed to the followers of Arius. 6. This warning having also failed, he assembles an episcopal synod, at which Arius and his chief ad- herents attend, and state their opinions unreservedly. They are thereupon excommunicated. 7. Arius now finds his position in Alexandria un- tenable, and repairs first to Palestine, where several bishops countenance him, and ultimately to Nicomedia, where he is welcomed and upheld by Bishop Eusebius. 8. Alexander issues the encyclical preserved by Socrates, and calls on his faithful clergy to sign it in token of their assent (cf. Ath. Op. i. 396, ed. 1698). 9. Somewhat later he writes the letter to Alexander of Byzantium, preserved by Theodoret, i. 5. (This is evidently the composition of a secretary, and subse- quent in date, the style being quite different from that of the former, and the contest being referred to as having become more aggravated.) 10. Constantine writes to Alexander and Arius, exhorting them jointly to put an end to "a purely verbal dispute" (Soc. i. 7). IT. When this letter arrives at Alexandria, Alex- ander holds another synod, attended by Constantine's messenger, Bishop Hosius. Arianism is again con- demned (Philostorg. i. 7 ; cf. Tillemont, vi. 230), and the presbyter Colluthus, who, on the ground of APPENDIX B. 363 Alexander's ''remissness," had taken upon him to *' ordain " clergy, is deposed, and his " ordinations " pronomiced null (a.d. 324). 12. In default of other means of settling the question, Constantine summons a General Council to meet at Nicsea in June, 325. APPENDIX C. ARIANISM TENDING TO UNITARIANISM. The decadence of English Presbyterianism in regard to Trinitarian faith appear to have begun in 17 17 under the influence of two Exeter ministers, Pierce and Hallet, the former of whom had disused the Trinitarian doxology in his services, but had not introduced controversy into his pulpit. The con- gregations were mostly averse to the new opinions, which were Arian in character. The Presbyterian ministers of Devon and Cornwall met, and almost unanimously expressed their belief in the Holy Trinity; but the Arianising party grew bolder. The dispute reached London, and produced a meeting of ministers at Salters' Hall, where a narrow majority resolved against introducing a Trinitarian declaration into the letter of counsel to be sent to their south- western colleagues. The minority thereupon adopted a formula made up of the first of the Thirty-nine Articles and part of the " Assembly's Catechism ; " they were known as "the Subscribers," and their action was approved by a majority of the south-western ministers, who with them incurred the reproach of setting up APPENDIX C. 365 "human creeds." Pierce and Hallet were dismissed from their pastorships, and Pierce took charge of an avowedly Arian congregation. But Arianism did not spread rapidly among English Presbyterians in general, and took but little hold in London before 1730. According to Bogue and Bennett (Hist, of Dissenters, iii. 378), most of the preachers who had imbibed it "concealed their sentiments under ambiguous ex- pressions " (a characteristically Arian proceeding, see Waterland, i. 392-395): "Many wore this disguise all their days, and the most cautious carried the secret with them to the grave. Some . . . left behind them a discourse, a pamphlet. . . . others had revealed the mystery to the initiated few." Sometimes Arian- ism was preached negatively by a marked silence on Christ's Divinity and the Atonement. "Free in- quiry became an idol" to students in Presbyterian seminaries; it was thought "candid" to condone heresy when a minister was sincere in holding it. But the general result is expressed in the sentence, "Socinianism was the child of Arianism;" or, to put it otherwise, Arianism was a " station " on the road to Socinianism, and the Presbyterians who thus passed beyond it had companions among the General Baptists, as Foster, whom Pope extols as preaching better than " ten metropolitans," and who, having Arianised about 17 18, ultimately settled in Socinianism. These two Congregationalist historians remark complacently that " of an Independent Church falling into Arianism perhaps an instance cannot be found ; " and Dr. Stoughton accounts for this by 366 WAYMARKS IN CHURCH HISTORY. observing that the Presbyterian ministers were less under the control of their flocks, more negative in belief, more open to literary and political influences, than their Independent brethren (Religion in England, vi. 296, fl".). A writer too early lost to the Church, after illustrating the relation of Trinitarian doctrine to the belief that " God is Love," observes that •' Arianism has hung like a watchful foe about the path of those who have inherited the awful teaching of Ulrich Zwingli and John Calvin." He also points out that Unitarianism is not less of a "slope" than Arianism ; that it is now " struggling for its very existence against theories which destroy religion altogether " (Aubrey Moore, " God is Love, and other Sermons," p. 14; cp. his "Science and the Faith," p. 160). For the Unitarianism of the last century has shrunk into a Theism with a naturalistic Christ. These stages of descent suggest one reflection. Belief in a Divine Christ can indeed exist and energise without belief in His present action through sacraments. But where the second lives, the first cannot die. APPENDIX D. SEMI-ARIANISM. Newman, in his "Arians," traces the "genesis" of Semi-Arianism with a bold vividness. "The genuine Eusebians were never in earnest in the modified creeds which they so ostentatiously put forward for the approbation of the West. However, while they clamoured in defence of the inconsistent doctrine contained in them, ... it so happened that they actually recommended" it '^ to the judgment of some of their followers, and ... at length per- ceived, doubtless to their surprise and disgust, that a party had arisen from among themselves, with all the positiveness (as they would consider it), and nothing of the straightforward simplicity of the Catholic con- troversialists, . . . and binding down their associates to the real import of the words which they had themselves chosen as mere evasions of orthodoxy." This statement is open to the objection that it paints the " Eusebians " too monotonously black. No party, political or ecclesiastical, was ever made up of mere intriguers. These men were not all so many duplicates of Eusebius of Nicomedia, not all privy 368 WAYMARKS IN CHURCH HISTORY. to base plots about a " broken chalice " or a " dead man's hand." Many of them, no doubt, were " indif- ferent honest " — men of petty moral build, self- surrendered to old prejudices, disliking a ''new test " without troubling themselves to understand what it represented, or to estimate the issue which had re- quired it; fancying that Nicaea had "carried the Church off her feet," that Arius had sufficiently explained himself, that Athanasius was a pragmatical troubler of Israel ; jealous, we may add, of Egyptian ascendency, and quick to take offence at remon- strances from Rome. But do we gain anything by calling them "conservatives " ? In Professor Gwatkin's learned and brilliant (if not wholly satisfactory) " Studies of Arianism," the term is applied to them, and to the Semi-Arians who succeeded them, with a curious and even wearisome iteration {e.g. it is used six times in p. 53, where also "conservatism" occurs thrice; five times in p. 61 ; six times in p. 167). It is evidently not, on the whole, intended for praise ; if once it is described as " honourable," elsewhere it is associated with "wavering, intrigue, indifference," with " undignified panic," with " prudent evasion of the question " in hand, with a wish to " command the assent of all parties by deciding nothing." Con- sidering that the word is avowedly adopted in " the broad meaning which it is supposed to bear in English politics, as indicating a class of men more inclined than others to acquiesce in an existing state of things," it is, perhaps, a little invidious to use it as descriptive of such qualities. But passing this by, we may note APPENDIX D. 369 the emphasis with which Professor Gwatkin sets before us the stumbhng attitude and helpless inconsistency of the Eusebian " conservatives." They " recoil from Arianism ; " they are " not prepared to record them- selves adherents of Arius ; " they " agree fundamen- tally with the Nicenes upon the reality of the Lord's divinity ;" they even defend it against Arius, but so inconsistently that their defence " breaks down ; " and yet their "timidity supports Arianism;" they are " patrons and allies of convinced Arians ; " their " usual explanation of John x. 30 " is " the Arian evasion" which explains it as a mere "unity of will" (pp. 49, 116, 129, 77, 53, 59, 118). Surely they " neither know what they say nor whereof they affirm." But let it further be considered whether the term " conservative," thus persistently inflicted on the reader, and mostly as bearing an ant.i-Nicene sense, may not produce an impression that the Nicene doctrine itself, as well as the imposition of the Nicene test-word, was foreign to Christian traditions, that its advocates were as such the innovating party. Such an impression would be contrary to a pregnant phrase in the account of the Nicene synod : the compilation of a creed as a standard of orthodoxy for all bishops was *' externally a revolution," yet " no doubt, in its deepest meaning, conservative." Just so ) it was necessary in order to secure the belief which had from Apostolic times been the underlying strength of Christianity. It maybe thought that the antithesis, "the victors of Nic^a leaned on Scripture, the Arians on tradition, throughout the controversy," is, like many antitheses, 2 B 370 WAYMARKS IN CHURCH HISTORY. too clean-cut to be true ; that it fails to do justice to the confidence with which, from the issuing of Alex- ander's encyclical, those of whom St. Athanasius was the representative claimed to be standing in the old paths, although Arianism might constrain them to adopt a new phrase. Here and there, unquestion- ably, authorities might be quoted by Arianism ; but there were traditions, and there was the tradition. The dominant characteristic form of Christian belief which had come down through the ante-Nicene cen- turies acknowledged a Redeemer who was by right adorable, because He was truly God. " If," says Keble, in the appendix to his sermon on " Primitive Tradition," " there be one among divines, ancient and modern, who commits his cause to the witness of Scripture more unreservedly than the rest, . . . that one is the great St. Athanasius. But the more un- feignedly he revered the Bible, the more thankfully did he avail himself of the greatest of providential helps to the right understanding of the Bible " in " the irrefragable testimony of the Church." He had to meet, and he did meet, the Arian glosses on texts, as well as the Arian appeal to this or that earlier teacher. But he felt sure of his ground both as to Scripture and tradition; he made it evident, as Professor Gwatkin excellently says, that "if Scripture was to be limited to any particular meaning, they must go outside Scripture for technical terms to define that meaning ; " he wrote and acted throughout as one who felt that a really new doctrine was as such self- condemned, and that not the opponents, but the APPENDIX D. 371 advocates, of the Homoousion were truly "con- servative " of the Faith. And if " Eastern conser- vatism " was "a hesitation to define the faith more closely," it could not be said to be represented by the Semi-Arians. Men who produced the Macrostich and the long Sirmian Creed, who felt sure that the evils which they discerned in the Homoousion were annulled by the insertion of another iota, who went naturally into the subtle disquisitions which form so large a part of the Ancyrene synodal letter, and who summed up their case in nineteen doctrinal anathemas, were certainly not indisposed "to define." It was a reasonable horror of the dirce fades of Anomceanism which moved the advocates of the Homoiousion fo take this course; and in the next year, 359, their leaders, Basil and George, put forth a memorial which Epiphanius (H^er. 73. 12) adds to the Ancyrene document, and which aims at unmasking the policy of the Acacians in pressing for the acceptance of the Homoion without any reference to "ousia." Let us, they meant, once get "likeness" simply affirmed, and we can easily explain it as referring to " will and action," as a moral hkeness quite compatible with unlikeness in being or nature; the Homoion will then be a stepping-stone to the Anomoion. The memorial points out that this device would be baffled if "like" were followed by "in all things," a phrase which, of course, would comprehend "essence;" and Basil thus interpreted its scope in a note appended to his signature of the " dated creed " of Whitsun- tide, 359, " In all things, not only in will, but in 372 WAYMARKS IN CHURCH HISTORY. vTToo-TaaLs, and existence, and being." One telling sentence in this paper might have come from Athan- asius himself. The writers are insisting on the uniqueness of the Divine Sonship, and they say, " When we think of God as Father, we think of Him as Father of God ; " in other words, a real " Son of God " can be no other than " God the Son." Professor Gwaikin may well say that such a manifesto from Semi-Arian leaders was in effect '' a surrender at discretion" to Nicenes. It involved a beHef in all that was intended by the Homoousion. It went far, indeed, to justify the hopefulness with which Hilary shortly before, and Athanasius shortly afterwards, appealed to the Semi-Arians as " brethren whose differ- ence from themselves was only verbal ; " who, as Athanasius puts it, would soon come to accept the Homoousion, if they clearly saw what it did and what it did not mean (De Syn. 41). He expressly names Basil, on the ground of what he had "written as to the faith." Years later, Epiphanius sums up his account of the Semi-Arians by asking plainly, " what was their grievance " in regard to the Homoousion ? and pointing out that, instead of suggesting Sabellian- ism, as they professed to think, it actually secured the idea of hypostatic distinctions in the one God- head ; whereas their own Homoiousion excluded that identity of nature which was implied in a really Divine Sonship. And they accepted " From the essence." If Epiphanius, in his coarse way, denounces them as intriguers and "actors," we must allow somewhat for the failure of those hopes which had been excited APPENDIX D. 373 by the conformity of a large number of Semi-Arians to the Nicene standard in 366. The project of a Reunion-council failed; a considerable minority re- fused to go with their brethren ; and from about that date *' the portion of the party which remained noncon- formist," as Newman expresses it (Arians, p. 391), is best known in connexion with the heresy called after Macedonius of Constantinople, which regarded the Holy Spirit as created and simply " ministrant," instead of being '' the Lord " and *' Lifegiver " (above, p. 98). When Professor Gwatkin's suggests (Studies of Arianism, p. 38) that at the time of the Nicene Council '' the idea of hypostatic distinctions " was a "new idea which claimed admittance," he cannot mean that the Church had not previously been, in fact, Trinitarian— had not held (albeit without certain phrases, then introduced into her confession) that the Son was, in a true sense, distinct from the Father, while yet mysteriously one with Him as God. For he has already said with equal truth and force (p. 5) that the Church felt " that the Person of the Lord is the infinite and final revelation of the Father," and " thus the Lord's divinity was from the first as fixed an axiom of Christianity as the unity of God." If Christ was thus the Son of the Father, and, as such, God from and with the Father, this means the Nicene faith. '' Athanasius and his friends " at Nicaea "could not leave it an open question whether the Lord is truly God or not " (ib. p. 40). APPENDIX E. BASIL AND GLYCERIUS. Professor Ramsay, in the eighteenth chapter of his highly suggestive book, *' The Church in the Roman Empire," represents the churches in Asia Minor as very loosely organised. One might think that the assembling of bishops in Pontus under the presidency of their senior to consider the Paschal question, and the decisive synodical action taken still earlier against the Phrygian Montanists, would point to a different conclusion. But Professor Ramsay takes up the case of Glycerins in the early years of the episcopate of Basil. He sets aside the " usual interpretation/' and undertakes to show that it is coloured by ecclesiastical preconceptions; that in Cappadocia *'the centraHsing discipline of the general Catholic Church " was not established without struggle and difficulty. The episode is certainly curious : three letters of Basil (Epp. 1 69-1 71) contain all that we can know of it. Glycerius, a monk, has been ordained deacon by Basil, to serve under the presbyter of Venasa. He neglects his duties, and, without any authority, makes himself the leader of a band of young women under APPENDIX E. 375 the title of ''patriarch," and "as one might take up a profession to live by ; " he perplexes and disturbs the local church, disregards his presbyter, his chorepisco- pus, and Basil himself, and decamps by night with his female followers and a number of young men. Then the spectators at a great country gathering are shocked or amused, according to their dispositions, by a dance in which the girls follow the youths. Fathers who entreat their daughters to come home are roughly repulsed by Glycerius, who carries his party off, though some girls by this time would fain return. A bishop — Gregory — gives him some countenance. Basil exhorts Gregory to send him back, or at least procure the return of the girls whom he is detaining, and writes to Glycerius himself that many, including his presbyter, are pleading for him — that if he will now return he will be pardoned. Another letter intimates a suspicion that Gregory himself, for some reason, is encouraging Glycerius in contumacy. There are several things here which suggest questions. For instance, we do not know who this Gregory was. Professor Ramsay is inclined to think that he was the old bishop of Nazianzus, which was not far from Venasa. If so, the letters must be dated before 374. But leaving this point, and not pausing to criticise a few inaccuracies in Professor Ramsay's translation, we may observe as follows : (i) Gregory's slackness does not of itself imply his approval of Glycerius' conduct. (2) Still less does the intercession of " his cure^' as Tillemont calls the '•'elderly and kindly-natured " presbyter, who had 376 WAYMARKS IN CHURCH HISTORY. evidently remonstrated with the self-willed deacon, for the same term " despising " is used of Glycerius's attitude towards all his three superiors in the Church. To talk, therefore, of the presbyter's " evident sym- pathy " with Glycerius is really somewhat wild. (3) It is quite a mistake to imagine that " patriarch " was then the recognised title of " the highest religious official" among the Christians of a district; the assumption of it by Glycerius would rather point to Montanistic leanings ; and, by the w^ay, to suppose that Basil was offended by such assumption on a deacon's part because it was " subversive of the strict discipline of the Roman Church," is to misread his whole attitude towards Rome. (4) As to the avvoho^ at which this " choir " presented itself, what proof is there that, having once been connected with a pagan festival, it ^vas now a Church-gathering in the proper sense, with religious ceremonies of its own? A still stronger term — TravrjyvpLs — was used by Chrysostom in 403 for a fair at which men ''bought and sold " (Pallad. Vit. Chrys. p. 68) ; and Tillemont's rendering of o-wo8os by "foire" seems reasonable enough. (5) Lastly, to say that the *' downcast looks of the pious, and the jests of the ribald," were details added by Basil's preconceptions, and to ignore the " information " given him about the strong objection expressed by parents, is arbitrary indeed. On the whole, while fully granting that the question throughout was not of morality, but of decorum and good order, and even that Glycerius may have been thinking of such dancing as David's, we may fairly APPENDIX E. 377 decline to accept the view that he was simply performing " a naive and quaint ceremony of early Cappadocian Christianity," and "was thus acting in accordance with estabhshed custom and the general feeling of the Cappadocian Church." This is surely to imagine beyond evidence. The confusion caused by the deacon's earlier irregularities, the evident disapproval of those to whom "the charge and government over him " had been committed, the scandal and domestic distress which his later per- formances involved, seem to tell strongly against the theory. And, after all, there is a question of some gravity behind. Professor Ramsay has done more than any one else to illustrate the journies of St. Paul through Asia Minor. Would he have said that Glycerins had " used the office of a deacon well " ? APPENDIX F. THEODORET. In one aspect of his career, Theodoret is a melancholy instance of the extent to which theological judgment can be warped by personal feeling. His regard for Nestorius and his dislike to Cyril kept him practically on the wrong side for years. His criticisms on the Cyrilline "articles" are too often captious, or indicative of confused thought, or vitiated by ignoratio ekfichi. As Cyril himself says in his rejoinder, Theodoret admits enough to show that he really believed in a Personal Union (Apol. adv. Theod. i, 2). But Theodoret did one thing which is not always fully appreciated in its bearing on the *' Filioque " contro- versy. Cyril, it is well known, came nearer than other Eastern fathers to the Western view of that subject. He was led that way by his one invariable thesis, that Christ was personally identical with the Only-begotten. It followed that the relation of the Holy Spirit to Christ could not be, like His relation to saints, "external," but must be internal; accordingly, Cyril spoke freely of the Holy Spirit as "from" (or "out of") "the Son" {Ik or t'l), although certainly some APPENDIX F. 379 passages which have been urged in this connexion refer to the emission or effusion of the Spirit, and thus do not come up to the mark of the Latin formula. But Theodoret, acknowledging that the Spirit is the Son's " own " Spirit, virtually challenges Cyril to maintain " that He has His existence from or through the Son ; " and Cyril does not accept that challenge, but contents himself with repeating that "the Spirit proceeds from the Father, but is not foreign to the Son, because the Son has all things with the Father " — that is, because of the " consubstantiality " (Apol. adv. Theod. 9), even as he afterwards said in his letter to John, that "the Spirit proceeded from the Father, but was not foreign to the Son in regard to essence." It cannot, then, be assumed that Cyril would have approved of erecting the Double Proces- sion into a dogma. After the reunion between Cyril and John, Theodoret long held out more persistently than Andrew of Samosata, though not so "irreconcilably" as Alexander of Hierapolis. He was satisfied with Cyril's later language, but he thought that the " articles " should be cancelled ; and even when at last, under pressure, he joined the reunion, he said that he would rather have both hands cut off than acquiesce in the condemnation of Nestorius (JJlansi, V. 899) ; in fact, he did not do so until urged by the Council of Chalcedon. We may well wish to believe that "the atrocious letter," as Cardinal Newman calls it, which professes to express his exultation after Cyril's death, was wrongly ascribed 38o lVAVMA/?JirS IN CHURCH HISTORY. to him. Canon Venables, in his excellent article on Theodoret in the " Dictionary of Christian Biography," thinks that it must be taken not seriously, but as " a bitter jest ; " but, apart from its bitterness, it would be a jest of a thoroughly "unbefitting" kind. Un- fortunately, an objection to treating it as spurious consists in the fact that Theodoret lived to write as offensively, and, considering the past, yet more discreditably, of Nestorius himself — "overdoing it," perhaps, in an endeavour to prove his own orthodoxy. If the letter about Cyril's entrance into Hades, and the chapter on Nestorius in the work on " Heretical Fables," with the "libellus" to Sporacius, are all, in whole or in part, inventions, Theodoret has had the singular fate of being wronged by forgers from two opposite points of view. However, when Cyril was gone, Theodoret's mind worked itself clear, to the great advantage of the Church. Not only did he bring himself to speak of Cyril's "memory," in the usual style, as "blessed" (Epp. 83, 86), but in his Dialogues, which are his best contribution to theology, and in many of his letters {e.^i^. Epp. 21, 83, 104, 116, 125, 130, 145, 146), we observe that the Eutychian dispute brings out with special distinctness his genuine belief in the personal divinity, as well as in the real humanity, of our Lord. Thus his riper statements recognise with a balanced com- pleteness those two sides of the Incarnation-mystery which were impartially guarded by Leo and at Chalcedon, as afterwards by those who maintained asainst Monothelites the existence of "two con- APPENDIX F. 381 cordant wills and activities " in the indivisible personality of a divine and human Christ. (On this see below, Appendix I.) But we learn more of the real Theodoret by looking outside the polemical sphere. He follows Chrysostom as an expositor of Scripture on the Antiochene lines, which discourage all excess of allegorism ; and this enhances our surprise at the credulity which distinguishes his memoirs of Eastern ascetics. He is the active laborious bishop of a small North-Syrian diocese^ " forty miles long and as many broad, very hilly, partly woodland, fully cultivated" — so he describes it in one of his letters (Ep. 42). He is familiar with all its eight hundred "parishes" — the word being here used in its present sense ; by sedulous visitations he has cleared them of all heresy (such as Marcionism and two forms of Arianism), though not without being "pelted" for his pains (Ep. 113). When the poor people are overtaxed, he exerts himself to procure a revision of the assessment (Ep. 42). Cyrrhos, his episcopal city, is a " poor little " place; he has spent much in "relieving its unsighdi- ness by new buildings of various kinds" (Ep. 138). When an imperial order confines him to it, as a person dangerous to the peace of the Church, what annoys him is the harshness of the proceeding (Epp. 79-81). He has been a voluminous writer (Epp. 116, 145) and a very successful preacher; on one occasion, at Antioch, the patriarch John rose from his throne and applauded by clapping his hands (Ep. 83) : but he is equally painstaking in 382 IVAYMARKS IN CHURCH HISTORY. the humbler task of instructing catechumens before baptism (Ep. 94). He is keenly sensitive to miscon- struction and injustice ; in one letter he passionately complains, alluding to the hostility of the Eutychian party then in power, that he has not met with even such humanity as is extended to criminals in prison (Ep. 134). Yet his troubles never make him selfish ; he is always to be relied on for considerate and practical sympathy. His letters of condolence are carefully thought out, and sent just when most likely to be helpful. A widow is exhorted, when the freshness of her grief is somewhat past, to think of her husband not as dead, but as gone on a journey. A man who has lost first his wife and then his promising son is reminded of Wisdom iv. 11; in another case, after i Thess. iv. 13 has been adduced to restrain immoderate sorrow, the wound is gently touched with the balm of Isa. xlix. 15, "for," adds Theodoret, " He is nearer (olKeioTEpog) to us than father or mother" (Ep. 14). Yet perhaps we are more impressed by his power of interesting himself in the distresses of exiled foreigners, such as African Christians ruined by Vandal invasion — a bishop (Epp. 52, 53), a noble Carthaginian citizen (Epp. 29- 36), and a highborn young lady, twice sold into servi- tude in company with her faithful slave-girl (Ep. 70). A nature so affectionate was sure to attract friends and to value them. "Distance of place," he once ™tes, "and length of time do not break up a genuine friendship; but rather heighten its bloom" (Ep. 59). One short note shows the great prelate in a playful APPENDIX F. 383 vein. A friend has sent him some Lesbian wine ; he admires its colour, Ukes its " dehcate flavour," just liints at the possibihty of its turning sour; time has a bad effect on many things ! " But if, as you say, it tends to prolong life, it will be of no good at all to me ; I have no desire for length of days" — the sunny mood is momentarily overshadowed — " for life takes us into very rough waters." Then, after expressing pleasure at a monk's recovery from illness, *' I send you a jar of honey, such as Cilician bees make from the spoils of the storax flowers" (Ep. 13). Theodoret's years did not, in fact, much exceed sixty. He seems to have died about 457, while the memory of his rehabilitation at Chalcedon was still recent. Tillemont thinks that but for his " mis- fortune in having defended Nestorius and attacked Cyril, his name might have been as much revered in the Church as that of a Basil or a Chrysostom " (xv. 207) ; and Cardinal Newman, in his exquisite papers on ''The Trials of Theodoret," compares him in some respects to Chrysostom, calls him a great writer and holy bishop, and considers that " nothing in his life forbids our saying that he was as genuine a saint as some of those whose names are in the calendar; " "he has ever been known as ' the Blessed Theodoret' " (Hist. Sketches, iii. 307). APPENDIX G. CYRIL ON THE *' KENOSIS." Cyril frequently introduces the word KeVwcrts in reference to Phil. ii. 6, and evidently takes it in the literal sense as an " emptying," for he argues from it to a divine pre-existing "fulness," as against the Nestorian supposition that Christ was an individual human person existing ISlkCjs, iSta, dva /^epos, Ke^^oipicr- fjL€vois (Ep. 2 ad Nest., Expl. Cap. 2, 3, 12, Adv. Orient. 11, etc.). "It is, I presume, what is full that is 'emptied'" (adv. Nest. v. 2). "The Word was thus ' emptied ' by His becoming like unto us, whereas, as God, He was full" (Schol. 12). Cyril understands ovx ap7rayf.tov . . . 0€<3 to mean. He did not deem the being equal witli God a thing to grasp tenaciously, as if He insisted on " remaining " in the unqualified enjoyment of its rights, but, on the contrary, " He lowered Himself to a voluntary empty- ing" (Ep. 3 ad Nest. 8 ; Expl. Cap. 4; Quod Unus, PP« 373> 41 1> ^^' Pusey). In one passage of Quod Unus he faces the question, What is the nature of the /ceVa)(76s ? and answers, It consists in the Son's assuming flesh, and coming to exist in the form of a servant APPENDIX G. 385 —in the assimilation to us of One who in His own nature was not like unto us, but was above the whole creation. Thus He humbled Himself, having lowered Himself ot/covo/ui/cws in the measures (yaerpois) of the manhood" (Op. ed. Pusey, vii. 373). Two phrases here invite comment. Cyril, like Eusebius (H. E. i. i), Athanasius (Orat. c. Ari. ii. 75), Gregory of Nazianzus (Orat. 29. 18), uses oLKovo[XLa for that supreme " dispensation " of Divine wisdom and love whereby the Father sent the Son to be the Saviour. Thus, "if He is called Apostle ... we are not ashamed of the olKovofxta " (Expl. Cap. 2), and oIkovo- /xtKws is used as virtually equivalent to dv^pojTrtvws (adv. Theod. 10), and in connexion with Christ's presence at the marriage in Cana (Ep. 3 ad Nest. 11), and with His Passion and death (Schol. 37, adv. Nest. v. init.). Merpov and /xeVpa are used of the lines which mark out the sphere of human life ; thus, " He stooped to a fxirpov befitting a servant " (adv. Theod. 10) ; " He did not treat the {xirpov of the manhood as dishonourable" (Expl. Cap. 4, like " non horruisti Virginis uterum ") ; "the measures of the manhood called Him to be our High Priest " (Expl. Cap. 10) ; and so frequently "the measure" or " measures t-^s K€VO}(T€W